Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

‘You knew the guard?’

‘I think he’d brought women here before.’

‘Not in that state.’

She shook her head.

‘But that wasn’t why I recognised him. I remembered him from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, with some of the sisters. It was about five years ago now. General O’Duffy was taking a Garda pilgrimage at the same time. He was the Commissioner then. We were all on the same train through France. When we got to Lourdes he sent some of his lads to carry our luggage to the hostel. It was the guard who brought my suitcase. I didn’t know his name.’

‘You could testify that he was here that night?’

‘No, I’m not in the business of testifying, Sergeant Gillespie.’

‘But you just said — ’

‘You have your job to do in the sewers, and I have mine. That’s all.’

When Stefan left the office, Mother Eustacia got up and pulled a thick foolscap book from a bookshelf. She took it back to her desk. It was a diary for 1934, a daybook with a page for every day of the year, where she noted everything that happened in the Convent of the Good Shepherd. She opened it at the twenty-sixth of July. It was the Feast of St Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She carefully tore out the page and screwed it up. Then, without looking down, her hand reached for her rosary.

There were several pubs close to Dublin Castle that almost belonged to Special Branch. The same pubs the men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s G Division had drunk in fifteen years earlier when they were hunting some of the men who stood at the same bars now. Since you could never quite tell in those days whether the Special Branch man on the corner stool was collecting information for the British or passing information about the men he was drinking with on to Michael Collins, assassinations in pubs could be counter-productive. It was safer all round to kill British intelligence officers when they were at home. The pubs all had different functions then and it was the same now. There were pubs for getting drunk in, pubs for meeting informants in, and pubs where your inspector was unlikely to find you. Farrelly’s in Crane Lane had a small snug at the back, with a door to the jacks and a yard that led to an exit into Essex Street. Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch was in the snug when Stefan Gillispie arrived. He was eating a plate of rashers and drinking a mug of tea. He seemed amused to see Stefan again. It had been a long time.

‘How’s the farming going, Stevie?’

Stefan sat down. He knew Lynch’s grin wouldn’t last.

‘Can I get you something?’

‘I’m grand, thank you, Jimmy.’

‘You’ll be back on the job before long, I’d say.’

‘Maybe. We’ll have to see.’

‘A man of mystery, eh?’

‘Was Sean Og in this morning?’

‘Are you looking for him?’

‘I will be at some point.’

‘No. He done himself a bit of damage. Says he’s broken a rib.’ Lynch was looking at Stefan more cautiously. It wasn’t an idle visit. He needed to know what it meant.

‘He did me a bit of damage too. Nothing broken. I won’t show you.’

‘When was this?’ The Special Branch man was uneasy. He didn’t know why there should have been any contact between Moran and Stefan. Beating up another detective on his instructions was one thing; that was work. Sean Og sometimes needed reining in, but still, it was only a fight.

‘Last night, Jimmy. He was trying to kill me at the time.’

‘He goes at it after a few — ’ Lynch laughed, but he didn’t like this.

Stefan took the captive bolt pistol from his pocket and put it on the table. Lynch looked at it. He knew what it was, but that was all he knew.

‘You’ve pigs to kill down on the farm then,’ he grinned.

‘Remember Susan Field?’ continued Stefan, watching the detective closely. ‘You took over the investigation into her death, last time we talked. I hear you didn’t get far. The State Pathologist thought she’d been shot in the head with a captive bolt pistol. You said you didn’t. But that’s the gun. You might remember Vincent Walsh. He was buried in a little plot next to Susan’s on Kilmashogue. You’d know him best for the letters Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick wrote to him, the ones you sold to Hugo Keller. Wayland-Smith said he’d been shot in the head with a captive bolt pistol too. And that’s the gun that shot them both.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Lynch was choosing his words carefully now. He didn’t understand and he didn’t know where this was going. But if he was thrown by the mention of the letters it didn’t show.

‘Sean Og tried to put a hole in my head with it last night.’

Detective Sergeant Lynch was not often surprised; he prided himself on being too well informed for that. But he was certainly surprised now.

‘I see. So what are you going to do, Stevie?’ he asked.

‘I don’t have any witnesses, that’s the trouble.’

‘If that’s true then all you’ve got is a gun from a slaughterhouse.’ Lynch spoke slowly. He didn’t know why Stefan was showing him a weaker hand.

‘You’ll have to do something, Jimmy. It’s pushing it, even for Special Branch. You’ve got a guard who’s murdered two people. It could have been three. What are you going to do, leave him where he is until the next time?’

Lynch’s lips tightened. There was conviction in Stefan’s words. He couldn’t just dismiss them.

‘He did kill them, Jimmy.’

‘You know that?’

‘I know it.’

‘Let’s say he did. Do you know why?’

‘Not really. I don’t know why he’d be covering up buggery and abortion, but that’s all I’ve got now. Till yesterday I thought you did it.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Because of Hugo Keller. He was doing the abortion.’

‘But not the buggering.’

‘No.’ He had to admire Lynch for his expressionless face. He had thrown Keller into the conversation again to see what response he got. It was nothing, almost nothing. But Keller was the Special Branch sergeant’s weakness. How much did Stefan really know and how much was bluff?

‘How did you know about Fitzpatrick’s letters, Jimmy?’

‘Is it letters or murder, what are you on now?’

As bluffs go, it wasn’t one of Jimmy Lynch’s best. Stefan smiled and ignored it.

‘You found out from Sean Og somehow, that’s what I think. Wouldn’t that be it?’

The detective didn’t answer, but it was answer enough.

‘When Broy brought you into Special Branch, Sean was already a guard. I’d forgotten that. He wasn’t an obvious candidate for the Broy Harriers, was he? He was a pro-Treaty, Fine Gael man. You got him in.’

‘We took different sides in the Civil War. So? Aren’t we meant to put all that behind us now? Besides, we went through a lot together before that, fighting the Tans.’

‘Camaraderie, that’s nice to see, Jimmy. Was he ever a Blueshirt?’

‘If he was he’d keep pretty quiet about it now.’

‘I heard he went on a Garda pilgrimage with General O’Duffy.’

‘A lot of guards did that. It’s how you got promoted then.’

‘Well, if any of them try to kill me I’ll add them to the list. In the meantime, if you looked at the back of Seanie’s wardrobe I’d be interested to see what colour the shirts are, because I’d say he was there when that gang of Blueshirts went to Billy Donnelly’s to get the letters, Monsignor Fitzpatrick’s dirty letters. And when they didn’t get them, someone sent him back to kill poor old Vinnie, to keep him quiet. What do you think, Sergeant?’

Lynch held Stefan’s gaze but he was uneasy now. ‘You’d have to ask Garda Moran, not me.’

‘Come on, he told you about the letters. He must have done. And you worked out who might have them. Maybe you’re not such a bad detective after all, when you put your mind to it. You traced them back to Billy Donnelly, and you put him in the Joy until he delivered them.’