’
The High Commissioner stopped, looking at O’Rourke.
‘Father Byrne is dead.’ The bishop’s voice was oddly matter-of-fact. ‘The police pulled his body out of the Mottlau River early this morning. He is in the mortuary. The cause of death was drowning apparently. The police inspector at Weidengasse hasn’t said as much but the question of suicide is hanging in the air. That’s the implication anyway. I’m not sure I can rule it out, either, not after the conversation I had with Father Byrne yesterday.’
He looked from Hannah to Stefan. Neither of them was sure whether it was a look of compassion or accusation. After several seconds his gaze returned to Hannah.
‘I know the details of his relationship with your friend, Miss Field. I knew nothing about it before yesterday. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about.’ He was silent for a moment. He wasn’t thinking about Francis Byrne and Susan Field, but Francis Byrne and Hugo Keller. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how much longer Francis could have held it all in, but your appearance started to break down the wall. And Mr Gillespie’s arrival a little later,’ he turned to Stefan, ‘well, you are a policeman, aren’t you? I imagine your approach was harder. You also knew more about him, more about what happened to Miss Field. Perhaps more than he could cope with.’
Stefan felt Hannah’s eyes on him, questioning, as O’Rourke spoke. He hadn’t told her what he knew about how Susan had died yet. He hadn’t had time. And he needed the right time too. But all she saw was that he had still been holding something back, even now, even here, after everything else.
‘The relationship between your friend and Francis belongs to them alone now I think, Miss Rosen, except to say that you should not underestimate the feelings he had for her, or what he suffered because of the weakness he showed in abandoning her. It was weak; it was selfish. His death doesn’t alter that. The fact that she died in the way she did was cruel enough; the idea that she had been killed, murdered — that was more than he could face.’
There was no reason for either Hannah or Stefan to feel much for Francis Byrne. Stefan knew enough to believe he had it coming. Hannah still knew less, but knew that if the priest wasn’t responsible for Susan’s death himself his lies had protected whoever was, whether inadvertently or not. Yet as they listened to O’Rourke’s quiet voice it didn’t seem that neat.
‘How long had he been an informer?’ said Lester.
‘Long enough,’ replied the bishop. He looked at Stefan again. ‘How this man Keller found him here, I don’t know. But I do know the Nazis and their obsession with gathering information. From Dublin to Danzig isn’t so surprising. And once he’d found Francis he knew what to do with all the weakness and selfishness, the fear and guilt. He threatened to expose him and destroy him. Sadly Francis didn’t have the faith in me he should have done. Perhaps that was my fault. I was too concerned with great events to see a man in need before my eyes. He was Keller’s spy. I’m sure you have worked that out yourself. There are people who have trusted me, confided in me, whose names will be in the hands of the Gestapo and the SS.’
He was silent, knowing all too well what that could mean.
‘You see I can’t stand in the pulpit and tell people not to vote for the bastards, even if everyone knows that’s what I think. They’d want me sacked and the Church would sack me. It’s too busy making sure it’s not on the wrong side to make sure it’s on the right side. I think of Martin Luther a lot these days. Simply to stand here is perhaps all I can do. Father Byrne was a victim of his own weakness, but he was also a victim of the darkness that’s all around us now. Yet he found his way back at the end. You may not think that matters, but I’m a priest. I see it differently. Perhaps he wouldn’t have found his way without you two. Angels come in many guises, we’re told.’
As he finished he was looking at Hannah again, and she had no doubt that what she saw now was compassion. He stepped forward, taking out a letter.
‘This was in his room, Miss Rosen. He meant to send it to you. It’s addressed to your hotel.’ He turned back to Stefan. ‘I think Father Byrne went to see this man Keller. I imagine to tell him he would no longer be blackmailed. I want to know what happened. It may be that he drowned. It may be that he killed himself. If it was something else, then I probably won’t be able to do anything anyway. Earthly justice won’t be on offer. But I have another angel to serve, the recording angel. Since there isn’t a policeman I can trust, your opinion will have to do instead. Will you look at the body?’
The River Vistula rises in the Carpathian Mountains, over a thousand kilometres south of the Free City. It flows through the plains of Poland, past Krakow and Warsaw, and eventually issues into the Bay of Danzig and the Baltic Sea through a delta of sluggish channels and lagoons. For almost a thousand years it has been the great artery of Poland in every sense. When Poland disappeared from the map of Europe, as it did from time to time, for Poles their country was somehow still alive in the great river. In Danzig the Vistula was the Weichsel. The city ended where a branch of the Vistula, the Mottlau River, flowed out of the port and into the silted and moribund channel that was called the Dead Vistula, Die Tote Weichsel. It was here, by the seaplane station on the shore of the Dead Vistula, that the morning flight from Stockholm so narrowly missed the floating body of Father Francis Byrne. A priest who rediscovers his religion can be dangerous, not least to himself.
The body was not at the mortuary. When the bishop phoned the police station in Weidengasse, close to where Father Byrne had been found, he was told it had already been moved. Now the bishop’s car drove Stefan Gillespie and Count O’Rourke out through the gates of the High Commissioner’s residence on to Silberhutte, into Holzmarkt and Kohlenmarkt. Outside a polling station, a gang of brown-shirted SA men stood, almost blocking the entrance, checking the people going in to vote. The car continued past the Danziger Hof and into An der Reitbahn. It was only now, as he passed the building with the great dome and the Russian-looking spires, that Stefan realised it was the city’s synagogue, sitting with unintended defiance at the heart of Danzig. It wasn’t mentioned in the guide book he had looked through that first night at the hotel; it wasn’t even on the map. In front of the synagogue a group of boys in Hitler Youth uniforms held up election placards and flags. Several of them were stretching out a banner. It became legible as the bishop’s car passed. ‘Die Juden sind unser Ungluck.’ The Jews are our misfortune. O’Rourke didn’t notice. He’d seen it too many times. In Vorstadtischer Graben they passed another polling station and another SA gang noting the names of the voters. It was unlikely very many of Danzig’s Jews would be pushing their way past the brown shirts to cast their votes.
As Stefan looked out at the city, Edward O’Rourke seemed to be doing the same thing, but his eyes didn’t see very much. He was weighing the consequences of what had happened. Then, quite abruptly, as they crossed the river, he started to talk about Francis Byrne. He didn’t look round. Stefan wasn’t really sure the words were addressed to him at all.
‘I met Francis at the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. They assigned him to me as a guide. He had good German and an interest in genealogy. My family fled Ireland after the battle of the Boyne. They ended up in Russia, fighting for the czars. It was the family business. My father intended me for a general but the way things have turned out in Russia I probably made a wise decision to turn my hand to something else. Francis ended up spending more time arguing about the future of the Church than looking into my family tree. We disagreed about a lot but he was very bright. I liked him. When I left, I offered him a job, if he ever wanted one. I didn’t hear from him for nearly three years, and then unexpectedly he appeared in Danzig. He wasn’t the same man though. Somehow all his vitality had gone; along with all his curiosity, all his passion. But I didn’t see how troubled he was. There is a high price to pay for that now. It was only when he came to me yesterday …’
O’Rourke stopped as suddenly as he had started, and he said no more. They drove across the river on to the Speicherinsel. In Milchkannengasse they pulled up outside Grund amp; Co, funeral directors.
A considerable amount of the undertaker’s art had already been expended on Father Francis Byrne. His face was an unnatural, almost clownish pink. His hair had been oiled and combed back in such neat, stiff lines that it looked like a wig. He was wearing a dark suit and clerical collar that had certainly not accompanied him into the dark waters of the Mottlau. The coffin he lay in was lined with white silk, which only accentuated the pinkness of his flesh. He looked like a mannequin from the windows of Freymann’s department store. Herr Grund scurried behind the bishop with a combination of fawning obsequiousness and ill-disguised fear. It was a privilege to have such an eminent personage on his premises, but the corpse had been brought by the Gestapo. O’Rourke bent over the body of the priest. He made the sign of the cross on his forehead and prayed silently. As he straightened up he turned to the undertaker. ‘Leave us alone, please.’ The words were said quietly and graciously. The undertaker hesitated. The bishop’s stern eyes said what his words had not. ‘Now piss off.’ The undertaker bowed, walking deferentially backwards before leaving the room.
