Gallagher stayed in his chair and watched Hoey scrawling on the board.
“Now I might be able to plug into that,” said Gallagher, nodding toward the board. “Where’d you get those names?”
“An index of Paul Fine’s. We found it in his office.”
Minogue walked by Gallagher and out into the hallway. Kilmartin, there ahead of him, turned to Minogue.
“I phoned the lab for an up-date just now,” he grunted. “They’re ready to put it in writing that Fine was shot somewhere else than the beach. We’ve had men up and down the beach since the middle of the day.”
Minogue thought about the manpower which Kilmartin had suggested calling in. He’d need at least fifty men: Killiney Bay stretched miles down to Bray. The body probably hadn’t made it more than a couple of hundred feet offshore before the tide had drawn it in. Minogue didn’t want to think about Fine being shot aboard a boat and being dumped over. Fifty Gardai to do the hotels along the promenade in Bray, all the entrances to the beach… the railway stations for a sighting. Fine hadn’t owned a car. Go on the radio news tonight, at least. Wait until tomorrow for the telly, get a good clear recent snap for the papers too. Door to door? There couldn’t be more than a handful of older houses directly adjacent to the beach, houses built before the State decided that the foreshore was State land. In every place along the beach that Minogue could think of you’d have to be right down on the sand to see anything happening at the water’s edge. And who’d be down on the beach at night, anyway? Curriers with cans of lager and joints and their doxies for a wear. Model citizens: the least likely to step forward.
“I think we’d better set about it, all right,” Minogue concluded.
Kilmartin could call in detectives from the Central Detective Unit in Harcourt Street as well as other crime ordinary detectives from District Detective Units around the country.
“Let’s start by posting a car at every and any car entrance to the beach. Stop anyone going down to the beach and ask if they were around on Sunday or Sunday night. I’m sure there are regulars who drag the dog out and what-have-you every day there. Then to the beach accesses for pedestrians only. As for ourselves here, we should look at possibles from Fine’s card index for one thing.”
“Be more than fifty, Matt. Tell me a hundred.”
“Can we do it?”
“According to the phone call I got this afternoon from You-know-who, we’d better,” Kilmartin replied sardonically.
“I see. Let’s put men to yacht clubs and boat clubs, then, and boaters out of any harbours south from Sandymount,” said Minogue. “All the way to Bray. Anything stolen in the line of boats, people seen tampering with boats, boats going out after dark. Railway stations on the suburban system, in case he got on or got off on the south side. Leave a photo at every ticket office, for starters.”
Minogue heard his assumptions creak insistently as he widened the net which he knew was in untried waters. Who was to say that Fine hadn’t been shot anywhere in Dublin and then left on the beach or in the water after dark? So far they hadn’t met anyone who could tell them where Paul Fine might have been on Sunday after he’d left his flat. Minogue mentally underlined Mary McCutcheon’s name again.
He walked out into the yard and took in some of Dublin’s stale air. Kilmartin sauntered out after him.
“I called God Almighty and I got the Assistant Comm instead,” Kilmartin muttered. “Are you ready for thirty men tonight? Give them your mind after we set them up at a meeting tonight and then we’re off and running already.”
Minogue wanted to be away from Kilmartin, away from this swell of impossibility rising toward him. Fine’s friends-someone-must have been with him some time over the weekend. Kilmartin flicked his cigarette away and spat expertly.
“I don’t see myself as the one to bang the drum for this crowd tonight, then,” murmured Minogue. “Will you give them the run-down and I’ll sort out individual assignments with Shea Hoey?”
“Fair enough,” said Kilmartin brightly, chastening the surprised Minogue. “Do you have an idea where you’ll want to start?”
“Six men to go over cassettes and videos we found in the flat. I’ll earmark another six experienced interviewers for whoever Gallagher thinks is worthwhile off Fine’s index. Those are my main ones for now anyway… I don’t know if the Branch will insist on using their men for any suspects they pull out of their own files.”
Kilmartin nodded, looked to the sky and yawned long. Minogue thought he heard Kilmartin’s dentures click when they dislodged during the yawn. Age, he reflected dully.
“Here’s something I was thinking about just now,” said Minogue. “Do you think that whoever shot him knew that the bullets would go clean through?”
Kilmartin didn’t look away from the skyline.
“You’re the crafty boyo, aren’t you now? I know what you’re getting at.”
Minogue felt guilty stepping into the pub with Kilmartin. It was ten to eleven.
“That’s what I worked all these years to set up, Matt. Don’t be looking like a whipped pup. Hoey probably knows the ropes better than I do now, and Keating is no slouch either. Murtagh just looks stupid; he’s actually a sly bollocks with plenty of brains, just a bit lazy. Don’t be worrying about no skipper at the helm. No one is indispensable, they say.”
Kilmartin knew the barmen in Nolan’s. Minogue declined whiskey, settling for a pint of stout instead. Kilmartin had a Powers whiskey and a bottle of stout.
“Here’s to retirement. The golden years and all that,” Kilmartin toasted ambiguously. The stout was too heavy and too chilled for long gulps. “Let’s not be fretting about international gangsters. We’ll come up with some Provisionals link yet, wait’ll you see.”
Minogue thought about the work which was afoot already tonight. Gallagher had settled on the names of eleven students which he believed might help. One of the detectives had asked if they should Section 30 any students. Reluctantly, Minogue had assented, and told the detectives to throw the Offences Against the State Act at people on the list if they dragged their heels.
“I’m not happy sending them out to interview those students with nothing under their belts to poke at them with, no way to see if they’re being entirely truthful,” said Minogue reflectively.
“No other way around it, Matt,” Kilmartin countered decisively.
Was this what rank did, Minogue ruminated. Another pint of stout was slapped on the counter in front of him.
“Ah, Jimmy, I can’t.”
“You can’t leave it behind you, that’s a fact.”
He watched Kilmartin scoop the change from the fait accompli off the counter.
“Lookit, wait and see what turns up on these tapes. Maybe Fine had a diary on him and it was lost. Stolen? Maybe they took it, whoever did him in, don’t you see. No sign of a wallet or anything, am I right? So he may have had vital things on him when he was killed.”
Kilmartin was right to keep doors open, Minogue reflected. For himself, he needed a night’s sleep, to be away from this.
Minogue re-read the letter, posted nine days ago somewhere in New York City. At least the boy wasn’t writing from the bridal suite of some dive in Las Vegas. Kathleen buttered more bread. It was half-past seven. Minogue had managed to steal into bed without disturbing anyone last night. He awoke to the alarm, lying in the same place as he had when he first stretched out in the bed. He felt dull, bunched.
“Cathy with a C. I don’t know. I can’t tell from this letter, I’m hardly an expert,” Minogue tried.
“Your own son, mister. Don’t you see what he’s getting at?”
“I don’t, I suppose.”
“He’s interested in her, that’s what. To my way of thinking he’s not telling us the half of it. ‘Irish’, he says. As if that’s supposed to impress.”
Minogue believed that Kathleen was more nervous than angry.
“Everybody’s Irish over there, I suppose, if they want to be. You see he’s after meeting her family and everything,” she added.
Minogue folded the letter and placed it under his saucer. Hopefully the saucer might devour it.
“He’s testing us out. A fella can be very nervous when he meets a nice girl,” said Minogue. Listening to himself he heard the stupidity of the remark.
