by John Brady
“He wants a priest, all right,” said Kilmartin. He leaned further in over Gibney.
“I’ll say an Act of Contrition with you now while we wait for the priest,” said Hoey gently. “If you can’t say it, it’s OK, just follow along with me in your own mind.”
He didn’t remember all of the prayer, but Kilmartin carried him over the bits he had forgotten, those parts of the prayer which every Catholic was taught should be recited for the dying. Gibney’s lips began to move again half-way through.
Hoey finished the prayer as the approaching sirens became louder. The policemen blessed themselves. Gibney’s neck muscles stood out with the effort of trying to raise his head.
“Is it something you’d want to tell us?” whispered Kilmartin.
“Brian,” whispered Gibney and his head fell back.
“Brian Kelly, is it?” said Minogue.
Gibney blinked and grimaced. He tried to raise his head again.
“Only me. That’s all…” he wheezed. Hoey reached his hand under Gibney’s head. “Just me. Fine too… Only me. Had to…” whispered Gibney. His stare was fixed frantically on Minogue. Hoey let the head down slowly. The sirens were tearing open the night on the street now. The blue rotating lights flared off the cars nearby.
“Ambulance,” said Farrell, rising. He waved his arms at the glare of the approaching headlights. Minogue turned back to Gibney, whose eyes were closed now. His chin had sunk on to his chest. Hoey had been unable to extricate his hand from under the head and looked up at Minogue, puzzled. Cramp seized Minogue’s leg in a spasm then. He stood and hobbled to the gate, stretching and massaging the calf. He watched the ambulance attendant, a young man with a Frank Zappa moustache, roam with the stethoscope over Gibney’s chest.
Minogue turned away and saw people from houses on the street walking slowly toward them. The detectives were out of the van now, and sealing off the front of the house. Gorman’s voice startled Minogue who looked up from his crouch and saw Gorman’s pale face beyond the gate. Gorman looked down then and tried to bless himself, forgetting the handcuffs.
“Will you identify this man for us, Mr. Gorman?” Minogue heard Farrell’s acid tones.
“This is my friend, Eamonn Gibney,” said Gorman slowly. “Will someone please tell me if he’s alive?”
Nobody answered Gorman. Minogue stooped to massage his calf again. His chest felt tight and he drew in deep breaths. Farrell’s drawl sounded gravelly, mocking.
“Mr. Fintan Gorman? I’m Chief Superintendent Farrell of the Garda Special Branch. I’m detaining you under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, as I have reason to believe that you are involved in a criminal conspiracy prejudicial to the good order of…”
Minogue watched the mustachioed attendant trying again with the stethoscope, his eyes darting from side to side with the concentration.
“That Gill’s all right,” Kilmartin whispered close to Minogue’s ear. “No thanks to the fucking planning either, but don’t quote me here.”
Minogue shivered again. The attendant asked Hoey to help him draw Gibney out from the fence. He stepped in the blood as he hefted Gibney on to the footpath. More blood eddied out from under Gibney as he was moved.
“Jesus,” Minogue heard the attendant say in a cutting Dublin accent as he shook his head, “try and get a line on to him, quick.”
Hoey helped lift Gibney on to the stretcher. Minogue’s thoughts gathered around the cramp again. He imagined the bones in his ankle, his knee, the musculature that held a body upright, the miracle of walking. Gibney saying that it was just him. Then running, athletes running, that was miraculous too. Just him? Can’t believe that. Have to walk more, that’ll stop those cramps. Hoey was standing beside him now.
“Gibney’s gone, sir-that’s what the man said. They can’t get the blood into him.”
How long had he been standing here? Everything looks so simple until you learn more about what goes into it. Screams, a woman screaming in the house. Gorman’s wife: one minute chatting with her friend on the phone, wondering whether her husband was alive the next.
“He was shot in the chest. There was no hope,” said Hoey.
Minogue felt the first drop on the back of his hand. The cramp began to ease. Another drop plinked on to a car roof nearby. Kilmartin brushed against him as he stepped back on to the road.
“Come on now, lads. Plastic, on the double. Everything counts, now,” Kilmartin was saying.
Minogue stepped away from the gate and leaned against a car. Kilmartin backed into him.
“Sorry Matt. Are you all right now?”
Minogue still felt the emptiness, the raw vacuum of simply being there. Something had taken over and ejected Minogue out of the ferocious present. Several Gardai were going into Gorman’s house now and Minogue heard another scream before the front door was closed again.
Kilmartin was poking a pack of cigarettes at him.
“We’ll just have to concentrate on Gorman or the others,” he was saying. Hoey joined the two by the car, his face pale. He took one of Kilmartin’s cigarettes and lit it from the butt of the one he was just finishing. Both his hands were shaking.
“They’re taking Gorman to the Bridewell, Farrell says,” said Hoey in a small voice. “Told me to tell you…”
Kilmartin was still holding the packet of cigarettes out as he observed Hoey. Minogue didn’t think about them but took one of the cigarettes and placed it between his dry lips. The rain was still light.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the last week of October Marguerite Ryan was carried through the streets of Cahir, County Tipperary by a small crowd, almost exclusively women, after receiving a suspended sentence for manslaughter. The State had no immediate plans to appeal the verdict. Minogue saw Marguerite Ryan on the nine o’clock news. She looked proud and embarrassed, but she did not hug the women with the same fervour as they were hugging her. Minogue went to bed early, thereby earning a curious look from Kathleen. He pleaded a light cold. At his age, he argued quietly, a man had to look after himself. He had dug some books out from under the bed and was going to give some of de Maupassant’s longer stories a second shot in the French. He also had a dangerous reading experiment in the form of a play next to the bed, too, if de Maupassant didn’t go easy on him: A Long Day’s Journey into Night.
Next to the books Minogue had drawn out a three-week-old copy of the Irish Times. It was folded open at the page where the headline announced that a PLO representative in London had disclaimed any responsibility for the firebombing of the Jewish Museum in Dublin, Ireland. The statement, quoted verbatim, included a paragraph referring to Ireland’s current post-colonial contradictions and malaise. Another paragraph claimed parallels between the plight of oppressed Irish nationalists and Palestinians. Minogue remembered trying to understand what the paragraphs meant but his thoughts had no bite then. All he fastened on was a statement declaring that it was in nobody’s interests to obliterate history.
Iesult-at Kathleen’s prompting, Minogue was sure-ferried a hot whiskey to him ten minutes after he retired. He regarded hot whiskey as a frivolous waste of good whiskey for the same reason that Kathleen thought it was a good drink. If a body had to take a drink at all, she would have added. The boiling water in on top of the whiskey burned off much of the alcohol, and the cloves and sugar made a toy of the precious liquid.
“Every broken-down father should have so solicitous a daughter.”
“What are you broken-down about? It’s only a cold. All Irish men love to complain, did you know that? Even Pat does it. I tell him to shut up. You’ll wake up as right as rain tomorrow and you’ll have to find some other excuse for feel-What’s that book? Eugene O’Neill? That’s very depressing. Why are you reading that?”
“Where did you pick up on the notion that art is for comfort?”
“Are you trying to make yourself sicker, is it? You’d better be on your feet when trouble-the-house gets in off the plane tomorrow. His poor
little heart will be broken after leaving his Cathy behind in hamburger heaven. I bet he asks you if you told the Immigration to raid the shop so as he’d be put out of the place…”
Minogue glared at the wolf who had entered as Florence Nightingale.
“I hope you can control your hyperbole when you see him,” he said.
Minogue had picked up the cold on the previous Sunday. He and Kathleen had motored up to Sallygap-his choice-and had sat in the car with the Sunday papers and a set of binoculars. Minogue had spotted two hawks before evening. It was chilly and damp in the car, and the flask of tea was soon gone. Minogue hadn’t turned on the engine for heat because he saw that Kathleen has fallen asleep across the back seat, with a blanket over her legs.
Minogue surveyed the desolate bog plateau which led into Wicklow proper. He loved the place. It was a brown and grey darkening world, falling away into an early winter. The low clouds covered the television mast on Kippure Mountain high over the empty landscape. Minogue’s mind lingered over the view of the bog as he tried to remember the names of the chieftains who had escaped the dungeons of Dublin Castle and fled across these mountain passes in the dead of winter. Red Hugh O’Donnell was one of ours… the same year they founded Trinity College was it? 1591? Them and us.
A few drops of rain were all that had come so far from the heavy, low cloud. With the light going fast now and Kathleen stirring awake, Minogue gathered his wits and started the engine. As he had a last look at the fading world here-a view of the high boggy plains which he could take to work with him tomorrow-a mile off in the distance, under Kippure Mountain, he spotted a figure moving steadily across the heather. He put the binoculars to his eyes and looked to see what hardy hill-walker was racing the darkness back to whatever spot he had parked his car. The nearest house was four miles in off the pass, in the village of Glencree. The binocular view compressed the scene and crowded the walker into a tighter world. The low clouds seemed to be but feet over his head as he plodded along.
“There’s a citizen who’s fond of his mountains,” he said to Kathleen as he headed for Glencree. Coming down off the plateau, the road snaked and hairpinned under the beginnings of Kippure Mountain, bringing Minogue closer to the figure still striding across the moor. Might have parked his car anywhere along here, thought Minogue, before taking off along one of the sheep tracks. Turning a blind bend, Minogue saw the person more clearly now. Definitely a man, wearing a green anorak and an aran hat. He stopped the car and took up the binoculars again.
“Declare to God, Kathleen, do you know who that looks like? I was thinking about him, maybe that’s why I’m imagining it’s him.”
“A ghost?”
“Not a bit of it. That’s Billy Fine.”
“You’re joking. It’ll be pitch black within the hour, lovey. How can you see anything at all?”
“I think it is, you know.”
Minogue stepped out of the car and opened the boot. He took out his Wellingtons and leaned against the back door as he donned the rubber boots. Kathleen stayed in the back seat, looking down the road toward the valley of Glencree.
“I’ll find out soon enough,” he said apologetically. “Then I’ll hot-foot it back.”
“Mind the bog-holes,” said Kathleen with irony plain in her caution. “The light is poor already.”
Minogue shouldered his binoculars and made off over the heather. Walking, he thought over Paul Fine’s funeral. The crowd waiting for the coffin to be carried out of the little house within the Jewish cemetery at Aughavannagh Road. Archbishop Burke, who was there before Minogue and Kilmartin, had worn a yarmulka with no trace of the embarrassment afflicting Kilmartin and the Commissioner, who walked stiff-necked in the fear that theirs might fall from their heads. After Johnny Cohen had slipped him one, Minogue had put it on his head and promptly forgotten it.
As a species (which species or genus Minogue wasn’t sure, Gentile or merely policeman), Minogue and Kilmartin found themselves beside Tynan and the Commissioner. The trio of Mickey Fitz, Downey and Mary McCutcheon stood off to the other side of the crowd, nearer to the dignitaries from the government and Dail. Minogue noted Tynan’s almost uninterested attention as Tynan explained parts of the ceremony. The body, taken but an hour previously from the hospital mortuary, had been driven in a Flanagan’s hearse to the burial ground. It had been collected and accompanied by three men from what Tynan called the Holy Society.
“They’ll wash and dress the body, all under a sheet,” Tynan murmured. “All in white. Jews are enjoined to treat the burial of their dead with the greatest respect. All in white, from head to toe. Rich or poor. You don’t see any wreaths, do you?”
Minogue looked around. There were none.
“That’s how it is with them. Nothing showy. Go to God plain.”
They watched. the unvarnished coffin being carried to the graveside. The wooden pegs, Tynan explained when the four policemen were seated in the pub afterwards, were supposed to stick out like that. They were not hammered in tightly because God must know that the living were reluctant to part with the dead.
“They’d not be happy burying someone so late after death, you know. Especially with the PM,” Tynan had whispered.
Kilmartin had every appearance of being pleased to be in a pub with his own kind after the funeral, Minogue remembered.
“Tell ye something now,” Kilmartin had confided. “It wasn’t so much the hat falling off me head that had me nervous. When they started to say the prayers and some of them started bowing and waving around… But then, to cap it all, when the prayers started up I automatically began with an Our Father and a Hail Mary. Jases, such an iijit, I thought to meself. I hope nobody heard me.”
The Commissioner thought that Kilmartin’s addition to the Kaddish was very funny. “No fear of anyone overhearing you praying, Jimmy. There’s nobody has heard you saying prayers yet.”
Kilmartin had felt obliged to laugh, as the Commissioner was happy with his joke.
Minogue stepped around a turf-cut now and found a sheep track which led toward a point where the figure in the gloom ahead would cross his path.
Tynan had described the week of mourning awaiting the Fines after the funeral. The family members shouldn’t leave the house before nightfall, but should be together during the day. The prayers they were not expected to join in before the burial could now be uttered by the family members aloud. The bare maintenance of physical needs was to suffice, and even those things would likely be taken care of by friends and relatives. Minogue had wanted to tell Tynan that Fine had mentioned thinking of emigrating to Israel, but Fine would not have people know this. Tynan had not laughed at Kilmartin’s wrong prayers either. God, if he was worth his salt as an Omnipotent, had to be multilingual. Minogue remembered the smell of the Commissioner’s whiskey breath as they parted outside the pub, the frown of sincerity as he told Minogue that excellent police work had been done, with the minimum fuss over such a major crisis.
Fine had phoned Minogue at home some two weeks after the funeral. He had thanked Minogue for his work and said no more.
Minogue stopped in the heather and used the binoculars. It was Billy Fine. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, and was so intent on his path that he hadn’t noticed Minogue yet. Minogue looked back toward the car but it was no longer in sight. The roadway was hidden under a dyke which had been dug as an aid to getting turf out of the bog.
“Hello!” he called out over the bog. Fine did not turn. Minogue adjusted his direction to cross Fine’s path, and quickened his pace. Without warning, a fine drizzle began to settle over the bog. Minogue called out again, and this time Fine turned.
“Justice Fine,” Minogue shouted, and threaded his way around bog-holes toward the stationary figure.
“I thought it was yourself,” Minogue called out.
“We share the same bog, isn’t that something?” said Fine as he shook hands. His face was relaxed, suggesting wry amusement at the sight of Minogue. �
�What are you at?”
“I’m going home for my tea,” replied Minogue, pointing toward where he believed Kathleen and the Fiat were. “Here look, do you want a lift? That rain will be coming in in earnest, I’m thinking.”
Fine walked alongside Minogue. “I’m parked up above the village. The time ran away on me but I think I could have made it before the dark. I would have stepped out on to the road if it had turned dark on me.”
“I didn’t know you for a bog-man,” said Minogue.
Fine shrugged. “I came up from town to get a bit of space.” He stopped and surveyed the desolate landscape. “Plenty of room up here, and that’s a fact,” he murmured. He turned to Minogue with a quizzical expression and said: “ ‘Great hatred and little room… ’”
“ ‘… had maimed us from the start,’ ” Minogue finished.
Fine shook his head and looked down at his Wellington boots. “You’re a gas man, Minogue. Spouting Yeats and annoying people. I don’t think there’s a man in Dublin-outside of the Gardai, I mean-that’d believe a Guard is interested in poetry or museums.”
“Ah, why ruin a good stereotype,” Minogue said. “People depend on them, and sure it gives you a good cover to move around under.”
Fine began walking again. “ ‘Great hatred… little room,’ ” he said. “Room in the head and the heart departments, I suppose he was talking about.”
“I’d say so, all right,” Minogue agreed.
“Rosalie and I have been giving serious consideration to leaving,” said Fine then. Minogue was too taken aback to say anything. “It was her saying something that got me to thinking about that poem.”
Minogue said awkwardly, “You remember scraps of things, I suppose…”
“She has the feeling that there’s not room for us here any more. Odd sort of idea, and I’m not sure what she means.”
“If ye get up and leave, there’d be less room for the likes of us, I think,” said Minogue. Fine looked over to Minogue and frowned. Then his face relaxed.
“You are one of the oddest people I have ever met, Minogue-and I have lived and worked in a very odd city all my life. How did you ever get stuck into the job of being a Guard?”
