The City in Darkness

by Michael Russell

  A bank account wasn’t unusual but for a postman in the Wicklow Mountains it was noteworthy, and what people did with their money said a lot. There was a folder of bank statements, the latest dated 23 November. Two transactions; a lodgement of £9.00 on the 17th, and the transfer of £15.00 to a savings account the same day. The statements went back two years; sums were intermittently paid in and transferred to the savings account. The amounts varied, £5, £8, £15; on one occasion in September 1938, £25, in April, £28. Occasionally cash was withdrawn.

  In an envelope he found statements for the savings account. Byrne was saving surprising sums; often what he paid in was more than he could have earned. The total at the bottom of the sheet told a story, though Stefan could not know what it was. There was almost £700, accumulated in two years working as a postman. Even if he had found a way to live on nothing, it was over twice what he could have been paid.

  Next, Stefan opened a file that contained envelopes full of newspaper cuttings; the contents were like the ringed items in the newspapers. Some cuttings were attached to pieces of paper, with handwritten notes, names, dates, addresses. On one was a name he recognized: Marian Gort, a childhood friend of Maeve’s. She died in an accident before he and Maeve met, but not long before. He couldn’t remember much about it. Inside the envelope were more cuttings. The first was clipped to a piece of paper with the words ‘Church of Ireland Gazette’ and a date. It all came back to him.

  The funeral took place on Friday, at St John’s, Laragh, of Miss Marian Gort, daughter of the Reverend and Mrs Cyril Gort. Miss Gort died tragically in a walking accident, close to the beauty spot known as the Spinc, in the hills above Glendalough. The funeral was attended by many family and friends from all parts of Ireland and Britain. The Reverend Gort was assisted by the Most Reverend John Gregg, the Archbishop of Dublin, who was Miss Gort’s godfather.

  There were more cuttings about the death, the accident, the funeral, the inquest. Byrne’s interest in this was odd, but something written below one cutting showed he had found reasons to think about Marian’s death, to collect information and to want to question what had happened to her.

  Hushed up because she topped herself is what a lot here said at the time. Handy enough for him. But bollocks I say. She was number 2.

  It was the next envelope that changed everything. As he took it from the folder he saw another name he knew. The name was Maeve Gillespie. His curiosity was replaced by a moment of almost physical nausea. Instinct told him he was on the edge of something that was no longer intriguing but strange and disturbing. Something in this seemingly random collection of facts and dates and names was about Maeve. In the envelope there were cuttings as before; there were scribbled dates, the dates of Maeve’s death and of her funeral at Kilranelagh. He didn’t need to read them. He needed to know why they were there. The last cutting recorded the inquest that had been only a formality, and its verdict: misadventure. But next to it William Byrne had added his own dismissive comment on that verdict.

  Did anyone see it? No. He drowned this one. So it is number 3!

  Stefan stared uncomprehendingly at the piece of paper. Then he heard the door downstairs. He closed the file and stood up. It was a reflex. There was nothing to hide but he couldn’t begin to talk about what he had just been looking at. There was a link forging in his head, inexplicable, senseless, but somehow already undeniable, between his wife’s grave at Kilranelagh and this man he knew nothing of, who had now disappeared.

  A man entered the room. He wore a grey trench coat, slightly too small, and a trilby, slightly too big. He had a round face and a dark complexion; when he smiled, as he did now, he showed a set of teeth too white and regular to be anything but false. He was short and thickset. The man behind him, ten inches taller, was Fintan Grace. Stefan forced his mind out of the confusion filling it. As Chief Inspector Halloran eyed him coldly, despite the smile, he found a focus to bring him back to the present in Dessie’s description of Messrs Halloran and Grace: Laurel and Hardy.

  ‘You’re Gillespie?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Terry Gregory tells me you’re here to lend a hand.’

  ’Something like that, sir. It’s up to you.’

  ‘Up to me, is it? Jesus, is that from Terry himself?’ Halloran looked round at Fintan Grace. ‘They’ve put some manners on the Special Branch. Gone are the days they’d shoot you in the back without even apologizing.’

  Inspector Grace laughed; it was part of his job.

  ‘You’re here because Ned Broy smells nefarious goings-on among the Laragh Gardaí, and he wants to make sure I’m not sweeping it under the carpet. If I didn’t know, I’d think he had us confused with you fuckers.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean, “Yes, sir”?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s about it.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Halloran laughed.

  ‘You’re right, Fintan, this one is the clever bollix altogether.’

  Inspector Grace was unsure if he should laugh at this.

  ‘So why are you in here, Gillespie? Didn’t want mud on your shoes?’

  ‘You’re not short of volunteers up above.’

  ‘We have looked here, Inspector. He’s not under the bed.’

  Fintan Grace chuckled; this was safer ground.

  ‘I thought I’d see who this feller was exactly, sir.’

  ‘And what did you find out?’

  ‘He was careful with his money, for a man who spent most of it in the pub, I’d say. There’s close to £700 in his bank account.’

  ‘I know, I have looked. So what else?’

  ‘That’s as far as I got, sir.’

  Stefan didn’t want to draw attention to the contents of the desk. He had to know more. What he didn’t need was Halloran blocking his access to this room. But the chief inspector seemed to have no problem with Stefan looking through the evidence here. His initial hostility was softening.

  Stefan took a few steps towards the mantelpiece. ‘Is this in Spain?’

  ‘It is. Billy Byrne was with O’Duffy’s boys. He even picked up a war wound. He’d a grand story about it they say and the more he drank the grander it got. If they’d left him there he’d have seen off the Reds sooner than Franco. Though some say he broke his leg falling off a balcony in a whorehouse. But you’ll get begrudgers in any line of work, Inspector.’

  Stefan grinned; it seemed to be what Halloran expected.

  ‘So are you getting any closer to what happened, sir?’

  ‘Closer to what happened, but not closer to who did it.’

  ‘You think someone killed him then?’

  ‘I think he’s dead one way or another. Your man was a nasty bit of work. I don’t know if that’s why no one’s saying anything, but there’s a holy hush along the valley like nothing since St Kevin was in communion with the angels. Yet there’s no hiding what people thought of Billy. I’d say he had a way of ferreting out bits and pieces his neighbours didn’t want ferreted. Some tax-fiddling here and there, some stock missing on the hill that ended up at the butcher’s back door, a poteen still doing too much business, a box of contraceptives sent from England, some dirty postcards from Paris. He was probably a great lad for the kettle and steam too.’

  Halloran had decided to engage the interloper. With or without a body he felt he was on top of it. He wanted that message to get to Garda HQ.

  ‘And I’m sure it got nastier. Who was at it with who, always a song worth knowing, plus what goes with it. The baby delivered down the country no one knows about, or the one on the wrong end of the knitting needle and gin. The girl in London who’s really in a Magdalene Laundry.’

  ‘So all this money – you think he was blackmailing people?’

  ‘A grand word for it, but you’ve been looking through his desk. I don’t know what he got from the papers, but he must have turned up something now and again. He certainly used what he knew to avoid bills or pay for drinks. I had that much from
Sergeant Chisholm. But he was getting money too, putting a bit away, setting up very cosy here. And who’s going to say anything about that now? “I didn’t kill him myself, Mr Halloran, but let me tell you how he blackmailed the bollocks off me.” Not very likely.’

  ‘So perhaps someone had finally had enough?’

  ‘Could be. One Christmas box too many.’

  ‘Any candidates?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘I’ve a good idea what happened. And I’m not alone. Half the valley knows, including the Guards. Who, is another thing altogether. Because where are they, these gobshites who know what went on? Searching the mountains with faces so long you’d think they wanted to find him. There’s more than one could tell where Billy delivered his last Christmas card.’

  Stefan could hear Halloran’s frustration; it was real enough.

  ‘So what do you want me to do, sir?’

  ‘I don’t care much if you keep out of my way.’

  ‘There has to be something here,’ said Stefan, ‘along with his bank statements, the papers, the cuttings. There’s a lot of it. It might be worth going through it all in detail, just to see if it can tell us anything more.’

  ‘You’d be here till next Christmas, Gillespie, and no better off.’

  ‘Well, if no one else is doing it . . .’

  ‘I never knew Terry Gregory’s fellers were so thorough. What’s the matter, is beating the shite out of people not getting the results anymore?’

  ‘I’d be no use up a mountain – I’d never keep up with Fintan.’

  Halloran was laughing as he turned to Fintan Grace, who wasn’t. It was another part of Grace’s job to confirm decisions he knew his boss had already made. He nodded. The less he saw of Stefan Gillespie the better.

  ‘All right,’ said Halloran, ‘since Terry was generous enough to give us a detective who can actually read, we might as well make use of you.’

  When the Bray detectives left Stefan went back to the desk. He looked at the files again. There was more. A dozen sheets of paper clipped together, covered in the writing he now recognized as Byrne’s, carefully formed like words in a school copy. The first sheet was headed with another woman’s name. It meant nothing to Stefan: Charlotte Moore. As he read he realized the words were not the postman’s. Byrne must have found this material somewhere and copied it. It had involved considerable work. He looked at the date on the first sheet. Not the date Byrne wrote it down but the date of the Irish Times article he had recorded. More articles followed, covering months. It was a story Stefan didn’t know anything about at all.

  Charlotte Moore had gone missing on 3 March 1919. She was fourteen. Her body was never found. She lived in Glendalough. Her father was a farm labourer, her mother cleaned at one of the big houses. The search went on in the mountains for weeks, starting with a surge of public concern that echoed what was happening with the Missing Postman. But the search was fruitless. Before long it petered out. It wasn’t surprising, even twenty years on. In Ireland the end of the First World War was marked by the start of another war: the War of Independence. The Royal Irish Constabulary were on the front line even in Wicklow. It was inevitable the search for the girl’s body would be abandoned. Besides, everyone knew what had happened.

  Not many days after Charlotte Moore’s disappearance someone else disappeared from the Vale of Glendalough; a man of twenty-seven, Albert Neale, a forestry worker who had already been questioned. Outbuildings at the farm where he lived were searched; articles of Charlotte’s bloodstained clothing were found. But he had already fled. There was one sighting of him on the mail boat from Kingstown, but Albert Neale would never be seen again. In the margin of his notes William Byrne had added something:

  Never did find her. Nor him. They lost their ‘murderer’, so they looked for no one else. But it was the first he done. His number 1.

  Stefan leafed back through the cuttings and notes. A girl murdered in Glendalough twenty years ago. A woman dead in an accident eight years ago. A woman drowned seven years ago. He forced himself to look at Maeve as the third woman in a list. One. Two. Three. Charlotte Moore. Marian Gort. Maeve Gillespie. The postman saw something that brought them together. There was not one murder for him, there were three. Maeve was the third. He believed they had all been killed and by the same man. Stefan already knew the evidence was almost nothing. In the cuttings about Marian and Maeve evidence was to the contrary. But he could not dismiss what he was looking at. For seven years he had believed his wife drowned, swimming in the waters of the Upper Lake. There had never been a reason to think anything else. But William Byrne, now missing presumed dead, a man who, in Chief Inspector Halloran’s words, had a way of ‘ferreting things out that people didn’t want ferreted’, had not only been convinced that Maeve had been murdered, he believed he knew who had killed her.

  Did anyone see it? No. He drowned this one. So it is number 3!

  It was so matter of fact it sounded real; it had been real to Byrne. One. Two. Three. The postman was good at finding things out. He made money from it. Even Halloran had to wonder if he was so good it might have cost him his life. Somehow the fact that Byrne was probably dead gave credibility to it. If he died because of the way he pushed himself into people’s lives, their errors, foibles, mistakes, into their secrets and their tragedies, into their crimes, then surely the things he believed were real.

  There were more pieces of paper but none of it related to the three women. There was another envelope. Inside were photos, the two-and-a-half inch prints from a Box Brownie. Stefan recognized the Upper Lake, the mountains, houses and shops in Laragh. Sometimes a date was on the back. Then he was looking at five photographs of headstones, two headstones in what felt like the same cemetery. The pictures had been taken in winter and summer. In one the name Marian Gort was legible. But it wasn’t the name Stefan was looking at. In each photo there was a single white arum lily.

  11

  Laragh

  Stefan stopped the Austin beyond the Garda Barracks. It was not quite dark. He had passed lines of people heading in from the Seven Churches. The day’s search was over. There was mist again, but no more than the meeting of damp air and freezing temperatures. He walked the Trooperstown Road to the wrought-iron gate that led into the Church of Ireland churchyard.

  It was a familiar space, not because he knew it, but because it was so like the Church of Ireland churches in Baltinglass and Kiltegan he did know. He had only been here once, the day before Maeve died, when he left her bringing flowers to her friend. To one side was the square tower and the grey building that was St John’s church, its arched windows glazed only in clear leaded panes. On the other side of a pebble path was the graveyard.

  He walked through the black, lichened stones and the scattering of brighter, yellower newcomers, looking for Marian Gort’s grave. He saw the lily first, on the grass beside a wreath of red-berried holly. It was still only a flower; he could not read what William Byrne had read. The postman knew who put it there. But Stefan would have to find a way to read it now. There was some relief in the clarity of that. In all the confusion and disbelief there was a kind of calm around him. He could see the beginnings of the night sky above the churchyard. It was where he stood, on the edge of the dark. He had to step into it. Nothing could be the same until he knew the truth.

  As he walked back he saw the other lily, by a small stone set against the ivy-covered churchyard wall; not quite a headstone. He recognized it from Byrne’s photograph. ‘Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me: In memory of our lost daughter Charlotte Moore.’ Hearing footsteps, he turned. A man, little older than him, was watching him from the church.

  ‘Good evening!’

  He saw a glimpse of a clerical collar under the man’s overcoat.

  ‘Hello, my name’s Gillespie, Detective Inspector Gillespie.’

  ‘Ah, no news of Mr Byrne?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s an unpleasant business. It’s sad. It must look as if he . . .’

>   Stefan registered the word ‘unpleasant’.

  ‘Did you know him, Mr . . .?’

  ‘Campion. I knew him as one knows a postman. At such times one realizes how little we do know about so many people we see every day.’

  The platitude eased the Reverend Campion’s slight discomfort.

  ‘I was looking at a grave just now, someone I knew. Knew isn’t right. A friend of my wife’s when they were children, Marian Gort.’

  ‘Ah, you know the Gorts?’

  The vicar had recognized him as one of his own, if not for exactly the right reasons. His tone was softer. It wasn’t that he had been unwelcoming, but now there was more trust, even in a conversation in which no trust was required.

  ‘My wife did. I didn’t realize Mr Gort had left Laragh.’

  ‘He’s in England now. Mrs Gort was English. Sadly, she died. He did call in last week, though. Over for Christmas. He has a son in Greystones.’

  ‘He brought the wreath?’

  It was an odd question, though Campion didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘There’s a single arum lily, just next to it.’

  ‘Is there? Well, quite possibly he brought that.’

  ‘It hasn’t been here more than two or three days.’

  The vicar was looking at Stefan with some bewilderment now.

  ‘There’s another lily too, on a memorial to a girl called Charlotte Moore.’

  The Reverend Campion frowned; he didn’t understand.

  ‘Have you seen lilies here before, by those two headstones?’