John Brady - Kaddish in Dublin

“I’m Pat Sheehy,” he said in a Kerry accent. “And you’re Gardai.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Minogue, wondering if there was a ban on using the term Father; “we don’t look like rock stars.”

“Ah no. It’s the appointment book that tells all.”

Sheehy closed the heavy door behind them. The residence smelled of floor-wax and a chicken boiling somewhere. Minogue and Tynan followed the agile Sheehy across the parquet to a double door that opened into a room with a high ceiling, the proportions of which suggested a Georgian if not a neoclassical plan at work, but in the nineteenth century. Several large portraits hung from the walls. All were past Archbishops of Dublin, Minogue concluded after recognizing two. Fresh flowers rested in a Waterford cut-glass bowl atop what Minogue’s amateur eye guessed was an antique Irish bog-oak table.

In this waiting room the visitor could read the Reader’s Digest, Time or The Word, a publication of the Oblate Fathers.

Sheehy was back inside of two minutes. Less cheery now, Minogue believed, a lot less. The chicken smell was stronger in the hall: maybe it wasn’t chicken but someone’s goose getting cooked… the fat is in the fire now… what’s sauce for the goose is-Minogue reined in his flittery thoughts.

Sheehy knocked and entered without awaiting a summons from within the room. Minogue felt quickly that the knot of his tie was in place and brushed over the zipper of his fly. You never know, said his gargoyle within. Was he expected to kiss the ring, or had that gone out too with the Latin Mass? He determined not to do so, anyway.

The Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Reverend Doctor Francis Burke, stood behind his desk and nodded at the two policemen. Minogue heard Sheehy closing the door. Burke was making no attempt to come around the desk to greet the policemen, Minogue realized. Tynan went before him and reached across the desk to shake hands.

“John. How’ve you been?” said Burke.

Tynan said he was fine. He turned to introduce Minogue.

“Your Eminence,” said Minogue. Burke nodded as he shook hands briefly. He looked a lot different off the telly, Minogue thought. Maybe it was the light in here. Or the knobs under the telly to adjust the tint and the-Time to get a new one, Kathleen says, what with the scratchy bit at the bottom of the screen now-

The curtains were dark green and they had been drawn across what could be full-length windows behind the desk. The office was probably thirty feet square, Minogue estimated: there might even be room in here for the Archbishop to have posed for that WAM poster with his foot on the necks of the oppressed women of Ireland. ‘ Not the Church, Not the State, Women must control their…’ One wall was taken up with bookcases, whose glass doors reflected the fancy candelabra lights which dangled from the embossed ceiling. There were two hardbacked chairs drawn up on the policemen’s side of the desk. A coffee-table stood chairless by the marble fireplace to their right. Business, Minogue knew, otherwise we’d be sitting there at that table by the fire that was probably never lit.

Tynan waited for the Archbishop to sit before he took his chair. Minogue followed suit and stole another glance at Burke. The face fleshy but not unhealthy: tired, anyway. Fifty-four, fifty-five? His mauve shirt was that of an Archbishop. He had piled a series of file folders and one thick book to one side of the desk, leaving plenty of room for the photograph of John Paul II high on the altar in the Phoenix Park with his congregation of over a million of the country’s 3? million souls gathered about in the grass. It might have been taken in the middle of his ‘Young people of Ireland’ speech. Minogue could not classify the smell here in the room yet: it was not pipe tobacco, it was more a medicinal smell. Cough drops?

Burke settled himself and looked to Minogue. “You’re a principal officer in investigating Brian Kelly’s death?”

“I’m not, Your Eminence. I’m merely part of the permanent staff in the Technical Bureau. You’d probably know my department as the Murder Squad.”

“I hope I don’t get to know it all that well,” said Burke humourlessly.

“I spoke with Father Heher this morning,” said Minogue.

“Yes, that I know,” said Burke. He looked to the closed door behind the two policemen as though to gather inspiration from it. “You’d be the Inspector Minogue who is investigating the murder of Billy Fine’s son, Paul Fine, wouldn’t you?”

“I am that, Your Eminence.”

“Tell me then, Inspector: why do you think he, Billy Fine, asked you to do the job? Do you have some expertise? Before you give me your answer, I should save you the trouble of asking me how I know this-we meet occasionally in the course of our jobs, Billy and I. Yes,” Burke raised both hands off the desk and used them as wands to indicate around the room, “jobs. This is a job as well as a vocation. I am a bureaucrat as well as a shepherd. This is my office. I’ve met the Fines and many others in the Jewish community in Ireland over the years. My heart goes out to Billy and Rosalie: they are the best that Ireland could hope for in respect of their learning and culture and religion. Billy Fine has the soul of a poet, a writer buried behind those robes. Rosalie Fine is one of the most cultured women I have met in my life. I went to see Billy on Monday night late after I heard the news, and passed on our prayers to them. He asked me then if I knew you. I didn’t.”

Minogue realised that his nervousness was going now. Something was taking its place, a tension, a feeling of some stretching.

“Your question, Your Eminence… I’m not sure. It may be a sentimental thing when all is said and done, to be honest with you. I had met Justice Fine in the Jewish Museum here just after it opened. I believe he knew something of my career background in the Murder Squad.”

“Modest of you, Inspector. Billy Fine seems to have a lot of faith in you. Tell me, are the policemen who do your line of work very different men from those we see helping the schoolchildren across the street?”

Minogue didn’t know whether the talk was toying. “Yes, Your Eminence, I believe that we are.”

“The job requires a certain flair,” Tynan said quietly.

“Flair? Are you very tough, you Gardai here on this work?” asked Burke.

“I don’t think so, Your Eminence. We’re the same as the next man in the street. I can say that my colleagues have a very strong sense of fairness. We try and deal with what people do to other people as best we can. I don’t understand certain things about people even after I see them through a trial.”

“Not an elite that’s used to getting what it wants quickly?”

“I feel very un-elite at the best of times,” replied Minogue. “I go home most evenings to my wife. We have two grown children. We read and watch a little bit of telly and do a bit of gardening if the rain holds off and the slugs don’t attack the cabbage. Sometimes we go on a holiday.”

“Billy Fine said he wanted you. He is no fool.”

“I’m flattered, Your Eminence. I’ll help him out as well as I can, but I work for the State also.”

Burke lolled back in his chair. Minogue heard him breathe out slowly as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his thumbs.

“Anyway, what are we here for? Brian Kelly and Opus Dei. Is that the menu you’d like, John?”

Tynan nodded. “We’d be obliged for your help.”

“They told you you’d have to apply to Rome to release the membership rolls, I suppose? You didn’t want a list of all the membership in Ireland, did you? You had a sideline interest.”

Minogue cleared his throat. Yes, that’s what the smell was: cough drops. “Brian Kelly’s friends and associates in the organization,” he said. “We’d be wanting to interview them. Perhaps the deceased was anxious, under some pressure.”