“Another bog-trotter telling a Dublinman what to do. Be the living Jasus-”
“I’ll run you in if you don’t shut up,” Minogue snapped. He did not like the crowd; thickening on the footpath, watching.
“We’re Garda officers,” said Hoey. “You’re talking yourself into court here. Park that car now and go home. You’re half-cut already.”
“Two coppers!” the man shouted to the crowd. “Two coppers telling me I can’t stop me own car to pick up people, with the whole city bollicksed by the bus-strike. And all the culchies that are sitting below in the Dail, running the country and letting the bloody kip fall apart! Did yous ever hear the like of that?”
He stood with his arms spread wide in a theatrical appeal. Heads nodded and bobbed in the crowd. A youth with a crew-cut stepped off the footpath.
“Leave the man alone and mind your own fuckin’ business,” he said to Minogue. “Man is only trying to help people out.”
The cry of ‘culchie’ repeated brought Minogue’s anger back. “Listen here to me, now, mister. Get back up on that path there or you’ll be in on a breach of the peace.”
“You and whose army?” sneered the youth.
Just as Minogue realized that he’d have to collar the youth, a Garda squad car braked noisily beside the crowd. Two Gardai ran over. Minogue showed them his card without taking his eyes from the youth.
“I was just advising this citizen here to hit the trail.”
The young man’s stare faltered, then turned to a look of disgust before he regained the footpath and walked through the crowd. Minogue watched him stop once, look back and spit purposefully into the gutter.
“Are you going to park it, or do you want to blow in the bag?” asked one Guard.
“Hold on there a minute,” the driver began.
“Park it or go off with these two lads now,” Hoey repeated. The driver sat in behind the wheel and did a creditable job of parking by the kerb. The younger Garda asked him for his licence and insurance. Minogue nodded his thanks and sat back in the car after Hoey.
“What about the buses?” said the woman with the poodle hair.
“I don’t know, missus,” said Minogue through the open window. “We could fit two of ye down as far as Dame Street or so. More than that we can’t do.”
The woman nudged her companion and they stepped down off the footpath. A third elderly woman scurried after them. The three climbed into the car and wrestled their shopping bags over their knees. One giggled.
“Are we right then, ladies?” asked Hoey.
“Go ahead, driver,” one tittered. “And don’t spare the horses.”
“Yous aren’t going to land us in the slammer, are yous?” one piped. All three burst into shrill laughter. Minogue assured them that they would not be chained in the dungeons of Dublin Castle.
“Are yous really pleecemen? Yous must be detectives on account of the gear yous are wearing.”
“I’m eighty-two last July,” said the one with the reedy voice, “and I’ve never been in a police car in me entire life. I can remember gunfights in the streets of Dublin with the Black and Tans.”
“That must have been terrible,” said Hoey.
“It certainly was. It was great,” she replied. “Everyone had guns in their pockets them days.”
Hoey glanced saucer-eyed to Minogue and then looked to heaven.
“I hope nobody I know sees me in the back of a squad car,” said the third. “They might think I was having some excitement.”
The trio cackled again. Minogue heard dentures clacking.
“It’s the bloody busmen you should be locking up, you know,” said the poodle hair-do. “I was always union meself, and me dear Larry-God be good to him-wouldn’t hear a word ag’in the union either. But this is different, isn’t it?”
A chorus of agreement from the back.
“And the pensions might be cut too. Prices going up every day, it’s a holy show. Not to speak of the hooligans that’d rob you in broad daylight. There’s no jobs.”
Minogue nodded in agreement.
“Ah Jesus, but we showed the Black and Tans, didn’t we? Didn’t we, do you hear me talking?” said the poodle-haired firebrand. “And we’ll show the Brits again if we have to, won’t we?” she added vehemently.
The three women launched into a rousing version of ‘We’re all off to Dublin in the green’. Minogue believed that they all very much enjoyed the last line of the chorus as they leaned into it with gusto. “… To the echo of the Thompson gun!”
They sang the last verse before leaving the car at the corner of George’s Street.
“Ah, come on now,” Hoey protested vainly. “We can’t sit here in the car singing.”
“One last verse!” cried one, breaking away from the chorus. “Then we’re off!”
“… To the echo of the Thompson gun!”
Hoey drove quickly away from the kerb. The three waved and laughed from the footpath while passers-by stopped to look at the police car.
Deputy Commissioner Tynan phoned while Minogue was speaking with Kathleen.
“I must go, Kathleen. There’s a big-shot on the other line. I want to hold on to my job for a little while yet.”
He watched as Eilis tried to look severe, what to him might look Jesuitical, and he frowned at her, but she did not stop. Kilmartin thought that Tynan was a bit stuck-up, ‘too smart for his boots by times, without the common touch’. Minogue liked Tynan for those same reasons. Several times during the afternoon he had remembered Tynan’s impassive gaze in the Commissioner’s office, a gaze that might have been a mute appeal to join in appreciating the humour of life.
“More important than your wife?”
“If you can pay my salary, I’ll keep on talking to you.”
“You knew she was going away for the weekend.”
“I did,” replied Minogue. “But she wanted me to, em,‘tell you about it’. I was the messenger to be shot, I think.”
“At least she was frank about it. About those others going as well.”
“I’m thinking we should leave Iesult to do her own bidding, Kathleen, and not have her feeling guilty or that she has to sneak away. Look, I’ll phone you if I’m going to be late.”
Tynan’s voice betrayed no signs of anything but officialdom.
“I have instigated the process. I was obliged to set up a small team here to work on the matter: a team of two, to be precise. Very discreet, and reporting only to me.”
“May I ask if there have been any inquiries or reports directed to this concern before?”
“Ask, by all means, do. There have not. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been mention of officers’ membership of such organizations before, merely to say that nothing has been made of the matter. As for accounting for firearms and ammunition, that’s a matter for A Branch, as you well know. I’m not high in the firmament there.”
Firmament, Minogue thought. Maybe Tynan’s humour was so dry that… A play on fundament? Tynan had trained for the priesthood as a young man, thirty-odd years ago. Policemen who did not like any mystery to surround their fellows in the job attributed what they saw as Tynan’s frostiness to both the training and the native constitution of a fish, a cold fish.
“I have to meet with the Deputy Comm from A Branch within the hour. I propose to run the check as part of a type of secret spot-check, or surprise accounting. This has been done before as an aid to ensuring that care and use of firearms by Garda officers does not become slipshod.”
“Great,” said Minogue, meaning it.
“I bask in your praise,” said Tynan. “There is another matter which you may be interested in, one which we haven’t had a chance to discuss so far. Jim Kilmartin mentioned to the Commissioner that he’d like to find an ex- Opus Dei member so that he and you might have an insider’s view of the organization. The Commissioner mentioned it to me in passing. You may or may not know that I was destined for the priesthood many years ago, and at one time I was involved with Opus Dei.”
“That’s interesting,” Minogue fibbed while buying time so another part of his brain might penetrate the fog:
