Echobeat

by Joe Joyce

  ‘The British haven’t come back yet with any info about her.’

  ‘But they know we know about Glenn. If he’s one of them.’

  McClure came around his desk. ‘Yep. But we’re not likely to upset their operation. And the fact that they know we know gives us another card to play if we need it for something else.’

  Duggan laughed, thinking Timmy was wasted in politics: he’d love this stuff. He opened the door for McClure to pass through.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ McClure paused. ‘Talk to Benny Reilly. Keep it informal. We’re just suspicious, don’t really know anything.’

  ‘Who’s Marjorie?’ Duggan asked as they went down the corridor.

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘Oh,’ Duggan said, embarrassed that he had gone too far. He knew nothing about McClure’s life outside the office. They had never shared any personal information.

  ‘She wrote the card,’ McClure stopped outside Duggan’s office. ‘Her name’s actually Caroline. You must come around to the house and meet her some day.’

  Sullivan was smirking at him as he came into the office. ‘What?’ Duggan demanded, aware he had heard McClure’s parting comment.

  ‘Like I said,’ Sullivan said. ‘The commandant’s pet.’

  Duggan grunted at him, a dismissive sound.

  ‘I had to tell him,’ Sullivan dropped his voice to a contrite note. ‘He put a gun to my head.’

  ‘Who?’

  Sullivan looked at the open door behind Duggan and waited for him to close it. ‘Anderson,’ he said. ‘He was asking about you.’

  ‘Asking what?’ Duggan demanded, wondering if Sullivan knew Gerda’s real identity and had told Anderson.

  ‘Asking what you were up to. Why you spent so much time out of the office. Using cars like they were your own.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘The truth. I had to,’ Sullivan widened his eyes with innocence. ‘That you’re the commandant’s pet. He lets you do whatever you want. Swan around town. Not have to sit here doing the hard work all day.’

  Duggan wondered if Anderson had actually asked Sullivan anything or if Sullivan was just voicing his own views. ‘What else did he ask?’

  ‘Nothing. Said it was strange that no one seemed to know what you were up to. But I didn’t mention a word about your homo friend.’

  Duggan laughed with relief. ‘I thought you didn’t like Anderson.’

  ‘Pushy fucker,’ Sullivan said. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell him about Gifford. What’s he up to anyway?’

  ‘He thinks we’re holding back information about someone he thinks might be a possible British spy,’ Duggan shrugged.

  ‘You wouldn’t do that,’ Sullivan looked shocked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Duggan said. ‘But he’s got a bee in his bonnet about it for some reason.’

  A cold wind came up the river with the tide, bringing the acrid smell of the gasworks farther inland to mix with the bitter tang of hops from the Guinness brewery. Duggan cycled along the northern quays through the afternoon darkness, wishing he had taken a car again and to hell with Anderson. The road was treacherous for the bicycle, the limited lighting making it difficult to distinguish between hard-packed snow and yielding drifts. He hit the side of what he thought was a ball of snow but turned out to be a stone or a frozen lump of horse shit. The front wheel jerked to the right, threatening to unbalance the bike and he slid his foot along the ground to keep it upright. He recovered his equilibrium and pushed on, following the tracks of a horse and cart ahead of him: two messenger boys hung onto its stubby back shafts with a hand, their other hands struggling to keep their handlebars balanced.

  Gifford was waiting for him at the corner of O’Connell Street, between Kapp and Peterson’s tobacconists and Harris’s radio shop, his back against the wall under the unlit neon signs. He had his hands in his pockets, watching the parade of passers-by with the half-sneer of a practised corner boy. Duggan was breathing hard with the extra effort and concentration as he stopped in the gutter and tried to get a stable foothold on the path.

  They went back down Bachelors Walk a short distance and into a narrow laneway that cut through to Middle Abbey Street. Duggan told him his instructions in a low voice as they walked and they worked out how they were going to get Benny to reveal Goertz’s whereabouts without telling him they knew that he was in touch with the German and that he had passed on his coded message to the sailor en route to Lisbon.

  They turned into North Lotts, an unlit laneway of former stables, now mainly stores, their eyes adjusting to the gloom. Above them, the clouds seemed brighter with a dull reflection of the city but there were few lights visible here, an odd pool from a printer’s window or store door ajar. There was no one in sight and the lane’s length was broken only by the shadow of a vehicle a third of the way down. It turned out to be what they hoped it was. Benny Reilly’s van.

  A faint light showed between the cracks of the double doors behind it. Duggan put his bike against the next entrance and nodded to Gifford who knocked on the wicket door. There was a shuffling noise inside, the sound of a latch lifting, and the small door opened inwards. The man inside had to bend down to look up at them. ‘Lads,’ he said, glancing from one to the other, identifying them as policemen.

  ‘Mr Reilly,’ Gifford said as if he had found a long lost friend. ‘Can we come in?’

  Reilly opened the door and they bent down to step through it. There was a bench running around two sides of the garage and various implements and horse harnesses hanging on the third wall. A high barstool stood before the bench at the back wall, close to a lit oil lamp. A closed ledger and an open ink bottle and pen were on the bench in front of the stool. There was a paraffin oil heater on the ground nearby, its dome glowing red, the distinctive smell of its fumes all pervasive.

  Gifford closed his eyes and inhaled. ‘Ah, the smell of paraffin,’ he said. ‘They say it’ll be rarer than perfume in a few months.’

  ‘Aye,’ Reilly nodded as if he had heard a piece of inspired wisdom. He was in his mid-forties, about five foot eight, wiry, and had a deeply furrowed forehead from exaggerating what he thought was an honest face. There was a cigarette propped behind his left ear.

  ‘Surprised you’re wasting it like that,’ Gifford rubbed his hands in front on the heater. ‘But makes it very cosy in here.’

  ‘You have to have a bit of heat and light,’ Reilly pointed to the ledger. ‘Just doing up the accounts. Maybe for the last time.’

  ‘Really?’ Gifford encouraged him.

  ‘The haulage business is fucked, if you’ll excuse the expression. That van outside’s only a liability now.’

  ‘No petrol?’

  Reilly shook his head in affirmation. ‘Only scrap metal without the juice. And I wasted two hundred quid on it last year.’

  ‘You were robbed.’ Gifford said in sympathy.

  ‘I was and all. Nothing but trouble since I got it.’

  ‘I was reading in the paper that there’s a special petrol allowance for lorries and vans that keep essential supplies moving.’

  ‘For farmers and the like,’ Reilly dismissed the idea.

  ‘I’d have thought a man like yourself would be able to get extra petrol for that.’ Gifford moved away from the heater and ran his hand along the bench at the side of the shed, looking at the jumble of items on it.

  ‘That’d be only for the big operators,’ Reilly watched him.

  ‘Essential supplies, though. You’re used to carrying them.’

  ‘In a small way. But you know how it is. It all depends on who you know. Pull.’

  ‘True for you. But you must know lots of people. People you’ve done favours for.’

  ‘I’ll apply anyway and see if anything comes of it.’ Reilly turned to look at Duggan, who was standing in the centre of the floor with his hands in his pockets. Duggan stared back at him.

  ‘You always have the horse and cart.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’
Reilly switched his attention back to Gifford.

  ‘We were out there this morning.’ Gifford stopped beside a weighing scales and took a small rusty weight off one side of the balance. The scales tipped slightly to one side. ‘Tut, tut,’ Gifford smiled at him and hefted the weight in the palm of his hand. ‘Yeah,’ he continued, ‘we were running short of petrol. The woman there said you’d be able to help us.’

  Reilly shook his head in sadness. ‘God love her. She’s a bit simple. Doesn’t keep up with the news.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Gifford took another weight off the bench and balanced it against the one in his other hand. ‘We made it back anyway. Just about.’

  Reilly glanced at Duggan as if he might like to confirm their safe return. Duggan stared back at him. Gifford put down one of the weights and pulled open a drawer beneath them and took out a handful of unused paper bags, all folded flat. ‘So what are you hauling about these days?’

  ‘Anything people want me to,’ Reilly folded his arms, a gesture that said he could go on playing this game for as long as it took. ‘Furniture, stones, clay. Whatever people want me to bring from one place to another. There’s a lot of people moving around these days. You’d be surprised.’

  Gifford touched a box under the counter with his foot and raised his eyebrows in surprise when it did not sound hollow. He bent down and pulled a tea chest part way out and looked into it. ‘Well I never,’ he said. ‘A tea chest with tea in it.’ He straightened up and looked at Duggan. ‘Have you ever seen a tea chest with tea in it?’

  Duggan kept his face straight but Reilly didn’t bother looking at him. ‘Fill a bag there for your mother,’ Reilly said to Gifford.

  ‘I don’t have a mother,’ Gifford pushed the tea chest back with his foot.

  ‘She’s gone to her reward. Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘No.’ Gifford dropped the paper bags into the drawer and shoved it closed with his hip. ‘Never had one. I was found under a head of cabbage in the Castle garden.’

  ‘I know some of the lads there,’ Reilly said. ‘In the Castle.’

  ‘Really?’ Gifford sounded interested. ‘Who?’

  ‘What branch are you in?’

  ‘The Branch.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ Reilly said, relaxing. ‘I wouldn’t know any of you lads.’

  Gifford hefted the weight in his hand. ‘You know any of the lads from weights and measures?’

  ‘I bought those weights from the fucker who sold me the van,’ Reilly flicked another glance at Duggan.

  ‘Him there,’ Gifford nodded at Duggan, picking up on Reilly’s thoughts. ‘He’s from another world altogether.’

  ‘Really?’ Reilly turned to Duggan, knowing that they had come to the point at last.

  ‘These are unusual times,’ Duggan said, taking his hands from his pockets. ‘Dangerous times. And we need all good patriotic Irishmen to keep their eyes open. Especially men who know a lot of people, who move around a lot. To alert us to anything we should know about. Anything out of the ordinary. Especially people out of the ordinary.’

  Reilly nodded his head up and down as if this was all a revelation to him. ‘I know what you mean. We have to protect our position, neutrality.’

  ‘Exactly. So we’re asking people who know what goes on around town to keep us in the picture. About strangers, for instance. For everyone’s sake.’

  ‘Those bombs last week,’ Reilly bit his lip at the memory. ‘We don’t want any more of that here.’

  ‘And we don’t want anyone taking chances with our neutrality. We want to keep out of this war. And we want to know of anything that threatens that. Anything at all.’ Duggan took a piece of paper with a phone number on it from his breast pocket and passed it to Reilly. ‘Would you call me if you come across anything? Ask for Robert.’

  ‘That’s you?’ Reilly took the page and mouthed the number.

  Duggan nodded.

  ‘Just Robert?’

  Duggan nodded again. ‘You can rest assured that anything you tell me will be kept totally confidential. If I’m not there you can leave a message.’

  Reilly folded the note and slipped it into the top pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Okay,’ Gifford interjected, replacing the weight on one side of the balance and watching it fall to the counter with a thud. ‘We’re all clear here?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Reilly patted his top pocket. ‘Couldn’t be clearer.’

  ‘Right,’ Gifford nodded to Duggan.

  Duggan put out his hand and shook Reilly’s, as if they were sealing a deal. ‘We’re counting on people like you in this emergency.’

  Reilly shook his hand and his solemn face broadened into a grin. ‘I’m sure your mother would appreciate a little extra tea.’

  ‘Jaysus,’ Gifford interjected. ‘Fellows like him never have mothers.’

  ‘Another cabbage man?’

  ‘God, no,’ Gifford shuddered. ‘He’s one of those fellows you hear about from Russia. Make them in factories. Not an ounce of human feeling in them. Just mechanical parts. Chop up their own mother for spare parts without a moment’s hesitation. If they had one.’

  ‘Best of luck now,’ Reilly said with a laugh that contained little humour and maybe a touch of nervousness as he showed them out and closed the wicket behind them.

  ‘He’ll do it,’ Gifford said as they emerged from the lane onto Bachelors Walk.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘We’ve threatened him three ways. At least.’

  Duggan straightened his bicycle alongside the footpath, pointing back down the quays. ‘I better make sure that phone line is set up,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll take him a day or two,’ Gifford said. ‘To stumble across Goertz, accidentally like. An amazing coincidence.’

  ‘As long as he tells us where he is. Not where he was two days ago.’

  ‘He’ll give him up,’ Gifford nodded to himself with conviction. ‘Benny’s got to live here. And with us. Interesting, his reference to knowing lads in the Castle.’

  ‘What? He was just trying to figure out who you were.’

  ‘He was trying to figure out if I was one of the competition. Some lads in the detective branch are running their own black market operation. He wanted to know whether we were with them.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Duggan sighed. ‘How long’s that been going on?’

  ‘Since the shortages began to bite and the black market began to explode.’

  ‘And they’re getting away with it?’

  ‘Not for much longer. There’s an inquiry under way. All very hush hush as usual. Benny probably doesn’t know that. Did you notice how the fucker relaxed a little when he realised we weren’t there to put the squeeze on him over his supplies of oil or tea.’

  Duggan shook his head. He was so immersed in his own world that it was almost a shock to hear about ordinary venality.

  ‘There’s always someone at it,’ Gifford pursed his lips and exhaled loudly. ‘In the land of saints and shysters.’

  Gerda’s landlady tightened her lips in a sign of disapproval when she opened the hall door to Duggan. She said nothing, just turned and shouted ‘Gertie’ up the stairs. She waited until Gerda came down and said, ‘This is a respectable house. We don’t allow unannounced callers at this hour of the night.’

  Gerda lifted her overcoat off the hall stand and walked around her. The landlady closed the door behind them without another word and Gerda mimicked her, ‘This is a respectable house’ in a low voice as they went down the path.

  ‘It’s not that late,’ he said as they sat into the car. It was nearly nine o’clock.

  ‘This better be important,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘What?’ A shadow of concern crossed her face.

  ‘I wanted to see you.’ He leant across and kissed her on the lips. She kissed him back quickly and put her palm on his chest and pushed him away.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she said, exaggerating her Cork accent. ‘You
want her to think I’m a right whore altogether.’

  ‘Is she watching?’ Duggan started the car.

  ‘Of course she’s watching.’

  He drove down Iona Road. ‘Where’re we going?’ she asked.

  ‘You have the keys to your office?’ he asked back.

  ‘You should have phoned me.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  She fished in her coat pocket, dangled a ring of keys before his eyes, and rested her head on his shoulder. He leaned his head over to rest on hers and they drove in silence to the city centre. He went down O’Connell Street and turned into Cathedral Street to park. O’Connell Street was busy with people hurrying for their last buses and trams and they threaded their way through a long bus queue and skipped across the road in front of a tram.

  In her office they dropped their coats on the floor and embraced, cold hands reaching under clothes. ‘Aah,’ she shuddered at the touch of his hand on her bare back. ‘Wait a minute. I have a present for us.’

  She went behind her desk and opened a cupboard and took out a folded blanket as well as the rug and held it up in one hand like a trophy. She came back to him and rubbed the soft wool against the side of his face.

  ‘Only nineteen and eleven,’ she said. ‘On sale in Todd Burns’.’

  ‘A bargain.’

  ‘Reduced from two pounds ten.’

  ‘You couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘How could you resist that?’ she smiled and they both laughed at the ease in which they had slid into an old married couple routine.

  The fire in Mr Montague’s office was dead, the few sparks dying almost as suddenly as they were exposed from the ash as he poked at it. She spread the rug on the floor and folded her overcoat into a pillow and they undressed quickly and lay beside each other on the rug and pulled the blanket over them. It was too narrow to cover them completely.

  ‘Won’t work,’ he whispered. ‘My turn to be on top.’

  He shifted position and she tucked the blanket in at their sides and held him tight while they made love. They stayed like that until she said, ‘You’re getting heavier,’ and then they swapped positions, she half-lying on him, her head on his chest and a hand stretched out to his other hip. He dozed off and when he woke again she was still in the same position, breathing in a smooth rhythm. He tried not to move, not sure whether she was awake or asleep, and he listened to the night-time stretches and contractions of the building and smelled the polish of the linoleum, thinking idly that someone had cleaned the office recently. There were no sounds now from the street outside.