Swallow decided to treat himself to a large Tullamore and a steak and kidney pie in Deegan’s of Parliament Street before presenting himself to John Mallon at his office in the Lower Yard. He and Shanahan had gratefully accepted Lafeyre’s offer of a lift in the comfort of his brougham as an alternative to a drenching ride across the city on the open police car.
One of the perquisites of office for the chief superintendent of G-Division was the provision of a house in the Lower Castle Yard. It hardly competed with the splendour of the State Apartments in the Upper Yard, occupied by the Lord Lieutenant and his entourage in ‘the season’, when the Castle hosted balls, ‘drawing rooms’ and receptions. There was a world of distinction in rank and status between the Upper and the Lower Yards. Apart from housing the State Apartments, the Upper Yard also accommodated working offices of the powerful civil servants who ran the administration of Ireland for the Crown. Nonetheless, the chief superintendent’s house was well-appointed and spacious, and it had recently been redecorated to Mrs Mallon’s taste.
After breaking the ‘Invincibles’ conspiracy in the wake of the Phoenix Park murders of Chief Secretary Cavendish and Under-Secretary Burke five years previously, John Mallon could do no wrong in the eyes of the Castle authorities. If Elizabeth Mallon wanted new wallpaper in her parlour, she could have it.
In providing for their chief of detectives to have his home within the Castle walls, the authorities got excellent value for their money. Whether at his office or in his house, John Mallon received a constant inflow of information on crime and security matters from all over the country, but particularly from across Dublin city. He insisted upon it. Woe betide the duty detective manning the public office at Exchange Court who delayed the transmission of any important intelligence to him in his parlour, or even in his bedroom.
A sheet of icy rain swept across the Lower Yard as Mallon opened the door in response to Swallow’s tug on the bell-chain. The chief of detectives put a warning finger to his lips, gesturing him to be silent.
‘Detective Inspector, come in. I have two gentlemen inside who were just leaving.’
He led him into the parlour at the front of the house. It was pleasantly warm, in contrast with the outdoor chill, and it smelled of whiskey and tobacco smoke. A good turf fire burned cheerily in the grate. Swallow saw two empty glass tumblers on a low table.
Two men were standing by the fireplace, evidently preparing to leave. Swallow knew immediately that they were from the office of the assistant under-secretary for security, Howard Smith Berry, in the Castle’s Upper Yard. Smith Berry’s background was in military intelligence in India, and since his appointment to Dublin he had built a separate and supposedly secret security unit, perhaps a score of men, to act under his personal direction. The detectives of G-Division detested them. Most of the secret service men were ex-military, unfamiliar with police work. The G-men regarded them as blunderers and spies. And every G-man believed that they too were being spied upon by Smith Berry’s men.
Swallow knew the younger of the men now standing in John Mallon’s parlour. Perhaps thirty-five years of age, he was clean-shaven, of average height and athletic build. He was Major Nigel Kelly. At least that was the name by which he had introduced himself. He was an unknown quantity. Swallow had found it impossible to identify his previous posting from the army list when he consulted it. Their paths had crossed unpleasantly, and they had clashed more than once in the past. Kelly had openly voiced his contempt for the way G-Division did its work. Swallow thought him a fraud and a poseur. Military men were usually open about their regimental background, but Kelly never spoke of his. Swallow was good on accents. He could always tell a speaker’s county, and often what part of that county, but Kelly’s eluded him. It was English, but overlaid with something Irish, probably Antrim or Down, he reckoned. And a touch of colonial as well.
‘You know Major Kelly,’ Mallon said. ‘You probably haven’t met former County Inspector Waters of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Mr Waters has been assigned as a special investigator to work with Major Kelly on behalf of Mr Smith Berry.’
Waters had a policeman’s sharp eyes but an easy expression. Swallow knew him by reputation. He had led the RIC’s crime department through the early violent years of the land war.
‘The celebrated Inspector Swallow.’ The older man held out his hand in greeting. His smile seemed genuine. ‘I’ve heard a lot about your work.’
‘Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.’
Kelly’s mouth tightened in displeasure, forming an unmistakable sneer. Leading the way out of the room, he made no attempt to acknowledge Swallow.
Mallon indicated towards an easy chair once they had gone.
‘Sit down, Swallow. You haven’t advanced very much in Major Kelly’s affections I’m afraid. A sour bastard, and a dangerous one. He’s got a face like a wolf, and the instincts of one too. Unfortunately, he hasn’t got its intelligence.’
Mallon had not been so outspoken before about any of Smith Berry’s squad. Swallow knew that he had protested to the under-secretary when the new secret service men had begun to make their presence felt. Mallon felt it was an implied slur on G-Division. The secret service men understood little of the complexities of Irish political crime, and they had subverted Mallon’s own intelligence network on more than one occasion. But the under-secretary had stood firm. Mallon told Swallow his conclusion: that the orders to establish the unit had come from the chief secretary, Arthur Balfour, who had taken over as head of the British administration in Ireland almost two years previously.
The chief looked stressed; more so than he normally would have, even with the news of an overnight murder, Swallow reckoned. Mallon stood and took a tumbler from the sideboard. Without asking he poured Swallow a heavy Bushmills. Then he poured a shot into his own glass, adding an equal measure of water.
‘I’ll talk to you about what those two bloody fellows were after,’ Mallon said tersely. ‘But first tell me about the murder out at Rathmines. Any progress?’
‘It’s not looking the best, sir.’
Swallow sipped at his Bushmills. It was not a taste he particularly appreciated, but he would never offend Mallon over his own favourite tipple.
‘No witnesses worth talking about. No motive. Dr Lafeyre tells us she wasn’t sexually active. It probably wasn’t robbery because her week’s wages were left at the scene, although it’s possible someone could have missed her bag in the dark. As of now, I’ve nothing to go on. I’m going out to meet the mother and the rest of the family later. Superintendent Boyle has turned out his fellows in numbers, so the usual searches, door-to-door and all that, are in hand.’
Mallon scratched his beard.
‘With all these London murders the newspapers will raise a racket. Any dead female has to be linked to this Jack the Ripper business in London. I had a query from Commissioner Harrel this morning.’
In the normal course, Swallow knew, the commissioner would only concern himself with ‘special’ crimes that had a political dimension. The security of the realm was paramount in the thinking of the Castle’s senior mandarins. It was G-Division’s primary task. An ‘ordinary’ murder, like that of Alice Flannery, would hardly merit attention. But Mallon was right: the so-called Ripper crimes were causing nerves to fray far from London’s East End.
‘You can tell him we’re pursuing every avenue, chief. Right now we don’t have a suspect, but we’ve just started on the investigation.’
Mallon nodded.
‘I know you’re “pursuing every avenue”. It’s at once a useful and a useless phrase. But I understand you’ve just started. And at least there isn’t anything political about it. Just keep me well informed.’
He paused, and indicated with his thumb towards the door through which Kelly and Waters had departed. ‘I told you I’d explain what those two wanted.’
Commonality of religion, background and career experience more often than not brought Mallon and Swallow to similar thinking without the need for discussion. He guessed that whatever the secret service men wanted, it had to do with politics.
‘I imagine they’ve got some plan afoot that’s likely to inflame passions, give us more work and yield no profit. And they think it’s a great idea,’ he said.
Mallon’s grin was without humour.
‘Precisely. They’re working flat out to cut the ground from under Parnell at the commission in London,’ he said. ‘They’re desperately looking for ways to blacken him.’
Swallow knew that as soon as the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, had announced the setting up of the inquiry to investigate the allegations that Parnell was encouraging the Fenians to violence, Smith Berry’s secret service unit had been further augmented by security detectives, including some drawn from the Special Irish Branch at New Scotland Yard. Some retired RIC men with security experience had been quietly drawn in too. Waters was one that he knew about. They kept to themselves, working out of private offices in the Upper Yard with a military guard outside, but most G-men had got to know some of them by sight. He had encountered them coming and going along Castle Street or Palace Street. They avoided the common police canteen behind Exchange Court that served both RIC men and DMP members. They drank separately too, avoiding the public houses around the Castle habituated by policemen.
‘They’re digging deep to get any dirt there is on Parnell,’ Mallon said. ‘The government is supposed to be disinterested and impartial, of course, but it’s clear they’re doing all they can to support The Times’s charge that he’s working hand in glove with the Fenians, and that the more violence there is, the more political leverage it gives him.’
‘But we know that’s not true, chief. We’ve never got a shred of evidence to support it. If it wasn’t for Parnell there’d be a lot more young men enrolling with the Fenians.’
‘Of course.’ Mallon’s tone was exasperated. ‘It’s their bloody stupidity that angers me. They think they have to destroy Parnell. I’ve tried to explain, again and again, that he’s the best buffer we have between order and chaos, just as you’re saying. As long as we have him in position, moderate opinion has a place to express itself. If he’s brought down, the extremists will move in to fill the vacuum.’
Swallow drank from his Bushmills. It was good, but he still preferred the mellow Tullamore.
‘So what do Kelly and Waters want of us?’
‘They want the originals of the protection logs.’
G-men were assigned to Parnell’s protection every time he came through Dublin. They monitored his movements from the moment he would step ashore from the cross-channel steamer, returning from Westminster. They watched his house on Merrion Square, logging the people who came and went and the times they did so. When he visited elsewhere, they logged the address and the arrival and departure and any visitors. Swallow had done his share of it before promotion, carefully copying details into the logbooks at Exchange Court at the end of each shift. But every G-man knew that what was officially designated as protection was also surveillance. Every detail of Parnell’s life was recorded and passed up the security chain to the officials in Smith Berry’s office. And every G-man who did the Parnell ‘protection’ shifts with any regularity knew that he was frequently accompanied by Mrs Katharine O’Shea, the estranged wife of his parliamentary colleague, Captain William O’Shea. Her home was at Eltham, in Kent, which she shared with Parnell and two of the three children they had together. Their first, it was known, had died in infancy.
‘They’re going to try to bring him down over the relationship with Mrs O’Shea,’ Mallon said. ‘They’re a married couple to all intents and purposes. She and Captain O’Shea have lived apart for years, but she’s legally his wife and the relationship with Parnell is adulterous. He’ll be hard pressed to deny it. But Smith Berry believes that our protection logs would be irrefutable evidence.’
‘Why can’t they get their evidence in England?’ Swallow asked. ‘As I understand it they live together with their children fairly openly at Eltham.’
Mallon scoffed. ‘Oh, they think it’ll be far more devastating for him if the adultery is revealed in Dublin. Desecration of the soil of Holy Catholic Ireland and all that.’ He grimaced. ‘That kind of thing isn’t as much a novelty in England, you understand. ‘And then the bishops and the priests will rise up and denounce him as a godless sinner, of course. Not everyone will follow their lead, but it’ll be the end of him politically. His own followers will split. As you and I know, there’s quite a few who’d like to have his place as party leader. McCarthy would love it. So would Healy or Dillon.’
‘So they want our protection logs . . .’ Swallow mused. ‘What did you tell them?’
‘I wasted a good glass of whiskey on each of them before they said what they were after.’ Mallon’s face reddened with anger. ‘I told them that any significant information gathered by G-Division was sent to Smith Berry’s office as a matter of routine. Then I told them to go and take a shite for themselves.’
Swallow grimaced. John Mallon rarely used profanities or coarse language.
‘That won’t go down too well, chief, when Kelly reports to Smith Berry. They’ll have the commissioner down on us.’
‘They’ll try, but Commissioner Harrel understands politics, and he understands about keeping Parnell in power. He won’t see his force misused to suit the purposes of the bloody Times of London. I don’t think he’ll buckle to Kelly and his type.’
Swallow was silent for a moment. He sipped again at his whiskey.
‘I’d make a suggestion, chief, if you don’t mind,’ he said slowly. ‘I think if I were you I’d make sure the protection logs were put someplace safe. There’s about ten or twelve books relating to the Parnell detail. They’ve always been stored in the crime inspector’s office. They’re in the filing cabinets where we can get easy access to them if needed. If they’re left there, Kelly’s men will go in and take them, at gunpoint if necessary.’
He paused.
‘Now that I come to think of it, that particular cabinet is nearly full to capacity. If the logs were removed for storage, sure you wouldn’t even be certain where they are.’
Mallon reached for the Bushmills and poured again for both of them. He added his customary dash of water and pushed the jug across to Swallow.
‘Detective Inspector, you know that I couldn’t approve of the removal of official papers from G-Division. But I understand the problem about storage. And I’d be sympathetic to an overworked clerical staff that simply can’t keep track of every damned sheet of paper, wouldn’t I?’
Swallow drained the last of his whiskey.
‘You would, chief. That’d be your style all right.’
The rain cut across his cheeks as he made his way up the Lower Yard to the back entrance to Exchange Court. He climbed the stairs to the inspector’s office. It was empty, as he had hoped. He took the key to the storage cabinet from the wall-rack and brought the heavy logs out onto the table, almost a dozen in all. Then he used a pair of canvas straps with metal buckles, standard issue from Her Majesty’s Stationery Office for binding heavy files, to make two bundles. He retraced his steps down the Lower Yard to the office of the city medical examiner, the two bundles clasped against his chest to protect them from the rain.
Lafeyre did most of his official work from the city morgue at Marlborough Street. But the authorities had also provided him with a small, secure room in the Lower Castle Yard, close to the Army Pay Office, to store evidence and files. A duplicate key, for convenience of access, was held in the crime inspector’s office.
Even though the November evening was closing in, Swallow needed no light to navigate the room. He unbundled the books and inserted them one by one into the space behind a storage cupboard that stood immediately inside the door. Stacked flat against the wall, they would be invisible to anyone coming or going through the doorway. He stepped out into the yard and quietly turned the key in the lock.