Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

Stefan Gillespie sat in a room on the ground floor, close enough to the stairs for the odour of the cells to hover in the air. A bare table separated him from the dark-haired woman. The room was bare too, lit by a naked bulb. There was a window high in one wall, no more than a foot square, the glass painted over with the remains of what once must have been whitewash. She had still given him no information and no explanation. She denied nothing, admitted nothing, said nothing. He didn’t even know her name. She returned his gaze with quiet self-assurance. He was the one who kept looking away to scribble something he didn’t need to scribble on the sheet of white paper in front of him. She was beginning to make him feel she was the one running this.

‘You’re from Dublin, thereabouts anyway. The leafier parts I’d say.’

She didn’t answer.

‘You’ve clearly been out of the country though.’

‘An accent and a suntan, I can see you’re nobody’s fool.’

She didn’t need to smile to make him feel foolish.

‘Do you realise how much trouble you’re in?’

‘As a matter of fact I don’t.’

‘I can see you’re an intelligent woman. You’re not what I expected.’

He knew those last words were another mistake.

‘You were expecting some sort of idiot, were you?’

‘That’s not what I meant. ’

‘Idiot enough to be pregnant. Well, how idiotic can a woman get?’

‘Sooner or later you’re going to tell me who you are. You know that as well as I do. The only thing that can help you in this situation is to cooperate with us as fully as possible. It’s Mr Keller we want, not you.’

‘I’m sure even he knows you’ve got him. What do you need me for?’

She reached across to the packet of cigarettes on the table. They were Stefan’s. She hesitated, looking at him. He shrugged. She took one and put it between her lips. He pulled the lighter out from his pocket and flicked it, then stretched over and lit the cigarette with what he hoped was an appropriately reassuring smile. But if he thought the woman’s silence was about to end with this small act of human contact he was mistaken.

‘Thank you.’

She drew on the cigarette, then shook her head.

‘I can’t do what I went there to do. And that’s your fault. I’m not sure where that leaves me. Well, apart from being stuck here in a police station with you. That’s all I’ve got suddenly. I want to see what happens next.’

‘What happens? This is about a life, a life that would have ended this afternoon. It’s about God knows how many other lives that have ended in that back room.’ He was speaking the words he was supposed to speak now, but he knew they didn’t sound like his own. He knew too that this clever, unfathomable woman would understand that immediately. And she did.

‘Yes, it is about a life. I know that already. I wish I didn’t.’

Stefan saw something else in the woman’s face now. It was sadness, a deep and uncertain sadness. He also saw that it had nothing at all to do with why they were here. Whatever she was talking about it wasn’t the conversation he had just felt obliged to start. The interview was still going nowhere. He was not controlling this. She was. The words ‘stuck-up bitch’ were in his head. He’d had enough. He got up, pushing the cigarettes at her.

‘I’ll leave you the fags. It’ll be a long night.’ He went. Let her stew.

As he left the room he found himself smiling unexpectedly. He remembered another time he had walked away from a conversation with a woman and thought the same thing — ‘stuck-up bitch’. It was nearly six years ago. A pub in Nassau Street. Maeve. Seven months later he’d married her. And now she had been dead for nearly two years. One year, nine months, eight days. He had thought about that night in Nassau Street a thousand times in those months, waking and sleeping. He had relived it as he had relived every moment of their lives together. But he had never smiled about it in quite the same way before. It wasn’t that the woman from Merrion Square reminded him of Maeve. Perhaps she reminded him of something about himself he had forgotten. Instead of feeling angry she made him want to laugh. These thoughts came at him out of nowhere. He pushed them away. He saw Dessie MacMahon walking towards him, with a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea.

‘Has Keller phoned his solicitor?’ he asked.

Dessie nodded, taking a bite of the sandwich.

‘But he’s still not saying anything?’

‘No. He’s very polite about it though.’

‘Is the solicitor on his way?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Stick him in a cell for the night and see how polite he is about that.’

Garda MacMahon took another bite of the sandwich.

‘What about the nurse?’ said Stefan.

‘She’s still giving out, but it’s the same story. Nothing to say.’

‘The evidence is all in Merrion Square. I don’t understand how Keller thinks he can explain that away by keeping his mouth shut and grinning.’

‘Do we give him another go, Sarge?’

‘No, I’ve had enough. Just lock the three of them up for the night.’

He wasn’t sure that would wipe away Hugo Keller’s smile. It looked like it was painted on. He was too cocky. He seemed to think he was untouchable. The nurse would keep insisting that she was just a nurse. He didn’t believe her, but Sheila Hogan was hard. She wouldn’t talk till there was something in it for her. The dark-haired woman was different. She had no place in this. Twelve hours in a police cell might bring her to her senses.

It was dark in Merrion Square as Detective Sergeant Gillespie approached the house again, but it looked brighter now than it had in daylight. The shutters were open and all the lights were on. The front door was open too and a uniformed guard stood on the steps. Stefan smiled a greeting.

‘How’s it going, Liam?’

‘Great, I can never get enough of standing around in the fecking cold.’

Stefan went in and moved down the hall to the back drawing room. A man in his late fifties was sitting on the edge of the couch, writing notes. Edward Wayland-Smith was the State Pathologist. He was tall, overweight, bearded, dressed in tweeds that made him look like he had just been blasting pheasants with a shotgun or pulling fish from a stream with a rod and flies. There was a silver-fresh salmon in the boot of his car to say he had been.

‘He’s certainly got some extraordinary equipment here. You wouldn’t find better in any hospital in Ireland. Well, in most hospitals you’d be grateful to find anything at all.’ He continued to write as he spoke, not looking up. ‘Nota bene!’ he announced, finally raising his eyes.

‘Suspended from the ceiling a 170 centimetre shadowless operating lamp. You also see a state-of-the-art gynaecological chair; German, almost brand new I’d say, with some very clever modifications. There’s a well-equipped workshop in the cellar too. It looks like your man Keller was making his own equipment, or at least improving on what he’d got. Ingenious, some of it. He must be rather bright, certainly not your average backstreet abortionist. There’s also an X-ray transformer of very high quality. I haven’t seen one like it in Ireland. It’s a modification of another continental piece of apparatus. I’ve made a full inventory, which I will have typed up tomorrow. You have looked at the office I assume, Sergeant?’

Stefan nodded. ‘I’d like you to make a note of the books.’

‘It’s done.’ Wayland-Smith got up and walked out to the hall, turning back the pages of his notebook as he did. He went into the office. He stood beside a bookcase, scanning his notes, then pointing at some of the books.