On this occasion Tony Goulding was in his role as Minister for Industrial Development and Technology but the fact that he was also the Tanaiste, the Deputy Prime Minister, provided additional prestige.
He stood with a handful of lesser dignitaries, like the Lord Mayor, on a dais at the front of the huge exhibition hall at the Royal Dublin Society grounds at Ballsbridge. Before him were row upon row of trade stands and hundreds of people waiting to hear what he had to say.
It was not a particularly high podium and so most of the people, especially those at the back, were unable to see him in the flesh. But it did not matter. Thanks to monitors on each stand and several video walls mounted around the hall, they could see his face wherever they were. It was an impressive display of televisual communication but it was out of the age of steam compared to some of the concepts which would be revealed in the coming weeks.
Goulding was about to open the third WONTEC, the annual world information technology convention. Before its launch two years ago, some of the organisers had come up with the working title of WINTEC but others felt this sounded too much like just another Microsoft innovation. Bill Gates might have conquered the world but not all of his opponents had come out of the bushes to surrender.
So a slightly more neutral acronym had emerged and although it had once been remarked that the alternative sounded like a stir-fry, it had stayed as WONTEC. Gates himself was due in Dublin in two days’ time to give a lecture at University College, and other gurus of IT would be appearing at seminars and debates in various centres throughout the city.
Goulding’s face with its shining, beefy features beamed from the video screens. He was a man who might have been described as verging on elderly although he preferred to think of himself as being in late middle age. He had wary eyes and carefully tended silver wings of hair and WONTEC’s presence on these shores was an enormous coup for him.
The first convention had been in California, the second in Japan and now here it was in Ireland. There had been puzzlement and a slight snootiness in some quarters when the venue had been announced but to the more informed observers it was no surprise at all.
For years Ireland had been welcoming computer firms and gaining a reputation as a kind of silicon island. It was a country with an enterprise culture and one that provided attractive arrangements, like low corporate tax, for industries thinking of putting down roots, particularly those industries looking to the future of new technology, of which Ireland aimed to be a world patron.
Industrial development and the jobs which went with it had been the key to Democratic Nation’s electoral success. It was why, when the Cabinet was being formed and Goulding and the Prime Minister were discussing which post he should have, he had been firm about creating this one for himself.
In his chosen area of responsibility, Goulding had come to be seen as something of a magician and even though he had the strategies and successes of previous Governments to build on he always managed to make it look as if the credit was his and his alone. Securing this convention in the face of vigorous international competition was most definitely a personal triumph and in the speech which he was about to make, he would add to the achievement with the announcement that another American software company was going to set up shop, this time in County Mayo.
Not all of the delegates to WONTEC would hear the speech although, of course, it would be available on-line if they wished to pick up on it later. Some of the delegates had not even arrived yet while others had already sought out the charms of Dublin’s pubs and hotel bars where they were downloading pints of Guinness and glasses of Bushmills whiskey.
It was unlikely that many of them would bother to pick up a local paper, except perhaps to look at the entertainment listings, although since they no longer considered newspapers to be a primary source of information it was more probable that they would get what they wanted from the website created especially for the convention or from other pages on the net.
If they had looked through the papers, however, they could not have avoided seeing one story which had gripped the local media and which might conceivably have given them a different take on Dublin life from the one they were experiencing in its hostelries.
Even in a place used to occasional instances of violent crime, this one had a particular shock value. Two battered corpses had been found in a rubbish tip on the outskirts of the city. The bodies were that of a girl and a young man. The girl’s skull had been smashed and it seemed as if the man had been systematically beaten before his skull was crushed, too.
The police were appealing for information but there were no leads as yet, although the identities of the couple had been established. The girl was from Waterford and had left home months before to live in Dublin, exactly where, her mother did not know, but she knew her whereabouts now, that was for sure, having just had the appalling task of identifying the remains.
Some weeks ago, the girl’s brother had also left home, according to reports, with the intention of coming to Dublin to try to find her but there was no sign of him now either and the police had issued a description. There was no photograph to go with it because his mother had only a couple of childhood snaps. He resembled thousands of young men in this city and the Gardai did not hold out much hope of finding him if he did not wish them to.
Nor were they at all convinced that he was still alive.
The dead man had been known to the police. He came from north Dublin and he had spent too much of his short life in and out of young offenders’ centres and prison for a succession of offences involving robbery and possession of drugs. Both the victims had been users and it was generally assumed that in some way their habit had precipitated their deaths.
One crime correspondent had been talking to ‘sources’ and had reported that the police believed they knew who might be responsible but they had no evidence to link this person with the crime. The murders were also believed to be connected to the discovery of the burnt-out remains of a stolen van in the shell of a warehouse on an industrial estate. On the floor of the building the police had found extensive patches of dried blood.
In addition, they had found the house in Ballyfermot where the couple had been squatting and they had tried to talk to the neighbours. But that was a complete waste of time as usual. Ballyfermot was a place where people told the police nothing, no matter what, and so if there was anyone who had seen or knew anything they were certainly not going to reveal it.
Unless the brother turned up, alive, the prospects for solving this one did not look good.
But none of this was occupying the attention of the WONTEC fraternity who were still streaming into Dublin airport from major cities throughout the world.
Among them were five men whose ages ranged from twenty-five to forty. They were ordinary-looking men, indistinguishable from all the other delegates, and their arrival would arouse no particular interest. In the unlikely event that it did, they each had ID from a minor subsidiary of Hurll Inc, the American computer giant.
They had not travelled together. Three of them had American passports and had flown from New York, Boston and Los Angeles. The other two had come from London and Paris and carried European Union passports which allowed them to walk straight out of the airport without being stopped by Customs and Immigration.
They had been chosen as much for the anonymity of their appearance as the technical expertise which they possessed. They needed to blend with their surroundings and for that reason they were all Caucasian. There were no blacks or Asians among them or men of Latin origin. Dublin, although proudly cosmopolitan, was in essence a white city.
The group had a leader, a man who wore glasses.
It was not Parrish’s first visit. He and two of his companions had been here before.
Their destinations were several of the city’s hotels, the bigger and more crowded the better, and so only major hotels had been selected. It had not been easy finding the right accommodation. Many of the hotels had been fully booked for some time but in the end appropriate arrangements had been made. None of the men would stay in one hotel for more than two days before moving on to another one.
Transport was not a concern. Two cars had been left at the airport for them and hidden in secure compartments under the back seats was all the equipment they would need for their stay.
In the days following their arrival, they would do their homework, get to know the geography and wait for their moment to come.
Gallagher sampled the cool tartness of his Guinness, then licked the froth from his top lip. In a painting above his head, the thin face of James Joyce observed the ritual from behind his glasses.
Gallagher’s companion had a pint of Guinness, too, and he was using it to help swallow a large portion of humble pie.
Although he was the same age, Alan Warnock had not worn as well. He was a small man, bald and over-weight, but he had his sister’s mellow brown eyes.
They were just off Grafton Street in Davy Byrne’s, one of Dublin’s most famous pubs, the noisy watering-hole for literati past and present, where wide-eyed tourists wandered in looking for an atmosphere which the regulars all took for granted. Gallagher and Warnock were perched on stools at a marble shelf along a wall decorated with brass light fittings in the shape of daffodils. It was as if spring had come into the pub with them but it had not done much to lighten their mood.
‘Listen,’ Warnock said when they had both taken the edge off their thirst, ‘thanks for coming. I, eh – I didn’t want us to fall out about this, you know? I was just as shocked as you were about what happened.’
Gallagher gave a surly shrug. He did not want to go over his problems with Emma again.
‘Well, for what it’s worth,’ Warnock continued, ‘it’s made things kind of difficult for me, too.’
Gallagher gave him a sceptical look and waited.
‘It was a bloody sub-editor trying to be clever. I gave her your piece and then came the row in the Dail and I suppose she went – aha, time for a bit of fun here. The paper hates Democratic Nation, you know.’
‘I had noticed.’
‘If I’d known what she’d done, I’d have killed the picture but I wasn’t there when the page was being put together. I nearly died when I saw it.’
‘So,’ Gallagher said, ‘how’s this a problem for you? I’d have thought the editor would have given you a raise.’ He sipped his drink slowly.
A choking cough from a nearby table distracted them. A man with a plate of oysters had gone red in the face and his companion was hammering him on the back.
‘Too much Tabasco,’ Warnock diagnosed before going on. ‘The editor heard I’d torn a strip off her. So he called me in and told me she’d done a brilliant job. Very enterprising, very imaginative, he said, just the sort of person who knew what the paper was all about and I was to tell her that and if I didn’t watch myself I might find she’d been given my job.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘What do you think I did? I told her the editor thought she’d done well but it didn’t mean that I thought the same and then I went out and got stinking drunk. I’m not getting any younger and I’ve got the mortgage to pay, you know. I can’t afford to make principled stands. You go from being enfant terrible to old fart overnight in this business and no one wants you. Anyway, I wanted you to know. I apologise. And now I owe you one. I mean that.’
Gallagher was finding it hard to remain indignant with his old friend, as he knew he would. As well as that, there was a cheque from Dublin Sunday on the way and he needed the money. His appointment with his bank manager was looming.
‘Okay, then,’ he said, ‘lend me twenty grand.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Warnock said with a laugh. ‘Nice one. What would you like – pounds or dollars? Maybe you could think of something a bit more realistic, like – why don’t I buy the next round.’
Gallagher downed his pint with determination.
‘All right. Why don’t you buy the next round?’