Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘Was the ticket used?’

‘No. There’s always someone ticking off the names of guests at a first night and Vincent Walsh’s name wasn’t ticked. I presume he didn’t come.’

‘Would you have expected him to?’

‘He was very close to our wardrobe master, Eric Purcell. He was his guest.’ He pronounced all his words with an unusual, almost mannered care. He spoke the words ‘very close’ quite slowly, watching Stefan’s eyes again. It was not a statement but a question. ‘Do you understand?’ He did. He also understood that the best answer to the question was to say nothing. Mac Liammoir would decide if that answer was the one he wanted to hear.

‘I have spoken to Eric. He can remember the evening very clearly. He was expecting Mr Walsh and he was rather upset when he didn’t arrive. As it transpires he didn’t see his friend again. No one did. He simply disappeared. Of course, that makes some sense now. You will want to talk to Mr Purcell.’

Stefan nodded. Mac Liammoir left the Green Room for a moment and returned quickly with a man of around forty. He looked nervous and as they were left alone, the nervousness seemed closer to fear. Stefan recognised the species of fear precisely. Eric Purcell was a small man whose effeminate features and movements were a part of his being; he would have encountered policemen in very different circumstances, without the protection of the Gate’s walls. He would have had reason to be nervous.

It was obvious that Purcell was upset; it was obvious that Vincent Walsh had mattered to him, in a way that already told Stefan the world the dead man had inhabited. And because of that it wasn’t surprising that the wardrobe master knew very little about the dead man’s family. He knew Vincent had had a mother and father in Carlow, and that’s where he’d grown up. They had a shop there; Purcell thought it was a tobacconist’s. That was all. As far as he knew, Vincent Walsh hadn’t kept in touch with his parents.

‘I thought something was wrong, Sergeant.’

‘You expected him to be at the first night?’

‘He’d never have missed it. It wasn’t just the play. I got him a little bit of work here when I could. I’d told him there was something in the offing.’

‘Did you try to contact him?’

‘I did. But he’d gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘People go, don’t they?’

‘Who told you he’d gone?’

‘He worked at Billy Donnelly’s, Carolan’s, in Red Cow Lane. He’d a room there. It was Billy who said he’d left. Well, why wouldn’t he? There isn’t much to stay for.’ It was clear Vincent Walsh’s disappearance had left a bitter taste. It was all the more bitter now that Eric Purcell knew the anger and hurt he had harboured for so long afterwards had been unjustified.

‘What made you think something was wrong?’

‘I don’t know. I just thought Vincent was better than that.’

‘When did you last see him?’

There were tears in the wardrobe master’s eyes, of grief and guilt. He hesitated. Stefan could see there were things Purcell didn’t want to say. He had been gentle enough with him at first. Now he needed to be tougher.

‘Mr Purcell, your friend didn’t meet a happy end. He was killed. And when he was dead someone took him out to a mountainside, dug a hole and dumped his body in it. I want to find out who did that. I need your help.’

‘I’ll help if I can.’

‘You remember the date?’

‘Yes.’ He had made his decision; to stop feeling sorry for himself.

‘I couldn’t tell you the date off the top of my head, but it’s easy to remember the day. It was the night after the Eucharistic Mass in the Park. He pulled me out of bed, hammering on my door at one o’clock in the morning.’

‘Did he often do that?’

Eric Purcell shook his head. It still wasn’t easy. He was fighting the old habits of self-preservation that told him never to say anything to the Guards, about anything, about anybody. Stefan knew that and he waited.

‘He’d been at the Mass in the afternoon, then he’d been working in Carolan’s. When the pub closed some fellers came in, Blueshirts, a gang of them. They started roughing up Vincent and Billy the way the Guards — I’m not saying — I mean it happens sometimes, you’d know yourself, Sergeant.’

Purcell assumed Stefan wouldn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about a couple of queers being beaten up. It wasn’t as if it was entirely unreasonable. Didn’t the police have a go at it now and then too?

‘So what happened?’

‘He got away, and eventually he turned up at my flat.’

‘Was he hurt?’

‘There was a bit of blood, a few bruises.’

‘Did he stay?’

‘He left after a couple of hours. He was worried about Billy.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your friend gets you up in the middle of the night. There’s blood on his face. He’s been beaten up. He stays a bit, then he goes back to the pub where he was attacked. You’re worried about him. But you’ve arranged to meet him here the next week. Then he doesn’t turn up. He’s just gone. You never see him again. And you don’t remember what he talked about?’

‘He didn’t say very much. That’s the truth. He didn’t want to talk.’

‘So what did he do?’ persisted Stefan.

‘Nothing really. I cleaned him up. I washed the blood — ’

‘Did he know these men, the Blueshirts?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘So did you just sit there and look at each other?’

‘He wrote a letter.’

Stefan looked at him, surprised.

‘He wanted an envelope. He had some papers in his pocket. I didn’t really see. He put them in the envelope with a note. Then he wanted a stamp, but I didn’t have one there. He asked me to post the letter the next day.’

‘Did you?’

The wardrobe master nodded.

‘Did you look at the address?’

‘It was addressed to Billy Donnelly.’

‘Which was where he was going when he left?’

Purcell nodded again.

‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?’

‘It wasn’t my business.’ Grief was still there; so were old jealousies.

‘Did he say anything about this letter?’

‘No. He seemed a bit happier when he’d written it though. He laughed when he gave it to me. He said they wouldn’t look in the same place twice.’

‘Did you know what he meant?’

‘No, I told you, he didn’t want to talk about what happened.’

Stefan Gillespie believed him. He believed him all the more because of the note of bitterness he could hear, even though tears were still in Eric Purcell’s eyes. Vincent Walsh had mattered to him, perhaps more than he had mattered to Vincent. When Vincent was in trouble he’d knocked on the wardrobe master’s door; he needed help, but he didn’t offer trust in return.

‘What’s going to happen to him? I mean his body.’

‘We’ll contact his parents now. He’ll be buried in due course.’

‘I’d like to know when.’

‘I’m sure Mr and Mrs Walsh — ’

‘I doubt they’ll be inviting his friends, Sergeant.’

Walking down the stairs on his way out of the Gate, Stefan was surprised to see Wayland-Smith sprawling in an armchair by the box office, frowning over the crossword in The Irish Times . He laughed, finally seeing something he should have seen immediately, and wrote in the answer. He got up.

‘My car’s outside. It seemed quickest to come here and get you.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve found another body at Kilmashogue.’

It was almost dark as Stefan Gillespie and Wayland-Smith stood on the road below the woody mountainside again. The rain had gone now. It was a clear, crisp December night. Below them the great sprawl of Dublin was just starting to disappear into the darkness. The lights from the tractor and the State Pathologist’s estate shone on the heap of earth and rock that still slewed across the track. It was only when the workmen had started to clear the landslip that they discovered the second body. It lay in several pieces where it had broken apart as it tumbled down the slope with the soil that had covered it; a leg, an arm, the torso and head. Black skin still held some of the bones in place, barely, like a wet paper bag about to split apart; other bones had already lost most of their flesh. It was immediately clear, to Stefan as well as to Wayland-Smith, that the body had been buried far more recently than the first. The jaw and the face were already almost a skull, but on the top of the head there was still skin and hair. It was long hair, a woman’s. The pathologist turned to a guard behind him, who held a small cardboard box.