Michael Russell - The City of Strangers

Sergeant Gillespie smiled. It was four years since he’d last spoken to Mac Liammóir, the actor and director who was the Gate Theatre’s founder, but he didn’t need to be told those were his words.

Four years ago the body of a young man had been found buried in the Dublin Mountains, close to the body of a woman who had recently disappeared. It had been a Gate theatre ticket that had helped identify the man, but the investigation had taken Stefan Gillespie a long way from Dublin, to Danzig and the heart of the European crisis that was now threatening to spill into war. It had brought him face to face with what mattered most in his life. It had led him to the only woman he had come close to loving since the death of his wife, Maeve, six years ago. When it finished the thread of passion that had held Stefan Gillespie and Hannah Rosen briefly together had broken. It had been inevitable.

The investigation itself had concluded in the dark corridors where unwanted investigations were given an indecent burial. Micheál Mac Liammóir was a memory from that time, but Stefan remembered him as a man who had looked for discretion and trust from him, and had found it. Clearly those same qualities still mattered.

‘So everyone’s pretending he’s not a murder suspect, sir?’

‘We’re dealing with this at a distance.’ The Commissioner ignored the question. ‘The conversations are in telegrams and even they’re at second or third hand. The decision not to involve the New York police is a political one. Extradition could drag on for months if Harris digs his heels in. We’d a feller embezzled six hundred pounds as a tax collector in Kerry. It took nearly a year to get him extradited from Boston. Even that made The New York Times . If your man takes it into his head not to cooperate and we have to drag him through the courts, well, axe-murderers make great headlines. Not the ones Dev wants. Mac Liammóir thinks Harris is harmless if he’s handled the right way. His mother might have had a few things to say about that, but at the end of it all, a policeman who’s not too much like a policeman is what we want.’

‘Should I take that as a compliment, sir?’ said Stefan, smiling.

‘Mr Mac Liammóir obviously thinks it is. I’m going along with this because we are relying on the Gate. I don’t need to tell you it isn’t going down well everywhere. Superintendent Gregory is in charge of the investigation. You know him?’

Stefan knew who Gregory was. ‘I’ve probably met him. I think he was at the Castle, in Special Branch, when I was a detective at Pearse Street.’

‘Special Branch is running it. There’s no reason to think it involves anyone other than the mother or the son, except that it’s already dragging in the government, the Department of External Affairs and my fucking Uncle Tom Cobley. And while I wouldn’t say Dev’s a friend of the family, he’d know the father. Doctor Harris carries some weight. So there’s that too. Put it all together and you see why kid gloves are the order of the day, Sergeant.’

Though Stefan nodded, he wasn’t sure that handing the thing over to Special Branch was the answer to that; kid gloves weren’t their speciality.

‘You fly to New York the day after tomorrow.’

Stefan was surprised; he had assumed he would be going by boat.

‘You’ll know the flying boat service has just started operating from Foynes. I won’t tell you what it’ll cost, but somebody seems to think the wrong headlines will cost more. It will get you to New York in less than twenty-four hours. You’ll be there two days and then straight back. A boat’s going to take more than a fortnight. Right now the kid gloves are yours, Stefan. I don’t need to tell you Terry Gregory thinks this is shite. He may be right, but I’m doing it the way I’ve been asked, softly-softly. My office will make all the arrangements. There’s a detective here to fill you in. He’ll take you to see the superintendent.’ Ned Broy laughed. ‘Don’t expect much of a reception.’

As he left the Garda Commissioner’s office Stefan was surprised to see that the detective waiting for him was not the surly, jumped-up bollocks from Special Branch he was expecting, but the large and familiar figure of Dessie MacMahon, once his partner in the detectives’ office at Pearse Street Garda station. Dessie and Stefan had kept in touch over the years, but it was still a while since the two men had seen each other.

‘How’s it going, Sarge?’ grinned Dessie.

‘You tell me, Sergeant,’ Stefan answered. ‘It is sergeant now?’

‘Well, if you sit on your arse long enough –’

‘So what’s this got to do with you?’

‘They’re stuck with me. I was the first detective into Herbert Place. The maid called Pearse Street when she went into the house and saw the state of Mrs Harris’s bedroom, the blood that is. So I’m working out of Dublin Castle for the time being. But everybody’s getting a look in on this one, I tell you. I don’t know why. Superintendent Gregory decided the son killed the old lady the day they found her car at Shankill. But you still can’t move for inspectors and superintendents and chief superintendents. We’ve got Inspector O’Sullivan and Superintendent Dunlevy from Dún Laoghaire, Chief Superintendent Reynolds from Headquarters, Superintendent Clarke from Bray, not to mention Special Branch calling the shots at the Castle.’

‘You know I’ve got to bring Harris back from New York?’

‘I’ve to take you to see Superintendent Gregory,’ nodded Dessie. ‘You know you’ll be getting more of a bollocking than a briefing from him?’

Stefan smiled. ‘Let’s get on with it so.’

‘He’s busy at the moment. He’ll be out at Corbawn Lane later.’

‘Corbawn Lane where –’

‘Where Mrs Harris’s car was. It’s where he dumped her in the sea.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘The only instructions I’ve got are that you’re a fucking messenger boy and that’s how you’re to be treated. You’re not a fucking detective. You’re not part of the fucking investigation. Nobody’s to tell you anything about anything, or give you even a sniff of the job. You’ll be bollocked when the super’s got the time. Apart from that, Mr Gregory didn’t tell me to welcome you aboard, but I’m sure if he wasn’t so busy he would have.’

They walked out of Garda Headquarters.

‘I tell you what I’d like to do?’ Stefan gave Dessie a wry smile. It was a long time since he’d been this close to a murder. ‘Have a look at Herbert Place. That’s where she was killed? So if you were the first one in there –’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’

‘Yes, so it’ll be more than your job’s worth. Is that right?’

Detective Sergeant MacMahon grinned.

‘With a bit of luck.’

*

‘Blood.’

As Detective Sergeant Dessie MacMahon started to climb the stairs of the big Georgian terrace in Herbert Place he pointed at the fifth tread, without stopping. Sergeant Stefan Gillespie did stop, bending to look down at the dark, densely patterned stair carpet; red, black, yellow, thistle-like flowers endlessly repeated. Only the chalk marks showed him where to look; a small brown stain stood out against yellow and red.

‘Blood.’

Dessie pointed at two of the uprights on the grey-painted banister. It was a long time since they had been painted. Again only traces of chalk made the smears of brown that could have been almost anything, or even nothing at all, immediately visible.

‘Blood.’

As he carried on Dessie’s left hand gestured at a chalk circle beside two crooked picture frames. They had been recently knocked askew; an oval, ebonised frame enclosing a sepia photograph of a heavily bearded man in a frock coat; a chipped, gilt square of plasterwork surrounding a sampler that was a map of Ireland with the counties outlined in green thread. Between them another streak of something brown marked the muddy swirls of the embossed wallpaper. Where the frames had moved they revealed that once the indeterminate colour of the wallpaper had been a startling emerald green. There was little wallpaper to be seen however.