The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  “I’ll take half an ounce of your best Bird’s Eye,” he says.

  “Very good.”

  Teasdale weighs it out carefully on the copper scales and wraps the small brown pile in a sheet of newsprint.

  “You could go to his house, of course. He lives on Thompson Street with his mother and his sister, Rose.”

  O’Connor nods. He knows where Flanagan lives, but he has never been there. For safety’s sake, they meet in taverns and coffeehouses well away from the Irish districts, where no one is likely to recognize or remember either of them. He’ll give Flanagan another day or so to reappear, he thinks, and then, if necessary, he’ll talk to the sister, Rose.

  He pays Teasdale for the tobacco, then walks back to the Town Hall to wait for the telegrams. It is the middle of the afternoon before they come in. The offices in London and Liverpool have no record of anyone named Byrne involved in Fenianism, but the telegram from Dublin identifies Daniel Byrne as a commonly used alias of Stephen J. Doyle, a Union veteran and a known Fenian who, according to reliable informers, was involved in the attempted uprising in March but escaped arrest. His current whereabouts are unknown.

  O’Connor shows the Dublin telegram to Fazackerley. Fazackerley reads it and frowns.

  “It’s the same fucking fellow,” he says. “Would you ever believe that?”

  “We need to find Tommy,” O’Connor says. “If Doyle’s after him, it means he’s been discovered.”

  “He might be dead already. When those Fenians get their hands on a spy, they don’t trouble themselves with the niceties. You know that, Jimmy.”

  “Or he might be hiding. There are places he could go.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “His sister, Rose, does slop work for the Solomons. And there’s a mother too. They live on Thompson Street, behind the ropery.”

  Fazackerley takes a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocks the gun safe, and takes out two revolvers. He loads them both and hands one to O’Connor.

  “Should we tell Maybury what we’re doing?”

  O’Connor shakes his head.

  “One Fenian more or less won’t trouble Maybury much. If we need to, I’ll tell him after.”

  They ascend Shude Hill past the back entrances to Smithfield market. There is a damp tang of fish guts and cheese, and the pavement underfoot is strewn with broken vegetables, malt, and sawdust. Outside the Turk’s Head a barrel organ is playing “Men of Harlech” and Fazackerley pauses to listen, then gives the monkey a farthing. When they reach the corner of Thompson Street they ask a man for the Flanagan house, and he looks them up and down, then points across to number twenty-three.

  Rose Flanagan is small and thin like her brother. She has dark hair tied up with a scrap of ribbon, and pale green eyes. When they tell her who they are and that they have come about Tommy, she explains that Tommy is not at home and they haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. O’Connor asks if they can step inside for a moment, and she glances out into the street to see who is watching, then steps back and nods them toward the kitchen. The mother is sitting by the stove bundled up in shawls and blankets, her soft, crumpled face vacant and frog-like. She offers them a faint smile but doesn’t say hello. The two men sit down, unbutton their overcoats, and put their hats on the table in front of them.

  “They’re police, Ma,” Rose tells her. “They’re here looking for our Tommy.”

  “Tommy?” the mother says. “We don’t know where he’s gone to at all.”

  “That’s what I told them. He was here yesterday, but we haven’t seen him since.”

  O’Connor reaches into his pocket for his notebook and pencil.

  “Did Tommy take anything with him when he left the house yesterday?” O’Connor asks Rose.

  “He took his dog,” Rose says.

  “Did he take a bag or a traveling case?”

  “Tommy doesn’t have any traveling case,” the mother says.

  “He just took the dog with him,” Rose says. “Has he done something wrong?”

  “We think he might be hiding somewhere, but we don’t know where.”

  “Why would he be hiding?”

  “Do you know a man named Stephen Doyle?”

  Rose looks at him a moment before answering. Her expression is both tired and amused, as if none of this is entirely new to her. How many times in her life has she pulled Tommy out of trouble? O’Connor wonders.

  “I never heard of him,” she says.

  “I know an Arthur Doyle, lives over on Spear Street,” the mother says.

  “Not Arthur, Ma, Stephen,” Rose says.

  The mother shakes her head.

  “I never heard of any Stephen Doyle,” she says.

  “We think Tommy might be in danger,” O’Connor tells them. “Last night, near midnight, he came to the detective office in the Town Hall and said that this man Stephen Doyle was threatening him.”

  “So you two saw him there last night?”

  “Not us,” Fazackerley says. “Another officer named Rogers.”

  “If he was in danger, then why didn’t you help him?”

  “We’re not sure what help he needed. He left a note for me to meet him today at noon, but when I went to the place he wasn’t there.”

  “And you’re a friend of Tommy’s, are you?” Rose says. She gives him a sharp suspicious look. O’Connor wonders just how much she knows about her brother’s business, and how much of what she knows she is prepared to admit in front of the mother. He looks around the kitchen. It is clean enough, but the furniture is old and badly made. There is a single candle guttering on the table in front of them and the fire in the grate is almost out.

  “I’ll be plain with you,” he says, “since we’re short of time here. Tommy has been passing me information, secrets, you could call it, in return for money, and my fear is he’s been discovered.”

  “What secrets?” the mother says. “What secrets could Tommy know that would be of use to anyone but himself?”

  “Perhaps he kept it from you,” O’Connor says, “to protect you, but Tommy is close with members of the Fenian Brotherhood in Manchester.”

  “The Fenians?” the mother says. “Tommy knows those fellows, of course, we all do, but he’s not a part of all that and never has been.”

  O’Connor looks at Rose. Her expression tightens.

  “Our Tommy’s not a spy,” she says. “If he was I’d know about it.”

  “Do you have an idea where he could be hiding? Are there other friends? Other places he goes to? If we find him first, before they do, we can keep him safe.”

  Rose shakes her head.

  “If you know anything about my brother, you’ll know he’s forever getting himself into mischief,” she says, “and he generally talks his way out of it one way or another. He’s gone missing before and he’s always come back with some story to tell. He’s an eejit all right, I’ll grant you, but he’s not a fool. Whatever it is he’s done or not done can be made right without the police being brought in, I’m sure.”

  “This is more than mischief, though. If you think you can help him yourself, you can’t. It’s too late for that now.”

  “Whatever Tommy’s been telling you, Mr. O’Connor, I’d take it with a large pinch of salt. He’s a dreadful liar.”

  “That’s the truth,” the mother agrees. “I hate to say it about my own son, but he’s awful with the lying.”

  Fazackerley sniffs and shakes his head.

  “For christsake,” he says.

  O’Connor runs his thumbnail along the knife-gouged table edge. Whatever Rose knows, she is keeping to herself, and if she’s scared, she is doing a fine job of covering it up. Probably, he thinks, she believes most of what she is telling them—that this is just another one of Tommy Flanagan’s scrapes and that talking to t
he police will make things worse, not better, for all of them.

  “You know what the Fenians do to their spies. You must know that.”

  “I know they generally kill them. But our Tommy’s not a spy, I told you that already.”

  She flushes a little, then smiles to show she is sure of herself despite what they might think. One of her teeth at the front has a chip off the corner. Fazackerley starts to explain that if a man sells secrets for money, he is, by the popular reckoning, accounted a spy, and since Tommy Flanagan…but O’Connor stops him there.

  “If you can’t help us any, then we’ll be on our way,” he says. “But if you do hear anything from Tommy, you can get a message to us at the Town Hall. Sergeant Fazackerley and Head Constable O’Connor.”

  “You’re one of those sent over from Dublin, aren’t you?” Rose says to him.

  “That’s right.”

  “What happened to your face there?”

  O’Connor shrugs.

  “Got into some bother over in Gaythorn. Couple of hefty fellows asked me for a loan.”

  She steps closer in and has a look at him. She smells of bacon rind and, more faintly, lavender.

  “I’ve got some ointment that’ll take that swelling down for you,” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, you wait here.”

  She goes into the front room and comes back with a small brown-glass bottle. The label says “Dr. Abel’s Best Liniment.”

  “It’s the best thing for aches and bruises,” she says. “Just try it.”

  “I won’t, thank you,” he says. “Not now.”

  “Here.”

  She puts some of the chalky white liquid on her finger ends, dabs it quickly onto his cheek and temple, then looks at him.

  “Go on, rub it in,” she says. “You’ll feel it working straightaway.”

  She’s playing games now, he thinks. That’s all. Showing that she’s not afraid of them.

  “Very well, then.”

  He nods and rubs it in. His bruise-blackened skin feels thinned out and breakable.

  “See,” she says.

  “We’ll be on our way now,” Fazackerley says.

  O’Connor takes the liniment bottle off the table and looks at it. There is a lithograph of Dr. Abel with pince-nez and a long white beard, and a description of his many accomplishments.

  “You do needlework for the Solomons, don’t you? That’s what Tommy told me.”

  “I gave that up. I work in the kitchens at the Spread Eagle now. It’s better paid.”

  “I’ll look for you there, then,” O’Connor says. “If I need you again.”

  She sniffs at the thought.

  “You won’t be needing me again, though. Our Tommy will be back before you even know it.”

  * * *

  —

  Back outside on the cobblestones, O’Connor opens his notebook and thumbs through the pages, hesitating twice and going back again, as if to check a fact or date. He first noticed something wrong when he opened it in the kitchen, but now he can see for certain that there are pages missing, five or six of them, cut out with a sharp blade. He doesn’t remember exactly what was written on the missing pages, but he can make a guess from the dates before and after.

  “What is it?” Fazackerley says.

  “There are pages gone from my notebook,” he says. “Cut out with a knife or razor.”

  “Fallen out, more likely. Check all your pockets.”

  “I already have.”

  “Show me, then.”

  O’Connor gives him the notebook and Fazackerley opens it and looks. He touches the cut-off edges with his fingertip and grimaces.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t like this before?”

  O’Connor nods.

  “It’s the Fenians,” he says. “It must be them. That’s why I was robbed in Gaythorn. They did it for the notebook, not the money or the watch. They cut out the pages, then put the notebook back in my pocket so I wouldn’t notice.”

  “If it was a Fenian who robbed you, you would have recognized his face.”

  “They must have found someone else to help them, someone new, to throw me off.”

  “That’s too clever for the Fenians. They’d never have dreamed up a scheme like that.”

  “It’s too clever for Peter Rice, that’s true, but we don’t know it’s too clever for Stephen Doyle.”

  “If he reads the pages, what does he find there?”

  O’Connor shakes his head.

  “Names,” he says. “Three or four. I’m not sure.”

  “Three or four?”

  “Tommy Flanagan, William Mort, Henry Maxwell…” He stops talking and looks off down the street. He thinks of Stephen Doyle, dark-browed, war-scarred, murderous, sitting in an attic room somewhere hunched over the papers like a priest with a breviary.

  “Christ almighty.” Fazackerley shakes his head. “One dead spy you might pass over as a slice of misfortune, but three all together is something else. Even Maybury will prick up his ears at a slaughter like that one.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Tommy Flanagan is all but unrecognizable. Most of the face is shot away, and what is left is twisted, bent, and blood-blackened, like a piece of meat left too long in the oven. O’Connor can hardly bear to look at him. He feels sick at the very sight. Henry Maxwell, lying on the muddy ground adjacent, looks more or less the same. Why, if they had to kill them, they couldn’t have done it in a more decent manner, he doesn’t know, except, of course, he knows very well. It is a sign of their scorn, a reminder of the nature of the crime and its consequence. There will be no wakes here. No funeral parades. And if the mothers and widows want to say goodbye, this horror is all they will have to say goodbye to.

  The coroner is standing off to one side, making notes, four constables in uniform are waiting around with gray canvas stretchers, Fazackerley has already been and gone. O’Connor walks over to the crumbling, weed-clogged edge of Travis Island and looks down into the black and viscid waters of the Irk. Two men dead because of his carelessness. He feels the shame burning in his stomach like something swallowed by mistake. He would like to take a drink now. He remembers the taste of whiskey on his tongue, like a long, deep cavern he could crawl into and be safe. Not a cavern, though, he reminds himself, a tomb. He closes his eyes for a moment and thinks about offering up a prayer for the dead but doesn’t. Rain falls steadily from a darkened sky; it pummels the river’s grimy surface and raises a fetid tang from the wet earth all around. After another minute, one of the constables comes over and tells him that the cart has arrived and they are ready to move the bodies.

  There is a Belfast priest, Father Cochran, waiting for them at the infirmary. O’Connor gives him the names and addresses of the dead men and explains what has happened. He offers to give the families the news himself since he knows the circumstances, but Cochran says that it will be better coming from him. They are standing in a gloomy basement room, and the two stretchers are placed side by side on the red-tiled floor. The bodies are covered over with mud-stained blankets. The priest crosses himself twice, then bends down and lifts up an edge.

  “Good God,” he says. “How can you even know which one is which?”

  “We went through their pockets.”

  “Well, the sooner they’re decently buried, the better. There’s no glory or goodness in any of this.”

  “Will you tell Rose Flanagan that when she is ready to talk to me, she knows where I can be found?”

  Cochran looks at the body again, then puts the blanket back and stands up. Most of the color has drained from his face.

  “Do you really think she’ll be wanting to talk to the police after this?” he asks. “Do you think any of them will?”

  “They won’t get justice any other way.”
>
  “Justice?” he asks. “Is that what we saw last week at the prison with three men hanged?”

  “This is not the same.”

  “Are you sure?”

  There is a pause. There is no fire in the room and the only light is from a narrow window high up on one wall. O’Connor can see his own breath hanging like a veil in the dark air.

  “Just as sure as I need to be,” he says.

  Cochran nods, licks his lips, and presses the wrinkles from his vestment with the heels of his hands.

  “I believe you’re from Dublin,” he says. “May I ask which parish?”

  O’Connor looks at him a long moment, then shakes his head.

  “No,” he says, “you may not.”

  * * *

  —

  When all the papers have been signed and the coroner is finally satisfied, O’Connor walks from the infirmary back into Ancoats. There was only one other name in his notebook, William Mort, a carpenter from Leitrim. He has been missing for two days now and his family has no idea where he could be. O’Connor wants to tell them about the bodies on Travis Island before they hear it from someone else. He goes to the house and knocks, but no one answers. He sees a curtain move in the upstairs window and tries again. As he walks away, someone shouts at him to fuck off and not come back, and a boy throws a stone, which misses. He remembers what it felt like after Catherine died. Trapped in memories. Despair like ice spreading out from the center of a pond. But there is always something left, he thinks. There must be. A gesture, a movement, a way of pulling back. Something tiny. It is a sin to just give up—not that he cares very much about sin.

  When he gets to the Town Hall, Maybury is waiting for him.

  “You come along with me,” he says.

  “There’s no sign of Mort as yet,” O’Connor tells him.