In the Dark River

by Conor Brady

  ‘Come on. Tell me. There’s something not right. Is there a problem?’

  ‘Ah, ’tis nothing you need to worry about, Mr Swallow.’

  Swallow perched himself on a bar stool.

  ‘We’ve known each other for a few years now, Dan. I know when you’re happy and I know when you’re out of sorts. So, what’s bothering you?’

  The barman replaced the tankard on the shelf and threw his polishing cloth on the counter.

  ‘Truth to tell, Mr Swallow, I’m thinking it might be time for me to move on. I’ve been here twenty years. I’m not getting any younger and I’m not sure I’m up to the job anymore.’

  ‘That isn’t the way I see it, Dan,’ Swallow said quietly. ‘You’re the head man here. You were head man before Mrs Swallow took over. You know every customer. You keep the place like a palace. Grant’s couldn’t manage without you. And I know I speak for Mrs Swallow too when I say that.’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know about that now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About Mrs Swallow, I suppose. I think she’s not happy with the way things are being done here anymore.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s so, Dan,’ Swallow answered. ‘She always says how much the place depends on you. You’re on top of everything here. You’re looked up to with respect by the staff. Every single apprentice we’ve ever had here has praised you for the way you’ve taught them the trade.’

  Dan shrugged.

  ‘Maybe that was the case in earlier times, but Mrs Swallow doesn’t seem to think so now. She’s … well … as likely to find fault now whenever she’s in the place.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t want to make anything of it … but this morning she said the countertops were filthy. They weren’t. I wiped them down with carbolic and hot water and dried them myself, same as I do every morning. You could eat your dinner off them.’

  Swallow nodded.

  ‘I understand. I know you scrub every square inch of them. Look, don’t make too much of it. She’s not in the best of order since she lost the baby. We’ve all got to be a bit patient for a while.’

  Dan reached for another tankard and started to polish it with his cloth.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Mr Swallow. She’s always been a lady to me. I know it’s not been an easy time for her. Or for you either, I’m sure.’

  ‘No, Dan. You’re right there. It’s been a difficult time. She’s had a lot to deal with. And I’m not always the best one to rely on for sailing in troubled waters.’

  When he went upstairs, Maria was in the dining room.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in last night,’ she greeted him. ‘You must have been very tired after such a long day.’

  She took her seat at the table as Tess came in with the soup tureen.

  Swallow sat opposite and reached for a glass of water. He was still perspiring from the walk in the heat of the day from Exchange Court. There was still work to be done on the night’s crime reports from the divisions, but he told himself it was important to be home to take his mid-day meal with Maria after the previous day’s hasty departure and last night’s late return.

  ‘I read in the newspaper about finding that poor creature’s remains down in the underground river,’ Maria said. ‘What a terrible thing to contemplate. I hope that you’ll be able to find out what happened. It must be dreadful for her family.’

  The vegetable soup was thick and very hot, an unappetising choice on a warm, summer day. But there would be no profit to complaining to Tess. He made a pretence of liking it and refilled his glass with cool water.

  ‘Of course. But I wouldn’t even be sure that we’ll be able to say who she is. We’re trying to check the missing persons lists.’

  He sipped his water and smiled at Maria.

  ‘It’s not really table talk, let’s leave it. I’m sorry I was so late last night. I had to go out to Kingstown with Mallon to meet Mr Parnell at the Salthill Hotel. Did you sleep well? I could hear your breathing this morning as I left.’

  She raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  ‘Mr Parnell? That must have been interesting. Has something important happened?’

  For a moment he was going to tell her about Captain O’Shea’s proposed divorce suit, then he checked himself. It was not that Maria could not be trusted to keep a confidence concerning police business. But she did not need to be burdened with knowledge of other people’s problems or distress. He sidestepped the question.

  ‘No, it was to advise him of some threats we’d learned of, it’s routine. The man has a lot of enemies. But, yes, it was interesting. I’d seen him many times and I’d heard him address meetings, but I’d never spoken with him before. He has a very strong presence. Mallon and he have known each other a long time.’

  Maria stiffened slightly.

  ‘If it was just routine, why did you have to travel out to Kingstown in the middle of the night? Couldn’t you just as easily have been at home and left whatever business had to be done to Mr Mallon?’

  He stopped pretending he was enjoying the soup, dropping his spoon noisily into the bowl.

  ‘Please don’t try to interrogate me, Maria. My duty makes a great many demands on me, you know that. I won’t be answerable for my every action in discharging it. Suffice it to say that it was necessary to do my duty.’

  She was silent for a moment. He saw her eyes moisten.

  ‘I waited until midnight,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not easy sitting here on my own, you know. I just wish that …’

  Her voice trailed off.

  He knew that at this point he had to be patient and gentle. He choked back a rising sense of impatience.

  ‘I appreciate that. And I know that every day and every night is difficult since … the baby. I’ve tried to convince you to get out more, enjoy the summer days. I’m sure that would help.’

  ‘You know I’m needed here. I can’t just take off … to the waters … or wherever,’ she answered sharply.

  ‘Dan Daly can manage for a few hours if you’re not there.’

  ‘He’s slowing down. I have to stand behind him now to get anything done. And when it’s done it’s often not done right. Everybody seems to depend on me.’

  ‘I think he believes he’s doing his best and that you’re criticising him.’

  Maria’s eyes blazed.

  ‘Are you telling me that you’ve been discussing me with my employees?’

  The sharpness in her voice had switched to full-blown anger.

  ‘I’d remind you that although I am your wife, I remain the proprietor and the licensee of this house. I will not have my staff discussing the running of this business with my husband. And I expect more of my husband than to have him discussing me with them.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Maria,’ he said evenly. ‘The man was upset and confused. I simply reassured him that he’s well thought of. There wasn’t any discussion, as such.’

  Tess appeared at the dining room door, carrying the main course on a tray. Maria swung around to her.

  ‘Go away, please, Tess. Mr Swallow and I need to have a private conversation.’

  ‘Now,’ she slapped the table with an outstretched palm, ‘I have offered you, more than once, the opportunity to come into this business with me on an equal basis. But you wouldn’t do it. So, having that decision, you have no say in how I run it or how I deal with my employees. You’ve refused an offer that most men would jump at because you want to stick with your wretched police work … and we’ve seen the unhappy results of that selfish, stupid decision.’

  She hesitated for a moment, drawing breath. Swallow knew what was coming.

  ‘That decision cost the life of our child,’ she sobbed. ‘Our beautiful child.’

  It was a monstrous charge. And yet, he knew, there was truth to it. If he had left G-division, as Maria had wanted, he would not have been in conflict with the security department. There would have been no raid on the house by Smith-Ber
ry’s agents. There would have been no confrontation between Maria and the agent known as Major Kelly. No fall on the stairs. No miscarriage. No lost baby.

  He felt angry and empty all at once. Now Maria had her head in her hands and had started to sob openly. A gentle, sorrowful sobbing, as she rocked forward and back over the table.

  He had no answer to give and he could think of nothing to say that might alleviate her distress.

  ‘I’m going back to work,’ he said, quietly, after a few moments.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Two developments while you were out, Boss,’ Pat Mossop was waiting for him on the first floor of Exchange Court before he got to his office. Swallow could see he wanted to impart whatever news he had as quickly as possible.

  He gestured to Mossop to follow him inside and closed the door behind them.

  ‘There’s a note from Dunlop,’ Mossop said, handing him an envelope and a single sheet of plain paper. ‘It arrived in the post an hour ago.’

  Dublin’s postal delivery system was so efficient that correspondents might send letters and receive replies to them up to three times in any one day. The franking on the envelope told him it had been posted at the General Post Office in Sackville Street before half-ten that morning. It was addressed to Mossop and marked ‘private and confidential’.

  Swallow placed the single, typewritten sheet on the desk. Dunlop had chosen his language with care so that anyone intercepting the letter could not possibly understand its references.

  The goods that were expected have arrived and are currently being examined. They would appear to be as described and of the declared quality. However it is apparent from my superiors’ initial reaction that they are unlikely to be suitable. They will not meet the needs of this firm and will be returned, probably on the day after tomorrow.

  It is likely that a new buyer will be found very swiftly with the goods on the market and that a completed sale will be announced within days if not hours.

  Horseman.

  ‘I suppose that means more to you, Boss, than it does to me,’ Mossop said, looking quizzically at him.

  ‘I had a meeting with Dunlop and I briefed Chief Mallon. He and I went out to the Salthill Hotel last night to see Mr Parnell and we told him what we knew. He’s going to see if he can persuade O’Shea to drop the divorce suit. Dunlop is trying to play Polson along for a few days to give us a bit of time. Whether it will work, I don’t know.’

  Mossop shrugged.

  ‘Well, it’s good that Mr Parnell will try at least. I imagine he can be fairly persuasive when he wants to be.’

  ‘There was something else, Pat?’ Swallow queried him.

  ‘Yes, Boss. Dr Lafeyre sent a message to meet him at Marlborough Street as soon as you can. He’s going to be there for the next few hours.’

  ‘I’ll go across there immediately. Copy that note over to Chief Mallon and I’ll see you here later.’

  He stopped at the Palace Bar on Fleet Street as he made his way to Marlborough Street and ordered a pork pie and a glass of ale. He was hungry, having abandoned his dinner and he needed something to wash away the taste of Tess’s heavy soup. The bar was quiet. There were no pressmen from The Irish Times. They were at work, reporting the courts and the other business of the city. It would be different in the evening time when they would have completed their work, but for the moment he was happy to enjoy the calm of the empty bar without company.

  A cooling wind came up the river from the bay and stirred the city air as he crossed the bridge to Sackville Street. He grinned at the sight of the seagulls sitting atop John Henry Foley’s monument honouring the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell. It was too imperial in its tone, he always thought, presenting the acknowledged leader of the common people and the author of Catholic Emancipation in the style of an emperor. Foley had died before it was completed a few years previously. Swallow reckoned he would have been unhappy to see it become a favoured target for defecation by the big, raucous sea birds. Perhaps one day, he thought, there would be a statue to Charles Stewart Parnell as well. In his quest for Home Rule he was following in the footsteps of the Liberator. However, that likelihood would be considerably diminished if he became the object of condemnation as an adulterer. That would be ironic, he told himself, given O’Connell’s reputation as a prodigious begetter of children out of wedlock. Some wag had it that one could hardly throw a stone anywhere in Kerry without hitting one of O’Connell’s offspring.

  When he got to Marlborough Street, Harry Lafeyre was just finishing a post mortem in the examination room.

  ‘An eejit of a baker’s lad above in Stoneybatter that got his shirt caught in the dough mixer,’ the surly Scollan informed him, jerking his thumb towards where the city medical examiner was bent over a corpse on one of the steel tables. ‘Broke his neck, I’d say … don’t know why the doctor is takin’ so long about it. But he’ll be done in a couple o’ minutes.’

  Lafeyre removed his heavy rubber gloves and apron, washed his hands with carbolic soap and led Swallow into the smaller of the morgue’s two laboratories.

  ‘There’s some very interesting material here, Joe,’ he smiled, emphasising each word very slowly. That smile always told Swallow that Lafeyre had important information and he was going to enjoy imparting it.

  ‘First, let me tell you about the ligature.’

  He took a rectangular, glass container from the shelf and laid in on the bench. Swallow could see the thin rope, now washed and clean and lying in a short loop.

  ‘This,’ Lafeyre tapped the box two or three times, ‘is somewhat surprising.’

  ‘Could we skip the theatrics, Harry, and tell me what it is?’

  Lafeyre’s grin was somewhere between self-satisfied and triumphant.

  ‘This, my dear Detective Inspector, I believe to be part of a restraint used for an animal. In simple terms, an animal’s tether or lead.’

  He tipped the thin rope out of the glass box and placed one end of it under the Grubb microscope.

  ‘You can see it’s very tightly woven but also that the fibres have been strained. They’re stretched. But if you look in there between the fibres you can see strands of hair. It’s a coarse, tough, wiry hair. It could be from a lot of animals, I suppose. Maybe a horse or a goat or a dog.’

  Swallow put his eye to the glass. He could clearly see the hairs between the fibres. He nodded approvingly to Lafeyre.

  ‘I don’t suppose you can tell me what breed of goat they came from?’

  Lafeyre knew the question was facetious.

  ‘Ah, you’re being smart. You should be kneeling down in admiration and thanking me.’

  Swallow laughed.

  ‘Good work, Harry. You’re right. But give me a guess.’

  ‘Ah, you need a specialist in veterinary medicine, I’d say. There aren’t many of those around although there’s talk of establishing a college to train people in animal medicine. I’m only a doctor for humans.’

  ‘You should have been a polisman, Harry.’ Swallow laughed again. ‘You’re far too smart for doctoring.’

  ‘You’ve seen nothing yet, my friend,’ Lafeyre ignored the jibe and reached for a second, larger glass box. Swallow could see that it contained the leather belt he had retrieved from the Poddle as well as a small metal box, perhaps three inches cubed.

  Lafeyre spread the belt on the workbench, placing a glass evaporating dish beside it. The belt had cracked and blistered along its length as it had dried out. Swallow could see that Lafeyre had unpicked much of the stitching that had held the two layers of leather together.

  ‘The belt itself tells us nothing of significance,’ Lafeyre said. ‘The leather seems to be cowhide but if it’s American, for example, it could be bison. It’s impossible for me to tell. But now, here’s the real find.’

  He reached for the metal box, lifted the lid and turned it upside down on the dish.

  ‘What do you think of that, Inspector Swallow?’

  Swallow found himself lo
oking at a collection of glittering coins. Gold half sovereigns. And scattered among the brilliant discs, perhaps a score of bright, sparkling stones, flashing white and blue.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Harry. Are those what I think they are?’

  Lafeyre picked up one of the stones between thumb and forefinger and held it to the light streaming through the window.

  ‘I’m not an expert but I saw a lot of these in my time in southern Africa. I even bought a few, straight out of the mines in the East Rand. There’s a couple of them in the ring I gave to Lily when we became engaged. I’d say these are good quality diamonds. They’re not the very best but they’ve got good light. Very little colouring, and they’ve been expertly cut and polished.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘The coins and the stones were stitched into the belt, between the two layers of leather. Whoever had them obviously wanted to keep them safe and reckoned that the best place was around their waist.’

  ‘Any idea of what the whole lot is worth?’

  ‘There are twenty-three stones. They’re high carat so you’d really need a skilled jeweller to say what the monetary value might be, but you’re talking about some hundreds of pounds. And, of course, there’s the sovereigns. These are all 1874 or 1859. I think that 1859 is rather rare. Again, you’d need professional advice on that.’

  Swallow scribbled details silently in his notebook for a few moments.

  ‘Right,’ he nodded to Lafeyre, ‘let’s hypothesise that the dead woman was wearing the belt. And that she was garrotted with the rope. What sort of conclusions can we draw from what we know so far?’

  Lafeyre grimaced.

  ‘You’re the detective. I’m only the technical consultant here. But I suppose we can say she was a woman who had some means of acquiring these valuable goods. And I suppose we can surmise that whoever killed her didn’t realise that belt she was wearing had all this loot in it, otherwise it wouldn’t have gone into the Poddle with her, would it?’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The gold fillings in her teeth tell us she wasn’t poverty- stricken, so maybe – just maybe – she was a woman of means. Not a housemaid or a washerwoman.’