In the Dark River
Page 16
Chapter 19
Years of police work had brought him to an understanding that there could be many different and contradictory aspects to any individual and that character was a complex thing. Experience had taught him that sometimes in order to relate successfully to people, one had to put different parts of their lives into different spaces. The most brutal and determined criminal could turn out to be a loving spouse or caring parent. The most dedicated professional man could be cold and uncaring to his own flesh and blood. Thus, when he was in the art school in Thomas Street, Swallow thought only of Lily Grant as the class teacher. It was as if she ceased to be Maria’s sister and thus his sister-in-law. He became oblivious of the fact that she was Harry Lafeyre’s fiancée, and that they were to be married in the autumn. His relationship with her in the art school classroom was that between a willing, if average, pupil and a patient, talented teacher.
He had expected that when he would re-appear at the painting class, after an absence of almost a month, there would be something of a welcome from his teacher. But the moment he saw Lily’s unsmiling face he realised that the woman now glaring at him was not looking upon him as a returned prodigal but as her troubled sister’s neglectful husband.
‘Mr Swallow. We haven’t seen you here for a while.’
Her tone was curt. Cold almost.
‘I’ve been busy, Lily. Professionally, I mean.’
She smiled in greeting as other members of the class assembled, taking their work and settling in at their accustomed places.
‘So I’ve heard,’ she answered him. ‘You’ve had difficulties getting home to your wife at any reasonable hour.’
Clearly, she had been in recent conversation with Maria. He knew that was perfectly reasonable, but it irritated him. Notwithstanding, he decided to ignore the implied reprimand.
‘I hope you can help me to make up for lost time with my assignment,’ he said evenly.
Lily effected a sorrowful sigh.
‘Oh, we’ve moved on from the seascape assignments. Yours is over there on the bench.’
She nodded to the other side of the room.
‘We’re doing the human form again this week and next. I was too ambitious in moving the class on from it earlier in the year.’
He was disappointed. He believed he had made progress with the seascape depicting the Shelley Banks. He disliked working on the human form because he was not very good at it. But there might be an advantage to be gained if the class was to focus on the human form. The man who modelled for the class was none other than Charlie Vanucchi, the leader of the city crime gang of that name.
Swallow needed to talk to Charlie Vanucchi.
‘I was hoping you might give me some help with the seascape,’ he said to Lily.
She stepped to the window, away from the others and beckoned to him to follow.
‘Really, Joe, I think you’d make better use of your time today caring for Maria than being here. The fact is that her spirits are quite low.’
‘You know that I care for her very well,’ he said coolly. ‘I’ve tried very hard to help restore her in every way that I can. But she’s quite unresponsive. I’m not sure there’s much more I can do until she decides to help herself or at least allow others to help her.’
‘I know she’s difficult just now,’ Lily answered. ‘She’s even snappy with me, but she’s been through such a lot. You have to understand how these things affect a woman. She’s not chosen to be melancholic, you know.’
Before he could respond, Charlie Vanucchi came through the door, shrouded in a heavy, grey blanket that covered him from shoulder to ankle. He made his way, smiling, through the class, to the model’s seat at the centre of the circle of student painters. He caught Swallow’s eye and grinned cheerily.
‘Ah, Mister Swalla’ isn’t it won’erful how we’re brung together be the love of art?’
Lily had once shown Swallow some of Vanucchi’s own sketches in charcoal. He had to admit grudgingly that the gangster had a certain, primitive talent, probably superior to his own. He often wondered if Vanucchi’s decision to enroll in the class had been a calculated taunt. The relationship between detective and criminal was complex. Vanucchi sometimes acted as Swallow’s informant when he picked up information about Fenians and other political extremists. And on occasion, when other detectives were on Vanucchi’s trail for some crime, Swallow had marked his cards, enabling him to stay in the clear. Charlie Vanucchi was useful to Swallow on the streets of Dublin. He was no use to him behind bars.
At some stage, Vanucchi had also realised that the physiognomy he had inherited from his Neapolitan ancestors, with dark features, sallow skin and a lean, muscular body, made him a suitable subject for student groups like this. Swallow reckoned he enjoyed the element of self-exhibition involved. The attraction in posing nude for up to two hours in a frequently cold and draughty classroom was hardly the shilling fee he received from the Municipal School of Art.
He nodded in response, pointing to the clock and then to the door, indicating to Vanucchi that he wanted to talk to him when the class had ended. Vanucchi confirmed his understanding with a wink. Then he let the blanket fall to the ground and with a broad grin to the class, assumed his classic pose, legs slightly bent, torso forward and chin resting on an upturned palm, imitating some classical statue from antiquity.
Lily said a few, brief words of welcome and thanked the model, as convention required.
‘Pencil or charcoal sketch only, please, ladies and gentlemen,’ she told the class. ‘We’ll take, say forty-five minutes and then see how we’re doing. I’d be particularly happy for you to focus on the model’s facial structure and muscles as well as the neck and shoulders. But you may prefer to work on other parts of the anatomy. It’s up to yourselves.’
The door opened again just as the students’ pencils and charcoal sticks started to move across their drawing pads.
Katherine Greenberg stepped into the classroom, mouthed an apology and started to make her way towards her customary place at the side of the circle, next to Swallow.
‘Well, Miss Greenberg,’ Lily exclaimed. ‘This seems to be the day we welcome back all of our lost lambs.’
Katherine smiled at her just a little too sweetly as she opened her portfolio.
‘Thank you, Miss Grant. I’m sorry I’m a little late.’
‘You can see what we’re at, Miss Greenberg?’
Swallow smothered a grin. Katherine was by far the best talent in the class. Two of her watercolours had been accepted for showing in the spring by the Royal Dublin Society. And she had been singled out for mention in the quarterly report of the art school’s council. Lily was thus obliged to treat her with a degree of respect that belied a conviction that her star-pupil had romantic feelings towards Joe Swallow. The fact that they long pre-dated his marriage to her sister was beside the point.
‘Thank you, Miss Grant,’ Katherine dropped her voice, not to disturb the others. ‘I’ll just carry on here with the subject, if that’s suitable.’
She gestured to Vanucchi, reclining in his natural state.
Lily inclined her head in polite acknowledgement.
‘Of course.’
The class worked on steadily for about three quarters of an hour. The only sounds disturbing the quiet of the room were the scratching of pencils and charcoals and an occasional murmured comment or observation from Lily as she moved behind each of the students, appraising their work. When she called the break, just before three o’clock, most of the students adjourned, as usual, to the canteen for a cup of tea.
Katherine stayed at her place and turned to Swallow.
‘So, we’ve both decided to stop playing truant and get back to pursuing our muses,’ she smiled. ‘I didn’t really expect to see you, after what you told us the other evening when you came to visit. And what with all these other crimes being reported in the newspapers. I feel so sorry for those people attacked in their home out at Templeogue Hill.’
‘Ah,’ she waved a hand theatrically. ‘You gave me the encouragement. Besides, my father says he thinks he might have some useful information for you on those items you brought in to us. He’d like you to come by to talk to you again when you can.’
She paused momentarily.
‘I could have some supper for you, if you’d like.’
‘Thank you. Tell him I’ll do that just as soon as I can. I doubt it’ll be this evening though. I’ve got a lot of police business in hand. Speaking of which, I need to have a word with our model.’
He consciously did not respond to her offer of supper. He hoped that perhaps she would think he had not heard.
Charlie Vanucchi had re-appeared in the room, swathed in his woollen blanket, a steaming mug of tea clutched in his hand.
He followed Swallow out into the corridor.
Swallow indicated a quiet alcove off the classroom corridor.
‘Now, Charlie, I want you to do a little favour for me.’
Chapter 20
Mossop had set up a review meeting at Exchange Court for six o’clock. In addition to himself as bookman, it comprised Swallow, with Mick Feore, Eddie Shanahan and Stephen Doolan. A review meeting was just that. Most of the detectives and uniformed officers would still be out on inquiries, trying to complete their jobs list. The known results of the day’s work, such as they were, would be considered briefly and the bookman would prepare reports for a full case conference in the morning.
Feore was dejected. His men had drawn blanks everywhere in their efforts to identify the woman in the river from the missing persons list .
‘She’s none of the four we’ve been trying to trace,’ he said wearily. ‘Mary Dunne turns out to have gone home to her mother in Galway to get away from her husband. Matilda Evans went out to Kingstown to get a job as a kitchen-maid. She likes the sea air so she didn’t come back to Dean Court and didn’t tell anyone. Mary Nelson from Portobello is deceased. She died of tuberculosis in the North Dublin Union but the family were ashamed to tell anyone. Annie Boland from Rathfarnham turns out to have run away with a farmer’s son from out by Firhouse. They didn’t think she was good enough for their darling heir. His family thinks they went to Scotland.’
Eddie Shanahan’s inquiries on the McCartan robbery had borne no fruit either. Nothing of significance had turned up in the checks on the hotels and guesthouses. No informants or friendly sources in bars or doss-houses or in the brothels at Monto had anything unusual to pass on. There was no word of unusually large sums of money being flashed anywhere.
‘We’ve got Spencer’s likeness out to every station, with spare copies for beat-men to show around,’ he told the group. ‘But there’s nothing back yet from the lads checking the trains.’
Stephen Doolan reported that his teams had completed their searches along the Poddle and its underground tributaries. They had collected a great variety of old clothes and footwear, empty bottles, broken crockery, tin cans and pieces of sacking, bits of rope and twine along the river bank. These were now stored in the Kevin Street depot but there was nothing to connect any of the items to a crime.
‘We checked the access points in the city as well, right down to the culvert in the Upper Yard,’ he said. ‘None of them is really secure. Locks are broken. Hinges gone. Bars rusted away. If someone wanted to drop a body through and into the water it would have been no trouble. All I can say is that we didn’t spot anything suspicious.’
‘So we’ve still no idea how or where she got into the river?’ Swallow asked.
Doolan shrugged.
‘I’m afraid not. It could have been anywhere between the Upper Yard of Dublin Castle and Tallaght.’
There was nothing more to consider. Mossop took his murder book and files and withdrew to the crime office to prepare his paperwork for the morning conference. Swallow did a final check on the correspondence of the day that had accumulated on his desk and locked his office.
The young G-man still on duty in the public office looked up as he came down the stairs.
‘There y’are, Inspector. I was just about to go up to you. A young lad just dropped this in for you. Said it’s urgent.’
He noted with satisfaction that the novice officer had picked up some manners since earlier, addressing him by rank. Perhaps someone else had checked him during the day.
He took the plain white envelope and withdrew the single sheet inside. The message was signed ‘HORSEMAN’ and comprised just one line.
2 AT 9
Number 2 was the location code for The Brazen Head public house. Number 9 was the hour at which Dunlop would be there.
He guessed that Dunlop needed time at the newspaper office to type up his reports after his return from Belfast, and he probably didn’t particularly want to meet Swallow at any of the public houses where other reporters would be drinking at the end of the working day. That suited him fine. The Brazen Head on Merchant’s Quay was convenient and he liked its dark snugs and aged wooden counters, polished to a shine by the elbows of generations of Dublin drinkers.
He left the building and crossed Dame Street into Parliament Street. He had time in hand so he decided to walk along the quays. He liked this closing time of day in the city, particularly in the summer. The sun was low to the west, streaking distant clouds with red. The sky over the city was clear and the air was balmy, as it usually is when the meteorological phenomenon that is the ‘evening temperature inversion’ occurs over Dublin Bay.
Unusually, the Liffey was being pushed back upstream by a high tide from the bay, its salty freshness dissipating the river’s customary odours of sludge and mud. He crossed the quay to the footpath alongside the granite embankment wall, stepping smartly to avoid a steam tram, hissing and clanging its way towards the Phoenix Park. The still, evening air carried the laughter of the young couples on the vehicle’s open deck, making their way to stroll in the Park’s rolling acres, or perhaps by Islandbridge, where the river left the city behind and started to flow through wooded countryside.
It seemed an eternity since he and Maria had done the same as these happy couples, walking and talking and making plans for when the baby would arrive. When Swallow came home, leaving his police work behind him, Maria would hand over the running of Grant’s to Dan Daly and the staff and they would take the tram to Parkgate Street. They usually went to The People’s Gardens, between Chesterfield Avenue and the RIC Depot, so that Maria did not have to walk too far from the tram stop to enjoy its array of plants and shrubs. It was said that there was at least one thing growing in the gardens from every country in the Empire. They would sit by the little ornamental lake, watching the water-fowl, the swooping swallows chasing insects in the warm evening air and even the occasional deer, coming in from the open park for a cooling drink.
Everything was right then. They were happy in their marriage, living in the spacious accommodation over Grant’s. Maria had already started to convert one of the bedrooms to be a nursery. She had moved the bed and the furniture out to make way for a cradle and had the walls hung with special wallpaper, printed with soft animal faces, from the Arnott’s store on Henry Street. When the baby would be born, they had agreed, Maria would withdraw, at least for a while, from the day-to-day running of Grant’s. That might be the right time, perhaps, for him to take his pension, step out of the police and become a full partner with her in the running of the business.
It all seemed so long ago now, although it was less than a year. It had been a happy interlude that he had never expected to enjoy, in a life that was otherwise largely marked by disappointment, failure and loss. The only success he could point to in his life was as a police detective. Not bad, it might be said. Some might even envy it. Passable pay. Plenty of variety. Secu
rity. A pension at the end of it. He was good at what he did. Was not his promotion the evidence of that? He even liked the work. So why did it all taste like so much dust in his mouth?
He wondered what Maria would be doing at that moment. Grant’s should be picking up as the evening closed in. But it would not be overflowing with custom. It was Thursday, almost the end of the week, when the meagre wages paid out to Dublin workers on the previous Friday would be spent, for the most part. That was why Thursday was the pawnbrokers’ busiest day. A good proportion of the money crossing the counters in the city’s pubs this evening would have been raised on the back of humble goods put into hock by their owners for a shilling or two.
He hoped Maria would be downstairs in the select bar, presiding as she always did, coiffed and formal and very much in charge of her house. Perhaps he should divert to James’s Street on his way to The Brazen Head to see. He could check by looking through the window from the street without having to go inside. But if she was not on the floor, he knew, she would in all probability be in the first-floor parlour, sitting, sad and silent in the dusk. And on this occasion, he knew, he had to be elsewhere. He could not go upstairs to comfort her. Not now. So what would be the point of knowing, he asked himself.
Sooner or later, he knew, they would have to resume their conversation and he would try to bring the pieces of their relationship back together again. Either that or it would wither and die. Neither of them wanted that, he believed. Perhaps the price he would have to pay would be to get out of the police and commit to working with Maria on the business. She was not a very young woman but she was not past child-bearing. The doctors agreed there was no reason why she could not have another child. Perhaps it might be possible to get back to where it had been before and retrieve the happiness. But he could not start down that road this evening.
The Brazen Head was not as quiet as he had expected. Two parties of naval ratings had somehow found their way there from their frigates, moored at the North Wall, evidently with money to spend. He liked to quote an observation once offered by John Mallon, that publicans along the river owed a great debt of gratitude to Her Majesty’s Exchequer and the Royal Navy. Moreover, he reasoned, members of the Dublin police should be thankful that rowdy sailors helped to keep them busy and in their jobs.