“Give me the name of the ranking Gardai you talked to, would you?” said Minogue.
“A Sergeant Hickey. I didn’t ask him what station. Then a mob of Guards showed up, just before some of the media. We’ve been getting calls from all over the world since five o’clock this morning. American television stations. The Taoiseach phoned here at eight o’clock. Archbishop of Dublin, the Lord Mayor. Then your own.”
“Commissioner Lally?”
“The very man.”
Minogue couldn’t decide if Cohen was hinting at his, Minogue’s, ignorance of the event. Hoey must have tried him at home, Minogue thought again. He excused himself and went to the phone.
“God Almighty, Shea,” he whispered into the receiver. “What the hell is happening? I’m up at the Fines’ and I’m looking for a place to hide my face. What broke down?”
“I only happened to be in early,” Hoey answered. “I heard it off the radio, and me parking the car.”
“Damn and blast it, Shea, we can’t be running an investigation like this. We look like iijits. We are iijits. This has to stop, man.”
Hoey didn’t reply immediately.
“It’s on your desk, sir,” he said finally. “I took the liberty of looking through your morning stuff from Eilis. Timed at four-fifteen from Dispatch. They knew to get you, anyway. I tried you at home but you were gone already.”
Cohen walked into the hall now, heading for the kitchen, thereby cutting short Minogue’s anger.
“All right, all right.” Minogue dug the receiver into his ear. “All right. Was it just this bombing thing, Shea?”
Hoey told him that he was awaiting a call from the National Library with more information. Doyle had gone over to the Library already to see the dockets and give Kearney a good going-over.
“Kearney, the library assistant who phoned?”
“Yes. He knew Justice Fine’s name and figured that the fella looking for books and filling in the request dockets was some relation of Fine’s. That’s how he remembered. Guess what Paul Fine was interested in?”
“Go on, Shea, for the love of God. I’m in Fine’s house here, sitting on their phone.”
“Sorry. He signed retrieval slips for nine books. Do you know how the system works there? You ask for books to be brought to you. There are millions of books there, and very valuable ones too. So Kearney is one of the assistants who’d go and get the actual books down off the shelves. Now it doesn’t say what time the books were given out and Doyle’s going to try and pin Kearney a bit better than that. All the nine books got to him, that is to say that none of the books was missing or anything. Ready for a few titles? Catholicism and the Franco Regime by a Norman Cooper. Never heard of any of these meself… Addresses, Essays and Lectures by J. E. De Balaguer, Church and Politics of Chile by a fella called Smith…”
“Hold on, hold on there, Shea. What’s all this? I’m swimming in detail here and now is not the time.”
“… Opus Dei: the Call of the World by-”
“What?”
“That’s it, though,” said Hoey. “They all have something to do with Opus Dei.”
“Opus Dei? But Shea, this thing at the Museum. Get Gallagher on to it, or at least confirm he’s alerted to it. And is Jimmy Kilmartin on to this already?”
“Yes he is, sir. He fairly pounced, I can tell you.”
Minogue stared at a shrouded mirror by the phone. Thoughts flickered and escaped. No order. He realized that he was biting his lip.
“He says he’s going to hold off on a separate task force until we sort this out,” Hoey continued. “He’s hunting down the top dog in Opus Dei, or whatever they call their boss.”
“I don’t know anything about them, so I don’t,” Minogue muttered. “All I know is that they’re religious.”
“Wait now,” said Hoey. “More stuff breaking, wait’ll you hear this. This is what you should have heard before the balls-up about last night.”
Minogue stopped chewing his lip.
“Remember we left just after ten last night, didn’t we? Well a woman phoned in at a quarter past, a woman from Dun Laoghaire. She has a young lad in the Scouts. There was a troop of them out on manoeuvres on Killiney Hill some time on Sunday afternoon. Putting names to trees and counting birds and that sort of diversion. Her young lad was up after his bedtime last night, annoying the heart and soul out of her. He saw a clip from the news though, our bit on the site up on the Hill. Quick as a flash-so says the mother-the chiseller says: ‘I was there.’ She asked him about it. There’s two detectives dispatched out to the house and the young lad will miss a morning’s school over it. Will I call you back there when I have any news?”
Minogue considered the suggestion. A morning with the Fines would be a long morning but Hoey’s news had buoyed him.
“No, Shea. Be better if you had some brief on what this Opus Dei is all about.”
Minogue remembered Kilmartin’s jibes from the previous night. Before they had knocked off for the night, Kilmartin had showed a shrinking Hoey the black-and-white photos of a curled, black mass. It was unrecognizable as the body it was supposed to be, except through the foreknowledge which Kilmartin’s expression of grim indulgence brought. ‘Trial by fire. Burnt offerings,’ the blasphemous Kilmartin had muttered as he had laid snap after snap of what had been Brian Kelly on Hoey’s desk like a ghastly game of cards.
“And try and get a hold of stuff and roll it out for me and Jim Kilmartin,” Minogue finished. “And find out what Gallagher and company make of the bombing. Stay put by the phone. I’ll get to you within the hour.”
Minogue held the receiver while he broke the connection. Phone Gallagher himself? Kilmartin? Drop the interview here and head for the Squad HQ, try and get into the driving seat as the information came in? The phone rang under his stretched fingers.
“Yes,” Minogue said, not yet back in the present. A man with a northern accent asked if Justice Fine was available. Minogue recognized the voice from somewhere.
“May I say who’s calling?”
“Sean O’Duill from Armagh.”
Cohen was already through the kitchen door and he took the receiver from Minogue. Fine emerged, carrying a tray. Minogue trudged after him into the front room.
“John Cohen, Your Eminence,” he heard Cohen say. “Very glad of your support… I’ll pass it on to him.”
Fine paused, tray in hand, listening to Cohen. He laid the tray down.
“Look after yourself,” he said to Minogue.
Minogue sat down in an armchair. Cohen came in yawning. Through the closing door Minogue heard Fine’s voice now, resigned and gentle. “Yes, Sean, we do. We keep on asking ourselves if this is really happening. Shock, yes…”
Cohen closed the door and sat opposite Minogue. The two men remained silent, one staring contemplatively at the tray, the other, a bewildered, middle-aged Clareman, anxious and distracted.
Rosalie Fine, a compact, stocky woman, entered the room noiselessly. Small patches of colour had gathered high on her cheeks. Her eyes were clear hazel, but they seemed out of focus to Minogue. He rose. She held the limp sleeves of her cardigan as she sat. Billy Fine came in after her and sat next to her on the couch, taking one of her hands in his.
“I’m sorry for your trouble,” Minogue said quietly. The words were thick and clumsy in his mouth and they ran back in his mind to taunt him. Rosalie Fine looked at him but Minogue felt she was not seeing him. Different people, these are. His embarrassment flared again. These people didn’t use a countryman’s stilted words. He dithered with the coffee, grateful for the strong sweet mixture.
“I was just about to apprise your husband of the investigation so far.” He paused to look at Fine. “But I’m far from sure now if this is the time-”
“There’s no time,” she interrupted. “There’s never any proper time. There’s no time that’s right…”
“With all the people coming to the house,” Minogue murmured, trying to recover.
“And last night’s…?” she paused, stuck for words, and looked directly at Minogue. Minogue took a quick sip of coffee. He heard Fine’s breath exhaled quickly.
“I wanted to reassure you that we’re casting the net wide. We have the expertise and the tools at hand to track down the suspects. And the will,” Minogue added slowly, returning Rosalie Fine’s distracted gaze. “The Special Branch has already conducted an extensive search for extremists who might be even remotely connected
