“It’s clean, the whole thing. We got to see this Egan that he mentions and Egan confirmed that Khatib and another student were up on some mountain in Kerry over the weekend with him. Clean living. Why can’t they go drinking like everybody else, I ask myself. Khatib never heard of Fine. Didn’t know of any murder.”
“Now, this one here, Ali. He has a Jordanian passport but Gallagher says he is or was Palestinian. We had to put him on a Section 30 to shut him up. He’s a hot lad entirely.”
Hoey did not read this one. Minogue looked up from the half-page statement once to see Hoey’s lack of interest.
“Ali more or less dared the detective-who is it? O’Reilly from Store Street-to charge him. ‘What possible offences could I have committed against the Irish State?’ sort of thing. Knows his law,” said Hoey.
“Resist at all?” asked Kilmartin.
“No sir. If he had shut up he would have been home in bed by eleven o’clock instead of walking home at half-two in the morning. He’s a member of the Irish-Arab society, quite legit. More of an intellectual than anything else. He has a tongue like a rasp on him. He knew a lot about Irish politics, if that’s any consolation. Never heard of or knew anyone called Fine. He spent Sunday afternoon studying in his flat and he gave two names to corroborate.”
Hoey turned to the next statement. Minogue knew that they had nothing to help the investigation along, with these three students. They read through the remainder slowly. Keating sat at the table quietly without announcing himself.
“Did you put in a ‘want’ to police where this Ebrahim fella is supposed to be visiting, in Nottingham?” Minogue asked.
“Yes sir. There was a reply on the telex this morning. He is there, and his sister is married and living there too.”
Gallagher’s lists, Minogue thought: have to go back to them and widen the net.
“Only one admitted to knowing about the murder. None said anything to suggest that they knew Fine at all or knew that he was a Jew,” Hoey went on. “None professed to know of any organization called the League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People. One of them, the Mahoud fella three statements back, said he’d like to hear more about them. Smart-arse. Later on, as you’ll see if you read the end of his statement again, he says that if anyone’d know of such a group, he would.”
“Bit of a braggart, is he?”
Hoey shrugged and looked around the table as if to invite optimism.
Kilmartin coughed. “If we’re going to follow along with this line,” he began slowly, “I see two possibilities.”
He paused to light his cigarette.
“The outfit we want is a splinter, maybe a whole new group. It’s baptism of fire, if you like.”
“Like a declaration to take them seriously?” said Keating.
“Yes. I can’t see IRA involvement here at all, beyond maybe renting out some guns to this group. These people are likely young and have some contact with groups who have guns. A new crowd arriving here doesn’t have that contact, but a splinter group would. As for the IRA, they wouldn’t have anything to do with killing a Jew. Pardon me putting it like that. If they wanted to take a swipe at the judiciary here, they wouldn’t have picked Fine’s son. And if they did, they would admit doing it, am I right?”
Minogue nodded.
“So you have educated or semi-educated people with heads full of theories about how the Irish are in the same boat as the Palestinians maybe,” Kilmartin went on. “Fringe people, maybe did a bit of university, enough to get themselves confused.”
“Where ignorance is bliss…” murmured Hoey.
“Now you have it. Learned just enough to stay stupid. Definitely not for the man in the street. He doesn’t give much of a shite what’s going on in the Middle East-until some of the UN troops start getting shot. The IRA will take the guns and talk about the Palestinian cause but bejases…” Kilmartin concluded with a scornful pull at the cigarette.
“Gallagher says that the IRA wouldn’t touch Muslim fanatics with a ten-foot pole, sir,” said Keating. “On account of how the Ayatollah and his mob hate anything to do with socialism.”
“Oh, does he now?” said Kilmartin.
“But there might be another kink in this, sir-if you’ll pardon me saying so,” rejoined Keating. “Remember that Fine used to be enough of a Leftie for the Branch to have a file on him. Could we be talking about some class of a falling-out here?”
“We need to know where he was killed,” Minogue interrupted. “I think we’re jumping the gun here. What was the other possibility you thought of?” he asked Kilmartin.
“Just that it might be a group we know who did the murder-except that they don’t want to get a bad name on the head of it.”
The policemen fell silent.
“The timing of the call to the paper,” said Minogue. “That’s something I’m having trouble with.”
“We up and left for Killiney after the call came through from Dalkey Station,” Hoey joined in. “While ye were on the train out, that’s when the call came into the Press.”
“Ten twenty-nine,” said the exacting Keating.
“And that was only twenty minutes or so after the body was first sighted and reported to Dalkey Station. That’s odd. Why call then to claim responsibility?”
“Maybe they were going to call that time anyway,” suggested Keating. “We can’t be sure right now that it wasn’t coincidence.”
“The world treats persons who rely on coincidences rather harshly,” said Minogue. “I think they knew that Fine was to be found shortly or had just been found.”
“Couldn’t have anything to do with the oul‘ lad who saw him though,” said Kilmartin. “Seventy-odd years of age. He’s nothing to us at all, at all.”
“Yes, but why call if there’s no body? I mean, if they dumped Paul Fine in the sea so as he might float off and not be found… They must have known that the body would be found. Leave the motive for killing him in the first place: what does it say about the planning that went into the killing? They attempted to make the body disappear, to all intents and purposes. So why would they want to call and claim responsibility for a murder, when they didn’t want the body found?”
“Unless they saw, or knew about, the oul‘ fella finding him Monday morning,” said Kilmartin. He was beginning to enjoy himself, Minogue realized, speculating out loud, prodding discussion. Maybe Jimmy Kilmartin had longed to play second fiddle for a long time so that he could throw ideas around and not have to feel silly if they came to nothing? Or was there a little malice in it, seeing how much Minogue could stay on top of an investigation which looked like it could become an intractable mess?
“Or it means that the body wasn’t dumped that far away from where it was found,” said Keating vaguely. “It could have been pushed in from Killiney beach itself, and the tide didn’t do the job they hoped it would.”
“There’d have been people on that beach until dark,” said Hoey. “They’d have seen any body floating even fifty feet offshore.”
“But the point is,” Minogue tried to recover his thread, “if they had planned this killing and they really wanted to have the body disappear, they could have arranged that. So, the timing of this killing was not of their choosing, I think. It may be that there was no elaborate plan to kill Paul Fine at all.”
The policemen took turns scrutinizing the walls.
“What word from Pat Gallagher on the Ports of Entry lists?” Minogue tried.
“Em, nothing yet,” said Hoey quietly.
“Where’s this Mary McCutcheon one?” asked Kilmartin. “Someone has to know what Fine was at over the weekend.”
“She’s up in Sligo doing a story, sir,” said Hoey. “She’s to come down to Dublin on the train this morning first thing. She only heard about it last night herself. She’s a reporter for the Irish Times.”
“Is she his girlfriend or intended or what?” asked Kilmartin.
Hoey shrugged. “Paul Fine’s Da knew of her but never met her. Mickey Fitzgerald says that she was more or less Paul’s girlfriend. Ten ten, the train schedule says, in Kingsbridge.”