Michael Russell - The City of Strangers

Several cars were parked in front of the house, among them the Austin that Dessie MacMahon had driven down from Herbert Place.

It was a grey house; the grey stucco beneath the grey-black roof was grubbily spotted with algae and lichen in various shades of grey, and at the corners of the house it was starting to crumble away. The house itself was empty; it had been empty for a long time. The big downstairs windows that looked out over the garden to the sea were covered by boards that had themselves become grey and stained over the years; upstairs the curtains were closed.

The gardens that led across the lawn to a row of trees and the sea were controlled rather than cared for; someone came to cut the grass and stop the borders going wild but that was all.

Stefan Gillespie and Dessie MacMahon stood at the far side of the garden where a thick hedge separated it from the low cliffs and the sea beyond. The hedge was smashed and broken; the grass around it was muddy and churned; there were the deep ruts of car tyres that had been spinning and spinning aimlessly there.

‘I told you about the Baby Austin Mrs Harris drove. She’d only had it three months. It was her pride and joy apparently. She seems to have spent most of those three months driving it around Dublin. And this is where they found it, jammed into the hedge right here. The night she disappeared a friend of hers saw the car coming out of Herbert Place and turning on to Baggot Street. The woman thinks it was Owen Harris who was driving it.’

‘So he brought it here? With the body in the back?’ said Stefan.

‘It’s hard to see it any other way. He had to get rid of it. He must have decided the sea was his best bet. It wasn’t such a daft idea either. She hasn’t been found. Whether he was trying to get the car into the sea as well –’

They both looked up for a moment. There was the drone of an aircraft overhead. A small plane was following the coast, northwards towards Dublin. Across the garden hedge where the cliff dropped down to the beach below, uniformed guards were walking along at the water’s edge, their eyes fixed on the sand and rock; offshore there were two small boats. The beach had been searched and re-searched, but every day it was searched again with the tides in case the sea gave anything up.

‘We’re up and down the whole east coast,’ said Dessie, ‘from Wexford right up to the North. They’re looking in Wales, Scotland, the Lancashire coast. Not a sign of her.’

‘It’s going to be hard work keeping all that quiet, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a missing woman, that’s all anybody’s saying.’

‘So why here?’ asked Stefan.

‘It was the family house. Where Harris lived when he was a lad, before the old man and the old lady went their ways. They’d been living apart for years. The father still owns it. So the assumption is Owen Harris knew it, that’s the long and the short of it. And he knew it was empty.’

‘And he tried to drive straight through the hedge?’

‘That wasn’t such a good idea. It’s some hedge. And he got it stuck. It went through so far, but it couldn’t get any further. Then the wheels started to spin and it wouldn’t move at all. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t back out. So the story is he got her out of the car and dragged her through the hedge. He pulled her, carried her, whatever he did, and he got her down on to the rocks. Then he shoved her off. It was high tide. Whether that was luck or he knew – I guess he’ll tell us that himself, eventually. It did the job. The problem was the car. Nothing was going to move it. Or get the blood off the back seat. He had no choice. He just left it here and he went home …’

‘Where’s the car now?’

‘It’s in the garage at Dublin Castle. They’ve had a good go at it, the State Pathologist and the rest. It’s given us more blood and it makes it hard to argue Owen Harris wasn’t here. Not that he seems to have gone to great lengths to hide that. He stopped a car at the top of Corbawn Lane by the AA box and asked the feller for a ride into town. He got dropped in Ballsbridge.’

‘Jesus, what the hell did he look like by then?’ Stefan shook his head.

‘Let’s say he made an impression. It was a couple, a man and a woman. I think when he walked out in front of the car they were too scared not to give him a lift. He told them he was an Englishman from Tunbridge Wells, on holiday. They had no idea what he’d done of course, but I think they were relieved to reach Ballsbridge in one piece. The conversation was a bit one-sided, but they said he apologised for the Norman invasion, the Famine, the Act of Union, the Black and Tans, and the Economic War, and said he hoped political developments would bring a new dawn in Anglo-Irish relations.’ Dessie laughed. ‘For some reason “new dawn” did stick.’

Stefan was laughing too.

Sergeant MacMahon took out a cigarette, cupping his hands to light it.

‘So does anyone know what it was all about?’

‘Apart from the fact that the mother and son were both barking?’

‘And were they?’ asked Stefan.

‘They were always fighting the peace out, according to the maid anyway. Mrs Harris was a great one for throwing the delft across the room.’

‘Just an ordinary Irish family then.’

‘Well, there was definitely something wrong upstairs,’ said Dessie. ‘She’d come out of a convalescent home six weeks ago. She’d been in there a month. For the rest, according to Doctor Harris. Superintendent Gregory likes to refer to him as the “estranged” husband. They were all a bit strange if you ask me. Anyway, the doctor says she was very highly strung. Fragile nerves. She needed rests like that quite a lot. This time it was after she’d broken into the old fella’s house and stolen a canteen of cutlery. She locked herself in her bedroom with it for three days.’

‘When did the marriage break up?’

‘They hadn’t lived together since Owen Harris was seven. That’s when they were all here. The old man’s in Pembroke Road now. He owns the house in Herbert Place too. She didn’t have any money. He kept the both of them.’

‘So Owen Harris had a row with his mammy and killed her?’ Stefan frowned. ‘And that’s it. What did she do, throw one plate too many at him?’

‘Maybe we’ll find out when we get him back,’ replied Sergeant MacMahon. ‘The maid says they were rowing about money. He wanted some and she wouldn’t give it to him. It was to do with this theatre tour in America, the Gate. The actors had to stump up their own fares. So that’s what he needed it for.’

‘And she wasn’t having it?’

‘There wasn’t a lot of spare money about. She lived on what her husband gave her. He wouldn’t be a man to throw it about, so they say.’

‘But there was money, wasn’t there?’ continued Stefan.

‘There was a bit Mrs Harris had from working for the Hospitals’ Sweepstake. She did a lot of that, but they only paid her expenses. It’s meant to be charity. She had an office in a room at the back of the house, and a secretary came in sometimes to do a bit of typing. That’s it. There wouldn’t have been any sort of living in it at all. Money was the main topic of conversation at Herbert Place, well, how Mrs Harris never had any was.’

‘She had a brand new car!’

‘She did so,’ said Dessie, ‘and in a shoebox on top of the wardrobe in her bedroom, she had a box with six hundred and seventeen pounds in it.’

‘That doesn’t make much sense.’

Dessie shrugged; it didn’t.

‘So where did that come from?’

‘Same place as the car.’

‘Doctor Harris didn’t buy her that then?’

‘No. She bought it herself.’

‘And –’