by Conor Brady
The man called Murphy punched him hard in the face so that he fell to the floor. A boot crashed down and he felt cartilage crack in his nose. Then there was a warm gush of blood down his lower face and neck.
Now Teddy finally lost control of his bladder. He felt the hot urine run down his legs and soaking his trousers.
‘Speak when yer fuckin’ spoken to,’ the man who called himself Murphy said. ‘Answer my fuckin’ questions. Salesman, my arse, yer up to no good, crawlin’ around the Liberties of Dublin all fuckin’ day. Did ye think ye weren’t noticed?’
The door opened, and a man stepped into the room. Teddy tried to focus through eyes blinded with pain and tears. He had the impression that the newcomer was tall and well-dressed. A smell of cologne contested with the foul air of the storeroom.
Teddy’s tormentors came to attention after a fashion. They stepped back from their victim on the floor.
‘Mr Vanucchi,’ the man called Murphy said respectfully. ‘You … you heard we have this fella here.’
The visitor peered down at Teddy’s huddled and bloody form as if examining something suspect on a market stall.
‘Who is he?’
‘An English fucker. Says the name is Jones. Says he’s a salesman. He had a bundle o’cash, more than fifty quid. An’ a gun.’ Murphy took the Colt from his pocket.
‘What were you plannin’ to do with him?’ Vanucchi asked.
‘Knock him on the head, wait till dark and drop him down the drain behind the brewery,’ Murphy said in a tone that anticipated approval.
Vanucchi thought silently for a moment.
‘Ah no, I don’t think so,’ he chuckled.
He drew an Evening Mail from his pocket and held it out.
‘I think this fella’ is too valuable to be let off down the sewer.’ He tapped the newspaper. ‘This fella is in the news. If he’s who I think he is, every bobby in Dublin is lookin’ for him. I can do us a couple of favours with the lads in the G-Division over this.’
He gestured to the porter keg.
‘Sit him over there and clean him up.’
They dragged Teddy to a sitting position. One man produced a flannel handkerchief and rubbed it across his features. Vanucchi leaned forward.
He caught the odour of Teddy’s urine and stepped back a pace.
‘Jesus, you’re a stinky fucker. Pissed yerself.’
Teddy sat in terrified silence.
‘Let me to introduce meself. My name is Charlie Vanucchi. You can call me ‘Mister Vanucchi.’ I’m a fella of, let’s say, a lotta’ influence around these parts. Me associates here would be happy to drop ye in the Liffey and, for meself, I couldn’t care if they did. But I think it might be in yer own interests and mine if we were a bit more imaginative. Do ye get me drift?’
Teddy nodded stiffly.
‘Good. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere. So I suggest ye start by tellin’ me who ye really are, why ye came to Dublin to do yer robbin’ when ye’ve plenty of places to rob in England and who yer boss is.’
Teddy knew that if he was ever again going to see his beloved East End, this Charlie Vanucchi was his best hope. He realised that he had to tell all.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 4TH, 1887
THIRTY-TWO
Swallow presented himself at Mallon’s office in the Lower Yard shortly after 9 o’clock. The chief’s clerk was coaxing a turf fire into life in the grate so that he could boil a kettle for tea.
‘You’ll not see him until th’afternoon,’ the clerk announced on his knees in front of the feeble combustion. ‘Gone to the military across at Parkgate. There’s a meeting with the brass, and then there’s the usual luncheon. I’ll put you down for 3 o’clock.’
‘Three o’clock. Sure, there’s no hurry on anyone. Good luck with the fire. You’ll have a fair thirst by the time you get the tea made.’
The clerk did not miss his sarcasm.
The morning conference held no great promise. For most of those present there was more interest in getting first-hand details of the attempted robbery and shooting at Greenberg’s than in the murder investigations.
‘Great shootin’ I heard,’ Stephen Doolan grinned. ‘A bloody marksman.’
Various G-men went through their reports, detailing their inquiries over the previous twenty-four hours.
The Windsor Hotel on Mecklenburg Street had been raided, searched thoroughly and then put under observation for the night. Not surprisingly, though, the gunman called Teddy had not returned.
Nor had there been any sighting by the beat men. That was surprising. Unless a fugitive had a particularly good hideout, the Dublin Metropolitan Police machine could usually locate its quarry fairly quickly.
‘Duck’ Boyle was engaged in the unusual business of exercising his imagination.
‘Mebbe these two done th’ Ambrose Pollock killin’ too. If they were plannin’ on knockin’ off Greenberg’s mebbe they had a sort of a practice run at Pollock’s?’
‘It’s an angle that could be considered all right,’ Swallow said. ‘But we don’t know if they were even in Dublin when Ambrose Pollock was murdered. The Darby fellow is of borderline intelligence. He can’t read the calendar and he doesn’t know if he’s been here for days or weeks.’
‘Well, Dr Lafeyere says Pollock was dead for a week whin he was found,’ Boyle agreed. ‘And that’s five days since. So they’d have had to have been here twelve days ago. Fellas like thim woulda’ made their presence felt before now. They’d a been in some kind o’ trouble.’
Swallow reckoned that Boyle was probably right. The police network was well tuned to pick up the presence of any new arrivals into the city’s underworld. An observant constable, a curious G-man or an informant would have spotted them and notified Exchange Court.
‘We can question the second fellow about Pollock’s when we get him,’ Doolan said.
‘First he has to be found,’ Boyle retorted. ‘I can’t figger why he hasn’t been spotted around the city.’
Stephen Doolan raised a hand.
‘Did you manage to trace where the silver at Pollock’s came from?’
‘It was made for a family called Gessel. Big landowners in Galway, somewhere close to Loughrea,’ Swallow answered. ‘They just sold out recently and the place was broken up. It seems there’s a Lady Margaret Gessel now living in Sussex who was the last of the family there.’
‘Are we going to try to talk to her?’
‘I think we have to. It’s worth trying to bring it a bit further. I’m going to see Chief Mallon later. I’ll ask him to have one of his London contacts to interview her down in Sussex.’
The conference was about to break up when Mick Feore arrived.
‘Sorry I’m late, Skipper,’ he told Swallow. ‘There was something I needed to look in to.’
‘What’s on your mind, Mick?’ Swallow asked.
Feore had his notebook open.
‘There’s a hall porter at the hotel with a record for assaults on women and for larceny. He’s a fella called Jimmy Rowan, from Limerick, aged around forty. He’s done time in Limerick and Mountjoy. We didn’t get on to him until now because he’s been working under an assumed name. He calls himself Regan now – his mother’s name.’
Swallow sensed a frisson of interest around the room. In his mind’s eye he recalled an image of a porter in a not-too-clean coat operating the front door of the hotel.
‘How did you cop the false name, Mick?’ Doolan asked.
‘He’s not too popular with some of his fellow workers. Aggressive. Throws his weight about, they say. A chambermaid passed the word to one of the Store Street constables. How she knew about his past, I haven’t an idea.’ He smiled with satisfaction. ‘Anyway, when I questioned this fella he admitted who he is and told me about his form. I’ve just been down at DCR asking them to pull out his file. They’ll have it in an hour.’
‘You’d better stay with that inquiry,’ Swallow said. ‘And let us know what they have on him. Any idea of hi
s movements around the time Phoebe disappeared?’
‘The Store Street lads are working on that now. He admits that he was in the hotel, but he claims he was nowhere near the first floor any time around then.’
‘I’ll cross check the statements we already have,’ Mossop offered. ‘It’s possible that someone could’ve mentioned his whereabouts.’
‘Do that, Pat, it might come right.’ Swallow said. ‘God knows, there aren’t too many other possibilities.’
THIRTY-THREE
John Mallon had mixed feelings about luncheons with the army brass. Government policy was to keep the army away from the dirty business of politics and the Land War, and to have the police in the front line. But the civil power might ultimately have to rely on the strength of the military, and so regular briefings with exchanges of intelligence were essential. And, after all, there had to be lunch.
Mallon liked the military for their directness and practicality. They made a refreshing change from the civil servants in the Upper Yard with their careful ambiguities and their cultivated subtleties.
The food and the wines at the officers’ mess were always first class. But the soldiers all seemed to be married to each other’s sisters or cousins. And they came overwhelmingly from a background that Mallon had nothing in common with. He enjoyed the hospitality, but he was always glad to get back to the comfortable familiarity of the Lower Yard at the Castle.
He sensed when Swallow came into his office that he seemed more eager, more energised. He took the chair that Mallon indicated in front of the big oak desk.
‘Good work at Capel Street yesterday, Swallow. The newspapers are full of praise for a change. Do we know anything more?’
‘Not a lot, Chief. The young fellow I shot, Darby, is simple-minded. He’s a known petty criminal in London. A string of convictions for everything from larceny to assault. It’s fairly clear he was the number two man on this job. The other one with the gun hasn’t been picked up yet, which is strange because he doesn’t know his way around Dublin.’
Mallon stroked his short beard. It was a characteristic mannerism when he concentrated.
‘What were they doing here in the first place? They hardly came over specially to rob old Ephram Greenberg. Were they on the run?’
‘Well, that’s the strange thing about it, Chief. It seems they did come to rob Greenberg and his daughter. They wanted some Greek coins she’d bought in recently. And in particular, they wanted to know who she had bought them from.’
‘Greek coins? They’re valuable I assume.’
‘According to old Ephram they’re worth decent money, maybe £20 each in London. But you wouldn’t cross the Irish Sea for them. They’re not the most valuable items known to collectors.’
‘Numismatists,’ Mallon said.
‘Sir?’
‘People who make coin collections, Swallow. The opposite of what you did in medical school, according to yourself.’
Swallow surmised that the wines at the army lunch had been good.
‘So,’ Mallon continued, ‘what does this young Darby fellow say?’
‘He’s told me what he knows, I think. He says the gunman’s name is Teddy. They did time together in Wandsworth. He says that he hasn’t got a second name for him. Ordinarily I wouldn’t believe that two lags who were in together wouldn’t know each other’s full names, but he’s slow-witted. They met some man in London and he set them up for the job. Darby doesn’t know his name either. He says he’s a toff type. I think that’s genuinely about all he knows.’
‘Toff type, eh? Someone with enough money to have their dirty work done by somebody else.’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘What’s so special about the coins? What do the Greenbergs say about it?’
‘It was the daughter, Katherine, who bought them in the shop. The seller was a woman called Grace Clinton with an address on North Circular Road near Phibsboro. She’s married to a law clerk called Arthur Clinton. We’ve checked the register at the Law Society, and it shows him employed with Keogh, Sheridan and James. They’re on the Quays there just up from the Four Courts.’
‘A law clerk? Unusual to have a law clerk’s wife going around selling trinkets.’
‘That’s true. Mrs Clinton doesn’t seem to have understood the value of the coins. Greenberg says they’d fetch maybe £20 apiece in London, but Grace Clinton sold them to Katherine for a fiver each.’
‘Have we questioned this Mrs Clinton?’
‘That’s part of the problem. I sent young Vizzard out to the house. But she and her husband and their children seem to have left. They took off to the Broadstone station on Sunday morning in a cab, taking a lot of bags and luggage. They boarded a train that goes down into County Meath as far as the town of Athboy, with the usual stops in between. We’ve got inquiries out with the railway staff to see if we can pinpoint where they got off, but so far we’ve nothing back.’
Mallon’s forehead creased in puzzlement.
‘It’s bloody hard to make a lot of sense out of all that.’
He looked up as if he had suddenly remembered the murder investigation and the search for Phoebe Pollock.
‘Leave that for a bit. Any progress on the Pollocks?’
‘There’s a couple of things.’ Swallow drew his notebook.
‘Mick Feore discovered that the hall porter at the Northern Hotel is a fellow called Jimmy Rowan, with a lot of form, it seems, including violent assault. He’s from down south, Limerick. A Store Street constable got a whisper from one of the staff.’
Mallon pursed his lips.
‘Hmm … we’d need to be careful in case he tries to make a bolt for it.’
‘We’re checking with other witnesses now, and we’re pulling down his file from DCR.’
‘Good work by Feore … you said there were a couple of things.’
‘We traced the silver in Pollock’s basement.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘The Ulster Office got moving on it. In fairness, they were very helpful once they came back to work.’
Mallon grinned.
‘You’ll have learned a bit more about diplomacy so?’
Swallow ignored the jibe.
‘The silver is connected to this Gessel family. The last of them at the place down in Galway was a Lady Margaret Gessel, now living in England. She might know where the stuff went after the house and its contents were disposed of. We have an address for her in a town called Dymchurch, in Sussex.’
Mallon scratched his beard again
‘There’s a fellow called Gessel in Downing Street. One of the Under-Secretaries at the Prime Minister’s office. Any connection?’
‘He’s a distant relation. I don’t think he comes into this picture. The property came down to the widow.’
Mallon reached for his notebook.
‘I’ll jot down those details about this Lady Margaret. I’ll be on the telephone later to Jenkinson at Scotland Yard. I’ll have him send someone out to interview her.’
‘We still don’t know for definite that there’s any connection between this and the murder,’ Swallow emphasised. ‘So it’s a bit of a shot in the dark, Sir.’
Mallon shrugged. ‘Of course, but like I said, this sort of merchandise would be very unusual in Ambrose Pollock’s line of business. It’s worth a try.’
Swallow retraced his route across the Lower Yard to Exchange Court. As he passed the apse of the Chapel Royal, Harry Lafeyre and another man emerged from the Medical Examiner’s office. He recognised Lafeyre’s companion as George Weldon, lately their fellow dinner guest at Maria’s.
Lafeyre waved a greeting. Weldon gave a polite nod.
‘You look pleased with yourself, Swallow,’ Lafeyre bantered. ‘It’s nice to see a man who’s happy with the way he finds the world.’
‘Happy would be too strong a word, but I’m making some progress.’
‘With the Pollock case?’
‘What else? The boss has the j
ob nailed between my shoulder blades.’
Lafeyre nodded. ‘I thought maybe it was to do with that shooting in Capel Street yesterday. You’re all over the newspapers, as I’m sure you know.’
‘Indeed. Any progress on your end with the blood spatters on the weight that Pollock was skulled with?’
Lafeyre shook his head.
‘Not yet, I’m afraid. I’ve been dealing with a bad outbreak of food poisoning at a house in Rathmines. There’s a couple of young children and their mother who’re very ill. I’ll need a bit more time.’
It was part of the price paid by the authorities for not employing a City Medical Examiner full time. In order to make a decent living, Lafeyre took private patients. He had built a reasonably good practice among the middle-class families of the new affluent suburbs to the south of the city.
Lafeyre jerked his thumb toward the Castle Street Gate.
‘George is staying for a few days. We’re going over to the Burlington for a drink and maybe a bite of food later. Do you want to join us?’
Swallow was hungry. He had not eaten since breakfast and he could tackle a pint or a large Tullamore. But he had work to do first.
‘I’ve to complete a report for Chief Mallon on the Pollock business. It’ll take an hour. I’ll follow you there.’
Weldon raised an eyebrow inquisitively. ‘Are you likely to make an arrest?’
Civil servants, other than in the security offices at the Castle, did not habitually ask G-men about their work. Swallow took refuge in a policeman’s favourite generalisation.
‘Ah, it’s just a routine matter, Mr Weldon.’
THIRTY-FOUR
The Burlington Hotel was a five-minute walk away on St Andrew’s Street. Its habitués were the bankers, stockbrokers and insurance managers who populated the grand offices on Dame Street in sight of Trinity College. Castle officials and G-men would not generally figure in the usual run of clients in the bars and lounges on the ground floor or in the restaurant on the level above.
That was fine with Swallow. There were times when he was happy to step out of the world of policemen and criminals. Not that he was under any illusions about the fellows with the stiff collars and the striped pants on Dame Street. Like any other sector of the population, there were good and bad among them. The bad ones in the banking offices did not carry knives or guns as a rule. Their crimes were effected with dodgy account books, fake signatures, bogus deeds and the like.
