gratefully leaping out to the open sea and sky all the way to Dun Laoghaire and beyond. James Joyce had walked Sandymount strand and been visited by beauty there… had Gorman walked the same watery emptiness, alone or with these cronies of his, concocting a salvation for Ireland?
Claustrophobia added to Minogue’s tension. All but one of the Special Branch cars had been parked in the next street over. One car was parked by Gorman’s gate. It would not arouse suspicion, since two armed policemen customarily formed a guard outside the homes of Government Ministers. The two on shift tonight were to help net Gibney as he left the house. Three detectives sat in a Toyota van directly across the street from Gorman’s. The van advertised chimney-sweeping services and the bodywork was battered and grimy. Minogue had been told that those in the van were monitoring a relayed tap off Gorman’s home telephone: Farrell was worried that news of the swoop might reach Gorman by phone from a member of the clique who had evaded detection so far.
Minogue stretched his arms out straight and yawned.
“Didn’t I tell you that Tynan is the cute one?” said Kilmartin, breaking off from an interior conversation to let the two detectives know how astute he had been.
Minogue remembered Tynan’s expression as he had knocked back the glass of whiskey last night: regret, and some contentment too, Tynan staring down into the cubes rattling in his empty glass. It had been like a farewell toast to the memory of someone whose funeral he and Minogue had attended.
“You did,” said Minogue.
“Ah, but what a waste when all is said and done,” Kilmartin dropped into a tone of melancholy. “All that talent. All well-educated, and with the best of intentions.”
Minogue’s anger burst loose. He struggled to get out of the car. “Jesus Christ, Jimmy. I don’t want to hear any more about the best of intentions. The damned island is full to the brim with the best of intentions. Loads of genius and no talent. Full of imagination and too damn scarce on ideas that might be in danger of working. The priest who married the Ryans below in Tipperary had the best of intentions, as did the Ryans themselves. Heher has the best of intentions, but he makes my skin crawl. Archbishop bloody Burke has the best of intentions.”
“Calm yourself, would you,” said Kilmartin.
“What matters is what and who’s left after the best of intentions have done their work. Gorman had the best of-”
“That’ll do it, Matt,” said Kilmartin. The tone was now one of rank, Minogue realized. Kilmartin was sitting still, blinking. What could be excused in private could not be let go in front of Hoey.
Minogue kicked the door open and stepped on to the footpath. The relief was immediate. Kilmartin got out of his side and walked reluctantly around to Minogue. Like fence-wire that grows into the bark of a tree, Minogue was thinking: Jimmy Kilmartin and Matt Minogue. Tied together by a quarter-century of knowing one another as cops.
“Ah, I know how you feel, Matt. You’re very involved. When you’re in this line of business as long as me, you’ll be able to be more objective, you know.”
Kilmartin cut short his advice when he saw the unmarked car coming down the street ahead of them. There were three men in it. Minogue saw the short antenna quivering as the car drifted slowly by. A face turned to them from the back seat, Gallagher’s. He pointed ahead of the car, beckoning them.
“Come on so, and we’ll have a pow-wow,” said a cheered Kilmartin. “The brass is here. That was Farrell in the car too, wasn’t it?”
Minogue and Kilmartin walked the 200 yards to where the car had stopped. They passed a man standing by a bus stop. He was wearing a three-quarter length coat, sometimes called a car-coat or a bum-freezer. Minogue recognized it immediately as the trademark of a detective who was carrying a firearm. Kilmartin nodded at the detective in passing, and whispered: “Soon enough.”
Minogue wondered if Gorman or his wife or one of their children might look out into the garden and spot one of the half-dozen detectives in position around the house. A shadow by the neighbour’s garage, a slight movement by the hedge… Daddy, there’s someone in the back garden, I saw a… Minogue forced the groaning door of his imagination shut. Can’t think like that now, waiting and worrying. Everyone’s doing the best he can…
Minogue joined Kilmartin on his hunkers by the back window on Farrell’s side of the car. Gallagher was handling the radio traffic from the back seat, the coiled lead from the dashboard stretched almost taut, a handset in his other hand.
“That’s the last one brought in just now,” growled Farrell. “Except for this Gibney.”
“You have the other Army fella, Cunningham?” asked Kilmartin.
“Meek as a lamb, but he’s saying nothing.”
“Turn up a gun or anything in his place?” Kilmartin persisted.
“No,” Gallagher answered. “We found street maps and some kind of an itinerary marked out though, with times written in on the maps. It looks like a tail on someone who travelled by car over that route. Could have been a planned hit.”
“Not a minute too soon,” said Farrell sharply. “Tell Johnny Tynan that the next time you see him, Matty.”
Minogue said nothing.
“How many in the bag now, so?” said Kilmartin.
“Ten of the eleven on your list… twenty-three all told,” said Gallagher. “Sorry, it’s twenty-four.”
“Jases,” whispered Kilmartin. “Are there any more Army and Gardai?”
“No,” Farrell interrupted. “The ones we fingered, we got them off the phone feeds. Some of them might be duds though. This last bugger, we had to wait for him since nine. He was visiting his wife in the hospital. She had a baby at seven o’clock this evening. Did you ever hear the like of that for timing? Can you see us going into the maternity ward and clipping his hands in front of his missus?”
Kilmartin snorted. “Great work, Tommy,” he said.
“I’ll be a lot happier when Gibney’s out of that house,” replied Farrell harshly. “I don’t like this one little bit. You’d think he had a sixth sense the way he left a few minutes before the arrest team showed up at his place.”
“Gorman’s missus and the three children are in there, all right,” said Kilmartin.
Gallagher checked with the radio van. There had been no calls to Gorman’s house.
“Looks like it’s sealed nicely all the same,” said Kilmartin.
“Buy me a pint and a small one on the head of it,” grunted Farrell. “What the hell is Gibney doing in there?”
“He may have a lot of persuading to do with Gorman, by the sound of that earlier call we heard off the tape,” Minogue observed. “The nearer we get to the Ard Fheis, the more Gorman’ll need to be persuaded.”
“I suppose so,” said Farrell. “We couldn’t get into the bloody house all day. The missus was home with one of the kids, so we couldn’t get any device inside the house at all. Take too long to rig up an infra-red mike on the windows with all the houses here so higgledy-piggledy. Christ, I’d give my right ball to hear what they’re saying to one another in there right now.”
Kilmartin glanced quickly at Minogue. Both men remembered a recent Special Branch blunder which had involved the use of directional microphones in one of their stake-outs. A Branch specialist had been perched on a wall, headphones on and pointing a dish toward an anchored yacht in Howth harbour one night over the summer. The Gardai had been called by a citizen who was suspicious of such a person pointing what looked like a Martian weapon at the boat. Rather than alert people on the yacht to the surveillance, the Branch man had allowed himself to be arrested. Farrell would not want his officers lampooned in cartoons as they had been after that affair, if neighbours of the Germans found men perching on their window-sills or in their apple trees pointing things at the Germans’ house.
The car radio came alive with a click and a hiss: “ Phone’s ringing in the house, over-”
“Do it, so,” hissed Farrell.
Gallagher squeezed the transmit button on his handset.
“Alert to all units. This is Control. Repeat: alert to all units. Phone is ringing in the house. Repeat: phone is now ringing-”
Gallagher’s hand was shaking as he released the button. The radio van began transmitting a patch from the relayed phone-tap. Minogue felt his leg cramping but he ignored it. The familiar double ring of the telephone came eerily from the radio. Farrell had his hand on the door release, body poised to elbow the door open. Minogue moved
