by John Brady
Butchers’ shops, hucksters with tables of fruits and vegetables and little plastic whatnots, pubs with their doors open to dark and sepulchral interiors. Two drunken men sat on church steps and swayed as they argued. Without warning, the car in front braked. Hoey was fast, but he had been too close and the police car bounced dully off the back of it. Hoey turned off the engine and stepped out slowly, Minogue following. The other driver was looking down between the two cars. The back bumper of his ancient Cortina had merely collected another minor dent to add to the myriad others. The driver, a fat middle-aged man, unshaven and lumbering, gave the two policemen a disparaging look after he had surveyed the damage.
“We’re all right this time,” he said conclusively in a broad Dublin accent. Minogue smelled malty breath from the grizzled red face.
“If you had have signalled, we wouldn’t be standing around holding up the traffic,” said Hoey.
“You don’t say. If you hadn’t been a half-inch off me arse we wouldn’t be standing around,” the man retorted. “Didn’t yous know there’s a fuckin’ bus strike? I was pulling in to give these oul’ wans a lift.”
He nodded in the direction of a clump of bystanders gathered around a bus stop.
“Well, next time turning on your indicator might save you a few bob,” said Hoey.
“A few bob, is it? You’re a culchie, aren’t you? Up outa the bog, with shoes on and everything? Don’t you know that the car following is supposed to be able to stop, no matter what?”
“Within reason,” Hoey said.
“Within reason, me bollocks. Where’s the reason of keeping these poor oul’ dears waiting on a bus that’s never going to come? And the sun boiling down on them?” He turned to the group by the bus stop and shouted. “Hey missus, are your rashers getting fried there, and you waiting on the bus?”
An older woman with a hair-do like a poodle sticking out from under a head-scarf called back: “Amn’t I getting boiled meself here, sure.”
“See?” said the driver turning to Hoey. “This is Dublin, not Ballybejases. We look after one another in this city. And we don’t need fuckin’…” — he paused to mimic Hoey’s accent-“ ‘indicator lights’ to stop at bus stops and give lifts to the elderly that’s stuck by the side of the shagging road on account of the fact that yous culchies what are running the country can’t get yis’r fuckin’ act together-”
Minogue cut short the lecture on the political economy when he saw the barrel-chested man move towards Hoey with his forefinger jabbing the air in front of him.
“Give yourself a shake there,” said Minogue, “and don’t be making a show of yourself in the street. Do your good deed, and be off with yourself like a good man. There’s no damage done.”
“Another bog-trotter telling a Dublinman what to do. Be the living Jasus-”
“I’ll run you in if you don’t shut up,” Minogue snapped. He did not like the crowd; thickening on the footpath, watching.
“We’re Garda officers,” said Hoey. “You’re talking yourself into court here. Park that car now and go home. You’re half-cut already.”
“Two coppers!” the man shouted to the crowd. “Two coppers telling me I can’t stop me own car to pick up people, with the whole city bollicksed by the bus-strike. And all the culchies that are sitting below in the Dail, running the country and letting the bloody kip fall apart! Did yous ever hear the like of that?”
He stood with his arms spread wide in a theatrical appeal. Heads nodded and bobbed in the crowd. A youth with a crew-cut stepped off the footpath.
“Leave the man alone and mind your own fuckin’ business,” he said to Minogue. “Man is only trying to help people out.”
The cry of ‘culchie’ repeated brought Minogue’s anger back. “Listen here to me, now, mister. Get back up on that path there or you’ll be in on a breach of the peace.”
“You and whose army?” sneered the youth.
Just as Minogue realized that he’d have to collar the youth, a Garda squad car braked noisily beside the crowd. Two Gardai ran over. Minogue showed them his card without taking his eyes from the youth.
“I was just advising this citizen here to hit the trail.”
The young man’s stare faltered, then turned to a look of disgust before he regained the footpath and walked through the crowd. Minogue watched him stop once, look back and spit purposefully into the gutter.
“Are you going to park it, or do you want to blow in the bag?” asked one Guard.
“Hold on there a minute,” the driver began.
“Park it or go off with these two lads now,” Hoey repeated. The driver sat in behind the wheel and did a creditable job of parking by the kerb. The younger Garda asked him for his licence and insurance. Minogue nodded his thanks and sat back in the car after Hoey.
“What about the buses?” said the woman with the poodle hair.
“I don’t know, missus,” said Minogue through the open window. “We could fit two of ye down as far as Dame Street or so. More than that we can’t do.”
The woman nudged her companion and they stepped down off the footpath. A third elderly woman scurried after them. The three climbed into the car and wrestled their shopping bags over their knees. One giggled.
“Are we right then, ladies?” asked Hoey.
“Go ahead, driver,” one tittered. “And don’t spare the horses.”
“Yous aren’t going to land us in the slammer, are yous?” one piped. All three burst into shrill laughter. Minogue assured them that they would not be chained in the dungeons of Dublin Castle.
“Are yous really pleecemen? Yous must be detectives on account of the gear yous are wearing.”
“I’m eighty-two last July,” said the one with the reedy voice, “and I’ve never been in a police car in me entire life. I can remember gunfights in the streets of Dublin with the Black and Tans.”
“That must have been terrible,” said Hoey.
“It certainly was. It was great,” she replied. “Everyone had guns in their pockets them days.”
Hoey glanced saucer-eyed to Minogue and then looked to heaven.
“I hope nobody I know sees me in the back of a squad car,” said the third. “They might think I was having some excitement.”
The trio cackled again. Minogue heard dentures clacking.
“It’s the bloody busmen you should be locking up, you know,” said the poodle hair-do. “I was always union meself, and me dear Larry-God be good to him-wouldn’t hear a word ag’in the union either. But this is different, isn’t it?”
A chorus of agreement from the back.
“And the pensions might be cut too. Prices going up every day, it’s a holy show. Not to speak of the hooligans that’d rob you in broad daylight. There’s no jobs.”
Minogue nodded in agreement.
“Ah Jesus, but we showed the Black and Tans, didn’t we? Didn’t we, do you hear me talking?” said the poodle-haired firebrand. “And we’ll show the Brits again if we have to, won’t we?” she added vehemently.
The three women launched into a rousing version of ‘We’re all off to Dublin in the green’. Minogue believed that they all very much enjoyed the last line of the chorus as they leaned into it with gusto. “… To the echo of the Thompson gun!”
They sang the last verse before leaving the car at the corner of George’s Street.
“Ah, come on now,” Hoey protested vainly. “We can’t sit here in the car singing.”
“One last verse!” cried one, breaking away from the chorus. “Then we’re off!”
“… To the echo of the Thompson gun!”
Hoey drove quickly away from the kerb. The three waved and laughed from the footpath while passers-by stopped to look at the police car.
Deputy Commissioner Tynan phoned while Minogue was speaking with Kathleen.
“I must go, Kathleen. There’s a big-shot on the other line. I want to hold on to my job for a little while yet.”
He watched as Eilis trie
d to look severe, what to him might look Jesuitical, and he frowned at her, but she did not stop. Kilmartin thought that Tynan was a bit stuck-up, ‘too smart for his boots by times, without the common touch’. Minogue liked Tynan for those same reasons. Several times during the afternoon he had remembered Tynan’s impassive gaze in the Commissioner’s office, a gaze that might have been a mute appeal to join in appreciating the humour of life.
“More important than your wife?”
“If you can pay my salary, I’ll keep on talking to you.”
“You knew she was going away for the weekend.”
“I did,” replied Minogue. “But she wanted me to, em,‘tell you about it’. I was the messenger to be shot, I think.”
“At least she was frank about it. About those others going as well.”
“I’m thinking we should leave Iesult to do her own bidding, Kathleen, and not have her feeling guilty or that she has to sneak away. Look, I’ll phone you if I’m going to be late.”
Tynan’s voice betrayed no signs of anything but officialdom.
“I have instigated the process. I was obliged to set up a small team here to work on the matter: a team of two, to be precise. Very discreet, and reporting only to me.”
“May I ask if there have been any inquiries or reports directed to this concern before?”
“Ask, by all means, do. There have not. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been mention of officers’ membership of such organizations before, merely to say that nothing has been made of the matter. As for accounting for firearms and ammunition, that’s a matter for A Branch, as you well know. I’m not high in the firmament there.”
Firmament, Minogue thought. Maybe Tynan’s humour was so dry that… A play on fundament? Tynan had trained for the priesthood as a young man, thirty-odd years ago. Policemen who did not like any mystery to surround their fellows in the job attributed what they saw as Tynan’s frostiness to both the training and the native constitution of a fish, a cold fish.
“I have to meet with the Deputy Comm from A Branch within the hour. I propose to run the check as part of a type of secret spot-check, or surprise accounting. This has been done before as an aid to ensuring that care and use of firearms by Garda officers does not become slipshod.”
“Great,” said Minogue, meaning it.
“I bask in your praise,” said Tynan. “There is another matter which you may be interested in, one which we haven’t had a chance to discuss so far. Jim Kilmartin mentioned to the Commissioner that he’d like to find an ex-Opus Dei member so that he and you might have an insider’s view of the organization. The Commissioner mentioned it to me in passing. You may or may not know that I was destined for the priesthood many years ago, and at one time I was involved with Opus Dei.”
“That’s interesting,” Minogue fibbed while buying time so another part of his brain might penetrate the fog: why had Tynan called, if this was thirty years ago?
“It’s not really,” said Tynan. “ Ipso facto, I mean. I was interested in the mention of Opus Dei-surprised, even. I expect you’ll find yourself in Bewley’s before the afternoon is out, will you?”
“I beg your pardon?” from a flustered Minogue. He glared back at Eilis’ amused scrutiny of his embarrassment and felt the prickly heat radiate up to his scalp. Let her think it’s hot flushes for all I care, his gargoyle hissed.
“I’ve seen you feasting yourself there before of an afternoon. I’ll be there in Westmoreland Street, the non-smo part. Will you make a point of being there yourself?”
“I’m not sure I follow the arrangement.”
“I can hole up in my office if you want, Minogue, and we can get bored out of our skulls wishing we were out of the bloody place in a restaurant where we would discuss the matter just as thoroughly. Let’s do it the easy way. I have some titbits about Opus Dei for you.”
Minogue was not pleased to be feeling slightly apprehensive as he walked to Bewley’s. He regarded it as a sanctuary, a place where even Kilmartin’s company might be tolerable for a short while because the coffee and the noise and the faces swamped any attempts at being official. Why had Tynan not taken him aside after the meeting with the Commissioner? He remembered the steady eyes, not unlike those of a fish should a fish ever have lazy eyelids.
Tynan was not a policeman’s policeman at all. He had done his time dutifully in uniform and had worked his way up the ranks steadily, taking his exams. His superiors couldn’t help but notice that where Tynan went, order followed, and that much of their own job was made easier by the work of this diligent officer. Tynan didn’t seem to mind that others took the credit for his efforts. He had managed to reform many bureaucratic areas in the Gardai. “A mind like a steel trap,” Kilmartin had said several times, usually over pints. Oddly, Tynan had managed not to antagonize rank and file Gardai. He was new to Garda B Branch, and lately Minogue had heard quiet compliments being passed about him. B Branch now seemed to be caught in the grip of some odd efficiency and this efficiency was very quickly noticed by ordinary Gardai because B Branch dealt with their bread and butter. As well as each Garda’s personal file, Tynan’s dominion included transfers and promotions, leave and gratuities, discipline and training. Tynan, a man to be suspicious of because he had turned away from the priesthood, was in danger of becoming popular. Gardai would never again accept the dictatorial regime which had only begun to ease up in the early ‘70s. An unhappy coincidence of history-the North boiling over, and the aftermath of a commission of inquiry which had been scathing about Garda administration-had brought Gardai more say in their working conditions.
Tynan’s reserve had become the springboard for ribald jokes to be pitched out in Garda company. Minogue had heard the jokes but didn’t much like them. Tynan had married later than most and his wife was supposed to be very glamorous. Minogue remembered her laughing a lot and smoking American cigarettes at the parties and functions which she attended with Tynan. He thought he had heard Tynan say something to her in Latin once, and recalled the dry expression on his face while she burst out laughing. Lovely teeth. Jokes about what spoiled priests could do in the line of sexual behaviour were probably signs of an acceptance, Minogue guessed. They had to make him their own because he wouldn’t do so himself…
He spotted Tynan immediately next to the door in the nonsmoking room. Tynan nodded faintly and returned to his newspaper. Minogue, deciding to forgo the bun, carried the coffee slowly and planted it on the marble table-top. Tynan folded the paper and watched as Minogue shoved a spoon and a half of brown sugar into the cup.
“Just the job for this time of the day,” said Tynan. Minogue saw that Tynan’s civvies were well cut: navy blue, but lightweight, and an ironed white shirt. The tweed tie was to let the discerning know that he wasn’t a puritan.
“Do you like it?” Tynan said and looked down at the suit.
“It’s all right,” Minogue replied boldly.
“Roberta told me to buy it. Rank has its responsibilities. The Emperor has to have his clothes.” There was no trace of humour on Tynan’s features.
“There’s an expression about that, I believe,” Minogue hammed slightly.
“‘To lead the people, you must turn your back on the people,’” said Tynan. “You don’t want your followers looking at a poorly tailored back, don’t you know. If the suit impresses them, they’ll be less likely to spoil the cut by sticking a knife between your shoulders.”
“I have but the two suits myself,” said Minogue. “One is for funerals and the other one is gone too tight for me…”
Tynan nodded as if commiserating.
“I prefer to be in the uniform all day. I even have pyjamas done to look like a uniform, I suppose you know that.”
Minogue spluttered coffee, still too hot for his greed. Tynan knew of some of the jokes about himself, then.
“I heard that, all right,” he said. “I think the blue sits well, though.”
Tynan looked off into the middle distance.
/> “It’s the cut,” he murmured. “That’s why you pay the price, so says Roberta. She’s always right in the sartorial line. Those Protestants know how to dress, I tell you.”
Tynan sipped from his cup.
Roberta, Minogue echoed within. At least ten years younger than Tynan, so full of life, and she laughing away. American cigarettes, poise. What had Tynan said to her to make her laugh so much that time? A would-be Jesuit marrying a laughing Protestant-no wonder Jimmy Kilmartin was wary.
“Are you a regular here?” Minogue asked.
“No more than yourself. I know that you favour the place an odd time. Even Jim Kilmartin gets dragged in here too. It’s not on your file or anything. Now, about Opus Dei,” Tynan said quietly. He leaned over the table. “I told you that I was closely associated with them a long while back. This Brian Kelly, the lad in the car, he was a member?”
“Yes he was; high up in it. He had been a Numerary, but the pair we talked to said he was ranked as an Associate when he died.”
“You know that’s lower on the totem.”
Minogue nodded.
“Well that doesn’t happen often. You’re in or you’re out of the organization, if you’ve attained that standing. It’s usually all or nothing. I’m surprised-unless it was a temporary thing, a punishment.”
“They told us that he was going through his period of re-evaluation, his life and aims. That everyone has these… spiritual milestones.”