The City in Darkness

by Michael Russell

  ‘And he’s still here.’

  ‘He stayed when the others went. He has it in his head he wants to study for the priesthood. If he has the vocation I’m not sure he has the ability. But he’s loyal, a good Irishman, a good Catholic. For good reasons he’s loyal to Frank Ryan. He has a job as a kind of secretary here. I have a weakness for lame ducks! I never had the heart to turn him out.’

  Stefan wanted to ask about someone else who had worked at the college, perhaps another Irish lame duck. But as Jim Collins was no longer there, and with no reason to bring him up, he said nothing. It would be Hagan himself he tackled about that. As the whiskey disappeared and the conversation between the ambassador and the rector turned to hurling and home, Stefan decided there would be nothing more for him to learn. The rector, starved of guests, let alone Irish ones, would not make an early night of it. Stefan left.

  As he walked to his room the upper cloisters were in deep shadow, but he could see a light further along the gallery. It came from a partly open door. It would have been nothing odd if he hadn’t known it was the ambassador’s room. He walked slowly, keeping in the shadows, close to the line of small doorways into the cells. He was very near the light now.

  He listened. He could hear drawers being opened. He imagined some Abwehr man was searching Kerney’s room. But it was odd. Leaving the door ajar was sloppy, and even a junior Intelligence officer ought to be able to open a drawer silently. And since the Abwehr knew far more about what was going on than Kerney, what was the point? He heard nothing more for over a minute, then the silence was broken by footsteps. The light went off. He opened the door he was standing by and stepped into a dark cell. If the intruder came his way, he could push the door to. He needed to find out who was in the ambassador’s room before doing anything. It might be better saying nothing to Kerney. They had pushed the Abwehr hard enough today.

  The door from the ambassador’s room opened. A man came out, pulling the door shut and locking it. He walked along the gallery to the stairs. Stefan moved out of the doorway and crossed to the one of the arches that looked down into the cloisters. The man was moving quickly. When he reached the stairway there was a brighter light. For a moment it illuminated his face very clearly as he started down the stairs. It was Michael Hagan.

  Next morning Leopold Kerney left for Madrid. Stefan could see he was still reluctant. Frank Ryan’s release was a personal matter. That was what had led him to cross so many diplomatic lines and even to be economical with what he told his own government. It was what made him avoid asking why the Germans wanted to free a man they would, not long ago, have shot had he fallen into their hands in Spain. He had persuaded himself that people who cared about Ryan as he did, in particular the Abwehr agent Helmut Clissmann, were the force behind what the Germans were doing. Even after his conversations with Stefan he held to that. Yet whatever the ambassador told himself, Stefan could see that Kerney didn’t leave Salamanca with an easy mind.

  ‘This is a letter for Frank. It simply says you have my authority and my trust. He will know less about what’s going to happen than we do. Then there’s this.’ Kerney had taken out a green booklet stamped with a gold harp; a new Irish passport. ‘María Fernández Duarte. Miss Duarte lives in Salamanca but she was with Frank during the war. She worked as a nurse. But no one who was on the Republican side is entirely safe. There’s no altering the fact that Spain’s peace is vindictive and unforgiving. Her visits to Burgos gaol won’t have gone unnoticed. Frank feels the international support he has received has, in a small way, kept her safe. Now he wants her to leave Spain. I’m giving her an Irish passport, I have to say without consulting anyone. And I’ve promised to see she gets out of the country.’

  Stefan looked at a photograph of a woman with a shock of thick, untidy black hair. She didn’t look like she would choose any easy way.

  ‘So do I give this to her?’

  ‘Once he’s away. But I want Frank to know it’s done.’

  An hour later the ambassador was gone. Stefan had said nothing about Michael Hagan but he still wanted to know why he had been in Kerney’s room. After seeing the ambassador’s taxi off he walked into the porter’s lodge, looking for Chávez, to check the train times to Burgos. Chávez wasn’t there and he spent several minutes discussing the timetable with the Abwehr guard, maintaining the fiction that he spoke no German. He saw Hagan pass the door on his way out of the college, clearly in a hurry.

  He wandered out to the street and watched the young Irishman heading down the hill towards the centre of the city. There was purpose, even urgency in his step. He had a feeling that purpose and urgency were not much in Hagan’s make-up. Neither was searching the rooms of the rector’s guests. The two things might go together. And he still had to speak to Hagan about William Byrne and Jim Collins. Whether in the past or the present, the more he knew about the rector’s Irish lame duck the better.

  Stefan kept his distance as he followed Michael Hagan. There were few people in the Calle Cuesta San Blas and the figure in black was easily visible, but as the streets became narrower and more crowded he had to keep closer. There were alleyways where Hagan turned abruptly, taking a route he knew well. Suddenly the crowds were denser, noisier; Stefan knew where he was. It was the market he had driven through the day before; he recognized the red market building and the trucks and carts. For a moment he had lost sight of Michael Hagan. Then he saw him across the Plaza del Mercado, passing under a colonnade, hurrying up a flight of stone steps.

  By the time Stefan reached the steps he had lost him. He emerged from the stairway into a great open space, full of a light that not only beat down from the blue sky above it, but was reflected back from the three storeys of sandstone arcades and galleries that made up the vast square. It was the Plaza Mayor. He gazed about him, not for the Irishman in black, but simply at the great piazza of light.

  The cloistered arcades of shops and cafés that lined the sides of the square were full of people but unlike the market outside the chatter of voices was calm and quiet. He looked out over the cobbled stones, trying to find Hagan again, and as a cloud of pigeons erupted up from the Plaza Mayor he saw him approach a café and sit at a table. There was a woman there. Stefan stepped under the arches of the arcade and moved round the plaza. He knew the woman’s black hair. This was María Fernández Duarte. She smoked a cigarette as Hagan talked, leaning forward, tense in a way she was not. He had no doubt that whatever Hagan had been looking for in Kerney’s room, that was what they were discussing. But these were not people to be wary of; they were Frank Ryan’s friends. He walked to the café and sat down at the table.

  ‘And a beer for me, please,’ he said as the waiter brought coffee.

  He smiled, looking out at the square.

  ‘It’s quite something.’

  ‘I don’t know you, Mr . . .?’ She spoke good English.

  ‘Stefan Gillespie, Miss Duarte. Mr Kerney mentioned you to me.’

  She smiled. Michael Hagan looked embarrassed.

  ‘Mikey’s told me who you are. You’re going to Burgos to see Frank.’

  ‘He didn’t need to search the ambassador’s room to tell you that.’

  ‘It was only to help María, Mr Gillespie.’

  As the waiter brought his beer, Stefan shrugged; it didn’t matter.

  ‘I wanted to know what’s happening to Frank,’ said María.

  ‘So what did you find out, Mikey?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘Nothing.’ Hagan was tight-lipped, a look of defiant loyalty.

  ‘I think you need to be very careful, Miss Duarte; you too,Mikey.’

  ‘What do we need to be careful of, Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘I’m sure you know. It’s not me. It’s not Mr Kerney.’

  She looked hard at Stefan and didn’t reply.

  ‘I think he’s all right, María.’

  ‘Because he’s an Irishman?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Hagan.

  ‘I know Frank is comin
g out of prison, Mr Gillespie. He has told me as much in his way. He won’t tell me more. I think he can’t. Or he can’t say it where we can be overheard. But I know it’s because of your ambassador. If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know if Frank would be alive. I trust him. But I also know it is something to do with the Germans, the Abwehr. I know he has talked to them about Frank at the Colegio. I don’t understand and I need to. It makes no sense. How can anyone trust them?’

  ‘If you can trust Mr Kerney, isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Gillespie, is it?’

  It was a question Stefan could not answer himself.

  ‘You know Mr Kerney has got you an Irish passport?’

  ‘Yes, Frank wants me to go to Ireland. But where will he be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Stefan saw the doubt in her eyes; he felt it himself. ‘That’s for him. What matters is he’s out of gaol. If that needs to be a secret, so nothing can get in the way, so what? He’ll be free, that’s all.’

  ‘People have died to get Frank out of Burgos.’ María spoke quietly. ‘Now the people he hates more than the Falange, the Nazis who bombed our cities and gave Franco his machine guns and tanks, are helping him get away. Why? Because they’re sorry for him and they want him to go home?’

  Hagan was looking round nervously.

  ‘Are those empty questions, Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘Never mind anyone else, Miss Duarte, you have to trust him.’

  ‘I know. There are no questions if Frank finds his way home.’

  Stefan knew she wanted him to tell her that he would.

  ‘He will, I know he will.’ It was Michael Hagan who answered.

  ‘I am going to Burgos today,’ María continued, ‘to the Central Prison. Perhaps the last time. He won’t tell me that, but I know now. And you are going too.’

  Stefan looked at her and nodded. It had been his intention only to discover what they knew, what they were doing, but he had to say more.

  ‘I will be with him. I’ll see him leave Spain. And I will come back to Salamanca to tell you.’ Stefan finished the beer and stood up. ‘But leave it alone, both of you, leave the Germans alone. I think Frank would say that.’

  He walked away, across the Plaza Mayor. He wasn’t sure María Duarte would leave it alone. As for the journey Frank Ryan would take, he had no idea what it would be. He had no sense if ‘home’ came into it. But it wasn’t his concern. He glanced back across the Plaza Mayor to the café where Michael Hagan and María were still talking. He had established a relationship of sorts with Hagan now. He had waited long enough. It was time to tackle him about Glendalough and the letter to William Byrne.

  A dark man in a grey suit watched Stefan idly from a café across the plaza. He had watched the conversation between Stefan, María and Mikey Hagan too, though he had not been close enough to hear anything. He had taken several photographs of the square that included them. He picked up his elegant Zeiss again and took one more picture, then called for his bill.

  20

  Burgos

  When Stefan Gillespie returned to the Irish College a car passed him on the Calle Cuesta San Blas. Oberleutnant Triebel was driving; Eckhart was beside him. He knew they were heading for Burgos. He would be taking the train tomorrow.

  He didn’t know if what had happened in the Plaza Mayor gave him a better chance with Michael Hagan now. He hoped he had shown he could be trusted as far as Frank Ryan and María Duarte were concerned. Clearly they both meant a lot to Hagan. He assumed the young Irishman was aware that his search of the ambassador’s room would not be reported to the rector. That meant more trust. He took a postcard he had bought on his way out of the Plaza Mayor and sat in the cloisters, writing a message for Tom that was only about trains and sunshine and the great square in the picture.

  Half an hour later Hagan returned; Stefan went to meet him.

  ‘I thought you might want to show me the chapel, Mikey.’

  It wasn’t what Michael Hagan was expecting. María said she trusted the Irish policeman; that didn’t make him easy to be with. He had a feeling Stefan wanted something more. It unsettled him. The detective looked at him with a curiosity he couldn’t fathom.

  They didn’t speak until they were in the chapel. It was a place of cold stone and quiet. It had little decoration except for the great altarpiece that filled the high east wall, sectioned off in golden stucco squares that framed small paintings of the life of Christ. As Stefan looked towards it, down the length of the vaulted knave, the young Irishman began to deliver a kind of lecture. The voice not was not really his own; the words had been learned by rote.

  ‘The retablo is the most remarkable feature of the chapel. Begun in 1529, the paintings of the life of Christ are by Alonso Berruguete. The birth of Our Lord, the adoration of the shepherds, the Magi, the flight to Egypt—’

  He stopped, aware that Stefan was now gazing directly at him.

  ‘I have another reason to be here, Mikey. It’s about William Byrne.’

  Michael Hagan stared; it came from nowhere.

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘Billy Byrne, yes. You knew him in the Bandera, and here.’

  ‘We convalesced at the college, yes . . .’

  ‘You won’t know he’s dead.’

  ‘No. Poor Billy, I’m sorry to hear that.’

  He was being careful now. Stefan could see it.

  ‘What happened to him, Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘No one knows. He disappeared in Glendalough on Christmas Eve. Nobody’s seen him since. I was investigating that. We presume he’s dead, and that somebody killed him. But who did it is another thing altogether.’

  Hagan was avoiding his eyes, confused, uncomprehending.

  ‘But I think it had something to do with a man who worked here, a man called Jim Collins. I think the man who killed Billy Byrne was known to Jim Collins, perhaps a long time back. You knew them both, of course.’

  The young Irishman barely nodded.

  ‘Billy wrote to Collins, not long ago. You sent the letter back.’

  ‘I did.’ The reply was hesitant. ‘Jim’s been gone six months now.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I don’t at all, that’s why I sent the letter back to Billy.’

  ‘Would the rector know?’

  ‘He went very sudden, Inspector, he left us no address at all.’

  ‘I understand he’d worked here for years, hadn’t he? So why?’

  ‘It was his family, I’d say. He married a Spanish woman. They had children. That’s as much as I know. And we weren’t great pals. He was the gardener, the handyman.’

  ‘What was his relationship with Byrne?’

  ‘Billy wasn’t here that long.’

  ‘Did you know they both came from the same place, from the Wicklow Mountains, Glendalough, Laragh, Rathdrum, round that area?’

  ‘I suppose so. We talked about home a lot, why wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Someone murdered Billy Byrne, Mikey. And other people. There was a girl twenty years back, then two women seven years, eight years ago. Billy thought the same man did it, and he knew who that was. He found out here, from Jim Collins. At least he found out about one murder. He put the others with it later. Did you ever hear of a man called Albert Neale?’

  Hagan shook his head slowly.

  ‘Is Charlotte Moore a name you know?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘So none of this means anything to you?’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Gillespie.’

  Mikey Hagan wasn’t a bad liar but he was too short on bewilderment about these questions. Even a bit of indignation wouldn’t have been out of place. But Stefan decided to stop. He would leave it here. Hagan needed to take it in. It wasn’t over. He would be back, and back with news of the man who had saved Hagan’s life. He would have no qualms about using that.

  ‘Think about it while I’m in Burgos, about the three women who died in Glendalough. Billy was right. It wasn’t Alber
t Neale, the man you never heard of. The police thought he killed the girl, Charlotte, but he didn’t. I have a very good idea Albert and Jim Collins are the same man. He might like to know there’s a policeman who believes him, even twenty years on.’

  Hagan still wanted to avoid Stefan’s eyes; he couldn’t.

  ‘The other women had names too. One was called Marian. One was Maeve. And there’s someone else dead of course, your comrade Billy. Not up to much I know, but maybe we’re a bit like the Church in the Gardaí, even a nasty bit of work deserves better than murder. And the woman called Maeve, Maeve Gillespie, was my wife.’

  He gave a shrug, then turned away and walked out.

  Mikey Hagan looked down at his hands. He had held them in check through it all. He didn’t know how. But now they were shaking. He looked up at the altar for a long moment. He walked to a pew and genuflected. He knelt on the stone floor and clasped his hands in prayer, his fingers intertwined like a child’s. He still couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.

  María Fernández Duarte sat opposite Frank Ryan. Between them were the bars and the netting. As always a warder sat in the space that separated them. It was a scene they had played out scores of times; the same place, the same sounds, the same sights. Although there were other memories, happy memories, they were not always easy to find. It felt at times as if there had never really been a before; this was what they were.

  ‘So who is he?’ Frank Ryan was puzzled.

  ‘Señor Gillespie is his name. He came from Dublin with your ambassador. They were together at the Colegia. I think Señor Kerney has gone to Madrid now, but the policeman is on his way here, to see you.’

  Ryan didn’t know why there was an Irish policeman travelling with Leopold Kerney, but the Irish College had a part to play in what was brewing. It was where Kerney first spoke to German Intelligence about getting him out of gaol. Whatever this Guard was doing he was part of that. And a stranger coming to see him, on Kerney’s behalf, could only mean something was about to happen. It would be very soon. He could feel that now. He couldn’t show it, even to María, but he knew she sensed it too.