do not get is this: one iota of testimony pertinent to your murder cases,” Tynan concluded crisply.
“Run it backwards now,” Minogue tried. “Do any of these people know they’re on a sheet of paper in our fists?”
“I asked him what the chances were of those on the list knowing that we’re on to them. He said that the confessor told the source that it would be a grievous sin for him to alert the people on this list to the Gardai being in possession of this piece of paper. That’s as far as he can go. But the person may have told someone after the confession was made. He’s unstable, upset. It might be rough.”
Minogue frowned at Tynan’s face framed in the side window. Someone was singing in or near the pub.
“I’ll make my call first and get the thing going from the top. You’ll be wanting to talk to Jimmy Kilmartin then, I think.”
“Paul Fine?” Minogue called out, alarmed.
“You’re the one who built this house of cards, Minogue. You should know. I’d stake my pension on it.”
Minogue switched on the interior light and looked at the folded paper he had withdrawn from the envelope. There was no letterhead on the paper and it was addressed to no one. The door of the lounge bar banged after Tynan had entered. No remarks, no signature. The car creaked on its suspension. There were only the eleven typed names. Minogue did not recognize the first three but he noted that the ranks had been entered in brackets after them. Colonel Eamonn Gibney. Captain Lawrence Cunningham. The Garda rank was a sergeant: Eoin Morrissey. Garda Sergeant Eoin Morrissey worked in the Technical Bureau and Minogue had met him several times in the company of Shea Hoey at Ryan’s pub in Parkgate Street.
Minogue realized that he was still holding his breath. His forehead was pounding now. He looked up from the paper to the windscreen’s circus reflections of dashboard and steering wheel. He looked down at the paper again, at the last name. It was still there, still the same. Fintan Gorman.
Minogue elbowed himself out of the car and walked hurriedly to the door of Slattery’s lounge.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
This is what we’re dealing with,” said Gallagher. He turned to the unwieldy tape-recorder on the desk.
It was Friday evening. Kilmartin, Minogue and Hoey were seated in Chief Superintendent Farrell’s office. Farrell, who had come from a meeting with the Garda Commissioner and Tynan, seemed impatient, even more than his usual curt and belligerent self.
Kilmartin had said it out loud as the trio were crossing Harcourt Street to Farrell’s office. Jimmy would make a lot of his prophecy after they had finished the meeting with Farrell, Minogue knew. After all, Kilmartin had been right… again.
“Bet you that the Commissioner told him to let us in. And that Tynan told the Commissioner too,” Kilmartin had said excitedly. “Bet you any money you like. Go a tenner, Matt? A tenner says that Tynan made him.”
Yes, Kilmartin was probably right.
“And you know Farrell, runs the Branch like his own private army. I’d say he’s bulling mad. He wanted to go after Heher and get the source who made the confession; squeeze the bejases out of him. What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Minogue.
“I still say it was Drumm who made the confession, and after Heher came down offa the ceiling he knew he’d have to tell the Archbishop about it. Ah, but Farrell’d choke the Pope himself to get at the source,” said Kilmartin with relish. He licked a palm and rubbed it back along his crown to settle what was left of his hair.
“I like the sound of that,” Minogue conceded.
“Choking the Pope or putting your tenner on the line?”
“The former,” said Minogue. “I’d lose my tenner, I’m sure.”
“Well, I must say that Tynan sticking up for us is something I don’t mind at all, at all,” said Kilmartin. “There may be something to him if he stood up to Farrell. Did you hear that Farrell went to the Minister, and all? He wanted the swoop last night even; he thinks this crowd is dangerous. It was Tynan’s doing to put in the phone taps and make Farrell wait for at least twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe Farrell didn’t believe that the confessional is secret, and thought these-what should we call them- conspirators might have been told of the leak,” said Hoey. “But the confessional is still sworn to secrecy, isn’t it? So the Branch couldn’t have gone any further than ourselves.”
“Secrecy, is it?” said Kilmartin in his music-hall incarnation. “It had bloody well better be, for the love of Jases. I told a few whoppers in confession boxes in my time, and I don’t want them broadcast, I can tell you,” he added, stepping around the parked police cars.
Tynan’s first call from Slattery’s pub had been to the Commissioner. A second tenpenny piece had clanged into the phone when he called Farrell at his home in Clontarf. Minogue was in the pub by then and he dearly wanted to eavesdrop on what Tynan was demanding in crisp tones, sentences without verbs, a slow insistent, serious voice, as he stared at the graffiti on the wall in front of him. Minogue had fought off that temptation by giving into another. He pushed his way to the bar and bought two Jameson’s whiskeys with ice in both of them.
Tynan questioned neither the ice nor the whiskey. Minogue phoned Kilmartin at home after Tynan had told him what he had started. To his credit, Kilmartin had not questioned Farrell’s involvement. As part of Garda department C3, the Special Branch was expected to see to subversive groups within the State. Nor did Kilmartin pass any remark about Tynan taking the reins. Putting down the telephone, Minogue had then realized that Kilmartin’s deferring without complaint was the surest sign of what the list in the envelope could mean. Kilmartin seemed to have been glad to step aside and let the paint-and-powder brigade, as he sometimes called the Special Branch, work it out.
It was not until this morning that Minogue had found out that Tynan had had a District Court judge roused from his telly in Fairview and brought by police car to the Four Courts. No fewer than twenty-seven phone taps had been operating within ninety minutes of the two men sipping their Jameson’s. By midday today the number had grown to over fifty. Surveillance teams had been placed on all the people on the list by midnight, and had remained in place throughout the night. They were relieved by shifts of Branch detectives. In the case of the Army ranks on the list, Army Intelligence had been alerted and was reporting to the First Secretary of the Minister for Defence.
Gallagher had met the three detectives at the front desk and directed them to Farrell’s office.
“Tommy,” said Kilmartin, reaching across the desk, “how’s things?”
“Hot,” grunted Farrell, a taciturn and driven policeman with a reputation for ruthlessness, but a man believed to have no political debts to service.
“And Matty Minogue himself,” said Farrell.
“And Seamus Hoey,” Kilmartin added.
There were no preliminaries. Gallagher had the tape of the telephone calls edited, rewound and poised to play. He turned the switch and nothing happened.
“Plug?” said Minogue. Hoey checked the socket behind his chair. Farrell pursed his lips.
“Jimmy,” said Farrell, “I told God Almighty a half-hour ago that leaving things this way was too much of a risk. We should have jumped last night and worried about hard evidence and building a case after we got in the doors.”
“Did you play him this tape too?” asked Kilmartin.
“Damn right I did. That’s why we’re moving tonight. Yous may have a murder to worry about: we have several to prevent. As well as lunatics flinging petrol bombs at Jewish churches.”
“Two murders,” said Minogue. Farrell glared at him.
“It’s nothing to what could happen unless we lift this lot tonight,” said Farrell gruffly.
“Well we-that is to say Tynan-had hardly got a start on going through the files for possible associates not mentioned on the list, Tommy,” Kilmartin said. “There has to be a lot more than two Army officers and one Garda sergeant.”
“And didn’t Johnny Tynan tell me the selfsame thing not an hour ago? ‘A lot might slip the net if we move too soon,’ says he. ‘If we don’t get the ones on the list to talk, we’ll fall short of getting all of them,’ says he. Oh they’ll
