there, so you don’t look like an iijit.”
Kilmartin called out to him as he reached the doorway. “And ask him what he thinks of Mrs. Ryan and the WAMmers running the country and doing away with the men.” He collapsed into a phlegmy cough as he laughed after Minogue.
Tynan’s clothes still looked sharp after a workday. Minogue felt more nervous the nearer they drove toward the Archbishop’s residence.
“Jimmy asked me to get His Eminence’s opinions on the Ryan case, or rather the Women’s Action Movement and their championing of Marguerite Ryan.”
“What do you think of it yourself?” asked Tynan absently.
Minogue looked out over the rooftops of College Green where the still-heavy traffic had snared them. The sky was tangerine and russet, like a bloodied egg, making a mockery of the pewter shades on the ground. This Dublin, this time, were just about tolerable, he decided.
“I don’t know what to think. I have a daughter at home who’s twenty-three and she doesn’t take any guff out of anyone. I could never see her getting into a situation like Marguerite Ryan’s. Being abused, I mean.”
“You are putting a lot of stock in the history of abuse,” Tynan said vaguely.
“How can you ignore it? I’d prefer Iesult to be the strap she is rather than be acquiescent or overly obedient,” said Minogue.
“With due respect to the Archbishop, I think he’d tend to favour an emphasis on being obedient,” mused Tynan. “I studied with him when I was in college, you know. That’s how I got to talk to him this afternoon. We swap Christmas cards every year still. There is life after the seminary, I found out.”
Tynan looked at the elaborate lamp standards beside the statue of Thomas Moore on the concrete island in the middle of the Green. “Do you know the motto for Dublin? There’s a coat-of-arms there on that lamp, the coat of arms on a blue background.”
Minogue looked out but could see only blue patches in the twilight.
“ Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas. That’s the kind of obedience we used to take our mental tweezers to when we were in college. I suppose that ideally it’s related to the Greek notion of virtue-a citizen who goes along with the correct line, the moral path, being a member of a collective which works together, a collective informed by virtue.”
“Virtue is its own reward,” said Minogue. “I never much liked the sound of that one. Like, it’s all right to get walked on.”
“ Virtus. Obedientia,” Tynan murmured. “I hope they meant that a sound civic spirit would make for an agreeable city. Well, they’re talking about a city as a group of people, not some abstract institution, and that’s something, isn’t it?”
Minogue moved with the light and geared into second as they went by the pillars of the Bank of Ireland.
“Obedience is a horse of a different colour, though,” said Tynan, awakening with the motion of the car. “I would like to hear the modern-day Opus Dei expound their notion of obedience and virtue. They certainly don’t hobble themselves with the ‘virtue is its own reward’ end of things. Their mandate is to challenge and engage the world. Apostolic.”
“Engage,” said Minogue in a Paris accent diverted through Clare.
“Nice. I can brag to an upstart journalist that some members of the Gardai speak French. They want to be like the early Christians, committed and evangelical. No wonder the man in the street is a bit suspicious of them, if they’re working alongside him.” Tynan’s voice suggested to Minogue that he had a grim smile. “Of course they take private vows and promise obedience to the superior that Rome appoints. That’d be the ‘final authority’ you were told about by that priest…”
“Heher.”
“Heher, over Opus Dei members who work in the Gardai or are enlisted Army men. ‘Noble folly’, they called it in my day. The idea of being a knight who did God’s bidding.”
“Tilting at windmills, is it?”
“They do a lot more than that in places like Guatemala, I suspect,” Tynan said. The unexpected edge to his voice startled Minogue. This Tynan was a fish from the depths. Minogue gave his passenger a quick glance.
“Now you’re asking yourself if I’m the one, and not you, who might have something abrasive to say to His Eminence tonight, aren’t you?” said Tynan, heavy with irony.
Minogue had to laugh.
“Don’t be worrying yourself,” said Tynan. “I was just thinking out loud. It was all a long time ago for me. There’s no bitterness. I serve different masters now,” he added wryly.
Not for long, if Jimmy Kilmartin is right, thought Minogue.
When they reached the Archbishop’s Residence, Minogue searched the glove compartment for a comb and did the best he could with what was left to him of daylight and hair and composure. He recalled that the residence used to be called the Archbishop’s Palace. Vatican Two had muted the splendour of titles, at least.
“Ah, you’re all right,” said Tynan. “An honest face.”
“Did he say anything exactly?” Minogue tried again, checking the toes of his shoes for noticeable scuffs.
“He said he wanted to see Inspector Minogue as well as myself. To tell us what can and can’t be done about Opus Dei.”
“I don’t know where he got my name from.”
“Heher, whom you saw this morning.”
“I’m in for a talking-to, is it?”
“No, no,” Tynan smiled wanly. “This is the 1980s, Minogue. It’s not the Church Triumphant any more. Let’s look on it as an information session.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The door was answered by a cheerful priest, who was in his thirties and had the look of a happy athlete about him. He was not wearing a jacket and the sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up over his elbows. A farmer’s son.
“I’m Pat Sheehy,” he said in a Kerry accent. “And you’re Gardai.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Minogue, wondering if there was a ban on using the term Father; “we don’t look like rock stars.”
“Ah no. It’s the appointment book that tells all.”
Sheehy closed the heavy door behind them. The residence smelled of floor-wax and a chicken boiling somewhere. Minogue and Tynan followed the agile Sheehy across the parquet to a double door that opened into a room with a high ceiling, the proportions of which suggested a Georgian if not a neoclassical plan at work, but in the nineteenth century. Several large portraits hung from the walls. All were past Archbishops of Dublin, Minogue concluded after recognizing two. Fresh flowers rested in a Waterford cut-glass bowl atop what Minogue’s amateur eye guessed was an antique Irish bog-oak table.
In this waiting room the visitor could read the Reader’s Digest, Time or The Word, a publication of the Oblate Fathers.
Sheehy was back inside of two minutes. Less cheery now, Minogue believed, a lot less. The chicken smell was stronger in the hall: maybe it wasn’t chicken but someone’s goose getting cooked… the fat is in the fire now… what’s sauce for the goose is-Minogue reined in his flittery thoughts.
Sheehy knocked and entered without awaiting a summons from within the room. Minogue felt quickly that the knot of his tie was in place and brushed over the zipper of his fly. You never know, said his gargoyle within. Was he expected to kiss the ring, or had that gone out too with the Latin Mass? He determined not to do so, anyway.
The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Reverend Doctor Francis Burke, stood behind his desk and nodded at the two policemen. Minogue heard Sheehy closing the door. Burke was making no attempt to come around the desk to greet the policemen, Minogue realized. Tynan went before him and reached across the desk to shake hands.
“John. How’ve you been?” said Burke.
Tynan said he was fine. He turned to introduce Minogue.
