The City of Shadows

‘I wouldn’t blame him. If I had somewhere to go, I’d go myself.’

‘Come on, Sheila. You were playing doctors and nurses in more ways than one in Merrion Square. I know there’s fellers who keep stockings and knickers by their beds, but I wouldn’t have put Hugo down for that game.’

‘Maybe he’d surprise you.’

‘Did he tell you he was going?’ asked Stefan.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Not a lot. But then it wasn’t much to him. You, I mean. He didn’t stop by on the way to the boat to pick you up, Sheila. He’d have been sitting down for a beer on board I’d say, about the time you fell down the stairs.’

‘With a bit of luck it choked him.’

‘He didn’t even say goodbye then?’

‘This is the only goodbye I got.’ She lifted her plastered arm and gestured at her battered, blackened face as best she could.

‘We’ve got something in common then. Sergeant Lynch and his friend called on me too. They thought I must have taken it. I don’t know if it was a guess, or maybe it was what you told them the first time round?’

‘Is it sympathy you’re looking for, Sergeant?’

‘I don’t really know what Jimmy Lynch wants, but if I haven’t got it and you haven’t got it, maybe we’re both done with falling downstairs.’ He waited for a response. There wasn’t one, just the same look of contempt. He took the photograph of Susan Field from his pocket and held it up to her.

‘Did you ever see this woman?’

She looked at the photo and shook her head.

‘She’d have visited Keller.’

‘A lot of women did. I’d hardly remember them all.’

‘It was about five months ago.’

‘I’m not saying she didn’t. I’m saying I don’t remember her.’

‘Susan Field.’

She shook her head again.

‘I do know the name’s not in the appointments book, Sheila.’

‘You think they use their real names?’

‘The last thing we know about Susan Field is that she was going to Merrion Square, to see Hugo Keller for an abortion. She’d an appointment. The twenty-sixth of July. She hasn’t been seen since. She’s disappeared.’

‘That’s not my business. I don’t know her.’

‘How many abortions did he do in the last six months?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on! It can’t be that many.’

‘There were people he didn’t want me to see. Special.’

‘What do you mean special?’

‘It’s not hard to work out, is it? Important people, people with money, politicians from over the road in Leinster House. Bigwigs who want extra privacy. People who wouldn’t like to walk into a hospital with a dose of the clap, or let anyone know whose wife they got pregnant. Important people.’

‘I don’t think there was anything very important about Susan Field, except to the people who loved her. All they want to do is find her.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want them to.’

Her words were cold. It didn’t tell Stefan that Sheila Hogan knew more than she was saying, but if she did it was very clear sentiment wasn’t going to open her mouth. He put the photograph back in his pocket.

‘They change their minds,’ she said. ‘They don’t always turn up.’

‘What would you think if I said the man who sent Susan Field to see Herr Keller, to get the abortion, was a priest? Would that surprise you?’

‘I wasn’t paid to be surprised.’

‘So has that happened before?’

‘You’d have to ask Mr Keller. I wasn’t paid to ask questions either.’

‘I wish he was around to ask, Sheila. He wasn’t a great talker, then?’

‘There were two things he wanted me for. The second one didn’t involve a lot of talking, not the way he did it anyway.’ There was a disdainful sneer on the nurse’s face again. It could have been for Hugo Keller, but Stefan felt it was for men in general. And he wasn’t excluded.

‘This book of Keller’s, the one Jimmy Lynch is looking for, the one neither of us knows anything about, is that what he kept in there? Names, addresses, appointments? The things he didn’t want anybody to find out?’

He threw this at her, not expecting an answer, but hoping for more than he’d got from Jimmy Lynch or Lieutenant Cavendish. Whatever the book was, it had to contain answers to some of the questions he couldn’t ask Keller face to face now. All he wanted to know was whether there was anything in it about Susan Field. But Sheila Hogan had nothing to give.

‘If I knew where it was I wouldn’t be in here, would I? You think I give a toss about anything of Hugo Keller’s? I’ve got him to thank for this. I don’t care about any fecking book or any fecking women or anybody else. He can screw himself as far as I’m concerned. If ever I saw him again it’d be to spit in his eye. If you want to take the message I can always spit in yours.’

8. Kilmashogue

When Stefan came out of the Mater on to Eccles Street, Dessie MacMahon was there, waiting for him in the black Austin. A body had been found in the Dublin Mountains. The State Pathologist was already on his way there.

‘Do we know what they’ve got?’

‘Bones, that’s all Mr Wayland-Smith said. Oh, and she was in, looking for you. About an hour ago.’ He didn’t need to be more specific.

‘What did she want?’

‘She left a couple of books. And there’s a note.’

Dessie reached over to the back seat as he pulled out into the traffic.

‘Drive, Dessie! I’ll do it.’ Stefan lifted up two thick, heavy volumes. One was still quite new; the other was well-used and thoroughly dog-eared.

‘She was a while writing the note. I didn’t read it,’ grinned Dessie.

‘If we want to get to this body alive you’d be better looking where you’re going,’ snapped Stefan. As Dessie drove on, whistling quietly in amusement, he unfolded the note that was tucked into one of the books.

Just back from Mr Field’s. The only thing that struck me were Susan’s books, well, she never read much when we were at school. Most of them were for her UCD course. But look at what’s written at the front of these.

He registered the title of the first book as he opened it, The Dawn of Modern Thought: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz; on the flyleaf was a name, a place, and a date, ‘Francis Byrne, Pontifical University, Maynooth, 1932’. The other book was The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France. Inside, on the flyleaf, in the same handwriting was written, ‘Read it and give it a chance, your good friend Francis’. He didn’t think either book would impress Father Anthony Carey very much. He looked back at Hannah Rosen’s note.

I called in at the UCD office in Earlsfort Terrace this morning, asking about courses. I mentioned Francis Byrne. He turns out to be Father Francis Byrne, a lecturer in medieval philosophy last year. He left UCD about six months ago. The woman said she thought he’d gone abroad somewhere.

Stefan was both pleased and irritated. Hannah couldn’t walk around Dublin questioning people as if she was still barging into Hugo Keller’s clinic. But she had found something, a new place to start. The priest was that place.