Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘I know what it is, Dessie.’

‘That’ll be why you’re a sergeant so.’ He drained the cup. ‘Anyway, most people there wouldn’t have bought tickets. They’d have been invited.’

‘So there would have been a list?’

‘There would.’

‘And?’

‘They’re going to see if they can dig it out. I wouldn’t say it’s the best organised place. You wouldn’t expect it to be, would you? The arty type.’

Stefan surveyed the debris piled on Dessie’s desk. Garda MacMahon laughed. Suddenly they both sensed someone watching them. They looked round to see Inspector Donaldson in his usual position, in the doorway, debating whether he really wanted to walk in and have a conversation with Detective Sergeant Gillespie or whether it could be left for another day.

‘This body’s a nasty business. I’ve just seen the autopsy report.’

‘Very nasty, sir.’

‘Are you any nearer identifying him?’

‘We’ve got something.’

‘What about this woman you’re looking for?’

‘Susan Field.’

The inspector hesitated. This was what was really on his mind.

‘I understand there’s a connection with the man Keller, Sergeant.’

Donaldson sniffed uncomfortably, but it had to be said.

‘There is. We know she was going to him for an abortion.’

The word still offended Inspector Donaldson and he thought he’d seen the back of it. ‘Didn’t they look into her at Rathmines? They didn’t find anything.’

‘There’s more evidence now, and more reason to be concerned.’

‘They concluded she’d gone to England,’ persisted the inspector.

‘I’m not convinced of that sir. There’s no evidence at all. It’s an assumption, just that. The abortion is still the last thing we know about Susan Field. Of course, if Keller was still here we’d have someone to talk to about it.’

Stefan and Dessie gazed blandly at Donaldson, waiting for him to say something. He was the one who had allowed the Special Branch detectives to pull Hugo Keller out of the Pearse Street cells. But as far as the inspector was concerned it wasn’t his business any more, and that was the end of it.

‘You’d better take that up with Special Branch.’

‘It didn’t go down well last time.’ Stefan pointed at his bruised face.

‘Is that some kind of accusation, Gillespie?’

‘It should be. What do you think, sir? Shall we have a go?’

Stefan glanced at Dessie and Dessie tried hard to keep a straight face. Inspector Donaldson bristled. If there was any truth to the suggestion that Detective Sergeant Lynch had something to do with Gillespie’s injuries it was between the two of them. Lynch was a thug; Gillespie ought to have known better than to cross him. No one would thank James Donaldson for poking his nose into Special Branch’s sewer and he had no intention of doing so.

‘I suggest you get on with your job and put personal matters aside.’

He was pleased with that; it came very close to sounding like leadership. But there seemed no need to cross the threshold into the CID office now. He turned and walked away. The soles of his always highly polished shoes echoed loudly and decisively along the corridor. Dessie looked at Stefan.

‘You haven’t told him there’s a priest in it somewhere?’

‘Hasn’t the man got enough to worry about?’ laughed Stefan.

The telephone rang. He reached across the desk and picked it up. The voice at the other end was an odd combination of the punctilious and lazy.

‘Is this the CID office? I’m afraid my front of house manager took the number, but not the name. His best suggestion was that I ask for the fat detective who smokes Sweet Afton. I don’t know how many fat detectives you have, and perhaps they all smoke Sweet Afton; however it may give you a clue and, given your line of work, that should be more than enough.’

‘Is that the Gate?’

‘Faultless! You see, I didn’t underestimate you.’

‘I’m the thin one who doesn’t smoke Sweet Afton.’

‘It’s about the first-night ticket. We have a name for you.’

Crossing over the Liffey and on to O’Connell Street Stefan Gillespie looked at the Christmas window full of toys at Clery’s. Tom’s tricycle was there. He had paid the deposit at the beginning of November and a little more at the start of December. When his wages came next week he would be able to find the rest. It was a long walk to the far end of the wide street, past the statue of O’Connell the Liberator, past the GPO, past Parnell and the incongruous Nelson’s Column. The other Christmas windows went unnoticed. His mind was full of things that didn’t connect with each other. He hoped the Gate Theatre would at least show him a way forward for the body on the hillside at Kilmashogue.

The theatre made up one side of the Rotunda Hospital, where its grey eighteenth-century facade turned sharply into Parnell Square. A small door, almost unnoticeable until you reached it and fell up the steps, led into a dark and narrow corridor, more like the entrance to a Georgian town house that had seen better days, as most of the houses in this part of Dublin had, than to a theatre whose reputation was not measured by its size but by the grace and the compassion it brought to its cramped and untidy quarters. When you walked into that corridor and up the steep steps, to an auditorium that seated barely three hundred people, you had done more than enter a theatre. If there was anywhere in Dublin where the writ of the city’s squinting windows didn’t run, it was here. The Gate was an island. Its founder, Micheal Mac Liammoir, an actor who gave his life’s greatest performance as an Englishman triumphantly playing an Irishman, had made the play the theatre’s only purpose and in doing had created something more than a theatre. The Gate had ignored Dublin and had made Dublin, a city that was nothing if not contrary, love it for that. Along the way, almost unnoticed, it had given lungs to a city that, despite all its passions and its furious energies, was wheezing and consumptive and in constant need of God’s clean air.

Detective Sergeant Gillespie sat in the Green Room, high-ceilinged, and small like everything else; the walls were dark, green as they had to be, lined with photographs of actors and productions. Light poured in from a high Georgian window on to the street below. When the door opened he knew the man who came in. He had sat in the auditorium here with Maeve; it seemed like a long time ago now. Was it five years? Diarmuid and Grainne ; love and death. Micheal Mac Liammoir had been Diarmuid. The actor shook Stefan’s hand firmly, fixing his gaze hard for some seconds. It was a look that told Stefan he would be judged here, and precisely what he would be told would depend on that judgement. It was as obvious as that.

‘Your colleague said very little. I didn’t speak to him myself. But I imagine this is something rather serious. I think you should tell me more.’

It was an odd start to the questions Stefan was there to ask, but he sensed this was a place where he would find honesty and trust reciprocated.

‘We have the body of an unidentified man. We don’t know the circumstances of his death, but they are, for the moment, suspicious. I can’t say any more than that. The fragment of a theatre ticket was found in a wallet buried with the man. So far it’s the only thing that’s given us any chance of identifying him. For now we’re assuming the ticket was his.’

Mac Liammoir didn’t waste time showing surprise or shock.

‘Well, we’ve dug out a list of people who were invited to the first night of The Way of the World . The ticket in question was given to a young man called Vincent Walsh. I didn’t know him well myself but he did work here as a dresser from time to time. He was never on our permanent staff.’