The City in Darkness

by Michael Russell

  ‘Don’t go home tonight,’ she said to Caspar and Melchior.

  As the two kings got on the bus María walked on with the crowd, away from the prison. The glow of the floodlights was behind her. It was very black now. Abruptly, she turned off the road. A track led out into a field below the road. The clothes she wore were dark and no one noticed; soon she was invisible, walking through the fields towards the village of Villalonquéjar. A line of rocks and bushes marked a field boundary; she followed it until she reached a road. The lights of the village were to her left, to the right was the warm glow of Burgos itself. She crossed the road. There was a wall ahead, all that remained of a barn. She listened. She gave a low whistle. A man emerged from behind the wall, running towards her.

  ‘Jesus, this is some game!’ He spoke in English. ‘Where is he?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He didn’t come, Mikey, that’s all. He didn’t come.’

  ‘Are they on to it?’

  She walked a few more yards and then staggered and fell. Michael Hagan put his arm round her, lifting her up. The first tears were in her eyes.

  ‘What the fuck do we do now, María?’

  Hagan looked up across the road and the fields towards the prison; its floodlit outline was bright on the black horizon at the crest of its low hill.

  ‘We better just get away, María, somewhere, anywhere.’

  With his arm still round her he pulled her with him. Behind the tumbled wall was a small grey Peugeot. María had frozen. The Irishman opened the car door and pushed her in. He started the engine and backed out from where the car was hidden, then drove up to the road. It was little more than a beaten track. The headlights blazed. He thought better of the lights and turned them off. Then he set off towards the village, trying to think.

  ‘Back to Salamanca, straight back. That’s it. I can pick up the road to Valladolid later. Just get me there, María. If we get lost here we’re fucked.’

  He reached down and picked up a map. He pushed it on to her lap.

  ‘There’s a torch in the glove compartment. We want the road from Villalonquéjar to San Mamés. It’ll be to the left. It’s a dirt road but it’s fine, I came in that way. I think I’ll recognize it. We’ll have to use the lights after that. So, San Mamés, then Buniel. Right? That’s the main road. Come on!’

  When the bus carrying the two kings reached the junction with the road into Burgos there were torches ahead. A gang of Civil Guards stepped forward to stop it. A Civil Guard pulled open the door and climbed in. Another policeman followed, a rifle on his back. The first benemérita looked along the rows of seats at the women and children. He turned to the driver and nodded. The driver stepped down from the bus. The policeman walked on and grinned at Caspar and Melchior. Their beards had gone but one still wore a turban and the other a gold crown of cardboard. The second Civil Guard was covering them with the rifle. The kings got up as the driver had done. They followed the policemen off the bus. Another policeman got in. He shut the door and took the driver’s seat, turning to the silent passengers.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have you back in Burgos in no time.’

  As the bus pulled away, women and children were still on the road from the prison. They passed the Civil Guards with their guns trained on the bus driver and the two kings. No one knew why; why never mattered. Within minutes the men were marched away, not to Burgos, but towards the line of trees that marked the Río Arlanzón. The men made no attempt to resist. The end was not in doubt. The shots rang out in the darkness. The first bullets were to their heads, with shots through the eyes for decoration. Caspar, Melchior and the bus driver were left by the river for days before their families could take the bodies. There had been no angel to warn them.

  14

  The Round Tower

  In the days following Christmas, Stefan Gillespie did little more than ask questions nobody seemed to understand let alone have answers to. He had persuaded Chief Inspector Halloran to let the suspended Sergeant Chisholm back into the station to dig out records from the mildewed cardboard boxes that filled one of the cellars underneath the barracks. The contents of the boxes sometimes related to the year scrawled on the top, but it was hit and miss, and it was impossible to know if information was missing. There was RIC material about the disappearance of Charlotte Moore in 1919, including statements and the maps used in the search. The search was a mirror of what was going on outside in the Vale of Glendalough, both in scale and in the growing conviction that no body would ever be found.

  George Chisholm thought most RIC records had gone to Dublin Castle in the twenties and Stefan spent a day there, avoiding anyone from Special Branch except Dessie MacMahon. He found some of what he was looking for, including the reports of the CID investigation. None of it told him anything he didn’t know. But it did make the case against Albert Neale hard to refute. And if Neale really had killed Charlotte Moore, then everything the Missing Postman believed about her death, and about the subsequent deaths of Marian Gort and Maeve, was already falling apart.

  There was little in Laragh about either Marian’s death or Maeve’s, and no reason why there should be as far as the Garda Síochaná was concerned. There were a number of statements about Maeve’s drowning, one of which was Stefan’s own. All the statements were about the discovery of the bodies; Marian’s below the Spinc, Maeve’s at the edge of the Upper Lake. There had been no post-mortems; the coroners’ reports merely formalized the accidental deaths no one had questioned. Sergeant Chisholm had been stationed in Laragh at the time of both deaths, and remembered them well. The only contribution he made to Stefan’s line of questioning was that there had been gossip about Marian Gort and suicide.

  After reading all the records he could find, Stefan had discovered nothing to add independent evidence to what William Byrne believed. He had not even formulated real questions he could ask locally about Charlotte, Marian or Maeve. The only ones he could see needed to be asked in Spain, of the man Billy Byrne had written to, Jim Collins, and even he had disappeared.

  It was Twelfth Night. Stefan had not gone over the mountains as usual. He was taking Tom to Dublin to meet Maeve’s parents, along with his uncle, aunt and cousins, to see the pantomime at the Olympia. He had seen Kate only once since Stephen’s Day. She was with her parents in Dún Laoghaire, still without a job, uncertain what she was doing, and uncertain what she and Stefan were doing too. She spent New Year’s Eve at Kilranelagh but she had hardly been on her own with him. He arrived late from Glendalough and dropped her at the station in Baltinglass for the early train. He was fond, even loving, for a time when they went outside at midnight, but when the moment was gone he came back in as if he was avoiding something, full of banter that wasn’t how he normally behaved.

  On Twelfth Night, Stefan got to Dublin with Tom at midday and left him with Maeve’s family in Bewleys, saying he would see them at the Olympia. He drove from Grafton Street to the Quays. He crossed the river at Kingsbridge to McKee Barracks. Commandant de Paor was expecting him.

  De Paor began with the politenesses that went with the time of year, but Stefan was unresponsive. He was tight-lipped, ill-at-ease and abrupt.

  ‘I’m here to ask you a favour,’ he said.

  ‘Is that a favour for you or a favour for Special Branch?’

  ‘Me. I’m not at the Castle at the moment, I’m in Glendalough.’

  It was an explanation of something; de Paor didn’t know what.

  ‘Isn’t that a little off the Emergency track?’

  Stefan smiled; he felt slightly easier now he was saying it.

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the Missing Postman. There’s a theory at Garda HQ that G2 did it to get the arms’ raid out of the papers.’

  ‘It’s done the job, I’ll give you that, Stefan. So, missing postmen now. Is there anything Special Branch don’t get their noses in these days?’

  ‘There are some – you might want t
o call them irregularities, I suppose. The commissioner wanted someone from Dublin down there.’

  ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custiodies?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Well, we’re not big on missing people or guarding the Guards.’

  ‘What were you about before Christmas if it wasn’t guarding the Guards? Or are you happy Special Branch isn’t mounting a coup now?’

  ‘Happy enough,’ de Paor grinned, ‘though things still puzzle me. I see the Curragh filling up with every Republican Tom, Dick and Seamus you can shake a stick at, but a distinct absence of top men. It crossed my mind to offer to pick up Hayes for Terry Gregory if he was short staffed. But if he can send you to tramp the hills for a postman it can’t be that bad.’

  Stefan didn’t know what was happening at Dublin Castle. He didn’t really want to. De Paor had pushed some of that back into his mind again, but it wasn’t why he was here. The rest of them could play those games.

  ‘You’d know a bit about General O’Duffy’s Bandera, Geróid?’

  The G2 man was puzzled.

  ‘You’d know the men that went, I mean.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be on the tip of my tongue exactly.’

  ‘The Missing Postman was in Spain with O’Duffy.’

  ‘Is that a line of inquiry? A Spanish barman looking for his money?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what it is.’ Stefan’s reply was blunt.

  ‘I see. I’ll be serious then. It is a line of inquiry?’

  ‘Spain is, as far as I’m concerned. The postman’s name was William Byrne. He went to Spain with O’Duffy, I guess in 1936. He was injured at some point. Probably in a bar or a brothel. He said he’d been wounded, but that was a lie. He did break some bones. He spent time convalescing at the Irish College in Salamanca. That’s what I’m interested in. You’d know it?’

  De Paor looked at him oddly for a moment.

  ‘I do know it. I know priests who were there. And I think there were some of O’Duffy’s men who ended up recuperating there. Some of them might even have seen a bullet fired in anger. They were at the battle of Jarama briefly.’

  ‘I thought you’d know something,’ said Stefan.

  ‘That’s not the level of detail you’re looking for, though, is it?’

  ‘You know people who know people. You’ve just told me that. Salamanca is where your man Byrne was. He was pally with another one of O’Duffy’s men there, a man called Michael Hagan. And Hagan is still at the college, working or training for the priesthood. I have a letter Hagan sent to Byrne, and a letter Byrne sent to someone else at the college. He may have no connection with the Bandera, I don’t know, but he’s Irish. It’s the relationship between Byrne and this other man that matters. His name is James Collins.’

  Stefan passed across a piece of paper with the names and details.

  ‘We have lists of men who went to Spain with O’Duffy but that’s it, if you’re talking ordinary soldiers. What you have is already more than we’d have. As for the Irish College, I think it was closed up, moth-balled during the Civil War.’

  De Paor watched Stefan, who seemed about to say more, but stopped as if suddenly thinking better of it. He could see Stefan’s awkwardness had returned. He could tell a lot wasn’t being said. And he could feel there was something very personal behind all this.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find. It might help if I knew what it’s about.’

  ‘It’s about murder. Three murders. Probably four murders.’

  ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’

  ‘And it’s about me, about something I didn’t see, a long time ago.’

  There was nothing more Stefan had to say. A few minutes later he left. Geróid de Paor sat at his desk looking down at the piece of paper that had been put in front of him. It wasn’t interesting in itself, but he read the names with the same thoughtful frown he had shown when Stefan first started to explain what he wanted. He picked up the telephone.

  ‘Can you get me Colonel Archer?’

  He waited.

  ‘It’s Geróid, sir. It’s just something odd that’s come up, out of the blue. I don’t know if it could be useful to us. It’s this Kerney business in Spain. Shall I pop in, sir?’

  Tom and Stefan spent the afternoon in the Olympia Theatre with Maeve’s parents, Jack and Sally, and with her brother Dermot, his wife Kathleen and their three children, Tom’s cousins. They were all staying with Jack and Sally in Malahide; Tom would be going back to spend two days there.

  Stefan wanted to talk to someone, to ask if there was anything at all that could begin to make sense of the idea that Maeve had been murdered. He knew it might come to that eventually. But how could he start that conversation? And if everyone else was right, if it was nothing except Billy Byrne’s imagination, or if it was true yet there was no killer to be found, what was the point of pushing this tumour into the heart of Maeve’s family?

  In the darkness of the Olympia he was surrounded by laughter, and he laughed himself as the two Ugly Sisters burst on to the stage at every opportunity to scream: ‘God save all here, it’s an Emerrrgency altogether!’ with the audience roaring in unison with the word ‘Emerrrgency!’ It still wasn’t the time to speak. Till he knew something real he could say nothing.

  After the pantomime they ate at Hynes’s along Dame Street. Oddly, for Stefan, it felt like one of the most successful of the Christmas outings they had been on together. He watched them all talking over one another, and the children, in hushed, giggling whispers, repeating the words, ‘It’s an Emerrrgency’, endlessly. If he was unusually quiet no one seemed to notice it. But he was glad when they set off, the children still full of noise, heading for the tram to Malahide. He walked back up Dame Street to Dublin Castle.

  In the detectives’ room they were still working, among them Dessie MacMahon, waiting for Stefan. He had telephoned Kilranelagh the night before. It was no more than a message about catching up, but Stefan knew where Dessie was phoning from; he was being careful with his words. And it was about more than catching up.

  Stefan and Dessie walked down Parliament Street, over Grattan Bridge, to the bar at the Ormond Hotel. Stefan ran through the details of what he had found in William Byrne’s rooms in Glendalough and what else he had put together. Dessie was never a man to say much; what he took in stayed in until, unexpectedly, he put it together with some unlikely, inconsequential piece of information in his head and saw something everyone else had missed. His silence tonight was a deeper than usual.

  The Ormond was not a bar that invited you to stay. A man played the piano but his music added nothing to the frigid atmosphere. Stefan and Dessie sat at the back of the bar. Dessie stubbed out one Sweet Afton and lit another. Stefan took out a cigarette too. It signalled the end of an unsatisfactory conversation about events in the Wicklow Mountains.

  ‘So what’s going on at the Castle, Dessie?’

  ‘It’s all bringing in IRA men. No evidence needed. If Gregory says they’re IRA, they go to the Curragh. I don’t know who the informers are, but the Boys are easy to find. I’d say the IRA’s leaking like a sieve.’

  Stefan was waiting for Dessie to say what he was there to say.

  ‘Terry Gregory’s been asking about you, Stevie.’

  ‘Asking what?’

  ‘He’s never said a word to me, but there’s others he’s talked to.’

  ‘I don’t have a lot to hide, Dessie. He can talk all he wants.’

  ‘If he was walking round saying, what’s that fucker Gillespie up to, I wouldn’t think twice. But it’s quiet. When he’s quiet he’s digging. Some of the lads don’t like that. You mightn’t think they’d be watching your back . . .’

  ‘You’re right,’ laughed Stefan. ‘So who told you this?’

  ‘Never mind who, I’m passing it on. He wants to know the usual things, who you spend your time with, where you drink, who you talk to.’

  ‘In the Wicklow Mountains?’

  ‘No, but I
’m not sure he minds you being out of the way just now.’

  Stefan nodded. He had thought the same thing after Christmas.

  ‘There is one thing. I was talking to Aidan Fogarty—’

  ‘Garda Fogarty? What would he know about me?’

  ‘He was in the mess, and he says, for a bit of craic, “Tell that inspector of yours to watch his arse, Gregory’s on to him!” I asked why and he said he seen you one night before Christmas, coming into the Castle, with too much whiskey inside you.’ Dessie grinned. ‘His words! He said the boss was asking about you next day. Had Fogarty seen you in the Castle the night before, late? He made a joke about you having a report to give him so, and how he’d have your bollocks if you’d been off on the piss.’

  ‘And what did Fogarty say?’

  ‘He hadn’t seen you.’

  ‘Fair play to him, I owe him one.’

  ‘Fogarty didn’t think the boss believed him.’

  ‘You’ll want another drink, Dessie.’

  As Stefan went to the bar Superintendent Gregory was walking towards him. The superintendent smiled. There was nothing accidental about the meeting.

  ‘Fresh enough out there. A hot whiskey would do the trick. Don’t worry about one for Dessie, I’d say it’ll be time he was on his way now.’

  Gregory walked across to the table where Dessie MacMahon was sitting and sat down beside him. A moment later Dessie got up and walked past Stefan.

  ‘Well, you know he wasn’t just passing by.’

  Stefan carried the drinks to the table and sat down.

  ‘It’s a while since I was here,’ said the superintendent. ‘It’s always been a shitehole. But maybe you’d be more a cocktail-bar man yourself?’

  What Gregory said idly was never idle. It seemed he knew something about the drink with de Paor before Christmas too. Stefan didn’t answer.