with Arab or Islamic causes. We’re still not ignoring the possibility of third-party involvement.”
“You mean the IRA?” said Fine.
“And groups on the Continent who have links with the IRA,” Minogue replied.
Fine nodded. The gesture seemed to wake Rosalie Fine from her detachment. “You don’t sound very confident about this,” she said abruptly. “We’ve been hearing these assurances from your Commissioner. I wonder if we’re not being reassured a bit too much.”
“Rose means that she’d sooner know the truth,” said Fine. “Same as myself.”
Minogue took a deep breath. He found that Rosalie Fine was still looking at him.
“This group that phoned the paper is not known to the Gardai. We’ve interviewed a large number of possible suspects already. Now, in the light of what happened last night, we might well be dealing with something involving more than just your own tragedy. I mean, not that…” Minogue felt his face redden and prickle.
Then Rosalie Fine spoke as though she had just entered the room. “Billy told me that you were in our Museum in Walworth Road.”
Minogue nodded. A faint alarm buzzed behind his thoughts.
“What did you think of it?” she asked. She might be making polite conversation with someone she had just bumped into in the street, Minogue saw. Was this the distraction that grief brings?
“I enjoyed myself,” he said. “All new to me. I’m County Clare, you see. Transplanted. I was taken to the altar by a Dublin-woman and I’ve been here since. It’s a tough calling. Our two at home would put the heart crossways in you.”
Rosalie Fine’s face took on a slightly indulgent cast, with a trace of irony plain in her eyes.
“I’d say you’re well able for them,” she murmured. Fine seemed glad to let down his load for a moment too. He leaned forward and placed his cup on the table. Rosalie Fines’ eyes slid out of focus again.
“I was talking to Lily,” she murmured in a different voice. “Last night, she phoned… Paul met Lily here on a holiday. She’s a cousin of the Greens. Greens the booksellers. Lily is a Londoner, of course. We were happy when Paul fell for her. A nice family and she wasn’t your traditional type to stay home and all that. Very modern and Paul liked that, he needed that. She was into the journalism herself, just starting into television.”
“Well he went to London with her but he couldn’t stand it.‘Exile’ he called it.”
“Lily had every right to say no to living here in Dublin,” Billy Fine took up the conversation. “And to be blunt,” he glanced at his wife before resuming, “they were bitter parting. Lily is a very strong personality, very confident. Of course you’d assume that Paul was the opposite, the one who gave way more…”
“With Julia and David it was different,” said Rosalie. “They knew early on they’d want to be moving eventually, seeing the world. With the youngest you never know. They say the youngest feels responsible for the parents. And then, who knows, maybe we wanted to hold on to him a bit longer…”
Minogue concentrated on part of the pattern on his cup as Rosalie Fine wept. Her husband wept also, sitting upright, clutching his wife’s hand until the hands were a jumble of whitened knuckles. A minute passed. The phone trilled once in the hall before they heard Cohen’s bass tones. Then the voice stopped. Cohen opened the door.
“Rose, it’s Canada,” he said. “If you’re up to it.”
Rosalie Fine drew in a breath, stood and walked to the door. Fine yawned deep into his palm.
“She has a sister in Toronto,” he murmured.
“I won’t burden you any longer,” said Minogue. “I must get on top of these developments and I don’t want to be hanging on your phone.”
Fine didn’t seem to have heard him. He rubbed at an eyebrow. “I thought we were exempt, you might say,” he murmured as he looked at the window. “Irishmen, the same as yourself. Oh but certainly there’s the root in Israel. You know, I must say that the years have me circling back to what I was born into. Being Jews, I mean, having a spiritual homeland. It’s no religious fervour. I’m less ‘Irish’ than I was ten years ago. Than I was yesterday, I must say too. Aliyah looms closer. It would not be a hardship on us.”
“I don’t follow you there, the last bit,” said Minogue.
“ Aliyah? We’ve given some thought to emigrating to Israel. Keep that under your hat. I’m a public figure the minute I walk out the door here. I’ll tell them when I’m ready to retire and not before. Sure, they only gave me the job last year, and me the youngest on the bench.”
Fine turned from the window and stared at the policeman. “Look, you don’t need to squirm here,” Fine said. “I didn’t expect you to come here spouting answers. You have to work out what happened at the Museum, same as myself.”
Minogue hesitated before deciding to tell Fine. “There’s something which came up late last night and again this morning,” he said in little more than a whisper. “Something that the Commissioner would not have known to tell you at tea-time yesterday. This may prove important. Please don’t read much into it yet until it becomes more substantial. We understand now that Paul may have been researching a group, a topic, which in turn may be linked to the death of a young man very recently.”
Fine blinked.
“He may have mentioned this to you? Opus Dei.”
Fine shook his head slowly.
“Not a word to me,” he murmured. “But you can’t be in earnest. I heard of them before. They’re a Catholic organization, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are.”
“To do with lay people, though, religious-minded.”
“I believe you have it in a nutshell,” said Minogue. “I’m awaiting a summary of what Opus Dei is, in Ireland anyway. Paul undertook to read up on them, but we can find no trace of notes he might have made. There was no mention of this until a citizen called last night, a man who works in the National Library. Paul was working there in the Library one day, researching this Opus Dei organization. There are several puzzling things about this. Opus Dei is not an extremist organization in the sense that they’d ever have anything to do with violence. And we don’t understand why Paul didn’t do his research in RTE, or discuss the topic with the people he worked with there. Then there’s the lack of notes. One might suppose that he was making his first pass over the subject reading the books on Friday, so he’d only commit things to paper later on…”
Minogue paused but Fine said nothing.
“I’m not suggesting there’s anything sinister or conclusive to this. And of course last night’s outrage-”
“Friday,” Fine interrupted then. “I met Paul Friday for dinner.”
“Did he say anything which strikes you as odd, connected with what I’ve just told you? Was he excited about anything?”
Fine frowned and ran a fingertip around his lips.
“No, no. He made a face at something though, something that came up in conversation. The journalism tended to make him a bit cynical, I think. Some of the hoi polloi were in the Gallery for lunch too, some TDs and Ministerial Sees. The luminaries gather there, usually toward the end of the week, to gab and gossip about one another. I recognized a few of them and of course it does them no harm to doff their hats to Mr. Justice Fine. Paul thought it was a bit rich. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths,’ he said, if I remember. Yes. Not like him to be cynical really. That may be more due to working with Mickey Fitzgerald and company. I know that Paul didn’t much like digging into the more gritty types of exposes that Fitz and the others like to blow up. Paul said something about the Ard Fheis coming up next week, some comment about: ‘They’ll all be at one another’s throats soon.’ Always the way, a cynic would answer, I suppose.”
“You didn’t ask him what he meant?”
“No. I assumed he meant that the Ard Fheis would be planning some strategies for the election. They’re always a bit of a circus.”
“I suppose,” said Minogue. He made for the door. “If you can spare me the time later, could I draw you more towards Paul’s personal life? I may be asking awkward questions as to any enmities with family and relations but I believe you’ll know that I have only a policeman’s interest… Could I arrange a time if I phone you later?”
Fine let his breath out and nodded slowly. He sat in the couch again and let himself slump. Minogue thanked Billy Fine and rose to leave. He nodded to Rosalie Fine in the hall. A woman sat next to her, crying. Minogue was seized again by furious, inchoate shame.
Through the door and descending the steps, he was grateful to be out in the air again, breathing deeply and trying to loosen the tension in his shoulders. He nodded at the detectives in the surveillance car and headed down
