'lost interest' or fell into any other nineteenth-century category which described people who were cracked, were often found work. One of these legion of disaffected public servants was well known to Minogue. He routinely saw the former Higher Executive Officer in the Revenue Commissioners-now a messenger-happily shouting his way around the streets, barking mad and refusing to take the pills which were supposed to render him subdued like other mortals.
Eilis was also a relative of Kilmartin's wife, Maura, but that alone was not enough for her to be taken on in so demanding a job as the police, not to speak of the Technical Bureau. A reluctant Kilmartin persuaded Eilis to take an intelligence and aptitude test, just as the Americans did, in the hopes of thereby demonstrating to his wife that he had tried his best to find something for Eilis but that, alas, she 'couldn't function.'
Eilis, who knew nothing of the shapes and questions which made up such tests, scored one hundred and seventy-four on an IQ test. She demonstrated a frightening ability in her deductive faculties, excellent creative thinking and indicated that she would have made a formidable jurist. Eilis now occupied a desk next to Kilmartin's office, chain-smoking and keeping track of anything that walked, crawled, ran or was telecommunicated to the section. Minogue had read in her the abandon of one who had found the world to be mildly entertaining. This was an attitude which others construed as arrogance and contrariness, never stopping themselves to recognize a tragic sense because they could not know such things and be themselves again.
'I think that means,' she paused to inhale more smoke, 'that they're tricksters of some sort, I suppose. Do you follow?'
'I expect you're right. Have you the number of the station handy?'
Eilis drawled out the telephone number.
'Safe home, your honour,' she added in Irish. He detected no humour.
Murray was groomed like a mannequin, right down to the cuff-links. Few things about a man's clothes show up the parvenu as easily as cuff-links, Kenyon believed.
'One Colombian coffee-nothing less, mind you,' Murray said to the waiter. 'And yourself, James?'
'Tea will do.'
'You'll have read the Combs' material, James?' Murray began.
'Yes, I did.'
'We can readily agree then, I'm sure, that we both know the background here. Even the ancient history,' Murray said.
'Have you read up the material lately?' Kenyon asked.
'Really, James. You know quite well I did. But I sense that your evaluation may be different.'
'There's the matter of his murder,' Kenyon continued. 'He was found Sunday evening, it seems.'
'The police don't have a suspect, that I know.'
'Who would want to kill Combs?'
Murray adjusted his shoulders inside his jacket.
'The Foreign Office would like to know, too. Even if Combs was small change. Very minor capacity. We'll find out from the police soon enough, I'm sure.'
Kenyon made a conscious effort to keep the irritation out of his voice. Was it already time to tell Murray that he had not asked for a meeting to be showered with gratuitous non sequiturs? The waiter's return gave Kenyon time to figure out a new approach.
'Tell me, Alistair,' Kenyon began, 'what did you make of Combs' grumblings when he first started sending material over?'
Murray smiled wanly as he stirred his coffee.
'Oh those, yes. Well, that was over two years ago, of course. Combs obviously didn't like to be asked to live there, that was pretty clear, um?'
Kenyon nodded as he doctored his own tea.
'You see, our Second Secretary in the Dublin embassy at the time… well, he wasn't as experienced as we would have liked for this kind of work. All in all, a bit of a damp squib.'
'You mean that Combs' threats were not taken seriously?'
Murray arched his eyebrows as he drew the cup down from his lips again.
'They were hardly threats, for heaven's sake. He grumbled about being there. I've been there on a few wet winter days myself and to be candid, I'd be grumbling, too. Dull enough work, too, I imagine.'
'The embassy memo says the police suspect robbery.'
'Um,' Murray nodded and affected a consideration of Kenyon's interruption.
'What we had there with Mr Combs, James, what we had… we had an old man who was hitting the bottle rather hard for a long number of years. Prone to grudges, willful misinterpretations. Quite paranoid, too.
Now match that with the Second Sec we had there at the time, his local link-a chappie fresh out of Oxbridge, who probably spent his weekends reading spy books…'
Murray's faint smile trailed off into a look of indulgent regret. Kenyon said nothing. He waited for Murray to replace the dangling cup on its saucer. Murray's gaze swept over the view of the Serpentine before returning to Kenyon.
'What you get are melodramatic memos on the wire. Combs tried to put the wind up the boy and succeeded. Well, we didn't play Combs' game, as you can see from your hours in the Registry yesterday.'
Kenyon did not return Murray's sardonic glance.
'We placed a new Second Sec there. He's one of our best, James. One of our best.'
'Who was handling Combs, the new Sec?'
'Ball. Mervyn Ball. Fine fella, Mervyn. Soon put Combs to rights. Got him motivated, feeling positive.'
Kenyon recalled dating the memos that had mentioned Combs' ramblings in those meetings which Combs had had with his novice handler from the embassy. Murray might well be right on that, he had to concede. There hadn't been a peep since Ball had taken up the station. But did that mean that Combs had simply swallowed his bitterness for two years? Had it really been just drunken complaining before?
'Was it your impression that Combs didn't mind the place so much after he had been there for a while?' Kenyon tried.
'Ireland? Well, now that you mention it, I had thought that he was a little more tolerant of the place, yes,' Murray allowed.
Kenyon suppressed his rising anger. He remembered the feeling he had when he had read the place names, the mention of redundant information in
Combs' later reports. There was a quality of a surreptitious sneer about them.
'It strikes me that Combs may not have been the old fool you're implying. Much less the drunken old fool,' said Kenyon in a restrained tone.
'Really, James?' said Murray, blinking with a new interest.
'You know his background. He was badly treated. He toughed it out during the war in very tight situations. More to the point, he was not a man to bluff. Judging by his record, I mean,' Kenyon said slowly.
'Really, James? That's forty years ago. Personalities deteriorate. That's human nature. Aren't we talking about an old pouf-dah who had taken to the bottle? I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but we have the living to contend with,' Murray said, out in the open now.
'Look,' he continued, 'we kept tabs on him since he landed in Ireland. We think we know him rather well.'
The barb registered with Kenyon, but he was grimly pleased to see Murray throw off the first of his gloves and turn to his prejudices.
'There's one flaw in what you're saying,' Kenyon said coldly. 'If he really was such an unreliable man, why did your office take him on in the first place?'
Murray blinked once.
'James, James. You know as well as I do that we inherited him. We looked around at what we had for assets in Ireland. It was a particularly bad time. We thought we could use Combs. Believe me, we wouldn't have chosen him if he weren't on the books. He was a relic.'
'He was placed in Ireland on the condition that he live near Dublin?'
'Yes. He has been at us for years to be allowed back into Britain. It was decided that he'd be less of a risk if he were at arm's length. You know who he worked with during the war, I take it?' said Murray with a challenging
