by Joe Joyce
Gifford came back with two mugs of tea. ‘No bikkies,’ he said. ‘You’d miss the woman’s touch.’ He settled himself down. ‘So? You want to share my lonely vigil?’
‘I’m looking for a woman who drives a Wolseley and wears a fur coat.’
‘Too old for you,’ Gifford shook his head. ‘And way above your pay bracket.’
‘She collected Goertz’s things from Quinn’s house.’
‘Ah, the Brownshirt Pimpernel,’ Gifford smiled. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if that fellow Goertz really exists. Or if you lads in the hothouse haven’t invented him so you can run around pretending to do something useful.’
‘He exists,’ Duggan said, not really in the mood for Gifford’s flippancy after his conversations with Gerda and McClure. ‘You saw those leaflets.’
Gifford took a slow sip of his tea, changing tack. ‘And you think she might have come to the attention of the Garda Síochána?’
‘She could be one of those republican women.’
‘The irreconcilables,’ Gifford looked over Duggan’s shoulder and raised a finger. ‘The very man.’
Duggan turned and saw the Special Branch sergeant from the previous night crossing the room towards them.
‘What?’ the sergeant barked.
‘He’s looking for a woman with a fur coat who drives a Wolseley,’ Gifford explained.
‘You went over our heads,’ the sergeant said to Duggan, ignoring Gifford. ‘I don’t appreciate that.’
‘What?’ Duggan asked, flustered.
‘You got that bitch released.’
‘Mrs Quinn?’
‘She might fool your lot with her I-know-nothing innocence but she doesn’t fool us. That whole family are up to their necks in irregular activity. Every single one of them. Not just her thick cousin.’
‘I didn’t know she had been released,’ Duggan said, surprised that his recommendation had had such an immediate effect.
The sergeant snorted. ‘What’s the number?’
‘The number?’ Duggan repeated.
‘Of the Wolseley?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What you do know?’
‘It’s black.’
‘Jaysus.’ The sergeant turned to Gifford. ‘You brought him in. Give you something to do. Look up the records and find all the black Wolseleys whose drivers wear fur coats. That probably includes men as well.’
‘Yes, sarge,’ Gifford said. ‘You know I hang on your every word.’
The sergeant narrowed his eyes and pointed a warning finger at him and walked away.
‘Sorry,’ Duggan said to Gifford when he had gone.
‘Not to worry. It’s not as meaningful as Curly Wee but it might be more useful.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ Duggan said. ‘He’s given me an idea. Don’t bother doing anything.’
‘Whatever you say, sir. A captain always outranks a sergeant.’ Gifford paused. ‘You’re going to talk to her.’
Duggan nodded.
‘Want me to come?’ Gifford made a theatrical move towards his desk drawer and froze halfway. ‘Shoot out her other windows?’
Mrs Quinn took her time opening the door. She was wearing a faded apron over a flowered dress and her face was scrubbed and without make-up. She looked like she hadn’t slept much. Duggan told her his name without his rank and asked if he could talk to her.
‘You’re the German,’ she said, a statement to herself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not German.’
‘I mean the one who was talking German to my husband.’
‘Yes. Can I have a word with you?’
She hesitated a moment and then opened the door. ‘He said you had come to an arrangement with him. To have me released.’
‘They let you see him?’ Duggan stepped in and paused in the hallway.
‘When they let me go,’ she nodded towards a room at the back of the hall and he went into the kitchen ahead of her. ‘They were moving him to Mountjoy.’
‘He shouldn’t be there too long,’ Duggan offered, thinking of Quinn’s belief that the Germans would release him when they achieved their final victory in the spring.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she gestured towards the table and he took a seat.
‘No, thanks. Don’t go to any trouble.’
She sat opposite him and folded her arms, waiting.
‘Your husband was telling me all about Herr Goertz,’ Duggan began. ‘The man who was here over the Christmas.’
‘There’s nothing more I can tell you about him then.’
‘What was he like?’
She shrugged. ‘He hardly spoke to me at all. They talked in German all the time.’
‘You don’t speak German?’
She shook her head with a touch of impatience.
‘He didn’t talk to you at all?’ Duggan tried again.
‘Only “please” and “thank you” and that sort of thing. Very polite.’ The way she said it was not a compliment.
Duggan picked up on her tone. ‘He left without telling you.’
‘Without a word of thanks. Just disappeared.’
‘But he sent his thanks. Through the woman who collected his things.’
‘Mrs O’Shea,’ she sniffed.
Duggan kept his face straight, hiding both his delight and a flash of anger. That bastard Quinn had been lying to him, saying he didn’t know who she was. He’d have to think again about everything he’d said. ‘You met her?’ he prompted.
‘Yes. I had to bring her up to the bedroom to collect his things. While she looked down her nose at everything.’
‘What did she say?’
‘About the house? Oh, nothing. But she didn’t make any secret of what she thought of it.’ She raised her head in another unconscious sniff. ‘All beneath her.’
‘What did she say about Herr Goertz?’
‘Just that he sent his thanks. That’s all. No mention of all we had done for him. Given him Christmas dinner and everything.’ She paused. ‘Just “thanks”. That was all. Offhand. Like I was one of her servants.’
‘You know her?’
‘I know of her. And her type.’ She stood up and got a packet of Sweet Aftons from a counter. She offered him one and he lit both. ‘All airs and graces. You should hear her accent. She was only a nurse when she married Surgeon O’Shea. But you should hear her now. All hoity-toity.’
‘Surgeon O’Shea?’ he said, like he was trying to place him.
‘You know him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’d know if you knew him,’ she nodded to herself. ‘If you know what I mean. He hobnobs with all the powers that be these days. Knows all the so-called right people. From the old days.’ She looked him in the eye, squinting through a plume of smoke. ‘The glorious years.’
He nodded. The War of Independence years, she meant. Before it all ended in civil war.
‘He was a young doctor then. Treated more than a few lads who couldn’t go to hospital with their wounds. Then went with de Valera.’
Duggan put the politics of it together without even thinking. O’Shea had been close to the IRA, opposed the treaty, but followed de Valera when he founded Fianna Fáil and came into the Dáil and then into government. Like Timmy, he thought. And the Special Branch sergeant was probably right: Mrs Quinn was one of the irreconcilable opponents of the treaty and of those who had given up the fight. Not so innocent, he thought. Like her husband.
‘And where are they living now?’ he asked, as if he used to know where they lived.
‘Rathgar,’ she said, an unspoken ‘where else?’ attached to it. ‘A big house on Rathgar Road.’
‘And your husband had a word with her too,’ he prompted.
‘Aw,’ she gave a humourless laugh. ‘He was afraid of her. Kept out of the way. Let me bring her upstairs and collect the things.’ She took another drag and picked a loose piece of tobacco off her lip as she exhaled. ‘He’s an innocent when it co
mes to politics, you know. He got a job on the Shannon scheme when he left the tech. Siemens brought him to Germany to train some of them on the electricity-generating equipment. He’s been back and forth a few times and every time he goes he loves it even more. I think he wishes he was born a German.’
‘He told me he had interesting political discussions with Herr Goertz.’
She dismissed that with a shrug, not interested in German politics. ‘He knows nothing about politics,’ she repeated, meaning local politics. ‘He’s really only interested in engineering and machines. Germany is just a fairyland to him.’
Duggan put out his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up. ‘Thank you very much for your time,’ he said.
He went ahead of her to the hall door and turned on the doorstep. ‘Sorry about your windows,’ he looked up at the plywood nailed over the bedroom window above.
‘Thugs,’ she said and added quickly, ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’ He shook his head. ‘Just thick, ignorant thugs.’
Duggan started pedalling with one foot and threw his other leg over the saddle and cycled away slowly, keeping to the tracks where the light shower of snow had been turned to slush by car wheels. He almost felt a twinge of sympathy for Quinn, who was trying to ignore the political tensions under his nose by moving his interests into a political fantasy land. And there was Gerda, too, trying to shake off the world she’d been born into, but with greater reason. And the O’Sheas, now among the powers that be. And maybe harbouring Hermann Goertz.
The morning was brisk, the sun bright and the air still sharp. Ranelagh was busy with Saturday shoppers, the footpaths more crowded than the roads. He sped by, weaving behind two women pushing prams across the street and headed back towards the city. He was about to cross the humpback bridge at Charlemont Street when he thought he should let Gifford know that he’d found out who the woman was and turned onto Canal Road. The canal was still, reflecting back the sky’s blue and hiding its usual murkiness. The snow lay pristine on its far bank.
Gifford’s flat wasn’t far away, in Heytesbury Street, and he crossed at the next bridge and freewheeled down to Harrington Street and turned right at the church. He propped his bicycle beside the railings outside the house and realised it was too early to knock on the door: Gifford would still be asleep after his night shift. He tore the back off an envelope and wrote a message and pushed it through the letterbox of the basement door. A noise inside stopped him as he was about to turn away and he waited for a moment, undecided. There was no further sign of life, so he left.
Captain Sullivan raised his head from his arms resting on top of a typewriter and gave Duggan a bleary look as he came into the office.
‘Been up all night again?’ Duggan asked, tossing his overcoat onto a spare chair.
Sullivan straightened up. ‘Got a few hours’ sleep but I’d be better off if I hadn’t got any.’
‘Any more news from Terenure?’
‘German bombs again,’ Sullivan shrugged.
‘But nobody dead this time.’
‘They were lucky. Especially one family, who used to live on the South Circular. In one of the houses that was bombed the other night.’
‘You’re joking me,’ Duggan looked at him in astonishment.
Sullivan shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh. ‘It’s true. I wouldn’t want to live near them wherever they move to next. It looks like Adolf has personally targeted them.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Duggan shook his head. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Would you like to live beside them?’
‘I mean the Luftwaffe can’t be targeting a single family.’
‘I wouldn’t want to take any chances. Would you?’ Sullivan paused. ‘You know the other house hit belonged to Jews.’
‘Jesus,’ Duggan said, thinking of Gerda and how she would take that news. ‘They can’t be targeting them. A needle in a haystack.’
‘Maybe someone’s pinpointing them.’
‘Even so,’ Duggan said. ‘How could they hit specific houses?’
‘Maybe they have a secret weapon of some kind. Like the British with their radio detection thing.’
‘And why would they have hit that house in Carlow if they had? Killing people in the middle of nowhere.’
Sullivan was about to answer but his gaze shifted and Duggan felt a slap on his back. ‘You got something for me?’ Captain Anderson from the British section said as he turned.
‘Not yet,’ Duggan said. ‘My source is down the country.’
‘Doesn’t he have a phone?’
‘He doesn’t like talking on the phone.’
Anderson gave a short laugh. ‘Wise man. When’s he back?’
‘Monday, probably.’
‘You’ll talk to him then,’ Anderson’s Belfast accent made it sound even more like an order. ‘Impress on him the importance of linking us up with his source. In the national interest.’
Duggan nodded, curbing his instinctive reaction that Timmy didn’t need to be told by Anderson what was in the national interest. ‘By the way,’ he said instead, ‘do you know anything about an Englishman called Roderick or Roddy Glenn?’
‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’ Anderson propped himself against the desk.
‘He’s an artist.’
‘One of the conscientious objectors? The group of English artists who’ve come here to avoid the war. Say they’re pacifists or conscientious objectors. Maybe just dodging conscription.’
‘I don’t know,’ Duggan said. ‘He’s hanging round a café used by the German internees. Keeps trying to talk to them. ‘
‘Ah,’ Anderson nodded in satisfaction. ‘An agent provocateur.’
‘Says he has information for them. But they won’t talk to him.’
‘Yeah,’ Anderson nodded again. ‘They’re right. Brits love that sort of stuff. Psychological operations, they call them.’
‘So he’s a British agent,’ Sullivan intervened. ‘You should be keeping an eye on him.’
Anderson gave him a scathing glance over his shoulder and said to Duggan, ‘We’re up to our necks at the moment. Fishermen flooding in.’
‘Fishermen?’
‘Retired English colonels pretending to be here for the start of the salmon season. Going around the west trying to catch German submarines refuelling in quiet bays.’
‘I thought they’d given up on that,’ Duggan said.
‘They’d still love to catch us out. Really put the cat among the pigeons.’
‘But it’s not true,’ Duggan protested. ‘There are no U-boats coming ashore.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Anderson shrugged. ‘We have to keep an eye on them anyway. See where they’re going. Who they’re talking to. Some fuckers down there’ll tell them anything for a few pints. Or just for the hell of it.’ He paused. ‘You’re from down there, aren’t you?’
‘Sort of,’ Duggan admitted. ‘Nowhere near the coast though.’
‘So you know what I mean,’ Anderson straightened himself up. ‘What’s his name again? That English artist?’
‘Roddy Glenn.’
‘You have someone covering that café, don’t you?’ Anderson waited for Duggan to nod in agreement. ‘Keep an eye on him. And let me know if anything transpires.’
‘We’ve got our hands full with the Germans,’ Sullivan interrupted. ‘You might have heard they’re bombing us every night.’
Anderson gave him a sardonic wink, clapped Duggan on the shoulder and left.
‘Fucking northerners,’ Sullivan grunted. ‘Think they can come down here and order everyone around.’
‘You better get used to it,’ Duggan laughed. ‘Partition’s not going to last forever.’
Sullivan snorted and asked him for a cigarette. Duggan lit one for himself and slid his case and lighter down the table. ‘Where’s the commandant?’ he asked through the smoke.
Sullivan lit his cigarette before replying. ‘At another meeting with civil servants. Trying to deci
de whether to sound air raid sirens or not the next time a plane approaches Dublin.’ He slid the cigarette case and lighter back to Duggan.
‘What’re they going to do?’
‘Who knows. The boss thinks they shouldn’t unless a fleet of bombers approaches. Anyway, who’s going to sleep in their beds tonight if they’ve got a shelter? And if they haven’t …’ Sullivan shrugged the thought away. ‘By the way, he wants everyone on standby for another raid. So no more of your sudden disappearances.’
Duggan grunted. ‘Are you finished using that typewriter as a pillow?’
‘It’s all yours.’
Duggan carried it back to his place and put in two sheets of paper with a carbon between them and typed the details of his conversation with Mrs Quinn. The next move was obviously to put surveillance on Mrs O’Shea, let her lead them to Goertz. Or maybe talk to her about his whereabouts. Her husband’s connections made either option sensitive, but they needed to talk to Goertz, as the commandant had said, see if he could explain what the bombing was all about. Which didn’t mean they had to talk to him in person. Indeed, it might be better if they didn’t, keep him at arms length in case the British found out about it. If they talked to him through an intermediary. Like Mrs O’Shea.
He finished typing his note about Mrs Quinn’s information, stubbed out his cigarette and leaned back and closed his eyes and thought of Gerda and her head on his shoulder and his arms around her.
Ten
Duggan chained his bicycle to a lamp standard across the road from the Ha’penny Bridge and walked along Liffey Street, taking his time. People hurried by him in the gloom, trying to pick their steps carefully on the slush and snow, well wrapped against the cold. The lights were going out in shops and the crash of shutters coming down broke the sound of hurrying feet. At the corner of Abbey Street he bought an Evening Herald from a newsboy and crossed, timing his way between cyclists and stepping over two lumps of horse shit, still steaming as a dray clomped westwards.
