ago?”
“I asked him that. There is. They do tape back-ups every day in case there’s a power loss. The computer does the taping automatically every evening. Some of the stuff they keep, like payroll, in case they find there was a mistake later on. They always keep a week’s worth of everything on the computer but only selected stuff stays on tape for longer than that. He’s gone to find the tapes for me now.”
“To all intents and purposes a person working under his own password would not have people looking over his shoulder, would he?” Hoey asked.
“God, yous’re very devious. Matter of fact I asked him that: who would know other people’s passwords, like,” Doyle replied. “He told me that it was no big secret with passwords at all. He keeps the passwords in his files but it’s not a question of anybody knowing another person’s password after snooping around for it in his filing cabinet. It’s that the passwords are quite easy to figure out. Often it’s a bit of someone’s name. He knows that some users even loan out their passwords to others so they can work on the same material.”
“Are there other ways to eavesdrop, so to speak?” Minogue broke in.
“There are, apparently,” said Doyle. “If you know another person’s password there’s a way to look at what he’s doing if he’s working on the computer at the time.”
“Phone us when you get through that tape thing, so,” said Minogue. “And dazzle us with more of that verve and acuity.”
Eilis turned from emptying her second ashtray of the day. She looked from the becalmed Hoey still cradling the phone idly to the semi-reclining Minogue who was also mulling over Doyle’s discoveries.
“Verve and acuity,” she said as she lit up a Gitane. “There’s no knowing what a person will hear from parties working around here. It’d make a girl think twice.”
Kilmartin emerged from his office, scratching his ear and looking for Minogue.
“Time for evening prayer,” Kilmartin said with a leaden irony.
Minogue flipped a folder on his desk and uncovered his summary for Kilmartin to feed the Commissioner with.
“There’s a little something to add to this and bring it up to the minute,” Minogue murmured. “Doyle went out to RTE and chased up something on the computer there. Paul Fine used the computer but there’s nothing in his file. Doyle’s working up a copy of what might have been on the computer in Fine’s name a while ago.”
“Fair enough,” said Kilmartin vacantly as he read down the page. “That’s all from the Gardai on the beaches today?” he asked, looking down to Minogue.
“The best we have is from callers-in, I’m afraid. That woman who put us on to the site. The lad with his girlfriend in the carpark late Sunday night, we’re stuck with him… he still can’t put a make on the cars he saw.”
Kilmartin couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Jases, that’s not much. With seventy-odd men?”
Minogue shrugged. “Don’t forget the better parts. There’s the ticket man who can tentatively place Paul Fine in Dalkey Station around one o’clock. He might have gotten out of a train with time to spare and walked up over Dalkey Hill to Killiney Hill Park. It’s a nice little jaunt.”
Minogue watched Kilmartin’s head wave slightly from side to side as he went down the page again. “And remember the appeal tonight will be on Killiney Hill, not the beach. I put Gallagher’s plans in point form because I don’t know any more than what you see. Thirty-eight names, he told me. It’ll take time. Not something we can rush him with,” Minogue added.
Kilmartin nodded distractedly and yawned. He slapped the file folder against his thigh.
“I didn’t even want to be thinking about this fella who was toasted out beyond in Bray. The remains are in poor shape but we have an engine block number. A Volkswagen. I was to get a phone call a half an hour ago.”
Kilmartin had been gone ten minutes when Eilis directed a call to Minogue. The car in Bray had belonged to one Brian Kelly, thirty four, of Leopardstown Gardens, civil servant. Mr. Kelly was a Principal Officer in the Department of Finance. He was unmarried. He was not answering his phone. Gardai from Cabinteely were at the house. Mr. Kelly had a brother a priest in Finglas. His parents lived in County Carlow. Had any effects been left intact for identification after the fire? A watch with an expanding strap was partially intact. Clothing had been burned off completely. Remains of a leather wallet, melted plastic (probably bank cards), some change on the floor of the car.
Minogue asked for the details again. This time he wrote them down. It was a matter of ferreting out his dentist’s name to light on an X-ray identification. Minogue saw five o’clock looking back down off the wall at him. He watched Keating about to begin typing from his notebook.
“How would you like to be Jimmy Kilmartin for a while?” he asked Keating.
“I wouldn’t mind the pay and the perks,” Keating answered cautiously. “I was just about to type up me summary of Fine’s office stuff.”
Minogue headed Keating off at the pass. “Is there anything that’d change what we’re at now? Diaries or notebooks?”
“No,” said Keating as he flicked his notebook shut.
“We will most likely have to set up a team for another case, that’s what I’m getting at.”
“The man out in Bray?”
“Yes. It may well be this man here,” Minogue replied, handing Keating the sheet.
“You’ll have to pick up an X-ray from the Pathologist’s. They did ‘em this afternoon. There’s a fella looking through Kelly’s house for receipts. Now phone here the minute you get a match off the dentist’s charts.”
As Keating was leaving, Eilis was moving from desk to desk with small bundles of photocopies. She tendered Minogue’s share into his hand. They were copies of statements from members of the public who had telephoned the help-line in answer to last night’s media appeals. Hoey, his copies in his hand at the blackboards, wrote in the sighting at Dalkey train station on Sunday. So the ticket man was sticking by it now, enough to sign a statement on it, Minogue thought. Paul Fine’s last Sunday now had two placings before the asterisk and the question mark next to it. There was still no writing under the Saturday.
Kathleen said that she had heard the appeal on the half-five radio news.
“Killiney Hill Park,” she said. “That’s creepy, I’m telling you. I always liked going for a stroll there. It’ll be a while before I’ll be wanting to walk around that spot again.”
Minogue told her that he didn’t know what time he’d be home tonight. There could be another investigation being launched. It was up to Kilmartin to put a team together for that but he might be foraging for experienced detectives who were working with Minogue at the moment. That could mean that her husband might be taking over the Fine case directly, without Shea Hoey there to direct traffic for him.
“You are coming home some time tonight, I take it?” said Kathleen. “At least you’re not relying on the buses. There are some walkouts already. Aren’t they divils entirely?”
“It may be late enough, but I’ll be home all right,” replied Minogue. He did not sound as decisive as he had wanted to.
Claustrophobia seized him as he looked around the squad-room. His thoughts ran to the Fines: what would they be doing now, a day and a half after their son had drifted in off the sea? Gone. Murdered. Never to see again. Can’t shake his hand, can’t look at him across the table and share a joke. He should at least phone Justice Fine and tell him how the investigation was going. Sooner or later he’d have to interview the Fines again, this time to get in touch with another son, a son with whom a father and mother had had differences. The stuff of family life: arguments, bickering, friction. The Paul Fine who was hidden under the biography Minogue had built so far.
Loss swooped low, a vulture, in Minogue’s chest. It never got easier; it seemed at times like this that it only got harder. What could parents know of their adult children? Were someone to ask Minogue for a description of Daithi Minogue, how much would he forget to say, how would he choose the blocks to build the picture?
Seven o’clock. Minogue had been caught in the rain on his way back from his tea in George’s Street. The taste of rashers and eggs was thick on his tongue after he had run the last hundred yards.
Kilmartin was holding court in his office. Hoey was back, shaved, and Keating was leaning in Kilmartin’s doorway. Doyle had returned from RTE. He sat opposite Kilmartin, with a cohort, a prematurely bald detective whom Minogue recognized as one seconded from the Central Detective Unit for the Fine murder.
“Just the man we want,” said Kilmartin. “Listen to these lads here.”
Minogue collected two yellow phone messages from his desk as he passed. One was from Gallagher, the other from his daughter Iesult. Prompted by Kilmartin, Doyle began.
