by John Brady
Fine’s smile rallied, but then dropped off his face. He turned to look out of the window again.
“I gave you that woman’s name, didn’t I?” said Fine. Minogue looked from Fine to Cohen. Fine seemed to sense the tension immediately, and he sat up and looked at Cohen. “Oh it’s all right, Johnny. For God’s sake, it’s not dirt or anything. Everything counts in this line of work. I gave you her name, didn’t I?”
Minogue nodded. Paul had had a girlfriend, Mary McCutcheon. She was a journalist.
“Although he never talked to me directly about things like that.” Fine paused as though to weigh his words. “He never introduced her to us. I think he was ashamed. Yes. But I believe he was very fond of her.”
Minogue felt the acid sting of tears on his own eyes and he turned back in his seat, blinking, while Billy Fine wept in the arms of his friend.
CHAPTER THREE
“Did any of ye hear of these lunatics before?”
Kilmartin and Minogue shook their heads.
“The League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Not a foreign accent either. Mother of Jases, as if we didn’t have enough to be going on with,” the Commissioner declared. “I have a lot of faith in you fellas. So does the whole country too, let me tell you. Yous have the nose for getting convictions.”
Minogue stole a glance at the neck stretching the collar, the farmyard face. Gardai had always had a measure of suspicion for their Commissioners since the force was founded in 1922. There had been autocrats and weaklings, Napoleons and incompetents in the post. It didn’t take a Leftie to declare publicly that every Garda Commissioner was too much under the finger of his political overseer, the Minister for Justice. Too political.
“You can’t imagine the pleasure I had putting me name to last year’s Report on Crime,” said the Commissioner.
Minogue’s gargoyle within sniggered: did he mean the 450-odd crimes in which firearms were used? The seizure of four rocket-launchers by accident, perhaps? Maybe Lally meant the overall detection rate of 32 per cent, published in black and white for the public to get the willies over? Maybe the state of community-Gardai relations in Dublin, the one county with half the country’s population…?
“Yes, indeed. Every blade out there on the beat knows that if there’s a person murdered in this country then the perpetrator has less than one chance in twenty-five of getting away with it…”
Must be going to ask for something big, thought Minogue. Kilmartin listened with an apparent gravity, nodding his head for emphasis.
“… I threw that 95 per cent success rate at policemen in that bloody conference in Stockholm last month and bejases if they were nearly calling me a liar.” The Commissioner shook his huge head for emphasis. He’s like a horse settling on the bit, Minogue thought. A finger came out of the fist which the Commissioner had been raising and lowering on the table.
“ ‘Oh but in Ireland we hear there is much crime of violence,’ says one of them, a shagging Frenchman, I think. Well I cut him short then and there, so I did, in short order too. And I was thinking of Jimmy Kilmartin and yourself, Matt, when I settled this Frenchman’s hash. I wouldn’t mind but the ones that were bragging about little crime were iijits like the Swiss and the Norwegians, races without the brains and the vim to do a bit of divilment anyway. All they do is sit at home and count their money or commit suicide. Pack of shites… Anyway, all the lads on the Squad have the creative approach as well as the hard work. Do you know what I said to this Frenchman, do you?”
“No,” Kilmartin whispered.
“I nearly told him to eff off. They think they’re the bee’s knees, that crowd. Well I happen to know that they have dracul-”
“Draconian?” said Minogue.
“Exactly. Draconian laws to be harassing their citizens, so I do. The French are savages in their own right. Anyway, I says to this upstart, ‘You’re addressing a policeman whose Murder Squad is an example to the civilized world.’ Do you get the hint about civilized? Themselves and their Algeria!”
What civilized world, Minogue wondered. The Commissioner, more fully inflated with that happiest of Irish emotions, the fearless rebuffing of any suggestion that things Irish were not the equal and better of anything on the planet, became even more animated. Minogue did not like this man one bit.
“That’s the way,” said Kilmartin. Minogue winced at his sycophancy. The Commissioner dropped both fists dramatically on the table and his whole demeanour changed in an instant. His face was now a mask of stern determination.
“So that’s the confidence I had under me hat when I was able to say to Chief Justice Fine that all the resources of the Garda Siochana would be brought to bear on this dastardly crime.”
Did he really say ‘dastardly crime’ to Fine, Minogue’s gargoyle asked.
“Most particularly, the proven record of the Murder Squad.” The Commissioner sat back in his chair, satisfied with his oratory. “And do you know, men, that Justice Fine knows you, Matt?”
“A fleeting acquaintance, I’m thinking,” said Minogue, his suspicions returning in full.
“Maybe so, but evidently the man has the same faith in you as I do and as Jimmy Kilmartin does. You’re not an Inspector for nothing, I can tell you.”
Kilmartin must have known this would come out, Minogue realized then.
“He asked me if you’d spearhead the investigation,” said Lally.
Minogue did not trust himself to look at Kilmartin now.
“So naturally I told him I’d speak to Jimmy Kilmartin about that. To see how the land lies, if you follow me.” God Almighty turned to Kilmartin.
“Absolutely sir,” said Kilmartin guilelessly.
“Great stuff, men,” said the Commissioner, rising. “Can I have a call on it every day? The Minister has asked me for a briefing every evening: that’s the kind of priority it has. He’s expecting to be prodded during Question Period as to security. Oh, and lookit… I had the Branch, er, see if they had any file on this Paul Fine. He was by way of being a journalist. The name sort of struck a chord, like. He was a bit of a Leftie when he was in college, that sort of thing. Mild; no record of trouble with the law.”
Lally swept an arm over imaginary protestations and squinted at both policemen. “That’s all water under the bridge, so it is. Trotskyist, Leftie, journalist, Jew-none of that matters a damn to us, isn’t that the way to approach it? Fair play and justice for all.”
Then why mention it, Minogue wondered.
“I’ve greased the wheels with the Branch already, seeing as I had that titbit of information about Fine. There’s a Gallagher in the Branch, Sergeant Gallagher. I believe that he and another few under him monitor these foreign fanatics here.”
Fanatics. Minogue sat down again when the Commissioner left. Anything to do with the Middle East meant fanaticism apparently. There were no Irish fanatics, of course.
“Looks like you’re elected, Matt,” Kilmartin said from the door. Minogue hoped it was a trace of relief he detected in Jimmy’s voice.
“Can I have Shea Hoey and Keating too then?”
“To be sure,” said Kilmartin remotely. He held his hand on the door yet. “Look. A few things. The Commissioner in his haste may get a hold of you to find out how you’ll be doing on this case-instead of getting his brief from me. You heard him say he wants to hear from us every day?”
Minogue nodded.
“All I’m saying is, don’t leave me in the dark on anything. I don’t want him telling me what I’m supposed to know. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Ah, he’d never do that.’ I’m not saying he would, but you can see he’s jumpy about this. And another thing. I don’t want any of the hooligans in the Branch knowing too much about what we’re up to. Take whatever you can off this Gallagher fella, but don’t be giving him so much as the steam off your piss in July. Don’t be surprised if you-know-who is about to give the identical little speech to the Branch, telling them to keep their own investigation under their hats.�
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Kilmartin arched an eyebrow and winked. Neither gesture dispelled Minogue’s bafflement. “You’re still a bit of an innocent, Matt. That doesn’t mean you or I should be taken for a gobshite though, does it?”
“I’m not so sure I want to know more at this point,” murmured Minogue.
“Here, so, think on this: God Almighty has no choice but to go along with Fine’s request to have you running this. And don’t be worrying about me and me pride. I’ll be more than happy to take the credit from you when the time comes. But don’t forget that you have the name of being a class of a wild rozzer.”
“I do?”
“Don’t be an iijit, of course you do. You nearly managed to make a diplomatic pig’s mickey out of the Combs business. God Almighty was expecting you to march down to the British Embassy and break down the door looking for any more involved in that Combs case. You don’t think you’d be drawing an Inspector’s pay today if the Commissioner was the sole captain of the ship, do you? It came down from Justice, right from the Minister too, as a signal to the Brits that we done right here and we support our police, no matter what the politicos might say. That sort of political weather spoils our gallant Commissioner’s humours, don’t you see. He just wants to run his shop like any other yo-yo high up on the State payroll.”
Minogue had heard it before. He had no sympathy for the Commissioner’s humours.
“Perhaps I should be grateful to have you keep me from falling under a bus too?”
“Don’t be getting uppity, Matt. Just be looking over your shoulder when you’re working on this.”
Paul Fine’s flat was in Ringsend, close by the new city-centre bypass route. His flat was the upper storey of a house which backed on to Ringsend Park. The house, standing at the end of a terrace, was removed both in architecture and original function from the houses on the terrace itself. Minogue guessed that it had been an official billet or quarters for a functionary who had worked on the docks around this part of the Port of Dublin.
The air was thick with seagulls and pigeons. Sulphurous, fishy smells on the air reminded Minogue that the Liffey Basin and docks were on the far side of the bypass road at the foot of the terrace. He could see the upper decks and cranes of moored cargo-ships when he looked in that direction. A young woman holding an infant stood in a doorway half-way down the terrace watching the two policemen. The snout of a Garda car showed from a lane next to Fine’s place.
Ringsend had had the name of being the toughest assignment for Gardai but that was twenty and more years ago, Minogue reflected, as he stared bleakly down the grimy road. Pitched battles outside and inside the pubs on Saturday nights had been routine then. Innumerable gangs and family racketeers fleshed out the crime figures in Ringsend and Irishtown. As with the newer working-class areas such as Inchicore and Crumlin and, more recently, Tallaght, much damage had been done to Garda work by Gardai themselves. Young Guards, countrymen, fresh from training, had been thrown into areas like Ringsend and had been backed up and directed by Gardai also overwhelmingly from the country. Over the years, those old hands had distilled their native dislike for Dubliners into a cynical and heavy-handed contempt. Time, not training, had settled the matter. Ringsend and Irishtown had become quieter as the first generation born into the flats and terraces had married and moved out. The Garda Press Office still liked to point out, to nuisances who asked why Garda-community relations were so bad, that crime rates in places like Ringsend had plummeted because Garda foot-patrols had solved the problem.
“They used to say that a sign you were a real Dubliner was if you knew where Raytown was,” Minogue observed. Hoey took note of Minogue’s melancholy tone, of Minogue examining the grey sky over the docks. “Yep,” Minogue added. “Raytown’s over there by Ringsend village.”
“Seems like a rough spot still to me,” Hoey said.
“Ah, it is and it isn’t. Is this the house?”
A cramped glass porch had been built around the front door. Two Guards were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. The middle-aged woman who had admitted Minogue and Hoey fussed with the teapot for the new arrivals.
“Miss Connolly has keys for the flat upstairs, sir,” one Guard said, rising from the table.
Minogue declined tea, and took the keys.
“When was Mr. Fine here last?”
“Let me see. This being a Monday… It would have been Sunday morning. Late morning. I was doing a bit in the garden there, and I saw him come out. About eleven o’clock.”
“In the morning?”
“Oh yes. We all go to bed early here, we do. The whole street does be as quiet as a graveyard at nine o’clock at night.”
“Sure it was him?”
“Certain, I am. A very nice man, Mr. Fine. I’m still not able to believe it. Lovely young man. Of course I knew he was a Jew, seeing as I see the mention of his father in the papers and so on. Lovely family, I’m sure.”
Minogue staved off his discomfort. He was less irritated than nervous at people telling him that Paul Fine was a Jew.
“Did Mr. Fine speak to you at all recently?”
“Oh, precious little. ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good evening’. Very much kept to himself and always polite.”
“Any chat with him at all?”
One of the Gardai started in on another piece of sponge cake. Minogue didn’t care that they were all seated around the table listening. She might say something different to them and that would be good for starters.
“Nothing. I’m alone here, you see. I never married, as I was saying to the lads here,” she smiled wanly toward the two Gardai. “But I don’t like to be putting conversation on people. If I met him at all, it’d be: ‘How’s it going, Miss Connolly?’ and ‘Grand weather’. Oh a lovely young man.”
She looked entreatingly at all the policemen and shook her head.
“Any visitors, Miss Connolly?”
“Let me think… Very, very occasional… very odd…”
“Do you mean odd visitors, is it?”
“A very odd time, I meant. It was only people he’d arranged to come and visit, I’m sure. There was one fella, I remember his face, used to call by sometimes. Familiar-looking, a fella with a beard. They’d sit in the garden of a nice day. Have a little wine and all that,” she said with an air of casual insight. ‘Having a little wine and all that’ might constitute glamour or bohemian living in these latitudes, Minogue guessed.
“A fella with a beard?”
“Matter of fact I saw him on the telly once. Fitzpat-”
“Fitzgerald?”
“That’s it. He’s a bigwig in RTE,” said Miss Connolly, referring to the head office of the Irish radio and television stations. “But he’s a bit of an atheist too, I believe. I brought them out tea once and I was introduced. Mr. Fine said that Mr. Fitzgerald was his boss and he was trying to soften him up for a bit more pay. A nice sense of humour, I’d say. Terribly nice lad… There were a few others too, all in the same line of business, I’m sure. You know how you can tell, what with the trendy clothes. Have a cup of tea or a bottle of stout maybe. I’d hear them upstairs, but never late at night, never.”
“Did you ever meet his girlfriend?”
“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “Sure you wouldn’t like more tea?”
Minogue glanced at the two Gardai whose car was blocking the driveway outside. One had crumbs in the folds of his uniform. A nice easy few hours’ work holding Fine’s place until the glamorous blades from the Murder Squad came by. Minogue gestured for the younger Guard to step out of the kitchen.
“We’re going up to his flat now. Go over what she remembers again, would you? How long he had been here, any irregularities? Did he ever come home drunk, was he ever having rows that she knows of? Arguments with people on the phone? Did he ever tell her anything about his work or personal life? Any strangers on the terrace this last while, callers looking for Fine?”
“Like Arabs with headgear?” the Garda asked.
&
nbsp; Minogue fixed him with a stare.
“It’s just that we heard there was something to do with Palestine…” The Garda tried to regroup with a careful smile.
“Did she see any letters addressed to him? Don’t worry about her saying she never noticed such things-just probe. She’s not a woman to be missing things, I’m sure.”
Minogue phoned Kathleen after an hour. The last ten minutes he had spent seated on Fine’s bed with Hoey, going over what he had recorded in his notes. He had told Hoey to get hold of Gallagher in Special Branch for late afternoon. They’d be wanting all Gallagher had on possible extremist groups. Hoey was to phone the television station, RTE, and insist on seeing Fitzgerald as soon as possible.
Kathleen answered after two rings. Minogue told her that he’d be late. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to watch Die Nasty on your own.”
Daithi was in the States these five weeks past. Iesult was out on a date with Pat the Brain. Psychology and philosophy lectures over a glass of beer?
“I won’t be able to understand it without you there to take it to pieces for me,” Kathleen replied.
Minogue grinned. “It’ll be gone ten o’clock, I’m sure.”
“Fine and well, Inspector. I heard it on the half-one news, and I might have guessed you’d be in the thick of it. Just don’t be taking too much on yourself.”
Was that a resigned rebuke?
He told her about Fine wanting him on the investigation.
“That’s a great compliment, I suppose. Why you, though?”
“Remember that time in the Jewish Museum, just after it opening up? He was there then and he spotted me, apparently. But tell me,” he interrupted himself by asking his wife of thirty years,“how’s life treating you, anyway? Taking into account it’s a Monday and we’re not in Honolulu or lollygagging on some island in the Mediterranean.”
“True for you. I’m grand anyway. There’s a letter from Daithi, by the way.” The change in her voice, the late attempt at cheerfulness bit sharply at the edge of Minogue’s mind.
