Wicklow, April 1935
The field behind the house at Kilranelagh was full of sheep. On one side, penned tightly and bleating noisily, were the grubby, thick-woolled ewes waiting to be sheared; on the other were the newly shorn, bewildered by their sudden weightlessness, their gleaming white coats flecked here and there with blood. It was the day after Stefan Gillespie’s return from Danzig, but nothing, not even Tom’s excitement, could stand in the way of the shearing. The Farrell brothers would be there from the break of day, when the sheep were brought in from the fields, until the last one was clipped, late that afternoon. Stefan and his father carried ewe after struggling ewe from the pens to the thudding Lister engine that drove the shearing heads. The smell of diesel mixed with the smell of the animals. Their clothes reeked of sticky lanolin and sheep shit. Now the sun was almost overhead. Half the flock had been clipped and they would soon stop for dinner. Stefan looked up to wipe the sweat from his eyes. He saw the bent figure of Emmet Brady walking through the field towards him, leaning on his stick. It was four months since they had first talked about Tom. The threat from Father Carey and the Church had been brooding over the farm all that time. It was never quite forgotten, but for a time the business of life had pushed it away.
Stefan and the solicitor walked away from the noise of the shearing, saying nothing. David Gillespie watched them as he carried on his work.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not a very welcome guest, Stefan,’ said Brady finally.
‘I thought after all this time –’
‘They won’t let it go. You have the choice you had before, to go along with it and send Tom to his uncle and aunt’s, or they’ll take it to court. I think they’ll move quite quickly now. And they have their reasons for that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’ll want to ensure it goes before a particular judge. No one ought to be able to guarantee that, of course, but let’s just say it will happen.’
‘And why’s that so important?’
‘The man is Alexander Phelan. I’ve looked very hard at what’s been happening in the last few years, in cases like this. Phelan sat on one in 1934. A woman had custody of her children taken away from her. She was a Protestant. The Catholic husband was in hospital and dying. There’d been a falling out and the husband accused the woman of interfering in the children’s religious upbringing. Not much evidence, other than his word, but Phelan refused to accept her assurances that she would continue to bring the children up as Catholics. He said he was duty bound to secure the fulfilment of any agreement that was made before a mixed marriage, because of the special position of the Catholic Church in the state. And because, and these are the words he used, “the state itself pays homage to that Church”.’
They walked on in silence again, looking up towards Baltinglass Hill.
‘When we first talked after Christmas, I gave you the bleakest picture, Stefan, but I believed that with the right barrister we could fight this. The more I’ve seen of what’s going on the less sure I am. It’s even bleaker now.’
‘It still feels like this should be impossible, Mr Brady –’
‘It should be. But you need to think hard before taking this on.’
‘Are we back to me accepting it and being grateful I still see him?’
‘I only know you have to tread carefully.’
The old man stopped.
‘There is another option.’
Stefan shook his head in weary disbelief.
‘You mean convert? Are we back to that?’
‘No, I mean leave the jurisdiction.’
Stefan turned back to the shearing, watching as his father struggled with a recalcitrant ewe. Then he looked round again, up to Baltinglass Hill.
‘That’s the best our Free State can offer us? Leaving the country?’
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.’
As he turned to face Brady once more he didn’t need to answer.
‘If it’s the decision you’re going to make in the end, make it now. They can’t pursue you for something that won’t stand up in a court in England, but if we go to trial and lose, taking Tom out of the country when he’s a ward of court is a different matter. You could end up in gaol yourself.’
The green John Deere tractor was chugging up the field towards them. Helena drove and Tom perched on the trailer behind her, with a basket of sandwiches and cans of hot, sweet tea. Tess the sheepdog ran alongside, barking.
‘Dinner! It’s the dinner!’ Tom’s voice was shrill and happy above all the other noise.
That evening Stefan and his father were milking in the dark parlour that smelt of fresh hay and the warm breath of cows and the smoke from David Gillespie’s pipe and the urine and disinfectant swirling in the open concrete drain. Stefan sat on one stool, his fingers squeezing milk into the galvanised bucket beneath an udder. On the other side of the cow, out of sight, his father’s fingers pulled at the teats of another one. For a moment the only sounds were the rhythmic spurting of milk into the buckets and the mouths of the cows pulling the hay from the hay racks.
‘Did Mr Rosen pay you well?’
‘What?’
‘I’d say there was more to it than putting your woman on a boat.’
‘Maybe a bit more.’
‘Your mother was listening to the German news on the radio.’
‘You’d think she’d know better. They didn’t mention me then?’
They couldn’t see each other, but he felt the look of disapproval on his father’s face. Stefan didn’t want hard conversations; he wanted to think.
‘I’m not asking you to tell me what happened in Danzig, Stefan.’
‘I’ve told you, Pa, not much. It’s over. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘Other things aren’t over, are they?’
‘Is this a conversation Ma told you to have?’
‘That’s the way she is. We’ve all been avoiding it, haven’t we?’
Stefan didn’t answer. After a few seconds his father continued.
‘Lawyers are going to cost money.’
‘I know.’
‘What we’ve got is yours and Tom’s. I hope you know that too.’
‘Perhaps it won’t come to that.’
‘It’s going to come to something, Stefan.’
‘I’ve a bit set aside.’
He was still sidestepping. David Gillespie couldn’t see the shrug, but he knew it was there.
‘Emmet Brady’s not so sure you can win, is he?’
‘Is that Ma’s question?’
‘The question’s do we give the money to the lawyers, or do you take it and start again, somewhere else? Wasn’t Mr Brady saying the same thing? It doesn’t mean there mightn’t be a day you could come back home again.’
It was the first time the words had been spoken. For David, however hard they were, they were easier without seeing his son’s face. Everyone knew how rarely anyone came home, even when somewhere else was only hours across the Irish Sea. There was only the sound of milk spurting into buckets again.
‘There’s a way to go yet, Pa.’
‘You think so?’ David was surprised by his son’s quiet self-control. ‘If Mr Brady’s not convinced, I don’t know who else can help us.’
‘Sometimes it’s not who you know, it’s what you know,’ said Stefan. It felt like the shrug was still there.
‘Should I know what that means?’ There was a note of irritation in David’s voice. Riddles weren’t answers. These were difficult things to say.
‘No,’ Stefan snapped in return, ‘and you wouldn’t want to.’
At almost the same instant father and son got up from the milking stools and walked to the battered churn behind them. They poured the milk from the buckets in silence. Stefan knew what it had cost his father to speak those words, and what it had cost his mother to tell him to speak them. But it wasn’t time for answers. They said no more till the milking was done and the cows were back in the fields.
When the two men walked into the kitchen the only recognition that the conversation in the milking parlour had happened was the look Helena gave David, and the slightly puzzled shrug he gave her in return. Explanations would have to wait, but she knew the questions no one wanted to ask still had no answers. Stefan and David stood next to each other at the sink, washing their hands. Tom sat at the kitchen table, unaware of anything except for the radio and a woman’s voice reading a story that had taken him somewhere else altogether. Stefan listened too: ‘A faint glimmer floated down from the hills. That was Seamus, holding a candle and riding Long-Ears. The storm lantern the turf-cutter used danced across the bog like a will-o’-the wisp, and the big steady glow of the kitchen lamp advanced on the road and Eileen knew her mother carried it. All the lights came together at the crossroads. “Hee-haw,” sang out Long-Ears, and Eileen knew she was found.’ As David Gillespie opened a bottle of beer and poured out two glasses, Stefan sat down at the table beside Tom, watching him happily absorbed in the story, and wishing he could just be where his son was now, far away from everything.
*
The following morning Stefan Gillespie set off early on the bicycle it had taken him the best part of the previous evening to repair, after its years in the loft of forgotten things behind the pigsty. His father was milking the cows. It would be a long ride into the mountains. The air was still cold but it was a clear, almost cloudless day; it would be hot as he climbed up to Glenmalure. The last time he had made this journey on a bicycle he was probably sixteen or seventeen, with Terry Lynch and Richard Kavanagh and Billy Harrison and Niall Quinn. None of them really kept in touch now. Terry was in America, somewhere in New York. Richard was still farming in Englishtown, just down the road, but there was never much to talk about other than the way the grass was growing and the price of cattle. Billy was in Yorkshire, a travelling salesman the last he’d heard, with an English wife and three children. Niall was in Baltinglass now, back from Dublin and trying to make something of the auctioneer’s firm his father had drunk into the ground.
There was time to remember a lot as he cycled past the track up to the cemetery under Kilranelagh Hill where Maeve was buried, then through Balinroan and on past Tom’s school at Kilranelagh Cross; by the long, crumbling wall of the crumbling Humewood Estate and on to Rathdangan and Rathcoyle; up on to the Military Road where it rose more steeply now, towards Aghavannah, and then suddenly, as the road turned sharply, he was riding down the steep slope into the valley of the Avonbeg River, beside the ruins of the English army barracks at Drumgoff. For a moment the reasons that had brought him into the mountains didn’t matter as he looked down. He knew this place. It was in his blood. He needed it to be in his son’s blood as well.
Hannah was in Dublin with her father. He hadn’t seen her since the train took them into Dublin from Dún Laoghaire. The journey from Sweden to Ireland had taken four days; by train to Gothenberg, by boat to Hull, then train and boat again. They were four days the two of them would not have again. It was hard to accept that. But it didn’t quite drive out the sense of exhilaration he felt as he sped down the wooded hillside into Glenmalure. He was doing a job no one wanted him to do – except for Hannah Rosen. It wasn’t only about her though. It wasn’t duty or some great sense of right and wrong, or a responsibility to the law or the Gardaí or some higher purpose he hadn’t found a word for. He wasn’t there to speak for the dead. They didn’t care. He was carrying no fine motives up into Glenmalure. He wanted someone to pay for something. But it was more than that. There was an unspoken hope in this journey into the mountains. There were no scruples in that hope. He wasn’t looking for the truth; he was looking for a weapon.
He stopped at the Glenmalure Inn for a glass of lemonade. They told him they knew Mrs Donahue well. She lived in the cottage by the ford below Ballinagoneer and they kept her letters for her. She’d a few chickens up there and she’d had new slates on the roof last month. It was Joe Crosbie from Greenan who done it so she’d have to have a bit put away with the prices he’d charge, not that it was anybody’s business but her own. She’d never said she was a widow, but there was a feller from Dublin bought the house two years ago and she had it from him. She didn’t have much to do with anyone, but then if you were up at the top of the glen there wasn’t anyone to have much to do with anyway. Once a week she came down to the crossroads and took the bus into Rathdrum. On the way back she’d have a Guinness or two and wait for a lift from Eddie McMurrough. She wasn’t a bad looker, taking all things into account. It wasn’t only out of the kindness of his heart Eddie took her on past the farm at Ballinaskea and all the way home.
The road into Glenmalure stopped below Ballinagoneer, not long after the ford over the Avonbeg. There were only the mountains beyond. It was a long, narrow valley, with the hills climbing up more and more steeply. Even in summer it could be dark. The fields that were strung out along the valley were small, hard-won, stony things; they didn’t stretch far before the valley walls rose up at angles only the sheep could walk. Glenmalure had always been a bleak place. Down the centuries it had been a place of refuge too, as rebellion after rebellion against the English failed. It was a place of refuge for Mrs Donahue now. Stefan knew from the letter he had found at Hugo Keller’s house in Langfuhr that she was waiting in Glenmalure. Now he would have to tell her that the man she was waiting for was dead.
He crossed the ford and cycled through the woods until the track was too rough to pedal any further. He pushed the bike for another quarter of a mile. On one side of the track, among the trees, there were broken walls, overgrown with moss. It was a long time since anyone had lived here, but as the trees thinned out and the sunlight broke through on to the road there was a small cottage. It was neat and whitewashed. There was washing on the line and half a dozen speckled hens were picking about for food in front of the house. As he leant the bicycle against the wall, a woman came out, smiling. He recognised the nurse, Sheila Hogan, immediately. She recognised him.
‘How’s it going, Sheila?’
‘You’ll want some tea.’ There was no smile now.
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
She walked back in without another word. He sat down on a bench by the door. The wood was warm from the sun. It would be better said outside.
When she came out with the tea he took her letter to Hugo Keller from his pocket and gave it to her. She sat down on the bench, holding it tightly.
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked.
‘I was in Danzig.’
‘You saw him.’
He nodded.
‘I haven’t heard from him in a while.’
She stared down at the letter. She knew what he was going to say.
‘I’m sorry, but he’s dead, Sheila.’
She looked around her, at the garden and the mountains.
‘What happened?’
‘You know what he did. His luck ran out. It was bound to one day.’
‘Someone killed him?’
‘Yes.’
She stared across at the hens.
‘He didn’t like what he was doing there.’
‘I’d say it was a bit late for him to start being choosey. How many years was he at it, blackmailing people and selling information? It was never a recipe for a quiet old age. He could get away with a lot here –’
‘He didn’t want to go to Danzig. It was because of the priest –’
‘It doesn’t much matter now, does it?’
‘All he wanted was to come back here. He wanted to stop. That’s why he bought this place. But they wouldn’t let go. They wouldn’t let him stop. He didn’t want to leave Ireland in the first place. If you hadn’t –’
‘The man’s dead, let’s leave it there. I’m not here for the wake.’
‘Then what are you here for, Mr Gillespie?’
‘The notebook.’
‘Jesus, are you still on about that?’
‘We found the woman.’
‘Who?’
‘Susan Field. You don’t remember?’
‘I remember I wasn’t there when she came to Merrion Square.’
‘But he’d have told you she died.’
She said nothing for several seconds, then nodded.
‘Someone shot her. Did you know that, Sheila?’
‘No. Hugo didn’t know either,’ she said, clearly surprised.
‘No, I don’t think he did. But I’m not really bothered about what he knew now. What matters is who he knew. It was a Special Branch man shot her, Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch. You know who he is, don’t you?’
‘I should do. He put me in hospital.’
‘And is that why you’re up here as Mrs Donahue?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Wasn’t Jimmy working for Keller?’
‘He was working for himself.’
‘And when Hugo went, he wanted the book – for himself.’
She said nothing again. The habit of silence was an old one.
‘So what’s in this book, Sheila?’
‘Nothing that matters now.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was his insurance policy. That’s what he called it. If anything went wrong. He put everything down in it. What he knew, what he sold, what he kept for himself. It was what he kept for himself that mattered most. He said it was his ticket to stay in Ireland. There were so many people he knew about, important people. He’d had enough. He just wanted to come up here and forget it all. When he went back to Germany he didn’t know they’d force him to keep working for them. It was only to lie low, till he came home again.’
‘You make blackmail sound like the Vincent de Paul, Sheila. It would have been a little nest egg too, to dip into when the winters were hard.’
‘You’re probably right. Maybe he’d never really have stopped.’
‘Is it here then?’
She didn’t respond.
‘It’s no use to you now.’
‘And what use is it to you?’
‘I don’t know yet, but if it’s not me isn’t it Jimmy, sooner or later?’
‘People are stupid, you know that?’ She spoke the words bitterly. ‘They do stupid things. They steal and lie and cheat and fuck. That’s all they do. That’s all they are. Why shouldn’t someone get something out of it? If it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else. Didn’t they deserve it anyway, most of them? He always said when he got to the pearly gates they wouldn’t let him in, but he’d find a way. He’d just keep his eyes open and sooner or later he’d have something on God himself!’ She shook her head and looked up at the mountains again. There were no tears.
‘You’ve kept it for him long enough. He’s not coming for it now.’
He couldn’t pretend to feel much for Hugo Keller, but he understood what loss was; and somewhere in those last words Sheila Hogan sensed that. She touched the final letter she had written to Hugo Keller, a letter he had never read. Stefan Gillespie had brought with him the last breath of the man she loved, and she was oddly grateful that he had. She had waited. She had believed, as Keller had believed, that he would come back here and find her. And now he wouldn’t. She got up and walked to the vegetable garden. There was a spade sticking into a bed where she had been earthing up potatoes. She pulled it out and went across to an apple tree by the stone wall. It was full of white blossom. She pushed the spade hard into the ground and started to dig.
He stopped at the ford across the Avonbeg and sat by the river. He opened the Jacob’s biscuit tin Sheila Hogan had dug up under the apple tree; there was a picture of a goldfinch feeding on yellow gorse flowers. It was a small, dark green notebook. The handwriting was tiny and meticulous. It filled every lined page though it took no notice of the lines. At first he thought it was in some kind of code but it was no more than a truncated shorthand of abbreviations and numbers. The abbreviations were names, sometimes addresses. The numbers were dates, sometimes sums of money. Sometimes there was a page of notes following a name, but they were written in the same shorthand, missing out vowels, often stopping a word half way through. Sometimes there were lists of dozens of names on a page, with no more than an address and a series of letters after them that classified them in some way. Keller’s shorthand was German of course. It had an elliptical quality that would make it tedious to decipher, but it wouldn’t be so hard.
At the back of the book, in a small cardboard wallet, there were several pieces of folded paper. The first was a letter. He knew the woman’s name Hugo Keller had written at the top, even in its shortened form, and the name underneath it. She was the wife of a government minister and he was a senior diplomat. There was little more than the address of a hotel in London, but there didn’t need to be any more. The next sheet of paper was a list of names. There were politicians, businessmen, senior clerics, several senior Garda officers. There was no explanation but at the end of the list was the name Becky Cooper and the sum of money Keller had paid her. Stefan knew her name well enough; she ran a brothel in Dublin. By two of the names there were abbreviations and dates. The word ‘Syph.’ wasn’t hard to expand on. Keller had treated two of the men on Becky’s list for syphilis. Next there were four letters folded together. ‘My Dearest Vincent.’ He had found them.
They weren’t long, but they were filled with vivid, almost unstoppable sexual desire, interspersed with strangely banal details about work. The third letter ended with an expression of growing excitement about the upcoming Eucharistic Congress. ‘Only a month away and there is so much to do! It’s wonderful! Your Loving Friend, Robert.’ There had been little to connect the two bodies on the mountainside at Kilmashogue. There was the earth in which their bones were buried. There was the single hole from a captive bolt pistol in each of their skulls. And there was Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch, who sold these letters to Hugo Keller and drove the car that collected Susan Field from Keller’s clinic. That made Lynch the only link between Vincent Walsh and Susan Field. Now there was something else. Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick had been Vincent’s lover. He was also the man who had sent Jimmy Lynch to twenty-five Merrion Square to take Susan Field away. Fitzpatrick was someone else the Special Branch sergeant worked for. That day in Earlsfort Terrace, when Stefan had questioned the monsignor, the priest had shown only bitterness and resentment towards Francis Byrne, the follower and protégé who had abandoned him. But it seemed like he wasn’t so bitter or resentful that he couldn’t find an abortionist for the young priest in his hour of need and a bent garda sergeant to sort the mess out for him afterwards.
*
Stefan met Dessie MacMahon in Neary’s in Chatham Street the next day. It wasn’t long after opening. Dessie sat in the corner by the back door that led out to the Gaiety Theatre, wreathed in smoke. The only other people in there were actors coming and going for rehearsal. The two policemen hadn’t seen each other in three months but Dessie asked no questions. If there was something Stefan wanted to tell him he would tell him. This was business, and it was serious business. That was clear enough from the phone call.
‘How’s it going, Dessie?’
‘Ah, you know how it is yourself.’
‘Detective Sergeant McGuinness?’
‘He’s no trouble.’ It wasn’t a compliment.
‘Inspector Donaldson?’
‘Well, he doesn’t like the fact that Charlie McGuinness takes a drink, but once the Angelus bell rings and he goes to Mass and Charlie’s off to the pub, we’ve a nice quiet station so. All in all he likes that bit well enough.’
‘What’s happened about the bodies at Kilmashogue?’
‘I told you, we’ve a nice quiet station now.’
‘I was in Danzig,’ said Stefan quietly.
Dessie nodded as if that was about as interesting as a trip to Clontarf.
‘I saw the priest there, Francis Byrne. I saw Hugo Keller too.’
‘Still in touch with your woman, then?’ reflected Dessie, unsurprised.
‘Yes.’
‘And I thought you were milking cows.’
‘You can only milk so many. They’re both dead, Byrne and Keller.’
Detective Garda MacMahon finally raised an eyebrow.
‘Danzig’s not a place you’d go on holiday from what the papers say.’
‘It isn’t,’ replied Stefan. ‘But nothing new this end? You haven’t heard Jimmy Lynch has got to the bottom of it so?’
‘If he has he’s kept it to himself,’ said Dessie.
‘He wouldn’t have to look far. I think he killed Vincent Walsh and Susan Field. And if he didn’t kill them he made dammed sure they were dead.’
‘Jesus!’ Dessie looked round. No one was listening. ‘What the feck for?’
‘At the moment I’d say it was for Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick.’ He took Keller’s small notebook from his pocket. He opened it and handed one of Fitzpatrick’s letters to Vincent Walsh across the table.
Dessie’s eyes widened as he read.
‘I need you to watch my back,’ said Stefan simply.
‘They won’t let you do anything with this.’
‘That depends what I can put together before anyone notices me. I’ve got a bit of time. Fitzpatrick won’t go running to the Commissioner, not with what I know about him, but he’s quite likely to go running to Jimmy Lynch. And Jimmy might take matters into his own hands. I need to know where he is.’
‘You want me to follow a Special Branch sergeant?’
‘No, I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ said Stefan, laughing.
‘No, you couldn’t.’ Dessie took out an unopened pack of Sweet Afton. ‘That could get me into some real shite!’
*
When Sister Brigid opened the door of the house in Earlsfort Terrace she knew she recognised Stefan Gillespie. She wasn’t quite sure where she’d seen him, but so many people came to her brother’s meetings nowadays. They were so full that she couldn’t expect to remember half the people.
‘Hello, Sister, I was hoping to talk to the monsignor.’
‘He’s not here just now, can I help at all?’
‘Are you expecting him back? It is important.’
‘He won’t be long,’ she smiled. ‘Well, you can wait if you like.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Come in and have a cup of tea.’
He followed her into the hall and down the stairs to the basement, into a kitchen that was dark and old-fashioned but scrupulously neat. There was the smell of baking and a kettle was already steaming on the black range.
‘I get so little time to bake now. There’s so much work. But this afternoon I thought, blow it! I haven’t baked a scone in a month and Robert loves scones. Well, I tell him he loves them but I’m the one who does really. You need someone to make cakes for though. There’s no pleasure just making them for yourself. If you wait till they cool you can have one as well.’ She poured hot water into the teapot as she talked and while it was standing she opened the oven door and took out a tray of fruit scones. She put them out on a rack, one by one, in tidy rows. When she had finished she looked pleased with the results. She went to the teapot and poured a cup out. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar, it’s on the table. I didn’t ask your name?’
‘It’s Gillespie. Detective Sergeant Gillespie.’
‘Oh, yes. I do remember you, Sergeant.’ Then she frowned. ‘It was before Christmas, wasn’t it? Robert was really very upset. He didn’t tell me what you were discussing with him, but I know he didn’t like it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked you in. I don’t know if the monsignor would want –’
‘I need to see him. It isn’t something that can wait.’
‘When you were here before, it was about Francis, Father Byrne, I do remember that. You wanted to know where he was. But he’s dead now. We heard last week.’
‘I know.’
‘He drowned.’ She shook her head. ‘We hoped he would come back.’
There was something about the way she spoke that suggested more intensity than just a train across Europe and a Holyhead boat.
‘Come back?’
‘He lost his way.’ She smiled sadly and crossed herself. ‘But where he is now, he will never lose his way again. When we ask forgiveness, we are forgiven.’ She turned her head. Stefan could see that she was close to tears.
‘I’m sorry, Sister.’
‘Francis meant a lot to both of us. He lived in this house for many years. He was very special to my brother. He always felt that Francis would be beside him in his work and that one day, when the time came, it would be Francis who carried it on. When he turned away from everything Robert had taught him –’ She started to re-arrange the scones on the rack. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Mr Gillespie. I don’t know what you can have to say.’
Stefan looked round as the door opened behind him. The monsignor was there. And there was no question that he remembered exactly who Stefan was.
‘What are you doing here?’
Stefan stood up slowly, his eyes fixed on the priest.
‘I need to talk to you, Monsignor.’
Robert Fitzpatrick’s face showed a mixture of anger and indignation, but Stefan saw uncertainty too, somewhere behind all that.
‘I don’t believe we have anything to talk about, Sergeant.’
‘Perhaps we could go upstairs. There are still questions –’
The monsignor was more agitated now. He walked forward.
‘He’s dead! Don’t you know Father Byrne is dead?’
Brigid stepped forward and took her brother’s hand. He was immediately calmer.
‘I did tell him. I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t know who he was.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Brigid. I think you can get out, Sergeant.’
But Stefan had no intention of getting out. His eyes hadn’t left Robert Fitzpatrick’s since he turned to see him in the kitchen. He had all the cards he needed.
‘I do know he’s dead, Monsignor. I saw him in Danzig. I was with Bishop O’Rourke, at the undertakers, after they pulled his body out of the river.’
The priest and the nun stared at him. Fitzpatrick frowned as if he couldn’t relate these ideas: the garda sergeant, Danzig, Francis Byrne. Brigid closed her eyes and bowed her head. As she looked up her lips were moving silently; her fingers were clasping the beads on the rosary at her waist.
They stood in Fitzpatrick’s study. It was a room at the back of the house, behind the office and the bookshop. It looked out on a small, high-walled garden. There was a flowering cherry, full of white and pink blossom. The priest stood with his back to the window. He didn’t ask Stefan to sit down.
‘As I understand it you were suspended from the Gardaí earlier this year. I don’t know whether you’ve been re-instated, but if you have, the best thing you can do is walk out of this house now, or I’ll make damned sure you’re kicked out completely. Don’t think I haven’t got the ability to do it either.’ The threat was cautious and considered. He was trying to weigh Stefan up as he spoke. He didn’t know what to make of him. The idea that the policeman he had been in Danzig, talking to Francis Byrne, was still as startling as it was unexpected.
‘Let’s forget the lies about Father Byrne, shall we? He did have an affair with Susan Field. He did pay for an abortion for her at Hugo Keller’s clinic. You not only knew Keller, you put Francis Byrne in touch with him. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you what I know. And when the abortion went wrong and Susan had to be taken to hospital, you sent someone to sort it all out.’
‘Is that what Francis said?’
There was quiet calculation in the priest’s eyes. This conversation meant nothing after all. These were just words, and the man they were talking about was dead.
‘It’s also what Mr Keller said,’ replied Stefan. Fitzpatrick couldn’t know Keller was dead. He had no links to what had happened in Danzig.
‘Mr Keller is still in Germany?’ The monsignor was less sure now.
‘He’s in Danzig at the moment,’ said Stefan. That much was true.
‘And he’ll be coming back to testify to all this?’ smiled the priest. If Keller wasn’t in Ireland it didn’t matter.
‘You don’t deny you knew Hugo Keller, Monsignor.’
‘He was a friend, at least an acquaintance, of Adolf Mahr’s, the director of the National Museum. I’m sure I met him a few times, at dinners or receptions. I have close ties with the German community, especially the German Catholic community. If what you say about his involvement in abortions is true I am deeply shocked. We can’t always know where the bad apples are in a barrel. As far as Father Byrne is concerned I was satisfied with the answers he gave to your questions in December. It was my impression your senior officers were too. Unsubstantiated and scurrilous allegations about a priest who died tragically won’t endear you to anybody.’
The monsignor was used to being believed. He had no reason to think that lying would change that. This policeman knew a lot, but in the end it counted for nothing, not against his word. The man wasn’t important enough to matter. He was a problem though and he would have to be dealt with. Stefan could feel the confidence growing in the eyes that now fixed his. He had caught the priest off guard, but it hadn’t taken him long to regain his composure. Fitzpatrick already thought it was over. However, it wasn’t.
‘The guard you sent didn’t take Susan Field to hospital,’ continued Stefan, ignoring the denials he had just heard. ‘He took her to the Convent of the Good Shepherd. They couldn’t do anything. She’d already lost too much blood. I’m not sure what happened next. Either she died or the guard killed her. And if he didn’t actually kill her, he went to some lengths to make sure she was dead. I don’t know what his instructions were, but I know you sent him.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. This means nothing to me, nothing.’
He spoke quietly. It wasn’t so much about confidence now. Stefan’s words troubled him in some way, but it wasn’t the right way. He still felt he was untouchable, but there was something else. He looked puzzled. The indignation was gone and it was hard to read what was in his face now.
‘I don’t think my superior officers are going to be satisfied with what Father Byrne told us in his letter,’ said Stefan, ‘however much they want to be. You wrote most of it for him anyway. But that’s only the beginning. There was another body next to Miss Field’s. You’ll remember him.’
Monsignor Fitzpatrick looked confused. ‘What other body?’
‘The one you longed to feel throbbing next to yours – Vincent Walsh’s. That’s what it said in your letter, didn’t it? I’ve seen them, the letters. Obviously Vincent’s body won’t have been throbbing next to anyone else’s for a long time now. Not since someone shot him in the head with a captive bolt pistol, which is, oddly, what happened to Susan Field as well.’
The priest stared blankly.
‘Vincent.’
It was all he said but he made no pretence that he didn’t know who Stefan was talking about. He moved towards the desk, very slowly. He stood for a moment, leaning on it. He repeated the name quietly. ‘Vincent.’ It was barely a whisper. He seemed unaware that Stefan was still there. He sank into the chair. Stefan hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t this. And it wasn’t right. He couldn’t believe that the man in front of him knew anything at all about Vincent Walsh’s death. But there was still Detective Sergeant Lynch; Lynch and the love letters, Lynch and Keller, Lynch and the car that came for Susan Field.
‘Tell me about Jimmy Lynch, Monsignor.’
‘What?’ Robert Fitzpatrick looked up again.
‘Detective Sergeant Lynch.’
‘I don’t know any Detective Sergeant Lynch.’ Fitzpatrick was a beaten man. It was hard for Stefan to believe he was dragging this lie out of himself, but it couldn’t be the truth.
‘You sent him to help Father Byrne. You sent him to get Susan Field.’
‘I didn’t send anyone,’ he said. ‘When Francis called, he said he needed a car. I told him we’d see to it. So we sent a taxi, just a taxi. I don’t know anything about a guard.’
They were automatic words, like automatic writing. He was somewhere else, and the fact that he was somewhere else testified to the truth of the words. And suddenly Stefan was looking at another face. It was the face of Hugo Keller, dying in the kitchen of the house in Eschenweg. Keller talked about the guard driving the car, the guard who took Susan Field away, the guard the monsignor sent. He didn’t know who that guard was – Hugo Keller, the man who knew everything about everybody. But Jimmy Lynch had been selling him information for years. He was bought and paid for. Stefan had been so fixed on the one connection he had that linked Vincent Walsh and Susan Field that Hugo Keller’s nameless guard had automatically become Detective Sergeant Lynch. But now, suddenly, it wasn’t him at all.
As Stefan came out into the hall of Fitzpatrick’s house again, Sister Brigid was climbing the stairs from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a cup of tea and a plate of scones and jam. She pursed her lips disapprovingly at him.
‘I’m sure you’ve upset him again.’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t feel like apologising, but he did. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Did Francis look peaceful when you saw him, Mr Gillespie?’
There wasn’t any point telling her he looked the way people do when they’ve been beaten to death, and that peacefulness isn’t really in it.
‘He looked peaceful enough, Sister.’
‘I think in a way he has come back to us.’ She smiled sadly and walked to the door into the study. She knocked. There was no answer. As Stefan stepped out into Earlsfort Terrace, Brigid opened the door. Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick was sobbing, his head buried in his hands on the desk. She put down the tea and the scones and folded her brother in her arms.
The man who followed Stefan Gillespie from Earlsfort Terrace across into Stephen’s Green would not make the mistake of being seen. He wasn’t good at everything he did, but he was good at that. He could keep his distance; he had the instincts that told him when to disappear; he could always see his man again in a crowd. It didn’t much matter if he lost him anyway, he wouldn’t be difficult to find. If not today tomorrow, but today would be best, before he made more trouble. It was still early. It wouldn’t be dark till after nine, but when night came he’d know where Sergeant Gillespie was. That would be the time to do it.