that fact doesn’t automatically incriminate the Gardai. You saw yourself that the ballistics comments said we don’t use that class of ammunition, for one thing.”
“He could have used a Garda gun and got his hands on high-velocity stuff himself,” argued Minogue.
“But where’s the key motive behind all this, I ask? It doesn’t hang together very well. Do you know what you’re saying? Fine didn’t have any friends, or enemies for that matter, that we know of in the Gardai. And why would he, sure?” said Kilmartin.
“But someone could have borrowed or loaned out the gun for the murder and then had to replace it.”
“But why, how?”
“If I knew that I’d have the murderer awaiting trial and I’d be at home with me feet up.”
Kilmartin drew a deep breath and sighed as he let it out slowly.
“Like I said to you, Matt, I’m only the Devil’s advocate, as I said, keeping you honest,” he repeated.
“Well seeing as you’re primed for that role, you’d better hear the rest that I’m thinking, then. I still can’t fathom this business about the timing of the phone call to the paper on Monday morning, half an hour after the citizen finds the body washed up.”
Kilmartin looked warily at Minogue’s sceptical face. “Ah Jases, not that again-”
“Hold your horses a minute, Jimmy. If we had to make our living on coincidences in a murder case, we’d have starved to death a long time ago. What if the killer knew that the body was discovered, and decided it was time to phone up and spin a yarn to buy himself time?”
Kilmartin didn’t react as Minogue had expected. He let his eyes out of focus and joined his fingers to make a church-and-steeple which he placed under his nose. Minogue sensed victory. “How did he know when to phone?” asked the glaze-eyed Kilmartin from behind the finger construction.
“He could have been near the beach and found out. Remember the hotel, and the waiter saying that a barman had seen the Garda cars congregating there?”
Kilmartin nodded non-committally, eyes still away on an alternative world.
“Anyone around the place might have done the same thing-gone down to see the commotion and seen that the body had not washed out to sea.”
“Fair enough,” said Kilmartin calmly. “We’ve caught killers because they returned to the site at some point afterwards. I can go along with that.”
Minogue wondered if Kilmartin was buying time, humouring him while he awaited the arrival of the men in the white coats.
“I wasn’t getting at that, actually. I was thinking of something a little different from an eye-witness at the beach.”
“You were, were you?” said Kilmartin in a somnambulistic monotone.
“I was thinking that perhaps a member of the Gardai alerted someone to the discovery of the body. Thereupon this someone decided to phone the paper and try to confound us. It may be that our killer is a member of the Gardai.”
“Aha. I see.”
“Yes,” Minogue went on tentatively. “So somewhere between the beach and us here in the squadroom, a Garda found out that Paul Fine’s body was on Killiney strand and this Garda told someone else. Or else the Garda himself phoned the paper.”
“To confuse us,” Kilmartin said tonelessly.
“To confuse us,” Minogue repeated. “Yes.”
“A Garda.”
“A Garda,” Minogue agreed. Kilmartin was still locked into his reverie so that Minogue felt he might be conversing with a person in a trance.
“A Garda took a Garda firearm and shot Fine in the head three times last Sunday afternoon?”
“A Garda may have been involved in the shooting of Paul Fine on Sunday afternoon,” Minogue qualified.
“Why would one of our colleagues do that, now?”
“I haven’t a clue, Jimmy.”
“You haven’t a clue,” Kilmartin repeated woodenly. He blinked and regained this world, looking blankly at Minogue.
“I’m willing to defend it, Jimmy. After all, I’m the one with the flag in his hand for this.”
Kilmartin gave no obvious sign that he read Minogue’s defensiveness as insubordination.
“So you’ll want an accounting for use of firearms within the Gardai in Dublin, at least?”
“That’s what I’m going for, yes. Oh, and the Army too,” said Minogue.
“The Army,” echoed Kilmartin quietly.
“The Army. Our Army,” agreed Minogue cautiously.
“Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb?”
“That’s right, Jimmy. In for a penny, in for a pound. What do you say?”
Kilmartin looked at his nails.
“Oh, I’m in too. I just wanted to hear how you’d explain turning two extremely large bureaucracies on their bloody heads.”
Minogue smiled with the relief.
“Just this, though,” continued Kilmartin. “One of us has to phone God Almighty and tell him how you reached this decision.”
“Good,” Minogue agreed. “I’ll do it, so. I want to be sure that the checks are not apparent at all. There must be a way of accounting for firearms and ammunition without the whole Garda Siochana getting to know about it.”
Minogue, leaving, heard a strange Americanism from the subdued Kilmartin.
“Have a nice day, Matt.”
Minogue ate a scrambled-egg sandwich in between gulps of what the restaurant called consomme soup. He was to meet the Garda Commissioner at half-past one. Kilmartin had agreed with him that, for the moment, the fewer people on the task force who knew about this part of the investigation, the better. Hoey was let in on it, as Minogue wanted him along to the meeting in Garda HQ in the Phoenix Park. Hoey was also the funnel through which all the information coming in from the field on the Fine murder case had flowed.
After Minogue had telephoned the Assistant Commissioner he had waited at his desk to play out the bet he had placed with himself. It had taken the Commissioner less than five minutes to phone Kilmartin. The same Kilmartin must have expected the reaction because his door remained closed. Minogue mentally pocketed his own bet. Kilmartin had emerged from his office with a name written on a sheet of foolscap, had handed it to Minogue and asked him if he had ever met Major-General Seamus O’Tuaime. Minogue had not. Then Minogue would make his acquaintance in the company of the Garda Commissioner. Kilmartin had left the foolscap dangling from Minogue’s hand. This was Kilmartin’s way of letting him know that he was on his own, Minogue understood.
Minogue checked his clothes for drops of soup. He stood from the chair and flicked at his shirt and jacket to dislodge any globs of scrambled egg which might have hidden themselves in folds while he had been seated. He had been wondering how much he could withhold from O’Tuaime, especially.
“You look like you’re thrilled skinny at the prospect of this meeting. If you don’t mind me saying so,” said Hoey.
“I don’t mind you saying so. Army uniforms make me jittery. I must have been an anarchist in me last incarnation.”
“I wish we were more like the coppers on the Continent. They can grow their hair and wear their own clobber a lot of the time in Germany,” Hoey opined dreamily. “A bit of glamour’d be all right.”
He should have driven home to Kilmartin the point that the real common element was Opus Dei. No, Kilmartin would have insisted on something more demonstrably tangible if he, Kilmartin, had had to use it as an explanation for Minogue’s plan. Minogue began to believe that Kilmartin’s diffidence about the plan was his way of leaving Minogue to await the outcome of this meeting more or less alone. Right, Matt Minogue, he might as well have said, you say you’re in charge here so off you go. Was it that childhood fear of authority which had filtered through to the adult Kilmartin as an excessive sense of accountability toward his own superiors now-another cardinal Irish trait, the constant fear of rebuke?
“So it’s really top-secret then,” said Hoey.
