Kilmartin cut short his advice when he saw the unmarked car coming down the street ahead of them. There were three men in it. Minogue saw the short antenna quivering as the car drifted slowly by. A face turned to them from the back seat, Gallagher’s. He pointed ahead of the car, beckoning them.
“Come on so, and we’ll have a pow-wow,” said a cheered Kilmartin. “The brass is here. That was Farrell in the car too, wasn’t it?”
Minogue and Kilmartin walked the 200 yards to where the car had stopped. They passed a man standing by a bus stop. He was wearing a three-quarter length coat, sometimes called a car-coat or a bum-freezer. Minogue recognized it immediately as the trademark of a detective who was carrying a firearm. Kilmartin nodded at the detective in passing, and whispered: “Soon enough.”
Minogue wondered if Gorman or his wife or one of their children might look out into the garden and spot one of the half-dozen detectives in position around the house. A shadow by the neighbour’s garage, a slight movement by the hedge… Daddy, there’s someone in the back garden, I saw a… Minogue forced the groaning door of his imagination shut. Can’t think like that now, waiting and worrying. Everyone’s doing the best he can…
Minogue joined Kilmartin on his hunkers by the back window on Farrell’s side of the car. Gallagher was handling the radio traffic from the back seat, the coiled lead from the dashboard stretched almost taut, a handset in his other hand.
“That’s the last one brought in just now,” growled Farrell. “Except for this Gibney.”
“You have the other Army fella, Cunningham?” asked Kilmartin.
“Meek as a lamb, but he’s saying nothing.”
“Turn up a gun or anything in his place?” Kilmartin persisted.
“No,” Gallagher answered. “We found street maps and some kind of an itinerary marked out though, with times written in on the maps. It looks like a tail on someone who travelled by car over that route. Could have been a planned hit.”
“Not a minute too soon,” said Farrell sharply. “Tell Johnny Tynan that the next time you see him, Matty.”
Minogue said nothing.
“How many in the bag now, so?” said Kilmartin.
“Ten of the eleven on your list… twenty-three all told,” said Gallagher. “Sorry, it’s twenty-four.”
“Jases,” whispered Kilmartin. “Are there any more Army and Gardai?”
“No,” Farrell interrupted. “The ones we fingered, we got them off the phone feeds. Some of them might be duds though. This last bugger, we had to wait for him since nine. He was visiting his wife in the hospital. She had a baby at seven o’clock this evening. Did you ever hear the like of that for timing? Can you see us going into the maternity ward and clipping his hands in front of his missus?”
Kilmartin snorted. “Great work, Tommy,” he said.
“I’ll be a lot happier when Gibney’s out of that house,” replied Farrell harshly. “I don’t like this one little bit. You’d think he had a sixth sense the way he left a few minutes before the arrest team showed up at his place.”
“Gorman’s missus and the three children are in there, all right,” said Kilmartin.
Gallagher checked with the radio van. There had been no calls to Gorman’s house.
“Looks like it’s sealed nicely all the same,” said Kilmartin.
“Buy me a pint and a small one on the head of it,” grunted Farrell. “What the hell is Gibney doing in there?”
“He may have a lot of persuading to do with Gorman, by the sound of that earlier call we heard off the tape,” Minogue observed. “The nearer we get to the Ard Fheis, the more Gorman’ll need to be persuaded.”
“I suppose so,” said Farrell. “We couldn’t get into the bloody house all day. The missus was home with one of the kids, so we couldn’t get any device inside the house at all. Take too long to rig up an infra-red mike on the windows with all the houses here so higgledy-piggledy. Christ, I’d give my right ball to hear what they’re saying to one another in there right now.”
Kilmartin glanced quickly at Minogue. Both men remembered a recent Special Branch blunder which had involved the use of directional microphones in one of their stake-outs. A Branch specialist had been perched on a wall, headphones on and pointing a dish toward an anchored yacht in Howth harbour one night over the summer. The Gardai had been called by a citizen who was suspicious of such a person pointing what looked like a Martian weapon at the boat. Rather than alert people on the yacht to the surveillance, the Branch man had allowed himself to be arrested. Farrell would not want his officers lampooned in cartoons as they had been after that affair, if neighbours of the Germans found men perching on their window-sills or in their apple trees pointing things at the Germans’ house.
The car radio came alive with a click and a hiss: “ Phone’s ringing in the house, over-”
“Do it, so,” hissed Farrell.
Gallagher squeezed the transmit button on his handset.
“Alert to all units. This is Control. Repeat: alert to all units. Phone is ringing in the house. Repeat: phone is now ringing-”
Gallagher’s hand was shaking as he released the button. The radio van began transmitting a patch from the relayed phone-tap. Minogue felt his leg cramping but he ignored it. The familiar double ring of the telephone came eerily from the radio. Farrell had his hand on the door release, body poised to elbow the door open. Minogue moved back on the footpath. The man who had been at the bus stop was now running softly towards Gorman’s house. There would be the others poised by the door, by the windows, moving across the grass…
The phone was picked up in the middle of a ring.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice. Farrell raised his hand as though about to start a race.
Another hello. Minogue stood up and looked down the street.
“Hello, Finnoula? This is Madeline. Howaryou?”
“Madeline! Is it yourself that’s in it? How are you doing yourself?” Mrs. Gorman replied. “ Are you up here in Dublin?”
“I am. I was up today and I met Emer. She said you were confined to barracks.”
“Sean is sick, but the other two are grand. It’s only a bit of the diarrhoea.”
“I hope I’m not calling at a bad… ”
“ Not at all, I’m only delighted to hear you,” said Finnoula Gorman.
A lovely warm voice, Minogue thought. Welcoming, confident. Does this woman know what her husband is up to?
“Sure they’re all packed off to bed. I’m watching a cod of a thing on the telly, an oldie with Gary Grant in it.”
The other woman laughed.
“Well I’ll be up in town here until tomorrow, Finnoula. That’ll be long enough to spread the word.”
Farrell’s eyes widened and he sat forward in the seat.
“I’m expecting, so I am.”
“Ah, that’s just fantastic! Well, tell me the whole story now… ”
The transmission cut off. Farrell swore and let his hand drop on to his knee. Gallagher squeezed the set.
“Fall back all units. Repeat: fall back. Await further instructions.”
“At least she’ll keep anyone else from phoning in,” said Farrell.
By ten-fifteen Kilmartin could wait no longer.
“I hope there’s no one looking out their windows here tonight. ‘Cause if they are, they’ll be seeing an important Garda officer by the name of Kilmartin making his pooley up ag’in the wall here. I’m only bursting, I tell you,” said Kilmartin.
Kilmartin walked to a shadowed part of the footpath which was overhung with shrubs tumbling down from a high wall. Minogue strolled back up the footpath. He was reluctant to get back into the car with Hoey because he knew Kilmartin would follow him. How was it that some people talked even more when they were nervous, while others simply shut up?
Dried leaves had gathered against parts of the walls along the road. Gorman lived in a street of well-to-do people, Minogue saw. A Volvo and a Saab were parked within a few cars of one another. The breeze had died down but Minogue could still sense the sea. If he had the chance he’d take a sick day and walk Sandymount strand before the bitter east wind came in with the Dublin winter. Bring Kathleen. Go for Chinese food on the credit card afterwards. Finish off with a quiet one in Gerry Byrne’s over in Galloping Green, he’d have the fire lit in the lounge for sure… Anisette. Pernod would do all right, even if it was a tourist’s drink here.