“Let’s go on a bit. We were getting somewhere. I’m Paul Fine and I have Brian Kelly wanting to tell me something.”
“That’s what I was saying: when you put this against the wall, it doesn’t stand up well. Kelly had nothing to tell you that was so scandalous.”
“But I’m a Jew. Is that a disadvantage? I wouldn’t know the ins-and-outs of what Catholics do.”
“That’s it. When you push it to the limit…”
“But being a Jew I might have a distinct advantage. I’d know what goes on in Irish heads because I’m Irish, but I’d be bringing a fresh approach to the matter.”
“You wouldn’t be so cynical about religious Catholics, you mean?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t start out spiteful and wanting to go for people’s necks. Something else though, Shea-there’s another reason why Brian Kelly picked me. It’s something symbolic. Did you ever hear of a fella called Leopold Bloom?”
“I think I did, all right… Was it a film?”
Minogue shook his head.
“A symbolic thing… because you’re a Jew? Like Jesus,” Hoey whispered, looking around the squadroom to be sure that no one else could see his embarrassment.
“Fabulous, Shea. There’s that. Brian Kelly would have been alive to religious symbolism, yes. There’s another thing too, something very down-to-earth.”
It was Hoey’s turn to shake his head. “Can’t see it.”
“ I couldn’t be a member of Opus Dei, Shea,” Minogue whispered.
Hoey sat back in the chair and drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “You’re saying that Kelly was worried about his pals in Opus Dei finding out that he was none too happy about something to do with the organization? If he had pals left in it.”
“You’re Brian Kelly now, Shea. Ready?”
Hoey sat up again.
“Why are you not trying to get in touch with Mickey Fitzgerald?” Minogue asked.
Hoey answered in the tone of the hypnotized. “I don’t know.” He began laughing lightly, unable to hide his embarrassment. “Sorry. I’m not much good in the theatrical line.”
“Maybe you’re paranoid,” said Minogue contemplatively.
“Thanks very much.”
“Brian Kelly, I mean. Maybe you’re at a pitch of anxiety and you imagine people are spying on you.”
“Now you’re talking, sir. But does it help us much to find out that Brian Kelly was a nut-case?”
Minogue disliked the term. He had shied from it even before his own brush with the arbitrariness that haunted every life, that you saw if you were able to look beyond ‘father’ and ‘policeman’ and ‘Irish’. Minogue had discovered the hard way that normality was a rather ambiguous accomplishment, something which could backfire, something which involved a lot of work which you hardly knew you were doing or why, until you stopped doing it, or it stopped you.
“Point taken, Shea. We need to get his associates at work to give us a clue as to demeanour and state of mind. Definitely.”
Hoey brightened at some remembrance, just as Minogue was about to leave. “I’ll tell you one thing: whether or which Kelly was cracked, he certainly seems to have put Paul Fine in the same frame of mind. If you look at events kind of sideways, I mean.”
“How do you mean?”
“You might think this a bit odd, but nobody in RTE knew about his interest in Opus Dei, not even the McCutcheon woman, his moth. He kept it to himself. Maybe Kelly told him he had to.”
“Ummn.”
“And he went to the National Library, not to his own place. He didn’t even check what a journalist probably checks first, the newspaper clippings and programmes on tape. And if this notion is still holding together, he’s off out to Dalkey or Killiney on the Sunday to meet Kelly. Do you see…?”
Hoey perched up on the front of the chair, slowly waving and pushing at the air with his cigarette.
“Kelly in Killiney Hill?”
“He meets Fine, an arranged meeting. They have a chat and Kelly tells him something…”
“Tell me why Kelly wasn’t the one to kill Paul Fine, Shea.”
“Like he could have been unbalanced and had some queer thing about Jews? After realizing what he’d done, he might be sick of himself and want to commit…?” Hoey shook his head. “I’m stuck there, really stuck. I’d go along with the business of Kelly trusting a Jew not to treat his information sensationally and muck-rake the organization that he might still have fond memories of. But my belly tells me that the man who shot Paul Fine three times in the back of the head wasn’t Kelly. Little Patsy O’Malley will tell us that for certain when we show him a picture of Kelly. I wonder, did Kelly attend a psychiatrist or the like?”
“Good one, Shea. Suggest that to Jimmy Kilmartin, will you? I hope I can come up with names of Opus Dei people who we can grill about Brian Kelly. I’m going to meet a fella tonight who might have something to tell me.”
“Great stuff. Who is it, do you mind me asking?”
“The Archbishop of Dublin. Apparently he wants to see me.”
“The what?” said Kilmartin.
“None other. Tynan must have been in touch with his office and was able to pull a string. This particular string seems to be attached to a brick… or should I say, a pillar? I hope that it lands soft now that I’ve pulled on it. I was trying to chase down an Opus Dei membership list as well as any friends or ex-friends of Brian Kelly. That’s what I get for doing a bit of your work for you, Jimmy. I’m meeting more clergy in one day than I’ve met in years. Maybe I’ll get a letter of introduction to the Pope of Rome.”
“I’d have it on me conscience if I didn’t take it upon meself to warn His Holiness you were planning to drop in,” said Kilmartin drily. “Tynan, now. They stick together, don’t they? He’s Tynan’s age, is the Archbishop. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they’ve known one another since they were baby priests, before Tynan jumped the wall and came to us. What’s the name for baby priests anyway, before they get to be real priests? Scholars, is it?”
Minogue had often thought that calling Ireland’s one Cardinal ‘the Primate of all Ireland’ had been an intentional pun. He had seen a cartoon of a simian cardinal on a Women’s Action Movement poster near Grafton Street during the summer. The cleric, complete with crozier and pince-nez and hat, had been sitting on oppressed women.
“Noviciates, I think.”
“Very clever. That brain of yours is a fright to God entirely. Lookit, though-I’d watch that Tynan, do you know what I mean?”
Minogue used one of the coarse replies which Iesult gave when Kathleen was over-anxious for her daughter to understand what a wise course of action might be. “I know what you mean but the grass is wet,” he sighed. “What’s there to watch in Deputy Commissioner John Tynan?”
“Exactly. Deputy. Deputy always wants to get beyond being deputy anything. He has his eyes set on God Almighty’s chair.”
“Like your Fabulous Fintan Gorman and the Chief?”
“You can laugh all right, Matt. Seeing as you’re not competing for the job yourself.”
Minogue did not bother to confirm Kilmartin’s contention here. He turned to the matter of Brian Kelly.
“How do you want the manpower shifted around when we take on Kelly as murder, Jimmy?”
Kilmartin thanked his friend and colleague for reminding him of that headache. In the icy tones of a countryman scorning another countryman, he told Minogue that he’d be told in good time, most likely tomorrow morning as soon as the forensic reports were delivered in their completeness. Steps were already being taken to get interviews from Kelly’s associates at work. Kilmartin then invited Minogue to have the Archbishop bless a non- existent set of rosary beads which he, Kilmartin, pretended to draw out of his pocket. “Ha, ha, ha,” Kilmartin laughed, and coughed. “I nearly had you believing me there.”
“I’ll ask him to say a special prayer for your wife.”
“Oh, that’s a dirty one there,” Kilmartin mocked. “And her the happiest woman in Ireland. Straighten your tie
