by John Brady
“That’s what I was saying: when you put this against the wall, it doesn’t stand up well. Kelly had nothing to tell you that was so scandalous.”
“But I’m a Jew. Is that a disadvantage? I wouldn’t know the ins-and-outs of what Catholics do.”
“That’s it. When you push it to the limit…”
“But being a Jew I might have a distinct advantage. I’d know what goes on in Irish heads because I’m Irish, but I’d be bringing a fresh approach to the matter.”
“You wouldn’t be so cynical about religious Catholics, you mean?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t start out spiteful and wanting to go for people’s necks. Something else though, Shea-there’s another reason why Brian Kelly picked me. It’s something symbolic. Did you ever hear of a fella called Leopold Bloom?”
“I think I did, all right… Was it a film?”
Minogue shook his head.
“A symbolic thing… because you’re a Jew? Like Jesus,” Hoey whispered, looking around the squadroom to be sure that no one else could see his embarrassment.
“Fabulous, Shea. There’s that. Brian Kelly would have been alive to religious symbolism, yes. There’s another thing too, something very down-to-earth.”
It was Hoey’s turn to shake his head. “Can’t see it.”
“ I couldn’t be a member of Opus Dei, Shea,” Minogue whispered.
Hoey sat back in the chair and drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “You’re saying that Kelly was worried about his pals in Opus Dei finding out that he was none too happy about something to do with the organization? If he had pals left in it.”
“You’re Brian Kelly now, Shea. Ready?”
Hoey sat up again.
“Why are you not trying to get in touch with Mickey Fitzgerald?” Minogue asked.
Hoey answered in the tone of the hypnotized. “I don’t know.” He began laughing lightly, unable to hide his embarrassment. “Sorry. I’m not much good in the theatrical line.”
“Maybe you’re paranoid,” said Minogue contemplatively.
“Thanks very much.”
“Brian Kelly, I mean. Maybe you’re at a pitch of anxiety and you imagine people are spying on you.”
“Now you’re talking, sir. But does it help us much to find out that Brian Kelly was a nut-case?”
Minogue disliked the term. He had shied from it even before his own brush with the arbitrariness that haunted every life, that you saw if you were able to look beyond ‘father’ and ‘policeman’ and ‘Irish’. Minogue had discovered the hard way that normality was a rather ambiguous accomplishment, something which could backfire, something which involved a lot of work which you hardly knew you were doing or why, until you stopped doing it, or it stopped you.
“Point taken, Shea. We need to get his associates at work to give us a clue as to demeanour and state of mind. Definitely.”
Hoey brightened at some remembrance, just as Minogue was about to leave. “I’ll tell you one thing: whether or which Kelly was cracked, he certainly seems to have put Paul Fine in the same frame of mind. If you look at events kind of sideways, I mean.”
“How do you mean?”
“You might think this a bit odd, but nobody in RTE knew about his interest in Opus Dei, not even the McCutcheon woman, his moth. He kept it to himself. Maybe Kelly told him he had to.”
“Ummn.”
“And he went to the National Library, not to his own place. He didn’t even check what a journalist probably checks first, the newspaper clippings and programmes on tape. And if this notion is still holding together, he’s off out to Dalkey or Killiney on the Sunday to meet Kelly. Do you see…?”
Hoey perched up on the front of the chair, slowly waving and pushing at the air with his cigarette.
“Kelly in Killiney Hill?”
“He meets Fine, an arranged meeting. They have a chat and Kelly tells him something…”
“Tell me why Kelly wasn’t the one to kill Paul Fine, Shea.”
“Like he could have been unbalanced and had some queer thing about Jews? After realizing what he’d done, he might be sick of himself and want to commit…?” Hoey shook his head. “I’m stuck there, really stuck. I’d go along with the business of Kelly trusting a Jew not to treat his information sensationally and muck-rake the organization that he might still have fond memories of. But my belly tells me that the man who shot Paul Fine three times in the back of the head wasn’t Kelly. Little Patsy O’Malley will tell us that for certain when we show him a picture of Kelly. I wonder, did Kelly attend a psychiatrist or the like?”
“Good one, Shea. Suggest that to Jimmy Kilmartin, will you? I hope I can come up with names of Opus Dei people who we can grill about Brian Kelly. I’m going to meet a fella tonight who might have something to tell me.”
“Great stuff. Who is it, do you mind me asking?”
“The Archbishop of Dublin. Apparently he wants to see me.”
“The what?” said Kilmartin.
“None other. Tynan must have been in touch with his office and was able to pull a string. This particular string seems to be attached to a brick… or should I say, a pillar? I hope that it lands soft now that I’ve pulled on it. I was trying to chase down an Opus Dei membership list as well as any friends or ex-friends of Brian Kelly. That’s what I get for doing a bit of your work for you, Jimmy. I’m meeting more clergy in one day than I’ve met in years. Maybe I’ll get a letter of introduction to the Pope of Rome.”
“I’d have it on me conscience if I didn’t take it upon meself to warn His Holiness you were planning to drop in,” said Kilmartin drily. “Tynan, now. They stick together, don’t they? He’s Tynan’s age, is the Archbishop. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they’ve known one another since they were baby priests, before Tynan jumped the wall and came to us. What’s the name for baby priests anyway, before they get to be real priests? Scholars, is it?”
Minogue had often thought that calling Ireland’s one Cardinal ‘the Primate of all Ireland’ had been an intentional pun. He had seen a cartoon of a simian cardinal on a Women’s Action Movement poster near Grafton Street during the summer. The cleric, complete with crozier and pince-nez and hat, had been sitting on oppressed women.
“Noviciates, I think.”
“Very clever. That brain of yours is a fright to God entirely. Lookit, though-I’d watch that Tynan, do you know what I mean?”
Minogue used one of the coarse replies which Iesult gave when Kathleen was over-anxious for her daughter to understand what a wise course of action might be. “I know what you mean but the grass is wet,” he sighed. “What’s there to watch in Deputy Commissioner John Tynan?”
“Exactly. Deputy. Deputy always wants to get beyond being deputy anything. He has his eyes set on God Almighty’s chair.”
“Like your Fabulous Fintan Gorman and the Chief?”
“You can laugh all right, Matt. Seeing as you’re not competing for the job yourself.”
Minogue did not bother to confirm Kilmartin’s contention here. He turned to the matter of Brian Kelly.
“How do you want the manpower shifted around when we take on Kelly as murder, Jimmy?”
Kilmartin thanked his friend and colleague for reminding him of that headache. In the icy tones of a countryman scorning another countryman, he told Minogue that he’d be told in good time, most likely tomorrow morning as soon as the forensic reports were delivered in their completeness. Steps were already being taken to get interviews from Kelly’s associates at work. Kilmartin then invited Minogue to have the Archbishop bless a non-existent set of rosary beads which he, Kilmartin, pretended to draw out of his pocket. “Ha, ha, ha,” Kilmartin laughed, and coughed. “I nearly had you believing me there.”
“I’ll ask him to say a special prayer for your wife.”
“Oh, that’s a dirty one there,” Kilmartin mocked. “And her the happiest woman in Ireland. Straighten your tie there, so you don’t look like an iijit.”
Kilmartin called
out to him as he reached the doorway. “And ask him what he thinks of Mrs. Ryan and the WAMmers running the country and doing away with the men.” He collapsed into a phlegmy cough as he laughed after Minogue.
Tynan’s clothes still looked sharp after a workday. Minogue felt more nervous the nearer they drove toward the Archbishop’s residence.
“Jimmy asked me to get His Eminence’s opinions on the Ryan case, or rather the Women’s Action Movement and their championing of Marguerite Ryan.”
“What do you think of it yourself?” asked Tynan absently.
Minogue looked out over the rooftops of College Green where the still-heavy traffic had snared them. The sky was tangerine and russet, like a bloodied egg, making a mockery of the pewter shades on the ground. This Dublin, this time, were just about tolerable, he decided.
“I don’t know what to think. I have a daughter at home who’s twenty-three and she doesn’t take any guff out of anyone. I could never see her getting into a situation like Marguerite Ryan’s. Being abused, I mean.”
“You are putting a lot of stock in the history of abuse,” Tynan said vaguely.
“How can you ignore it? I’d prefer Iesult to be the strap she is rather than be acquiescent or overly obedient,” said Minogue.
“With due respect to the Archbishop, I think he’d tend to favour an emphasis on being obedient,” mused Tynan. “I studied with him when I was in college, you know. That’s how I got to talk to him this afternoon. We swap Christmas cards every year still. There is life after the seminary, I found out.”
Tynan looked at the elaborate lamp standards beside the statue of Thomas Moore on the concrete island in the middle of the Green. “Do you know the motto for Dublin? There’s a coat-of-arms there on that lamp, the coat of arms on a blue background.”
Minogue looked out but could see only blue patches in the twilight.
“ Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas. That’s the kind of obedience we used to take our mental tweezers to when we were in college. I suppose that ideally it’s related to the Greek notion of virtue-a citizen who goes along with the correct line, the moral path, being a member of a collective which works together, a collective informed by virtue.”
“Virtue is its own reward,” said Minogue. “I never much liked the sound of that one. Like, it’s all right to get walked on.”
“ Virtus. Obedientia,” Tynan murmured. “I hope they meant that a sound civic spirit would make for an agreeable city. Well, they’re talking about a city as a group of people, not some abstract institution, and that’s something, isn’t it?”
Minogue moved with the light and geared into second as they went by the pillars of the Bank of Ireland.
“Obedience is a horse of a different colour, though,” said Tynan, awakening with the motion of the car. “I would like to hear the modern-day Opus Dei expound their notion of obedience and virtue. They certainly don’t hobble themselves with the ‘virtue is its own reward’ end of things. Their mandate is to challenge and engage the world. Apostolic.”
“Engage,” said Minogue in a Paris accent diverted through Clare.
“Nice. I can brag to an upstart journalist that some members of the Gardai speak French. They want to be like the early Christians, committed and evangelical. No wonder the man in the street is a bit suspicious of them, if they’re working alongside him.” Tynan’s voice suggested to Minogue that he had a grim smile. “Of course they take private vows and promise obedience to the superior that Rome appoints. That’d be the ‘final authority’ you were told about by that priest…”
“Heher.”
“Heher, over Opus Dei members who work in the Gardai or are enlisted Army men. ‘Noble folly’, they called it in my day. The idea of being a knight who did God’s bidding.”
“Tilting at windmills, is it?”
“They do a lot more than that in places like Guatemala, I suspect,” Tynan said. The unexpected edge to his voice startled Minogue. This Tynan was a fish from the depths. Minogue gave his passenger a quick glance.
“Now you’re asking yourself if I’m the one, and not you, who might have something abrasive to say to His Eminence tonight, aren’t you?” said Tynan, heavy with irony.
Minogue had to laugh.
“Don’t be worrying yourself,” said Tynan. “I was just thinking out loud. It was all a long time ago for me. There’s no bitterness. I serve different masters now,” he added wryly.
Not for long, if Jimmy Kilmartin is right, thought Minogue.
When they reached the Archbishop’s Residence, Minogue searched the glove compartment for a comb and did the best he could with what was left to him of daylight and hair and composure. He recalled that the residence used to be called the Archbishop’s Palace. Vatican Two had muted the splendour of titles, at least.
“Ah, you’re all right,” said Tynan. “An honest face.”
“Did he say anything exactly?” Minogue tried again, checking the toes of his shoes for noticeable scuffs.
“He said he wanted to see Inspector Minogue as well as myself. To tell us what can and can’t be done about Opus Dei.”
“I don’t know where he got my name from.”
“Heher, whom you saw this morning.”
“I’m in for a talking-to, is it?”
“No, no,” Tynan smiled wanly. “This is the 1980s, Minogue. It’s not the Church Triumphant any more. Let’s look on it as an information session.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The door was answered by a cheerful priest, who was in his thirties and had the look of a happy athlete about him. He was not wearing a jacket and the sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up over his elbows. A farmer’s son.
“I’m Pat Sheehy,” he said in a Kerry accent. “And you’re Gardai.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Minogue, wondering if there was a ban on using the term Father; “we don’t look like rock stars.”
“Ah no. It’s the appointment book that tells all.”
Sheehy closed the heavy door behind them. The residence smelled of floor-wax and a chicken boiling somewhere. Minogue and Tynan followed the agile Sheehy across the parquet to a double door that opened into a room with a high ceiling, the proportions of which suggested a Georgian if not a neoclassical plan at work, but in the nineteenth century. Several large portraits hung from the walls. All were past Archbishops of Dublin, Minogue concluded after recognizing two. Fresh flowers rested in a Waterford cut-glass bowl atop what Minogue’s amateur eye guessed was an antique Irish bog-oak table.
In this waiting room the visitor could read the Reader’s Digest, Time or The Word, a publication of the Oblate Fathers.
Sheehy was back inside of two minutes. Less cheery now, Minogue believed, a lot less. The chicken smell was stronger in the hall: maybe it wasn’t chicken but someone’s goose getting cooked… the fat is in the fire now… what’s sauce for the goose is-Minogue reined in his flittery thoughts.
Sheehy knocked and entered without awaiting a summons from within the room. Minogue felt quickly that the knot of his tie was in place and brushed over the zipper of his fly. You never know, said his gargoyle within. Was he expected to kiss the ring, or had that gone out too with the Latin Mass? He determined not to do so, anyway.
The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Reverend Doctor Francis Burke, stood behind his desk and nodded at the two policemen. Minogue heard Sheehy closing the door. Burke was making no attempt to come around the desk to greet the policemen, Minogue realized. Tynan went before him and reached across the desk to shake hands.
“John. How’ve you been?” said Burke.
Tynan said he was fine. He turned to introduce Minogue.
“Your Eminence,” said Minogue. Burke nodded as he shook hands briefly. He looked a lot different off the telly, Minogue thought. Maybe it was the light in here. Or the knobs under the telly to adjust the tint and the-Time to get a new one, Kathleen says, what with the scratchy bit at the bottom of the screen now-
The curtains wer
e dark green and they had been drawn across what could be full-length windows behind the desk. The office was probably thirty feet square, Minogue estimated: there might even be room in here for the Archbishop to have posed for that WAM poster with his foot on the necks of the oppressed women of Ireland. ‘ Not the Church, Not the State, Women must control their…’ One wall was taken up with bookcases, whose glass doors reflected the fancy candelabra lights which dangled from the embossed ceiling. There were two hardbacked chairs drawn up on the policemen’s side of the desk. A coffee-table stood chairless by the marble fireplace to their right. Business, Minogue knew, otherwise we’d be sitting there at that table by the fire that was probably never lit.
Tynan waited for the Archbishop to sit before he took his chair. Minogue followed suit and stole another glance at Burke. The face fleshy but not unhealthy: tired, anyway. Fifty-four, fifty-five? His mauve shirt was that of an Archbishop. He had piled a series of file folders and one thick book to one side of the desk, leaving plenty of room for the photograph of John Paul II high on the altar in the Phoenix Park with his congregation of over a million of the country’s 3? million souls gathered about in the grass. It might have been taken in the middle of his ‘Young people of Ireland’ speech. Minogue could not classify the smell here in the room yet: it was not pipe tobacco, it was more a medicinal smell. Cough drops?
Burke settled himself and looked to Minogue. “You’re a principal officer in investigating Brian Kelly’s death?”
“I’m not, Your Eminence. I’m merely part of the permanent staff in the Technical Bureau. You’d probably know my department as the Murder Squad.”
“I hope I don’t get to know it all that well,” said Burke humourlessly.
“I spoke with Father Heher this morning,” said Minogue.
“Yes, that I know,” said Burke. He looked to the closed door behind the two policemen as though to gather inspiration from it. “You’d be the Inspector Minogue who is investigating the murder of Billy Fine’s son, Paul Fine, wouldn’t you?”
