yellow service chits.
“Holidays. Get the car serviced before buzzing down to the country. That class of thing. It’s always a busy time for the boys in the garage.”
“Your service manager, Doyle. Are you aware that he has a prison record?”
O’Reilly straightened up, handing a sheet of flimsy copy paper to the superintendent. “Really now—if we can’t forget a man’s past, a man who’s suffered enough, as I understand it…”
“How so?”
O’Reilly’s hand went back in his pockets, deep. “I consider that his business.”
Two hours’ labor, 2:30 to 4:30, at 6 pounds per hour, 30 pence tax.
O’Shaughnessy asked if he might take the afternoon’s slips with him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the woman at the desk, “but as you can see I need them for billing purposes.”
“And we’d have to know what all of this is about,” O’Reilly added.
“Then you’re going to force me to get a court order for them?”
O’Reilly glanced away. He cocked his head to one side. A man in his thirties, his dark hair was just beginning to gray. He had a round face with a long sloping nose and a prominent chin. “Let’s say that for the present I’d just like to think the whole thing over.”
After phoning Murray, O’Shaughnessy thought. And the call would go through post haste.
“Have you no children yourself?” the woman asked McGarr.
“None. No—” McGarr reached up and with two knuckles plucked at the child’s cheek, “—nippers.” He looked fondly at the little boy who was sitting on his knee and bounced him a bit. With his right hand he reached for the teacup on the table, which was covered with an assortment of biscuits, breads, jams, and a box of sweets—bonbons and creams mostly.
The kitchen was startlingly modern, all porcelain and chrome appliances with stark white walls that the sliding glass doors to the terrace and back garden made brilliant. On a counter a portable television was showing a soap opera beamed in from a commercial British station, and at the beginning of the viewing hour a replica—rather, the model—of the kitchen had appeared in most of the advertisements for home-care products. Now the volume was turned low.
McGarr had gained access to the Brady household by dropping the fact that it had been he who had discovered the bomb in the Caughey car.
“A bomb and not just a scare, was it?” she had asked.
“Aye, a bomb, Missus Brady. And wired to the clutch. Didn’t I almost step on it myself.” McGarr had then touched his brow.
“Why, you look…famished. Parched. Amn’t I right, Inspector?”
“Chief Inspector,” McGarr corrected, knowing it would matter to her.
The other neighbors who had been led to safety several streets away had only just been returning, and they had stared inquiringly at the Brady doorway and the many hatboxes that McGarr had stacked in it.
“Would you care to see my papers?”
“Ah, no, no—come in, sir. Out of the sun. It’s blazing today.”
And in the Brady flat, too, McGarr had found the welcome relief of air conditioning. Brady himself was a manager at the Philips Electrologica data processing firm. “We got a big mark-off on the machine,” which she pronounced mashsheen , “but I needn’t tell you the current is expensive. It’s only on days like this—
“But they’re Belgians, you know. Philips. And they make my Tommy work awfully hard. He says we can afford it. Still, it’s only on days like this—
“It’s about the poor old woman that you’ve come.” She had scurried around the kitchen, readying the table, filling a pot with water, taking this and that from the metal cabinets around the kitchen.
“Tony, you little brigand, put that down.”
She was from the country and her mind was quicker than her tongue. She was again wearing the cardigan and the gray woolen dress that he had seen her in the night before, and the pink fluffy booties that looked like two dust mops on her thin
“Holidays. Get the car serviced before buzzing down to the country. That class of thing. It’s always a busy time for the boys in the garage.”
“Your service manager, Doyle. Are you aware that he has a prison record?”
O’Reilly straightened up, handing a sheet of flimsy copy paper to the superintendent. “Really now—if we can’t forget a man’s past, a man who’s suffered enough, as I understand it…”
“How so?”
O’Reilly’s hand went back in his pockets, deep. “I consider that his business.”
Two hours’ labor, 2:30 to 4:30, at 6 pounds per hour, 30 pence tax.
O’Shaughnessy asked if he might take the afternoon’s slips with him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the woman at the desk, “but as you can see I need them for billing purposes.”
“And we’d have to know what all of this is about,” O’Reilly added.
“Then you’re going to force me to get a court order for them?”
O’Reilly glanced away. He cocked his head to one side. A man in his thirties, his dark hair was just beginning to gray. He had a round face with a long sloping nose and a prominent chin. “Let’s say that for the present I’d just like to think the whole thing over.”
After phoning Murray, O’Shaughnessy thought. And the call would go through post haste.
“Have you no children yourself?” the woman asked McGarr.
“None. No—” McGarr reached up and with two knuckles plucked at the child’s cheek, “—nippers.” He looked fondly at the little boy who was sitting on his knee and bounced him a bit. With his right hand he reached for the teacup on the table, which was covered with an assortment of biscuits, breads, jams, and a box of sweets—bonbons and creams mostly.
The kitchen was startlingly modern, all porcelain and chrome appliances with stark white walls that the sliding glass doors to the terrace and back garden made brilliant. On a counter a portable television was showing a soap opera beamed in from a commercial British station, and at the beginning of the viewing hour a replica—rather, the model—of the kitchen had appeared in most of the advertisements for home-care products. Now the volume was turned low.
McGarr had gained access to the Brady household by dropping the fact that it had been he who had discovered the bomb in the Caughey car.
“A bomb and not just a scare, was it?” she had asked.
“Aye, a bomb, Missus Brady. And wired to the clutch. Didn’t I almost step on it myself.” McGarr had then touched his brow.
“Why, you look…famished. Parched. Amn’t I right, Inspector?”
“Chief Inspector,” McGarr corrected, knowing it would matter to her.
The other neighbors who had been led to safety several streets away had only just been returning, and they had stared inquiringly at the Brady doorway and the many hatboxes that McGarr had stacked in it.
“Would you care to see my papers?”
“Ah, no, no—come in, sir. Out of the sun. It’s blazing today.”
And in the Brady flat, too, McGarr had found the welcome relief of air conditioning. Brady himself was a manager at the Philips Electrologica data processing firm. “We got a big mark-off on the machine,” which she pronounced mashsheen , “but I needn’t tell you the current is expensive. It’s only on days like this—
“But they’re Belgians, you know. Philips. And they make my Tommy work awfully hard. He says we can afford it. Still, it’s only on days like this—
“It’s about the poor old woman that you’ve come.” She had scurried around the kitchen, readying the table, filling a pot with water, taking this and that from the metal cabinets around the kitchen.
“Tony, you little brigand, put that down.”
She was from the country and her mind was quicker than her tongue. She was again wearing the cardigan and the gray woolen dress that he had seen her in the night before, and the pink fluffy booties that looked like two dust mops on her thin
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