Echowave (Echoland Book 3)

by Joe Joyce

  ‘I’m not a member of anything,’ Duggan said.

  ‘You a Roman Catholic?’

  Duggan nodded.

  ‘So you’re a member of something.’

  ‘I’m not in the IRA.’

  ‘So why were you meeting those Germans?’

  ‘What Germans?’ Duggan held his breath inwardly, aware that he was inviting them to call his bluff and reveal more of what they knew. But he wanted to know what they knew. Who had told them about an IRA man visiting Lisbon and being on board his ship?

  ‘The ones you said you met in the bar. What was it called? Antonio’s?’

  They really know nothing, Duggan thought. They’re just fishing. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Yes you did. You confessed to meeting German agents in a bar in Lisbon.’ The detective looked over Duggan’s shoulder at his colleague. ‘You heard him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Clear as a bell, Sergeant,’ the detective behind him said. ‘He confessed.’

  ‘I did not.’ Duggan knew what they were doing and it strengthened his resolve not to give in to them. They were playing policemen’s tricks, stringing together a collection of phrases into a confession. The kind of thing that had sent many an innocent Irishman to prison for years in this country. Even to the gallows. ‘There might’ve been Germans in the bar for all I know. That’s all.’

  The detective brushed his words aside with his cigarette hand. ‘We’ll move on.’ He leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘What did the German agents want?’

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans.’

  ‘A little sabotage? In England? Ulster? Where?’

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans.’ Duggan adopted a sullen tone.

  ‘Maybe it was just a little information?’

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans.’

  ‘Harmless stuff, like the weather. Everybody in Ireland talks about the weather, don’t they?’

  Duggan said nothing.

  ‘Maybe it was the other way round,’ the detective said, sounding surprised at his own versatility. ‘You were asking them for something? A little help?’

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans.’

  ‘A few guns? Bombs?’

  ‘Bicycles,’ the detective behind Duggan sniggered.

  The detective doing the questioning gave Duggan an inquisitive look. Duggan stared back at him and said, ‘I didn’t meet any Germans.’

  The detective picked up Duggan’s passport and flicked through it for a moment. ‘Citizen of Ireland,’ he read with a short laugh. ‘And Mr de Valera wants us to afford you every protection and assistance.’

  He closed the passport and tapped its hard edge on the table to underline his words. ‘Never mind this little piece of Eire theatrics. Let’s be clear about the situation here, McCarthy. The law says you are a subject of His Majesty the King. And you have confessed to conspiring with the King’s enemies in the middle of a war. You know what that means?’ He paused. ‘What happens to British subjects who assist the enemy in wartime?’

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans,’ Duggan muttered.

  ‘You should think carefully about your predicament. Sleep on it, in a manner of speaking. And decide what’s best for you. It will go easier for you if you tell us all about your German contacts. It’s even possible that you could be released. If you give us your full cooperation.’

  ‘Is my ship still here?’ Duggan asked.

  ‘It’s long gone. You’re on your own.’

  Duggan dropped his chin on to his chest. The detective stood up and nodded to his colleague, who opened the door and called to the policeman. ‘If there’s a raid tonight,’ he told the policeman when he came, ‘take him down to the docks and give him a ringside seat. Handcuff him to something solid out in the open.’

  The window of the cell had been blocked by a blackout shutter on the outside, and a feeble bulb lit the interior. ‘Can I have something to eat?’ Duggan asked, as the policeman stood back to let him enter. The policeman was the one who had been the passenger in the patrol car. He looked at Duggan for a moment and then nodded.

  Duggan lay down on the bed while he waited, thinking back over the interrogation. They had reason to suspect he was in the IRA, but they had no specific information about his meetings with the Germans. So who would have tipped them off? None of the Irish people he met in Lisbon knew about his cover story of being in the IRA or about his contacts with the Germans. Some of the crew suspected him of IRA connections and had seen him with Strasser in the pub. So information from any of them could fit with what the Special Branch men knew.

  He closed his eyes and hoped the Branch man had been telling the truth when he’d said the ship was long gone. That meant it should be back in Dublin by morning at the latest, and the captain would tell G2 what had happened. He was drifting off to sleep when the policeman came back with a mug of tea and a plate with two thinly buttered slices of bread. He handed them to Duggan without comment and left.

  The tea was weak and had too much milk and no sugar, but it tasted great. The bread wasn’t as grey as he was used to in Dublin and went a surprising distance towards quelling his hunger. The policeman returned a little later, handed him a cigarette and lit it for him with his own confiscated lighter.

  ‘Thanks,’ Duggan said with feeling as he inhaled, ‘I really appreciate that.’

  ‘Don’t smoke myself. But the missus would go without food

  sooner than pass up a cigarette.’

  ‘I know how she feels.’ Duggan nodded. ‘What time is it?’

  The policeman hesitated a moment. ‘Just after midnight. The end of my shift.’

  ‘Thanks for the food and for this,’ Duggan raised the cigarette.

  As soon as he had finished his cigarette, he lay down again, rolled himself into the blanket and fell into a shallow and uneasy sleep, half wakening several times.

  A roaring noise brought him fully awake, and he braced himself against the explosive blast, thinking of rolling off the bunk and under it.

  No blast came, but the sound of engines grew and grew, and then began to fade into the distance. He realised it was probably a Sunderland flying boat taking off. Which meant it was probably first light, about four o’clock in the morning. The bulb was still lit and the blackout shutter gave no sign of daylight from outside. He waited until the engine noise faded completely and then he turned over and tried to go back to sleep.

  It seemed like it was only seconds later that the cell door opened and someone shook him by the shoulder and shouted, ‘Up! Get up!’ He dropped his feet to the floor and stood up, unsteady with sleep. The policeman was a new one, middle-aged like his colleagues of the previous day. He caught Duggan by the shoulder and pushed him out the door, making no secret of his hostility.

  They went upstairs again and Duggan caught a glimpse of grainy daylight from a room with an unshuttered window as they walked to the interview room. The light was still on there, the window blacked out. The second detective was seated at the table this time, a notebook open in front of him. His sergeant was lounging against the wall with his hands in his pockets: he yawned as Duggan entered and sat at the table.

  ‘You’re a lucky bastard,’ the detective at the table said. ‘Your friends didn’t come last night.’

  Duggan rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘So you had a good night’s sleep. You thought about what the sergeant said?’

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans,’ Duggan said.

  ‘Good. That’s the way you want to play it.’ He took a pencil from his inside pocket. ‘Name?’

  ‘Sean McCarthy.’

  ‘Rank?’

  ‘Deckhand.’

  ‘Your IRA rank? You chaps love playing soldiers, giving yourselves ranks, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not in the IRA.’

  The detective studied him for a moment, his head to one side. ‘I’ll put you down as a major.’ He wrote in his notebook. ‘What unit?’

  ‘I’m not in th
e IRA.’

  ‘The Dublin Brigade. That sound right?’ The detective looked at his superior for confirmation. ‘Right.’ He wrote in the notebook again. ‘And you entered the United Kingdom illegally.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Duggan said.

  ‘Where’s your travel permit?’

  ‘You know how I came to be here.’

  ‘Yes, you were masquerading as a deckhand on a vessel and jumped ship when it came into port to present its navicert.’ He wrote in the notebook again. ‘And your mission?’

  Duggan stared at him, saying nothing.

  ‘Sabotage,’ the detective said, nodding to himself. ‘And the collection of information of use to the enemy. Where were you planning to bomb?’ He waited for an answer and then said: ‘Suspect refused to divulge the specific target of his mission.’ He wrote for a moment. ‘Suspect also refused to name his co-conspirators in the UK.’ He looked up from his notebook. ‘Can’t say fairer than that, can I? That’ll go down well with your commanders. Get you a medal. Posthumously.’

  Duggan sighed and rested his arms on the table, his hands joined. His eyes were growing heavy again and he wanted to close them and go back to sleep.

  ‘I don’t think he’s taking this seriously, sergeant.’

  Duggan felt hands tighten on his shoulders from behind and shake him violently. ‘He’s paying attention now,’ the sergeant said.

  The detective lit a cigarette and pulled the ashtray closer to himself. He leaned back in his chair as though he was taking a break. ‘You’re not giving me much help,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t meet any Germans,’ Duggan said, deciding to stick to this denial and thwart their transparent efforts to twist everything he said into an incriminating statement.

  ‘Pity,’ the detective muttered, almost to himself. He smoked in silence for a while, concentrating on the cigarette, then lunged across the table and grabbed Duggan’s hand. The sergeant reached around him at the same time, grabbed his other arm and twisted it behind the back of the chair, imprisoning him against the upright. Duggan tried automatically to pull his hand free but the detective had a firm grip on his fingers, pulling them forward so that his arm was stretched out.

  ‘That’s no farmer’s hand,’ the detective said, using his cigarette as a pointer. He moved the burning tip of the cigarette closer to Duggan’s palm. ‘You’re no more a farmer than a sailor.’

  Duggan braced himself, feeling the heat of the cigarette grow as it approached and hovered over his palm.

  ‘Not a bomber’s hand either,’ the detective said with surprise, and looked at the sergeant while letting his cigarette move closer to Duggan’s hand. ‘What we have here, Sergeant, is one of the officer class. One of those who orders ignorant Paddies to carry around weeping gelignite and kill innocent people if they don’t kill themselves first.’

  Duggan was transfixed by the cigarette and moved his thumb away from where it had been protecting his palm as the burning coal almost touched it. ‘I’m a farmer,’ he heard himself say.

  The detective took his time withdrawing the cigarette and then inhaled a last drag. He released Duggan’s hand and stubbed out the butt in the ashtray. The sergeant released Duggan other’s arm.

  ‘What kind of farmer?’ the detective asked, as if they were continuing a casual chat.

  ‘Mixed,’ Duggan shrugged.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘A few cattle and sheep. A bit of tillage.’

  ‘What do you do with them?’

  ‘Which? The bullocks or the hoggets or the wethers?’

  The detective stared at him, not knowing what he was talking about. Duggan stared back, happy to have made a small point after giving in and answering their questions. ‘Where’s this farm?’ the detective demanded.

  ‘In the west. Galway.’

  ‘And why did they order you to leave it?’

  ‘No one ordered me to leave it.’

  ‘You just decided to go off to Lisbon and say hello to the Germans.’

  ‘I was bored. I thought I’d like to try the sea.’

  ‘In the middle of a war?’ the detective said, with a disbelieving laugh.

  ‘Ireland is neutral.’

  ‘Stabbing us in the back, you mean.’

  ‘Making its own decisions.’

  The detective gave a slight smile of victory. ‘So a farmer who’s interested in politics.’

  ‘I’m not interested in politics.’

  ‘You just told us you were.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Duggan parried, feeling drained. He was tired and hungry and knew this could go on for hours. Or even days, if they had held the ship, or if something happened to it on its way to Dublin. Stop, he told himself, reining in his imagination. I can tell them right now who I am, ask them to contact the Irish High Commission in London, and put an end to it. But a stubborn streak said, No, I'm not going to abandon my cover story until I'm ordered to. Not to the bloody British.

  ‘You were looking for adventure?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come here and join the forces?’

  ‘I didn’t want to be a soldier.’

  ‘You could’ve been a sailor. In the Royal Navy.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight anyone.’

  ‘But you wanted to go off to sea,’ the detective said, shaking his head. ‘With ships being sunk every day. You think a jury’s going to believe that?’

  When the hostile policeman took him back to the cell, he found a mug of cold tea and two slices of cold toast on a tray. He sipped at the tea after stirring the settled milk on its surface with his finger, then ate the soggy toast and lay down. He was about to drift off again when the policeman banged on the cell door, opened it, and took the tray away.

  ‘Can I have one of my cigarettes, please?’

  The policeman ignored him and left. He was drifting off again when noise outside the window brought him back to consciousness. Someone removed the blackout shutter and the cell light was clicked off. He couldn’t tell what the day was like from the limited view. He fell asleep again and woke feeling exhausted and disorientated. Nothing had changed in the cell.

  He put his hands under his head and tried to relax, imagining that he was back in his parents’ house, sick in bed for the day, bored and restless. The only diversion was the occasional shadow passing by the window and a car wheel which blocked the light for a while until it moved away again. This is stupid, he thought. What am I trying to prove?

  But he knew, deep down, what he was trying to prove. It wasn’t just about being stubborn, of maintaining his cover until his superiors released him from it. Or trying to figure out why the detectives thought he was in the IRA. Or of standing up to the British, as his father had done during the War of Independence. It was about proving to himself that he could take the pressure. About the endless doubt since the war began about how he’d perform if called upon to actually fight an invader, about how he’d behave when things got rough.

  You’re just wasting everyone’s time, including your own, he told himself. There are more important things to be getting on with than indulging your own insecurities.

  He decided to admit who he was at the next interrogation, but nobody came for him and the day dragged by. He was sure it must be evening when the policeman came with his midday meal: two slices of spam with a boiled potato covered by some kind of watery gravy. The policeman acted as if he didn’t exist when Duggan asked him what time it was.

  ‘Tell the Special Branch men I want to talk to them,’ he said when the policeman came back for the tray.

  The policeman gave no sign that he had heard anything.

  When he had left, Duggan walked the three paces up and down the cell for a time, trying without success to ignore his craving for nicotine. Then he dropped to the floor and did press-ups without counting until it became too much of an effort to raise himself. He flopped on to the bed, feeling better for the exercise but still craving a
cigarette. He decided irritably that they could all fuck off, he wasn’t going to tell them anything after all.

  He dozed off again and was woken by the door opening. A man stood there as Duggan sat up.

  ‘Captain Duggan,’ the man said with an English accent. He was middle-aged, short and stout, and wore an open raincoat over a dark suit. He held out his hand. ‘Tom Hopkins.’

  Duggan stood up and shook his hand, and Hopkins motioned to him to go ahead of him, out of the cell and up the stairs to the

  station’s day room. The hostile policeman and a colleague whom Duggan hadn’t seen before were there. His possessions were on a table against the wall, including his kitbag, which they had brought from the ship.

  ‘Is that everything?’ Hopkins asked him.

  Duggan gave it a cursory glance and nodded.

  ‘You want to change, clean up?’

  ‘No,’ Duggan said, strapping on his watch. It was just before four o’clock. ‘I’m fine.’

  Hopkins gave him a wry look. ‘Suit yourself.’ He turned to the policemen. ‘Thanks for looking after him.’

  Outside, Duggan took a deep breath of the warm air. The sun was shining but there were puffy clouds in the sky and there was a light sprinkle of recent rain on the roadway. Hopkins led him over to a black Rover saloon and they sat in.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ Duggan asked.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Hopkins said, and shook his head when Duggan offered him a cigarette. Hopkins watched him light one and inhale the smoke deeply. ‘They give you a hard time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell them to contact us?’

  Duggan assumed ‘us’ was MI5, which had a close relationship with G2. ‘Not up to me,’ he said, shrugging, feeling light-headed from the sudden rush of nicotine.

  Hopkins continued to watch him as he contemplated that answer, then shook his head and started the car. ‘We’re on the same side this time, you know,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ Duggan nodded, making his light-headedness worse. He wasn't always convinced, though. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Holyhead,’ Hopkins said, driving off. ‘A long drive, I’m afraid. You know the Fishguard mailboat was sunk the week before last?’