“Ah,” said Fine as if concluding a line of thinking. “So you’re working away on it. Good. To judge by your Commissioner’s reaction to the mention of your name, you have left your mark. Naturally he’d tell me you were the real shemozzle after I made it plain I’d like you to be doing the work,” Fine continued.
“Seeing as he expected me to be on the warpath on account of who I am on the totem pole in the judiciary.”
“Are you on a warpath?” Minogue risked.
“How could I be? If you’ve ever had any calamity like this happen to you, you’d know that the only anger you can feel for a long time is the anger you feel against yourself and life in general for picking you out to land a tragedy on. You think you could have done better, prevented it. Made your feelings known better, told someone plainly what you thought. Do you know what I’m getting at?”
Minogue said that he did.
“What might begin to annoy me tomorrow, especially if I can’t get to sleep again, is the fact that we can’t go ahead with the funeral. You may not be familiar with our duty to inter the deceased as soon as possible. There was a time when we insisted that a Rabbi, or a relative at least, be with the deceased at all times up until the burial, you know. That used to cause no end of trouble. Johnny Cohen is more upset than I am, actually, but the State has to have its way. Three days, they say, and they’ll release Paul to us. It’s difficult explaining it to Rosalie without giving her the willies about what goes on in a post-mortem.”
The resignation was plain in Fine’s voice now.
“I may be able to do something,” said Minogue.
“I doubt you can, at all.”
“Can I come out to your house tomorrow, then? Would you mind me coming out?”
“Come out in the morning if you can. Half-nine would suit,” said Fine. “And just knock. We won’t be going anywhere.”
Hoey looked across to Minogue. Minogue rested his hand on the cradled receiver.
“Rough. That’s the stuff I can’t bear to do.”
“Rough isn’t in it,” Minogue murmured. “A terrible thing; the same the whole world over.”
For some reason Minogue had images of starving children with swollen bellies before him. Glazed, sickly eyes already hooded and marked with the inevitability of death; black children in their parents’ arms, themselves impossibly thin, looking fearfully into the television camera. That was death too, his gargoyle said.
“Never having things explained as to why it should be them.” Minogue murmured. Meaning, everything has to mean something eventually.
Hoey nodded slowly and dropped his gaze to the reports on his desk. He recovered a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. An image of Daithi came to Minogue then, the boy’s face a mask of puzzlement and resentment; Daithi wanting to ask him a question, to be answered, but no words coming from him. How was it that Minogue’s recollection of snapshots of a young Daithi was that of a boy’s face always frowning into the camera? Minogue sighed and tried to busy himself so that he might not feel this dead weight so keenly.
“Anything off the phones, Shea?”
“Four possible sightings in the Park on Sunday afternoon. They’re very iffy. The fella from the National Library is our most promising so far, I think. Did you get through yesterday’s, the ones from the beach?”
“I did indeed. Not hot at all,” said Minogue, sliding further into the trough.
“I was half-ways thinking of putting that car business under the scope again. The fella who was necking with his moth in the car-park late Sunday night, do you know who I’m talking about?”
Minogue nodded.
“Where there was a car parked there when he arrived and still there when he left. It’s a bugger entirely because we can’t get him to put a make on the car. I could nearly crucify him for being half-gargled and not noting details, but sure what can you do? At least he phoned us. I’d like to put out an appeal specific to the car-park though. Anyone who used it at all over the weekend…”
“Go ahead,” said Minogue. “Add it to tomorrow evening’s.”
Minogue unearthed his copy of the report on the tides for Sunday night. Hoey shook his head when he saw Minogue reading it.
“They covered themselves for anything there, didn’t they? ‘If the body was released an insufficient distance from shore between the hours of…’ What was it?”
“Eleven at night to three in the morning,” replied Minogue.
“I forget the exact terminology…”
“ ‘… a strong probability of it being washed up south-southwest of the point of release.’ They discount the boat thing, that’s something. If the body was dumped overboard, I mean.”
“But they can’t say where the body would have been put into the water. It could have been Coliemore Harbour or even the Forty Foot bathing spot. Even off Killiney Beach itself.”
“ ‘Not a steady speed in the nearer offshore currents, speed of drift inshore is indeterminate except for a probable rate of between one and five knots depending on the coastline,’ ” Minogue quoted.
“Sooner or later we should set up a dummy and try to match the conditions,” said Hoey.
Minogue made no reply. He was thinking of Paul Fine’s body adrift, the brine dissipating the blood and rinsing the wounds. Water closing over the head, the body sometimes underwater completely. Had someone gazing out on the water early on Monday not seen the gently bobbing body; had they not wondered?
“I must say,” Minogue whispered. “I’m damned if I can understand why someone needed to put the body into the sea.”
He held his hands up before rubbing his eyes.
“I know, I know. We talked about it. And then we talked about it some more.”
Minogue paused and massaged his eyes with his knuckles.
“You and me and Jimmy and the scenes-of-the-crime lads,” he said. “The idea of getting rid of the body to buy time-dirtying the motive, dirtying the trail. And the fact that the murder site can’t have been so well planned in advance. I know. But still…”
“What?” from a distracted Hoey.
Minogue took away his hands, blinked and shook his head.
“Why was he in the sea? If it’s a professional killer, this doesn’t fit with carrying a body anywhere. No way in the wide world. Pat Gallagher knows that too, I’ll bet. If we’re chasing an imported experienced killer, we have the situation of a killer not familiar with the terrain here, who kills his victim and moves off, rapid like. No messing about. It’s a lot of trouble to come back after dark, if that’s what we’re assuming, and carry a grown man to the shore.”
“Angle for it being more than the one man,” Hoey began. “In the disposal of the body, anyway. Say the killer is a pro. He does his job and confirms it by phone. The person he phones has a fit; says the body has to be moved, hidden.”
“Panic, you mean? But we keep on running up against that, Shea: why try to conceal the body when the call to the damn newspaper is a run at some kind of publicity. Can’t deny that.”
“Right. OK. The shooting itself might have been carried out coolly enough. But even the killer’d have the jitters, training or no training.”
“Training, you say,” Minogue said remotely. “There’d be no lack of familiarity with guns as regards people from the Middle East. Not to speak of our own crop of cowboys here.”
Hoey nodded agreement and hoisted his feet on to the desk. Minogue stared at Hoey’s shoes. They looked enormous from this angle, at least size thirteens.
“I think I know what you’re getting at,” said Hoey. “You’re thinking the killer and the carrier-awayer are distinct parties, aren’t you? The killer tells someone what he’s done and they’re the ones who do the panicking and decide that the body has to be moved. And we’re trying to pin the local connection to the killer if it’s a professional assassin thing. I know what you’re saying.”
“All right so,” said Minogue. “But I don’t follow why the body has to be moved at all. Still banging me head over that one.”
He looked at Hoey and wondered again if it was not time to return to smoking after fifteen years of irreproachable lungs. Hoey sat up in the chair as if being challenged.
“Let’s go through it again, then. Get it out of the running. Scientific and methodical, like. Are you
