Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘You think I don’t know better than that?’

‘Why are these papers all over the floor? Everything’s in the wrong — ’ He smiled; it was simple enough. ‘Did you leave Hannah here on her own?’

‘I’ve got the report on Billy.’ Dessie got up, ignoring Stefan’s question. ‘Here. “The defendant approached the detective and said, isn’t that a fine big one. It’ll give you the horn.” Jesus wept!’ He was laughing.

‘She’s gone through everything.’

‘You know who it was, Sarge?’ Dessie still wasn’t listening.

‘Who what was?’

‘The detective in the jacks.’

‘What do I care who was in the bloody jacks?’

‘It was Jimmy Lynch, keeping the Free State’s toilets safe.’

It was about as far from Special Branch work as you could get.

Billy Donnelly wasn’t feeling great. He could take his drink but he’d drunk himself senseless through most of that afternoon. He couldn’t remember what he’d said to his barman when they opened the pub, but Derek Blaney had walked out and said he wasn’t coming back. He would, but he’d leave it a couple of days to make his point. The dreary, familiar campery in the bar that night had made Billy want to take the lot of them by the scruff of the neck and kick the shite out of them till they said something, anything different. He felt he’d been listening to the same empty conversations all his life and what lay ahead was just the same thing, over and over, night after night after night. And he was right. But he had drunk himself into a stupor and out the other side now. He was sober and wished he wasn’t. The knock on the door was the last thing he needed, but he had no anger left to hurl at the unwanted visitor. He opened the door. Stefan Gillespie stood there.

Billy didn’t bother to protest. He hadn’t got the energy. He walked back to the bar and sat down. He left Stefan to close the door as he came in.

‘I thought we were done.’

‘I didn’t.’ Stefan sat down opposite him.

‘Tell me about the letter.’

‘There wasn’t a letter.’

‘Tell me about Jimmy Lynch then.’

‘He’s a gobshite, the same kind of gobshite you are.’

‘He put you inside.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Eighteen months hard labour. You were out in six.’

‘I was lucky.’

‘No one’s that lucky. Jimmy put you in there and Jimmy got you out.’

‘That what he said?’

‘What did he want?’

‘I thought he was just doing his job, locking up queers.’

‘Then maybe I should take a leaf out of Jimmy’s book. I’ll put in a report that you approached me in a public urinal. I’ll have Dessie MacMahon back me up on it. It’ll be the usual thing, gross indecency. It’ll be your third time.’

Billy didn’t answer. He was remembering those six months.

‘Three years at least, maybe more with the wrong judge.’

Stefan waited for it to sink in.

‘That’s hard labour too. You’re not getting any younger.’

‘You’re not Jimmy Lynch, Mr Gillespie.’

‘I won’t break your arms first if that’s what you mean. But I will put you away if I have to.’

‘What the hell does it matter to you? Vincent’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘What was in the letter Vincent sent you?’

There was nowhere for Billy Donnelly to go; he had to talk now.

He sat back, remembering that night.

‘All right the Blueshirts didn’t just turn up. They wanted Vincent.’

‘I’d worked that out.’

‘There was a feller he’d been with. He’d written Vincent some letters. The sort of things people write and wish to God they never had. Vincent was mad about him. From up the arse to true fucking love! Jesus! He wasn’t just anybody, this feller, either. I don’t know what happened but he wanted the letters back. The Blueshirts came to get them. All Vincent had to do was hand them over, but he couldn’t see it was your man who sent the bastards in the first place. He thought he was protecting the feller, hiding his fecking billiedoos. So he ran. He stuck the letters in a bloody envelope and sent them to me! They wouldn’t look in the same place twice! That’s what he wrote.’

‘So did he come back here that night?’

‘No. The letters came, a couple of days later, but he never did.’

‘Where are they now?’

Billy Donnelly still didn’t want to say it.

‘You know, don’t you, Billy?’

‘I gave them to Sergeant Lynch. I don’t know how he found out they were here, but he did. I’d kept them. I did think Vincent would come back. I should have just put them on the fire, but I couldn’t. They didn’t mean a thing to the man who wrote them but they meant everything to him. Jimmy Lynch turned up about a year later, asking about Vincent, about the letters. It didn’t matter what I said; he knew. So he put me away. I took six months of it. For what? Vincent was dead all that time. But then, I still thought he — ’

‘Was Jimmy Lynch there that night, with the Blueshirts?’

‘No, he was fucking IRA before he was a Broy Harrier, wasn’t he? I don’t know who they were.’

‘What about the man who wrote the letters?’

‘There wasn’t a name. All I know is what Vincent told me. He was some sort of teacher, not a school teacher … it was the university. And the bastard was a priest.’

The train from Baltinglass arrived at Kingsbridge just after ten the next morning. It was barely a week till Christmas now. Tom had come to Dublin with his grandmother and grandfather and Stefan had a day off. It was a day to gaze at the windows of the shops in Grafton Street and O’Connell Street, to look at Christmas trees and Christmas lights, to buy the small presents they would put round the tree in the sitting room at Kilranelagh. A day to eat dinner in the restaurant in Clery’s and have tea at Bewley’s Cafe. And there would be a long time to spend looking in one window in particular, just to the left of the clock outside Clery’s, where the tricycle still sat, surrounded by glitter and tinsel, toy soldiers and dolls, tin drums and teddy bears.

Stefan and Tom were in Bewley’s when Dessie MacMahon found them that afternoon. Pretending they had something else to do, David and Helena were out Christmas shopping for Tom and Stefan; Tom and his father had been Christmas shopping for them too. It had involved another slow walk past Clery’s window, and a last look at the tricycle, which Tom had, with impressive resolution, persuaded himself Santy might not be able to bring all the way to Baltinglass. Dessie came over to the table with a cup and saucer and sat down. He poured himself some tea from the pot. It was thick, black and tepid, but nothing was undrinkable with enough sugar in it.

‘ She’s been on the phone. That’s three times today.’

He eyed the coconut macaroon in the middle of the table.

‘You can have it if you want it, Dessie,’ said Tom.

‘Well, if it’s going begging.’ He didn’t wait to be asked twice.

‘I think she’s a bit pissed off with you. Jesus, that tea’s disgusting!’

‘I can’t do anything now, Dessie. I’ll phone her later.’

‘Well, she’s at the synagogue in Adelaide Road with Mr Field. Funeral arrangements and all that. That’s where she was going anyway.’

He got out a cigarette and lit it.

‘She was on about seeing you.’

The grin on Dessie’s face was irritating Stefan now.

‘Did she have something to say?’

‘I should think that one’s always got something to say.’ He winked at Tom. Tom laughed, though he hadn’t got any idea what he was laughing at.

Stefan hadn’t thought about Hannah all day, but now she was in his head. He wanted to see her, and he wanted to see her as himself, not as Detective Sergeant Gillespie. This was who he was, sitting here with his son. The rest was only what he did. They still knew almost nothing about each other. And he was sure she must want to see him too. That’s why she kept phoning. There were two hours before he had to meet his mother and father at Kingsbridge Station. He looked at the bill on the plate beside him and fished in his pocket for some shillings and a half crown. When he got up to leave with Tom, Dessie stayed where he was. He called over the waitress.