by John Brady
He stopped the car and switched off the engine. When he tried to move he found that he couldn’t. He bowed his head and prayed but the hands on the wheel remained as fists, tight and tighter as he struggled. Lucky, he thought again with savage irony. Lucky because he was still sane enough to get this far.
He checked his watch again. He imagined the body moving, rising, casting off the blanket, going for his throat. Less than an hour ago he had killed the other man who now lay huddled across the seat. The man had shouted once but the bar had thudded into the side of his turning head before he got his arm up. Hit him again, this time on his knees, putting him out. The film of yellow light had seemed to pulse and brighten as he had stood over the man, listening to the deep breaths whistling in his nose. He had fumbled the cord out of his pocket, finished him. Desperate then, feeling this could not be real, he had heard himself sob as he tightened the cord, his hands cramping with the strain until he let go at last. A blob of blood had issued from the man’s ear.
He had watched the street then, but no one had passed. He had opened the garage door, driven in the car, and swung the door down again. It had taken him ten minutes to wrap the body, drag it to the car and bundle it into the back seat. Then he had gone through the kitchen, cleaned the blood from the lino and latched the door. After that, he had driven away with his cargo, out into the beginnings of the evening rush-hour traffic toward the comfortable suburbs of Dublin’s south side…
He skirted the buildings and debris carefully, stopping to look back at the car. This needn’t have happened, he knew. He might have had an option, some hope of avoiding it, if that journalist hadn’t drifted in on the tide. He choked off the remorse with anger and looked about the site. Joyriders set fire to the cars they stole around here, he had heard. Beer cans lay heaped beside half-melted plastic cider bottles. He listened to the clacking of the suburban train, the DART, in the distance. The nearest houses were almost a quarter mile off. He looked back at the car again. People’d see smoke but the most they might do would be call the fire brigade. Even at that, the petrol would have done its work. Couldn’t wait, anyway.
He uncapped the petrol and doused the upholstery. The petrol soaked the blanket and began dripping on to the floor. He let the string into the can and drew it out slowly, looped one end around to the underside of the front seat and tied the other end to the top of a reinforcing bar which stuck out obliquely from the rubble nearby. Before lighting the cigarette he squeezed the string to make sure it was moist enough. Then he cupped clay and dirt into a small mound under the string. Slowly he plugged the cigarette into the clay. He left an inch between the smoking tip and the string. Four, five minutes, he thought. When he stood, the scene seemed to gather itself around him, crushing him. He felt his stomach stir with nausea. Dizzy, too, he breathed in deeply and rubbed his eyes hard. A funeral pyre, he thought, or a sacrifice. He forced himself to utter a short prayer. Through the fear and the unbelieving, as he heard his own heart beat loud, he knew that he had held fast. As grotesque as this was, as clumsy as it was, he had been lucky-blessed, perhaps-and he had held fast. He jogged across the acres of rubble and the derelict shells of factories, and headed for the train station.
The briefing ground on. Minogue could feel the bafflement, the tiredness of the detectives hanging in the air. While he waited for a pause in Gallagher’s delivery he watched a detective yawn.
“Will you run up a list of likelies from what ye know about extremists here who are interested in matters Middle Eastern?” Minogue asked finally. “Students and citizens not necessarily affiliated with Republicans here too?” he added.
Gallagher blinked and studied the table-top.
“I can put the request through the Palace in the Park to cover you,” Minogue said. He could think of no less ominous way to remind Gallagher that the request could have the Garda Commissioner’s scrawl on the end of it after going through his office in Garda HQ in Phoenix Park.
“Ah no, it’s not that,” Gallagher said awkwardly. “I know we have to get the lead out, and free up personnel and info if ye want it. I was just thinking ahead, trying to figure an easy way. We don’t have the files cross-indexed, you see. We go by names, we go by organizations. Then we have files from the Aliens Office for resident foreigners. I can run up a list, all right, but it’ll take time…”
“And the Ports of Entry data, to follow up on an in-and-out killer from abroad?” Minogue probed gently.
“To be sure,” Gallagher replied quickly.
Somebody’s belly rumbled, Kilmartin’s. “Jases! Did you hear that war-cry, lads? I could eat the cheeks off a Jesuit’s arse through the confessional grille.”
Whether planned or not, Kilmartin’s grumble loosened the tension which Minogue had felt settling after he had made his request for Branch material.
“How many students are we talking about?” asked Kilmartin.
“Students from the Middle East? I don’t know for sure. There are upwards of 200 Lebanese students here. I only know that because I heard it the other day. The Lebanese are very keen on university education. I don’t know what religion the Lebanese here are, even. I’d bet a lot of them are Maronites, Christians.”
“Libya. Syria. Places with big Muslim populations.”
“Iraq too? Do you want to know about Iran?”
Kilmartin looked exasperated enough for Gallagher to skip any answer.
“Here’s a rough guess then: 450. That’s a generous estimate. Included in that are militants and ordinary people who don’t beat any drums. You might find a PLO member and then you might find a member of the Irish-Arab society-both ends of the spectrum.”
“Right so,” said Minogue. “Let’s get on to specifics with this League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People, then.”
Gallagher sat back in his chair and tugged at his moustache. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything on them. I never heard of them-and I’m the expert,” Gallagher shrugged. “Are you sure you got the name right- the girl on the switchboard, I mean.”
“Shite,” said Kilmartin.
It was seven o’clock.
“Sandwiches?” asked Minogue.
“Hamburgers and chips,” Keating said.
Minogue caved in. “Let’s give ourselves a few minutes before we get down to brass tacks as to what we’re going to do here,” he murmured. He asked Hoey to copy the names from Fine’s index cards on to the blackboard. Gallagher stayed in his chair and watched Hoey scrawling on the board.
“Now I might be able to plug into that,” said Gallagher, nodding toward the board. “Where’d you get those names?”
“An index of Paul Fine’s. We found it in his office.”
Minogue walked by Gallagher and out into the hallway. Kilmartin, there ahead of him, turned to Minogue.
“I phoned the lab for an up-date just now,” he grunted. “They’re ready to put it in writing that Fine was shot somewhere else than the beach. We’ve had men up and down the beach since the middle of the day.”
Minogue thought about the manpower which Kilmartin had suggested calling in. He’d need at least fifty men: Killiney Bay stretched miles down to Bray. The body probably hadn’t made it more than a couple of hundred feet offshore before the tide had drawn it in. Minogue didn’t want to think about Fine being shot aboard a boat and being dumped over. Fifty Gardai to do the hotels along the promenade in Bray, all the entrances to the beach… the railway stations for a sighting. Fine hadn’t owned a car. Go on the radio news tonight, at least. Wait until tomorrow for the telly, get a good clear recent snap for the papers too. Door to door? There couldn’t be more than a handful of older houses directly adjacent to the beach, houses built before the State decided that the foreshore was State land. In every place along the beach that Minogue could think of you’d have to be right down on the sand to see anything happening at the water’s edge. And who’d be down on the beach at night, anyway? Curriers with cans of lager and joints and their doxies for a wear. Model cit
izens: the least likely to step forward.
“I think we’d better set about it, all right,” Minogue concluded.
Kilmartin could call in detectives from the Central Detective Unit in Harcourt Street as well as other crime ordinary detectives from District Detective Units around the country.
“Let’s start by posting a car at every and any car entrance to the beach. Stop anyone going down to the beach and ask if they were around on Sunday or Sunday night. I’m sure there are regulars who drag the dog out and what-have-you every day there. Then to the beach accesses for pedestrians only. As for ourselves here, we should look at possibles from Fine’s card index for one thing.”
“Be more than fifty, Matt. Tell me a hundred.”
“Can we do it?”
“According to the phone call I got this afternoon from You-know-who, we’d better,” Kilmartin replied sardonically.
“I see. Let’s put men to yacht clubs and boat clubs, then, and boaters out of any harbours south from Sandymount,” said Minogue. “All the way to Bray. Anything stolen in the line of boats, people seen tampering with boats, boats going out after dark. Railway stations on the suburban system, in case he got on or got off on the south side. Leave a photo at every ticket office, for starters.”
Minogue heard his assumptions creak insistently as he widened the net which he knew was in untried waters. Who was to say that Fine hadn’t been shot anywhere in Dublin and then left on the beach or in the water after dark? So far they hadn’t met anyone who could tell them where Paul Fine might have been on Sunday after he’d left his flat. Minogue mentally underlined Mary McCutcheon’s name again.
He walked out into the yard and took in some of Dublin’s stale air. Kilmartin sauntered out after him.
“I called God Almighty and I got the Assistant Comm instead,” Kilmartin muttered. “Are you ready for thirty men tonight? Give them your mind after we set them up at a meeting tonight and then we’re off and running already.”
Minogue wanted to be away from Kilmartin, away from this swell of impossibility rising toward him. Fine’s friends-someone-must have been with him some time over the weekend. Kilmartin flicked his cigarette away and spat expertly.
“I don’t see myself as the one to bang the drum for this crowd tonight, then,” murmured Minogue. “Will you give them the run-down and I’ll sort out individual assignments with Shea Hoey?”
“Fair enough,” said Kilmartin brightly, chastening the surprised Minogue. “Do you have an idea where you’ll want to start?”
“Six men to go over cassettes and videos we found in the flat. I’ll earmark another six experienced interviewers for whoever Gallagher thinks is worthwhile off Fine’s index. Those are my main ones for now anyway… I don’t know if the Branch will insist on using their men for any suspects they pull out of their own files.”
Kilmartin nodded, looked to the sky and yawned long. Minogue thought he heard Kilmartin’s dentures click when they dislodged during the yawn. Age, he reflected dully.
“Here’s something I was thinking about just now,” said Minogue. “Do you think that whoever shot him knew that the bullets would go clean through?”
Kilmartin didn’t look away from the skyline.
“You’re the crafty boyo, aren’t you now? I know what you’re getting at.”
Minogue felt guilty stepping into the pub with Kilmartin. It was ten to eleven.
“That’s what I worked all these years to set up, Matt. Don’t be looking like a whipped pup. Hoey probably knows the ropes better than I do now, and Keating is no slouch either. Murtagh just looks stupid; he’s actually a sly bollocks with plenty of brains, just a bit lazy. Don’t be worrying about no skipper at the helm. No one is indispensable, they say.”
Kilmartin knew the barmen in Nolan’s. Minogue declined whiskey, settling for a pint of stout instead. Kilmartin had a Powers whiskey and a bottle of stout.
“Here’s to retirement. The golden years and all that,” Kilmartin toasted ambiguously. The stout was too heavy and too chilled for long gulps. “Let’s not be fretting about international gangsters. We’ll come up with some Provisionals link yet, wait’ll you see.”
Minogue thought about the work which was afoot already tonight. Gallagher had settled on the names of eleven students which he believed might help. One of the detectives had asked if they should Section 30 any students. Reluctantly, Minogue had assented, and told the detectives to throw the Offences Against the State Act at people on the list if they dragged their heels.
“I’m not happy sending them out to interview those students with nothing under their belts to poke at them with, no way to see if they’re being entirely truthful,” said Minogue reflectively.
“No other way around it, Matt,” Kilmartin countered decisively.
Was this what rank did, Minogue ruminated. Another pint of stout was slapped on the counter in front of him.
“Ah, Jimmy, I can’t.”
“You can’t leave it behind you, that’s a fact.”
He watched Kilmartin scoop the change from the fait accompli off the counter.
“Lookit, wait and see what turns up on these tapes. Maybe Fine had a diary on him and it was lost. Stolen? Maybe they took it, whoever did him in, don’t you see. No sign of a wallet or anything, am I right? So he may have had vital things on him when he was killed.”
Kilmartin was right to keep doors open, Minogue reflected. For himself, he needed a night’s sleep, to be away from this.
Minogue re-read the letter, posted nine days ago somewhere in New York City. At least the boy wasn’t writing from the bridal suite of some dive in Las Vegas. Kathleen buttered more bread. It was half-past seven. Minogue had managed to steal into bed without disturbing anyone last night. He awoke to the alarm, lying in the same place as he had when he first stretched out in the bed. He felt dull, bunched.
“Cathy with a C. I don’t know. I can’t tell from this letter, I’m hardly an expert,” Minogue tried.
“Your own son, mister. Don’t you see what he’s getting at?”
“I don’t, I suppose.”
“He’s interested in her, that’s what. To my way of thinking he’s not telling us the half of it. ‘Irish’, he says. As if that’s supposed to impress.”
Minogue believed that Kathleen was more nervous than angry.
“Everybody’s Irish over there, I suppose, if they want to be. You see he’s after meeting her family and everything,” she added.
Minogue folded the letter and placed it under his saucer. Hopefully the saucer might devour it.
“He’s testing us out. A fella can be very nervous when he meets a nice girl,” said Minogue. Listening to himself he heard the stupidity of the remark.
“Nervous, is it? He’s there in New York without a visa, working on the sly for some computer company and he’s nervous? What about his poor parents?”
“Cathy… same name as Kathleen basically. A very nice name that. He has the same good taste as his father. I was nervous when I met you,” Minogue tried to divert her.
“Pull the other one, it has bells.”
“We said we’d give him the fare, so that was that. The boy is enjoying himself a bit. He knows he can’t stay there forever.”
“That’s what I’m getting at,” Kathleen said. “Don’t you see? He may have it in the back of his head to marry this Cathy girl and stay there.”
Minogue returned to his egg. It looked up from the plate at him, begging not to be slashed. For a moment he remembered nearly emigrating to the States thirty years ago. Did genes act like that, wait and ambush the next generation?
“So will you drop him a line and make him see sense.”
Not the time to be asking her what ‘sense’ she meant, Minogue knew.
“I will.”
Iesult slouched into the kitchen in a dressing-gown.
“You’re only missing the curlers and a cigarette in your mitt,” welcomed Minogue.
Iesult stopped and sneered t
heatrically.
“When’s the wedding? I hope it’s one of those vulgar parties with everyone decked out in iijity clothes,” she fluted.
CHAPTER SIX
Kilmartin was lying in wait for him. Hoey rose from the desk and brought what looked like statement sheets with him, as the three policemen sat at Kilmartin’s table.
“Any one of these fellas jump out and say ‘me’ to you?” asked Mingoue.
Hoey shook his head. “One we didn’t find was a Syrian fella. The other Syrian knew him, though, said he was in England visiting his sister since last week,” said Hoey. He placed the statement sheets- photocopies, Minogue saw now-on the table and began sorting them.
“Let’s start with this one, Khatib. He’s Iranian.”
Minogue’s eyes ran beyond the Judge’s Rule, the caution given to the person making the statement. Hoey read his copy again.
“It’s clean, the whole thing. We got to see this Egan that he mentions and Egan confirmed that Khatib and another student were up on some mountain in Kerry over the weekend with him. Clean living. Why can’t they go drinking like everybody else, I ask myself. Khatib never heard of Fine. Didn’t know of any murder.”
“Now, this one here, Ali. He has a Jordanian passport but Gallagher says he is or was Palestinian. We had to put him on a Section 30 to shut him up. He’s a hot lad entirely.”
Hoey did not read this one. Minogue looked up from the half-page statement once to see Hoey’s lack of interest.
“Ali more or less dared the detective-who is it? O’Reilly from Store Street-to charge him. ‘What possible offences could I have committed against the Irish State?’ sort of thing. Knows his law,” said Hoey.