“Paul Fine used the mainframe computer in RTE for typing and storing some of his work. I met two people who confirmed that; they personally saw him typing away on a terminal. I had them look into his files under his name and there was nothing. Not a sausage. I asked them where it was all gone and they didn’t know. Maybe he’d cleared off his stuff a few days ago. Then I found out they have a back-up memory for the stuff they hold on the computer. It’s in case the computer takes a fit or runs amok on account of a power shortage. I asked them to look at this tape back-up and see if there was something of Fine’s on it. It took them a while and a good bit of grumbling because they had to free up the computer so as they could run the tape back to it.”
“Wait for it,” said Kilmartin. Minogue recognized that quickening in Kilmartin, the darting eyes. A happier man, now, in his bloodhound incarnation.
“Your man didn’t understand it at first. The tapes, I mean. They’re all buggered up,” said Doyle. “Gobbledegook.”
“You mean erased when they shouldn’t have been?”
“He thinks that someone must have run a bulk eraser over the week’s tapes and that’s what turned them into mush. They started straightaway to make a new back-up. I was a hero for finding out their back-up was rubbish.”
“Could it have been accidental?” asked Hoey.
“It has happened before, he told me. But it’s unlikely that it was accidental. The staff who are in that area are wised up to the computer now.”
“Would it require some kind of expertise to wipe the things like that?” Minogue asked.
“No,” said Doyle reluctantly. “A bulk eraser is just a little thing that you wave over the tapes to remove the data. It’s very quick. And there were plenty of opportunities for a lot of people. It would only take a few seconds.”
“Do you mean that we can’t get a reliable access list for this facility from them, one we could start with and work up some suspects?” Hoey asked.
Doyle shook his head.
Kilmartin cleared his throat. “So much for that enterprising work. Yours truly here,” he nodded toward Keating still hanging out of the doorway, “he finally got a list of things that Fine wanted dug up by their library.”
“ ‘Information systems’, if you don’t mind,” said Keating in a tony South Dublin accent. “He asked for searches of British and Irish newspapers over the past five years. For mention of Ireland in speeches by Arab heads of state. Interception of IRA arms from places other than the US. Coverage of conferences concerning Arabs and Palestinians in Britain and Ireland; publications arising from those conferences…” Keating turned a page and scanned the topics. “Last of all, last Friday afternoon, he put in a request for newspaper, radio and television articles on one Fintan Gorman. Going back for five years.”
“The Minister for Defence?” asked Hoey.
“The very man. Fabulous Fintan Gorman,” echoed Kilmartin.
“Well. It looks like we had all of those interests already itemized, or we were aware that he was working on them. Did he decide on Gorman because of the work Fitzgerald gave him, the scandal beat?”
“I don’t know,” Keating replied. “I’m still trying to get in touch with Fitzgerald to see if he knew that Fine wanted to do a piece on Fabulous Fintan. He’s left RTE and he’s not at home.”
“Where did he get the name of Fabulous Fintan, anyway?” Hoey asked.
“This is the man who knows how to solve all our ills,” Minogue replied. “The name came from some row in the Dail when the Opposition called something he was talking about a fable.”
“I can see Fitz telling Fine to pick on Gorman because he’s a bit too clean-looking and deserves a good vetting,” Hoey murmured.
“To be sure,” Kilmartin snorted, “that’s your media mob for you. They go for the dirt and they aim for the biggest scandal they can find. Amn’t I right? ‘Go for the most upright-looking politician and drag him down into the muck,’ is the order of the day there, I’m telling you.”
“Not that yours is a partisan view or anything like that,” Minogue couldn’t resist saying.
“Absolutely not,” Kilmartin replied hastily. “I don’t mind what party the man belongs to. I just think that he should get a fair crack of the whip and not have them hyenas snapping at his heels. I ask you! Looking to see if he ever had a drink or had his maulers on the wrong diddies once in his life. I mean to say, we’re all human. That pack of shites out in RTE-over-educated malcontents. They love to show the shots of a Garda defending himself at a demonstration but they never show the gurriers in the crowd provoking us. Lefties. Wife-swapping and cavorting about. As if they didn’t do it themselves. Anyway, let’s not get bogged down at this point.”
“Right,” said Hoey. “A bit better news may be just around the corner for us. After the new appeal this evening a fella phoned us-not twenty minutes ago-to say that he saw Paul Fine on Saturday. He remembers Fine’s name only. Guess where he works?”
“Radio Telifis Eireann,” Minogue tried.
“Good try but no. The National Library above in Kildare Street.”
“Paul Fine was in the National Library some time on Saturday.” Minogue declared the question.
“Yep. We should be able to place him for a good part of the Saturday, during the day anyway. Things are coming together a bit better now, hah?” said Kilmartin as he sat back in his chair.
Minogue did not want to be uncharitable but the gargoyle within was off the leash already. Jimmy Kilmartin had come from a meeting with the Commissioner anxious for any apparent loosening in the investigation. He would read much into the National Library business.
“There’s two lads gone out to this man’s house and we’ll have a statement out of him before the evening is out. Then there are the slips which Fine filled in to get books in the Library,” Kilmartin pointed out contentedly.
“So Paul Fine worked on Saturdays too,” Minogue speculated aloud. “They mustn’t have had what he wanted in RTE, so he went to the National Library instead?”
“That looks like it so far,” replied Kilmartin.
Was this why Kilmartin and the others were keen at this hour of the day, the gargoyle asked Minogue.
“Now here’s the most interesting thing entirely, the one we’ve been holding back,” said Kilmartin cagily. “We have a match based on the dental work for that poor divil out in Bray. It was Kelly in the car all right, but the Pathologist’s report will be saying that Kelly may have been walloped in the head before the fire. There are signs of a very small hairline fracture, but he’s not sure about it. It may have been the heat of the fire and his head boiling- but the bone around it is not pressed out enough, he thinks. Kelly could have been knocked out, maybe even badly injured, and shoved into the back of the car. The car was set alight and Bob’s your uncle, it was a ball of fire inside of a minute.”
Minogue decided that it was indeed time to sit down.
“Meanwhile, back at the ranch,” Kilmartin continued. “Kelly’s brother is a priest. We got him to go into Kelly’s house with us, up in Leopardstown. Naturally the brother is very upset. Kelly was a very good-living man, he says. And sure enough, there’s some class of a chapel in the house. One of the bedrooms is like a monk’s cell, I’m telling you. ‘For prayer and contemplation,’ the brother says.”
“There are odd people in Leopardstown, I always knew that,” Minogue murmured. He was thinking of Kelly’s body being consumed in the inferno, the head expl-Ughhh. Christ.
“Odd isn’t the half of it. Our help-line number from the radio and telly appeals was on a scrap of paper by the phone.” Kilmartin leaned forward over his desk, his eyes hooded, and delivered the surprise. Minogue suddenly realized that Kilmartin had probably done this performance for the policemen already. They were all looking at Minogue now.
“Do you know whose name was also on this scrap of paper, but misspelled?”
“Go on,” said Minogue, prickly alert now. “Make my day.”
“M-I-N-O-G-H. That’s how he spelled it. Definitely out of touch with surnames from the County of Clare, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”
CHAPTER NINE
