‘He never came in. I didn’t see him again.’
‘What about his things?’
‘He’d a few clothes, a few books.’
‘You’ve still got those?’
‘What do you think this is, the left-luggage office? I kept hold of his things for a while, but when I saw he wasn’t coming back I got rid of it all.’
‘Did you get the letter he sent you?’ Stefan was watching him closely.
‘What letter?’
The response was quick, controlled; perhaps he was anticipating the questions now. But neither Stefan nor Dessie had any doubt that Billy Donnelly knew all about the letter, and that it had arrived. However, they could get nothing more out him now. There was no letter. He knew nothing about any letter. Yet the letter mattered and Stefan knew it. Vincent Walsh’s words still rang in his head. ‘They won’t look in the same place twice.’ If Vincent had died that night they were some of the last words he ever spoke. They couldn’t be explained, but they certainly couldn’t be cast aside.
As the two detectives left, Billy Donnelly could feel the sweat, cold on his back where it had been hot only seconds before. As he went to pour himself a drink, Dessie MacMahon reappeared at the door. He had remembered something.
‘Weren’t you in the Joy for a stretch last year?’
‘Six fucking months.’
‘What for?’
‘What’s it to you?’
Dessie grinned. He had a memory for these small things. ‘Attempting to procure an act of gross indecency at a urinal in Upper Hatch Street, but as it happened the feller was a guard, wasn’t that the story, Billy?’
Two fingers ushered Dessie out. Billy stood in the empty bar. He hadn’t forgotten Vincent. He never would. The drink was the first of many.
Inspector Donaldson had been reading Stefan Gillespie’s report for almost ten minutes. It wasn’t a long report. It deliberately avoided any facts that could be avoided and it made no attempt at theories or opinions. It described the discovery of the two bodies and the bare details of Wayland-Smith’s examination. Vincent Walsh and Susan Field had been identified, and although the circumstances of their deaths could not be determined, there could be no question but that the deaths were indeed suspicious. Something like two years separated the two events. Nothing linked them except the place of burial and the State Pathologist’s opinion that damage to both skulls could have been caused by a captive bolt pistol. Donaldson had already pencilled in the word ‘speculative’ above the word ‘opinion’. There was considerable information about the probable movements of both Vincent Walsh and Susan Field close to the time of their disappearance. The inspector had crossed out the word ‘probable’ and replaced it with ‘possible’. He turned the pages of the report over several times more, not because there was anything else to read, but because he didn’t want to have the conversation he knew had to come next. Nothing was going to make this trouble go away.
‘The man Walsh,’ he said, finally looking up. ‘How reliable do you think these people are? Purcell, I mean, and the publican, Donnelly?’
‘I’d say Purcell is telling the truth. Billy Donnelly knows more.’
‘I know Donnelly. The other one’s a queer too, I presume?’
‘Purcell doesn’t have any reason to lie.’ Stefan knew exactly what Inspector Donaldson meant. You couldn’t believe anything a queer said.
‘Lying is a way of life with these people. At any event there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to go. The man disappeared. He hasn’t seen him since. Or are you suggesting Donnelly was involved in the death somehow?’
‘Like I say, I think he’s got more to tell us.’
‘And if he hasn’t?’
‘Sir, four men attacked the pub the night Walsh disappeared.’
‘Oh, yes, the Blueshirts.’ Donaldson smiled. He didn’t believe it.
‘I’ve no reason to doubt that,’ Stefan continued. ‘Your man Purcell could see Vincent Walsh had been beaten up. And what the hell has Billy Donnelly got to gain from a story like that, two years down the road?’
The inspector sniffed. The Blueshirts, under the leadership of Eoin O’Duffy, the first Garda Commissioner and almost the first man President de Valera sacked on taking office in 1932, had been banned a year ago. They had threatened to march on Dublin in the same way Mussolini’s Blackshirts marched on Rome. After the ban the sale of blue shirts had declined rapidly, and the movement had faded away. But there were plenty of Gardai whose sympathies lay with O’Duffy and the march that never was, and James Donaldson had been one of them, however quiet he kept about that now.
‘Cat fights are common enough in the queer fraternity I’d say. The man wouldn’t want to be pointing his finger at friends, even after all this time.’
‘I think I need to take the Blueshirts seriously, sir.’
‘I don’t know where you’ll find any Blueshirts now, but you might want to remember that the majority of them were ex-soldiers who served this country well, whatever the views of the current regime. I would be careful about stirring up the past, and on the back of what’s probably a pack of lies.’
‘Susan Field.’ Stefan wouldn’t let Donaldson avoid this any longer.
‘We’ve been here already, Sergeant. I’m well aware that it comes back to Keller.’
‘I can’t question Keller. I don’t know where he is. I did speak to Sheila Hogan, his nurse. But that was after Jimmy Lynch had had a go and put her in the Mater.’
Donaldson ignored the last remark.
‘Didn’t she say she’d never seen the woman?’
‘That doesn’t mean a bloody thing. There was a foetus.’
‘I know that Gillespie. Obviously you’ve established the woman was pregnant.’
‘She wrote a letter that said she was having an abortion!’
‘Yes, there are questions to ask, Sergeant, I do accept that. And I will pass a request up the line for the German police to try to locate Herr Keller.’
Stefan looked at his tight-lipped superior and shook his head.
‘He was driven to Dun Laoghaire by the head of the Nazi Party here. With friends like that, not to mention our own Special Branch, I don’t think we’ll hear much back. That leaves us with one witness — Father Byrne.’
Inspector Donaldson might sideline the references to Adolf Mahr and Special Branch, but Byrne was another matter. However much he wanted to ignore it he knew he couldn’t. And so he had already tackled the problem.
‘I understand that and I have spoken to Monsignor Fitzpatrick.’
Stefan was surprised. The smile on Donaldson’s face was troubling.
‘You should have asked me before speaking to him yourself.’
‘I wanted to find out where Byrne was. It was the shortest route.’
‘That wasn’t a decision for you to make, Gillespie.’
‘It was a simple question, sir.’
‘It was a series of scandalous allegations against a priest!’
‘I have good reason to believe Francis Byrne was the man Susan Field was having an affair with, that he was the father of her child and, according to her letters, that he was the man who arranged for her abortion with Hugo Keller. He also paid for it. That makes him one of the last people to see Miss Field alive. And he left the country within a few days of her disappearing.’
It was more troubling that the inspector seemed untroubled by this.
‘As I said, I have spoken to Monsignor Fitzpatrick.’
‘So when do I get to question your man Byrne?’
‘Everything you’ve said about Father Byrne is speculation.’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
James Donaldson frowned. It was there again, ‘sir’, as a kind of insult.
