Kaddish in Dublin imm-3

by John Brady

  “You mean I should sit Ma down and say: ‘Ma, Pat and I will not have sex in Ballyvaughan, I promise’?”

  “Keep your voice down, would you,” Minogue hissed. “Bad enough to be giving me palpitations, but to be scandalizing my colleagues here… whatever effect you want to have, you just had it. But this is between you and your mother. I’ll certainly reassure her if she has doubts later on, but not before you let her know you’re going.”

  “Very tricky exit there, Da.”

  “Lookit, the both of us are well past the age where you should be Daddy’s little girl. Get to know your mother, would you?”

  “But she’s so full of what the Church says about this and that, Da,” said Iesult, her voice rising with exasperation.

  “And I’m easier to get around because I’m supposed to be a pagan or something? Listen for a minute. Did you ever hear me advising you what to do this last while?”

  “No. That’s what I like-”

  “You’re missing the point. Did it ever strike you that I may not have any sensible advice to give you? Ye have your own lives and no amount of talk is going to… ah, I don’t know. Being able to see clearly is what I mean. No gurus. Your mother is not afraid of standing up and saying what she believes is best for you, so you should be glad of knowing her. But face up to her and you’ll see something that might be entirely new to you, I’m telling you. She’d leave me in the ha’penny place.”

  “She has changed a bit, I suppose,” Iesult murmured.

  “Let me tell you, if Kathleen Minogue, or Kathleen O’Hare to give her her other title, if she ever turns turk on the Church and holy Ireland one morning, it would not surprise me. The Pope and the rest of them had better look out if and when she wants answers. Don’t you be worrying about dirty weekends, now.”

  Minogue was suddenly aware of eyes upon him. Hoey was observing him through threads of cigarette smoke, his curiosity evident, and a small curl of amusement worked at the sides of his mouth. Minogue’s glance flickered recognition that that last remark had been overheard and he felt the blush begin immediately at his collar. It would make things worse if he were to plead that he had only been discussing things with his daughter. Only? Daughter?

  “Hmmm,” said Iesult.

  “Do you know what I’m saying?” Minogue was conscious of trying to keep his voice low now.

  “I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll practise that ‘Frankly, Mother, I don’t give a damn’ in case she freaks out. Tell me, anyway, what will you be wearing for the wedding? They all go to registry offices there, I suppose.”

  “What wedding?”

  “When Darling Daithi decides to tie the knot with Curvaceous Cathy, the All-American Girl, in the ol’ US of A.”

  “You have a very sharp tongue, Iesult. I wouldn’t care to fall foul of it myself,” Minogue mustered. “Remember there’s many a man dug his own grave with his tongue, and didn’t know he was doing it until it was too late.”

  After the call Minogue wondered if he had been less than truthful when he had told himself that he would not be jealous of Pat the Brain. It wouldn’t take a Freudian to drive this one home, especially when Patient Minogue freely admitted that he loved Iesult immoderately. Hidden in her cutting humour, he knew, was her own concern for Daithi.

  Minogue phoned the Fines. The man’s voice answering was not Billy Fine’s.

  “This is Inspector Minogue. Unless it’s a major upset to come to the phone, yes…”

  Fine sounded like a man talking late at night, unhurried, tired but alert.

  “Good man, Inspector. No, it’s all right. I had been thinking of phoning you. I wasn’t sure how your protocol works. We’ve had phone calls daily from the Garda Commissioner to tell us where things stand.”

  “He gets his briefing from us.”

  “All right. So what there is to know he has told us already,” said Fine.

  “Now you have it. I was phoning, I think, to say hello. Just so as you know that any minute of the day there are policemen working on this. Everything’s being done that can be.”

  “Well that’s reassuring, I suppose,” said Fine slowly. Minogue was certain there was no sarcasm under the delivery.

  “And if I might inquire further, Justice…”

  “You had better start calling me something other than that. Billy will do well enough.”

  “If I might take a little of your time then, soon? I mean if I might put some questions to you about Paul. Very often the shock hides important facets of a person’s life, clues as to what might have happened. Returning to details after the initial shock can often yield up new, er…”

  “Facts. Yes. I’ve been thinking, all right. Waiting for something to come to me. I’m fairly familiar with how the Gardai do this. I’m ready, if that’s what you want to know, but Rosalie may be out of the running for a little while yet.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected-” Minogue began.

  “Oh, don’t be too delicate now. Rose is a tough bird. But it’ll take a while longer. ‘If only’ is what comes to mind a lot.”

  “There’s no getting used to it, I believe,” said Minogue gently.

  “Isn’t that a fact. You will probably have realized by now that Paul was not like the other children. We found that we had to do things differently with him, and now of course…”

  Neither man spoke for several moments. Minogue wondered if Fine was glad of somebody to chat to, someone outside the people in the house. The banter would help to sustain the mourning. There’d be plenty of time for weeping in between the stories, and for a lifetime to come after that.

  “Ah,” said Fine as if concluding a line of thinking. “So you’re working away on it. Good. To judge by your Commissioner’s reaction to the mention of your name, you have left your mark. Naturally he’d tell me you were the real shemozzle after I made it plain I’d like you to be doing the work,” Fine continued.

  “Seeing as he expected me to be on the warpath on account of who I am on the totem pole in the judiciary.”

  “Are you on a warpath?” Minogue risked.

  “How could I be? If you’ve ever had any calamity like this happen to you, you’d know that the only anger you can feel for a long time is the anger you feel against yourself and life in general for picking you out to land a tragedy on. You think you could have done better, prevented it. Made your feelings known better, told someone plainly what you thought. Do you know what I’m getting at?”

  Minogue said that he did.

  “What might begin to annoy me tomorrow, especially if I can’t get to sleep again, is the fact that we can’t go ahead with the funeral. You may not be familiar with our duty to inter the deceased as soon as possible. There was a time when we insisted that a Rabbi, or a relative at least, be with the deceased at all times up until the burial, you know. That used to cause no end of trouble. Johnny Cohen is more upset than I am, actually, but the State has to have its way. Three days, they say, and they’ll release Paul to us. It’s difficult explaining it to Rosalie without giving her the willies about what goes on in a post-mortem.”

  The resignation was plain in Fine’s voice now.

  “I may be able to do something,” said Minogue.

  “I doubt you can, at all.”

  “Can I come out to your house tomorrow, then? Would you mind me coming out?”

  “Come out in the morning if you can. Half-nine would suit,” said Fine. “And just knock. We won’t be going anywhere.”

  Hoey looked across to Minogue. Minogue rested his hand on the cradled receiver.

  “Rough. That’s the stuff I can’t bear to do.”

  “Rough isn’t in it,” Minogue murmured. “A terrible thing; the same the whole world over.”

  For some reason Minogue had images of starving children with swollen bellies before him. Glazed, sickly eyes already hooded and marked with the inevitability of death; black children in their parents’ arms, themselves impossibly thin, looking fearfully into the televisi
on camera. That was death too, his gargoyle said.

  “Never having things explained as to why it should be them.” Minogue murmured. Meaning, everything has to mean something eventually.

  Hoey nodded slowly and dropped his gaze to the reports on his desk. He recovered a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. An image of Daithi came to Minogue then, the boy’s face a mask of puzzlement and resentment; Daithi wanting to ask him a question, to be answered, but no words coming from him. How was it that Minogue’s recollection of snapshots of a young Daithi was that of a boy’s face always frowning into the camera? Minogue sighed and tried to busy himself so that he might not feel this dead weight so keenly.

  “Anything off the phones, Shea?”

  “Four possible sightings in the Park on Sunday afternoon. They’re very iffy. The fella from the National Library is our most promising so far, I think. Did you get through yesterday’s, the ones from the beach?”

  “I did indeed. Not hot at all,” said Minogue, sliding further into the trough.

  “I was half-ways thinking of putting that car business under the scope again. The fella who was necking with his moth in the car-park late Sunday night, do you know who I’m talking about?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “Where there was a car parked there when he arrived and still there when he left. It’s a bugger entirely because we can’t get him to put a make on the car. I could nearly crucify him for being half-gargled and not noting details, but sure what can you do? At least he phoned us. I’d like to put out an appeal specific to the car-park though. Anyone who used it at all over the weekend…”

  “Go ahead,” said Minogue. “Add it to tomorrow evening’s.”

  Minogue unearthed his copy of the report on the tides for Sunday night. Hoey shook his head when he saw Minogue reading it.

  “They covered themselves for anything there, didn’t they? ‘If the body was released an insufficient distance from shore between the hours of…’ What was it?”

  “Eleven at night to three in the morning,” replied Minogue.

  “I forget the exact terminology…”

  “ ‘… a strong probability of it being washed up south-southwest of the point of release.’ They discount the boat thing, that’s something. If the body was dumped overboard, I mean.”

  “But they can’t say where the body would have been put into the water. It could have been Coliemore Harbour or even the Forty Foot bathing spot. Even off Killiney Beach itself.”

  “ ‘Not a steady speed in the nearer offshore currents, speed of drift inshore is indeterminate except for a probable rate of between one and five knots depending on the coastline,’ ” Minogue quoted.

  “Sooner or later we should set up a dummy and try to match the conditions,” said Hoey.

  Minogue made no reply. He was thinking of Paul Fine’s body adrift, the brine dissipating the blood and rinsing the wounds. Water closing over the head, the body sometimes underwater completely. Had someone gazing out on the water early on Monday not seen the gently bobbing body; had they not wondered?

  “I must say,” Minogue whispered. “I’m damned if I can understand why someone needed to put the body into the sea.”

  He held his hands up before rubbing his eyes.

  “I know, I know. We talked about it. And then we talked about it some more.”

  Minogue paused and massaged his eyes with his knuckles.

  “You and me and Jimmy and the scenes-of-the-crime lads,” he said. “The idea of getting rid of the body to buy time-dirtying the motive, dirtying the trail. And the fact that the murder site can’t have been so well planned in advance. I know. But still…”

  “What?” from a distracted Hoey.

  Minogue took away his hands, blinked and shook his head.

  “Why was he in the sea? If it’s a professional killer, this doesn’t fit with carrying a body anywhere. No way in the wide world. Pat Gallagher knows that too, I’ll bet. If we’re chasing an imported experienced killer, we have the situation of a killer not familiar with the terrain here, who kills his victim and moves off, rapid like. No messing about. It’s a lot of trouble to come back after dark, if that’s what we’re assuming, and carry a grown man to the shore.”

  “Angle for it being more than the one man,” Hoey began. “In the disposal of the body, anyway. Say the killer is a pro. He does his job and confirms it by phone. The person he phones has a fit; says the body has to be moved, hidden.”

  “Panic, you mean? But we keep on running up against that, Shea: why try to conceal the body when the call to the damn newspaper is a run at some kind of publicity. Can’t deny that.”

  “Right. OK. The shooting itself might have been carried out coolly enough. But even the killer’d have the jitters, training or no training.”

  “Training, you say,” Minogue said remotely. “There’d be no lack of familiarity with guns as regards people from the Middle East. Not to speak of our own crop of cowboys here.”

  Hoey nodded agreement and hoisted his feet on to the desk. Minogue stared at Hoey’s shoes. They looked enormous from this angle, at least size thirteens.

  “I think I know what you’re getting at,” said Hoey. “You’re thinking the killer and the carrier-awayer are distinct parties, aren’t you? The killer tells someone what he’s done and they’re the ones who do the panicking and decide that the body has to be moved. And we’re trying to pin the local connection to the killer if it’s a professional assassin thing. I know what you’re saying.”

  “All right so,” said Minogue. “But I don’t follow why the body has to be moved at all. Still banging me head over that one.”

  He looked at Hoey and wondered again if it was not time to return to smoking after fifteen years of irreproachable lungs. Hoey sat up in the chair as if being challenged.

  “Let’s go through it again, then. Get it out of the running. Scientific and methodical, like. Are you ready?”

  “I am, I suppose,” said Minogue, glad to have some of Hoey’s vigour carry him.

  “Number one: the body is moved in an effort to have it disappear entirely-wash it out to sea. Why? Because clues somewhere along the line may incriminate the killer?”

  “But the bullets, Shea. Someone went to the trouble of recovering the bullets, even to first picking the types of bullets that could be recovered after going through the victim. I don’t see any clues staring me in the face at all either.”

  “But that might have been the clean-up crowd, the ones who might have carried the body away later. Number two: the body was moved so as to block the investigation in the sense of delaying it or allowing time for leads to run cold. Witnesses who may have seen something, events in Fine’s life that might shed light on the murder. The killer may have wanted time to get out of the country. That’s why we have to follow the Palestinian thread whether we like it or not.”

  “OK, Shea. But still and all, Gallagher knows his stuff, we have to admit that. The Branch don’t show any of the names on the list as having left the country in a hurry recently, either.”

  “I know Gallagher is on the ball, and they’d not hold back on something like this. But there’s always the possibility of completely new people on the scene. Even the students who have been harmless for years: one of them might be a sleeper. They have worse memories than we have, I hear. They’ll carry on a feud or the like to a hundred generations. Maybe that’s what Fine found out, that there was some cell which had gone undetected here and was just waiting for the order to do something when the time was right. Maybe we should be looking at a bigger picture, to see if there were any forthcoming events or visits in the offing. Diplomatic things, ambassadors, I don’t know. They might have been waiting to get a crack at an American bigwig, knowing that they come here often enough with the Irish-American connection.”

  Minogue thought about what Hoey was suggesting.

  “I’m going to raise that with Gallagher, Shea. That’s something we’ll have to look at if we’re bloc
ked still by the end of the week.”

  Hoey looked gratified.

  “Number three: he or they don’t want the victim’s last hours connected with Killiney Hill for another reason. Let’s assume the killer knows we make public appeals for help in the murder investigations. We’d want to be knowing what Paul Fine was doing there, wouldn’t we? Maybe he went there to meet someone.”

  “So if he met up with someone, a citizen’d call us and tell us that Paul Fine was with someone in the park. And the someone is the one who killed him. We discussed that one already.”

  “Yes. It may be a little tatty at the moment but we can’t be assuming that murderers have a genius intelligence just because we can’t put the bits together this very moment,” said Hoey with his palms upturned, looking in appeal to Minogue.

  “They make their slips, we make our living,” Minogue said, repeating one of Kilmartin’s favourite maxims, one which he liked to quote at discouraging moments.

  “If the killer and the cleaner-upper were two different parties, there could have been a squabble afoot, too,” said Hoey. “A real fanatic is tired of waiting for action and he gets carried away before his cohorts can stop him. Independent action. I know we talked about it before, but it seems to be creeping back even stronger. Fine may have met whoever killed him that afternoon. He may even have walked around with the killer for a while. Like we said from the start, if the killer is one of those Arab students he’d have been mighty conspicuous. People would remember him with Fine.”

  Minogue wished that the phone would ring and Gallagher would announce that he had a strong suspect in custody. He wished he could land in on top of a suspect and give him an aggressive interrogation, in shifts with someone like Kilmartin. Bully him. Anything was better than sitting here, empty. He wished he were not thinking about what the Fines were living through at this minute. He wished that he were not thinking that the body which had floated in and scuffed lightly on the beach at the water’s edge on Monday might have been Daithi. Foolish to be thinking this, illogical. But still… Schadenfreude, that ugly truth about us humans: at least it wasn’t my son that was murdered, no, not mine. It was Billy Fine’s boy and I’m sorry for him but it wasn’t my son that they opened up to see how he had died and if there were still the bullets… Death. Sincere regrets, my heart goes out to you; but always happening to someone else, please.