Hoey drove through Thomas Street, skirting the fringes of the Liberties. They drove past St Catherine’s church where the body of the hanged Robert Emmet had been decapitated and put on display to dissuade would-be rebels, who were welcome to observe dogs licking up Emmet’s blood. The streets were busy and full of a harsher afternoon sunlight which threw cutting shadows and glared off windscreens. Small groups stood by the bus stops looking for lifts here too. The bright light was not kind to Minogue’s humour and he found himself slipping from his morning cheer while the play of the sun on this old part of the city suggested the bare and frightening spaces of de Chirico and Magritte’s more unsettling works.
The city looked tired and over-used. Minogue thought of the pathetic fallacy and he made a half-hearted attempt to notice the school-children skipping by the pedestrians on the footpath. Idly he wondered which parts of Bloom’s long day and night had been spent in this part of the city. Should he try harder to read Ulysses again? But wouldn’t that resolve ruin the reading? It might help if he were to take a keener interest in the place-names and pubs and shops mentioned in the book. Kathleen had heard about walking tours of places mentioned in Joyce’s books, and she had suggested that her husband go on one instead of grumbling about not being able to get a handle on the book. There’d be Yanks, he protested, and he’d feel silly. But the man leading the tour is that fella from Trinity, the expert on James Joyce and he’s meant to be a howl… Minogue had never taken the tour.
Butchers’ shops, hucksters with tables of fruits and vegetables and little plastic whatnots, pubs with their doors open to dark and sepulchral interiors. Two drunken men sat on church steps and swayed as they argued. Without warning, the car in front braked. Hoey was fast, but he had been too close and the police car bounced dully off the back of it. Hoey turned off the engine and stepped out slowly, Minogue following. The other driver was looking down between the two cars. The back bumper of his ancient Cortina had merely collected another minor dent to add to the myriad others. The driver, a fat middle-aged man, unshaven and lumbering, gave the two policemen a disparaging look after he had surveyed the damage.
“We’re all right this time,” he said conclusively in a broad Dublin accent. Minogue smelled malty breath from the grizzled red face.
“If you had have signalled, we wouldn’t be standing around holding up the traffic,” said Hoey.
“You don’t say. If you hadn’t been a half-inch off me arse we wouldn’t be standing around,” the man retorted. “Didn’t yous know there’s a fuckin’ bus strike? I was pulling in to give these oul’ wans a lift.”
He nodded in the direction of a clump of bystanders gathered around a bus stop.
“Well, next time turning on your indicator might save you a few bob,” said Hoey.
“A few bob, is it? You’re a culchie, aren’t you? Up outa the bog, with shoes on and everything? Don’t you know that the car following is supposed to be able to stop, no matter what?”
“Within reason,” Hoey said.
“Within reason, me bollocks. Where’s the reason of keeping these poor oul’ dears waiting on a bus that’s never going to come? And the sun boiling down on them?” He turned to the group by the bus stop and shouted. “Hey missus, are your rashers getting fried there, and you waiting on the bus?”
An older woman with a hair-do like a poodle sticking out from under a head-scarf called back: “Amn’t I getting boiled meself here, sure.”
“See?” said the driver turning to Hoey. “This is Dublin, not Ballybejases. We look after one another in this city. And we don’t need fuckin’…” — he paused to mimic Hoey’s accent-“ ‘indicator lights’ to stop at bus stops and give lifts to the elderly that’s stuck by the side of the shagging road on account of the fact that yous culchies what are running the country can’t get yis’r fuckin’ act together-”
Minogue cut short the lecture on the political economy when he saw the barrel-chested man move towards Hoey with his forefinger jabbing the air in front of him.
“Give yourself a shake there,” said Minogue, “and don’t be making a show of yourself in the street. Do your good deed, and be off with yourself like a good man. There’s no damage done.”
“Another bog-trotter telling a Dublinman what to do. Be the living Jasus-”
“I’ll run you in if you don’t shut up,” Minogue snapped. He did not like the crowd; thickening on the footpath, watching.
“We’re Garda officers,” said Hoey. “You’re talking yourself into court here. Park that car now and go home. You’re half-cut already.”
“Two coppers!” the man shouted to the crowd. “Two coppers telling me I can’t stop me own car to pick up people, with the whole city bollicksed by the bus-strike. And all the culchies that are sitting below in the Dail, running the country and letting the bloody kip fall apart! Did yous ever hear the like of that?”
He stood with his arms spread wide in a theatrical appeal. Heads nodded and bobbed in the crowd. A youth with a crew-cut stepped off the footpath.
“Leave the man alone and mind your own fuckin’ business,” he said to Minogue. “Man is only trying to help people out.”
The cry of ‘culchie’ repeated brought Minogue’s anger back. “Listen here to me, now, mister. Get back up on that path there or you’ll be in on a breach of the peace.”
“You and whose army?” sneered the youth.
Just as Minogue realized that he’d have to collar the youth, a Garda squad car braked noisily beside the crowd. Two Gardai ran over. Minogue showed them his card without taking his eyes from the youth.
“I was just advising this citizen here to hit the trail.”
The young man’s stare faltered, then turned to a look of disgust before he regained the footpath and walked through the crowd. Minogue watched him stop once, look back and spit purposefully into the gutter.
“Are you going to park it, or do you want to blow in the bag?” asked one Guard.
“Hold on there a minute,” the driver began.
“Park it or go off with these two lads now,” Hoey repeated. The driver sat in behind the wheel and did a creditable job of parking by the kerb. The younger Garda asked him for his licence and insurance. Minogue nodded his thanks and sat back in the car after Hoey.
“What about the buses?” said the woman with the poodle hair.
“I don’t know, missus,” said Minogue through the open window. “We could fit two of ye down as far as Dame Street or so. More than that we can’t do.”
The woman nudged her companion and they stepped down off the footpath. A third elderly woman scurried after them. The three climbed into the car and wrestled their shopping bags over their knees. One giggled.
“Are we right then, ladies?” asked Hoey.
“Go ahead, driver,” one tittered. “And don’t spare the horses.”
“Yous aren’t going to land us in the slammer, are yous?” one piped. All three burst into shrill laughter. Minogue assured them that they would not be chained in the dungeons of Dublin Castle.
“Are yous really pleecemen? Yous must be detectives on account of the gear yous are wearing.”
“I’m eighty-two last July,” said the one with the reedy voice, “and I’ve never been in a police car in me entire life. I can remember gunfights in the streets of Dublin with the Black and Tans.”
“That must have been terrible,” said Hoey.
“It certainly was. It was great,” she replied. “Everyone had guns in their pockets them days.”
Hoey glanced saucer-eyed to Minogue and then looked to heaven.
“I hope nobody I know sees me in the back of a squad car,” said the third. “They might think I was having some excitement.”
The trio cackled again. Minogue heard dentures clacking.
“It’s the bloody busmen you should be locking up, you know,” said the poodle hair-do. “I was always union meself, and me dear Larry-God be good to him-wouldn’t hear a word ag’in the union either. But this is different, isn’t it?”
A chorus of agreement from the back.
“And the pensions might be cut too. Prices going up every day, it’s a holy show. Not to speak of the hooligans that’d rob you in broad daylight. There’s no jobs.”
Minogue nodded in agreement.
“Ah Jesus, but we showed the Black and Tans, didn’t we? Didn’t we, do you hear me talking?” said the poodle-haired firebrand. “And we’ll show the Brits again if we have to, won’t we?” she added vehemently.
The three women launched into a rousing version of ‘We’re all off to Dublin in the green’. Minogue believed that they all very much enjoyed the last line of the chorus as they leaned into it with gusto. “… To the echo of the Thompson gun!”
They sang the last verse before leaving the car at the corner of George’s Street.
“Ah, come on now,” Hoey protested vainly. “We can’t sit here in the car singing.”
“One last verse!” cried one, breaking away from the chorus. “Then we’re off!”
“… To the echo of the Thompson gun!”
Hoey drove quickly away from the kerb. The three waved and laughed from the footpath while passers-by stopped to look at the police car.
Deputy Commissioner Tynan phoned while Minogue was speaking with Kathleen.
“I must go, Kathleen. There’s a big-shot on the other line. I want to hold on to my job for a little while yet.”
He watched as Eilis tried to look severe, what to him might look Jesuitical, and he frowned at her, but she did not stop. Kilmartin thought that Tynan was a bit stuck-up, ‘too smart for his boots by times, without the common touch’. Minogue liked Tynan for those same reasons. Several times during the afternoon he had remembered Tynan’s impassive gaze in the Commissioner’s office, a gaze that might have been a mute appeal to join in appreciating the humour of life.
“More important than your wife?”
“If you can pay my salary, I’ll keep on talking to you.”
“You knew she was going away for the weekend.”
“I did,” replied Minogue. “But she wanted me to, em,‘tell you about it’. I was the messenger to be shot, I think.”
“At least she was frank about it. About those others going as well.”
“I’m thinking we should leave Iesult to do her own bidding, Kathleen, and not have her feeling guilty or that she has to sneak away. Look, I’ll phone you if I’m going to be late.”
Tynan’s voice betrayed no signs of anything but officialdom.
“I have instigated the process. I was obliged to set up a small team here to work on the matter: a team of two, to be precise. Very discreet, and reporting only to me.”
“May I ask if there have been any inquiries or reports directed to this concern before?”
“Ask, by all means, do. There have not. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been mention of officers’ membership of such organizations before, merely to say that nothing has been made of the matter. As for accounting for firearms and ammunition, that’s a matter for A Branch, as you well know. I’m not high in the firmament there.”
Firmament, Minogue thought. Maybe Tynan’s humour was so dry that… A play on fundament? Tynan had trained for the priesthood as a young man, thirty-odd years ago. Policemen who did not like any mystery to surround their fellows in the job attributed what they saw as Tynan’s frostiness to both the training and the native constitution of a fish, a cold fish.
“I have to meet with the Deputy Comm from A Branch within the hour. I propose to run the check as part of a type of secret spot-check, or surprise accounting. This has been done before as an aid to ensuring that care and use of firearms by Garda officers does not become slipshod.”
“Great,” said Minogue, meaning it.
“I bask in your praise,” said Tynan. “There is another matter which you may be interested in, one which we haven’t had a chance to discuss so far. Jim Kilmartin mentioned to the Commissioner that he’d like to find an ex-Opus Dei member so that he and you might have an insider’s view of the organization. The Commissioner mentioned it to me in passing. You may or may not know that I was destined for the priesthood many years ago, and at one time I was involved with Opus Dei.”
“That’s interesting,” Minogue fibbed while buying time so another part of his brain might penetrate the fog: why had Tynan called, if this was thirty years ago?
“It’s not really,” said Tynan. “ Ipso facto, I mean. I was interested in the mention of Opus Dei-surprised, even. I expect you’ll find yourself in Bewley’s before the afternoon is out, will you?”
“I beg your pardon?” from a flustered Minogue. He glared back at Eilis’ amused scrutiny of his embarrassment and felt the prickly heat radiate up to his scalp. Let her think it’s hot flushes for all I care, his gargoyle hissed.
“I’ve seen you feasting yourself there before of an afternoon. I’ll be there in Westmoreland Street, the non-smo part. Will you make a point of being there yourself?”
“I’m not sure I follow the arrangement.”
“I can hole up in my office if you want, Minogue, and we can get bored out of our skulls wishing we were out of the bloody place in a restaurant where we would discuss the matter just as thoroughly. Let’s do it the easy way. I have some titbits about Opus Dei for you.”
Minogue was not pleased to be feeling slightly apprehensive as he walked to Bewley’s. He regarded it as a sanctuary, a place where even Kilmartin’s company might be tolerable for a short while because the coffee and the noise and the faces swamped any attempts at being official. Why had Tynan not taken him aside after the meeting with the Commissioner? He remembered the steady eyes, not unlike those of a fish should a fish ever have lazy eyelids.
Tynan was not a policeman’s policeman at all. He had done his time dutifully in uniform and had worked his way up the ranks steadily, taking his exams. His superiors couldn’t help but notice that where Tynan went, order followed, and that much of their own job was made easier by the work of this diligent officer. Tynan didn’t seem to mind that others took the credit for his efforts. He had managed to reform many bureaucratic areas in the Gardai. “A mind like a steel trap,” Kilmartin had said several times, usually over pints. Oddly, Tynan had managed not to antagonize rank and file Gardai. He was new to Garda B Branch, and lately Minogue had heard quiet compliments being passed about him. B Branch now seemed to be caught in the grip of some odd efficiency and this efficiency was very quickly noticed by ordinary Gardai because B Branch dealt with their bread and butter. As well as each Garda’s personal file, Tynan’s dominion included transfers and promotions, leave and gratuities, discipline and training. Tynan, a man to be suspicious of because he had turned away from the priesthood, was in danger of becoming popular. Gardai would never again accept the dictatorial regime which had only begun to ease up in the early ‘70s. An unhappy coincidence of history-the North boiling over, and the aftermath of a commission of inquiry which had been scathing about Garda administration-had brought Gardai more say in their working conditions.
Tynan’s reserve had become the springboard for ribald jokes to be pitched out in Garda company. Minogue had heard the jokes but didn’t much like them. Tynan had married later than most and his wife was supposed to be very glamorous. Minogue remembered her laughing a lot and smoking American cigarettes at the parties and functions which she attended with Tynan. He thought he had heard Tynan say something to her in Latin once, and recalled the dry expression on his face while she burst out laughing. Lovely teeth. Jokes about what spoiled priests could do in the line of sexual behaviour were probably signs of an acceptance, Minogue guessed. They had to make him their own because he wouldn’t do so himself…
He spotted Tynan immediately next to the door in the nonsmoking room. Tynan nodded faintly and returned to his newspaper. Minogue, deciding to forgo the bun, carried the coffee slowly and planted it on the marble table-top. Tynan folded the paper and watched as Minogue shoved a spoon and a half of brown sugar into the cup.
“Just the job for this time of the day,” said Tynan. Minogue saw that Tynan’s civvies were well cut: navy blue, but lightweight, and an ironed white shirt. The tweed tie was to let the discerning know that he wasn’t a puritan.
“Do you like it?” Tynan said and looked down at the suit.
“It’s all right,” Minogue replied boldly.
“Roberta told me to buy it. Rank has its responsibilities. The Emperor has to have his clothes.” There was no trace of humour on Tynan’s features.
“There’s an expression about that, I believe,” Minogue hammed slightly.
“‘To lead the people, you must turn your back on the people,’” said Tynan. “You don’t want your followers looking at a poorly tailored back, don’t you know. If the suit impresses them, they’ll be less likely to spoil the cut by sticking a knife between your shoulders.”
“I have but the two suits myself,” said Minogue. “One is for funerals and the other one is gone too tight for me…”
Tynan nodded as if commiserating.
“I prefer to be in the uniform all day. I even have pyjamas done to look like a uniform, I suppose you know that.”
Minogue spluttered coffee, still too hot for his greed. Tynan knew of some of the jokes about himself, then.
“I heard that, all right,” he said. “I think the blue sits well, though.”
Tynan looked off into the middle distance.
“It’s the cut,” he murmured. “That’s why you pay the price, so says Roberta. She’s always right in the sartorial line. Those Protestants know how to dress, I tell you.”
Tynan sipped from his cup.
Roberta, Minogue echoed within. At least ten years younger than Tynan, so full of life, and she laughing away. American cigarettes, poise. What had Tynan said to her to make her laugh so much that time? A would-be Jesuit marrying a laughing Protestant-no wonder Jimmy Kilmartin was wary.
“Are you a regular here?” Minogue asked.
“No more than yourself. I know that you favour the place an odd time. Even Jim Kilmartin gets dragged in here too. It’s not on your file or anything. Now, about Opus Dei,” Tynan said quietly. He leaned over the table. “I told you that I was closely associated with them a long while back. This Brian Kelly, the lad in the car, he was a member?”
“Yes he was; high up in it. He had been a Numerary, but the pair we talked to said he was ranked as an Associate when he died.”
“You know that’s lower on the totem.”
Minogue nodded.
“Well that doesn’t happen often. You’re in or you’re out of the organization, if you’ve attained that standing. It’s usually all or nothing. I’m surprised-unless it was a temporary thing, a punishment.”
“They told us that he was going through his period of re-evaluation, his life and aims. That everyone has these… spiritual milestones.”
“An opportunity to grow in faith and commitment once the dark night is past?”
“You seem to know the tune well.”
“Humph. They haven’t changed much in that department, anyway. You know they come in for criticism, even from inside the Church?”
“No I didn’t,” Minogue replied. “I thought they were just very religious.”
“ ‘Just’ is right. There’s the charge of brainwashing against them. The way they recruit was the subject of some criticism a few years ago but it seems to have died down. They are very good at recruiting high-minded young people to throw in their lot with them. The initiates are usually very driven types of young men, very sincere, very conscientious and very clever… clever isn’t everything, is it?… the way only young adults can be, before the world announces itself to them in earnest. Hmm. This would be a chat to pass the time, though, if it weren’t for the context: Billy Fine’s boy.”
“Indeed,” said Minogue. “It was a cold-blooded murder. Savage. I want the killer very badly indeed, and I have less patience as the days go by.”
“That I noticed earlier in the afternoon. Let me ask you, now, what do you think is really going on here?”
“Like I said at the meeting, I’m beginning to think that the murder had something to do with Opus Dei. A youngster has come forward, a boy who had a glimpse of a man who may be the killer. He said the man looked like a copper. You know how it is with kids.”
Tynan nodded. “They tend to be a problem in so far as they see things a bit too clearly for our liking. But the claim about the fringe group and the Palestinians?”
“Sergeant Gallagher in the Branch has been banging his head on that one. He’s still interviewing but so far he has nothing to lead us with.”
“It’s a cover-up?”
“It might be and it might not. Just because the killer didn’t look like an Arab to the young lad who’s shaping up to be an excellent witness, that doesn’t mean…”
Minogue stopped when he saw Tynan nodding his head.
“We believe that Brian Kelly was also murdered and that the forensic will confirm that soon enough. So with those facts, we’re starting off with this line of investigation.”
“And Kelly was looking to talk to you one night late?”
“He was; we tape the calls to the help-line. We have the sense that Brian Kelly knew something about Paul Fine. I believe he may have arranged to meet Paul Fine just before Paul Fine was murdered.”
“Did Kelly kill Paul Fine?”
“No. He didn’t match the description we have off that sharp young lad. There’s a snapshot of Kelly on its way out to the boy’s home so that we can be positive of this.”
Tynan looked down into his cup. “The other alternative seems to be that Kelly was killed for the same reason that Paul Fine was killed, and perhaps by the same person or persons,” he said.
“Tell me why,” said Minogue.
“Kelly gives Fine some information. Kelly has some troubles with Opus Dei.”
“Thanks,” Minogue said archly. “Now I know how Jimmy Kilmartin feels when it’s me talking like that.”
“Doesn’t work very well when you don’t have evidence and facts, does it?” Tynan said quietly.
“I just can’t see religious people getting up to this mayhem,” said Minogue. “That stops me in my tracks, too.”
“All right, so. The gist of what’s bringing me here is this. I happen to know that Opus Dei has changed over the past few years. The whole character of the organization has changed and so has its membership in Ireland. I know this because I have a personal interest in it. I also know that there are serving members of the Gardai in Opus Dei. You may remember what General O’Tuaime said in the meeting,” said Tynan ambiguously.
“That the issue of Army members belonging to confraternities has come up before, but that it’s of no consequence?”
“Yes. Opus Dei has been around since the ’30s. It was a product of the ’30s in many ways, when people looked to the Soviet Union and began to get the shivers. Fascism as a counter to Bolshevism, and that sort of mania. Opus Dei never really got near the goal of having a broad base of membership here in Ireland. That’s what they realized not too long ago, so the emphasis was put less on recruiting big numbers of young men and more on using the ones they had already, using them more efficiently to do the apostolic work. Quality, not quantity became the by-word for them. I was approached several years ago by a certain party, unnamed, a senior Garda officer. He’s retired now. At one of those get-togethers in the Clarence Hotel, you can imagine. A few jars after the speeches, and we got down to the real business of gossip and character assassination. I’m sure that a goodly number of people know that I was once well on the way to being a priest and this man did. He suggested to me in the friendliest way-two Gardai having a jar and gabbing-that it would do me no harm if I were to resuscitate an interest in lay apostolic work. I caught on immediately that he meant Opus Dei. If it had been the Knights of Columbus, he would have said so. ‘No harm’ meant to my career, of course.”
Tynan’s eyes had taken on a frosty glint.
“This was 1971 when there were deaths every night in the North. The Provos were full of Marxist rhetoric and there was a feeling that anything could happen. I didn’t tell him that as regards resuscitating this interest he might as well be asking me to raise the dead. That’s none of anyone’s business, inside the job or outside of it, except my own. Don’t bother trying to think back as to who’s senior and who’s retired now: he was a harmless fellow, really. With me, you see, and the priestly calling, he would have assumed that once in, I was never ‘really’ out. It’s like being seduced, I suppose. He saw five years in a seminary on my card, and he saw what he wanted.”
Was Tynan a pagan too, Minogue wondered. Tynan flicked a glance beyond Minogue as though to address an unseen audience.
“I was told that as a bit of helpful advice. Naturally, as I’m married and the rest of it, I couldn’t aspire to the heights of being a Numerary or even an Associate in Opus Dei. My would-be mentor would have known that anyway. What he was saying, I decided, was that someone, some people who mattered in the Gardai, were involved with Opus Dei, even in a minor way. If I was to join, I’d be one of the boys.”
“Are we waiting to use the word ‘conspiracy’ but it sounds too dramatic?”
“Could be. I have no idea if it went anywhere beyond being a few people motivated by piety and a bit of nationalism. I simply said to myself that one day I’d find out more about this. I had put it on hold, and almost forgotten about it.”
“When you say ‘people who mattered’, do you mean someone senior to you at the time?”
“I was a Chief Super, working in Sligo then. There were three ranks above me. Assistant Comm, Deputy Comm, and the man himself, God Almighty.”
Seven in total, Minogue estimated. The noise of Bewley’s began to get in on him now. He was dimly aware of some backstage movements but he couldn’t focus on them while he had Tynan across the table from him. He watched him finish his coffee. Was he trying to get him tangled up in some messy speculation that could turn out badly? Why would Tynan confide in him like this instead of monitoring the investigation at a distance?
“If you’re trying to remember who was in those posts then and where they are now, give yourself a rest. I’ll tell you. DC1 was there then, and he’s still there. God Almighty used to be DC1 before Quinn. There’s only one of us four Assistant Comms who was at that rank back then. But that’s not the point, because we’re not on a witch-hunt, and I’ll tell you why before you get the spyscopes out. You know that Supers and Chief Supers have a lot to say indirectly in who gets promoted above them. In my case, other Chief Supers at the time would have been discreetly asked: ‘Is that Tynan worth the money?’ or ‘Can you work with Tynan?’ They even ask Supers and Inspectors, to see how they feel about their masters and their future masters. Not in so many words, of course, but their remarks are noted. So for any of these Opus Dei men to help a fellow along in his career, they wouldn’t have to be the dogs with loudest barks in the house.”
Was that how he talked to Roberta after a day’s work, talking about the Commissioner as God Almighty or the dog with the loudest bark?
“What I’m saying is this: you should bear in mind that I am interested in what facts might emerge from your investigation that’d tell me about Opus Dei. I told you they’re a different organization now, but that doesn’t mean they’re killers, at all. If there’s a one per cent chance that there was any Garda involvement in the Fine murder, I want to know about it on the spot.”
So this was it, Minogue realized. Tynan was asking that he, Minogue, report to him as well. He was hinting that he need not report more than he needed to Kilmartin and the Commissioner because they wouldn’t have the interest to follow up the consequences in-house.
“I’ve started a search of the files, but frankly I don’t expect to be able to find the information you need, we need, on them,” said Tynan. “A lot of the men keep their religion to themselves, me included. You know yourself that there are plenty of people to laugh at the Holy Joes these days. It’ll be the same story with your General O’Tuaime and his files too, I’d guess.”
He was right, Minogue’s sinking stomach repeated: the same would be true of the Army. The worm burrowed more vigorously into his belly now. If Tynan was nothing else, he was blunt.
“And you don’t need to underline the big gaps in all this either,” said Tynan. Minogue returned his gaze.
“What was so important that Paul Fine, and perhaps Brian Kelly, were on to that would cause people to kill them?” Tynan concluded.
They rose to leave. A distracted Minogue sensed that Tynan’s end to the conversation well matched his decisive moves as he strode away from the table. He was like a player walking away from a chess game which was suddenly over. Suddenly over for the loser, that was, who hadn’t seen the checkmate coming.
“I asked the two I met out in the Opus Dei house in Churchtown for a list of their members who might have been acquainted with Brian Kelly, you know,” Minogue said, as they made for the front door on to Westmoreland Street.
“You did, did you,” Tynan said with what could have been a smile, had it lived. “And what did you get?”
“A priest by the name of Heher told me he’d be happy to write to Rome on my behalf. Permission has to come from there, he says.”
“And what did you think about that?” Tynan asked as he stopped inside the door.
“I thought of trying to get a court order and cause a big commotion. I take a dim view of people thinking they may or may not decide to help the Gardai with information in a murder case.”
“The collar didn’t frighten you?”
“Heher was dressed in his civvies. I’m not afraid of being sent to hell for impertinence: it’s an honourable sin in this country.”
Tynan’s smile was almost reincarnated but it was his eyebrows only which registered the amusement now.
“You certainly deserve your reputation.” He held up one hand. “And don’t ask me to explain that remark any further. It’d be more than my job is worth to see you trying to argue the toss with a judge trying to get such a court order, much less enforce it. Tell me, do you think this Heher knew you were bluffing about this?”
“He might have. There wasn’t a thing to incriminate them at all in the Fine murder, I have to say. But I want to get to talk to others in that house, ones who might have known Kelly from when he stayed there too.”
Tynan scratched his chin lightly. “Let me work on that this evening. I’ll see what I can do, at least as regards getting to see the people in this house.”
“It’ll save me walking through the door on them this evening. I was planning to do just that,” said Minogue.
“Hold your fire for a moment, Minogue. We’ll see what five years in the seminary thirty years ago can get done, in these pagan times we’re living in.”