Michael Russell - The City of Shadows

There was never any record of an interview with Garda Sean Og Moran. After the night in Dorset Street with Stefan Gillespie and Jimmy Lynch, he stayed at home. Those were Jimmy’s orders. The broken rib was slow to heal. The Garda doctor saw him three times and was in no hurry to declare him fit for duty, even when his own doctor said he was fine and getting back to work was exactly what he needed. But Sean Og was in no great hurry to return to work himself. His life had been spent doing what he was told; if he was being told to stay at home, he was happy enough doing it for a while.

Most mornings he walked along the Grand Canal from the little house in Warren Street to the Church of St Mary and St Peter in Rathmines for Mass. Every three or four days he’d go to the library to get books for his children. The rest of the time he was either drinking in McGee’s or trying to turn the patch of ground at the back of the house into the garden he had always promised his wife. He had bought a lot of seeds, but other than that progress was slow. Afternoons were devoted to the garden, and most afternoons, when he came home from McGee’s, he slept. But a start had been made anyway, with the seeds. By next summer it would be done.

As May turned into June he was growing uneasy. He hadn’t seen Jimmy Lynch in two months. He’d have thought Jimmy, of all people, would have dropped into the pub, or taken him for a game at Christy Thompson’s Billiard Rooms. Jimmy had told him to keep his head down of course, and that was fair enough, but the other business would be forgotten now, surely. He’d never heard another word about it and the Garda Siochana was still paying him. It was maybe time to think about going back to work. He was five days into a novena at the church just now and he went to St Mary’s every morning to recite the rosary. Next week, when he was finished, he’d go into town and see the lads in Special Branch for a drink in Farrelly’s. But that was next week. Today he had the novena to think about. He put his rosary in his pocket and kissed his wife goodbye, in the way that people do when they’ve been married a long time — hardly noticing but never forgetting. His two children were with him as he left the house, a boy of six and a girl of eight. The six-year-old held his hand. Peadar Hayes had told him in McGee’s the night before that he’d some African marigold plants he could have for the new garden. He’d get those on the way back from the pub and plant them that afternoon. The kids could help him after school.

When they reached the Grand Canal Sean Og turned right towards Rathmines and the children turned the other way to go to school. He saw Eddie Sullivan’s horse and cart pulling into Martin Street. Eddie didn’t stop when Sean Og bellowed after him, to ask when the fuck he’d be delivering the turf he’d promised. He’d be delivering it when he had the fucking time, and he made a mental note that would be when he was clearing his yard of the broken, wet turf from last winter nobody wanted. Moran could never be arsed to pay and he expected an extra load every time because he was a policeman. ‘Well you’d want to keep on the right side of me, wouldn’t you, Eddie?’ That was always the joke, and Eddie always laughed and went away thinking did he really need to keep on the right side of the great gobshite?

The swans on the canal were noisy that morning. Sean liked the swans. He thought they were lucky. Sometimes he counted them while he walked along, just for something to do that he had the habit of doing, and because he thought the more there were the luckier they were. There weren’t very many that day as he crossed over the road to walk along the towpath, and they were scrapping and squabbling the way swans do sometimes. He wasn’t particularly aware of the two men coming towards him as he approached Kingsland Parade. They crossed on to the towpath as well.

There was something about one of the men he thought he recognised. He knew a lot of people. It was maybe someone he hadn’t seen in a long time, but he knew him, he definitely knew him. There was a half smile on the man’s face. Was he thinking the same thing? There was a smile on Sean Og Moran’s face too, as the first bullet hit him. He didn’t fall. He was a big man. The second bullet hit him in the head and he was dead before his body hit the ground. The two men walked quickly across the road again. A black car pulled out of Martin Street. And then they were gone. The only sound was the hissing and snarling of the swans Garda Moran hadn’t finished counting.

It was reported as an IRA assassination and Sean Og Moran’s name would go down on the Garda roll of honour. President Eamon de Valera said he died for his country. And he did. There were some things it was better his country didn’t know; if the president didn’t know either it made it all the easier. He could never be put on trial for what had happened but something had to be done. Just as Special Branch looked after its own, it cleaned up its own mess too. If the men on the towpath didn’t know Garda Moran, the man driving the car did. It was Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch.

When Eddie Sullivan finally delivered the load of turf to the house in Warren Street it was the best he had; and he never did ask to be paid for it.

It was a bright, hot day in August. Stefan Gillespie was walking along the main street of Baltinglass with Tom. There was a job to do that he didn’t want. It brought the world outside into the small West Wicklow town in a way only he could understand. The night before he had read Hannah’s letter again. It had arrived from Tel Aviv the week before. He had written to tell her what had happened to Sean Og Moran, not with any sense of satisfaction but because he had to. It was only right. But it was clear she felt no less uncomfortable than he did about the mess of lies and evasion and, finally, stark brutality that had been served up as some kind of apology for justice.

It’s an end, but not much of one. I don’t know what I expected. Something honest, I suppose. Instead there’s just another kind of murder. Or maybe it’s the same kind of murder, because there’s something else to hide. We deserved more than that, even the man who killed my friend deserved more than that. After everything that’s happened I’m not as good as I thought at an eye for an eye. I think I wanted to leave all that in Danzig. People feel it here too. Darkness, I mean. We’re all looking at the light and just hoping the dark goes away.

As Station Sergeant in Baltinglass, Stefan used every opportunity to escape from the barracks in Mill Street. He had a limited appetite for the kind of peace and quiet that kept him sitting in an office processing the mountain of paperwork that just doing nothing seemed to generate. The pleasure of being at home with his son was one thing; it was what he had fought for. But there was a lot less pleasure in the four dark walls of the front office at the Garda station. There were no detectives in Baltinglass, however, and in their absence he did his own detective work; it kept his mind from seizing up and it got him out of the station. It suited Inspector Riordan, who didn’t like detectives coming down from Naas and poking about in his domain. If his sergeant could keep them at bay so much the better. An afternoon out of the station should have been what Stefan wanted on a day like this, but he wasn’t going to enjoy the appearance he had to make on Baltinglass Hill

The Archaeology Department of UCD had been excavating the passage tombs on the upper slopes of the hill throughout the summer, and today the director of the National Museum was visiting the site. In a town where not much happened, Adolf Mahr’s arrival was a big event. Local dignitaries would be out in force. And as Inspector Riordan was in court in Naas all day, Stefan would have to represent the Gardai. His knowledge of the archaeologist’s extra-curricular activities in the Nazi Party left him with no desire to be among the enthusiastic hand-shakers, but he had no choice.