sheep and cattle, sloping up into the Dublin Mountains. He followed a road as it wound through the fields and the bare hillsides into thick, dark woodland. Somewhere underneath him were the slopes of Kilmashogue, where the bodies of Vincent Walsh and Susan Field had been buried. He had been a long way from that. He knew from Dessie MacMahon that the investigations had stopped. But unexpectedly it wasn’t over; that was why he was here. It was why he was flying to London, to take the Deutsche Luft Hansa plane from Croydon Aerodrome to Berlin and Danzig.
Very quickly the mountains were gone. The plane hummed with the steady drone of the propellers. They were over the sea. Stefan sat at the back of the plane. Only two other seats were occupied. The other passengers were Irish civil servants, travelling to a League of Nations meeting in Geneva. At Baldonnel they had plied him with questions. He had been pushed on to the flight by someone who knew someone, so there had to be something interesting about him. He made sure there wasn’t. They soon found his polite monosyllables irritating and the role he had come up with — a cattle dealer looking for new markets in Germany — decidedly down-the-country. He sat far enough back to make conversation impossible on the noisy two-hour journey to Croydon. The grey sea spread out below them, the waves catching the spring sunlight. There was a boat sailing to England. He looked down as the plane passed over it, and watched it until it had disappeared.
The months had passed quickly at Kilranelagh as winter moved into spring in the mountains. Stefan had plunged himself into work at the farm with an energy that absorbed his days and left him tired enough to sleep at night. The smell of stone and earth and animals was something to hold on to, and the longer the days were out in the fields the less time there was to talk about the threat that still hung over him and his parents, and over his son. Tom’s fifth birthday had come and gone now and he still knew nothing about the curate’s plan to send him to live with his uncle and aunt. Stefan had made it clear over and over again that he would never agree. There had been a brief exchange of letters between his solicitor, Emmet Brady, and the bishop in Carlow, then nothing. Tom was happy at school and happier still because, for reasons he didn’t understand, his father was at home. Father Carey was polite whenever Stefan saw him and had not referred to the matter since February now. David and Helena had read into that silence a truth Stefan was far less sure about. They thought it was done. For more than a month now none of them had discussed the threat as they had through the long winter evenings after Tom had gone to bed. But there were still nights when Stefan couldn’t sleep, however hard he worked. The curate’s bitter determination was still a shadow over him. He would lie awake, turning Emmet Brady’s cautious words around in his head for the hundredth time. He heard himself in the Four Courts, trying to persuade a judge not to take Tom away. And sometimes, as he imagined the judge telling him he was unfit to be a father to his son, he thought about the answer that was there, always unspoken, the answer even his mother and father must know had to be in his head. If it wasn’t finished, if it wasn’t forgotten, if the threat was as real as the old solicitor claimed it was, then one day the only option might be the journey to Dun Laoghaire, and the boat across the Irish Sea he had just been looking down at. But all that was for another day, however, a day he still hoped would never come. Now he was casting his mind back to the events of the previous morning and the reason he was on a plane to London.
The unfamiliar car had pulled into the farmyard at Kilranelagh early. He had never met Hannah Rosen’s father, but unexpectedly Adam Rosen was there, bringing back everything that had happened at the end of the previous year. Stefan had not forgotten Hannah, but he had pushed her to the corners of his mind. There seemed no point doing anything else. The other man introduced himself as Robert Briscoe. Stefan knew who he was. A Member of Parliament in Dublin and a close friend of Eamon de Valera’s; an old IRA man who had fought against the British and then against the Free State in the Civil War. He was also a leader of Ireland’s Jewish community. He was a surprising guest. The two men offered no explanation for why they were there. Briscoe spent no more than five minutes congratulating David Gillespie on the quality of his cattle, and Helena on the biscuits he smelled when he walked into the kitchen, but by the time he and Adam Rosen were installed in the sitting room, with a cup of tea and a plate of those biscuits, still hot from the oven, it felt as if he had been speaking to old friends for an hour. He had a politician’s skills and, as Stefan’s father remarked later, a politician’s handshake; a little too hard and a little too sincere. But despite all the good humour, neither David nor Helena had any doubt that when the sitting room door shut, the visitors weren’t there to discuss the weather.
‘It’s about Hannah.’ Adam Rosen spoke urgently once they were alone.
‘Isn’t she back in Palestine now?’
‘I wish she was.’ Hannah’s father hadn’t said much while Robert Briscoe was making conversation about cattle and cooking, but now it was obvious he was worried.
‘She’s in trouble, Mr Gillespie.’ It was Robert Briscoe who continued.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Stefan
‘She’s in Danzig. You’ll know why she’s there I think.’
It was all in front of him; the priest, Father Francis Byrne.
‘I can make a good guess.’
‘I’m sure you know a lot more than either of us, Mr Gillespie.’
Stefan frowned. At first he was simply puzzled, not because Hannah had gone to find Francis Byrne, but because of the time that had passed. It was months since he had last seen her, he had assumed she had left Europe completely.
‘I thought she went back to Palestine ages ago.’
‘She’s been on the Continent.’ Adam Rosen answered awkwardly. It was an odd turn of phrase. It sounded as if his daughter had been on a long holiday. ‘She didn’t tell anyone she was going to try and find this priest.’
‘But she arrived in Danzig two days ago,’ continued Briscoe.
In December, Hannah had told Stefan she was going to England. That was nearly four months ago now. If she had intended to go to Danzig, why had it taken so long? He could feel the two men were skirting around something, something that made the simple fact of Hannah’s arrival in Danzig dangerous in some way. He was conscious of Briscoe’s hard eyes watching him, in the silence that hung over the dark sitting room, weighing him up.
Adam Rosen was Robert Briscoe’s friend, and his friend’s daughter needed help. Hannah had put herself at risk, and not only herself. Now someone had to bring her back. It was Brian Field who had suggested Stefan Gillespie. He was a policeman. He spoke good German. And he probably cared about Hannah. There had been something between her and the guard, at least that’s what her father thought. That was good. It was a lever, and where trust was an issue, perhaps it was something to put some trust in too.
‘The situation is complicated, Mr Gillespie,’ said Briscoe.
Stefan smiled. ‘That doesn’t surprise me, with Hannah.’
‘We can’t do anything openly in Danzig.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’ Whatever Robert Briscoe and Adam Rosen were uncertain about Stefan knew that it must go deeper than Francis Byrne.
Briscoe looked at Adam Rosen again. Hannah’s father nodded. They had made the decision that Stefan Gillespie could be trusted, that he had to be trusted. It was the only way.
‘She was staying with some friends in Italy,’ said Hannah’s father. ‘She was meant to be sailing to Haifa three days ago, from Trieste. We do know she got as far as Trieste, but the boat sailed without her. She cancelled the booking. And then she took a train to Danzig the same night.’
‘She waited a long time,’ said Stefan, ‘but you know why she went?’
‘I know about Susan Field and the priest — ’
‘Francis Byrne. He was certainly in Danzig in December.’
‘We can’t make contact with her.’ Adam Rosen’s anxiety was clear. It seemed out of proportion, but it was clear.
‘Is that really such a big problem?’
‘Of course it bloody is,’ snapped Briscoe.
‘I don’t suppose she’s going to make herself very popular in ecclesiastical circles in Danzig,’ said Stefan, ‘but Father Byrne has already denied any kind of relationship with Susan Field. There’s a statement to that effect collecting dust in Dublin Castle. I don’t believe it any more than Hannah does, but that’s the Garda line here, and that’s all he’s going to say if she finds him. I doubt she’s going to beat the truth out of him, whatever it is.’
Hannah’s father shook his head. That wasn’t what this was about.
‘It’s not that simple.’ Briscoe was still watching Stefan intently. ‘Hannah needs to leave Danzig before anything happens. She’s not safe.’
