Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

They hadn’t asked about his body. Stefan didn’t have to explain that there was nothing for them to see or identify, nothing he would want a mother and father to look at. He told them they would be able to make funeral arrangements before long, perhaps in January. They nodded. They would do what they needed to do. There would be no wake. There would be no line of customers and friends and neighbours and family to follow the coffin the few hundred yards along Dublin Street, past the pillared court house into College Street, past the seminary; or to sit with it in the Cathedral of the Assumption overnight. The Mass for the Dead would be spoken to a handful of people. Vincent Walsh would be buried with as much shame as sorrow. Afterwards, his mother and father would sit in the room behind the shop and say nothing. They had mourned for their son long before his death.

Dessie MacMahon was a lot more comfortable in Carolan’s Bar than he had been at the Gate Theatre. Apart from the fact that Billy Donnelly didn’t need to be asked to put two hot whiskeys in front of him and Sergeant Gillespie, you knew who was who in here, and more to the point, who was what. Any man you found drinking in Carolan’s was queer and that kind of clarity seemed to Dessie to be only proper. Besides which, you could treat them like queers. A bit of craic was fine. Didn’t some of them have a way of making you split your sides sometimes? But up at the Gate you needed to watch yourself. You couldn’t know who was queer and who wasn’t and nobody seemed the least bit bothered about it. That couldn’t be right. However, as Stefan questioned Billy Donnelly, the publican was less forthcoming about Vincent Walsh than he was with the drinks. He took the news that Vincent’s body had been found with hardly a change in his sour expression. Maybe his eyes closed for just a moment, but it was hard not to feel that this didn’t come as news at all.

‘He was living here?’ said Stefan.

‘He worked for me. He’d a room upstairs.’

‘How long?’

‘Maybe a year.’

‘You knew him well then.’

Billy looked across the bar at the last of his departing customers. It was barely one o’clock and the pub never did do much daytime trade, but the presence of two detectives was enough to frighten off what there was.

‘You’re costing me money. Are you stopping long?’

‘Tell me about the night of the Eucharistic Mass,’ continued Stefan. It was not a question Billy expected, and if the news of Vincent’s death hadn’t seemed to surprise him very much, those words clearly did. He frowned.

‘You’d quite a night of it, I hear.’

‘I’m not with you, Sergeant.’

‘There was a gang of Blueshirts here, beating the shite out of you.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Was there a reason for that?’

‘Sure, why would they need a reason?’ It was the kind of answer Billy Donnelly would have given at any other time, and at any other time he would have laughed. He smiled, but his voice spoke wariness and caution.

‘It was just you and Vincent Walsh, Billy?’

‘If you say so, Mr Gillespie. It’s a long time ago.’

‘Vincent got away from them?’

Billy didn’t reply. He’d picked up a glass and a towel earlier and had been drying the same glass for some time, unaware that he was doing it.

‘Did he?’ insisted Stefan.

‘If I’d had the legs on me I’d have done the same.’

‘So when did he come back?’

The publican stopped drying the glass.

Stefan could see he was trying to work out an answer.

‘He was worried about you. That’s what I’m told. He was on his way back here by two in the morning.’

‘I didn’t see him.’

‘You didn’t see him come in?’

‘He never came in. I didn’t see him again.’

‘What about his things?’

‘He’d a few clothes, a few books.’

‘You’ve still got those?’

‘What do you think this is, the left-luggage office? I kept hold of his things for a while, but when I saw he wasn’t coming back I got rid of it all.’

‘Did you get the letter he sent you?’ Stefan was watching him closely.

‘What letter?’

The response was quick, controlled; perhaps he was anticipating the questions now. But neither Stefan nor Dessie had any doubt that Billy Donnelly knew all about the letter, and that it had arrived. However, they could get nothing more out him now. There was no letter. He knew nothing about any letter. Yet the letter mattered and Stefan knew it. Vincent Walsh’s words still rang in his head. ‘They won’t look in the same place twice.’ If Vincent had died that night they were some of the last words he ever spoke. They couldn’t be explained, but they certainly couldn’t be cast aside.

As the two detectives left, Billy Donnelly could feel the sweat, cold on his back where it had been hot only seconds before. As he went to pour himself a drink, Dessie MacMahon reappeared at the door. He had remembered something.

‘Weren’t you in the Joy for a stretch last year?’

‘Six fucking months.’

‘What for?’

‘What’s it to you?’

Dessie grinned. He had a memory for these small things. ‘Attempting to procure an act of gross indecency at a urinal in Upper Hatch Street, but as it happened the feller was a guard, wasn’t that the story, Billy?’

Two fingers ushered Dessie out. Billy stood in the empty bar. He hadn’t forgotten Vincent. He never would. The drink was the first of many.

Inspector Donaldson had been reading Stefan Gillespie’s report for almost ten minutes. It wasn’t a long report. It deliberately avoided any facts that could be avoided and it made no attempt at theories or opinions. It described the discovery of the two bodies and the bare details of Wayland-Smith’s examination. Vincent Walsh and Susan Field had been identified, and although the circumstances of their deaths could not be determined, there could be no question but that the deaths were indeed suspicious. Something like two years separated the two events. Nothing linked them except the place of burial and the State Pathologist’s opinion that damage to both skulls could have been caused by a captive bolt pistol. Donaldson had already pencilled in the word ‘speculative’ above the word ‘opinion’. There was considerable information about the probable movements of both Vincent Walsh and Susan Field close to the time of their disappearance. The inspector had crossed out the word ‘probable’ and replaced it with ‘possible’. He turned the pages of the report over several times more, not because there was anything else to read, but because he didn’t want to have the conversation he knew had to come next. Nothing was going to make this trouble go away.

‘The man Walsh,’ he said, finally looking up. ‘How reliable do you think these people are? Purcell, I mean, and the publican, Donnelly?’

‘I’d say Purcell is telling the truth. Billy Donnelly knows more.’

‘I know Donnelly. The other one’s a queer too, I presume?’

‘Purcell doesn’t have any reason to lie.’ Stefan knew exactly what Inspector Donaldson meant. You couldn’t believe anything a queer said.

‘Lying is a way of life with these people. At any event there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to go. The man disappeared. He hasn’t seen him since. Or are you suggesting Donnelly was involved in the death somehow?’

‘Like I say, I think he’s got more to tell us.’

‘And if he hasn’t?’

‘Sir, four men attacked the pub the night Walsh disappeared.’

‘Oh, yes, the Blueshirts.’ Donaldson smiled. He didn’t believe it.

‘I’ve no reason to doubt that,’ Stefan continued. ‘Your man Purcell could see Vincent Walsh had been beaten up. And what the hell has Billy Donnelly got to gain from a story like that, two years down the road?’