Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘Is that what Mr Field thinks?’

‘I don’t know. I think now he’s … almost forced himself to believe that. If he doesn’t, then what does he believe? She was twenty-three, Mr Gillespie. She was bright and full of life and independent and utterly bloody-minded. The idea that Susan would ever run away from anything is mad.’

‘You said there was a problem. What was it?’

‘Susan was a student at UCD. She was always very clever. But however clever you are you can get yourself into stupid situations. She had been having an affair with a man at the university. He was a lecturer. It started last year. She went into it with her eyes open. She made a choice.’

‘He was married?’

‘No, he was a priest.’

‘So that was the problem …’

‘It was one problem.’

‘Just tell me about it, Miss Rosen.’ He could see she needed to talk.

‘Well, I suppose … it was all very exhilarating at first. Susan needed that. She was always searching for excitement,’ Hannah smiled fondly. ‘But after a while it started to feel … claustrophobic. They couldn’t go anywhere. They couldn’t be seen together. And then she realised she was pregnant …’

‘That’s where Mr Keller comes in?’

She looked at him, trying to gauge his response, then she nodded.

‘Who else knew she was pregnant?’ he asked.

‘The priest. I don’t know …’

‘What about her parents?’

‘Her mother died five years ago. I’m sure she’d have talked to her if she’d been alive. Mrs Field was the heart of that family. Maybe too much. Susan always said she took the heart with her when she went.’ Hannah stopped, thinking about the past as much as the present. ‘Her father’s never been the same. I suppose he’s turned in on himself. He’s the cantor at the Adelaide Road Synagogue now. That’s his life, all his life. She couldn’t tell him. And her sisters are married. They’ve left Ireland. Things change, don’t they? It’s funny, I was always jealous of how close they all were.’

Stefan let her find her way back to the present before he continued. ‘A boat to England’s a common solution. It happens every day.’

‘Not Susan. And there was already a solution, wasn’t there?’

‘She’d made arrangements with Keller?’

‘It was the priest who knew about him. He did the arranging.’

Stefan couldn’t hide his look of surprise. It seemed to irritate her.

‘I didn’t mean to shock you, Sergeant.’

‘Shock would be overstating it, Miss Rosen.’ He smiled wryly.

‘Anyway, he knew where to go. He told her it was a proper clinic too, with a proper doctor. And he was going to pay for it all, she said.’

‘A gentleman as well as a scholar. It’s not what you’d expect.’

‘I don’t know. How do priests usually deal with these things?’

‘I don’t know either, Miss Rosen. I’m very rarely on my knees.’

‘That’s reassuring at least.’

‘So Susan wrote to you about the abortion?’

‘I had one letter telling me it was happening. Then she wrote to me again, the day before she went to the clinic. That was at the end of July. She was going on the twenty-sixth. I didn’t know it when I got that letter of course, but she disappeared the day after she sent it. And that’s all there is. No one knows where she went. No one’s seen her since.’

Stefan took this in.

‘Did she seem distressed about what was happening?’

‘I don’t think so. And I’d have known, even if she’d been putting on a brave face. It was something she had to do. She wasn’t jumping for joy, Sergeant, but I’d say the strongest feeling she had — was about drawing a line under it.’

Hannah dropped her head as she had done before, when she felt she was talking about Susan’s feelings in a way that didn’t quite fit a conversation with a policeman. Her hair fell forward each time and she brushed it out of her eyes, looking back up at Stefan with a slightly awkward combination of forthrightness and reserve. And each time, as their eyes met again, he was conscious that she was trusting him with her feelings as well as the facts. He somehow knew she didn’t do that easily. It happened of course, when people had no one else to talk to, when they’d bottled things up inside that they couldn’t tell anyone. As a policeman you relied on that sometimes. But this was different. At least he wanted it to be different. The sound of conversation and laughter all around him in Grace’s had faded away completely. Hannah spoke softly, but by now her words were all he heard. And he was conscious that he didn’t want her to stop talking to him.

‘So, do you think this abortion happened?’

‘Why wouldn’t it? She said she was going the next day.’

‘Isn’t it something she might have changed her mind about suddenly?’

She shook her head.

Stefan decided to take that at face value for the time being.

‘What did she tell you about Hugo Keller?’

‘She just knew what he did and that he did it in Merrion Square.’

‘And the priest set it all up?’

‘I told you. He was paying for it.’

‘So who is this priest?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t found him yet.’

He took note of the determination in those words; she would find him.

‘So your friend, who told you everything, didn’t tell you his name?’

‘When it started she almost liked the cloak and dagger element. It was as if she was breaking all the rules at once.’ There was the hint of a smile again, as Hannah thought about the friend she knew so well. Then she shrugged. ‘And she had a genuine desire to protect him. She was in love with him. She wanted to protect herself too.’ Hannah laughed. ‘Susan liked breaking the rules but she hated getting caught. She wouldn’t have called herself a practising Jew, but the idea of what people would say — an affair, with a goy, who was a Roman Catholic priest.’ She stopped. She wanted to keep laughing about her friend’s foibles, but all of a sudden it felt like another way of hiding her fear. Even what she was saying didn’t seem so funny now. ‘It wouldn’t have been nice. We Jews may have been the victims of everyone else’s prejudice, but we can find plenty of our own, Sergeant.’

‘When you contacted Mr Field, what did you tell him?’

‘I told him what she’d said in her letters.’

‘The affair, the abortion, the priest?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he passed the information on to the Guards?’

She nodded, slowly.

‘That couldn’t have been easy for him.’

‘I talked to him last week when I got home. He didn’t want to see me really.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know which was worse, his daughter disappearing, or what he found out about her afterwards, from me.’

‘Isn’t that a bit harsh?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘All right, so what happened?’

‘The Guards didn’t come back to him for weeks. He went to Rathmines every day, and every day they said they’d be in touch when they had any information. Only there never was any. In the end they told him they had no reason to suspect foul play. Do you have a manual for those phrases? Anyway, it was the same story as before, there was only one conclusion. Susan couldn’t face him after what had happened. She did what that sort of girl does. She got the boat to England. But they did think, sooner or later, she’d contact him. That sort of girl usually does — eventually.’

‘Did they talk to the priest? Did they talk to Keller?’

‘No. The priest was a figment of her imagination, or just a lie. The man must have been married and she made up the priest because she couldn’t deal with the shame. A Jewish woman wouldn’t understand what the vow of celibacy really meant, and how unlikely an affair with a priest was, you see. As for abortions, the inspector said Mr Field could rest assured such things didn’t happen in Ireland. That was, sadly, why some women, now what was it again, oh yes, why some women took the boat to England.’