Twenty-four hours earlier Stefan had known who killed Vincent Walsh and Susan Field. If Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch could be bought by Hugo Keller to collect information, he could be bought by Robert Fitzpatrick to clean up after him. A priest with such a high profile, who was in the habit of having sex with men like Vincent Walsh and writing them letters describing it, was always going to need help with his dirty laundry. The image of the moral crusader didn’t sit very well with arranging abortions for priestly protégés who got themselves into trouble either. That’s how Stefan had put it all together. The only question had been how far Lynch was following Fitzpatrick’s instructions and how far he’d been, in the way of the Nazis the monsignor saw as the Church’s salvation, working towards his Führer. Now, as he sat over a bony kipper and stewed tea in Bewley’s Café he could see how much of it didn’t fit after all, and how much he had ignored to get an answer.
Hugo Keller had told him and he hadn’t heard. It was a guard, not Detective Sergeant Lynch, a guard. There were the Blueshirts too, the ones who had come for Vincent that night after the Eucharistic Mass, the night he was murdered. They couldn’t have had anything to do with Jimmy Lynch. He was exactly the kind of anti-Treaty IRA man the Blueshirts had been created to fight. Besides, Billy Donnelly had sat on those letters for a year before Lynch even joined the Guards. And however Lynch found out about them he didn’t take them to help Robert Fitzpatrick, he took them to sell to Hugo Keller. There were always too many holes. The fact that Jimmy Lynch was bent didn’t make him a killer, though he’d killed easily enough in the IRA. The fact that Robert Fitzpatrick hated Jews and admired Adolf Hitler didn’t make him a killer either. Perhaps Stefan had wanted it to be the monsignor. He wanted it because of everything Fitzpatrick believed. He wanted it because the curate in Baltinglass was a little Fitzpatrick too. And there was Hannah. Perhaps he wanted to give her the answers she needed just a little too much. He had missed something. Now he had to go back and find what he’d missed. If anyone would let him. But if he couldn’t, the book was still in his pocket, Hugo Keller’s insurance policy, and tucked into it at the back were the letters to Vincent Walsh. It was his insurance policy now. If there were no more answers to find, Stefan had his weapon, and he would use it.
He was tired of thinking as he followed the familiar wall of Trinity College along Nassau Street, but the back bedroom on the top floor of Annie O’Neill’s Private Hotel in Westland Row wasn’t anything to hurry back to. The trains would have stopped now, but by five in the morning they’d be rattling over the bridge again and shaking the windows. It was cheap and Annie knew the Gardaí. Her husband had been in the Dublin Metropolitan Police when he disappeared in 1921. She always said he’d been shot by Michael Collins personally, which was no small honour, but everyone knew he’d left her for a woman who had a butcher’s in Clonmel. There were always bottles in the sideboard in the dining room at Annie’s and if you wanted to sit up all night with one of them you paid her what you thought you’d drunk, and if you couldn’t remember she wouldn’t overcharge you. The sheets weren’t as clean as you’d like but at least they got washed now and again, and because she was used to guards staying when they were up from the country, she didn’t care what time of the day or night you came and went. If you wanted rashers at five o’clock in the morning you’d find her in the kitchen cooking them. She said she could never sleep once the trains started up. When she was younger you could get more than rashers if you had a problem sleeping. Stefan smiled. At least Annie made him laugh. And one drink before he went to bed wasn’t such a bad idea after all that tea.
In Lincoln Place there was a terrace of empty buildings. There were boarded-up shop fronts below and rows of black, broken windows above. The previous year one of the buildings had collapsed. There were piles of rubble where demolition had started and abruptly stopped, and on either side of the gap scaffolding held up the walls of adjacent buildings. A corrugated iron fence had shut off the collapsed building at first but the steel sheets had been robbed and the rubble and broken walls were open to the street. The man had followed Stefan Gillespie back to Annie O’Neill’s earlier. He had followed him again that evening and waited, first outside Neary’s and then in Grafton Street, never staying still for long, never being in one place too many times, always at a good distance. And when Stefan was clearly heading back to Westland Row he didn’t follow him at all. He made his own way straight to Lincoln Place and waited. All that mattered was that there was no one there to see him. And it was late enough now. It was quiet. It would be all right.
He came at Stefan from behind, out of the darkness of the rubble of the ruined building. One arm was round Stefan’s head, pulling his neck back, stopping his breath. The other was round his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. He was being dragged into the darkness, over the piles of bricks and broken glass and roof tiles and rubbish. It was so sudden and so unexpected that it took only seconds before he was behind half walls and heaped debris, unable to breathe, unable to make any sound except the choking in his throat. He was trying to kick, but the man was very strong. And as he was pulled back, further and further from the street, the man’s elbow closed tighter on his neck. His lungs were bursting. Then the grip loosened. The man spun him round and pushed him against a wall. He held him with one hand and punched him in the stomach with the other, again and again.
Stefan dropped to the ground. He tried to move but he couldn’t. He looked up. The man was standing over him. He couldn’t see properly. It wasn’t just the darkness. He had been almost unconscious. Now he began to make out the shape looming above him. Then it was clearer, even in the dim light. It was Detective Garda Seán Óg Moran, Jimmy Lynch’s errand boy. He was holding a pistol in his hand. Stefan struggled to get up. Moran kicked him back. Then he knelt down. One knee was on Stefan’s chest. One hand pinned his neck again. The other hand held the gun. Stefan knew what it was: the captive bolt pistol. He was going to disappear too. Maybe he’d lie in a shallow grave in the mountains, just like Vincent Walsh and Susan Field. Tom would never even know what had happened to him. It was the image of Tom that filled his head. He tensed his hands. They were the only part of his body that had any strength left. And they were free. His fingers were touching something hard and cold close by. It was a piece of lead pipe.
As the big man cocked the pistol and bent closer Stefan swung his arm up, finding every bit of strength he had left. The lead hit Moran on the side of the head. He cried out and fell sideways. There was silence for a moment. Stefan knew that moment might be all he had. His blood was flowing; he was breathing deeply. He pulled himself up, leaning against the wall. Seán Óg was pushing himself up too, still dazed. He was still holding the gun, but it was no use to him at a distance. Stefan stepped forward, steadier now. He swung the pipe again, holding it with both hands now, driving it into the detective’s ribs. Moran fell again. The gun dropped. He was in pain, agonising pain. But he was still trying to lift himself. Stefan swung the pipe against the back of his head. Seán Óg collapsed for the third time. And he didn’t try to get up. For a few seconds Stefan stood over him with the pipe. He wanted to keep hitting him. He wanted to kill him. There was a little light now. The cloud was clearing. As he looked down he saw the pistol glinting in a puddle of oily water. He picked it up. Then he climbed over the piles of bricks and rubble and walked back into Lincoln Place.
*
Stefan winced with pain as the Mother Superior of the Convent of the Good Shepherd dabbed iodine on to his chest and back. It was the next morning and he sat shirtless in Mother Eustacia’s office. He hadn’t asked for her help, but the blood still seeping from the wounds inflicted on him by Detective Garda Moran was spotting his shirt. She looked at the bruising on his throat and neck. She drew her own conclusions, but said nothing. It would be an exaggeration to say she was pleased to see Stefan; she remembered his last visit and she remembered the dark-haired woman he’d come to collect.
‘You shouldn’t have left this.’
‘It looks worse than it is.’
‘I’d say it’s worse than it looks.’
She walked to a cupboard and put the bottle away. As he dressed himself she sat behind her desk and put her clasped hands on the table. The good-shepherding was over. She looked at him with an air of cautious disapproval. ‘I need to ask you some questions, Reverend Mother.’
‘So I understand.’
‘It’s about a woman who was brought here.’
‘A lot of women come here.’
‘It was last year. The twenty-sixth of July. She was brought here quite late that night, in a car, by two men. One of them was a guard.’ She was not going to be communicative, that was obvious enough; to say the other one was a priest wouldn’t help. She might know about that or she might not know, but it was Garda Seán Óg Moran he needed to find out about now.
‘I think you know that’s not unusual.’
‘He wouldn’t have been in uniform.’
She said nothing.
‘It was an abortion. Something went wrong. They couldn’t stop her bleeding. She should have gone to a proper hospital, but the men came here with her.’
‘These things happen. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘I think you saw her.’
‘If I did I would have told them to take her straight to the Coombe.’
‘That’s what you did.’
‘Then there don’t seem to be any more questions, Sergeant.’
‘She died.’
‘Unfortunately that also happens.’
‘Do you remember her? Her name was Susan Field.’
‘Why do you want to know about this?’
‘She didn’t die because she couldn’t get to a hospital in time. She died because the guard didn’t bother to take her there. Either he let her die or he killed her.’
She was silent again. He knew she remembered that night.
‘We found her body buried in the Dublin Mountains.’
‘Unpleasant as that is, it doesn’t mean she was killed.’
‘I know she was killed. That’s my job.’
‘And my job is to provide a place of refuge.’
Stefan’s opinion of that place of refuge was written on his face.
‘People want their sewers to run under the streets, Sergeant, out of sight and out of smell. Isn’t that part of your job too? You’re a policeman. When I pray for the women in my charge it’s not because the people who send them here don’t need praying for too. But I leave that to others.’ The contempt in her voice was not for the women who were locked away behind the convent walls.
He looked at her hard. In those last words there was almost contact, not sympathy, but something.
‘You don’t seem very surprised by any of this.’
‘It’s a long time since what men do to women has surprised me.’
‘Did you know the men who brought her here?’
She hesitated, but she had made her decision.
‘I saw the guard. He carried her in. The other man stayed outside in the car.’
It made sense. Moran was a big man. It wouldn’t have been difficult. She was giving him what she knew now. If she didn’t know the man in the car was a priest it wasn’t going to help to tell her, let alone tell her about the other priest, the one in Earlsfort Terrace, who had arranged it all and wanted it covered up.
‘You knew the guard?’
‘I think he’d brought women here before.’
‘Not in that state.’
She shook her head.
‘But that wasn’t why I recognised him. I remembered him from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, with some of the sisters. It was about five years ago now. General O’Duffy was taking a Garda pilgrimage at the same time. He was the Commissioner then. We were all on the same train through France. When we got to Lourdes he sent some of his lads to carry our luggage to the hostel. It was the guard who brought my suitcase. I didn’t know his name.’
‘You could testify that he was here that night?’
‘No, I’m not in the business of testifying, Sergeant Gillespie.’
‘But you just said –’
‘You have your job to do in the sewers, and I have mine. That’s all.’
When Stefan left the office, Mother Eustacia got up and pulled a thick foolscap book from a bookshelf. She took it back to her desk. It was a diary for 1934, a daybook with a page for every day of the year, where she noted everything that happened in the Convent of the Good Shepherd. She opened it at the twenty-sixth of July. It was the Feast of St Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She carefully tore out the page and screwed it up. Then, without looking down, her hand reached for her rosary.
*
There were several pubs close to Dublin Castle that almost belonged to Special Branch. The same pubs the men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s G Division had drunk in fifteen years earlier when they were hunting some of the men who stood at the same bars now. Since you could never quite tell in those days whether the Special Branch man on the corner stool was collecting information for the British or passing information about the men he was drinking with on to Michael Collins, assassinations in pubs could be counter-productive. It was safer all round to kill British intelligence officers when they were at home. The pubs all had different functions then and it was the same now. There were pubs for getting drunk in, pubs for meeting informants in, and pubs where your inspector was unlikely to find you. Farrelly’s in Crane Lane had a small snug at the back, with a door to the jacks and a yard that led to an exit into Essex Street. Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch was in the snug when Stefan Gillispie arrived. He was eating a plate of rashers and drinking a mug of tea. He seemed amused to see Stefan again. It had been a long time.
‘How’s the farming going, Stevie?’
Stefan sat down. He knew Lynch’s grin wouldn’t last.
‘Can I get you something?’
‘I’m grand, thank you, Jimmy.’
‘You’ll be back on the job before long, I’d say.’
‘Maybe. We’ll have to see.’
‘A man of mystery, eh?’
‘Was Seán Óg in this morning?’
‘Are you looking for him?’
‘I will be at some point.’
‘No. He done himself a bit of damage. Says he’s broken a rib.’ Lynch was looking at Stefan more cautiously. It wasn’t an idle visit. He needed to know what it meant.
‘He did me a bit of damage too. Nothing broken. I won’t show you.’
‘When was this?’ The Special Branch man was uneasy. He didn’t know why there should have been any contact between Moran and Stefan. Beating up another detective on his instructions was one thing; that was work. Seán Óg sometimes needed reining in, but still, it was only a fight.
‘Last night, Jimmy. He was trying to kill me at the time.’
‘He goes at it after a few –’ Lynch laughed, but he didn’t like this.
Stefan took the captive bolt pistol from his pocket and put it on the table. Lynch looked at it. He knew what it was, but that was all he knew.
‘You’ve pigs to kill down on the farm then,’ he grinned.
‘Remember Susan Field?’ continued Stefan, watching the detective closely. ‘You took over the investigation into her death, last time we talked. I hear you didn’t get far. The State Pathologist thought she’d been shot in the head with a captive bolt pistol. You said you didn’t. But that’s the gun. You might remember Vincent Walsh. He was buried in a little plot next to Susan’s on Kilmashogue. You’d know him best for the letters Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick wrote to him, the ones you sold to Hugo Keller. Wayland-Smith said he’d been shot in the head with a captive bolt pistol too. And that’s the gun that shot them both.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Lynch was choosing his words carefully now. He didn’t understand and he didn’t know where this was going. But if he was thrown by the mention of the letters it didn’t show.
‘Seán Óg tried to put a hole in my head with it last night.’
Detective Sergeant Lynch was not often surprised; he prided himself on being too well informed for that. But he was certainly surprised now.
‘I see. So what are you going to do, Stevie?’ he asked.
‘I don’t have any witnesses, that’s the trouble.’
‘If that’s true then all you’ve got is a gun from a slaughterhouse.’ Lynch spoke slowly. He didn’t know why Stefan was showing him a weaker hand.
‘You’ll have to do something, Jimmy. It’s pushing it, even for Special Branch. You’ve got a guard who’s murdered two people. It could have been three. What are you going to do, leave him where he is until the next time?’
Lynch’s lips tightened. There was conviction in Stefan’s words. He couldn’t just dismiss them.
‘He did kill them, Jimmy.’
‘You know that?’
‘I know it.’
‘Let’s say he did. Do you know why?’
‘Not really. I don’t know why he’d be covering up buggery and abortion, but that’s all I’ve got now. Till yesterday I thought you did it.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Because of Hugo Keller. He was doing the abortion.’
‘But not the buggering.’
‘No.’ He had to admire Lynch for his expressionless face. He had thrown Keller into the conversation again to see what response he got. It was nothing, almost nothing. But Keller was the Special Branch sergeant’s weakness. How much did Stefan really know and how much was bluff?
‘How did you know about Fitzpatrick’s letters, Jimmy?’
‘Is it letters or murder, what are you on now?’
As bluffs go, it wasn’t one of Jimmy Lynch’s best. Stefan smiled and ignored it.
‘You found out from Seán Óg somehow, that’s what I think. Wouldn’t that be it?’
The detective didn’t answer, but it was answer enough.
‘When Broy brought you into Special Branch, Seán was already a guard. I’d forgotten that. He wasn’t an obvious candidate for the Broy Harriers, was he? He was a pro-Treaty, Fine Gael man. You got him in.’
‘We took different sides in the Civil War. So? Aren’t we meant to put all that behind us now? Besides, we went through a lot together before that, fighting the Tans.’
‘Camaraderie, that’s nice to see, Jimmy. Was he ever a Blueshirt?’
‘If he was he’d keep pretty quiet about it now.’
‘I heard he went on a Garda pilgrimage with General O’Duffy.’
‘A lot of guards did that. It’s how you got promoted then.’
‘Well, if any of them try to kill me I’ll add them to the list. In the meantime, if you looked at the back of Seánie’s wardrobe I’d be interested to see what colour the shirts are, because I’d say he was there when that gang of Blueshirts went to Billy Donnelly’s to get the letters, Monsignor Fitzpatrick’s dirty letters. And when they didn’t get them, someone sent him back to kill poor old Vinnie, to keep him quiet. What do you think, Sergeant?’
Lynch held Stefan’s gaze but he was uneasy now. ‘You’d have to ask Garda Moran, not me.’
‘Come on, he told you about the letters. He must have done. And you worked out who might have them. Maybe you’re not such a bad detective after all, when you put your mind to it. You traced them back to Billy Donnelly, and you put him in the Joy until he delivered them.’
‘I thought this was about Seán Óg trying to kill you.’
‘I’m short on evidence, I told you.’
‘So?’
‘I’ve got a lot more on you than I have on him. I’ve talked to your friend Keller.’
‘Yes? Where is the old bastard now?’ He made it sound like he wanted to send a postcard and all he needed was his change of address.
‘He’s not easy to get hold of,’ replied Stefan. Again Hugo Keller alive somewhere was more useful than he was dead in Danzig. ‘But I’ve got chapter and verse on what you sold him down the years. I’ve seen the book. Remember that book you wanted so much? I know why now. He kept very meticulous notes. I even know how much he paid you. I know which bits he passed on to our esteemed director of the National Museum and the Nazi Party na hÉireann too, and which ones he kept for a little private blackmail.’
Detective Sergeant Lynch’s body tensed. He’d just run out of banter. This was all too close to home.
‘That’s a lot of bollocks.’
Stefan smiled. If all Jimmy Lynch could do was bluster, he had him.
‘Right. And when I take it all to the Commissioner, it’ll be your bollocks.’
*
The green door between Coyne’s cycle repair shop and Verecchia’s ice cream parlour in Dorset Street opened straight on to a flight of stairs. It led to a flat on the second floor of 47a that was a Special Branch safe house. Seán Óg Moran knew it well enough. He had a key. Sometimes he’d met an informant there with Jimmy. Sometimes there was a man his sergeant wanted questioned, who had to be kept there till he coughed up. Sometimes there was an informant who needed to lie low. There might even be an IRA man on the double-cross who had to hole up. He didn’t ask too much. Jimmy never liked that. And it was Jimmy who’d got him his job. He owed a lot to Jimmy. If his sergeant wanted him to know something, well, he’d tell him.
Seán Óg’s ribs were hurting like hell. The doctor had bound him up but there wasn’t much else he could do. He had to take it easy; it would take time. He wasn’t worried about Stefan Gillespie. No one had seen him. What was the word of a guard already on suspension against a Special Branch man’s anyway? Special Branch looked after their own. He might have to come up with some explanation. He’d just say Gillespie had a grudge against him. They bumped into each other and got into a fight. That’s as much as he’d need. Jimmy didn’t have any time for the Protestant gobshite either. Seán Óg had been drinking steadily since the previous night. It was partly pain and partly because he didn’t know what else to do when things went wrong.
As he walked into the bare kitchen there was only a lamp on. Jimmy Lynch was sitting at the table. There was a bottle of Powers and several glasses. The room smelt as it always did – of stale air, cigarette smoke and greasy newspaper from the chipper. He didn’t notice Stefan Gillespie at first.
‘Jesus this rib’s giving me some gyp.’
‘We’ve got a problem, haven’t we, Seánie?’
Moran saw Stefan, sitting in an armchair. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Sit down.’
The big guard did as he was told. Lynch pushed a glass at him.
‘What’s he said?’ Seán Óg reached for the bottle and a glass.
‘This is yours, I think,’ said Stefan as he got up and joined them at the table. He put the Accles and Shelvoke captive bolt pistol down in front of Moran.
The guard turned to Lynch uncertainly, then smiled.
‘We got in a fight, that’s all, Jimmy. We can work it out.’
‘You think so?’ There was nothing warm in the reply.
‘Who’s going to believe him?’ Seán spoke as if Stefan wasn’t there.
‘Me. I believe him. You were going to fucking kill him.’
Moran was puzzled. He didn’t expect Jimmy to talk to him like that.
‘And then there’s two people with holes in their heads that you buried out in the mountains at Kilmashogue. The little queer and the woman you picked up from Hugo Keller’s clinic. Why, Seán? What did they do to you?’
‘We can put it right. We always did. In the old days.’
‘This isn’t a fucking Tan or some RIC informant! It’s not a war!’
‘That’s not true, Jimmy. There’s more than one kind of war.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘There’s the war against God.’
Lynch stared at him. It came from nowhere. It meant nothing to him. But Stefan already knew where it came from. It was shorthand, but he had heard it before. Seán Moran looked at Stefan directly for the first time. He spoke softly now, as if he was explaining something entirely reasonable.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Gillespie, but what you tried to do to the monsignor, you couldn’t be allowed to do that. Why couldn’t you leave him alone? He’s been chosen and you’re trying to hurt him. If you understood the danger –’
Lynch was staring at them as if they had suddenly started talking to each other in another language. Stefan nodded as the big guard spoke.
‘I do understand, Seán. I’ve heard the monsignor speak.’
‘Then you know –’
‘Well, I know what he believes.’
‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t meant to kill you then.’ He smiled at Stefan, as if the thing had been resolved now. If Stefan knew about that, he must believe too. He must be all right.
‘What the hell are you two on about?’ interrupted Lynch.
‘It’s not so different from the Tans and the English, Jimmy.’ Seán Óg turned towards his friend again. ‘It’s just the same. You remember what you told me when we shot those fellers in the war? Jesus, I still wake up sometimes and I hear that lad in Finglas, screaming for his mother when you put the gun to his head. You don’t choose them, you said. You don’t want to kill them. You do it because there’s something bigger, too big to let feelings get in the way. It was Ireland then, but this is the whole world. Jews and communists, plotting to destroy God’s Church. The monsignor’s the one fighting the evil at work in the world, you see, the evil even the Church can’t see.’
He was articulate in a way that was unlike him. He spoke with calm assurance. He knew about this and, detective sergeant or not, Lynch didn’t.
‘Am I the only one here thinks he’s in a madhouse?’ asked Jimmy.
‘I’m sure you can make Detective Sergeant Lynch understand, Seán.’
Stefan’s eyes fixed on Lynch, telling him to shut his mouth and let Seán Óg talk. And the big guard did. Whether it was the familiarity of the safe house or the alcohol he’d been drinking all day, Garda Moran seemed to feel Sergeant Gillespie understood what had happened now. He was talking in a way he had never talked before. He’d thought about all this. He wanted other people to know. He had been carrying it for a long time. He didn’t kill easily and now that it was in the open he had to explain it. Detective Sergeant Lynch wasn’t in a madhouse but he was closer to a confessional than he knew.
‘The queer lad was going to blackmail Monsignor Fitzpatrick. We had to protect him.’
‘And what about Susan Field?’ said Stefan.
‘I didn’t like it, but she was going to die anyway.’
Lynch reached for the Powers. Seán Óg pushed his glass across.
‘Fill her up, Jimmy.’
‘If you’d got her to the hospital –’ Stefan felt he was close.
‘It could have all come out then. And that wasn’t right. It would have got in the way of the fight. Besides, after what she did to Father Byrne –’
‘What was that?’
‘She took him away,’ said the big guard, shaking his head. ‘Away from the light, Sergeant Gillespie. Away from the Mystical Body of Christ. That’s where the struggle is. And Father Byrne betrayed it. It broke Monsignor Fitzpatrick’s heart. But she did it, the woman. Sister Brigid said it was the sin that could never be forgiven. That’s in the Bible. The woman knew what she was doing to him, you see, because she was a Jew, don’t forget that. I did what I could though. I took her to the nuns, but they couldn’t help her. It was too late. The abortion was piling sin on sin, you could see it in her body. That’s why she was bleeding so much. There wasn’t another way. I had to do it. And Sister Brigid said she would have died anyway. She knew.’
It was very silent. Jimmy Lynch just stared at his old friend. But now Stefan knew. He knew why it had all meant nothing to Robert Fitzpatrick.
‘And was it Sister Brigid told you to kill Vincent Walsh?’
Moran nodded as if to say, why wouldn’t she? He drained his glass of whiskey and reached out to pour one more.
‘I hadn’t seen her for years you know. When I was in the industrial school in Clontarf the monsignor was the parish priest. She kept house for him, just the way she does now. My best friend was Enda Dunne then. We’d go and do the garden for them. I don’t say we did much really, probably made more mess than anything, but she’d give us a few coppers, and they’d a big orchard at the back. We could take what we wanted. And sometimes we’d stay over. She’d read to us, stories like. She was the only one ever read a story to me. It was a little room at the top of the house. The best bed I ever slept in. If I’m home there’s never a night I don’t read to my kids. You know what’s daft? They can read better than me. They pretend they can’t but they show me up.’ He laughed but as he spoke the words he said them with pride.
‘You’ve known Sister Brigid a long time then, Seán?’ said Stefan.
‘We lost touch during the fighting. I think she guessed I was in the IRA, and she didn’t approve. So, I don’t know, about five years ago I saw the monsignor saying Mass at the Pro-Cathedral one Sunday, and there she was. She knew me straight away. I was a just a guard then, uniforms. That was before you turned up and got me into Special Branch, Jimmy. We go back a long way too, don’t we? Sister Brigid said I should come and hear the monsignor at Earlsfort Terrace. I tell you, I never knew what was going on in the world. It frightened the life out of me. I wouldn’t understand it all of course. She says one day Robert, that’s the monsignor, one day he’ll be a saint. But if you could vote for saints, I tell you she’s the one I’d vote for.’
He stopped as if, having said what he had to say, it was over. He got up, smiling at Stefan like an old friend, even as he winced with pain. ‘One to remember you by, Sarge.’ He winked at Jimmy Lynch and then he left.
They said nothing for a long moment, listening to Seán Óg Moran’s feet going down the stairs. The door slammed as he walked out to Dorset Street. Lynch poured the last of the whiskey from the bottle. He passed a glass to Stefan.
‘Jesus Christ.’
Stefan could only nod in agreement.
*
Detective Sergeant Gillespie did most of the talking. Jimmy Lynch said very little. That was partly because he knew very little and partly because he was terrified of what Stefan was going to say about him. He knew Hugo Keller was dead now, but he felt as if his ghost was going to manifest itself at any moment in the Garda Commissioner’s office and point the finger at him. He had nothing to worry about in the end. Stefan stuck to the matter in hand, the murders of Vincent Walsh and Susan Field and the murderer, Garda Seán Óg Moran. There were things Stefan didn’t want to say in front of Detective Sergeant Lynch, and Lynch knew that, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be said eventually. He still didn’t know how much Keller had told Stefan. Meanwhile the Garda Commissioner, who had spent most of the time standing at the window of his office looking at the trees of the Phoenix Park, was well aware of the gaps in Sergeant Gillespie’s story. He wasn’t sure he wanted more than he was getting. He might be happy to leave it at that. A guard killing on the instructions of a nun who happened to be the sister of one of the country’s most prominent churchmen was more than enough to be going on with.
‘I want every file you’ve got on this, both of you. Whatever notes there are, whatever paperwork, either at Pearse Street or Dublin Castle, I want it here. I want no copies left for anyone else to find. You tell no one.’
Ned Broy dismissed Jimmy Lynch first, though the Special Branch man seemed reluctant to go. It wasn’t that he’d discovered a sudden liking for Stefan Gillespie but just now he didn’t want to be separated from him, at least not when that meant leaving him on his own with the Commissioner.
‘Get it done, Lynch!’
The door shut and a worried Detective Sergeant Lynch departed.
‘I’ll have to talk to the Minister of Justice. I’m not setting out to cover this up, but I know the first thing he’ll say, “Why the fuck did you have to tell me?” I’ll be frank, Sergeant, I don’t know what we’ll do. Whatever you’re not telling me is probably best left alone. I don’t need to know any more about Sergeant Lynch. The information from Mr Keller didn’t only go one way.’
‘I thought Jimmy was working for him.’
‘He was. So he knows who’s who. That makes him useful.’
‘I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him myself.’
‘I can throw him a long way, and he’ll find that out.’ Broy smiled. ‘But you can always do something with a man who’d sell his best friends for a few quid. If you know you can’t trust a man, at least you know something.’
By the time Inspector Donaldson heard that Detective Sergeant Gillespie was in the building, every trace of mat-erial relating to the deaths of Vincent Walsh and Susan Field that hadn’t been taken by Jimmy Lynch the previous year had been packed into cardboard boxes to be carried out of Pearse Street Garda station by Stefan Gillespie and Dessie MacMahon. There was a car from Garda HQ parked by the entrance. A uniformed guard took the boxes and packed them into the boot. As he slammed the boot shut and walked to the driver’s seat, Inspector Donaldson appeared, flustered and red-faced.
‘What are you doing here, Gillespie?’
‘Orders, sir.’
‘What’s he taken, MacMahon? He’s taken something!’
‘Files, sir.’ Dessie took out a Sweet Afton and put it between his lips. This seemed promising.
‘What files?’
‘Detective Sergeant Gillespie told me not to say.’
‘You’re still under suspension, Gillespie! You can’t walk into my station and – I’ll have you kicked so far the Commissioner –’
The back door of the car swung open.
‘Jesus, Stefan, what are we waiting for now? Get in!’
The inspector stared. Then he snapped to attention and saluted.
‘Sir!’
Stefan got into the car and shut the door. As the car drove off Inspector Donaldson was still saluting. Dessie was lighting his cigarette.
‘Drop the sergeant at Annie O’Neill’s in Westland Row.’
The Commissioner’s driver nodded. Broy leant back into his seat.
‘That’s the lid on it as far as you’re concerned, Gillespie.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And no more fecking freelancing.’
‘No, sir.’
‘I was never a by guess and by God sort of detective. Neither are you. So the holes in your story don’t tell me what a clever feller you are, they tell me you’re keeping something to yourself. You’ll have your own reasons.’
Ned Broy’s face was impassive; his words were matter-of-fact. But Stefan had every cause to believe that despite the Commissioner’s disregard for guesswork, he was pretty good at it. He had guessed more than he said.
‘I don’t know what you mean, sir.’
‘You wouldn’t. But whatever you intend to do with what you’ve got hold of now, just make sure none of it finds its way back to me. I won’t save you twice.’
*
The next morning Stefan Gillespie met Lieutenant John Cavendish upstairs in Bewley’s. Cavendish was in uniform. Where his stock-in-trade before had been that he didn’t really know what he was doing, now he was more businesslike. Stefan pushed the Jacob’s biscuit tin across the table. He had to do something with it. He had been tempted to throw Keller’s book into the fire. But it was more important than he wanted it to be. It had to go somewhere.
‘You’ll want this.’
Cavendish opened the tin and took out the notebook. He nodded.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Stefan didn’t know whether Eddie McMurrough was still driving his tractor up past the Avonbeg ford to Sheila Hogan’s cottage, but he thought he probably was. Wicklow farmers were persistent. There was no reason why she shouldn’t be left alone to find some kind of life.
‘What did you make of it, Sergeant?’
‘Some of it you could get from Thom’s Directory. Like a list of Jews in Clanbrassil Street. Some of it you couldn’t. Like which ones have got real money and which ones have got friends in Fianna Fáil. You could move on to the Dáil members Keller treated for syphilis, and people in government who wouldn’t squeak too loudly if the IRA found a way to get rid of Dev. I haven’t memorised it all if that’s what you’re worried about. But it’s in a simple enough shorthand. Anybody with decent German could read it.’
‘Does it identify Keller’s informants?’
‘A lot of them probably. He’s very thorough.’
There was nothing more to say. He knew what they really wanted. It wasn’t about what Hugo Keller might have passed on to Adolf Mahr in the way of information; it was about where the information came from. It would be a list, another list of people. People who could be trusted and people who couldn’t. And one day it might be about who was arrested and who wasn’t. The smell of all that had been in his nostrils too long. He’d had enough of it.
‘You’ve got what you want,’ said Stefan.
‘Is Miss Rosen going back to Palestine?’ Cavendish asked.
Stefan was surprised. ‘Why would that interest you?’
‘It doesn’t, but it interests you I imagine. I don’t know if she’s finished what she’s doing for the Haganah, but I’m reliably informed she’ll be lucky to get through London without British Intelligence putting a tail on her. When she gets to Palestine it’s unlikely she won’t be arrested and questioned by the Mandate Police. Not the Gestapo, but well worth her knowing.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I talk to all sorts of people.’
‘Does that include British Special Branch?’
‘Please, Sergeant, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. But don’t think they’re beyond exchanging information with German Intelligence, or the Gestapo if it suits them. Obviously she’s drawn attention to herself.’
‘I’ll tell her. Thank you.’ He smiled, remembering that first day in Pearse Street. ‘I’ve questioned her myself. I’d say good luck to whatever colonial hack draws that straw.’
As he stood up to leave, Cavendish frowned.
‘What did you make of the Nazis?’
‘Make of them?’
‘In their natural habitat.’
‘They didn’t surprise me, Lieutenant, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s what’s surprising, the fact that there’s nothing surprising about them. They tell you who they are. They tell you what they want. They tell you what they’re going to do. And when they do it, everyone’s surprised.’
Not everything in Hugo Keller’s notebook was in the biscuit tin Stefan had handed over to Military Intelligence. As he walked up Grafton Street and on to Stephen’s Green, he was heading for Robert Fitzpatrick’s house in Earlsfort Terrace. The letters the monsignor had written to Vincent Walsh were still in his pocket. He arrived as the bookshop opened. An elderly man told him that Monsignor Fitzpatrick was at Mass at the University Church and, though Stefan didn’t ask, he also told him that Sister Brigid had been taken ill. The man seemed very worried, because the illness had come on so suddenly and he didn’t even know where they’d taken her to be treated. Sister Brigid’s abrupt illness didn’t come as any great surprise to Stefan.
He left the house and walked back to Stephen’s Green and the University Church. The Mass had ended now and he passed the last Mass-goers as he moved through the atrium of the long, narrow building. Angelic figures directed him into the blaze of marble and glass that was the nave, each one holding a scroll. ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Domine Deus Sabaoth.’ Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts. Above the altar, in a half dome of blue and gold and red, the Natural World paid homage to God’s creation. At its centre sat Our Lady Seat of Reason. Robert Fitzpatrick knelt at the altar rail. His head was raised up to the Virgin above him, though his eyes were tightly closed. Stefan sat in a pew at the back of the church and waited for him. After a few minutes the monsignor rose from his knees and bowed his head. He crossed himself and turned to leave, but as he walked forward he saw Stefan Gillespie get up and step into the aisle in front of him, blocking his way.