by John Brady
“It’s a bloody commune on the farm. WAMmers milking the pigs and feeding grain to the dog. A pack of lesbians in a commune, a revolution. They might declare a republic and what would we do then? Ha ha,” Kilmartin continued. Unbidden, he sat heavily into the passenger seat.
While Minogue piloted sourly down the quays, Kilmartin repeated bits of his news and views all the way to George’s Street. The newspaper headlines on a stand by the entrance to Bewley’s cut him short. He stopped and grasped Minogue’s arm. Minogue looked to the papers for more about Marguerite Ryan, the new heroine of Ireland.
“Look at that, would you,” Kilmartin hissed. “The busmen are going on strike. Isn’t that the last straw entirely?”
Minogue did not think so. He carried his large white coffee to a table near the window. Normally he would have tried to avoid this rather moribund branch of Bewley’s by loping on down to Westmoreland Street, another five minutes away. With Kilmartin in tow he had decided to cut his losses. Kilmartin sat down opposite. He could not stop shaking his head every few minutes when he returned to the subject of Marguerite Ryan. Minogue wondered if that was how erotic obsessions showed themselves.
“She’s actually getting away with murder. We did all the paperwork and sewed it up tight. The next thing you know is the Director of Public Prosecutions throws out the murder charge and… Maybe we ought to phone up and tell them she gave him one stab for every year of his mortal life.”
“Let the hair sit, Jimmy,” said Minogue acidly. “It’s not proof of premeditation. Stress can drive a body to episodic madness. That’s the be-all and end-all of it for me.”
Kilmartin was agog at Minogue’s dismissal.
“The urge might have been so strong that she couldn’t stop herself. Possessed,” Minogue added.
“The assessment says she’s the full shilling, Matt. There’s nothing about temporary insanity. Didn’t I read some rubbish in the papers about the WAMmers saying it has to do with a woman’s monthlies?”
The coffee had boosted Minogue into sarcasm.
“Anybody do a psychiatric assessment of Frances Xavier Ryan?”
Kilmartin made a face and sipped at his coffee.
“As for the premenstrual syndrome, I haven’t had it myself,” Minogue added. “I do be feeling sorry enough for myself when I have a little headache, even. Menstruation is no lark, I understand.”
Minogue enjoyed Kilmartin’s shock as he noted a face turning from the next table. Kilmartin bowed lower over the table and whispered like a schoolboy whose blasphemy might be overheard: “You mean to say that if your wife or mine gave either of us a clout one day and then said it wasn’t her fault on account of her you-know-what, that’d be fine and well by you?”
“It may be that I actually deserve a clout every now and then. It’s to your own head you should be looking, Jimmy.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Let me say this: Marguerite Ryan is no Tipperary Joan of Arc, but sooner or later she might have had to defend her life with that husband the way he was. Maybe she was the victim of a crime we paid no attention to.”
Minogue hid behind his coffee cup then. He expected Kilmartin to send a taunt his way about being bossed around by Kathleen and Iesult at home, now that Daithi was in the States. Kilmartin changed the subject instead.
“I say we sack the busmen and be done with it. People are fed up with them hooligans dictating to the public and causing hardship to everyone just because they want a few bob. They’re robbing us blind with the fares anyway.”
“ ‘ Sic transit… ’,” murmured Minogue.
“You’re telling me,” said Kilmartin quickly.
“Are you going to run for election on it?”
“Easy for you to laugh. I was half tempted several times to do something in politics: I couldn’t do much worse than the shaggers and shoneens we have now. Leadership is what we badly need if the country is to get going again,” declared the statesman Kilmartin.
Going where, Minogue wondered.
“Someone new, but someone who knows the ropes and won’t be tricked into siding with the old crowd. Someone with enough smarts not to be dragged into the pubs and the clubs and the old rigmarole. Are you with me?”
“I am indeed. Do you have anyone in mind?”
“There’s the fly in the ointment, Matt,” Kilmartin said earnestly. “I can’t see anyone on the scene right now. It breaks my heart to see the government gearing up for the Ard Fheis with the Chief and his cronies working up to an election after they’ve wasted some money on their constituencies. It’s a machine at work, not democracy, isn’t it?”
“You’re quite right.”
Kilmartin looked around the restaurant as though to glean more pleasant topics to raise with Minogue. Minogue’s thoughts drifted toward Paul Fine. Fine had been assigned to work on digging up dirt on these office-holders which even Kilmartin had consigned to the large domain of yobbos and chancers. It was an assignment which Paul Fine hadn’t been thrilled about. Was it because he was by birth estranged from the tribal in-fighting which Irishmen like Kilmartin revelled in?
“What about that Gorman, would he be to your liking?” Minogue asked Kilmartin.
“There’s an interesting one. Mind you he’s part and parcel of what has the country going to pot now. That’s not to say that he’s a completely lost cause, though. Maura at home was telling me the other day that Gorman is by no means a yes-man. He’s a good Minister, if you toe the line and keep up with him. It’s not an easy bed to lie in, being a Minister for Defence and you not being forty years of age, you know. But Gorman’s popular and he’s been to school, too. Still and all, if he’s anybody worth thinking about why is he with that crowd of hill-and-dale robbers that’re running the country into the ground right now?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be a voice in the wilderness,” said Minogue coyly.
“Could be. I don’t know if he has the belly in him for real leadership though. When it comes down to the wire he’ll be lining up at the trough with the rest of them-wait’ll you see. The Chief has his hatchet-men out all the time listening to see who might be getting too popular or who might be getting ideas of stepping out of line. They’d give Gorman the chop-very rapid like-if they found he was slipping the leash on the Chief.”
“For a man who doesn’t like the current government, you know a lot about them.”
“Ah go on, I don’t know more than the next man. You know yourself that the fella who’s belly-aching about this or that party is the fella who’ll vote for them come the election. ’Tis the bane of our existence here, voting for personalities…”
Minogue marvelled privately at what Kilmartin had just said. Even Jimmy Kilmartin, middle age on him like a volcanic crust, was displaying that enduring paradox of cynicism and hope, that cardinal Irishism that Minogue had learned late he could not escape himself: professing to be aloof while sitting on an overwhelming desire.
“Do you hear me at all?” Kilmartin was saying. “When we find out who was in the car in Bray, we won’t be sitting here running the world. We’ll be earning our pay these next few days, I can tell you.”
Hoey put Doyle on hold and walked over to Minogue’s desk.
“Doyle, sir. He nosed around with the computer thing in RTE. Something interesting, do you want to listen in?”
Minogue pressed the flashing yellow button while Hoey returned to his extension.
“Minogue here now. Shea Hoey says you are inside a computer or something.”
“I went to Fine’s office, that big room with all the desks, and I asked a man called Downey if Fine made much use of the computer for his work. Some people use the computer for word-processing and what they call internal mail. Downey says yep, that Fine used to use the computer. Journalists file stories on them. There’s a room with eight terminals in it for the staff to use them as they wish. Some bigwigs have terminals all to themselves. Anyway. Paul Fine has used the computer in the past, to type up rep
orts. He had a user number and a password like the others. The idea is that you do your bit of whatever on the computer and then you save it. There’s a print room, too, and you can go and collect your stuff, depending on whether it’s your turn on it or whether the printers are taken up.”
“Did you get into the computer and look?”
“That’s what I was saying to Shea, sir. There were no items in Fine’s file on the computer. I got the manager of the Information Services to get the password and get in. Downey thought it was a bit odd that there was nothing because he was always slagging Fine about using the computer instead of his own brain. I was told they scrub the files every now and then but they give you lots of warning to save your files or to let them know they’re still active.”
“Is there any other way to check and see for stuff he may have had in his files there? Stuff he had a while ago?”
“I asked him that. There is. They do tape back-ups every day in case there’s a power loss. The computer does the taping automatically every evening. Some of the stuff they keep, like payroll, in case they find there was a mistake later on. They always keep a week’s worth of everything on the computer but only selected stuff stays on tape for longer than that. He’s gone to find the tapes for me now.”
“To all intents and purposes a person working under his own password would not have people looking over his shoulder, would he?” Hoey asked.
“God, yous’re very devious. Matter of fact I asked him that: who would know other people’s passwords, like,” Doyle replied. “He told me that it was no big secret with passwords at all. He keeps the passwords in his files but it’s not a question of anybody knowing another person’s password after snooping around for it in his filing cabinet. It’s that the passwords are quite easy to figure out. Often it’s a bit of someone’s name. He knows that some users even loan out their passwords to others so they can work on the same material.”
“Are there other ways to eavesdrop, so to speak?” Minogue broke in.
“There are, apparently,” said Doyle. “If you know another person’s password there’s a way to look at what he’s doing if he’s working on the computer at the time.”
“Phone us when you get through that tape thing, so,” said Minogue. “And dazzle us with more of that verve and acuity.”
Eilis turned from emptying her second ashtray of the day. She looked from the becalmed Hoey still cradling the phone idly to the semi-reclining Minogue who was also mulling over Doyle’s discoveries.
“Verve and acuity,” she said as she lit up a Gitane. “There’s no knowing what a person will hear from parties working around here. It’d make a girl think twice.”
Kilmartin emerged from his office, scratching his ear and looking for Minogue.
“Time for evening prayer,” Kilmartin said with a leaden irony.
Minogue flipped a folder on his desk and uncovered his summary for Kilmartin to feed the Commissioner with.
“There’s a little something to add to this and bring it up to the minute,” Minogue murmured. “Doyle went out to RTE and chased up something on the computer there. Paul Fine used the computer but there’s nothing in his file. Doyle’s working up a copy of what might have been on the computer in Fine’s name a while ago.”
“Fair enough,” said Kilmartin vacantly as he read down the page. “That’s all from the Gardai on the beaches today?” he asked, looking down to Minogue.
“The best we have is from callers-in, I’m afraid. That woman who put us on to the site. The lad with his girlfriend in the carpark late Sunday night, we’re stuck with him… he still can’t put a make on the cars he saw.”
Kilmartin couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Jases, that’s not much. With seventy-odd men?”
Minogue shrugged. “Don’t forget the better parts. There’s the ticket man who can tentatively place Paul Fine in Dalkey Station around one o’clock. He might have gotten out of a train with time to spare and walked up over Dalkey Hill to Killiney Hill Park. It’s a nice little jaunt.”
Minogue watched Kilmartin’s head wave slightly from side to side as he went down the page again. “And remember the appeal tonight will be on Killiney Hill, not the beach. I put Gallagher’s plans in point form because I don’t know any more than what you see. Thirty-eight names, he told me. It’ll take time. Not something we can rush him with,” Minogue added.
Kilmartin nodded distractedly and yawned. He slapped the file folder against his thigh.
“I didn’t even want to be thinking about this fella who was toasted out beyond in Bray. The remains are in poor shape but we have an engine block number. A Volkswagen. I was to get a phone call a half an hour ago.”
Kilmartin had been gone ten minutes when Eilis directed a call to Minogue. The car in Bray had belonged to one Brian Kelly, thirty four, of Leopardstown Gardens, civil servant. Mr. Kelly was a Principal Officer in the Department of Finance. He was unmarried. He was not answering his phone. Gardai from Cabinteely were at the house. Mr. Kelly had a brother a priest in Finglas. His parents lived in County Carlow. Had any effects been left intact for identification after the fire? A watch with an expanding strap was partially intact. Clothing had been burned off completely. Remains of a leather wallet, melted plastic (probably bank cards), some change on the floor of the car.
Minogue asked for the details again. This time he wrote them down. It was a matter of ferreting out his dentist’s name to light on an X-ray identification. Minogue saw five o’clock looking back down off the wall at him. He watched Keating about to begin typing from his notebook.
“How would you like to be Jimmy Kilmartin for a while?” he asked Keating.
“I wouldn’t mind the pay and the perks,” Keating answered cautiously. “I was just about to type up me summary of Fine’s office stuff.”
Minogue headed Keating off at the pass. “Is there anything that’d change what we’re at now? Diaries or notebooks?”
“No,” said Keating as he flicked his notebook shut.
“We will most likely have to set up a team for another case, that’s what I’m getting at.”
“The man out in Bray?”
“Yes. It may well be this man here,” Minogue replied, handing Keating the sheet.
“You’ll have to pick up an X-ray from the Pathologist’s. They did ‘em this afternoon. There’s a fella looking through Kelly’s house for receipts. Now phone here the minute you get a match off the dentist’s charts.”
As Keating was leaving, Eilis was moving from desk to desk with small bundles of photocopies. She tendered Minogue’s share into his hand. They were copies of statements from members of the public who had telephoned the help-line in answer to last night’s media appeals. Hoey, his copies in his hand at the blackboards, wrote in the sighting at Dalkey train station on Sunday. So the ticket man was sticking by it now, enough to sign a statement on it, Minogue thought. Paul Fine’s last Sunday now had two placings before the asterisk and the question mark next to it. There was still no writing under the Saturday.
Kathleen said that she had heard the appeal on the half-five radio news.
“Killiney Hill Park,” she said. “That’s creepy, I’m telling you. I always liked going for a stroll there. It’ll be a while before I’ll be wanting to walk around that spot again.”
Minogue told her that he didn’t know what time he’d be home tonight. There could be another investigation being launched. It was up to Kilmartin to put a team together for that but he might be foraging for experienced detectives who were working with Minogue at the moment. That could mean that her husband might be taking over the Fine case directly, without Shea Hoey there to direct traffic for him.
“You are coming home some time tonight, I take it?” said Kathleen. “At least you’re not relying on the buses. There are some walkouts already. Aren’t they divils entirely?”
“It may be late enough, but I’ll be home all right,” replied Minogue. He did not sound as decisive as he had wanted to.
Loss swooped low, a vulture, in Minogue’s chest. It never got easier; it seemed at times like this that it only got harder. What could parents know of their adult children? Were someone to ask Minogue for a description of Daithi Minogue, how much would he forget to say, how would he choose the blocks to build the picture?
Seven o’clock. Minogue had been caught in the rain on his way back from his tea in George’s Street. The taste of rashers and eggs was thick on his tongue after he had run the last hundred yards.
Kilmartin was holding court in his office. Hoey was back, shaved, and Keating was leaning in Kilmartin’s doorway. Doyle had returned from RTE. He sat opposite Kilmartin, with a cohort, a prematurely bald detective whom Minogue recognized as one seconded from the Central Detective Unit for the Fine murder.
“Just the man we want,” said Kilmartin. “Listen to these lads here.”
Minogue collected two yellow phone messages from his desk as he passed. One was from Gallagher, the other from his daughter Iesult. Prompted by Kilmartin, Doyle began.
“Paul Fine used the mainframe computer in RTE for typing and storing some of his work. I met two people who confirmed that; they personally saw him typing away on a terminal. I had them look into his files under his name and there was nothing. Not a sausage. I asked them where it was all gone and they didn’t know. Maybe he’d cleared off his stuff a few days ago. Then I found out they have a back-up memory for the stuff they hold on the computer. It’s in case the computer takes a fit or runs amok on account of a power shortage. I asked them to look at this tape back-up and see if there was something of Fine’s on it. It took them a while and a good bit of grumbling because they had to free up the computer so as they could run the tape back to it.”