Upon entering the house Minogue forgot that the outside of it had looked like any other along the street. The small front garden had been tidy, the driveway clean. Additions had been made to the back of the house but the annexe could not be seen until one had taken several steps inside the gate. Shrubs and small trees had been well attended to, as though by a gardener. A replica of an old Irish cross hung on the wall in the hall, the imitation black bog-oak stark and striking. Instead of the clutter of a family-shoes or bags higgledy-piggledy next to stairs as unconscious traps for parents, the smells of cooking and carpet and clothes-the hall was a plain vestibule. What was it about the smell of floor-wax that reminded Minogue of alien life? Who would take the trouble to wax and polish floors, and why would they want to be doing it? Did they have nothing better to do, like sit around or drink or read or argue?
Finbar Drumm led them to an oversized kitchen, spotless, with no pots lying around, all new fixtures. It looked institutional to Minogue, right down to the arrangement of coffee mugs on hooks by the sink. A bearded man with very good teeth and twinkling eyes rose from his seat by the table and greeted the two policemen. He was wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. His feet were bare. Father Heher was a man who took exercise, a man who might exert himself in many ways, Minogue believed. He looked into this healthy face as it smiled broadly.
“Joe Heher, how do ye do?” said the sunny, barefoot priest. A tight handshake, the slow vowels of a countryman from the Midlands. Drumm waved them into chairs. Everything about the kitchen and these two men was solid and clean and functional. Drumm smelled faintly of aftershave. His ruddy face and well-groomed hair suggested the same pursuits as Heher. Mens sana in corpore sano.
“I hope ye weren’t expecting any special regalia,” smiled Heher, catching a glimpse of Kilmartin’s look of appraisal. They miss nothing, Minogue thought, and they smile so readily. He was not displeased at Kilmartin’s discomfort at having to talk to a barefoot mind-reader.
“No bother at all, Father,” said Kilmartin trying to regain a solid ground of titles proper to his Ireland.
Heher was having none of it. “Joe, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I’m not one for keeping barriers of any kind. There’s tea to be had.”
“Ah no, thanks,” said Kilmartin. Minogue heard in his demur a tone of contest and rebuttal. Kilmartin placed the cassette-recorder on the table.
“A plug-in, is it?” said Drumm, ever-helpful.
“Batteries, thanks very much.”
“It’s truly a shock to think of Brian no longer with us,” said Heher. Looking intently into Kilmartin’s face and then settling on Minogue’s, his sad smile faded into an expression which Minogue guessed was to convey a deep understanding.
“Such a tragedy gives us all pause for reflection. I only hope that Brian’s death will lead to an enriching of those of us he left behind in this life.”
“He may not have headed for the next life willingly,” said Minogue. “And that’d make it the more tragic, I’m thinking.”
Heher’s eyes widened and he looked to Drumm.
“Dear God,” Drumm whispered. “Awful.”
“Burned to a crisp in the back of his car,” said Kilmartin. “Is it something he would have done himself, knowing him as you do?”
“I ask myself every day if we ever know our deeper selves,” said the now-contemplative Heher. “What fears and clouds lurk in the back of any man’s mind? For myself, I had no inkling that Brian wanted to end his life.”
“Nor I,” added Drumm. “Brian was a gifted and hopeful person. The roots ran deep.”
“He was a member of Opus Dei?” said Minogue.
“Indeed,” said Heher. The faint signs of a smile returned to flicker around his mouth.
“But he lived on his own. Is that unusual?”
“Not at all,” said Drumm. “Our calling accommodates itself to many situations. God calls where he finds you.”
Not too early, Minogue wanted to say.
“But, for example, if Brian were one of your Numerary members, he’d very likely have lived in one of your residences. Like this one, for all the world?”
Heher’s face showed well-meaning puzzlement. “I see you know a little about our work. Normally we don’t disclose information about our members: it’s enough to know that they come from all sections of society. Everyone is different, and we all have different needs. It’s very difficult to deal in terms of normal and abnormal, as Opus Dei respects everyone’s individuality and path to God.”
“We tend to think of violent crime as abnormal, even though some incidence of it might seem normal,” said Minogue.
“An interesting reflection there. Brian was not a Numerary, he was an Associate. We have no need of secrecy per se but we need some measure of privacy to ensure our apostolic effectiveness,” said Drumm gently.
“So Brian was well enough known to members of this house then, such as yourselves?”
“Oh, I teach bits of philosophy and French at Clonliffe,” said Heher.
“What exactly is your role here, Father?” Kilmartin asked.
“I’m a member of Opus Dei myself. I help with some doctrinal matters, some guidance.”
“So the Archbishop’s office always turns to you in the event that someone is enquiring about Opus Dei?” asked Minogue.
“Now you have it,” said Heher, regaining his smile. “I had the telephone call this morning and that’s how I knew to meet ye here with Finbar. They love to load me down with jobs. I think I’ll have to learn to complain better.”
Which means the exact opposite, Minogue realized. He wondered if complaining was not a mortal sin for members of Opus Dei. Did Heher flog himself the odd time too, and take cold showers?
“Form a union, Father,” said Kilmartin. “Then you’ll be set up nicely.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Heher, showing his teeth in a broad smile. “You’re referring to the bus strike, I take it.”
“Did Brian Kelly ever belong to a different rank than Associate?” Minogue asked, rafting in on the pleasantries.
Drumm cleared his throat before answering. “Matter of fact Brian stayed in this residence for several years.”
“Why did he leave?”
“He felt ready for a move,” Heher replied easily. “Nobody is shackled here.”
“Same rank here, then, as when he left?”
“I was coming to that,” said Drumm. He was working to maintain the genial air. “Brian was experiencing difficulties with his calling as a Numerary member. He had demonstrated great effectiveness and faith, but all of us have our clouded days. We all strive to renew our faith and commitment. It would be a poor and unreflective member who didn’t experience the anxiety which the deepest and most sincere self-examination can bring.”
Drumm looked hopefully into Kilmartin’s face.
Heher looked down at the grain on the bare table-top and nodded his head several times. “We’re out in the world, you see,” he joined in. “We’re mortal and fallible, all of us. We meet with the stress of modern living like anyone else. Our apostolic work brings us into tough situations and it’s no surprise that we should feel the pressures sometimes, the same as any other thinking men, thinking Christian men. We don’t hide in foxholes, metaphorical or otherwise. We don’t shun the world. Finbar here is a successful doctor, for example.”
Drumm smiled shyly and Minogue thought he saw the first genuine emotion in the group. Praise, nothing more, nothing less: a little praise was the hook when it should always be a pillow. Minogue made a mental note to praise his children to the eyeballs the next time he saw them.
“The other brothers in this house include a solicitor and a town-planner. If you came here at tea-time you’d see plenty of cars parked outside in the driveway. What kind of car does Pierce drive now, Finbar?”
“A Saab,” Drumm smiled. An inside joke, Minogue realized.
“There’s even a television in nearly everyone’s room here. Not to speak of fancy clothes,” Heher went on, smiling indulgently at the two policemen.
Minogue felt his unease turn to distaste. “So ye’re not Martians, I take it,” he said.
“Precisely,” said Heher, showing his teeth again.
“Any of the membership work in Radio Telifis Eireann, Father Heher?” Minogue asked quickly, his gaze holding Heher’s and watching Heher’s smile falter.
“An interesting question that. Not here, I think, is there, Finbar?”
“No, er, Inspector. We can’t boast such glitterati here, I’m afraid.”
“Any work on the buses then?” said Kilmartin, trying to ease the sudden tension. “Cause if they are, they’re not at work today, the rascals. Ha ha.”
Undeterred, Minogue went on. “How would I find out if there are any Opus Dei members in, say, advertising companies or factories? Or in the Army, say?”
“Well, you’d ask an Opus Dei member where he or she worked, I suppose,” said Heher.
“From the top down, I mean. Working from a membership list.”
“Well now, you have me there now. I expect you’d have to apply to our President and see if he’d be willing to discuss it.”
“The man in Spain, is it?”
“Good for you. In Rome, actually. Our office is in Rome, yes.”
Drumm was sitting very still. Heher’s smile was a frozen ruin.
“Nobody here in Ireland?”
“The authority to give out the names of members must come from Rome,” said Heher.
“Has such been asked of you before, Father?”
“No, it hasn’t,” said Heher evenly.
“If the civil authorities thought it a matter of great urgency…?”
“I must confess that I’ve no experience in this. I’d really need to seek guidance myself if it were a matter of such urgency.”
“How about a court order, Father Heher?”
Heher shrugged and worked on the smile again. “If my writing would speed things up, I’ll certainly try. But may I ask you then if you’ll be candid about why you’d want such information?”
“You certainly may,” said Minogue, feeling more vindictive now that Heher’s unctuousness stood out so freakishly in an atmosphere unmistakably tense. “We’ll be investigating the possibility that Brian Kelly’s death is connected to his membership of Opus Dei.”
Heher’s expression changed for an instant and Minogue thought he saw a moment of hostility shimmer in his eyes. In the few seconds of strained silence that followed, Minogue berated himself for dancing so easily to Kilmartin’s tune. Here was Minogue, leaping on command. Was he that addicted to his dislike of Heher and what Heher represented?
“You’ll be aware that nothing like this has happened before,” Heher said coolly. “And I note that you are saying in effect that Brian Kelly may have been a victim of foul play. Not that despondency got the better of him and he took his own life, but that one of our fraternity may know something about the death of his brother?”
“Former brother, I believe,” said Minogue.
“Well, now,” Kilmartin intervened, scaping his heels on the floor. “Before we go into details about Mr. Kelly’s tenure here and what ye knew of the deceased, I’d like ye to listen to this little tape which myself and Inspector Minogue have with us. The wonders of science. Would ye listen carefully and consider separately whether ye recognize this person’s voice?”
Kilmartin pushed Play and sat back in his chair. His eyes flickered to Minogue once. Looking to the intent Heher who seemed like he might be praying, Minogue believed that Heher had seen Kilmartin’s glance.
“Great,” said Kilmartin acidly. “Fuckin‘ great. You’re always dragging me in here. Sooner or later God Almighty or an Assistant Comm will be here and he’ll see us and want to know why we’re not at work. Where’ll we be then, I’d like to know?”
Minogue took the change from the cashier.
“It certainly is,” he replied to her. “Me and me boss here are going to mitch off work for the afternoon and go up to the Phoenix Park. Frighten the deer.”
“Don’t be waiting on the bus,” said the girl dryly. She knew Minogue both as a Garda and a large white coffee with a sticky bun, no butter. Minogue grinned. She might even know that he was referring to Garda headquarters in the Park, not the hundreds of acres of parkland where deer ran free.
“Where will we be then?” Kilmartin repeated.
“In good company, if they’re here too, I suppose,” Minogue replied. “What’s it to our legion superiors where we do our thinking, here or back in the squadroom? Anyway, you owe me.”
“I owe you a kick in the arse if I owe you anything,” said Kilmartin.
“You owe me for upping my blood pressure with those two moonies back up on Churchtown Road. You knew I’d see red with the likes of Heher.”
Kilmartin had no reply ready. He began shovelling brown sugar into his coffee and looked around at the motley crowd which made up Minogue’s congregation in this, his favourite branch of Bewley’s Oriental Cafe.
“See that little shite over there in the corner pretending to be invisible?” said Kilmartin moodily.
Minogue looked toward the corner and picked out a small middle-aged man with the features of a wary cat.
“Yes, him. I shopped him first nigh on twenty years ago. Never forget a face. He was forever breaking into church poor-boxes. As well as that, the bugger could climb anything. A shagging fly, he was. I wonder is he the same now. Take the eye out of your head, he would. Right from under your nose too.”
“All God’s chillun got wings, Jimmy. That’s what I like about this place.”
“All God’s children, my royal Irish arse. They’ll phone God Almighty’s office, you know. That Heher fella… bad news if he’s vexed, I’d say.”
“Do I care, though?” Minogue murmured, an image of Heher’s face still lingering.
Kilmartin lit a cigarette, shook his head and fell to stroking his nose. A tall woman with her hair cut severely, a single sharp-looking earring dangling from her ear over Kilmartin’s head, appeared at their table. “This is non-smoking,” she announced. Kilmartin looked up into an impassive face. Minogue clamped his jaw muscles in an effort not to smile: she was holding a paperback and he recognized the title as one he had borrowed from Iesult, The Rights and Wrongs of Women. The woman left when Kilmartin topped his cigarette.
“Sorry for breathing,” he said in a savage undertone.
Minogue could resist the temptation no longer. “See the book? The Rights and Wrongs of Women.”
“Jesus Mary and holy Saint Joseph. Everywhere you look there’s a fuckin’ WAMmer. She knew I was a Guard, too, of course. And she and the likes of her sitting in Bewley’s instead of being out at work somewhere. Bad cess to the bitch, the dying leper’s vomit,” Kilmartin growled. “If it was a man that was in it, I would have told him where to go and made no bones about it,” he added. “Taking advantage of my breeding to be polite to the fair sex.”
Minogue did not wish to provoke trouble beyond amusement by noting aloud that Kilmartin’s amour courtois politesse had gone the way of the cigarette, and about time too.
“Judo or something, Jimmy. You never know. Smoking is a vice, anyway.”
Kilmartin’s eyelids narrowed in a glittering contempt. “The niff of her hairy armpits is more of a health hazard as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get back to those two Holy Joes above in Churchtown Road.”
“All right,” said Minogue, bolstered by the first of the coffee. “Not a mention from them of Paul Fine, not a hint: that’s the most significant thing that I got out of it.”
“Until Drumm asked us how the phone call was taped, like?”
“Right. I think they were genuinely ignorant about it. Drumm turned a bit white at the gills. I don’t like them sitting on a possible membership list, though.”
“I think you got the message across to them pretty well there. They might work on excommunicating you.”
“Too late, Jimmy, I’m the white elephant that fled the circus a long time ago. I had the feeling that Heher was daring me to slap a court order on the organization, knowing damn well I couldn’t get one. Even if I could, they could bog me down by giving me a phone number in Rome and telling me to learn Italian very rapid.”
“Heher and Drumm,” murmured Kilmartin, now in the grip of the coffee. “Sounds like a tobacconist’s shop.”
“Or a sexual disorder,” said Minogue. “Out of Krafft-Ebing.”
“Kraft what? Margarine?”
“Interesting idea,” said Minogue mimicking Heher. “Margarine on the wane. No. Krafft-Ebing wrote a compendium of human sexual behaviour. Heavy emphasis on disorders.”
“Do you know,” Kilmartin said earnestly as he leaned forward, “you seem to have a dirty mind. I hope to God I’m not due for this mental fit that has your brain fried up like an egg. All this talk about sex and the Ryan woman butchering her husband-middle-age crazy, the Yanks call it. With all due respect, you were cracked enough to start out with.”
“Jimmy, I’ve been thinking. Maybe the Women’s Action Movement had put something in the coffee here that has us dancing in our heads and being rude to priests.”
“Very shagging funny. Do you see me laughing?”
“After all, things are only getting going. First it’s Fran Ryan done in by his wife. Maybe there’s a secret signal like a dog whistle over the radio that signals women to go out and get the kitchen knife and — ”
“Mad. You’re barking mad. I don’t doubt but that you’ll be running up and down O’Connell Street on all fours in a minute, waving your mickey and biting people and lathering at the mouth.”
“Remember the thirty-seven, James Kilmartin,” Minogue intoned in the most lugubrious West Clare-Transylvanian accent he could muster. “Your number vill be fifty-four-”
“Fifty-three until 7 October, if it’s all the same to you. Stop acting the bollocks. There might be someone in here who knows us. Control yourself.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Listen. They didn’t make any bones about saying it was Kelly’s voice on the tape? No funny stuff there?”
“Right,” said Minogue emphatically, launching himself into the bun. “That went a long way toward deciding me too. No humming and hawing. I’m pretty sure they were on the level.”
“So what we have out of this is…” Kilmartin extended his fingers and held the first, “… one, their assistance in tracking down whoever might have been with Kelly this last while. Heher maintains that Kelly didn’t come to him for ‘guidance’, but he may have gone to someone else if he wanted advice. Two, the names of his acquaintances that had anything to do with Opus Dei. Drumm used to be pally with Kelly up until Kelly left the house last, when was it…?”
“February last year. Over a year and a half ago,” said Minogue. “I think we could press more on the business of Kelly being demoted or whatever they call it. Remember? Kelly’s commitment changing a bit. ‘Such that his work and status better suited the rank of Associate,’ said Heher. That’s a roundabout way of saying that Brian Kelly had had it with that mob. To my way of thinking, they wouldn’t be too happy about losing him from their top rank. Those Numerary fellas seem to be dug in deep and I had the impression that it was a one-way street. They have to have spent years studying, they have to be professionally trained and then devote loads of time to Opus Dei…”
“They don’t kill backsliders, Matt. They were giving him a breather to see if he’d renew his what-you-me-call-it, his vocation.”
Minogue tripped on ‘renew’. Renewal, meaningful, communicate, relationship, interaction, share… He detested the hijacking of these words. What made it worse was that the Church was devious enough to turn to the new religions of pop-psychology to dress up its own vocabulary of salvation. Minogue had been disappointed and then amused to realize that he preferred the Catholic Church to remain flinty and regal, robed majestically in baroque and gilt authoritarianism. He wanted the triumphant church of his youth. His pantheism had been thrust upon him, but that older Church would have been the easier to deny, he mused wistfully, though he’d have missed the panoply. With guitar-wielding priests and personable smilers like Heher and Drumm, Minogue was suspicious. Self-actualization and meaningful communication were all right for Americans. Wouldn’t wash in Ireland.
“I didn’t like the hint about suicide, even if it was oblique. It felt like they were trying to cut him loose and take no responsibility for him now that he might embarrass them,” said Minogue. “All the yapping about pressure and stress of modern society: since when did we have a modern society? As though to say,‘Poor Brian, if only he had stayed with his brothers in Opus Dei, he’d have been all right.’ ”
Kilmartin stirred his coffee. “You can’t deny it though. We’ll never get a definitive from the post-mortem saying that Kelly was bashed on the head,” he said conclusively. “It’s us being pushy because Kelly might have been connected to Fine.”
“Come on, now,” said Minogue. “I never in all my life saw such a suicide. Even if that crack in the skull is due to the heat and so on. A man empties petrol in his car and sits in the back seat without making a move? We know it’s murder.”
He returned to his coffee and bun. He would have liked a second cup but did not wish to press Kilmartin to any more complicity in what Kilmartin regarded as truancy here in Bewley’s.
“Here’s how I see it,” Kilmartin began slowly. “We keep the Fine case to ourselves when we’re taking statements from Kelly’s friends and associates. Say absolutely nothing. Be all ears for even the slightest hint of anything any of them say about Fine being murdered. The ones who give any sign of a connection to Fine are the ones we can turn inside out, right?”
“Yep. Leave it for them to trip over and incriminate themselves.”
“And we’ll hold on to the supposition that Kelly did try to contact or meet with Fine,” said Kilmartin with the slow speech of a bargainer. “Remember, we can’t dismiss the idea that Kelly might have been involved in Fine’s death too and got cold feet afterwards, so that his pals got to him before he decided to spill the beans.”
“But how would they know that he was ready to spill the beans? How would they know he phoned up looking for me, for example?”
“Jases, not so many questions, I’m not a fortune-teller. Save it for this evening when we have the meeting.”
“We could assume that Kelly was being watched, or believed he was being watched. That would account for a few things, like why he went to meet Fine on Killiney Hill last Sunday instead of meeting him in a handier place… Maybe if Paul Fine was told by Kelly to keep something under his hat for the time being… the need for secrecy, do you get what I’m at?”
“Being watched? By his pals in Opus Dei?”
“Yes. If Kelly had knowledge of, or had participated in, Paul Fine’s murder, and that murder was connected to Opus Dei…”
Kilmartin was giving the embossed ceiling his careful consideration. Minogue licked his fingers before taking out his hanky.
“If we could only place the pair of them together,” Kilmartin muttered. “That’d be the bee’s knees. Then I’d feel a lot easier in myself about taking a flying tackle at this Opus Dei mob.”
Suddenly Kilmartin looked down from the ornate ceiling and fixed Minogue with a stare. “I know what you’re thinking, you know,” he said.
Minogue feigned fright. “I had a fear as a child that adults could read my thoughts,” he said. “Being the sinner I was, I had a lot to keep secret…”
“You’re thinking that Jimmy Kilmartin is afraid to go nose-to-nose with something to do with the Church, aren’t you?”
“I might be.”
“You’re thinking to yourself that Opus Dei is really a crowd of religious lunatics and they deserve a good house-cleaning, but that Jimmy Kilmartin doesn’t want to get his wrists slapped by someone wearing a priest’s collar.”
“The thought had-”
“Feckin‘ sure it had, and well I know it. Well I’ve just thought of something that’ll do the trick nicely for us, without us having to ask Heher for the time of day. Are you ready for this? A time-honoured Irish method.”
“Prayer? Abstinence? The rhythm method?”
Kilmartin glowered. “I can’t get over this. You really are full of dirt today. I don’t understand it. It ill becomes you.”
Minogue smiled at the reprimand which sounded like a hectoring parent or a teacher.
“I’m on the rebound from those two clean and bright specimens, Jimmy. Go easy on me, I don’t meet such angels every day.”
“We could look around for an informer. Now.” Kilmartin’s face shone with the anticipation of praise.
“You mean we should find ourselves a former Opus Dei man and get an insider’s view of the outfit?”
Kilmartin nodded, smiling expectantly, but Minogue’s gargoyle had broken loose after the coffee.
“Only a Mayo-man would come up with an idea like that,” he said maliciously.
Kilmartin sat up with a start. “What do you mean by that comment? There was never an informer born in Co. Mayo. Didn’t we take the brunt of the Black and Tans and join up Humbert’s Frenchmen in ‘98 and… What does Mayo have to do with the suggestion?”
Minogue was up and scampering to the door. He was unaccountably happy, even in the knowledge that this last quarter of an hour might have been merely an oasis in a day when he’d fall back into brooding about the Fines, about their son, about his own. He saw the closely cropped woman who had tried to add six minutes to Kilmartin’s life look up from her paperback treatise at the two heavy, middle-aged policemen hurrying out of the restaurant.
“And as for Clare people, they didn’t know what shoes and socks were until the first plane landed in Shannon,” he heard Kilmartin in pursuit behind. “And as for sports…”
Minogue winked at the grave face of the woman as he fled. She did not acknowledge his efforts. Perhaps it was not part of her view of the world that two clumsy policemen should be willingly making iijits of themselves.