John Brady - Kaddish in Dublin

Fitzgerald’s arched eyebrows gave way to a shrug.

“Like I say,” Minogue added. “We’re not the mind police or anything. We can only do good work if people are co-operative with us. Now, this is a murder investigation so don’t spare our sensibilities. We tend to like getting straight to the point. We’re tough nuts the pair of us, aren’t we, Shea?”

“We’re awful tough, so we are,” Hoey obliged.

“Matter of fact I can safely say that I don’t even go to Mass and I suspect that Detective Hoey here doesn’t go to confession either. So can we hurry it up here?”

Downey resumed. “He said he’d do a bit on that, just to get a feel for it. We just decided off the tops of our heads to start with any Libyan connection first, seeing as Gadaffi’s very much in the public eye. He’s on record as supporting the IRA.”

“Ever heard of that group, The League for Solidarity with the Palestinian People?”

Fitzgerald shook his head too. “I know from reporting on stuff like that that some other outfit will invent a name to cover some incident, just to keep it at arm’s length and see what public reaction will be,” he said.

“What outfits?”

“Well, in this case I don’t know. There’s no Palestinian Liberation Organization or Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Dublin,” Fitzgerald said emphatically. “And there’s no Jihad that I can tell. I bet that yous know them or at least your Branch does. There are none of the madmen from Lebanon here either, the Hezbollah crowd or other pro-Iranian groups. That’s not how those organizations work, as I understand my reading. They don’t send members here as students to be farting about with the IRA in secret. Sure, there are sympathizers and militants amongst any group of students from Arab countries. I’d bet there are even informal groups where PLO sympathizers give a speech here in Dublin. That doesn’t translate into guns and bombs, though.”

“The links are organized on the Continent,” Downey added. “You know, Paddy Murphy from Belfast goes to Amsterdam or Copenhagen and meets So-and-so. They don’t come here offering guns.”

“We knew all that but we still thought it was worth a second look. The situation changes. Libyans might be interested in causing a commotion here,” said Fitzgerald. He began polishing his glasses with a paper handkerchief. Idly Minogue wondered if Fitzgerald had more in common with the keen, cerebral pugnaciousness of a Jesuit than he realized.

“Did Paul Fine actually get to the stage of going out and meeting these students?”

“I don’t think so. We were just starting up, catching up on background at this stage. It was his story basically, he was just picking my brain a bit. Same as we all do here,” Downey added a little defensively. Minogue caught Fitzgerald’s eye for an instant. Had Fitz powers of mind-reading, from that look on his face after Downey’s mention of picking one another’s brains? Minogue had instantly thought of a family of apes grooming themselves.

“Do you keep a notebook, Mr. Downey? Could you tell us the names of persons you or Paul Fine were to meet with in this regard?”

Downey blinked. Fitzgerald continued cleaning his glasses, taking excessive care with his handiwork. Hoey tapped his pencil lightly on the pad and glanced at Minogue.

“Such names would be a great help to us, Mr. Downey. They would in no way incriminate anybody,” said Minogue.

Downey looked to Fitzgerald but had no guidance there. Fitzgerald breathed on the lenses again.

“It’s not the custom for policemen to be asking journalists for their diaries or notebooks. Excepting places such as Chile, perhaps,” Fitzgerald observed.

“I didn’t know you for a man who revered customs,” replied Minogue. “I rather like novel approaches myself.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” said Fitzgerald conclusively. “I appreciate your appreciation. A free Press does not involve policemen following up names in a journalist’s notebook and questioning them on what they may or may not have said to that journalist.”

“I don’t much care what they said to Mr. Downey here. I want to know what they knew of Paul Fine.”

Fitzgerald put his glasses on, curling them around his ears carefully. Minogue saw a brain-warrior girding his loins.

“Seeing as we’re talking man-to-man here, Inspector, let me ask you this: is it because Paul’s Da happens to be a Justice of the Supreme Court that you are so pushy?”

“Not principally,” Minogue answered.

Fitzgerald rested a languid gaze on Minogue for several seconds, then he turned to Downey. Downey left the room. Must have known and made their minds up before I ever actually asked, Minogue thought.

“It’s because Paul Fine is a Jew, isn’t it?”

“That could well be,” said Minogue slowly. “But I don’t like to say it out loud. Every victim of a murderer gets our best. I may look like a superannuated culchie cop to you but I am in fact a lunatic-a lunatic in the sense that I am a stubborn weasel when I get to grips with the murder of a person. My bite is very bad indeed, Mr. Fitzgerald, and I’m at the age where I don’t much care for jaded slogans like ‘the freedom of the press’. Not that I’m not a democratic person. It’s that I tend to lose track of public rituals when I seek out fairness for someone like Paul Fine. We’re his advocates, in a sense. Now if you want to get on your high horse and find my superiors’ ears in order to have me taken to task, fire away. But you’ll be surprised. This is a very personal business. You get to know who was treated so unfairly that they end up on a slab in the pathology department of a hospital and turn into a heap of reports on your desk. Frequently you get to like those victims and the people they were stolen from: you even get to like some of them inordinately. And it tears at your stomach and it can make you ill yourself, this grief and madness. Do you know what I’m saying at all? Let me know when I’m trampling on your civil rights, won’t you?”

Minogue heard Fitzgerald breathe out heavily through his nostrils. He looked to his watch.

“Tea?” said Fitzgerald. Minogue believed he had won something.

Downey brought the tea. He sat next to Hoey as they doctored their tea and pointed to names in his notebook. Hoey began copying them.

“If you think that Paul was by way of being very religious, you’d be wrong there,” said Fitzgerald. “I don’t know if there are lapsed Jews like there are lapsed Catholics but he didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve. I asked him when he came to me with the bit about the Arabs, the students, if he hadn’t an interest to declare there. He laughed it off, treated it as a joke.”

“A joke,” Minogue echoed with a leaden emphasis.

“Yes. Because being a Jew he’d necessarily be expected to have it in for any Arab. Stereotyping. Get this, now: Paul was an unashamed progressive, like a lot of people here. Your mob call it Leftie, I don’t doubt. Let’s just say that Paul wasn’t a gobshite. We have to fight our corner here on this programme. There’ll always be complaints, and dinosaurs from the bog wanting to put us off the air and have more ‘entertainment’, less looking at the Emperor. Paul wouldn’t have been working here if he was a bread and circuses man. It was a personal challenge to him to go out and meet these students, he said. He actually had a lot of sympathy for Palestinians. We think there are no shades of opinion in Israel, you know, and we assume that every Israeli-and therefore, every Jew the world over-supports what has happened in Israel over the last ten years. Not so.”

“It’s getting a bit murky for me,” Minogue murmured. “It seems odd to me that he should be murdered for being a Jew who was apparently taking an interest in Arab goings-on as regards Ireland.”