"I told the Commissioner I'd be happier with the other thing," Minogue murmured. He was trying not to stare at Kilmartin again. He had barely recognised Kilmartin on first entering the room. Jimmy Kilmartin's face glowed against the pillow.
"You mean that fella Pat Corrigan shot?"
"Him, yes. He was way senior to Ball. Ball was only the pot-boy really. That Murray character was the wild card. He had the power to pave the way and cover it up."
Kilmartin studied Minogue's nose and the two black eyes.
"Do you mind me saying that you sound like Donald Duck? No offence now."
"I've heard them all, Jimmy."
"You look like you were in a shocking row."
"I was. Moore's car hit us a good wallop. I was concussed and I didn't know it. I hit the lip of the seat, the metal frame where there's not enough sponge."
"A real hero," Kilmartin murmured.
"Kathleen says different. More like an ujit."
Minogue found himself staring at Kilmartin's face again. What was it about Kilmartin that was so different? Was it just the bed-rest and being forcibly kept away from his job that had cleared his face of cares?
"Not much hope of getting them to turn the fella over to us," Kilmartin added. "But you had the pig-iron to ask them."
"The embassy? I tried. Didn't get that far. But how do you know all this?" Pleased with his intelligence, Kilmartin winked.
"Ha ha. A little bird. Here, I'll tell you anyway. God Almighty was in visiting last night. Himself and the new Assistant Commissioner, Tynan, after he took his life in his hands and vetted you. To see if I was in the land of the living. Now I don't much like Tynan, but you know how it is with the man himself. Larger than life."
Minogue knew. God Almighty a.k.a. Thomas Martin Lally, the Garda Commissioner, was a porcine brute of a farmer's son from Longford. He was shrewd and overbearing, with a tongue like a rasp and a bottomless fund of fulsome bonhomie which he parlayed as charm. He repelled Minogue. Tynan he rather liked. Tynan had studied several years for the Jesuits before becoming a Garda.
"Oh yes. Himself has his own little copy of what you dug up, Matt. But that's between yourself and meself."
"And Pat Corrigan and half the world."
"Not a bit of it. The Minister put it all under wraps, the one copy. Or so he thinks."
"The prints I made, you mean?" Minogue said.
"Ah, no matter. Don't be upsetting yourself. Himself says to me he might have known it was a homo at the bottom of all this."
Minogue rose abruptly from the chair. "Look it, Jimmy-"
"Sit down, Matt. Sit down. There's people that don't have your delicate touch. I was just testing you. I wasn't trying to get a rise out of you."
"My eye, you weren't. Lally's a boor. He shouldn't be in the job. It's as well he didn't talk like that to me."
Kilmartin raised a supplicant hand.
"Easy, man. Don't be deserting a sick man's bedside. Come on now."
Minogue felt something give way in his chest. He sat down.
"Oh, but there was great crack and sport to do with the names that were in this notebook thing. Pillars of Tory Britain. One of them was head of MI5 after the war, even. Another one was a Home Secretary and he's still a big wind there, cocked up in the House of Lords like mutton dressed up as lamb. Aren't you glad when you wake up every morning to find you're living in a republic? None of this Lord and Lady Muck stuff. This King and Queen stuff is for children. Or gobshites."
Minogue stroked his chin. Forgot to shave this morning. Saturday senility.
"But sure the crunch is we have no way of ascertaining whether the stuff from this notebook is true at all. The business that happened to him after the war and so on. There's no mileage in that for us. But the Costello racket-and that fella in the embassy, God rest him. I'm sure it's ninety-nine percent true. They must have been mad entirely. All grist for the mill here, though, I needn't tell you. Couldn't have happened at a better time, hah?"
"Costello," Minogue murmured.
"Ah, but this poor Combs divil overplayed his hand with that ultimatum. And he was right to be wary of that Ball character; I mean to say, look what Ball seems to have gone and done to Combs in the end. I'm not for a minute saying that Combs wasn't hard done by in Britain, mind you."
"Wasn't the only one hard done by," said Minogue.
"War's war, Matt. Are you thinking of that fella they sold down the river just to keep Combs looking clean wherever he was then, Berlin? That would have sold a lot of Sunday papers if that had come out."
"Urn. Vogel. Means bird. Yes…"
"I didn't get through the full bit about them throwing Vogel to the wolves," Kilmartin prodded.
Minogue ignored the hint. He was thinking of the hour he had spent earlier this Saturday morning, sitting in his car at Sandymount. A lone horse and rider had been cantering back and forth, far out on the strand.
"This Vogel back in the war, Matt? That trickery?" Kilmartin said again.
"Combs said that he didn't realise what had happened to Vogel until after he got out of Berlin himself. He doesn't go into specifics, but he says that Vogel was betrayed in such a way as to have the credit for uncovering an Allied spy reflected on Combs himself. All he knew was that the Germans weren't so suspicious of him after they got their maulers on Vogel. He says he was sure that he was about to be arrested. He was warned that some people suspected him of being a double agent. That bit. That was in 1943 and very few of his pals were around to look after him in Berlin."
"That was a real eye-opener about how Combs got his info back to the Allies. The codes," Kilmartin said.
"He used to use specific words in his broadcasts, he says," said Minogue. "The words being codes for different cities where he had found out that, say, troop trains were being assembled or that they were working on new armaments."
"Then the Allies would bomb those cities and get the most for their money," Minogue added.
"I have no knowledge of that sort of stuff, the history and the moves during the war," Kilmartin reflected aloud.
"Apparently those bombings drove a lot of armaments production underground or at least dispersed it and gave the Allies time to set up something else during the delays."
"Anyway, they gave Vogel away to keep Combs looking good," said Kilmartin. "Yes. When Combs got to Lisbon and asked what had happened to Vogel, he heard that he had been picked up. He didn't know anything except what he had heard from the Nazis about a big coup, finding an agent and knowing his code-name and all. The officer who he talked to in Lisbon-he's the one who went on to be head of their MI5-told Combs that they had hoped to get more mileage out of Vogel but that Combs had chickened out early. 'A poor return on our investment,' he said to Combs, if I remember reading it right."
"God that was a terrible thing to say to him. Dirt and treachery," Kilmartin murmured.
"And then they wouldn't touch him with a forty-foot pole after the war."
"Indeed," said Minogue. "While they sorted out what they wanted to do with him. They tried to slot him into the Russian zone to do spying for them again; he turned them down flat. That might have been Combs' biggest mistake. And the thing is, who's to say the Russians would have welcomed him with open arms anyway, even if he passed on info to them as well as back to London?"
"Um," said Kilmartin. "They'd be just as suspicious as the Brits and the Yanks, I suppose. They'd be thinking the same as the Brits were thinking, that
Combs was being planted as a double by the other side. Jases. Allies, it it? The ins and outs of it all. The man was left with no ground to stand on."
"They kept on putting him off over the years," Minogue continued. "When he asked to be allowed to live back in England, I mean. Then they wanted some innocuous gaffer to look in on some goings-on here. Quid pro quo, I suppose. He doesn't talk about details of what they offered him, but they must have promised him that he would be, what's the word… rehabilitated. After he did a bit of work for them in Ireland. The rest you have to guess at," Minogue said.
"Then Ball gave him the chop?"
"Looks very like it to me. Combs miscalculated."
"While he was thinking and bellyaching about what they did to him years ago, they thought he was going to do the dirty on them in their efforts here."
"Now you have it," Minogue concluded. "He said that Ball was continually boasting about Costello being looked after. Not alone that, but Ball dropped heavy hints that suggested he was present at the Costello murder. There was some torture and mutilation carried on, if you remember. Maybe it was just to let Combs know that he was a tough nut, so not to be getting ideas himself…"
Minogue lost the thread of the conversation when Kilmartin started talking again. Minutes later, he became aware that Jimmy had finally stopped talking. Now he, too, was staring out the window.
"I want me dinner," Kilmartin said solemnly. "And I'm not going to sit here in the bed waiting for them to plonk some muck in front of me, stuff you could drink out of a shagging straw. I want me meat and me two veg. Will you come down to the cafeteria with me?"
Kilmartin shuffled down the hallways, eying the nurses and avoiding the doctors.
"God but that was a wicked dinner. Healthy, I suppose," Kilmartin said, shaking his head. "Ah, but you should have seen the two of them, Matt. Tynan and Himself. Himself sticks his big snoot in the door and tiptoes into the room first. 'Matty Minogue isn't here is he, Jimmy?' says he. Putting it on, of course. But there was something to it. And do you know what I said to myself when I saw that?"
"I don't."
"I says to myself, well I wish that I could inspire such fear as Matt Minogue, such as would cause him to do that."
Kilmartin paused in the hallway to stare at a nurse. Minogue took in the compound smells of the hospital, struck again at how powerful a sense the nose housed. Time to take a swipe at that Proust chap again, maybe.
"Oh yes. He was much as told me you were a pain in the neck about it all. His neck like, too."
"I hope I was," Minogue observed. "He has plenty of it to pain, let me tell you."
"Didn't he explain the ramifications to you?"
"The ones he thought were important, I suppose. After he reminded me of the Garda oath to keep my trap shut."
"Tough enough job for a Clareman."
"He spent a lot of time telling me that I could never expect the British secret service to fork over one of their, what did he call them, some antiseptic name… operatives, yes. That Murray fella. I couldn't expect them to hand me one. He wasn't overly excited about the conspiracy to murder charge I wanted issued."
Kilmartin laughed light-heartedly and slowed his promenade to peep into the rooms they passed.
Minogue remembered God Almighty starting with the flattery, soothing. He had made a great show of welcoming him into his office. It was the greater,
Minogue knew, because the Minister's Secretary was waiting there, too. Minogue instantly read Lally's gesture as a territorial display for the civil servant.
"Heard a great account of you, Matt, as did Mr O'Reilly here and indeed the Minister," the Commissioner began.
"And what with Jimmy Kilmartin laid up for a while and him forever singing your praises, sure the promotion is long overdue. Mr O'Reilly brings the Minister's commendations."
Not a word from O'Reilly, just a watchful interest. Minogue knew O'Reilly from two telephone calls and a curt letter received the morning after the shooting. It was O'Reilly who was to do the lecturing, apparently.
"… Goes without saying that this was a shocking crime, Sergeant. But as the Commissioner had pointed out, we are fully behind you and the Special Branch officers who assisted you in this matter. The Minister has expressed, his whole-hearted commendation and a recommendation for your promotion."
God Almighty's jovial expression faltered but slightly when Minogue finally balked.
"It's very likely that the State could charge and convict Murray on first-degree murder in the deaths of Arthur Combs and Tim Costello," Minogue said mildly.
To his credit, O'Reilly didn't duck.
"If your assumptions are accurate, yes."
"But how close are you, Matt?" the Commissioner asked blithely to drive home what O'Reilly would be delivering presently.
"Well, we're stuck. They're holding to the business about Combs. They've sent dental records and everything. The package looks watertight. They insist the fella we're talking about was drowned in Lisbon under mysterious circumstances in 1946," replied Minogue.
"It was all a long time ago to be sure," said the Commissioner. "God knows what kind of tricks and twists they got up to during the war, that crowd. That's how they treat their own, I suppose. A great argument for Irish neutrality, wouldn't you say, Mr O'Reilly?"
O'Reilly ignored the mild jibe. Minogue was not ready to give in yet.
"And Costello?" he said.
"Oh, right, him," said the Commissioner. O'Reilly looked quizzically at Minogue.
"I don't need to remind you that we're all bound by the rules of disclosure and confidentiality we signed when we became public servants. Let me put it to you like this, Sergeant. Costello was killed by unknown assailants-"
"— a known professional assailant, you mean," Minogue interrupted.
"That's not clear at all, Sergeant. Costello had made a lot of enemies, it's safe to say. Oddly, Costello has become useful to the cause of peace and security here. And you're forgetting that Costello was killed outside the jurisdiction of the State. A productive outcome, I think," O'Reilly continued.
"Anyone ask Costello if he wanted to be such an altruist, posthumously?"
"Costello was rabid, Sergeant. He lived and died by the gun. I'm surprised to hear you taking his part so steadfastly after your experiences with his ilk," O'Reilly replied without any reprimand that Minogue could detect. O'Reilly wasn't to be baited without showing some of his own sharp tongue, apparently.
Minogue saw God Almighty rub a knuckle to his nose and nod once. Tidy, ironic, almost funny about Costello: more use to us dead than he ever was alive. And Combs? Minogue returned O'Reilly's unblinking gaze. He wanted to inquire as to how the British had reacted when the photocopies of Combs' notes were laid on the table. He would not give the two men the satisfaction of asking.
"Both you and Inspector Corrigan demonstrated great foresight," O'Reilly said.
Both you and Inspector Corrigan, Minogue repeated within. Pat Corrigan running with the envelope, looking for the highest rank he could find from the dozens of policemen converging on the train station. Like a grenade he wanted to rid of.
"And another thing, Matt," the Commissioner broke in. "Nobody walks around the streets in this country waving a gun about. Not a fancy embassy attache or whatever they want to call this Murray. Not the Queen of England, for that matter. This is a democracy. I can tell you in all candour that it wouldn't have caused a stir here if Pat Corrigan had popped him for good."
He looked for bloodthirsty corroboration to O'Reilly.
"And like I said to Mr O'Reilly, I want the embassy and their bosses back in London to take note of your promotion, that we have nothing to be ashamed about. We held our end up here, so we did."
O'Reilly nodded once at that. Minogue almost gave up then. He didn't care to know how much of an edge the dossier had given anyone at the security conference.
"Definitely," O'Reilly added. "Not alone that, but your good work allowed the Taoiseach to send a strongly worded statement to the British Prime Minister."
"But what could he say to her, Mr O'Reilly?"
"I can disclose that he said he fully expected her to ensure that the embassy in Dublin was not to be used as a base for any covert operations of any description in this country."
In this country… the phrase echoed for several moments.
"In the Combs' case, one of theirs went astray-"
"One of ours," Minogue said. "Combs lived here. This was his home. People liked him. Did ye look at his drawings? Then tell me he was 'one of theirs.'"
"Ah now, Matt," the Commissioner interceded. "It's just phraseology. In a manner of speaking, like. Let's say that this wasn't Combs' home turf."
"But Tim Costello was one of ours?" Minogue had said then.
Kilmartin roused Minogue from his brooding when he began laughing at some recollection.
"Didn't the pair of them persuade you how much you had done for the greater good of the country, Matt? I heard the phrase uttered in this very room."
Minogue didn't answer.
"Here, we should have something to be celebrating your lad's exams. Cheer up, man."
"He's not certain until the results come out, Jimmy. He just said that he did great because the questions he had studied had come up."
"Sure that's life itself, isn't it, Matt? You answer the questions that come up, not the blather that the philosophers do be cooking up in their heads and all the rest of it. Iijits… Grandstanding a bit, aren't you, Matt? Wearing your morals on your sleeve. Take the bloody promotion and don't be so damned upright."
Minogue was astonished. Jimmy Kilmartin being so pointed? Quite without warning, Minogue began to laugh himself. The sourness which had occupied his thoughts began to ease. Kilmartin was eying him with cautious amusement.
"You might have something there," Minogue allowed. "Bumptious. Still, the nerve of you to be talking to me like that. What's come over you?"
"Well, for one thing I don't have to get a twist in me gut every time I see you and think to myself that Matt Minogue should have my rank. You're over-moral, man dear. You'd be surprised how clear things get and you lying here on your back all day. All the things you should have done, could have said. You know yourself, I suppose. They'll never admit to having Costello bumped off. Poor Combs either-Grimes, I mean."
"But couldn't we have demanded Murray? He committed crimes in our jurisdiction. Even the chance to question him. He was on the plane and in a London hospital before tea-time."
Kilmartin snorted dismissively.
"'Diplomat' my arse. I agree with you. In the abstract, of course. It was all part of a trade. You know that. They were on the blower very rapid after news of the escapade hit London. They say he's still on the critical list, Murray-"
"He was shot through the lung and that was the worst of it," Minogue protested. "Moore was the worse off with being shot in the back, but did you hear him complaining? They just want us to forget we ever had a chance to talk to Murray."
"All right, Matt. But don't be a gobshite. The deal is done. Go home and tell your wife that she's married to a man who routinely scares the wits out of his superiors."
Hugh Robertson was smoking one of his rare cigarettes in the restaurant. Kenyon watched the ceremony vacantly. Robertson searching as though he had forgotten which pocket held the cigarette case. Drawing one out, tapping both ends of the plain cigarette on the tablecloth. Searching for minute pieces of the dark tobacco before brushing them off the table. He offered Kenyon one, then lit his own and inhaled. The cigarette smelled of Turkish tobacco. Kenyon guessed they were hand-rolled in a specialty shop in the City.
"Yes, I told him that in my view Moore did excellent work. Everything according to instructions and more besides. We hadn't counted on Murray running amok, I reminded him. 'Moore displayed initiative and should be commended for that,' I said. I didn't tell him that I have three years to retirement and that he could…"
Kenyon was still drifting in the trough of relief after what Robertson had told him during the dinner.
"… fuck off with himself, don't you know."
Robertson smiled and batted his eyes. He looked about the restaurant before turning to the wine again.
"As if we are to be held to account for Six making a royal balls-up. 'Let them get together with the Foreign Office to put the egg back together,' I told him. Not in so many words, of course. After all, they loaned the problem to us. Never wanted it in the first place, did we?"
Kenyon tried to smile in return. He couldn't manage the sultry, silent-movie smile which Robertson seemed to produce effortlessly.
"I told him that James Kenyon had read Combs accurately, had evaluated the problem accurately and had moved at the first opportunity to try and pull the damn thing out of the fire. You can imagine that he was recording it all, because I was called in as a speech-writer for him to report to Maggie with. I can see him parrotting it all. 'Well ma'am, Mr Kenyon read the Combs business accurately and moved at the…'"
Kenyon was moved to express some gratitude, but he feared he'd be maudlin.
"Thank you, Hugh. You don't know what it means to-"
"Don't be overpowered, James. I told him the truth. He can gild the lily if he wants to later. I also mentioned, by way of a polite reminder, that when he needs a lamb for the ritual slaughter, we'll be going for Murray's neck."
"When do we get our hands on Murray?"
"Christ, don't ask, James," said Robertson languidly. "Six claims that he can't be interviewed yet… Means they're doing it right now, probably, before they pitch him over to us…"
"You see, James," Robertson eased himself against the chair better to expound, "C is a man whose disposition leads him inevitably to find villains. Villains and heroes. For a man in his position it's an extraordinarily simplistic way to see the world. But it has its advantages from my point of view here with this. Moore is a hero. Moore nearly lost his life in the service of national security, um? He'll be fine in a matter of months, but he'll need to watch his kidneys for the rest of his life, poor chap. We're giving him the option of a good disability out or a switch to other work. Once I explained to the old man that Moore is a hero, he copped on. All this consultation… I far preferred the old days, didn't you? Scandals and moles aside, of course. Consult the old man after an op. Drop an ambiguous memo, and let him go back to his greenhouse or Sanskrit."
Kenyon smiled tightly.
"But our present Duce was parachuted in to clean house. He's not, er, you know…"
"One of us," Kenyon completed the hackneyed Service joke.
"Just so, James," Robertson went on archly. "There's really no need for him to be running about preparing lengthy defences for the business in Dublin. He'll find out for himself. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse. Not our problem at all, at all. Even a layman can see that. What we had was a circus: Murray and Ball and their vendetta, running an alcoholic tout, one Mr Combs, through the embassy. A dicey enough proposal in Ireland even without Combs being a bloody Trojan horse. Where it would have stopped with Ball's rough-and-tumble tactics, I don't know. There's a case to be made for sending in proper tricks boys to do for what's-his-face and his ilk right on their home turf in the Republic. We could aerate more like… what's his…?"
"Costello."
"Yes. Naturally, Mad Murray has to prevaricate when it crossed your desk… and we're supposed to be the good fairy and fix up everything, good as new?"
"I wish C held that — "
"Ah, but I told him this, James. That part he can stomach, because he's mainly concerned for his own arse. PMO called him in the morning after, into committee, and the PM was doing her Sphinx bit at the end of the table. Not happy at all. 'Looked like the first tank must have looked to the first soldier who saw it coming over the trenches at him,' C said to me. La belle dame stuck the prod in deep apparently. Told them what it meant for border security negotiations. Didn't divulge to anyone what they had to give away to even keep the Irish at the damn table and still get Murray and Moore and that garbled dossier here… Didn't tell them what it did for her re-election plans if she didn't score a nice coup here either, mind you."
Robertson poured more wine. He snorted before sipping.
"Shopkeeper's daughter she may be, but she's twice the man of any around that table. There's only so much the Irish can mine with the papers, of course. If they ask too much for sitting on it we can retaliate in some other arena. If they went public or leaked it, they'd suffer in the long run. Their opposition parties and the lunatic fringe there could do a slash and burn on them, too, I expect. Scream bloody murder about the government giving into perfidious Albion again. Bloody-minded people there. What would they do if they didn't have us to complain about?"
Kenyon didn't fend off Robertson's roving bottle this time. He felt the wine working now. Robertson blinked several times. His eyes were soft and glassy from the wine. The waiter brought coffee. Kenyon alone drank some. Robertson drained his glass.
"Canny bastard, that copper, though," Robertson murmured. "Having the copy and baiting poor Moore…"
"Moore was on the plane two hours after the shooting. He didn't get to talk to the copper again," Kenyon said.
"Too bad he opened his mouth to the Irish security on the scene at all. The bit about the copper, Minogue, saving his bacon. I don't like to hear that sort of remark. Before our mob got out from the embassy and threw a blanket on the stuff."
"Shock, maybe," Kenyon answered. "Human after all. Murray was ready to kill him, he says."
"Oh-oh, James. I thought we could have a dinner and get half-sloshed without you going moral on me," Robertson chided.
Kenyon didn't mind the riposte. He believed that Robertson drew the remarks from him, a proxy conscience for himself.
"I would have felt the same way as Moore," said Kenyon.
Robertson fixed him with an indulgent and skeptical eye. Kenyon felt he could match Hugh Robertson's jaundiced eye this time.
"And I think you would have too, Hugh."
Robertson made no reply.