wouldn’t let go of the letters? He’d got the wrong end of the stick. He actually thought he was protecting you, Monsignor.’
It was difficult to read what was going on in Robert Fitzpatrick’s head. For some seconds he simply stared at Stefan. His face was white. There was something almost ferocious in his eyes; it could have been rage or despair. Then, quite abruptly, it was gone, and there was nothing. It was as if a light had been switched off. His face relaxed into a look of calm, bland disdain.
‘There really is no more to say, Sergeant Gillespie.’
‘I don’t care what you tell yourself, Monsignor. I don’t care what you believe. I’m not here for that.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Because I need your help.’
‘And what makes you think I’d want to help you?’
‘I’m sure you will. They can put a lid on a lot, but not on me. I haven’t finished with you.’
‘You disgust me!’
Robert Fitzpatrick stepped past Stefan. He gave him a look of withering contempt. Stefan grabbed him. He turned the priest round and held him by the lapels of his jacket, pulling him close and gazing angrily into his eyes.
‘You need to talk to me. You really do, I promise you.’
He let him go. Fitzpatrick didn’t move.
‘Do you know who Father Anthony Carey is?’
The priest was puzzled. The name meant nothing immediately.
‘He’s a curate in Baltinglass, but that’s not it; he’s in your Association of Catholic Strength. I think he’s a man you would probably know, Monsignor.’
Fitzpatrick answered warily, slowly, but he answered.
‘Yes, yes, I think I know who you mean. But I don’t understand — ’
‘Your Church is trying to take my son away from me, because of him. And he’s your man, isn’t he?’ Stefan explained what had happened. He didn’t need to go into detail. It all made sense to Robert Fitzpatrick. In fact there was nothing about it that seemed in the least bit unreasonable to him. The contact he had had with Stefan Gillespie now gave him every reason to believe that Father Carey had been doing what any decent priest should have done.
‘This isn’t any business of mine.’
‘You can make it your business.’
‘Why should I? Why would you imagine I’d even consider it?’
He would have said more, but he stopped. Stefan was smiling.
‘Because I’ve got the letters you wrote to Vincent Walsh.’
Fitzpatrick froze. He had thought there was nothing to this other than more unpleasantness, but the letters were different. Whatever the detective knew about their content, he still believed they had disappeared along with Hugo Keller. It hadn’t occurred to him that they were in the hands of this man who had done so much damage and caused so much pain. But the priest’s sense of who he was, his sense of his fundamental invulnerability, was still there.
‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’
‘Yes, I am. I’m glad you understand that, Monsignor.’
‘I see. And what are you going to do with these letters?’
He had found a smile, a half-smile, from somewhere. He was still stronger than this policeman. He had too many friends. No one would listen.
‘I’m going to do more than Herr Keller, I promise. I know a man who knows a man in London who’s in the market for that sort of thing. Journalist might not be the right word for it. He works for the
It really was blackmail, plain and simple. And there was nothing Robert Fitzpatrick could do about it. Blackmail is only ever as effective as the blackmailer’s determination to carry through his threat. The monsignor only had to look into Stefan Gillispie’s eyes to see that he meant every word he said.
‘I’m done speaking for the dead, Monsignor Fitzpatrick. Now I’m speaking for myself. You will help me or I’ll make it my only purpose in life to destroy you.’
An end was needed to the whole affair, but it was difficult for the Garda Commissioner and the Minister of Justice to find one. Among the few people who knew the story there were already different versions. Even Stefan’s version had its versions. There was the version for Ned Broy, the version for Dessie, the version for Susan’s father, the version for Hannah. The version he gave her was close enough to the truth, but didn’t contain everything. What the Commissioner told the Minister and what the Minister told anyone else was something else again. There were certain things that could be done. Sister Brigid Fitzpatrick took a sudden decision to spend the rest of her days behind the impenetrable walls of a contemplative order of Carmelite nuns in County Limerick. She would never leave. She understood what had to be done although she would never feel any need for her daily prayers to be prayers of penitence. She would shut her life off from the world for the same reason she told Sean Og Moran to kill: to protect her brother and allow him to fight the mystical war that would save mankind.
Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick, who had done nothing of course, would continue to proclaim the conspiracies of Jews and communists, and there were many who heard him sympathetically within the Church. His ideas were, after all, not wrong in themselves; they simply needed to be voiced less stridently. Not everyone could warm to Adolf Hitler, and there were certainly some unpleasant aspects to Nazism; but the real enemy was still red, not red and black; the hammer and sickle not the swastika. And with democracy on its last legs, something had to bring order to the chaos of secularism and immorality it would leave in its wake. The Nazis came down on their opponents hard, no doubt about that, but these were hard times. And if Adolf Hitler did keep talking about eradicating Jews, why would anyone want to take all that bluster literally? The man was a politician after all. The Church didn’t have to like Herr Hitler to know that for now the future was with him. There was a longer game for the church to play than any Thousand Year Reich fantasies. It wasn’t as if Robert Fitzpatrick didn’t understand that. He spoke with the voice of the age. And somebody had to. Among the carpenter’s tools were axes and hammers as well as fine chisels; now was the time of the axe and hammer.
Nevertheless, whatever version of the story Ned Broy and the Garda Chaplain told Archbishop Edward Byrne, at the archbishop’s palace in Drumcondra, it was felt that Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick would benefit from several years away from Ireland, researching his book on the Mystical Body of Christ at the Gregorian University in Rome. The need for all this new research came upon him almost as rapidly as his sister’s illness on her.
The day after Stefan Gillespie’s conversation with Robert Fitzpatrick in the University Church, he saw Hannah Rosen for the last time. They both knew it would be the last time and neither of them wanted to spend an evening talking about that, or worse trying to pretend there was something else to talk about. Instead they sat in the darkness at the Gate Theatre and let other people speak. It didn’t matter what the play was. It happened to be
‘The thin detective! And how’s the fat one?’
‘He’s not a great one for the theatre, Mr Mac Liammoir.’
‘Did we scare him off?’
‘There’s not much that scares Dessie.’
‘But it can be done.’
Stefan laughed. ‘This is Miss Rosen. Hannah, Mr Mac Liammoir.’
