Whether or not he noticed the irony, the Commissioner did not appear to be mollified.
“I’m not overly interested in what O’Tuaime or any other Ta Se thinks,” he said ominously. “I’m wondering if uprooting the Gardai is going to help anyone. People need to have confidence in their police, I don’t need to tell you that. There has to be a better way.”
Minogue was a little surprised at the derogatory term Ta Se, especially since the Commissioner and O’Tuaime had seemed to be on the best of terms. The phrase, meaning literally ‘he is’, referred to those who chose to use Irish on the basis that this linguistic sacred cow, which had been the scourge and bane of most schoolchildren’s existence, was an official language of the Irish Republic.
“I had to answer him honestly. I didn’t want him leaving here thinking we don’t apply the same scrutiny to our own officers,” Minogue tried. He was very close now to losing his temper.
The Commissioner observed Minogue as though viewing a painting. “Skimpy though, Matt, for all the upset it’ll mean, isn’t it?”
“If Paul Fine was murdered by a Garda or a soldier, or with the collusion of a Guard or soldier, we’d better go to a lot of trouble and upset ourselves. If the public finds out otherwise, there’ll be a damn sight more trouble,” said Minogue. He knew already that God Almighty would be on the phone to Kilmartin the minute he, Minogue, left this room. Kilmartin would be wanting to deliver himself of his own bad humour later, too.
“I don’t want you to think that you’re under pressure from Justice Fine here, now,” said the Commissioner in a measured tone. “Because you’re not working for him. You’re working for me and the Minister for Justice and the man in the street. Just because Fine is a bigwig and we took into consideration his request for you to be heading the case, this doesn’t mean a free hand to be pulling away at anything. If the investigation is flat, I want to know about it immediately.”
Minogue made no reply, but turned aside before the Commissioner could read the anger on his face. The trees outside were alive with the breeze, the sky behind them calm and empty of clouds. No wonder astronauts liked their job, Minogue thought.
“It’s easy enough for a man with his own particular loyalties to misunderstand the loyalties of others,” said the Commissioner.
“How do you mean?” Minogue snapped. “That I’m contrary enough not to be marching along in step with God and Ireland like the good little men marching around in the Army?”
The Commissioner sat back in his chair, rubbing his cheek as though recovering from a blow. An awkward smile crept over his face. “Hold your horses there, Matt: I was just testing. I’ll have John Tynan go to work on this. Just don’t be thinking you can ask the world here one morning and expect not to have questions asked.”
Minogue stood. “It’s really imperative to keep the search secret,” he said.
“Don’t be worrying. The Deputy Comm is well aware of that. And here, look… don’t be getting in a huff about O’Tuaime. He’s the old school. Pog mo than.”
The Commissioner barked his laughter in response to his own suggestion that Major-General O’Tuaime should kiss his arse. Minogue had been forgiven, apparently. The price of reassimilation was that he was expected to join in the Commissioner’s distaste for Irish-speakers, to join the fray in the rivalry between Gardai and Army.
Minogue met Hoey in the hall and they walked to the car without saying a word. Inside the car, Minogue stretched out with the seat half-way reclined. He breathed in and then out deeply, twice. Hoey was scrabbling for a cigarette. “There goes your promotion,” he joked lamely as he drew on the cigarette. “I wouldn’t want too many mornings like that. Me knees are still knocking,” he added.
“Well I don’t care what they say, Shea,” said Minogue regaining his cheer.
“What? Who says?”
“All of them: Jimmy Kilmartin, the talking heads on the telly, the ones with the sure solutions and the tough attitudes. The ‘dedicated service’ lads, the men of high morals. All of them.”
“Oh,” said Hoey wisely. Minogue thought of Mickey Fitzgerald’s biting sarcasm.
“The place isn’t Chile or Argentina yet, not by a long shot. Am I right or am I right?”
“Dead on,” said Hoey, plainly a talent lost to the diplomatic calling. “We’ll get them all yet, so we will.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hoey drove through Thomas Street, skirting the fringes of the Liberties. They drove past St Catherine’s church where the body of the hanged Robert Emmet had been decapitated and put on display to dissuade would-be rebels, who were welcome to observe dogs licking up Emmet’s blood. The streets were busy and full of a harsher afternoon sunlight which threw cutting shadows and glared off windscreens. Small groups stood by the bus stops looking for lifts here too. The bright light was not kind to Minogue’s humour and he found himself slipping from his morning cheer while the play of the sun on this old part of the city suggested the bare and frightening spaces of de Chirico and Magritte’s more unsettling works.
The city looked tired and over-used. Minogue thought of the pathetic fallacy and he made a half-hearted attempt to notice the school-children skipping by the pedestrians on the footpath. Idly he wondered which parts of Bloom’s long day and night had been spent in this part of the city. Should he try harder to read Ulysses again? But wouldn’t that resolve ruin the reading? It might help if he were to take a keener interest in the place-names and pubs and shops mentioned in the book. Kathleen had heard about walking tours of places mentioned in Joyce’s books, and she had suggested that her husband go on one instead of grumbling about not being able to get a handle on the book. There’d be Yanks, he protested, and he’d feel silly. But the man leading the tour is that fella from Trinity, the expert on James Joyce and he’s meant to be a howl… Minogue had never taken the tour.
Butchers’ shops, hucksters with tables of fruits and vegetables and little plastic whatnots, pubs with their doors open to dark and sepulchral interiors. Two drunken men sat on church steps and swayed as they argued. Without warning, the car in front braked. Hoey was fast, but he had been too close and the police car bounced dully off the back of it. Hoey turned off the engine and stepped out slowly, Minogue following. The other driver was looking down between the two cars. The back bumper of his ancient Cortina had merely collected another minor dent to add to the myriad others. The driver, a fat middle-aged man, unshaven and lumbering, gave the two policemen a disparaging look after he had surveyed the damage.
“We’re all right this time,” he said conclusively in a broad Dublin accent. Minogue smelled malty breath from the grizzled red face.
“If you had have signalled, we wouldn’t be standing around holding up the traffic,” said Hoey.
“You don’t say. If you hadn’t been a half-inch off me arse we wouldn’t be standing around,” the man retorted. “Didn’t yous know there’s a fuckin’ bus strike? I was pulling in to give these oul’ wans a lift.”
He nodded in the direction of a clump of bystanders gathered around a bus stop.
“Well, next time turning on your indicator might save you a few bob,” said Hoey.
“A few bob, is it? You’re a culchie, aren’t you? Up outa the bog, with shoes on and everything? Don’t you know that the car following is supposed to be able to stop, no matter what?”
“Within reason,” Hoey said.
“Within reason, me bollocks. Where’s the reason of keeping these poor oul’ dears waiting on a bus that’s never going to come? And the sun boiling down on them?” He turned to the group by the bus stop and shouted. “Hey missus, are your rashers getting fried there, and you waiting on the bus?”
An older woman with a hair-do like a poodle sticking out from under a head-scarf called back: “Amn’t I getting boiled meself here, sure.”
“See?” said the driver turning to Hoey. “This is Dublin, not Ballybejases. We look after one another in this city. And we don’t need fuckin’…” — he paused to mimic Hoey’s accent-“ ‘indicator lights’ to stop at bus stops and give lifts to the elderly that’s stuck by the side of the shagging road on account of the fact that yous culchies what are running the country can’t get yis’r fuckin’ act together-”
Minogue cut short the lecture on the political economy when he saw the barrel-chested man move towards Hoey with his forefinger jabbing the air in front of him.
“Give yourself a shake there,” said Minogue, “and don’t be making a show of yourself in the street. Do your good deed, and be off with yourself like a good man. There’s no damage done.”
