Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘You can leave all that.’

The butler picked up a plate of fried eggs and left, with a resentful scowl. The High Commissioner waited until the door had shut firmly behind him before he spoke. He was concerned and agitated this morning.

‘This is Count Edward O’Rourke, our bishop.’

The bishop nodded, not agitated, but as grim-faced as Lester. Stefan regarded the two men, remembering what he knew about Danzig now. They seemed an unlikely bulwark against Adolf Hitler. Sean Lester looked like a bank manager in a small Irish town; Edward O’Rourke looked like the town’s parish priest, round faced, with a housekeeper who fed him too well.

‘It’s a mess, a very unpleasant one.’ Lester shook his head. ‘From the sound of it I don’t suppose it’s really your mess, Gillespie, but it seems to come on your coat-tails. The priest Miss Rosen was here to talk to, Father — ’

The High Commissioner stopped, looking at O’Rourke.

‘Father Byrne is dead.’ The bishop’s voice was oddly matter-of-fact. ‘The police pulled his body out of the Mottlau River early this morning. He is in the mortuary. The cause of death was drowning apparently. The police inspector at Weidengasse hasn’t said as much but the question of suicide is hanging in the air. That’s the implication anyway. I’m not sure I can rule it out, either, not after the conversation I had with Father Byrne yesterday.’

He looked from Hannah to Stefan. Neither of them was sure whether it was a look of compassion or accusation. After several seconds his gaze returned to Hannah.

‘I know the details of his relationship with your friend, Miss Field. I knew nothing about it before yesterday. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about.’ He was silent for a moment. He wasn’t thinking about Francis Byrne and Susan Field, but Francis Byrne and Hugo Keller. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how much longer Francis could have held it all in, but your appearance started to break down the wall. And Mr Gillespie’s arrival a little later,’ he turned to Stefan, ‘well, you are a policeman, aren’t you? I imagine your approach was harder. You also knew more about him, more about what happened to Miss Field. Perhaps more than he could cope with.’

Stefan felt Hannah’s eyes on him, questioning, as O’Rourke spoke. He hadn’t told her what he knew about how Susan had died yet. He hadn’t had time. And he needed the right time too. But all she saw was that he had still been holding something back, even now, even here, after everything else.

‘The relationship between your friend and Francis belongs to them alone now I think, Miss Rosen, except to say that you should not underestimate the feelings he had for her, or what he suffered because of the weakness he showed in abandoning her. It was weak; it was selfish. His death doesn’t alter that. The fact that she died in the way she did was cruel enough; the idea that she had been killed, murdered — that was more than he could face.’

There was no reason for either Hannah or Stefan to feel much for Francis Byrne. Stefan knew enough to believe he had it coming. Hannah still knew less, but knew that if the priest wasn’t responsible for Susan’s death himself his lies had protected whoever was, whether inadvertently or not. Yet as they listened to O’Rourke’s quiet voice it didn’t seem that neat.

‘How long had he been an informer?’ said Lester.

‘Long enough,’ replied the bishop. He looked at Stefan again. ‘How this man Keller found him here, I don’t know. But I do know the Nazis and their obsession with gathering information. From Dublin to Danzig isn’t so surprising. And once he’d found Francis he knew what to do with all the weakness and selfishness, the fear and guilt. He threatened to expose him and destroy him. Sadly Francis didn’t have the faith in me he should have done. Perhaps that was my fault. I was too concerned with great events to see a man in need before my eyes. He was Keller’s spy. I’m sure you have worked that out yourself. There are people who have trusted me, confided in me, whose names will be in the hands of the Gestapo and the SS.’

He was silent, knowing all too well what that could mean.

‘You see I can’t stand in the pulpit and tell people not to vote for the bastards, even if everyone knows that’s what I think. They’d want me sacked and the Church would sack me. It’s too busy making sure it’s not on the wrong side to make sure it’s on the right side. I think of Martin Luther a lot these days. Simply to stand here is perhaps all I can do. Father Byrne was a victim of his own weakness, but he was also a victim of the darkness that’s all around us now. Yet he found his way back at the end. You may not think that matters, but I’m a priest. I see it differently. Perhaps he wouldn’t have found his way without you two. Angels come in many guises, we’re told.’

As he finished he was looking at Hannah again, and she had no doubt that what she saw now was compassion. He stepped forward, taking out a letter.

‘This was in his room, Miss Rosen. He meant to send it to you. It’s addressed to your hotel.’ He turned back to Stefan. ‘I think Father Byrne went to see this man Keller. I imagine to tell him he would no longer be blackmailed. I want to know what happened. It may be that he drowned. It may be that he killed himself. If it was something else, then I probably won’t be able to do anything anyway. Earthly justice won’t be on offer. But I have another angel to serve, the recording angel. Since there isn’t a policeman I can trust, your opinion will have to do instead. Will you look at the body?’

The River Vistula rises in the Carpathian Mountains, over a thousand kilometres south of the Free City. It flows through the plains of Poland, past Krakow and Warsaw, and eventually issues into the Bay of Danzig and the Baltic Sea through a delta of sluggish channels and lagoons. For almost a thousand years it has been the great artery of Poland in every sense. When Poland disappeared from the map of Europe, as it did from time to time, for Poles their country was somehow still alive in the great river. In Danzig the Vistula was the Weichsel. The city ended where a branch of the Vistula, the Mottlau River, flowed out of the port and into the silted and moribund channel that was called the Dead Vistula, Die Tote Weichsel. It was here, by the seaplane station on the shore of the Dead Vistula, that the morning flight from Stockholm so narrowly missed the floating body of Father Francis Byrne. A priest who rediscovers his religion can be dangerous, not least to himself.

The body was not at the mortuary. When the bishop phoned the police station in Weidengasse, close to where Father Byrne had been found, he was told it had already been moved. Now the bishop’s car drove Stefan Gillespie and Count O’Rourke out through the gates of the High Commissioner’s residence on to Silberhutte, into Holzmarkt and Kohlenmarkt. Outside a polling station, a gang of brown-shirted SA men stood, almost blocking the entrance, checking the people going in to vote. The car continued past the Danziger Hof and into An der Reitbahn. It was only now, as he passed the building with the great dome and the Russian-looking spires, that Stefan realised it was the city’s synagogue, sitting with unintended defiance at the heart of Danzig. It wasn’t mentioned in the guide book he had looked through that first night at the hotel; it wasn’t even on the map. In front of the synagogue a group of boys in Hitler Youth uniforms held up election placards and flags. Several of them were stretching out a banner. It became legible as the bishop’s car passed. ‘Die Juden sind unser Ungluck.’ The Jews are our misfortune. O’Rourke didn’t notice. He’d seen it too many times. In Vorstadtischer Graben they passed another polling station and another SA gang noting the names of the voters. It was unlikely very many of Danzig’s Jews would be pushing their way past the brown shirts to cast their votes.