Minogue heard Hoey trudging back up the stairs.
“Sergeant Gallagher says McDonald’s in Grafton Street, about three, if that’s all right,” said Hoey cautiously.
Minogue wanted to laugh away the sudden irritation. “You’re not serious.”
“He says to phone him if that doesn’t suit. That’s the Branch for you, staking out their territory. He says he works out of a car most days anyway, but he carries the stuff in his head.”
“What about the Fitzgerald fella, our television guru?”
“His programmes go on the air at five, and he says he needs to be at the controls for some of the live interviews. He’ll be there all afternoon.”
Minogue didn’t know what to do about Gallagher. Would he have to take him in hand already?
“How did you get Gallagher?”
“I phoned Branch HQ here and they radioed him. He phoned from somewhere, to the phone below here, I mean.”
“I see, says the blind man… Well, would you get him for me on the phone, Shea? Tell him I want to talk to him myself.”
The beginnings of a smile pushed at Hoey’s cheeks.
Minogue gathered the video-tapes and cassettes awkwardly under his arm. Keating could go through the folders of clippings. Maybe the bulk of Fine’s work would be in his office in RTE. Closing the door, Minogue hoped that his assumption was not leaking too badly yet: that Paul Fine’s work had had something to do with his death. He did not want to believe that Fine had been singled out as a Jew alone, a cipher for some group, to be murdered for being a Jew. But an Irish Jew… what would that group want with killing him for that? To prove that no Jew the world over was immune from Palestinian wrath, that the Palestinians had allies all over the world? Minogue’s mind lurched into crackpot associations.