The City of Shadows (18 page)

Mac Liammóir didn't waste time showing surprise or shock.

‘Well, we've dug out a list of people who were invited to the first night of
The Way of the World
. The ticket in question was given to a young man called Vincent Walsh. I didn't know him well myself but he did work here as a dresser from time to time. He was never on our permanent staff.'

‘Was the ticket used?'

‘No. There's always someone ticking off the names of guests at a first night and Vincent Walsh's name wasn't ticked. I presume he didn't come.'

‘Would you have expected him to?'

‘He was very close to our wardrobe master, Eric Purcell. He was his guest.' He pronounced all his words with an unusual, almost mannered care. He spoke the words ‘very close' quite slowly, watching Stefan's eyes again. It was not a statement but a question. ‘Do you understand?' He did. He also understood that the best answer to the question was to say nothing. Mac Liammóir would decide if that answer was the one he wanted to hear.

‘I have spoken to Eric. He can remember the evening very clearly. He was expecting Mr Walsh and he was rather upset when he didn't arrive. As it transpires he didn't see his friend again. No one did. He simply disappeared. Of course, that makes some sense now. You will want to talk to Mr Purcell.'

Stefan nodded. Mac Liammóir left the Green Room for a moment and returned quickly with a man of around forty. He looked nervous and as they were left alone, the nervousness seemed closer to fear. Stefan recognised the species of fear precisely. Eric Purcell was a small man whose effeminate features and movements were a part of his being; he would have encountered policemen in very different circumstances, without the protection of the Gate's walls. He would have had reason to be nervous.

It was obvious that Purcell was upset; it was obvious that Vincent Walsh had mattered to him, in a way that already told Stefan the world the dead man had inhabited. And because of that it wasn't surprising that the wardrobe master knew very little about the dead man's family. He knew Vincent had had a mother and father in Carlow, and that's where he'd grown up. They had a shop there; Purcell thought it was a tobacconist's. That was all. As far as he knew, Vincent Walsh hadn't kept in touch with his parents.

‘I thought something was wrong, Sergeant.'

‘You expected him to be at the first night?'

‘He'd never have missed it. It wasn't just the play. I got him a little bit of work here when I could. I'd told him there was something in the offing.'

‘Did you try to contact him?'

‘I did. But he'd gone.'

‘Gone where?'

‘People go, don't they?'

‘Who told you he'd gone?'

‘He worked at Billy Donnelly's, Carolan's, in Red Cow Lane. He'd a room there. It was Billy who said he'd left. Well, why wouldn't he? There isn't much to stay for.' It was clear Vincent Walsh's disappearance had left a bitter taste. It was all the more bitter now that Eric Purcell knew the anger and hurt he had harboured for so long afterwards had been unjustified.

‘What made you think something was wrong?'

‘I don't know. I just thought Vincent was better than that.'

‘When did you last see him?'

There were tears in the wardrobe master's eyes, of grief and guilt. He hesitated. Stefan could see there were things Purcell didn't want to say. He had been gentle enough with him at first. Now he needed to be tougher.

‘Mr Purcell, your friend didn't meet a happy end. He was killed. And when he was dead someone took him out to a mountainside, dug a hole and dumped his body in it. I want to find out who did that. I need your help.'

‘I'll help if I can.'

‘You remember the date?'

‘Yes.' He had made his decision; to stop feeling sorry for himself.

‘I couldn't tell you the date off the top of my head, but it's easy to remember the day. It was the night after the Eucharistic Mass in the Park. He pulled me out of bed, hammering on my door at one o'clock in the morning.'

‘Did he often do that?'

Eric Purcell shook his head. It still wasn't easy. He was fighting the old habits of self-preservation that told him never to say anything to the Guards, about anything, about anybody. Stefan knew that and he waited.

‘He'd been at the Mass in the afternoon, then he'd been working in Carolan's. When the pub closed some fellers came in, Blueshirts, a gang of them. They started roughing up Vincent and Billy the way the Guards – I'm not saying – I mean it happens sometimes, you'd know yourself, Sergeant.'

Purcell assumed Stefan wouldn't think there was anything out of the ordinary about a couple of queers being beaten up. It wasn't as if it was entirely unreasonable. Didn't the police have a go at it now and then too?

‘So what happened?'

‘He got away, and eventually he turned up at my flat.'

‘Was he hurt?'

‘There was a bit of blood, a few bruises.'

‘Did he stay?'

‘He left after a couple of hours. He was worried about Billy.'

‘What did you talk about?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Your friend gets you up in the middle of the night. There's blood on his face. He's been beaten up. He stays a bit, then he goes back to the pub where he was attacked. You're worried about him. But you've arranged to meet him here the next week. Then he doesn't turn up. He's just gone. You never see him again. And you don't remember what he talked about?'

‘He didn't say very much. That's the truth. He didn't want to talk.'

‘So what did he do?' persisted Stefan.

‘Nothing really. I cleaned him up. I washed the blood –'

‘Did he know these men, the Blueshirts?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘So did you just sit there and look at each other?'

‘He wrote a letter.'

Stefan looked at him, surprised.

‘He wanted an envelope. He had some papers in his pocket. I didn't really see. He put them in the envelope with a note. Then he wanted a stamp, but I didn't have one there. He asked me to post the letter the next day.'

‘Did you?'

The wardrobe master nodded.

‘Did you look at the address?'

‘It was addressed to Billy Donnelly.'

‘Which was where he was going when he left?'

Purcell nodded again.

‘Didn't that strike you as odd?'

‘It wasn't my business.' Grief was still there; so were old jealousies.

‘Did he say anything about this letter?'

‘No. He seemed a bit happier when he'd written it though. He laughed when he gave it to me. He said they wouldn't look in the same place twice.'

‘Did you know what he meant?'

‘No, I told you, he didn't want to talk about what happened.'

Stefan Gillespie believed him. He believed him all the more because of the note of bitterness he could hear, even though tears were still in Eric Purcell's eyes. Vincent Walsh had mattered to him, perhaps more than he had mattered to Vincent. When Vincent was in trouble he'd knocked on the wardrobe master's door; he needed help, but he didn't offer trust in return.

‘What's going to happen to him? I mean his body.'

‘We'll contact his parents now. He'll be buried in due course.'

‘I'd like to know when.'

‘I'm sure Mr and Mrs Walsh –'

‘I doubt they'll be inviting his friends, Sergeant.'

Walking down the stairs on his way out of the Gate, Stefan was surprised to see Wayland-Smith sprawling in an armchair by the box office, frowning over the crossword in
The Irish Times
. He laughed, finally seeing something he should have seen immediately, and wrote in the answer. He got up.

‘My car's outside. It seemed quickest to come here and get you.'

‘What's happened?'

‘They've found another body at Kilmashogue.'

*

It was almost dark as Stefan Gillespie and Wayland-Smith stood on the road below the woody mountainside again. The rain had gone now. It was a clear, crisp December night. Below them the great sprawl of Dublin was just starting to disappear into the darkness. The lights from the tractor and the State Pathologist's estate shone on the heap of earth and rock that still slewed across the track. It was only when the workmen had started to clear the landslip that they discovered the second body. It lay in several pieces where it had broken apart as it tumbled down the slope with the soil that had covered it; a leg, an arm, the torso and head. Black skin still held some of the bones in place, barely, like a wet paper bag about to split apart; other bones had already lost most of their flesh. It was immediately clear, to Stefan as well as to Wayland-Smith, that the body had been buried far more recently than the first. The jaw and the face were already almost a skull, but on the top of the head there was still skin and hair. It was long hair, a woman's. The pathologist turned to a guard behind him, who held a small cardboard box.

‘So show me.'

The policeman moved forward, stepping up on to the mound of earth, opening the flaps of the box. Stefan needed to shine a torch in to see. It could have been no more than earth and leaves, muddy, compressed; it could have been the carcass of a young rabbit, the fur stripped away, rotting. But the tiny skull was human. It was a foetus. Wayland-Smith crossed himself. It was a gesture Stefan didn't expect; he was conscious that he had never seen the State Pathologist make it over any adult corpse before. He moved closer to the torso and the head of the woman, stumbling in the slippery mud. He bent down, shining the torch on to her skull. He brushed away the mud on the forehead. There was something, quite small, blacker than the blackened skin; it was a round hole. Wayland-Smith squatted down beside him.

‘She's been dead no more than a year, maybe less.'

He took the torch from Stefan and bent nearer the head. The work of the soil had nearly removed the smell of putrefaction from the dead flesh, but this close it lingered. Stefan coughed as it hit the back of his throat. Wayland-Smith took a pencil from his pocket. He poked it into the hole.

‘I'd say so too, Sergeant. It's our captive bolt pistol.'

In the light from the torch something glinted in the mud. It was tiny. Stefan brushed it with his finger. It glinted more. He eased it away from the wet earth. A thin black cord came with it, circling the vertebrae that were all that was left of the neck; a silver chain. What had glimmered in the torchlight was silver too, barely half an inch in size. It was a Star of David.

Detective Sergeant Gillespie sat in the Austin outside the house in Lennox Street. It smelt, as always, of Dessie MacMahon's Sweet Afton. Usually that irritated him, if he bothered to notice it, but for now it seemed to drive out the smell of rain and soil and death that he had been breathing for the last twenty-four hours. Inside, Hannah Rosen was telling Susan Field's father that his daughter's body had been found. Stefan had not been on the wet plot of earth at Kilmashogue very long before he knew. It was scarcely an hour later that her handbag had been found, still full of the ordinary business of her life; comb, lipstick, pens and powder compact. There was a purse packed with shillings and pennies and threepenny bits and bus tickets, and there was a cheque book from the College Green branch of the Hibernian bank. The name inside the cheque book – still clearly legible – was Susan Field's.

Hannah had not been surprised by the fact that her friend was dead of course. Instinct had already told her that. But the circumstances threw her back into the kind of bewildered disbelief that made acceptance hard. Faced with death, knowing is never enough, not at first. She had known but she didn't believe. And now her heart, for a short time at least, had to fight the truth, in the futile, painful battle that can only be lost. Stefan could see it in her face; he had fought that battle once himself. He hadn't told her everything. There was still too much he didn't understand. Now there was more. How did the murder of Susan Field relate to the death of Vincent Walsh, dumped on the same hillside two years before, his bones broken and smashed, his head spiked like an animal in a slaughterhouse, just as Susan's head had been spiked?

It was only a few minutes before Hannah came back out to fetch him. He went into the house. Brian Field stood by the fireplace, hands clasped tightly behind him, like the last time Stefan was there. It felt as if the cantor had been standing there all that time, knowing he would come back to say, no, she didn't go anywhere, Mr Field; her bones are scattered on the mountainside. Stefan expressed his sorrow for the old man's trouble, with the handshake that always accompanied those words and, as ever, when the words were said and the hand-shaking done, there was nothing else to say.

‘I should see her,' said Brian Field very quietly.

‘She's been in the ground a long time, Mr Field. I'm not asking you to identify your daughter now, not from the remains. It might be best –'

‘I should see her.' He simply repeated the words. ‘I should see her.'

‘I'll go with you.' Hannah put her arm through his. All at once the composure on the old man's face was gone. There was a look of anguish.

‘Her sisters –'

She tightened her grip on his arm.

‘We'll telephone. Rachel can be here from London in no time.'

The cantor shook his head slowly; he didn't want to telephone.

Stefan recognised what he saw in that anguish. He remembered it well enough. Each person you tell makes death more real; each word of telling takes away the little breath of life that still survives inside your heart.

They stood over the body as it lay on the mortuary slab. They were the only people in the building. There were no questions to ask. Not now. It was the necessary business of death. Brian Field's fingers trembled as he took the blue kippah from his pocket. He put it on his head. He trembled again as he tried to fix it there with a hairgrip. Hannah took it from him and slid it on. He seemed unaware she was doing it. Stefan's eyes were fixed on the hairgrip. It was exactly the same as the two lined up on his desk, with the compact and the lipstick and the purse and the pens and the comb from Susan Field's handbag. And then quite suddenly, strong and clear, somewhere between singing and speaking, the cantor's voice filled the mortuary. ‘Yisgadal v'yiskadash sh'mei rabbaw. Amein.' May his name be exalted and sanctified in the highest. ‘B'allmaw deev'raw hir'usei.' In the universe created according to his will. ‘V'yamlih malhusei b'hayeihon uv'yomeihon. Amein.' May his kingdom swiftly come in our day and in the days of the house of Israel. Amen. As he continued, each amen was echoed more quietly by Hannah. Stefan watched her. He could feel how much it mattered to her. Sometimes you didn't have to believe it for it to matter.