'— Chestnut One to Control. In position and standing by. Over.'
'— Chestnut Two to Control. Waiting for the word, Control. Over.'
'It's half eleven and the bugger is still in the house. He could be burning the shagging negatives and photos for all we know,' Corrigan muttered.
Corrigan's car was parked outside the Golden Ball pub in Kilternan. Two Special Branch radio-cars were deployed on the Enniskerry Road, both equipped with Motorola radio trackers for the transmitter bug attached to the inside of the back bumper of Moore's hired Mini. Corrigan had tried to explain the tracking system to Minogue, but Minogue's morning mind could not get around the detail. Both radio-tracking cars had computer terminals, which were radio-plugged into the mainframe operating out of Harcourt Terrace in the City Centre. A very simple thing, Corrigan told a disbelieving Minogue, to have the computer do the triangulation from the signals the two pursuit cars were monitoring. Minogue had stopped Corrigan's offhand tutorial when he had made the mistake of asking how much the system cost.
'This is a bit dodgy, all the same,' Corrigan complained. 'I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't have gone to the top with it already and not to be playing games out here, trying to make the cat jump the way we want…'
Beginning to wonder, Minogue reflected. He had had enough of a job persuading Corrigan not to ring the bells yet but to wait on Moore. Minogue hoped that Corrigan swore more because he was nervous than because he was losing his belief in the scheme. Dunne excused himself to go to the toilet in the pub. Did anyone want more coffee?
'If you find any real coffee, by all means,' Minogue had said. 'No instant anything.'
There was promise of a sunny day yet. The smell of stale Guinness from the pub was not helping Minogue think any clearer.
'Are you listening to me, Matt? If this stuff is real at all, then Moore isn't worth playing. He's only a gofer, to clean up. He's solo, wait and you'll see.'
'He may be part of a criminal conspiracy, I'd say, Pat,' Minogue replied airily.
'All the more reason we shouldn't be keeping this to ourselves. If the embassy mob is mixed up in this, then I don't know what we'll do. The first thing we'll be asked is 'Why didn't you ujits inform the Commissioner and the Minister the minute you copped onto how big this was?''
'To which you'll say, or I'll say for you, 'Your Honour, it was our honest belief that only by watching Mr Moore could we establish the veracity of the allegations in this document,' ' Minogue said.
Corrigan shook his head.
'And me toasted on the stand if and when it comes up that I authorized a tracker on Moore's car without consulting a soul?'
'Initiative, Pat. What you're paid for. Would you have preferred to go begging for a warrant to toss his room in the hotel? As if he would keep the stuff there? We have to let him run with it.'
'I can tell you this,' Corrigan waved a finger in the air. 'The minute he strays near the outside range of the tracker, I'll see red. No messing then, boyo. I'll pull the plug.'
'What's the exact range of the thing?'
'It lists five kilometers. About three miles. Less in the city. What if he has a way of detecting it stuck to his car?'
Minogue shrugged.
'I still say it's a bit thin,' Corrigan said, stretching.
'Tell them I'm Rasputin. That's how I conned you into squandering manpower and gadgetry from the Special Branch. Patience, Pat. There's time enough to tell them. Costello was murdered. Combs was murdered. This is a murder investigation-'
'Get up the yard,' Corrigan broke in. 'Costello was bumped in the North so far as we're concerned. Even if he was abducted from here. Let the RUC worry about that. Not that they are, I can tell you.'
'Combs was murdered. Ball was murdered. Moore is nothing to us, as himself. He could just throw up his hands if we pounced now and say he hasn't a notion what's going on. It's what he does now that he has these photos. We don't need half the Gardai and the Branch to keep aft eye on him,' Minogue said.
'You don't think he'd just destroy the papers and be done with it?' Corrigan asked.
'No, I doubt it. He's in no danger. Even if he's a bit suspicious, he'll be keen to bring back the spoils to whoever sent him here. His bosses would want to see it.'
'Who gave you the idea of having the postman deliver this to Combs' house?'
'I got up early this morning and I decided to play this as if those papers were true. Once I had got that settled in me mind, it was easy enough to figure out some trick.'
'Trick, is it? It's not a game we're playing. Unless it's me in playing a game with my job. Or at least my credibility as a senior Garda officer,' said Corrigan.
'How true for you, now,' Minogue said in a conciliatory whisper.
'A bad choice of words.'
'Anyway. So you had Eilis phone your man and tell him there was stuff belonging to Combs coming in the post?'
'And to say that, sorry, we couldn't spare the manpower to go out and collect it for him. He fairly leaped at the chance to go out there on his own. That's a point in our favour.'
'And there's always my own set of prints,' Minogue reminded him. Corrigan yawned and took the photocopied pages from the seat.
'So this is what the poor divil was done in for,' Corrigan murmured.
'It's not just the business about Costello. That's bad enough. But there's everything to suggest that it was Ball who had Combs killed. On orders, maybe, from his own boss. There's no name on Ball's boss, so he might still be attached to the embassy. All it says here about him is that he is a little bourgeois who likes to dress natty.'
Corrigan squirmed in his seat before lapsing into silence. Minogue was as happy not to hear any more of Corrigan's doubts. If Combs was telling the truth, he didn't need Pat Corrigan to remind him that they had a bomb in their laps. Minogue had spent nearly forty minutes persuading Corrigan to have two Special Branch detectives land themselves in a ditch within sight of Combs' house, armed with telephoto lenses and a video camera. They had snapped Moore going into the house at a quarter to eleven, but he had been out of sight somewhere in the house ever since. The two Branch radio-cars had been waiting an hour and a half to take up pursuit of Moore's Mini.
'It'll take him time to read the stuff, Pat,' Minogue said, more in answer to his own interior conversation than to Corrigan. 'They're photos of handwritten notes, written under his real name, William Grimes, don't forget.'
Corrigan looked up from the prints, perplexed.
'He started out planning to get his own story out about what happened forty odd years ago?'
'At the beginning, yes. He probably put it as an ultimatum to Ball, but Ball suspected the worst. That he'd shop him for setting up Costello. And maybe even taking part in the killing.'
Dunne elbowed out the door of the pub. He had no coffees with him. He checked in with the photo- surveillance team. Moore was still in the house.
'Damn it to hell,' said Corrigan from under a contorted forehead. 'If this stuff is at all true, this Combs man should have had the hero treatment. The Russians were part of the bloody Allies, no matter what anyone says. Give the man a medal and a dinner at Buck Palace, thanks very much, that was great work you did for us, more champagne,' Corrigan argued. '*'
Minogue liked the indignant tone. He was pleased that Corrigan had been caught up in the drama, an advocate.
'There's the rub, Pat,' Minogue sighed. 'But later on you find poor Combs wondering if it was more than just the fact that he shared information with the Soviets.'
He searched through the prints and handed one to Corrigan.
'See there. There he is speculating that it was being gay did him in again as well. That they'd never trust him again because of it. Bitter. 'The sin of being a sodomite outweighed the virtue of saving what remains of civilization from people like Hilter.''
Corrigan looked up from the photo.
'Did you memorise that?' whispered Corrigan.
'No, it just stuck in me mind. There it is,' Minogue's finger found the line.
'God, but he was a bitter man to be talking like that.'
