“Did Paul do much of this stuff?”
“No he didn’t, actually. He hated it, if you really want to know. I rotate staff through that job. It’s a constant issue, potentially anyway.”
“Did he do well at it?”
“Well… he didn’t, I’d have to say. His strengths were in other areas. He didn’t have the killer instinct really-”
Fitzgerald stopped.
“What a stupid thing to say, after what has happened. What I meant to say was that Paul found this part of the work pretty distasteful.”
“What did he like to cover in the line of his work then?”
“He liked fairy stories.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That’s what we call them here. Sort of like good news, news that has or could have a happy ending. A new centre for adult education, more money for battered wives’ shelters, something progressive in the schools. Paul wasn’t a hungry bollocks like the rest of us, keen to tear at the vitals of those who misgovern and undo us. A bit nice, was our Paul.”
Fitzgerald’s demeanour changed with the last sentence, said slowly as if considering something foreign to him. His eyes were now less alert and guarded, Minogue believed.
“That doesn’t get any one very far, does it?” Minogue said.
Fitzgerald looked glum when he left them with Downey to open Paul Fine’s desk. Minogue had twenty minutes to look through its contents. He found two card indexes, a half-dozen school copybooks, some used, a small cassette-recorder you could shove in your pocket. No cassette in it, none in the drawer. Over a dozen hanging-file folders. Minogue left the files in the cabinet and looked through the copybooks. Fine had apparently kept notes. Minogue could read most of the pages, some home-made shorthand excepted. The most recent date appeared to be almost three weeks previously-notes from an interview which concerned agricultural fertilizers turning up in rivers.
One card index held names and addresses, listed alphabetically. The other, also bound with a rubber band, detailed lists of subjects. Minogue made sense of most of the topics. Fine had dated previous broadcasts on some items. Opening to P, Minogue saw ‘ Papal Visit- expenses’, followed by references to radio and television broadcasts. An idea for a future story on the radio, probably. Minogue checked ‘ Israel’ and found sub-topics too: ‘ Irl-Isl. (dpltc.)’, ‘Isl.- S. Africa’, ‘Isl.-West Bank’. Fine’s system also noted related subjects and programmes with some references to print media: ‘ I.T.’ for Irish Times, ‘Gdn.’ for Guardian, ‘Ind’ for the British Independent. The different media references were colour-coded, yellow for radio programmes, black for newspapers, red for television. Nothing under A for Arab. Stupid to expect that. No ‘ League for Solidarity… ’ either. Minogue found entries for the IRA and Intelligence Services. Methodical fella, Paul Fine. If he was bored some day or short of a topic he could go to his Index and even whet his appetite further by looking at some previous treatments of topics. None of his sources was dated earlier than two years back. Maybe he skimmed off the older entries at the end of every year and started new cards to stay up-to-date…
Hoey was fingering through the file folders in the drawers of the desk. Fitzgerald had indeed stuffed what he had found on the top of the desk into the drawers. A packet of Carroll’s cigarettes, a telephone message on red paper to call Mary. Minogue took the number to check against Mary McCutcheon’s. A small internal phone directory was pinned to the partition in front of the desk with postcards and cartoons next to it. There were several receipts and credit-card flimsies in the drawer, none less than a week old, and pens, pencils and biros in profusion. Minogue noted the Access card number to check for attempted uses since Fine’s death, and found a slip of paper with two names on it. He was able to read one of the names directly: H. All. The other looked like Khatib. Sounded Arabic, too. Surnames? He copied them.
Minogue pocketed the copybooks and flattened them in the inside pocket of his jacket. He handed the two card indexes to Hoey who promptly stuffed one in each pocket.
Minogue locked the desk. He found Fitzgerald with his head encased in headphones the size of polite teacups behind the glass wall of a studio.
“I’m holding on to the key,” said Minogue. “It’s out of your hands for the moment, but thanks very much for acting promptly and securing what may be valuable clues. It may prove useful, I don’t know. There’ll be a detective back to go through the stuff properly. Phone me if you have something, would you? Questions, recollections, anything you hear. Complaints too, if you want.”
Fitzgerald nodded without removing the apparatus. As Minogue turned away, Fitzgerald beckoned to him and he pried one of the headphones away from his ear.
“Do you have anything to do with the Ryan business down in Tipperary?”
“I did,” replied Minogue.
“We’re going to be having a WAMmer here for a live interview about twenty after. Do you know of the Women’s Action Movement?”
Minogue nodded but didn’t take the bait. “I’d better make haste then,” he murmured.
“Aha, I see. I just wanted a detail cleared up. Someone suggested it to me last night and it stuck in my head. You know how everyone has an opinion on this-whether it should be considered murder and all that?”
“All we do is give our evidence to our department up in the Park. They process it, file evidence, word it and then they throw it to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP lays the charges on behalf of the State.”
“OK. I know for a fact that this woman from WAM is going to be talking about the case being a psychological watershed.”
Minogue thought of incontinence. “What’s a psychological watershed when it’s at home?”
“The Ryan woman killing that husband of hers, fighting back. All the claims about wife abuse in holy Ireland. The line you’ll hear this evening will be about a revolution in Irish life, women not taking it any more from Church or State or husband.”
Minogue fixed on Fitzgerald’s ‘line’. Everything was a ‘line’ in this racket, then. Minogue knew the fascination which the Ryan case seemed to hold for many people all over the country and he was suspicious of it. Jimmy Kilmartin himself, that distant look in his eye, was that a portent of ‘a psychological watershed’?
“It’s the whole bit about the strong woman figure in the Irish psyche, I was told last night. That’s what strikes a chord with everyone,” Fitzgerald continued. “So tell me, do the Gardai recognize any significance in how Fran Ryan was killed?”
“He was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife,” Minogue replied cautiously. “Not on any altar of sacrifice or anything. No incantations or signs painted on the wall…”
“Yes, but how many times?”
“Ah, I bet you know yourself, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
“Thirty-seven, am I right?”
“You are,” replied Minogue.
“So yous don’t see any significance or ritual thing about that?”
“To do with where the planets were, is it?” Minogue tried.
“No. Fran Ryan was thirty-seven when he died.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Minogue and Hoey were five minutes late for the meeting. Minogue guessed Gallagher for the one who looked like a graduate student, subtly raffish and smart, mustachioed and clad in denim. Kilmartin was whispering with a sergeant whom Minogue recognized as a forensic technician who was always trying to organize golf tournaments which were a cover for lengthy booze-ups.
He walked to Gallagher and introduced himself. Gallagher’s accent was the faintly interrogative earnestness of Donegal.
“You don’t mind guiding these fellas here through your stuff too, do you?” asked Minogue as he glanced around the room. “We’re all off the Squad here. Keating. That’s Shea Hoey there I came in with. The world and his mother knows Jimmy Kilmartin, I’ll bet: ‘The Killer’ himself. The one he’s talking to has a preliminary from the scene and we’re waiting for anything from the autopsy. It’s early days yet with the pathology, though, so we shouldn’t be expecting anything proper until later this evening.”