the footpath toward his car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Minogue sat in the car for a minute before turning on the ignition. The familiar smells of the interior, cooked up stronger by the sunshine, rose around him; sparrows squabbled in the hedges. Kilmartin was nosing into the Opus Dei business. A possible witness, even though it was a child, from the murder site. Minogue had a dim sense of things moving now, gathering momentum, and for the first time in several days he felt excited. The excitement jarred against the anger he still nursed at Cohen’s springing the news on him.
The sun’s glare off the bonnet of the car moved Minogue at last and he drove off toward Islandbridge. Forty minutes later he had managed to cover three miles. He had turned the engine off but the fan was still running as it worked to cool the engine. The traffic had not moved for five minutes. Cyclists, many more than Minogue saw on ordinary workdays, swarmed around the jams, skittering over the kerbs and plainly enjoying themselves. Some motorists stood outside their cars, leaning elbows on their roofs. Pedestrians barely hid their smirks and they walked jauntily. Now that the weather was fine for the first day of the strike, the city had a holiday air.
Minogue counted to a hundred. Seeing no move ahead he started the engine and worked the car half-way on to the footpath. He wrote a note which he then placed on the dashboard as he stepped out to join the flow of pedestrians: ‘ Direct any tickets or tow fees to CDU, Investigation Section do C. Insp. J. Kilmartin’. Within a hundred yards of his abandoned car, Minogue was loping along, the motion of his freed body releasing him but slightly from the gloom which he had carried with him from Fine’s. He found a working phone booth and told Eilis that he had been shanghaied by traffic but that he’d be in the office within twenty minutes. The shabby streets, the chaos and inertia, this sullen greying town now oppressed him. He began walking faster.
Minogue breezed by Eilis and glanced at the policemen’s faces which turned to him. Hoey followed him into Kilmartin’s office.
“I’m after coming from the Fines,” Minogue muttered.
“How is it with them?” inquired Kilmartin.
“They’d be a lot less upset if they had their son’s body,” Minogue snapped. “Jews try to bury their dead as soon as they can. It’s damned important to them and I wish there was something I could do. As for me, don’t ask. I’m fit to be tied. What the hell happened last night?”
“One thing at a time, bucko,” Kilmartin snapped back. “PM stipulates a minimum of three days, and well you know it. How would it be if we handed over the remains and then wanted them back for a test we forgot later on?”
“A word in someone’s ear,” Minogue said acidly, glaring at memos on Kilmartin’s desk.
“I’ll look into the matter,” Kilmartin said slowly.
“To hell and damnation with looking into it, Jamesy,” said Minogue. “The point is this: what can we tell Mr. and Mrs. Fine now?”
Minogue turned to Hoey before Kilmartin could frame an answer. “Shea: what about this child, this Boy Scout fella? Is there anything to hope for?”
“Keating’s talking to him. Hasn’t phoned in yet.”
“Give me what you have on this fire-bombing then. Or do I have to go out and buy a bloody newspaper to find out what’s going on, at all? I feel I’ve been away for a week and I don’t know a damn thing that’s happening.”
“One witness heard the thing go off. Another witness heard a car tearing away down around the corner toward the city centre. She thinks she heard footsteps running fast before that.”
“And one in the car, no doubt,” Kilmartin slipped in.
“What’s Gallagher say?” Minogue asked impatiently. “Is this a planned thing, a campaign? What are we looking at here? Come on, Shea, feed me.”
Hoey blinked several times. “I phoned Gallagher: he has detailed a team to pick up a lot of the mob off the lists he drew up for us with the murder. Even ones he has already interviewed. Says the bombing and the murder were hardly the same people. No call to claim responsibility, he kept saying.”
“He has all the manpower he needs,” said Kilmartin. “We’d do well to leave Gallagher to his own devices on this. His crowd can do the fretting about what might happen next, if this is some campaign about I-don’t-know- what.”
“Anti-Semitic terror?” Minogue glared up from the desk-top at Kilmartin.
Kilmartin didn’t rise to the bait. “Lookit, God Almighty was on the phone not ten minutes ago, reminding us to do what we know best and to leave the other matter with the Branch. They have armed detectives outside people’s homes and all, already.”
“You mean to tell me he’s saying or hoping there’s no connection between last night and Paul Fine’s murder?” Minogue barracked.
“Don’t jump the gun, damn you,” Kilmartin snarled. “You’re in here with a mouth on you, bejases, and you’ll know no government. It’s all team-work, can’t you see? Gallagher’s helping us out and we’re helping him. He’s taking a lot of the weight, too. Of course he’s not an iijit about whether there’s links or not. Don’t you start getting foxy with me about it, man. Like it or not, we fall in line with an overall strategy. He said and did nothing to impede us.”
“Are we losing staff on the head of this, then?” Minogue shot back. “The staff we were given for the murder?”
Kilmartin looked at Hoey, then swivelled his gaze full on to Minogue. “You’re losing your marbles, by the sounds of things.” Still staring at Minogue, he said to Hoey: “You didn’t hear that, Detective Garda Hoey, did you?”
Hoey shuffled.
“Share and share alike,” Kilmartin drawled in a slow, ominous monotone which Minogue registered as one of his early-warning systems. “We work with them; they’re our mates; they have the goods; we need them. If they ask us for breakfast in bed, we’ll give it to them and we won’t throw it at them. They’re doing nearly all the interviewing. Don’t be rearing up on me because of it. Are you sure you’re not a bit too close to the boy’s family to stay cool on the matter?”
Minogue cast around for patient words. After several moments he felt the loosening of the anger in his throat. “I suppose you could say I’m not cool on the matter, Jimmy. Yes, you could say that, all right.”
Kilmartin’s brow lifted. He kicked off from the desk and rolled back to the wall before standing up and killing his cigarette. Glad to see me in a flap, Minogue wondered.
“I’ll see about the funeral arrangements,” said Kilmartin. “Now: about any people that Fine put away in jail.”
“We’ve been through the list of cases he’s heard,” said Hoey. “Twice, as a matter of fact. There’s nothing worth getting excited over.”
“What about Brian Kelly and Opus Dei?” Minogue led.
“I’ll give you what I have so far. We can’t say for certain that this Brian Kelly was actually a member of the outfit but…” said Hoey.
Kilmartin nodded. “Go on anyway, man, can’t you?”
“Right so. Opus Dei is the Latin for ‘God’s Work’. It was founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest, a Father J. E. De Balaguer. Hope I’m saying the name right. It was one of his books that Fine looked at on Saturday, if ye remember the dockets. It’s an apostolic movement. Here’s a quote on what they do: ‘… strive to sanctify their daily work and family life, to Christianize society’.”
“You mean that it was set up to counter the pagan materialistic twentieth century, especially after the Bolsheviks and what have you?” Minogue asked.
Hoey shrugged. “I’d have to know more to agree there. But it’s for lay people from any walk of life. Clergy can join up too. The basic idea is so as the church doesn’t get to be out of touch with modern society, that’s the way I read the aims. Now these Opus Dei people, they want to use whatever social positions they have to renew the faith. Make it more relevant, you see, on the factory floor… outside the chapel, like. Very sincere, holy people. There are ranks in Opus Dei. It’s organized like you’d see in any business or institution. The top dogs are called
