right?”
“She didn’t give me the treatment last night anyway.”
“Wait till court, bucko. Jesus wept. She’s an expert on everything. Did you hit the sack at all?”
“Enough of it. Is Shea in?”
Kilmartin’s brow creased with the effort of holding back a comment. Minogue wondered if Kilmartin knew of Detective Garda Shea Hoey’s habits lately.
“You know I’m off starting tomorrow. Get a break for a few days.”
Kilmartin’s brow shot up. He nodded toward his office. As Minogue followed him, he saw a yawning Hoey slope in past Eilis’s desk.
“Just give me a hand in drafting a press release to warn all the gutties and head-cases that they’re to wait until you come back from your holiday to-”
“You’re a howl, Jimmy.”
“Just a bit of levity, Matt. Don’t get your rag out over it. Course there’s no bother. Sure haven’t you overtime built up like a bank?”
“Good, so.”
“Yes. Morale is everything.” The Chief Inspector nodded his head as he spoke now. “A bit of R and R to keep you sharp. It builds morale, let me tell you. You can throw your hat at the technical stuff if you haven’t the morale built up. Amn’t I right?”
The phrase echoed in Minogue’s thoughts: Build the morale? Sounded like Kilmartin was trying out a phrase he had heard in his hob-nobs with senior Gardai. The new Garda Commissioner, John Tynan, had made Kilmartin and other senior Gardai jittery. Kilmartin knew that Tynan was planning a major reorganisation of the Gardai. The new Garda Commissioner’s back was not for slapping and Kilmartin, the tribal chief with his repertoire of bombast and charm, still struggled to find a purchase on the metropolitan modern, Tynan. Minogue bumped into Tynan more than chance allowed. Wary of him, he still liked the Commissioner’s dry wit, especially its effects on the likes of Jim Kilmartin.
“But Jases, look outside, it’s bucketing. Are you going to hide at home and do a bit of wallpapering and painting or something?”
“A visit to Clare for a day or two. Then I was half thinking of somewhere like… Santorini.”
Kilmartin frowned but Minogue let him dangle for a few moments.
“It’s in Greece.”
“Well that’s very exciting, I’m sure.”
“Wouldn’t mind a week there if we could get a cheap seat. Morale, don’t you know.” He frowned back at Kilmartin. “Build morale, like.”
Kilmartin didn’t register receipt of the gibe.
“Have you court?” he asked instead.
“Ten days’ time,” Minogue answered. “State has no plan to call me up. Yet.”
“All right so. But listen. There’s something I heard last night that I didn’t like one little bit. Not saying there’s a fly in the ointment as regards you and Kathleen having a fling off in wherever.”
“Santorini. You have to ride on the back of an ass to get up from the ferry, I hear.”
Kilmartin’s brow creased again.
“Arra Jases you can do that below in Belmullet, man,” he scoffed, referring to his home town in Mayo. He narrowed his glance.
“I bumped into Tom Boyle at a shindig. You know Tom, don’t you? Got a kick up the ladder the same time Tynan got the throne.”
Minogue remembered a slim, dapper Chief Superintendent Boyle from a drinks party at Kilmartin’s new house in Killiney. Boyle now occupied Tynan’s former position of Assistant Garda Commissioner.
“I know him not to run him over in the street, I suppose.”
“Uh-huh. Well. Tom says that Tynan’s a week away from a final decision about ‘reorganisation.’ Says Tynan is a holy terror in committee. Won’t listen to reason. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I do and I don’t.”
Kilmartin flashed a wily smile.
“Come on now, Matty. Don’t lay the ace and you with the knave in your fist. You and Tynan are thick enough when you want to be.”
Minogue’s thoughts had flown to the prospect of a large white coffee in Bewleys. A read of the paper, plenty of noise and chat. Sociable, solitary, solace-noisy Dublin’s best secret.
“Well? Has he dropped any hint to you about folding up the Squad here?”
Of course the travel posters would have been treated to highlight the blue of the Mediterranean, Minogue thought, throwing up the whitewashed walls to startle the eye. Turquoise…but the pictures couldn’t be all hammed. Fishing nets and boats bobbing in the harbour. He heard Kilmartin’s tones straying into the combat zone.
“He doesn’t use me as a sounding board, Jim. It’s just social and how-do with him.”
“That a fact?” Kilmartin asked with his eyebrows arched. “Well, Tom Boyle isn’t one for idle chat, let me tell you. No flies on Tom, by Jesus. No sirree Bob.”
Minogue turned his gaze on Kilmartin but didn’t see him. He knew as well as Kilmartin that there had been a stay of execution on the current structure of the Murder Squad for several years. The Squad had been slated to move to Garda Headquarters proper in the Phoenix Park, adjacent to the Forensic Science Lab and the nabobs who could look over Kilmartin’s shoulder day to day.
But by dint of Kilmartin’s work, the Squad had not yet been folded back into its parent group, the Technical Bureau. Kilmartin had parleyed, parried and placated his way into preserving his fiefdom. He had taken in more trainees from Garda Divisions all over the country. He had circulated Murder Squad detectives through other areas of the Technical Bureau to broaden their expertise. Kilmartin had made exemplary use of the new and emerging technologies. He had integrated computers and new communications protocols flawlessly. He had sat through complaint sessions with ranking Gardai from the country who were riled at having to run to Dublin for help in murder investigations.
“I really don’t know any more than yourself, Jimmy.”
Kilmartin changed tack.
“Maybe you don’t give a fiddler’s fart, Matt.”
“Well, there are days…”
Kilmartin leaned in over his desk.
“Look, head-the-ball. You think I don’t know what’s going on? Me bollicks. I know you. Shy but willing, we say at home, like an ass chewing thistles. You know Tynan a damn sight better than I do. Find out what the hell he thinks we don’t do well here. What we can do to keep him away. Budget? Public relations? More trainees? Christ, he can’t complain about the stats! Didn’t we clear 95 per cent last year? Well…aside from the feuding, of course.”
A feud between the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army had blown a large statistical hole in the Squad’s proud record. As though to taunt Kilmartin personally, both groups had taken up the habit of abducting a victim in the North and then killing him inside the border of the Republic-or vice versa. More often than not, this grisly ruse left the Royal Ulster Constabulary, whom Kilmartin despised, the kidnapping investigation and the Gardai the murder investigation.
Kilmartin’s tone had grown moody.
“It’s just that I know Tynan is looking right through me anytime I talk to him,” he said.
Bewleys in Grafton Street would be just about right at this time of the day. The dinnertime mob gone. But the rain? Jam the car up on the path in Dawson Street and scamper over. With any luck it’d be robbed. How much would insurance pay out for an eight-year-old Fiat…?
“Well?” Kilmartin repeated.
“I’ll give it my considered opinion. Will that do you?”
Kilmartin scowled and fixed Minogue with a one-eyed glare.
“When will you be talking to Monsignor Tynan, then?”
The irritation rushed back to Minogue.
“Jimmy-” Kilmartin waved away his response.
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “ ‘Tynan plays above board.’ ‘He’d come straight to me to sort anything
