“Look at that, would you,” Kilmartin hissed. “The busmen are going on strike. Isn’t that the last straw entirely?”
Minogue did not think so. He carried his large white coffee to a table near the window. Normally he would have tried to avoid this rather moribund branch of Bewley’s by loping on down to Westmoreland Street, another five minutes away. With Kilmartin in tow he had decided to cut his losses. Kilmartin sat down opposite. He could not stop shaking his head every few minutes when he returned to the subject of Marguerite Ryan. Minogue wondered if that was how erotic obsessions showed themselves.
“She’s actually getting away with murder. We did all the paperwork and sewed it up tight. The next thing you know is the Director of Public Prosecutions throws out the murder charge and… Maybe we ought to phone up and tell them she gave him one stab for every year of his mortal life.”
“Let the hair sit, Jimmy,” said Minogue acidly. “It’s not proof of premeditation. Stress can drive a body to episodic madness. That’s the be-all and end-all of it for me.”
Kilmartin was agog at Minogue’s dismissal.
“The urge might have been so strong that she couldn’t stop herself. Possessed,” Minogue added.
“The assessment says she’s the full shilling, Matt. There’s nothing about temporary insanity. Didn’t I read some rubbish in the papers about the WAMmers saying it has to do with a woman’s monthlies?”
The coffee had boosted Minogue into sarcasm.
“Anybody do a psychiatric assessment of Frances Xavier Ryan?”
Kilmartin made a face and sipped at his coffee.
“As for the premenstrual syndrome, I haven’t had it myself,” Minogue added. “I do be feeling sorry enough for myself when I have a little headache, even. Menstruation is no lark, I understand.”
Minogue enjoyed Kilmartin’s shock as he noted a face turning from the next table. Kilmartin bowed lower over the table and whispered like a schoolboy whose blasphemy might be overheard: “You mean to say that if your wife or mine gave either of us a clout one day and then said it wasn’t her fault on account of her you-know-what, that’d be fine and well by you?”
“It may be that I actually deserve a clout every now and then. It’s to your own head you should be looking, Jimmy.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Let me say this: Marguerite Ryan is no Tipperary Joan of Arc, but sooner or later she might have had to defend her life with that husband the way he was. Maybe she was the victim of a crime we paid no attention to.”
Minogue hid behind his coffee cup then. He expected Kilmartin to send a taunt his way about being bossed around by Kathleen and Iesult at home, now that Daithi was in the States. Kilmartin changed the subject instead.
“I say we sack the busmen and be done with it. People are fed up with them hooligans dictating to the public and causing hardship to everyone just because they want a few bob. They’re robbing us blind with the fares anyway.”
“ ‘ Sic transit… ’,” murmured Minogue.
“You’re telling me,” said Kilmartin quickly.
“Are you going to run for election on it?”
“Easy for you to laugh. I was half tempted several times to do something in politics: I couldn’t do much worse than the shaggers and shoneens we have now. Leadership is what we badly need if the country is to get going again,” declared the statesman Kilmartin.
Going where, Minogue wondered.
“Someone new, but someone who knows the ropes and won’t be tricked into siding with the old crowd. Someone with enough smarts not to be dragged into the pubs and the clubs and the old rigmarole. Are you with me?”
“I am indeed. Do you have anyone in mind?”
“There’s the fly in the ointment, Matt,” Kilmartin said earnestly. “I can’t see anyone on the scene right now. It breaks my heart to see the government gearing up for the Ard Fheis with the Chief and his cronies working up to an election after they’ve wasted some money on their constituencies. It’s a machine at work, not democracy, isn’t it?”
“You’re quite right.”
Kilmartin looked around the restaurant as though to glean more pleasant topics to raise with Minogue. Minogue’s thoughts drifted toward Paul Fine. Fine had been assigned to work on digging up dirt on these office- holders which even Kilmartin had consigned to the large domain of yobbos and chancers. It was an assignment which Paul Fine hadn’t been thrilled about. Was it because he was by birth estranged from the tribal in-fighting which Irishmen like Kilmartin revelled in?
“What about that Gorman, would he be to your liking?” Minogue asked Kilmartin.
“There’s an interesting one. Mind you he’s part and parcel of what has the country going to pot now. That’s not to say that he’s a completely lost cause, though. Maura at home was telling me the other day that Gorman is by no means a yes-man. He’s a good Minister, if you toe the line and keep up with him. It’s not an easy bed to lie in, being a Minister for Defence and you not being forty years of age, you know. But Gorman’s popular and he’s been to school, too. Still and all, if he’s anybody worth thinking about why is he with that crowd of hill-and-dale robbers that’re running the country into the ground right now?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be a voice in the wilderness,” said Minogue coyly.
“Could be. I don’t know if he has the belly in him for real leadership though. When it comes down to the wire he’ll be lining up at the trough with the rest of them-wait’ll you see. The Chief has his hatchet-men out all the time listening to see who might be getting too popular or who might be getting ideas of stepping out of line. They’d give Gorman the chop-very rapid like-if they found he was slipping the leash on the Chief.”
“For a man who doesn’t like the current government, you know a lot about them.”
“Ah go on, I don’t know more than the next man. You know yourself that the fella who’s belly-aching about this or that party is the fella who’ll vote for them come the election. ’Tis the bane of our existence here, voting for personalities…”
Minogue marvelled privately at what Kilmartin had just said. Even Jimmy Kilmartin, middle age on him like a volcanic crust, was displaying that enduring paradox of cynicism and hope, that cardinal Irishism that Minogue had learned late he could not escape himself: professing to be aloof while sitting on an overwhelming desire.
“Do you hear me at all?” Kilmartin was saying. “When we find out who was in the car in Bray, we won’t be sitting here running the world. We’ll be earning our pay these next few days, I can tell you.”
Hoey put Doyle on hold and walked over to Minogue’s desk.
“Doyle, sir. He nosed around with the computer thing in RTE. Something interesting, do you want to listen in?”
Minogue pressed the flashing yellow button while Hoey returned to his extension.
“Minogue here now. Shea Hoey says you are inside a computer or something.”
“I went to Fine’s office, that big room with all the desks, and I asked a man called Downey if Fine made much use of the computer for his work. Some people use the computer for word-processing and what they call internal mail. Downey says yep, that Fine used to use the computer. Journalists file stories on them. There’s a room with eight terminals in it for the staff to use them as they wish. Some bigwigs have terminals all to themselves. Anyway. Paul Fine has used the computer in the past, to type up reports. He had a user number and a password like the others. The idea is that you do your bit of whatever on the computer and then you save it. There’s a print room, too, and you can go and collect your stuff, depending on whether it’s your turn on it or whether the printers are taken up.”
“Did you get into the computer and look?”
“That’s what I was saying to Shea, sir. There were no items in Fine’s file on the computer. I got the manager of the Information Services to get the password and get in. Downey thought it was a bit odd that there was nothing because he was always slagging Fine about using the computer instead of his own brain. I was told they scrub the files every now and then but they give you lots of warning to save your files or to let them know they’re still active.”
“Is there any other way to check and see for stuff he may have had in his files there? Stuff he had a while
