Minogue was in a bad enough humour for not having thought of other places Fine might have stored his work. He had phoned Fitzgerald, hoping to short-cut Doyle’s work by finding out whether Paul Fine did use the computer. Fitzgerald had told him that he didn’t know and Minogue had had to believe him.
“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” wheezed Kilmartin, falling into step with Minogue. “Jases, you’re out of there like a blue-arsed fly. Take your time, man dear. I know where you’re off to, anyway.”
“How so?” said Minogue.
“I asked Her Nibs,” said Kilmartin, referring to the Delphic Eilis.
“‘His honour is making a bee-line for Bewley’s,’ says she, ‘by the look in his eye.’ Wait till I tell you-I just heard that Ryan woman was released without bail. She’s home with her children.”
Minogue didn’t believe Kilmartin at first.
“I swear to God. She was charged with manslaughter, given her dinner and put out on to the street. That’s not the half of it. There was a crowd of Women’s Action heavies with her, having a hooley and dancing in the street. Bedlam. They took her back to the farm, bejases, and there’s a crowd of them staying to help her with the farm work and make sure nobody comes around that might blackguard her.”
Kilmartin began to laugh. It was the laugh of a Hollywood castaway gone mad from thirst in the Sahara, Minogue believed.
“It’s a bloody commune on the farm. WAMmers milking the pigs and feeding grain to the dog. A pack of lesbians in a commune, a revolution. They might declare a republic and what would we do then? Ha ha,” Kilmartin continued. Unbidden, he sat heavily into the passenger seat.
While Minogue piloted sourly down the quays, Kilmartin repeated bits of his news and views all the way to George’s Street. The newspaper headlines on a stand by the entrance to Bewley’s cut him short. He stopped and grasped Minogue’s arm. Minogue looked to the papers for more about Marguerite Ryan, the new heroine of Ireland.
“Look at that, would you,” Kilmartin hissed. “The busmen are going on strike. Isn’t that the last straw entirely?”
Minogue did not think so. He carried his large white coffee to a table near the window. Normally he would have tried to avoid this rather moribund branch of Bewley’s by loping on down to Westmoreland Street, another five minutes away. With Kilmartin in tow he had decided to cut his losses. Kilmartin sat down opposite. He could not stop shaking his head every few minutes when he returned to the subject of Marguerite Ryan. Minogue wondered if that was how erotic obsessions showed themselves.
“She’s actually getting away with murder. We did all the paperwork and sewed it up tight. The next thing you know is the Director of Public Prosecutions throws out the murder charge and… Maybe we ought to phone up and tell them she gave him one stab for every year of his mortal life.”
“Let the hair sit, Jimmy,” said Minogue acidly. “It’s not proof of premeditation. Stress can drive a body to episodic madness. That’s the be-all and end-all of it for me.”
Kilmartin was agog at Minogue’s dismissal.
“The urge might have been so strong that she couldn’t stop herself. Possessed,” Minogue added.
“The assessment says she’s the full shilling, Matt. There’s nothing about temporary insanity. Didn’t I read some rubbish in the papers about the WAMmers saying it has to do with a woman’s monthlies?”
The coffee had boosted Minogue into sarcasm.
“Anybody do a psychiatric assessment of Frances Xavier Ryan?”
Kilmartin made a face and sipped at his coffee.
“As for the premenstrual syndrome, I haven’t had it myself,” Minogue added. “I do be feeling sorry enough for myself when I have a little headache, even. Menstruation is no lark, I understand.”
Minogue enjoyed Kilmartin’s shock as he noted a face turning from the next table. Kilmartin bowed lower over the table and whispered like a schoolboy whose blasphemy might be overheard: “You mean to say that if your wife or mine gave either of us a clout one day and then said it wasn’t her fault on account of her you-know-what, that’d be fine and well by you?”
“It may be that I actually deserve a clout every now and then. It’s to your own head you should be looking, Jimmy.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Let me say this: Marguerite Ryan is no Tipperary Joan of Arc, but sooner or later she might have had to defend her life with that husband the way he was. Maybe she was the victim of a crime we paid no attention to.”
Minogue hid behind his coffee cup then. He expected Kilmartin to send a taunt his way about being bossed around by Kathleen and Iesult at home, now that Daithi was in the States. Kilmartin changed the subject instead.
“I say we sack the busmen and be done with it. People are fed up with them hooligans dictating to the public and causing hardship to everyone just because they want a few bob. They’re robbing us blind with the fares anyway.”
“ ‘ Sic transit… ’,” murmured Minogue.
“You’re telling me,” said Kilmartin quickly.
“Are you going to run for election on it?”
“Easy for you to laugh. I was half tempted several times to do something in politics: I couldn’t do much worse than the shaggers and shoneens we have now. Leadership is what we badly need if the country is to get going again,” declared the statesman Kilmartin.
Going where, Minogue wondered.
“Someone new, but someone who knows the ropes and won’t be tricked into siding with the old crowd. Someone with enough smarts not to be dragged into the pubs and the clubs and the old rigmarole. Are you with me?”
“I am indeed. Do you have anyone in mind?”
“There’s the fly in the ointment, Matt,” Kilmartin said earnestly. “I can’t see anyone on the scene right now. It breaks my heart to see the government gearing up for the Ard Fheis with the Chief and his cronies working up to an election after they’ve wasted some money on their constituencies. It’s a machine at work, not democracy, isn’t it?”
“You’re quite right.”
Kilmartin looked around the restaurant as though to glean more pleasant topics to raise with Minogue. Minogue’s thoughts drifted toward Paul Fine. Fine had been assigned to work on digging up dirt on these office-holders which even Kilmartin had consigned to the large domain of yobbos and chancers. It was an assignment which Paul Fine hadn’t been thrilled about. Was it because he was by birth estranged from the tribal in-fighting which Irishmen like Kilmartin revelled in?
“What about that Gorman, would he be to your liking?” Minogue asked Kilmartin.
“There’s an interesting one. Mind you he’s part and parcel of what has the country going to pot now. That’s not to say that he’s a completely lost cause, though. Maura at home was telling me the other day that Gorman is by no means a yes-man. He’s a good Minister, if you toe the line and keep up with him. It’s not an easy bed to lie in, being a Minister for Defence and you not being forty years of age, you know. But Gorman’s popular and he’s been to school, too. Still and all, if he’s anybody worth thinking about why is he with that crowd of hill-and-dale robbers that’re running the country into the ground right now?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be a voice in the wilderness,” said Minogue coyly.
“Could be. I don’t know if he has the belly in him for real leadership though. When it comes down to the wire he’ll be lining up at the trough with the rest of them-wait’ll you see. The Chief has his hatchet-men out all the time listening to see who might be getting too popular or who might be getting ideas of stepping out of line. They’d give Gorman the chop-very rapid like-if they found he was slipping the leash on the Chief.”