This is what we’re dealing with,” said Gallagher. He turned to the unwieldy tape-recorder on the desk.
It was Friday evening. Kilmartin, Minogue and Hoey were seated in Chief Superintendent Farrell’s office. Farrell, who had come from a meeting with the Garda Commissioner and Tynan, seemed impatient, even more than his usual curt and belligerent self.
Kilmartin had said it out loud as the trio were crossing Harcourt Street to Farrell’s office. Jimmy would make a lot of his prophecy after they had finished the meeting with Farrell, Minogue knew. After all, Kilmartin had been right… again.
“Bet you that the Commissioner told him to let us in. And that Tynan told the Commissioner too,” Kilmartin had said excitedly. “Bet you any money you like. Go a tenner, Matt? A tenner says that Tynan made him.”
Yes, Kilmartin was probably right.
“And you know Farrell, runs the Branch like his own private army. I’d say he’s bulling mad. He wanted to go after Heher and get the source who made the confession; squeeze the bejases out of him. What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Minogue.
“I still say it was Drumm who made the confession, and after Heher came down offa the ceiling he knew he’d have to tell the Archbishop about it. Ah, but Farrell’d choke the Pope himself to get at the source,” said Kilmartin with relish. He licked a palm and rubbed it back along his crown to settle what was left of his hair.
“I like the sound of that,” Minogue conceded.
“Choking the Pope or putting your tenner on the line?”
“The former,” said Minogue. “I’d lose my tenner, I’m sure.”
“Well, I must say that Tynan sticking up for us is something I don’t mind at all, at all,” said Kilmartin. “There may be something to him if he stood up to Farrell. Did you hear that Farrell went to the Minister, and all? He wanted the swoop last night even; he thinks this crowd is dangerous. It was Tynan’s doing to put in the phone taps and make Farrell wait for at least twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe Farrell didn’t believe that the confessional is secret, and thought these-what should we call them-conspirators might have been told of the leak,” said Hoey. “But the confessional is still sworn to secrecy, isn’t it? So the Branch couldn’t have gone any further than ourselves.”
“Secrecy, is it?” said Kilmartin in his music-hall incarnation. “It had bloody well better be, for the love of Jases. I told a few whoppers in confession boxes in my time, and I don’t want them broadcast, I can tell you,” he added, stepping around the parked police cars.
Tynan’s first call from Slattery’s pub had been to the Commissioner. A second tenpenny piece had clanged into the phone when he called Farrell at his home in Clontarf. Minogue was in the pub by then and he dearly wanted to eavesdrop on what Tynan was demanding in crisp tones, sentences without verbs, a slow insistent, serious voice, as he stared at the graffiti on the wall in front of him. Minogue had fought off that temptation by giving into another. He pushed his way to the bar and bought two Jameson’s whiskeys with ice in both of them.
Tynan questioned neither the ice nor the whiskey. Minogue phoned Kilmartin at home after Tynan had told him what he had started. To his credit, Kilmartin had not questioned Farrell’s involvement. As part of Garda department C3, the Special Branch was expected to see to subversive groups within the State. Nor did Kilmartin pass any remark about Tynan taking the reins. Putting down the telephone, Minogue had then realized that Kilmartin’s deferring without complaint was the surest sign of what the list in the envelope could mean. Kilmartin seemed to have been glad to step aside and let the paint-and-powder brigade, as he sometimes called the Special Branch, work it out.
It was not until this morning that Minogue had found out that Tynan had had a District Court judge roused from his telly in Fairview and brought by police car to the Four Courts. No fewer than twenty-seven phone taps had been operating within ninety minutes of the two men sipping their Jameson’s. By midday today the number had grown to over fifty. Surveillance teams had been placed on all the people on the list by midnight, and had remained in place throughout the night. They were relieved by shifts of Branch detectives. In the case of the Army ranks on the list, Army Intelligence had been alerted and was reporting to the First Secretary of the Minister for Defence.
Gallagher had met the three detectives at the front desk and directed them to Farrell’s office.
“Tommy,” said Kilmartin, reaching across the desk, “how’s things?”
“Hot,” grunted Farrell, a taciturn and driven policeman with a reputation for ruthlessness, but a man believed to have no political debts to service.
“And Matty Minogue himself,” said Farrell.
“And Seamus Hoey,” Kilmartin added.
There were no preliminaries. Gallagher had the tape of the telephone calls edited, rewound and poised to play. He turned the switch and nothing happened.
“Plug?” said Minogue. Hoey checked the socket behind his chair. Farrell pursed his lips.
“Jimmy,” said Farrell, “I told God Almighty a half-hour ago that leaving things this way was too much of a risk. We should have jumped last night and worried about hard evidence and building a case after we got in the doors.”
“Did you play him this tape too?” asked Kilmartin.
“Damn right I did. That’s why we’re moving tonight. Yous may have a murder to worry about: we have several to prevent. As well as lunatics flinging petrol bombs at Jewish churches.”
“Two murders,” said Minogue. Farrell glared at him.
“It’s nothing to what could happen unless we lift this lot tonight,” said Farrell gruffly.
“Well we-that is to say Tynan-had hardly got a start on going through the files for possible associates not mentioned on the list, Tommy,” Kilmartin said. “There has to be a lot more than two Army officers and one Garda sergeant.”
“And didn’t Johnny Tynan tell me the selfsame thing not an hour ago? ‘A lot might slip the net if we move too soon,’ says he. ‘If we don’t get the ones on the list to talk, we’ll fall short of getting all of them,’ says he. Oh they’ll talk all right, I says to myself, but I couldn’t say that to them, now, could I?”
Indeed, Minogue reflected. It was known that Farrell had had a hand in the selection and training of a squad of Special Branch officers whose sole job was to interrogate suspects.
“Well, they’ve been trying,” said Kilmartin. “They’ve been up all night with the files and they’ve added possibles to the list.”
Gallagher got up off his knees red-faced and turned the switch again. This time it worked. After the hiss of the leader portion, a broad Kerry accent announced the time and the names of the persons speaking on the tape.
Gibney’s voice was a measured and polite Dublin accent. There were no pauses when he talked. He seemed to have prepared everything he wanted to say to Gorman on the phone. The tone was reasonable, gently persuasive. Minogue watched Kilmartin’s face go blank when Gibney mentioned the Ard Fheis.
“… We’ve drawn up a list of proposals for when the Dail gets back in session. Wait a minute, I dropped something… OK. Now you’ll have just the one day because the Opposition will go right to work and table the no-confidence. Now there’s no way around the business we discussed, you know? You know? We just have to have them so as we can accelerate the thing and- ”
“ I still say the momentum will carry us through.” Gorman’s tone was almost urgent, a palpable effort to stay calm.
Minogue felt a non-existent draught on the back of his neck.
“But we’ve talked about this ad nauseam, Fintan. Even your own estimates are for four to break ranks and then you-”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. That’s more than enough to carry the vote when the Dail sits. Don’t you see what I mean? There’s no need for anything more.”
Farrell held his hand up. Gallagher stopped the tape.
“This is toward the end of the call,” said Farrell. “The call went through to Gorman’s home phone at eight o’clock this morning, just before Gorman was heading off to work. Do you know what these two men are talking about?”
“Gorman’s going to jump ship on the Chief,” said Kilmartin slowly. “He’s going to lead away his supporters at the Ard Fheis next week…”
“… and he’s going to bring down the fucking government,” said Farrell calmly.
“Four sitting members of the party?” said Hoey. “Who are they?”
“Wouldn’t we all like to know that,” said Gallagher in his sibilant Donegal tones.
“But Gorman,” said Kilmartin. “What’s he going to get out of this? He’s not going to be the next Taoiseach, that’s for certain.”
“Will we take bets on that?” said Farrell.
“He doesn’t need to be,” murmured Minogue.
“Smart lad, Matty,” said Farrell savagely. “Give the man the rabbit. Gorman needs only four government members to walk out of the party for the government to fall. The next government’ll have to be a coalition, and they’ll need Gorman. He’ll be sitting pretty when they offer him a plum Ministry. Guess which one he’ll pick?”
“Defence again,” said Kilmartin.
“Top of the class, Jimmy. Gibney and the others will have Gorman in their pockets, then. If they don’t have him in their pockets already, they will after they do their bit of ‘business’ that Gibney’s hinting about. Any guesses on what Gibney means there?”
“I don’t know why I’m thinking this exactly,” Hoey began. “Wouldn’t it be to Gibney’s advantage to have a bit of disorder in the streets? A general strike, say?”
“How about a bomb in Dublin to get the Army out on to the streets?” said Farrell, “How about shooting someone?”
Farrell looked from face to face in the room. Gallagher rubbed his nose with the side of his hand.
“Name of Jases,” said Kilmartin finally.
Farrell leaned lower on his elbows. “What’s on here, as I told the Commissioner, is that we have several citizens plotting to destabilize the government of the Irish Republic, and they’re willing to use violence to that end.”
“ ‘They’, though,” said Minogue. “The ‘they’ that’s trying to do this is an Opus Dei faction. It’s not necessarily an Army coup or the likes of that.”
“Right,” said Kilmartin, recovering with one of his favourite sayings at hand. “This isn’t a banana republic, you know, Tommy. We’re a democratic country with troubles, that’s all.”
“All right,” said Farrell quickly. “I’ve been on the phone to Army Intelligence half the day. I know that O’Tuaime had started a search of Army personnel files for yous, but it was pretty half-hearted. As of half-ten this morning he was relieved of that piddling assignment, and Army Intelligence has launched a real search now that they have two names to start with. Cunningham seems square enough, a follower. This Gibney’s a very popular officer all up and down the ranks.”
“Like Gorman… all things to all men,” muttered Kilmartin. Minogue thought of the friendly, open faces of Heher and Drumm.
“They think he might twig to the surveillance. Lookit, if they’re jittery, I’m hopping about like a bloody Mexican jumping-bean. The security of the State and its citizens can’t be waiting around for any of us to be playing with bits of files and phone lines to gather bullet-proof evidence.”
Which is probably exactly what he told the Minister and the Commissioner earlier, thought Minogue.
“So if yous think that your Squad has first dibs on this, you’d be wrong,” said Farrell bluntly. He nodded to Gallagher, who restarted the tape.
Farrell looked at his watch after five minutes.
“There you are now. We’d be waiting for ten years before we’d get any mention of the word ‘murder’ out of them.”
“No mention of Paul Fine or Kelly yet. We need to point a finger at a killer, or killers,” said Minogue.
“Killers, did I hear you say?” Farrell frowned.
“Murder in the first degree can be charged to more than the actual killer,” said Minogue. “If there was a concerted, coherent plan, assistance rendered, weapons secured for-”
“All right, all right,” Farrell interrupted. Minogue gave Farrell a level stare across the table.
“Listen,” he murmured in the stillness which followed, “we’re investigating two murders.” He paused and returned Farrell’s gaze of impatient scrutiny. “That’s where all this stuff flows from, plain and simple. These two victims-and I had better spell it out, that we suspect these two murders are connected-are, or were, individuals. I’m sure we’re all entitled to be alarmed by this group, this conspiracy, but I’m in there, and my colleagues are in there, to nail a killer or killers.”
Minogue glanced to Kilmartin, who was searching the ceiling, and then to Hoey who nodded once, but kept his eyes on his shoes.
“I hear you, Matty,” said Farrell in a tone soft enough for Kilmartin to look at him in some surprise. “Who do you see as the killers here? I mean the ones that actually did the dirty work?”
Minogue exchanged looks with Hoey.
“Out of this list…” he took a deep breath, “my hunch is Gibney.” Hoey nodded briefly, and Kilmartin kept his eyes on Minogue. “I see it like this: Brian Kelly hears or overhears chat about this scheme to push Gorman to the top and install a government that leans hard to the right. You heard the tape yourselves: it’d be nothing for people to make a pretext for getting troops out on the streets these days. You even hear upright citizens who should know better,” Minogue paused briefly to savour Kilmartin’s discomfort, “pushing for easy answers. ‘Crack the whip’ kind of attitudes. We’re always looking for the leader, the man on horseback, the hero, in this country. Anyway. Brian Kelly finds out about these plans. He may even have tried to talk people out of it, appealed to them. This kind of talk could have been floating around for years and then it got serious suddenly, so Kelly gets alarmed. He’s caught, because he has a loyalty to his pals in Opus Dei too, but it seems that the organization shuns him. So he’s torn about the whole thing, he needs to talk to someone. Maybe he tries again with this group, maybe even talks to Gorman. We may never know if he threatens to reveal what he knows, but I can see him doing that, if he’s upset. Think about it. Here’s a man who has invested so much in this organization. He’s sincere, he’s responsible, he’s devout…”
“He’s dead,” Kilmartin muttered.
“I wonder what way his mind works. Does he seek out a person from the media? Does he want someone like Paul Fine to do a surface story on Opus Dei, as a way of letting this outfit know that they’re now in the public light so they’d better rethink their plans? Does he tell all he knows to Paul Fine? It doesn’t seem like that to us, judging by what Fine had dug up. But did Gorman, or whoever, think their whole enterprise was threatened? Did Brian Kelly purposely seek out a journalist who was also a Jew, by way of a symbolic act?”
“Fine and well to be speculating,” said Farrell. “But the way you brought it up, you want specifics. Can you link these murders at all, as yet?”
Hoey sat up and intervened.
“The killer may have wanted to make Paul Fine simply disappear,” he said quickly. “That would be a stiff warning to Brian Kelly. I doubt that the killer ever planned to kill the two people. It was more a case of ‘let’s get the more immediately dangerous character out of the way’… the journalist, that is… and then maybe try to persuade or bully Brian Kelly into keeping his trap shut. Then, when Kelly didn’t buckle under, or when it looked like he’d do anything because he was in a panic after hearing about Fine being murdered…”
“Killed him,” said Farrell and looked around at the faces of the policemen. “All right, I see how your mind is working on it. But lookit, now,” Farrell narrowed his glance when it came to rest on Minogue, “you’ve had your say. You’ve stated your priorities. I’m just telling you that it is my duty to bag all these characters as soon as possible. You’ll get your man, but you may have to do your digging and burrowing after I have these people in custody. I’m not saying this’ll make your job any easier, but that’s the story, and that’s how it’ll have to be.”
Before Minogue could say anything, Kilmartin deflected him.
“Do you think Gorman knows about Fine and Kelly?” Kilmartin asked Farrell.
The head of the Special Branch held his palms up.
“I’m no psychologist, Jimmy. He may suspect it; he may know it; he may have been told but turned a deaf ear; he may pretend to himself that he doesn’t know it. Christ, there could be any number of things going on. If you ask me, I think Gorman is being led by the nose. By his own bloody ambition. He ran out of patience waiting for the Chief to step down, and now he wants the cake all to himself.”
“Well, it appears that the people we’ve been listening to are not aware of us,” said Gallagher quietly. “Not yet, anyhow.” The soft, earnest Donegal hiss seemed to soothe the tension.
“And whoever spilled the beans in confession has not alerted this group,” added Minogue. That’s what Tynan would have argued, he knew.
“That could change at any minute,” said Farrell. “If we only knew the source, we could sit on him and make sure he kept quiet until we had all these lunatics in.”
Gallagher’s finger tapped lightly on the tape spool as he waited for Farrell’s instruction.
“So, this evening,” said Kilmartin at last,
“Yep,” said Farrell decisively. “We just can’t wait any longer. Now the, er, Commissioner suggested that we include some representation from your Squad, er, Jimmy-being as you have some business in this line of work.”
There was Kilmartin’s ten pounds safe, Minogue knew. It was plain that Farrell didn’t like offering.
“Not exactly a joint task force, or anything now. No need to be formal after all, is there? We all know one another here,” said Farrell.
“Right, Tommy. Good point, that,” said Kilmartin with a grave expression on his face.
“Just that, er, you’ve had valuable input and naturally you’d want to interview persons we pick up tonight. We have the manpower and everything, you understand,” Farrell continued in a restrained manner. “And if yous were to talk to a suspect directly upon arrest, you could have him at his most talkative.”
“Absolutely,” said Kilmartin. “That’s decent of you, Tommy.”
Minogue was seeing a Kilmartin he knew only too well at work on Farrell. There was no love lost between the two senior policemen. Kilmartin’s nose told him that Farrell was under orders to consult the Murder Squad, probably to the extent of having Squad officers present at arrests. A suspect surprised is often glad to talk. Now, Minogue bet an imaginary ten-pound note with his gargoyle, Kilmartin’s frown of concern and concentration was the practised foil for what he would come out with the minute they were away from Farrell: The bollocks, Farrell letting on he was doing us a favour, after Tynan laying down the law with him and telling him to co-operate with us. Oh we showed him, didn’t we!
“Would there be one suspect, say, that yous’d like to question in particular?” Farrell asked in a strained voice which could not carry the casual flavour he wanted.
Kilmartin put on a face of intense deliberation. Even Hoey knew that Kilmartin was dragging the time across Farrell’s patience like nails across a blackboard. Minogue spoiled the fun.
“Gibney. I’d like to have him the minute you lift him.”
“Good, so,” said Farrell, relieved.
“And I want to be in on the arrest too,” said Minogue.
“All right so, Matty. Do yous want to listen to any more of this? Ah, you probably don’t,” Farrell said busily. “Top secret, this tape. Gorman’ll ride to hell on this little thing yet. Yous heard the best of it, the worst of it. There’s work to be done, though.”
Gallagher was already rewinding the reel.