Both policemen watched the taxi stopping in front of their own car. A middle-aged woman emerged hurriedly from the back seat, her eyes red from crying. She ran to the gate and pushed it open. A younger woman stayed to pay the taxi-man and then she too hurried up the steps to the door, which was already opening. Fine stood in the doorway, his arms by his side, the shock clear on his face now. Both women embraced him. It seemed to take an effort more than he could summon for him to embrace them in return. He stood with his eyes closed as they drew him back into the house between them.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Hoey whispered tersely. His fingers jabbed at the packet of Majors in his haste to get another cigarette. Minogue felt the stab of grief keener this time.
“For the love of Christ,” Hoey mumbled, his hands shaking with the lighted match wavering at the end of the cigarette. “Will this day never end?”
“That’s the sister-in-law he’s been waiting on, I’d say. He’ll be out in a minute,” Minogue said. His chest heaved once, twice. He wondered if Hoey felt the same ache of shame as he did, the same confusion after realizing that it was shame.
It was five minutes before Fine reappeared at the door. Johnny Cohen was with him and both men were wearing black hats with modest brims. Hoey was out of his seat and holding the back door open by the time the two men had walked to the gate. Fine was very pale now.
There was no talk in the car. Minogue stared out the front window all the way to Vincent’s Hospital. Cohen had his hand under Fine’s arm when they stepped from the car.
Minogue heard Hoey’s ‘Jases’ under his breath before he himself saw Kilmartin and God Almighty, Garda Commissioner Lally, in the hall. God Almighty was in a civvy suit. Kilmartin danced attendance on him, seconding his nod to Minogue before they advanced to meet Fine. Minogue saw Kilmartin’s signal to stay back. The Commissioner took Fine’s hand. Fine nodded but seemed dazed. He did not look at any of the policemen’s faces. Cohen seemed to be trying to get closer to Fine, his hand firm under Fine’s elbow now. The Commissioner’s head bent close to Fine’s and Minogue heard “condolences… family… sincere… outrage…” Kilmartin followed with a briefer handshake. Minogue heard an “everything possible…” at the end of Kilmartin’s whisper.
Minogue went to the toilet. He took his time washing his hands. He washed his face then, and checked that his hairline had not scampered back another inch or two since that morning. Then he stooped and took a drink from the tap. He recalled the doctor kneeling by the body on the beach, shaking his thermometer, and shivered at the commonplace indignity of death. Kilmartin barrelled into the toilet just as Minogue was ready to take more stock of the face looking back at him from the mirror. Kilmartin stepped to the urinal and fumbled.
“That’s the boy, all right. At least we got that part right.”
“Did he give God Almighty an earful about not hearing it from the Gardai first?” asked Minogue.
“No he didn’t. Relief all around, let me tell you. Jases, I would have given out the pay about that if I were him.”
“I’ll wait outside,” said Minogue.
“Don’t be running off on me now, do you hear me, Matt? God Almighty wants to see the pair of us after you’ve seen Fine home.”
Minogue did not try to hide his unease.
Hoey drove stiffly, with almost ostentatious care, as though carrying a delicate or explosive cargo, Minogue thought. Billy Fine’s slack, pale face didn’t turn to meet Minogue’s eyes but stayed, instead, directed toward the window. Minogue did not take notes: he knew that Hoey was soaking it all up too. Hoey steered the car up through Ranelagh on the return journey to Fine’s home, while Johnny Cohen held Fine’s hand on the back seat. Minogue had watched Cohen dart occasional angry stares at him during the drive, and had returned them several times. All right, be protective, Minogue was ready to tell Cohen, but don’t get in the way of any scrap of information that’ll help us to catch Paul Fine’s killer.
“Lily couldn’t stand Dublin,” Fine murmured. “That’s the long and short of it. And I don’t blame her for that, not one bit. The heartbreak was that Paul couldn’t stay away from Dublin, probably for the same reasons that Lily couldn’t stay in it.”
Cohen coughed; a sure sign, Minogue decided, of anger that he was trying to control. He sensed that Cohen was the prickly guardian of a community which did not welcome prying Gentiles.
“How long were they married?” Minogue asked.
“Two years,” said Fine tonelessly. “She tried, you know,” he then said and glanced momentarily at Minogue. “Even with our community here she still felt like a stranger.”
Minogue watched Cohen scratching behind an ear, and wondered if Cohen could hold off making a remark.
“ ‘Strangers in a strange land’,” said Fine. He let out a sigh and his free hand went to his eyes. Minogue looked away as Fine’s head went down. Cohen leaned close to his friend and whispered in his ear. Fine nodded several times and relaxed against Cohen’s bulk. Hoey’s frown had deepened, and he seemed to be squeezing the wheel very tightly as if willing the car to move. Minogue waited.
“Anyway,” Minogue heard Billy Fine say,“that’s our lot, maybe. Paul wasn’t as thick-skinned as our other children. David’s set up as an orthodontist in London. Never come back, I imagine. Julia’s engaged to an American fella she met at a conference on plant genetics…”
Minogue stole a glance at Fine and noted the wry expression.
“We’d given up her getting married,” Fine added with the beginnings of a faint smile. He met Minogue’s cautious eye and smiled weakly. “Tough piece of work, the same Julia.”
“Great,” said Minogue. “The only way to be, I’m thinking. We have one like that. She’d frighten the wits out of lesser mortals.”
Fine’s smile rallied, but then dropped off his face. He turned to look out of the window again.
“I gave you that woman’s name, didn’t I?” said Fine. Minogue looked from Fine to Cohen. Fine seemed to sense the tension immediately, and he sat up and looked at Cohen. “Oh it’s all right, Johnny. For God’s sake, it’s not dirt or anything. Everything counts in this line of work. I gave you her name, didn’t I?”
Minogue nodded. Paul had had a girlfriend, Mary McCutcheon. She was a journalist.
“Although he never talked to me directly about things like that.” Fine paused as though to weigh his words. “He never introduced her to us. I think he was ashamed. Yes. But I believe he was very fond of her.”
Minogue felt the acid sting of tears on his own eyes and he turned back in his seat, blinking, while Billy Fine wept in the arms of his friend.
CHAPTER THREE
“Did any of ye hear of these lunatics before?”
Kilmartin and Minogue shook their heads.
“The League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Not a foreign accent either. Mother of Jases, as if we didn’t have enough to be going on with,” the Commissioner declared. “I have a lot of faith in you fellas. So does the whole country too, let me tell you. Yous have the nose for getting convictions.”
Minogue stole a glance at the neck stretching the collar, the farmyard face. Gardai had always had a measure of suspicion for their Commissioners since the force was founded in 1922. There had been autocrats and weaklings, Napoleons and incompetents in the post. It didn’t take a Leftie to declare publicly that every Garda Commissioner was too much under the finger of his political overseer, the Minister for Justice. Too political.
“You can’t imagine the pleasure I had putting me name to last year’s Report on Crime,” said the Commissioner.
Minogue’s gargoyle within sniggered: did he mean the 450-odd crimes in which firearms were used? The seizure of four rocket-launchers by accident, perhaps? Maybe Lally meant the overall detection rate of 32 per cent, published in black and white for the public to get the willies over? Maybe the state of community-Gardai relations in Dublin, the one county with half the country’s population…?