‘No.’
‘He was living here when he left Ireland though?’
‘This is none of your business, but since you are determined to be intrusive, I will tell you that before Father Byrne left for Germany, he and I had not been on the best of terms for some time. He lived here and he worked for me. It was my influence that got him the post as a lecturer that he seemed — eventually — to find more important than his duties as a priest. As his obligations to me became a burden to him, it was inappropriate that he should remain here. I suggested he went back to the seminary at Maynooth. However, Father Byrne took the unusual course of taking a flat somewhere.’
Stefan had to hold back a smile at how much venom the man in black had squeezed into the word ‘flat’; it was the Fall of Man and Sodom and Gomorrah in a single, apocalyptic syllable.
‘Did his students ever come here, Monsignor?’
‘A lot of people come here. You’ve seen that yourself.’
‘I suppose I mean friends, rather than just students.’ He was treading on dangerous ground, but the resentment Fitzpatrick clearly felt towards Francis Byrne made it worth pushing. The monsignor had a high opinion of himself and his importance; it was something else Stefan could use.
‘I find myself in a very difficult position, Monsignor Fitzpatrick. I have an investigation to pursue, a very serious one, and a very sensitive one. A woman is missing. She was a student at UCD and Father Byrne was one of her lecturers. He had a friendship with this woman, a close friendship. I have good reason to believe he was one of the last people to see her before she disappeared. I’m sure you would want him to help us if he could.’
‘I don’t like the words close friendship in this context, Sergeant.’
‘They’re words that need go no further, Monsignor.’ Stefan left the sentence hanging in the air. He didn’t need to say anything about the possibility of scandal for Fitzpatrick to see that he had to give something.
‘Father Byrne was sometimes less careful in his relationships than he should have been.’ The priest spoke slowly and carefully. ‘I don’t suggest that there was ever anything unpriestly about his behaviour, but he did perhaps regard himself too much as part of the university rather than as a man apart, which is the path of the priest. There were things Francis and I shared that we share no longer. I understand your problem, Sergeant Gillespie, but it has nothing to do with me. I’m sure if there is anything Father Byrne can do to assist you in your search for this woman he will. If you write to him, he will, of course, reply. My sister will have his address.’
He picked up his briefcase. It was clear he would say no more. He stood for a moment by the table, suddenly looking slightly lost. Then he turned and walked out without another word. Stefan thought that behind the irritation and indignation tears were beginning to well in the priest’s eyes.
As Stefan came out of the meeting room, the woman was still there, standing in the doorway of the shop. The footsteps of the monsignor could be heard, climbing the stairs. The woman was looking up after him. She turned to Stefan, an expression of concern changing quickly to a smile.
‘My brother says you need Father Byrne’s address, in Danzig.’
‘He’s not in Germany then?’
‘Isn’t it Germany anyway? Or don’t they want it to be? I can’t remember. It’s something like that. But it’s very simple, you can address letters to him at the cathedral in Oliva. He’s working for the bishop there.’
The monsignor could have told him that easily enough. There was more going on between Robert Fitzpatrick and Francis Byrne than not seeing eye-to-eye. There was real hostility, at least on the monsignor’s part. Stefan thanked the woman and turned to go. She pushed a leaflet into his hand.
‘Your wife should read it too.’
He came out into Earlsfort Terrace. It was cold and almost dark, but he was pleased to breathe fresh air. As he walked back towards Stephen’s Green he screwed the leaflet into a tight ball and dropped it into the gutter.
9. The Gate
At Pearse Street Garda station there was a note on Stefan’s desk. Wayland-Smith wanted to talk to him at the morgue. As he turned back to the door Inspector Donaldson was there, eyeing him, with the strained expression that meant he knew he wouldn’t relish the answers to the questions he had to ask.
‘What’s happening with this body at Kilmashogue?’
‘I’m just going to find out if Doctor Wayland-Smith’s got anything.’
‘Was he killed?’
‘I don’t suppose he buried himself.’
Donaldson pursed his lips impatiently.
‘Is it going to be an active investigation or not?’
‘If there’s anything to act on.’
A shrug was not what the inspector wanted either.
‘You know what I mean, Sergeant. How long was the body up there?’
‘He’s not sure. It could be two or three years, or it could go back to the twenties. We’ll find out. It doesn’t smell like some old IRA job to me.’
James Donaldson would go a long way to avoid a conversation about the Civil War or the IRA, but a death you couldn’t investigate because of ‘all that’ was in many ways preferable to a murder you had no choice but to investigate. Whenever he couldn’t get a straight answer out of Stefan Gillespie it usually meant trouble. He could smell it now. The kind of trouble his detective sergeant brought into the station like old dog shit on his shoes.
The black mottled bones had been laid out like an archaeological exhibit in a museum, on the white marble slab at the centre of the big room in the mortuary. The scent of carbolic didn’t altogether hide the reek of putrefaction that was not just in the air but in walls and floor and ceiling. It got you as you walked through the doors, a strange sweetness that caught at the back of your throat. The State Pathologist stood over the skeleton they had brought back from the mountainside, with an expression of almost tender concern. He spoke, as always, in the businesslike, dismissive tone that seemed to imply this was a job and nothing more, but his eyes showed something else. Two things in fact; that the dead mattered and that he would enjoy telling Detective Sergeant Gillespie everything he had found out.
‘A young man, in his twenties or thirties; nothing to contradict my judgement there.’ Wayland-Smith walked slowly round the slab. ‘A number of broken bones. Now he’s been scrubbed up rather more broken bones than I counted up at Kilmashogue. You’ll see the left arm, multiple fracture of the humerus; broken ribs here and here, along with the sternum; in both legs, femur left, tibia right. He has suffered severe trauma. The fractures indicate it happened quickly, and with some force. A fall from a considerable height or, more likely, something hit him. The injuries would be consistent with a traffic accident for instance.’
‘And that’s what killed him?’
‘It was certainly enough to result in death. But I can’t say it did.’
‘And what about this hole in the skull?’
Wayland-Smith smiled. It was the question he was waiting for.
‘Certainly not a bullet. I didn’t think so.’ The words ‘of course’ hovered in the air. ‘It could have happened during the accident, collision, whatever we choose to call it. Maybe something sharp, a protruding metal spike, narrow in diameter, hammered into his head by the force of impact.’
‘Which might have killed him?’
‘Again I can only say something of that sort would have had the potential to. With no soft tissue and no exit on the other side of the skull I can’t know how far the projectile went into his brain. I don’t much like the idea anyway.’ He peered down at the hole. ‘And it still seems remarkably neat, don’t you think, if we’re talking about smashing and hammering? There’s nothing about it that strikes you as in any way familiar, Sergeant?’
‘You mean you know what it is and I should know too?’
‘Doesn’t your family have a farm?’
Stefan nodded and waited. Wayland-Smith enjoyed these moments.
‘I’m sure you’ve seen the butcher arrive to stick the pig.’
He turned and walked to a table close by. He picked up a heavy pistol, wood and grey metal, square and clumsy. Stefan was puzzled by the weapon; it looked like something that had been cobbled together from other
