by John Brady
Kilmartin emerged from his office. Minogue had seen him coming, a shirted bulk approaching the distorting glass on the squadroom side of his office. Kilmartin stood in the doorway for a moment, lit a cigarette and resumed his prowl. He reminded Minogue of an ill-tempered schoolmaster patrolling rows of cowed pupils. There would be chopping and changing tomorrow as Kilmartin took the bit between his teeth on the Kelly case. Would he snatch Keating for that, too? Kilmartin paused by Minogue and arched his eyebrows.
“Best so far is the librarian fella for Saturday. He can attest to the fact that Paul Fine was well able to work,” said Minogue.
Kilmartin shrugged and moved on, trailing smoke. He fingered an evening newspaper open and blew out a cloud of smoke as he snorted at what he read.
“Fucking yobbos! Legislate them back to work,” he said to the headline. He resumed his leonine prowl, a thick-set Mayo-man shaped like one of the innumerable boulders which were strewn about the desolate bog landscapes of his native county. Perhaps a later Ice Age had deposited him, an obdurate lump, on the streets of Dublin and left him to stalk police offices with his shirt-tail almost completely dislodged from his trousers, a troglodyte, a bog-man who still hated Dublin after thirty years of policing it.
Minogue had found Dublin different. It had been difficult for him not to melt into its gentle decay when he had first arrived in the capital. The last twenty years had shattered the shabby charm of Dublin. The shards poked out now, gashing even the well-to-do who hid in Foxrock estates. Someone had taken the worst office architecture imaginable and mauled the city with it, rooting out people from the city centre and sending them to gulag garden suburbs where crime flourished. So ugly and widespread was this blight, with its dislocation of Dubliners into suburbs, that many, Minogue included, believed that the ruin of Dublin had been a carefully plotted conspiracy.
Kilmartin slowed after his first lap of the squadroom.
“There’ll be people who’ll have to walk to work with this bloody strike, you know. Bananas is what we should be growing here,” he said to no one, passing Hoey’s desk. He stopped abruptly before Minogue.
“Name of Jases, I’m nearly ready to go to this Ard Fheis meself and get up on the shagging podium and give those feckers a piece of my mind. ‘Leadership’: that’d be the sum total of me speech. ‘All we want is what we’re overpaying ye for already: leadership!’ We should declare a national emergency and a war on gobshites. People that are dragging their arses around the place, give them a kick-up in the arse and put them to work. ‘Here’s a shagging job,’ I’d say. ‘It may not be managing director, but it’s a start.’ Get the country back up and running again.”
“We might all end up working in McDonald’s, Jimmy,” said Minogue, goaded beyond silence.
“A howl is what you are. At least it’d be work, wouldn’t it? I don’t care if the Russians open a tank factory here; I’d say great, give us jobs. A fella has to start somewhere. This country was once the most civilized nation in Europe, with our monks and our books and our poets and our schools and everything-while the mobs beyond in Britain were still painting their faces and lathering the shite out of one another with sticks and stones. Look at us now for the love of Jases. The best-educated young people in Europe, probably the world, and no jobs. As for this European Community stunt, the United States of Europe and that class of bullshit-here, did I tell you this one? If you’re an Irishman and you’re going into the toilet, and you’re an Irishman and you’re coming out of the toilet, what are you when you’re in the toilet?”
“Can’t imagine, James,” Minogue tried.
“You’re-a-peein’,” said Kilmartin without smiling.
Minogue’s lifetime of listening to his fellow-islanders had included countless editions of Kilmartin’s perorations on the Land of Saints and Scholars in one guise or another.
“I would not care to have had the career of one of those monks and what-have-you,” he baited Kilmartin. “I would have asked to be excused from the hermit business too. Not to speak of the self-flagellation and the chastity bit. I haven’t the heart for one and I haven’t the stomach for the other.”
Kilmartin fixed a sceptical eye on Minogue. Hoey looked up cautiously from under his eyebrows.
“Now that you’re talking about beating yourself up for the greater glory, and all that,” said Kilmartin in an unexpectedly low tone. He leaned down with his hands spread on Minogue’s desk to confide. “Your man, Kelly, the lad toasted out in Bray. He had some class of a chapel and our resident encyclopaedia, Keating, says it looks like Kelly was one of those Opus Dei crowd.”
He leaned further to whisper to Minogue.
“They’re so holy that they beat themselves, he told me. No joking. They’re like the hermit monks, except they don’t run away from the common crowd. But they take sticks to one another and live like the monks in their private lives. Meet them in the street and they’re the same as the next man, hail-fellow-well-met. Maybe our Kelly had had enough of it and the pressure got to him. They have very high morals- and you know where that can lead a man. Oh yes, indeed, I wasn’t codding when I said earlier on to Keating that poor Kelly might still be a suicide. He might have banged his own head a bit, trying to sort himself out, don’t you know.”
Minogue remembered the pictures of Buddhist monks burning in the streets of Saigon.
Kilmartin stood to his full height, stretched and growled. “I’ll be a happier man when I find out why he had your name and our phone number on a sheet of paper in his house.”
CHAPTER TEN
Wednesday morning brought a break in the ceiling of cloud which had muffled the island for a week. The air was fresh again. Clouds so white as to be patently silly-looking to Minogue hung themselves from a sky of Blessed Virgin blue. The good burgher Magritte would have stood at his window for hours today, Minogue believed, so delighted would he have been with a sky like this.
A muzziness from last night’s drinking with Kilmartin (who had dragooned Hoey into the pub too) dissipated quickly after breakfast. The worm in his stomach returned when Minogue turned away from his usual route and headed for Fine’s house. Crowds stood at the bus stops still, some thumbing. Most cars were full. There were swarms of bicycles on the road. Minogue skirted the beginnings of traffic jams, reversing out of one road near Ranelagh to avoid a bottleneck and found himself at Fine’s street sooner than he had wanted. Any time would be too soon, he realized.
He parked in front of a light-blue Nissan Bluebird. The passenger had already stepped out on to the footpath and was staring at Minogue. Minogue couldn’t see the man’s hands. His back tingled. The driver, a man with a crew cut and a small mouth, already had his door open.
“Minogue, Technical Bureau. The Murder Squad, lads.”
The driver nodded. Minogue raised a hand to the red-haired detective on the footpath who was now rearranging his jacket and from the corner of his eye saw a lightly built man peering around the hedge two houses down. The driver spoke into a microphone pinned to his shirt and the man down the street withdrew into a garden.
Heavy and sweet smells drifted out from the gardens nearby. A wrought-iron gate to the side of the Fines’ house clanked open and Johnny Cohen trudged toward the main gates where the policemen were standing. Minogue pocketed his photocard and took several steps. Cohen nodded curtly. His gaze searched Minogue’s face.
“Morning to you, Mr. Cohen,” Minogue tried. “I trust I’m not calling too early on the Fines?”
Cohen squinted hard at Minogue. “He may be gone already,” he said slowly. “Or he may be catching up on last night. Were you there yourself later on, then?”
Minogue sensed challenge. The heavy beard seemed to close Cohen’s face. “The investigation, like? We were at it late, yes. But that’s what we do-”
Cohen scratched his eyelids, blinked and frowned. Then he looked over Minogue’s shoulder at the Special Branch car. “You didn’t hear, then,” Cohen stated the question. “The Museum.�
�
Minogue glanced from Cohen’s face toward the front door grinding open. Billy Fine stood in the doorway.
“Petrol bombs thrown at the doors of the Museum,” Cohen said. “The synagogue, I should say. Billy was up all hours. He got a phone call and off he went.”
Minogue’s wary drowsiness fled. He was acutely aware of details now: the cloying scent from the hedge, the far-off hum of the city centre traffic, Cohen’s bloodshot eyes. Fine stood very still in the doorway. Minogue pushed at the gate and strode towards the front door. He heard the gate being closed in his wake, his own feet skipping up the steps.
“I only found out this minute,” he said.
Fine’s arm moved and the door scuffed over a carpet. The sun escaped from a puffy white cloud and the light raced across the garden to the house. Minogue felt a tremor of helplessness when he looked at Fine now, the figure framed in the doorway, the morning sun, so kind to Minogue already, mercilessly bathing Fine in a harsh light, leaving him in the sharp contrasts, the shadows and glare of a fierce daylight. Fine had lifted his arm above his eyes so as to see Minogue. Cohen was walking toward the steps now. Dazzled by the sun, Billy Fine looked to Minogue as if he were grimacing in agony.
“They, whoever they are, tried to destroy the Museum,” said Fine. “Someone spray-painted PLO on the wall and threw a petrol bomb against the door.”
Minogue’s stomach froze and held tight. Cohen appeared by his side.
“The door held, we’re all right,” said Cohen. “The door held, that’s the main thing.” He did not take his eyes off Fine as he spoke.
Fine nodded. Minogue could not stop staring at him. Fine was unshaven, his eyes were reddened and his white shirt, open at the top, seemed to exaggerate the unkempt face. He drew Minogue into the front room.
“What else can happen?” said Fine. “Today’s Wednesday? If I don’t go to work I forget what day of the week it is. Do you have any cigarettes on you?”
Minogue wondered, from Fine’s tone, whether he was faltering, close to snapping.
“I don’t,” Minogue replied. “But I’m sure that… Look, I should leave off this interview if you’re-”
“It’s all right,” Fine said firmly. “Rose’ll be down in a minute. She has fags.” He went on remotely then: “You’ll have to persuade her it’s all right for her to smoke. She’s forever trying to give them up. She’s afraid I’ll start up again myself, so she won’t smoke in front of me, so…” The sentence died.
“We’re in a bit of a bind, you see,” Fine’s voice had changed to a monotone. “We can’t begin the week of mourning proper until after Paul’s burial. It’s very trying indeed to have to break custom as regard interring… We’re in a bit of a limbo, and what with droves of people in here to help… Then this thing last night-it must be some kind of nightmare, I thought first. Maybe the head is gone on me, and I was dreaming all this.”
“It’s well in hand now,” said Cohen. “Can’t you go up and lie down awhile? Get some rest even if you don’t sleep.”
Fine’s face eased. He looked at Cohen with a fleeting smile. “Ah Johnny.” He clapped Cohen gently on the shoulder.
“David and Julia are upstairs. Julia flew in from Boston yesterday. She’s knackered and very upset. David had to find a locum but he got in yesterday. He sat up most of the night.”
“May I ask about Paul’s wife?”
“Lily? Ask away. But she’s in a state,” said Fine as he examined his hands carefully. “She’ll only come for the funeral, I’m afraid. Very… upset. Bitter, I suppose. I think she feels that his family stole him from her, or Ireland did. Maybe Dublin. She was never gone on the place here,” said Fine, rising. “You’ll have a bit of coffee, will you?”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Minogue.
“I’m getting a pot for meself. You have a phone call to make before we do anything, anyway. Better do it now, man. It’s been hopping off the hook all morning. A Garda Hoey phoned not five minutes before you arrived, apologizing for himself but needing to speak to you.”
Cohen, slouched in the chair opposite, looked up as Minogue made for the hall. Minogue’s mind was cartwheeling, embarrassed and angry. Here he was, on a delicate enough visit, trying to mine more so that he could fill out a better picture of their murdered son, and this had gone off under him. He should have had a call about this, no matter what time. Hoey… probably tried him at home.
Cohen touched his arm as he passed. “It doesn’t look promising, does it, Inspector?”
Minogue scrambled for words. “Well, it seems to put a strong cast on the murder investigation. I’m just, I don’t know how to put it. Shocked. It’s…”
“PLO. I saw it on the wall, with my own eyes,” said Cohen. “Half-two this morning. Someone in a car. There were no witnesses to the actual thing.”
“Give me the name of the ranking Gardai you talked to, would you?” said Minogue.
“A Sergeant Hickey. I didn’t ask him what station. Then a mob of Guards showed up, just before some of the media. We’ve been getting calls from all over the world since five o’clock this morning. American television stations. The Taoiseach phoned here at eight o’clock. Archbishop of Dublin, the Lord Mayor. Then your own.”
“Commissioner Lally?”
“The very man.”
Minogue couldn’t decide if Cohen was hinting at his, Minogue’s, ignorance of the event. Hoey must have tried him at home, Minogue thought again. He excused himself and went to the phone.
“God Almighty, Shea,” he whispered into the receiver. “What the hell is happening? I’m up at the Fines’ and I’m looking for a place to hide my face. What broke down?”
“I only happened to be in early,” Hoey answered. “I heard it off the radio, and me parking the car.”
“Damn and blast it, Shea, we can’t be running an investigation like this. We look like iijits. We are iijits. This has to stop, man.”
Hoey didn’t reply immediately.
“It’s on your desk, sir,” he said finally. “I took the liberty of looking through your morning stuff from Eilis. Timed at four-fifteen from Dispatch. They knew to get you, anyway. I tried you at home but you were gone already.”
Cohen walked into the hall now, heading for the kitchen, thereby cutting short Minogue’s anger.
“All right, all right.” Minogue dug the receiver into his ear. “All right. Was it just this bombing thing, Shea?”
Hoey told him that he was awaiting a call from the National Library with more information. Doyle had gone over to the Library already to see the dockets and give Kearney a good going-over.
“Kearney, the library assistant who phoned?”
“Yes. He knew Justice Fine’s name and figured that the fella looking for books and filling in the request dockets was some relation of Fine’s. That’s how he remembered. Guess what Paul Fine was interested in?”
“Go on, Shea, for the love of God. I’m in Fine’s house here, sitting on their phone.”
“Sorry. He signed retrieval slips for nine books. Do you know how the system works there? You ask for books to be brought to you. There are millions of books there, and very valuable ones too. So Kearney is one of the assistants who’d go and get the actual books down off the shelves. Now it doesn’t say what time the books were given out and Doyle’s going to try and pin Kearney a bit better than that. All the nine books got to him, that is to say that none of the books was missing or anything. Ready for a few titles? Catholicism and the Franco Regime by a Norman Cooper. Never heard of any of these meself… Addresses, Essays and Lectures by J. E. De Balaguer, Church and Politics of Chile by a fella called Smith…”
“Hold on, hold on there, Shea. What’s all this? I’m swimming in detail here and now is not the time.”
“… Opus Dei: the Call of the World by-”
“What?”
“That’s it, though,” said Hoey. “They all have something to do with Opus Dei.”
“Opus Dei? But
Shea, this thing at the Museum. Get Gallagher on to it, or at least confirm he’s alerted to it. And is Jimmy Kilmartin on to this already?”
“Yes he is, sir. He fairly pounced, I can tell you.”
Minogue stared at a shrouded mirror by the phone. Thoughts flickered and escaped. No order. He realized that he was biting his lip.
“He says he’s going to hold off on a separate task force until we sort this out,” Hoey continued. “He’s hunting down the top dog in Opus Dei, or whatever they call their boss.”
“I don’t know anything about them, so I don’t,” Minogue muttered. “All I know is that they’re religious.”
“Wait now,” said Hoey. “More stuff breaking, wait’ll you hear this. This is what you should have heard before the balls-up about last night.”
Minogue stopped chewing his lip.
“Remember we left just after ten last night, didn’t we? Well a woman phoned in at a quarter past, a woman from Dun Laoghaire. She has a young lad in the Scouts. There was a troop of them out on manoeuvres on Killiney Hill some time on Sunday afternoon. Putting names to trees and counting birds and that sort of diversion. Her young lad was up after his bedtime last night, annoying the heart and soul out of her. He saw a clip from the news though, our bit on the site up on the Hill. Quick as a flash-so says the mother-the chiseller says: ‘I was there.’ She asked him about it. There’s two detectives dispatched out to the house and the young lad will miss a morning’s school over it. Will I call you back there when I have any news?”
Minogue considered the suggestion. A morning with the Fines would be a long morning but Hoey’s news had buoyed him.
“No, Shea. Be better if you had some brief on what this Opus Dei is all about.”
