by John Brady
“True for you. Sort of sets the tone for the news, wouldn’t you say?” said Fitzgerald.
Minogue almost smiled. Fitzgerald was no more than forty. He’d have allies, a common passion, support now. Minogue could remember the dull bells of the Angelus broadcast forty years ago in that pious, somnolent Ireland, summoning people to prayer at midday and at six. Fitzgerald, and his generation, could jibe now: he was educated and tough. It had taken Minogue thirty and more years to know that within the vague narrative which made up his life was retained the precise anger of his own rebellion. There had been few Mickey Fitzgeralds then. Minogue was now almost content that his anger had been blunted into detachment; Fitzgerald had made no such concession, he was sure.
Downey smiled tightly as though anti-clericalism was but an exchange of pleasantries. Hoey looked lost. Minogue stretched. Fitzgerald’s teeth showed for an instant. He took off the Leon Trotsky intellectual glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Bren here did some stuff with Paul,” he said.
“Before we go into whatever stuff you or he was working on, can you tell me if there were any peculiarities about Paul Fine recently?” Minogue began. “I mean if he was under stress or under some threat? Losing his job, a dangerous assignment, something of that nature? Did he behave in an unusual manner recently, make any odd comments?”
Fitzgerald shook his head.
“Anybody come looking for him here, asking after him here?”
Fitzgerald looked enquiringly at Downey who shrugged.
“Appear worried about anything? His personal life?” Minogue tried again.
“No,” said Downey.
Downey was well able to talk. Minogue interrupted him several times. The first time was when Downey mentioned Libya.
“No, nothing to do with the, er…” Downey looked to his boss to share the quip. “ ‘Proscribed organizations’ and all that. No, it was off-the-wall, we were talking over a pint one night, you know, talking up possible projects for the programme. We knew there’s a fair number of Arab students here on student visas. We were just wondering if there was any story in that, you know-if any of the Arabs had connections with members of the, er, you know.”
Minogue looked to Fitzgerald rather than Downey. “Lookit, lads, can we stop this pussyfooting around with the terminology?”Proscribed organizations“ and the rest of it? Call them the IRA or the Provos or whatever you like. My colleague here is not a tape-recorder or a lie-detector either, in case you’re wondering. He’s only jotting down notes. If I want a statement out of ye, I’ll ask ye. So can we talk like we’re citizens of the same planet?”
Fitzgerald’s arched eyebrows gave way to a shrug.
“Like I say,” Minogue added. “We’re not the mind police or anything. We can only do good work if people are co-operative with us. Now, this is a murder investigation so don’t spare our sensibilities. We tend to like getting straight to the point. We’re tough nuts the pair of us, aren’t we, Shea?”
“We’re awful tough, so we are,” Hoey obliged.
“Matter of fact I can safely say that I don’t even go to Mass and I suspect that Detective Hoey here doesn’t go to confession either. So can we hurry it up here?”
Downey resumed. “He said he’d do a bit on that, just to get a feel for it. We just decided off the tops of our heads to start with any Libyan connection first, seeing as Gadaffi’s very much in the public eye. He’s on record as supporting the IRA.”
“Ever heard of that group, The League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People?”
Fitzgerald shook his head too. “I know from reporting on stuff like that that some other outfit will invent a name to cover some incident, just to keep it at arm’s length and see what public reaction will be,” he said.
“What outfits?”
“Well, in this case I don’t know. There’s no Palestinian Liberation Organization or Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Dublin,” Fitzgerald said emphatically. “And there’s no Jihad that I can tell. I bet that yous know them or at least your Branch does. There are none of the madmen from Lebanon here either, the Hezbollah crowd or other pro-Iranian groups. That’s not how those organizations work, as I understand my reading. They don’t send members here as students to be farting about with the IRA in secret. Sure, there are sympathizers and militants amongst any group of students from Arab countries. I’d bet there are even informal groups where PLO sympathizers give a speech here in Dublin. That doesn’t translate into guns and bombs, though.”
“The links are organized on the Continent,” Downey added. “You know, Paddy Murphy from Belfast goes to Amsterdam or Copenhagen and meets So-and-so. They don’t come here offering guns.”
“We knew all that but we still thought it was worth a second look. The situation changes. Libyans might be interested in causing a commotion here,” said Fitzgerald. He began polishing his glasses with a paper handkerchief. Idly Minogue wondered if Fitzgerald had more in common with the keen, cerebral pugnaciousness of a Jesuit than he realized.
“Did Paul Fine actually get to the stage of going out and meeting these students?”
“I don’t think so. We were just starting up, catching up on background at this stage. It was his story basically, he was just picking my brain a bit. Same as we all do here,” Downey added a little defensively. Minogue caught Fitzgerald’s eye for an instant. Had Fitz powers of mind-reading, from that look on his face after Downey’s mention of picking one another’s brains? Minogue had instantly thought of a family of apes grooming themselves.
“Do you keep a notebook, Mr. Downey? Could you tell us the names of persons you or Paul Fine were to meet with in this regard?”
Downey blinked. Fitzgerald continued cleaning his glasses, taking excessive care with his handiwork. Hoey tapped his pencil lightly on the pad and glanced at Minogue.
“Such names would be a great help to us, Mr. Downey. They would in no way incriminate anybody,” said Minogue.
Downey looked to Fitzgerald but had no guidance there. Fitzgerald breathed on the lenses again.
“It’s not the custom for policemen to be asking journalists for their diaries or notebooks. Excepting places such as Chile, perhaps,” Fitzgerald observed.
“I didn’t know you for a man who revered customs,” replied Minogue. “I rather like novel approaches myself.”
“Thanks but no thanks,” said Fitzgerald conclusively. “I appreciate your appreciation. A free Press does not involve policemen following up names in a journalist’s notebook and questioning them on what they may or may not have said to that journalist.”
“I don’t much care what they said to Mr. Downey here. I want to know what they knew of Paul Fine.”
Fitzgerald put his glasses on, curling them around his ears carefully. Minogue saw a brain-warrior girding his loins.
“Seeing as we’re talking man-to-man here, Inspector, let me ask you this: is it because Paul’s Da happens to be a Justice of the Supreme Court that you are so pushy?”
“Not principally,” Minogue answered.
Fitzgerald rested a languid gaze on Minogue for several seconds, then he turned to Downey. Downey left the room. Must have known and made their minds up before I ever actually asked, Minogue thought.
“It’s because Paul Fine is a Jew, isn’t it?”
“That could well be,” said Minogue slowly. “But I don’t like to say it out loud. Every victim of a murderer gets our best. I may look like a superannuated culchie cop to you but I am in fact a lunatic-a lunatic in the sense that I am a stubborn weasel when I get to grips with the murder of a person. My bite is very bad indeed, Mr. Fitzgerald, and I’m at the age where I don’t much care for jaded slogans like ‘the freedom of the press’. Not that I’m not a democratic person. It’s that I tend to lose track of public rituals when I seek out fairness for someone like Paul Fine. We’re his advocates, in a sense. Now if you want to get on your high horse and find my superiors’ ears in order to have me taken to tas
k, fire away. But you’ll be surprised. This is a very personal business. You get to know who was treated so unfairly that they end up on a slab in the pathology department of a hospital and turn into a heap of reports on your desk. Frequently you get to like those victims and the people they were stolen from: you even get to like some of them inordinately. And it tears at your stomach and it can make you ill yourself, this grief and madness. Do you know what I’m saying at all? Let me know when I’m trampling on your civil rights, won’t you?”
Minogue heard Fitzgerald breathe out heavily through his nostrils. He looked to his watch.
“Tea?” said Fitzgerald. Minogue believed he had won something.
Downey brought the tea. He sat next to Hoey as they doctored their tea and pointed to names in his notebook. Hoey began copying them.
“If you think that Paul was by way of being very religious, you’d be wrong there,” said Fitzgerald. “I don’t know if there are lapsed Jews like there are lapsed Catholics but he didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve. I asked him when he came to me with the bit about the Arabs, the students, if he hadn’t an interest to declare there. He laughed it off, treated it as a joke.”
“A joke,” Minogue echoed with a leaden emphasis.
“Yes. Because being a Jew he’d necessarily be expected to have it in for any Arab. Stereotyping. Get this, now: Paul was an unashamed progressive, like a lot of people here. Your mob call it Leftie, I don’t doubt. Let’s just say that Paul wasn’t a gobshite. We have to fight our corner here on this programme. There’ll always be complaints, and dinosaurs from the bog wanting to put us off the air and have more ‘entertainment’, less looking at the Emperor. Paul wouldn’t have been working here if he was a bread and circuses man. It was a personal challenge to him to go out and meet these students, he said. He actually had a lot of sympathy for Palestinians. We think there are no shades of opinion in Israel, you know, and we assume that every Israeli-and therefore, every Jew the world over-supports what has happened in Israel over the last ten years. Not so.”
“It’s getting a bit murky for me,” Minogue murmured. “It seems odd to me that he should be murdered for being a Jew who was apparently taking an interest in Arab goings-on as regards Ireland.”
“That’s putting it a bit crudely. I don’t think any of those students would do that, even if they knew Paul was Jew. Remember that he was an Irishman, a Dubliner. Would you have known him for anything but that if you’d met him in the street?” asked the rhetorical Fitzgerald. Dead with a hole the size of a tenpenny piece in his forehead, Minogue wanted to reply. The back of his head pulped too, Mr. Smart-arse Fitzgerald.
“Point taken. What if there are more militant students coming here now? Like you were wondering about, ones with some brief to be involved with our crop of IRA? What if one of them knew precisely that Paul was a Jew?”
Fitzgerald shrugged. Minogue drained his cup and he watched as Fitzgerald rummaged in a drawer of his desk. A grainy newspaper photograph of Daniel Ortega fluttered to the floor by Minogue’s feet. He picked it up and laid it on Fitzgerald’s desk. Fitzgerald smiled then and laid a key by Minogue’s cup. Minogue couldn’t suppress a snigger.
“There: now you know for sure. Don’t tell the bishops,” said Fitzgerald.
“I didn’t think you kept pictures of the Sacred Heart in there, Mr. Fitzgerald. Don’t be worrying about shocking me.”
Fitzgerald announced that he had to get back to work. He had allotted nearly an hour to the Gardai, holding off calls and conferences for this interview. Now he had to get on top of this evening’s programme.
Minogue asked him what other stories Paul Fine had been working on.
“Bren will tell you those. I knew some of them. He did a story on chemists down the country refusing to stock contraceptives. Em, he trimmed something we got about Thatcher’s own constituency, you know, how the locals view her. What else? The Arab student thing, of course. Oh, I forgot: it was his turn to hunt for some scandal.”
“Scandal? Journalists?” said Minogue, not quite carrying it off.
“We’re always interested in what sulking backbenchers might be bellyaching about. Especially with the Ard Fheis, our glorious governing party’s convention, coming up in a week and a half. Not a lot of Party members will talk to our programme, you see-before the Ard Fheis, I mean. We have the name of stirring up trouble, making mountains out of molehills because our format pretty well dictates that we can’t give them a half an hour to gab. Still, we try. There’s always a grumbling TD out there, a fella who would like to air his notions.”
“I take it you mean a bit of muck-raking.” Fitzgerald affected shock. “Seeing as we’re talking man-to-man here,” Minogue added.
“You’re not a bishop in disguise, are you?”
“I’m merely a pawn,” replied Minogue.
“It’s not muck-raking. It’s called accountability and scrutiny of public officials and it’s rather popular in textbook discussions on democracy. I mean that we might want to check how many holidays a Member of Parliament or councillor takes and if the State purse is being devoted to projects a little too close to home for these boyos. Recreations, expense accounts, that sort of thing. See how they vote on certain issues, who they’re rolling around in the sack with. Who’s on the up-and-up, what Cabinet decisions for whom. Squeeze all that into a quickie magazine format for tired motorists, and you’re a better man than I. There are the obvious limitations.”
“Sounds mighty exciting,” Minogue fibbed.
“I’ll tell you what I like the most about it,” said Fitzgerald. He rubbed his hands together theatrically. “Aside from raising the wrath of the curators of culture and family life here, it’s knowing that the whole mob listen to our programme so they can get any dirt on their rivals. Then they pretend to condemn us for finding something isn’t quite square. I love it.”
“Did Paul do much of this stuff?”
“No he didn’t, actually. He hated it, if you really want to know. I rotate staff through that job. It’s a constant issue, potentially anyway.”
“Did he do well at it?”
“Well… he didn’t, I’d have to say. His strengths were in other areas. He didn’t have the killer instinct really-”
Fitzgerald stopped.
“What a stupid thing to say, after what has happened. What I meant to say was that Paul found this part of the work pretty distasteful.”
“What did he like to cover in the line of his work then?”
“He liked fairy stories.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That’s what we call them here. Sort of like good news, news that has or could have a happy ending. A new centre for adult education, more money for battered wives’ shelters, something progressive in the schools. Paul wasn’t a hungry bollocks like the rest of us, keen to tear at the vitals of those who misgovern and undo us. A bit nice, was our Paul.”
Fitzgerald’s demeanour changed with the last sentence, said slowly as if considering something foreign to him. His eyes were now less alert and guarded, Minogue believed.
“That doesn’t get any one very far, does it?” Minogue said.
Fitzgerald looked glum when he left them with Downey to open Paul Fine’s desk. Minogue had twenty minutes to look through its contents. He found two card indexes, a half-dozen school copybooks, some used, a small cassette-recorder you could shove in your pocket. No cassette in it, none in the drawer. Over a dozen hanging-file folders. Minogue left the files in the cabinet and looked through the copybooks. Fine had apparently kept notes. Minogue could read most of the pages, some home-made shorthand excepted. The most recent date appeared to be almost three weeks previously-notes from an interview which concerned agricultural fertilizers turning up in rivers.
One card index held names and addresses, listed alphabetically. The other, also bound with a rubber band, detailed lists of subjects. Minogue made sense of most of the topics. Fine had dated previous broadcasts on some items. Ope
ning to P, Minogue saw ‘ Papal Visit- expenses’, followed by references to radio and television broadcasts. An idea for a future story on the radio, probably. Minogue checked ‘ Israel’ and found sub-topics too: ‘ Irl-Isl. (dpltc.)’, ‘Isl.- S. Africa’, ‘Isl.-West Bank’. Fine’s system also noted related subjects and programmes with some references to print media: ‘ I.T.’ for Irish Times, ‘Gdn.’ for Guardian, ‘Ind’ for the British Independent. The different media references were colour-coded, yellow for radio programmes, black for newspapers, red for television. Nothing under A for Arab. Stupid to expect that. No ‘ League for Solidarity… ’ either. Minogue found entries for the IRA and Intelligence Services. Methodical fella, Paul Fine. If he was bored some day or short of a topic he could go to his Index and even whet his appetite further by looking at some previous treatments of topics. None of his sources was dated earlier than two years back. Maybe he skimmed off the older entries at the end of every year and started new cards to stay up-to-date…
Hoey was fingering through the file folders in the drawers of the desk. Fitzgerald had indeed stuffed what he had found on the top of the desk into the drawers. A packet of Carroll’s cigarettes, a telephone message on red paper to call Mary. Minogue took the number to check against Mary McCutcheon’s. A small internal phone directory was pinned to the partition in front of the desk with postcards and cartoons next to it. There were several receipts and credit-card flimsies in the drawer, none less than a week old, and pens, pencils and biros in profusion. Minogue noted the Access card number to check for attempted uses since Fine’s death, and found a slip of paper with two names on it. He was able to read one of the names directly: H. All. The other looked like Khatib. Sounded Arabic, too. Surnames? He copied them.
Minogue pocketed the copybooks and flattened them in the inside pocket of his jacket. He handed the two card indexes to Hoey who promptly stuffed one in each pocket.