He had watched the street then, but no one had passed. He had opened the garage door, driven in the car, and swung the door down again. It had taken him ten minutes to wrap the body, drag it to the car and bundle it into the back seat. Then he had gone through the kitchen, cleaned the blood from the lino and latched the door. After that, he had driven away with his cargo, out into the beginnings of the evening rush-hour traffic toward the comfortable suburbs of Dublin’s south side…
He skirted the buildings and debris carefully, stopping to look back at the car. This needn’t have happened, he knew. He might have had an option, some hope of avoiding it, if that journalist hadn’t drifted in on the tide. He choked off the remorse with anger and looked about the site. Joyriders set fire to the cars they stole around here, he had heard. Beer cans lay heaped beside half-melted plastic cider bottles. He listened to the clacking of the suburban train, the DART, in the distance. The nearest houses were almost a quarter mile off. He looked back at the car again. People’d see smoke but the most they might do would be call the fire brigade. Even at that, the petrol would have done its work. Couldn’t wait, anyway.
He uncapped the petrol and doused the upholstery. The petrol soaked the blanket and began dripping on to the floor. He let the string into the can and drew it out slowly, looped one end around to the underside of the front seat and tied the other end to the top of a reinforcing bar which stuck out obliquely from the rubble nearby. Before lighting the cigarette he squeezed the string to make sure it was moist enough. Then he cupped clay and dirt into a small mound under the string. Slowly he plugged the cigarette into the clay. He left an inch between the smoking tip and the string. Four, five minutes, he thought. When he stood, the scene seemed to gather itself around him, crushing him. He felt his stomach stir with nausea. Dizzy, too, he breathed in deeply and rubbed his eyes hard. A funeral pyre, he thought, or a sacrifice. He forced himself to utter a short prayer. Through the fear and the unbelieving, as he heard his own heart beat loud, he knew that he had held fast. As grotesque as this was, as clumsy as it was, he had been lucky-blessed, perhaps-and he had held fast. He jogged across the acres of rubble and the derelict shells of factories, and headed for the train station.
The briefing ground on. Minogue could feel the bafflement, the tiredness of the detectives hanging in the air. While he waited for a pause in Gallagher’s delivery he watched a detective yawn.
“Will you run up a list of likelies from what ye know about extremists here who are interested in matters Middle Eastern?” Minogue asked finally. “Students and citizens not necessarily affiliated with Republicans here too?” he added.
Gallagher blinked and studied the table-top.
“I can put the request through the Palace in the Park to cover you,” Minogue said. He could think of no less ominous way to remind Gallagher that the request could have the Garda Commissioner’s scrawl on the end of it after going through his office in Garda HQ in Phoenix Park.
“Ah no, it’s not that,” Gallagher said awkwardly. “I know we have to get the lead out, and free up personnel and info if ye want it. I was just thinking ahead, trying to figure an easy way. We don’t have the files cross-indexed, you see. We go by names, we go by organizations. Then we have files from the Aliens Office for resident foreigners. I can run up a list, all right, but it’ll take time…”
“And the Ports of Entry data, to follow up on an in-and-out killer from abroad?” Minogue probed gently.
“To be sure,” Gallagher replied quickly.
Somebody’s belly rumbled, Kilmartin’s. “Jases! Did you hear that war-cry, lads? I could eat the cheeks off a Jesuit’s arse through the confessional grille.”
Whether planned or not, Kilmartin’s grumble loosened the tension which Minogue had felt settling after he had made his request for Branch material.
“How many students are we talking about?” asked Kilmartin.
“Students from the Middle East? I don’t know for sure. There are upwards of 200 Lebanese students here. I only know that because I heard it the other day. The Lebanese are very keen on university education. I don’t know what religion the Lebanese here are, even. I’d bet a lot of them are Maronites, Christians.”
“Libya. Syria. Places with big Muslim populations.”
“Iraq too? Do you want to know about Iran?”
Kilmartin looked exasperated enough for Gallagher to skip any answer.
“Here’s a rough guess then: 450. That’s a generous estimate. Included in that are militants and ordinary people who don’t beat any drums. You might find a PLO member and then you might find a member of the Irish-Arab society-both ends of the spectrum.”
“Right so,” said Minogue. “Let’s get on to specifics with this League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People, then.”
Gallagher sat back in his chair and tugged at his moustache. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything on them. I never heard of them-and I’m the expert,” Gallagher shrugged. “Are you sure you got the name right- the girl on the switchboard, I mean.”
“Shite,” said Kilmartin.
It was seven o’clock.
“Sandwiches?” asked Minogue.
“Hamburgers and chips,” Keating said.
Minogue caved in. “Let’s give ourselves a few minutes before we get down to brass tacks as to what we’re going to do here,” he murmured. He asked Hoey to copy the names from Fine’s index cards on to the blackboard. Gallagher stayed in his chair and watched Hoey scrawling on the board.
“Now I might be able to plug into that,” said Gallagher, nodding toward the board. “Where’d you get those names?”
“An index of Paul Fine’s. We found it in his office.”
Minogue walked by Gallagher and out into the hallway. Kilmartin, there ahead of him, turned to Minogue.
“I phoned the lab for an up-date just now,” he grunted. “They’re ready to put it in writing that Fine was shot somewhere else than the beach. We’ve had men up and down the beach since the middle of the day.”
Minogue thought about the manpower which Kilmartin had suggested calling in. He’d need at least fifty men: Killiney Bay stretched miles down to Bray. The body probably hadn’t made it more than a couple of hundred feet offshore before the tide had drawn it in. Minogue didn’t want to think about Fine being shot aboard a boat and being dumped over. Fifty Gardai to do the hotels along the promenade in Bray, all the entrances to the beach… the railway stations for a sighting. Fine hadn’t owned a car. Go on the radio news tonight, at least. Wait until tomorrow for the telly, get a good clear recent snap for the papers too. Door to door? There couldn’t be more than a handful of older houses directly adjacent to the beach, houses built before the State decided that the foreshore was State land. In every place along the beach that Minogue could think of you’d have to be right down on the sand to see anything happening at the water’s edge. And who’d be down on the beach at night, anyway? Curriers with cans of lager and joints and their doxies for a wear. Model citizens: the least likely to step forward.
“I think we’d better set about it, all right,” Minogue concluded.
Kilmartin could call in detectives from the Central Detective Unit in Harcourt Street as well as other crime ordinary detectives from District Detective Units around the country.
“Let’s start by posting a car at every and any car entrance to the beach. Stop anyone going down to the beach and ask if they were around on Sunday or Sunday night. I’m sure there are regulars who drag the dog out and what-have-you every day there. Then to the beach accesses for pedestrians only. As for ourselves here, we should look at possibles from Fine’s card index for one thing.”
“Be more than fifty, Matt. Tell me a hundred.”