“Hmmm,” said Iesult.
“Do you know what I’m saying?” Minogue was conscious of trying to keep his voice low now.
“I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll practise that ‘Frankly, Mother, I don’t give a damn’ in case she freaks out. Tell me, anyway, what will you be wearing for the wedding? They all go to registry offices there, I suppose.”
“What wedding?”
“When Darling Daithi decides to tie the knot with Curvaceous Cathy, the All-American Girl, in the ol’ US of A.”
“You have a very sharp tongue, Iesult. I wouldn’t care to fall foul of it myself,” Minogue mustered. “Remember there’s many a man dug his own grave with his tongue, and didn’t know he was doing it until it was too late.”
After the call Minogue wondered if he had been less than truthful when he had told himself that he would not be jealous of Pat the Brain. It wouldn’t take a Freudian to drive this one home, especially when Patient Minogue freely admitted that he loved Iesult immoderately. Hidden in her cutting humour, he knew, was her own concern for Daithi.
Minogue phoned the Fines. The man’s voice answering was not Billy Fine’s.
“This is Inspector Minogue. Unless it’s a major upset to come to the phone, yes…”
Fine sounded like a man talking late at night, unhurried, tired but alert.
“Good man, Inspector. No, it’s all right. I had been thinking of phoning you. I wasn’t sure how your protocol works. We’ve had phone calls daily from the Garda Commissioner to tell us where things stand.”
“He gets his briefing from us.”
“All right. So what there is to know he has told us already,” said Fine.
“Now you have it. I was phoning, I think, to say hello. Just so as you know that any minute of the day there are policemen working on this. Everything’s being done that can be.”
“Well that’s reassuring, I suppose,” said Fine slowly. Minogue was certain there was no sarcasm under the delivery.
“And if I might inquire further, Justice…”
“You had better start calling me something other than that. Billy will do well enough.”
“If I might take a little of your time then, soon? I mean if I might put some questions to you about Paul. Very often the shock hides important facets of a person’s life, clues as to what might have happened. Returning to details after the initial shock can often yield up new, er…”
“Facts. Yes. I’ve been thinking, all right. Waiting for something to come to me. I’m fairly familiar with how the Gardai do this. I’m ready, if that’s what you want to know, but Rosalie may be out of the running for a little while yet.”
“I wouldn’t have expected-” Minogue began.
“Oh, don’t be too delicate now. Rose is a tough bird. But it’ll take a while longer. ‘If only’ is what comes to mind a lot.”
“There’s no getting used to it, I believe,” said Minogue gently.
“Isn’t that a fact. You will probably have realized by now that Paul was not like the other children. We found that we had to do things differently with him, and now of course…”
Neither man spoke for several moments. Minogue wondered if Fine was glad of somebody to chat to, someone outside the people in the house. The banter would help to sustain the mourning. There’d be plenty of time for weeping in between the stories, and for a lifetime to come after that.
“Ah,” said Fine as if concluding a line of thinking. “So you’re working away on it. Good. To judge by your Commissioner’s reaction to the mention of your name, you have left your mark. Naturally he’d tell me you were the real shemozzle after I made it plain I’d like you to be doing the work,” Fine continued.
“Seeing as he expected me to be on the warpath on account of who I am on the totem pole in the judiciary.”
“Are you on a warpath?” Minogue risked.
“How could I be? If you’ve ever had any calamity like this happen to you, you’d know that the only anger you can feel for a long time is the anger you feel against yourself and life in general for picking you out to land a tragedy on. You think you could have done better, prevented it. Made your feelings known better, told someone plainly what you thought. Do you know what I’m getting at?”
Minogue said that he did.
“What might begin to annoy me tomorrow, especially if I can’t get to sleep again, is the fact that we can’t go ahead with the funeral. You may not be familiar with our duty to inter the deceased as soon as possible. There was a time when we insisted that a Rabbi, or a relative at least, be with the deceased at all times up until the burial, you know. That used to cause no end of trouble. Johnny Cohen is more upset than I am, actually, but the State has to have its way. Three days, they say, and they’ll release Paul to us. It’s difficult explaining it to Rosalie without giving her the willies about what goes on in a post-mortem.”
The resignation was plain in Fine’s voice now.
“I may be able to do something,” said Minogue.
“I doubt you can, at all.”
“Can I come out to your house tomorrow, then? Would you mind me coming out?”
“Come out in the morning if you can. Half-nine would suit,” said Fine. “And just knock. We won’t be going anywhere.”
Hoey looked across to Minogue. Minogue rested his hand on the cradled receiver.
“Rough. That’s the stuff I can’t bear to do.”
“Rough isn’t in it,” Minogue murmured. “A terrible thing; the same the whole world over.”
For some reason Minogue had images of starving children with swollen bellies before him. Glazed, sickly eyes already hooded and marked with the inevitability of death; black children in their parents’ arms, themselves impossibly thin, looking fearfully into the television camera. That was death too, his gargoyle said.
“Never having things explained as to why it should be them.” Minogue murmured. Meaning, everything has to mean something eventually.
Hoey nodded slowly and dropped his gaze to the reports on his desk. He recovered a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. An image of Daithi came to Minogue then, the boy’s face a mask of puzzlement and resentment; Daithi wanting to ask him a question, to be answered, but no words coming from him. How was it that Minogue’s recollection of snapshots of a young Daithi was that of a boy’s face always frowning into the camera? Minogue sighed and tried to busy himself so that he might not feel this dead weight so keenly.
“Anything off the phones, Shea?”
“Four possible sightings in the Park on Sunday afternoon. They’re very iffy. The fella from the National Library is our most promising so far, I think. Did you get through yesterday’s, the ones from the beach?”
“I did indeed. Not hot at all,” said Minogue, sliding further into the trough.
“I was half-ways thinking of putting that car business under the scope again. The fella who was necking with his moth in the car-park late Sunday night, do you know who I’m talking about?”
Minogue nodded.
“Where there was a car parked there when he arrived and still there when he left. It’s a bugger entirely because we can’t get him to put a make on the car. I could nearly crucify him for being half-gargled and not noting details, but sure what can you do? At least he phoned us. I’d like to put out an appeal specific to the car-park though. Anyone who used it at all over the weekend…”
“Go ahead,” said Minogue. “Add it to tomorrow evening’s.”
Minogue unearthed his copy of the report on the tides for Sunday night. Hoey shook his head when he saw Minogue reading it.
“They covered themselves for anything there, didn’t they? ‘If the body was released an insufficient distance from shore between the hours of…’ What was it?”
“Eleven at night to three in the morning,” replied Minogue.
“I forget the exact terminology…”
“ ‘… a strong probability of it being washed up south-southwest of the point of release.’ They discount the boat thing, that’s something. If the body was dumped overboard, I mean.”