wasn’t easy, but she wasn’t supposed to be afraid of things that weren’t easy. She wasn’t supposed to be afraid of anything. She stopped for a moment, by the entrance to the hotel, looking up. A man was leaning out of an upstairs window, where a flagpole carrying the Irish tricolour, green, white and orange, extended over the pavement. There was a second pole beside it and the man was unfurling another flag. She knew the colours even before it dropped down beside the tricolour; red, white and black, and at the centre the swastika. She glanced round, expecting other people to be surprised, but no one else had noticed. She walked on quickly. She had other things to do.
The woman was in her early twenties. She was tall. Her hair was almost black, flecked in places with red. There was a warmth about her dark skin that could almost be felt, as if it had known a fiercer sun than ever shone in Ireland, even on the best of summer days. It was a sun that certainly didn’t shine on grey and soft December days like this one.
The purpose in her step was firm and unwavering as she walked along Merrion Row. She moved to avoid a crowd of winter-pale faces, bursting noisily out from a pub. She caught the breath of beer. It was another memory, almost comforting, but she wasn’t here for comfort. She turned into Upper Merrion Street. It was quieter. The flat fronts of Georgian houses gave way to the pillared buildings of government at Leinster House. She saw the trees that marked out Merrion Square. What preoccupied her was the tall terraced house at number twenty-five, with the closed shutters and the green paint peeling from the door, and the big room at the end of the long unlit corridor where the man who smiled too much did his work. Briefly her pace slowed, but only briefly. There was no real fear in her about what she had to do. The fear was about the darkness that might lie on the other side of it.
‘She’s back, your dark-eyed acushla.’
It was the fat policeman who spoke, squeezed uncomfortably into the driver’s seat of a black Austin 10, exhaling smoke from a Sweet Afton, the last of a packet of ten he had bought just before he’d parked the car two hours earlier. They were several hundred yards along from twenty-five Merrion Square. Detective Sergeant Stefan Gillespie, sitting in the passenger seat, opened his eyes. He wasn’t tired, but closing his eyes and feigning sleep was one way to stop Dessie MacMahon talking to him. He had already taken an hour of Dessie’s problems with his innumerable in-laws; gougers and gurriers the lot of them, and all the worse in drink, which they were in a lot it seemed. But Detective Garda MacMahon was right. It was the same woman. They had watched her make the same journey yesterday. They had watched her pass the house at twenty-five Merrion Square twice before she made herself mount the steps and knock on Doctor Hugo Keller’s door. They had watched her go inside, watched her emerge fifteen minutes later, and watched her hurry away again. They knew why she was back now.
‘She was making the appointment yesterday. This’ll be it I’d say.’
Dessie drew on his last cigarette one more time. Stefan nodded, his eyes fixed on the woman. She wasn’t what he’d expected. Even yesterday she didn’t seem to fit. That was the only way he could put it. There had been nervousness and uncertainty then. That made sense. Now she had her head high. It was more than grim determination though. It was in the way she held herself. As she paused for an instant at the bottom of the steps, she tossed her hair back, sweeping it off her face. There was nothing there that said shame. He could almost feel anger in that determination. There was something more too, something like pride. They were all words that didn’t belong here, words she couldn’t have any right to, doing what she was doing. And suddenly he found himself conscious of her as a woman, elegant, tense, beautiful. He hadn’t really noticed it yesterday. He frowned. It was a squalid business and that was the end of it. He didn’t like the intrusion of feelings that challenged that simple fact. The woman went inside the house and the green door closed behind her. The smell of sweat and smoke that came from Dessie swept over Stefan Gillespie again. There was a job to do and they needed to get on with it. As he turned, Dessie was grinning.
‘Your woman’s a looker. You wouldn’t blame the feller who wanted to give her a go.’
It would have been an exaggeration to say that the fat policeman had read his sergeant’s mind. It wasn’t even close. But it was still a lot closer than Stefan was comfortable with.
‘We’ll give it a few minutes, Dessie.’
‘I need a piss first.’ Garda MacMahon opened the car door and squeezed out, dropping his cigarette end in the gutter with the other nine. He walked quickly through a gate into the square, in search of a concealing tree. Sergeant Gillespie got out of the car himself and took a welcome breath of air. He was taller than his colleague and thinner, quite a lot thinner, and where Dessie was balding he had a mop of thick, brown hair that was shapeless rather than long, as if he didn’t remember to get it cut very often, which he didn’t. He looked younger than his twenty-eight years and people often assumed he was the garda rather than the sergeant. He put on his hat. It was colder than he’d thought. He stood looking towards the house. The dark-skinned woman was making him uneasy. It wasn’t a job he’d feel good about at the best of times, but it was more than that. He felt like getting back into the Austin and driving away. He pushed the thought from his mind. At least he wouldn’t have to sit there all afternoon with Dessie and his family rows and the smoke from another packet of Sweet Afton. Detective Garda MacMahon came back from the square, still buttoning up his fly.
The two policemen walked to the house. Stefan mounted the steps and rapped on the door. After a moment, he knocked again. It opened a crack. A middle-aged woman in spotless nurse’s uniform looked out at him.
‘Yes?’ It was supposed to be a question, but as yesses go it meant something much more like ‘no’.
‘We’d like to speak to Mr Keller.’ He took off his hat.
‘He’s not in just now.’
‘We can wait.’
‘He’s not here. And he sees no one without an appointment.’
‘Then I’d like to make an appointment. Now would be fine.’
Detective Sergeant Gillespie took his warrant card from his pocket and held it up. The woman’s first instinct was to slam the door in his face, but Dessie MacMahon had anticipated her. With surprising speed for his size he moved forward, past his sergeant, and put a foot and a portion of his not inconsiderable torso against the fast- closing door. He applied his weight in the opposite direction to the nurse, pushing her and the door firmly back into the hall. He had slammed her against the wall quite hard, but even as the two policemen walked into the house she had recovered her breath sufficiently for her furious and now panicking voice to fill the echoing hallway.
‘Hugo! Doctor Keller!’
‘You think he might be back then?’ said Dessie, grinning.
A door at the far end of the long hall opened. A small, rather avuncular man stood with the light behind him, peering through the thick lenses of his glasses as if he couldn’t really make out who was there. But if there was concern beneath that puzzled look it was well hidden. There was already a half smile on his face, even as Detective Sergeant Gillespie started to walk towards him. He knew what the two men were. He had absorbed that information and accepted it. He was not a man who bothered about the inevitable. He didn’t move as the detective approached him; instead his smile broadened. Stefan had only seen Keller at a distance before, going in and out of the house. He was always well dressed; today was no exception. Even though he was in shirtsleeves, the shirt was gleaming white; the yellow bow tie was perfectly tied; the braces had a floral pattern that was bright, almost loud, yet expensively tasteful; the suit trousers had knife-sharp creases; and his black shoes were spotlessly clean. By now Keller’s benign smile was irritating the detective. It was altogether too pleasant to be anything other than extremely unpleasant. Wherever it came from the effect was to make him want to wipe the smile off the man’s face with his fist. But even as that thought flashed through his mind he had an unsettling picture of Keller getting up from the floor and wiping the blood from his mouth, with the smile still there, broader and more unctuous than ever.
‘Hugo Keller,’ said Stefan flatly.
‘Doctor Keller.’ The German accent was stronger than he had expected. But he knew German accents. Austria, probably Vienna.
‘It’s Mr Keller I think.’
‘My doctorate is from the University of Graz. You may not know it, but it’s the second oldest university in Austria. Doctor Keller is correct.’
‘In Wien hat jeder streunende Hund ein Doktorat, aber sie sind noch immer Hunde, nicht Arzte, Herr Keller.’ He stressed ‘Herr’. It was true. In Vienna every dog in the streets had a doctorate in something. They were still dogs, not doctors. The smile wavered on Keller’s lips. This wasn’t quite the Dublin detective he had anticipated. Contempt might not be so wise.
‘I am Detective Sergeant Gillespie. I will be conducting a search of your premises. I believe you have instruments here that have been used to procure miscarriages, contrary to Section 58 of the Offences against the
