There was never any record of an interview with Garda Seán Óg Moran. After the night in Dorset Street with Stefan Gillespie and Jimmy Lynch, he stayed at home. Those were Jimmy’s orders. The broken rib was slow to heal. The Garda doctor saw him three times and was in no hurry to declare him fit for duty, even when his own doctor said he was fine and getting back to work was exactly what he needed. But Seán Óg was in no great hurry to return to work himself. His life had been spent doing what he was told; if he was being told to stay at home, he was happy enough doing it for a while.
Most mornings he walked along the Grand Canal from the little house in Warren Street to the Church of St Mary and St Peter in Rathmines for Mass. Every three or four days he’d go to the library to get books for his children. The rest of the time he was either drinking in McGee’s or trying to turn the patch of ground at the back of the house into the garden he had always promised his wife. He had bought a lot of seeds, but other than that progress was slow. Afternoons were devoted to the garden, and most afternoons, when he came home from McGee’s, he slept. But a start had been made anyway, with the seeds. By next summer it would be done.
As May turned into June he was growing uneasy. He hadn’t seen Jimmy Lynch in two months. He’d have thought Jimmy, of all people, would have dropped into the pub, or taken him for a game at Christy Thompson’s Billiard Rooms. Jimmy had told him to keep his head down of course, and that was fair enough, but the other business would be forgotten now, surely. He’d never heard another word about it and the Garda Síochána was still paying him. It was maybe time to think about going back to work. He was five days into a novena at the church just now and he went to St Mary’s every morning to recite the rosary. Next week, when he was finished, he’d go into town and see the lads in Special Branch for a drink in Farrelly’s. But that was next week. Today he had the novena to think about. He put his rosary in his pocket and kissed his wife goodbye, in the way that people do when they’ve been married a long time – hardly noticing but never forgetting. His two children were with him as he left the house, a boy of six and a girl of eight. The six-year-old held his hand. Peadar Hayes had told him in McGee’s the night before that he’d some African marigold plants he could have for the new garden. He’d get those on the way back from the pub and plant them that afternoon. The kids could help him after school.
When they reached the Grand Canal Seán Óg turned right towards Rathmines and the children turned the other way to go to school. He saw Eddie Sullivan’s horse and cart pulling into Martin Street. Eddie didn’t stop when Seán Óg bellowed after him, to ask when the fuck he’d be delivering the turf he’d promised. He’d be delivering it when he had the fucking time, and he made a mental note that would be when he was clearing his yard of the broken, wet turf from last winter nobody wanted. Moran could never be arsed to pay and he expected an extra load every time because he was a policeman. ‘Well you’d want to keep on the right side of me, wouldn’t you, Eddie?’ That was always the joke, and Eddie always laughed and went away thinking did he really need to keep on the right side of the great gobshite?
The swans on the canal were noisy that morning. Seán liked the swans. He thought they were lucky. Sometimes he counted them while he walked along, just for something to do that he had the habit of doing, and because he thought the more there were the luckier they were. There weren’t very many that day as he crossed over the road to walk along the towpath, and they were scrapping and squabbling the way swans do sometimes. He wasn’t particularly aware of the two men coming towards him as he approached Kingsland Parade. They crossed on to the towpath as well.
There was something about one of the men he thought he recognised. He knew a lot of people. It was maybe someone he hadn’t seen in a long time, but he knew him, he definitely knew him. There was a half smile on the man’s face. Was he thinking the same thing? There was a smile on Seán Óg Moran’s face too, as the first bullet hit him. He didn’t fall. He was a big man. The second bullet hit him in the head and he was dead before his body hit the ground. The two men walked quickly across the road again. A black car pulled out of Martin Street. And then they were gone. The only sound was the hissing and snarling of the swans Garda Moran hadn’t finished counting.
It was reported as an IRA assassination and Seán Óg Moran’s name would go down on the Garda roll of honour. President Éamon de Valera said he died for his country. And he did. There were some things it was better his country didn’t know; if the president didn’t know either it made it all the easier. He could never be put on trial for what had happened but something had to be done. Just as Special Branch looked after its own, it cleaned up its own mess too. If the men on the towpath didn’t know Garda Moran, the man driving the car did. It was Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch.
When Eddie Sullivan finally delivered the load of turf to the house in Warren Street it was the best he had; and he never did ask to be paid for it.
*
It was a bright, hot day in August. Stefan Gillespie was walking along the main street of Baltinglass with Tom. There was a job to do that he didn’t want. It brought the world outside into the small West Wicklow town in a way only he could understand. The night before he had read Hannah’s letter again. It had arrived from Tel Aviv the week before. He had written to tell her what had happened to Seán Óg Moran, not with any sense of satisfaction but because he had to. It was only right. But it was clear she felt no less uncomfortable than he did about the mess of lies and evasion and, finally, stark brutality that had been served up as some kind of apology for justice.
It’s an end, but not much of one. I don’t know what I expected. Something honest, I suppose. Instead there’s just another kind of murder. Or maybe it’s the same kind of murder, because there’s something else to hide. We deserved more than that, even the man who killed my friend deserved more than that. After everything that’s happened I’m not as good as I thought at an eye for an eye. I think I wanted to leave all that in Danzig. People feel it here too. Darkness, I mean. We’re all looking at the light and just hoping the dark goes away.
As Station Sergeant in Baltinglass, Stefan used every opportunity to escape from the barracks in Mill Street. He had a limited appetite for the kind of peace and quiet that kept him sitting in an office processing the mountain of paperwork that just doing nothing seemed to generate. The pleasure of being at home with his son was one thing; it was what he had fought for. But there was a lot less pleasure in the four dark walls of the front office at the Garda station. There were no detectives in Baltinglass, however, and in their absence he did his own detective work; it kept his mind from seizing up and it got him out of the station. It suited Inspector Riordan, who didn’t like detectives coming down from Naas and poking about in his domain. If his sergeant could keep them at bay so much the better. An afternoon out of the station should have been what Stefan wanted on a day like this, but he wasn’t going to enjoy the appearance he had to make on Baltinglass Hill
The Archaeology Department of UCD had been excavating the passage tombs on the upper slopes of the hill throughout the summer, and today the director of the National Museum was visiting the site. In a town where not much happened, Adolf Mahr’s arrival was a big event. Local dignitaries would be out in force. And as Inspector Riordan was in court in Naas all day, Stefan would have to represent the Gardaí. His knowledge of the archaeologist’s extra-curricular activities in the Nazi Party left him with no desire to be among the enthusiastic hand-shakers, but he had no choice.
He had walked up to the site several times that summer with Tom, who had just about worked out what archaeology was and had now decided he wanted to be an archaeologist when he grew up. He had been digging holes all over the farm for the last two months and the bedroom he shared with his father was filled with rusty iron and broken crockery. Stefan didn’t want to make any more of Mahr’s visit than he had to, but once Tom got hold of the news that the most important archaeologist in Ireland was coming it was impossible to tell him he couldn’t go to the site with his father.
There were several cars parked by the lane that led up towards the summit of Baltinglass Hill, but what Stefan saw first was the motor coach. A swastika pennant fluttered on the bonnet; several more hung on the insides of the windows. Adolf Mahr hadn’t only brought his archaeological hat to West Wicklow. The German community in Ireland had its own Hitler Youth branch now and they were down on a day trip to see the dig. It was the first time Stefan had seen a swastika flying since leaving Danzig. The world of missing sheep and poached salmon suddenly felt further away. The one that filled the newspapers and the wireless was in front of him again. He took Tom’s hand. Tom grinned up at him. ‘I like their flag, don’t you, Daddy?’
At the top of Baltinglass Hill there was a wide ring of heaped stones that had once supported a great cairn over a passage grave. Three thousand years ago it would have been visible for many miles, like a pyramid. The cairn had been dismantled long ago, though its stones were to be found in the Iron Age earthworks that surrounded the hilltop and in the hundreds of field walls that spread out across the countryside below. Inside the ring were the quarried pillars and slabs of the tombs that were being mapped and scraped and dug by the students from UCD. Adolf Mahr stood in front of the wall of stones, with a dozen archaeologists on one side and a group of children and teenagers on the other. The boys wore the brown shirts and shorts of the Hitler Youth; the girls were in white blouses and dark blue skirts. A swastika flew beside an Irish tricolour. The great and good of Baltinglass looked on approvingly. Sheep grazed indifferently at the edges of the crowd. Stefan and Tom joined the onlookers. It was a long climb and they were sweating.
Stefan saw the Church of Ireland minister, the Reverend Fisher, standing with Father MacGuire; the two men were laughing. From behind they were almost indistinguishable in their black suits and black hats.
Father Carey had been gone for two months now. His bishop had been surprised to receive an abrupt note from him in May to say how concerned he was that pursuing the issue of Tom Gillespie and his Protestant father might cause divisiveness in the community at a level he had not anticipated. He had to question whether the case was good for the Church after all. The note was so unlike the single-minded, bull-headed aggression that had filled the curate’s previous letters that the bishop could hardly believe it was from the same man. Divisiveness was Anthony Carey’s stock-in-trade. He had certainly never shown the slightest regard for the Protestants in his community before. Clearly something had happened. The bishop didn’t know what and didn’t much care. He had been backed into a corner by the turbulent curate and his friends in the Association of Catholic Strength. There was an appetite for putting Protestants in their place that he was a lot less enthusiastic about than some of his younger priests. So it was with considerable relief that the bishop called the Church’s lawyers and told them to find a suitable resting place for the file on Mr Gillespie and his son. He also decided it was high time Father Carey had his own parish. He had no vacancies himself, unfortunately, but he noted that other bishops did. The curate wasn’t missed in Baltinglass. If nothing else it meant the parish priest and the Church of Ireland canon could go back to playing chess with each other on Fridays, as they always did before Father Anthony Carey’s arrival.
At the Pinnacle, on the top of Baltinglass Hill, Adolf Mahr’s voice fought the wind that always blew there, but his presence was more important than what he was there to say. He slipped from English into German and back, even though most of the German children spoke English too. The onlookers liked that. It made the half-heard words feel somehow universal.
‘Prior to the coming of megalithic civilisation, around five thousand years ago, the north and west of Europe was inhabited by isolated and primitive tribes of hunter gatherers. We don’t know how the newcomers came to Ireland, by boat from Iberia or from Britain, but it is their skill with stone that left the first marks of civilisation on our landscape. They still stand on our hillsides today, these tombs and monuments that needed sophisticated organisation, technical expertise and huge resources in manpower. Who were these people? We have no idea. These are their only memorials. We will never know the language they spoke or the gods they worshipped. As they displaced the tribes before them, so they were displaced by the next wave of invaders, who brought bronze and then iron to Ireland. We don’t know whether they were extirpated or enslaved or simply absorbed by the Celts who finally claimed this island for their own. We may feel sadness sometimes, looking at these remains, for they are wonderful things and we should cherish them, but history is unsentimental. It is like nature. It obeys similar natural laws. The strong will survive; the weak will disappear.’
The German Stefan heard wasn’t quite the same as the English. In German it was the strong race that survived and the weak race that disappeared. He didn’t applaud as Adolf Mahr concluded with a few words in Irish to thank the local community for its support. Then, unexpectedly and delightfully for everyone there, with a nod and a smile from Mahr, the German children started to sing. The music was Schubert’s, the words Goethe’s. It had been one of his grandmother’s favourite songs. ‘Über allen Gipfeln is Ruh.’ Over mountain and hill all is still. ‘In allen Wipfeln spürest du kaum einen Hauch.’ Through all the trees scarcely a breeze; in the forest there is no birdsong. Wait, wait, before long you will find peace.
There was more applause, and people moved forward to chat and shake hands all over again. Stefan had had enough. He took Tom’s hand and started to walk away. As he did the Reverend Fisher and the parish priest turned towards him. ‘Marvellous, Stefan, don’t you think?’ said the Church of Ireland minister. There were tears in his eyes. Those young voices had touched something inside him; perhaps it was the memory of his own youth. He lowered his voice. ‘There may be a lot of things we don’t like about Herr Hitler, but my goodness, there are things we could learn.’
Father MacGuire smiled. ‘Probably great craic as long as you don’t want to sing a different tune, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant?’
Stefan nodded. ‘I’d say so, Father.’
Tom was pulling at his hand. As he looked round he saw that Adolf Mahr was walking towards them, smiling at the priest and the minister. ‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen. It’s quite a climb. But worth it for the view.’ They exchanged a few words about the view and the rain that usually meant there wasn’t one, before the director of the National Museum stretched out his hand to Stefan.
‘Thank you as well, Sergeant.’
Stefan had no option but to shake his hand.
‘There’s no need to thank me, Herr Doktor Mahr.’
The polite but unsmiling look and the oddly correct German unsettled Mahr. It seemed out of place. Something about the policeman was slightly familiar. He looked down at the small boy beside him and smiled warmly.
‘Are you interested in archaeology?’
‘I know it’s where we came from.’
‘It is indeed,’ laughed the director. ‘Good boy!’
He reached out and tousled his hair. Stefan, who was holding Tom’s hand, instinctively pulled him away. It was done without thinking; he didn’t want Mahr touching his son. The German was puzzled. He felt the hostility.
‘Do we know each other, Sergeant?’
‘No, we don’t know each other,’ said Stefan coldly.
As he walked away with Tom, the archaeologist watched him, now more puzzled than before. He paused for a minute, unable to remember why Stefan seemed familiar, then almost immediately he forgot about him and turned back to the queue of people who were waiting to shake his hand.
Stefan and Tom walked east from the Pinnacle, looking at the high, flat top of Keadeen and the Wicklow Mountains beyond. Within minutes the tip of Baltinglass Hill was out of sight behind them. The people were gone. There was only the rough grass and the gorse and the view across the fields towards the farm below Kilranelagh, and a few crotchety, grumbling sheep fanning out in front of them as they walked down the gentle slope.
‘Were they all killed?’ Tom was thinking hard.
‘Who?’
‘The people who lived here once. Who built the stones.’
‘I don’t know. Nobody really knows what happened. I don’t suppose all of them were. I’ve always thought they’re still here in some way.’
‘Like ghosts?’
‘Not like ghosts. I just mean … in us really. Well, we all come from somewhere. But if you keep going back to our grandparents and our great-grandparents and our great-great-grandparents for thousands of years, well, we probably all come from everywhere. Does that make any sense?’
Tom frowned. He wasn’t really sure it did. Stefan smiled.
‘But is this where we belong?’ asked the boy.
‘Well, there isn’t anywhere else, so I’d say so, wouldn’t you?’
Tom nodded. That seemed to make all the sense he needed.
They carried on down the hill. The wind had dropped now and they could feel the warmth of the sun. Tom still held his father’s hand. Hannah’s letter was in Stefan’s mind again. He thought of her last words. ‘There’s not a lot of light. It’s what makes it special. Thank you for giving me some of yours. I won’t forget.’ He wouldn’t forget either. She had given him her light too.
Tom suddenly let go of Stefan’s hand and started to run down the hill, faster and faster, scattering the bleating sheep ahead of him, and sending a pair of larks chirruping up out of the gorse into the clear, evening sky. He was shouting and laughing, just because he wanted to shout and laugh. And as Stefan chased after him, he was laughing as well, and for exactly the same reason.