David Dickinson - Death of a Pilgrim

Shortly after five o’clock in the morning Powerscourt woke to an urgent tapping on his door. He grabbed his pistol from the drawer beside his bed and opened the door a fraction.

‘You must come at once!’ the Inspector whispered. ‘Some of the pilgrims have escaped! They are not in their rooms! My man has been bound and gagged and cannot remember for the present exactly what happened. Join me by the front desk in a moment.’

Powerscourt wondered if he should wake Lady Lucy. He left her a short note instead. ‘Some pilgrims escaped. Gone to look for them. Love, Francis.’

He collected Johnny Fitzgerald on the way, Johnny protesting about the early hour and wondering if any of those wine shops would be open yet. The Inspector told them the bad news. It seemed as if the younger ones had managed to escape. ‘Wee Jimmy Delaney’s gone, so has Charlie Flanagan and Waldo Mulligan and Christy Delaney and Jack O’Driscoll, five of them altogether, all the younger ones.’

‘Have they taken their things with them?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Has all their stuff gone from their rooms?’

‘That’s a very good question, my lord, I didn’t think about it.’

‘Let me go and look,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I know what most of their packs look like.’ With that he sprinted up the stairs to the top floor. There were still revellers in the streets outside, maudlin songs floating through the open windows of the hotel. All the pilgrim packs were still there. That was a relief, he said to himself as he raced back down the stairs. Or was it?

‘Their belongings are all still there,’ he said. ‘In one sense that is good for they obviously intend to come back here at some stage. Perhaps they’ve just gone to join the party. But in another sense, Inspector, nothing could be worse. In every single murder on this journey the victim has been lured away by the killer, up a hill of volcanic rock, over to the side of a river, out to the back of a church, up to an upper room in a set of cloisters, and every time the killer strikes. All of those pilgrims bar one are in deadly peril, and that one is the murderer. Where easier to kill than in the streets of Pamplona in the hour before dawn when another body lying in the street will not arouse any interest? Even if there is blood flowing it will be taken for wine. We must search the whole town until we find them, Inspector. Pray God that the missing five come back alive!’

‘Lord Powerscourt, forgive me.’ A hotel porter had materialized from behind the front desk. ‘This came for you yesterday morning. We forgot to pass it on. Our apologies.’

Powerscourt was about to stuff it in his pocket but something told him to open it. He skimmed rapidly through the contents. It came from Franklin Bentley in Washington. ‘I have news from Pittsburgh,’ the message began. ‘Thirty years ago Michael Delaney lived there. He was married with a son aged two. When the wife was three months pregnant Delaney walked out and went to live in New York. Wife died in childbirth. Baby stillborn. Priests and nun contacted many relations in hope of finding somebody who would take on the boy and bring him up.’

Outside a drunk was singing in the street. Powerscourt had no idea what was coming next. ‘Nuns even offered to pay for him to be taken back to England or Ireland or wherever a willing Delaney might be found. One nun volunteered to escort him across the Atlantic to a new home. But there were no willing Delaneys. There was no new home. They all refused to bring up a child who was a member of their family. The boy was eventually adopted by a devout Catholic couple with no children of their own, and here is a strange coincidence. The priest who gave me this information said I was not the only person to ask him for news about the boy Delaney. Six months ago a very angry man had been to see him who had discovered adoption details in his father’s papers after his father died unexpectedly. He went to the priest for confirmation of what he had discovered. Reluctantly the priest backed up the details. I myself had to make a generous contribution to the Church Missionary Society before he divulged all. This man was indeed the little son Michael Delaney abandoned. He had been given the surname of his new parents. He left the priest an address in Washington to send any further information that might emerge. His name is Waldo Mulligan. Hope this information is useful,’ Bentley concluded. ‘Something tells me you will not be looking for any more research on this side of the Atlantic. Warm regards, Bentley.’

‘Sorry for the delay,’ Powerscourt said to his colleagues. ‘Inspector, Johnny, we have a name at last. If your men find Waldo Mulligan, Inspector, arrest him immediately. We haven’t time now for me to tell you why, but I am virtually certain he is the killer. Now, we must find the pilgrims before he kills again.’

‘I will fetch more men,’ said the Inspector. ‘I suggest you try in that direction over there, my lord. That is the area where the running of the bulls takes place. And quite soon too. If I were a young man, tired of being cooped up by policemen, that is where I would go.’

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald set off in the dark. Five prisoners had escaped. In an hour or two the bulls would be loosed to charge down the streets of Pamplona. The streets were wet from the night rain. Watching them from the darkest point behind the hotel Waldo Mulligan set off in pursuit of them, careful not to be spotted, his right hand holding very firmly on to something in his inside pocket.

Powerscourt lost Johnny Fitzgerald five minutes after leaving the hotel. He shouted his name but there was no answer. He was now in a great press of people, almost all of them young, heading for the start of the running of the bulls in Santo Domingo Street. The dawn was coming and he saw that nearly all of the young men were wearing white shirts and bright red scarves round their necks. Some of the older ones wore red sashes round their waists. They had the forced gaiety, Powerscourt thought, of young men about to go into battle. He had seen it so often before, a mixture of bravado, excitement and a fear that you would never admit to except to very close friends. Young men had to keep up a show in these circumstances, they couldn’t let people see they were frightened. Many of them held rolled-up newspapers in their hands to deflect the bulls’ attention. They told jokes or made plans to meet their girls after the run.

Powerscourt found himself thinking about an angry Waldo Mulligan conferring with the priest in Pittsburgh. He told himself to concentrate on the events ahead or he could end up killed or injured while his mind had wandered off to Washington. He could see now that parts of the route were lined with double rows of barriers with a small gap between them to allow runners to escape or medical staff into the route to remove the wounded. There was a clattering up above as people in houses with balconies crowded on to them drinking great cups of chocolate to keep warm.

Waldo Mulligan had manoeuvred himself into a position three or four people behind Powerscourt and almost invisible to him. It was ten to seven in the morning. Powerscourt and the others were held in by police barriers keeping the runners in their place. There was no escape now.

The running of the bulls in Pamplona has an ancient history going back to the days when the bulls were brought into the town to fight in the public square, which was also used as a bullring. In modern time the bulls are brought in at eleven o’clock the night before and kept in a corral. Six bulls make the run accompanied by one group of eight oxen with bells round their necks and followed by a further three oxen to sweep up any stray bulls on the route. Each bull weighs about twelve hundred pounds and can run at fifteen miles an hour, faster than most humans. For the bulls this is their first exposure to masses of people and to loud noise so they can become disoriented. If that happens they can turn dangerous. The route starts at Santo Domingo on a slope that favours the bulls as their front legs are shorter than the hind ones. After about three hundred yards the bulls enter the Plaza Consistorial Mercaderes for a stretch of a hundred yards or so. Then there is a sharp right-hand turn of ninety degrees called the Estafeta Bend which leads into the longest stretch of the route, the Calle Estefeta, a narrow street three hundred yards long where the only protection is in the doorways. Then there is a short stretch called the Telefonica where the double barriers come into play, acting as a funnel. The bulls are slower now, approaching the callejon or lane which leads into the bullring. There the runners are told to fan out along the side of the bullring while the bulls are corralled again, ready for the bullfight later in the day and death in the afternoon.