The City of Shadows (44 page)

‘At the moment I'd say it was for Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick.' He took Keller's small notebook from his pocket. He opened it and handed one of Fitzpatrick's letters to Vincent Walsh across the table.

Dessie's eyes widened as he read.

‘I need you to watch my back,' said Stefan simply.

‘They won't let you do anything with this.'

‘That depends what I can put together before anyone notices me. I've got a bit of time. Fitzpatrick won't go running to the Commissioner, not with what I know about him, but he's quite likely to go running to Jimmy Lynch. And Jimmy might take matters into his own hands. I need to know where he is.'

‘You want me to follow a Special Branch sergeant?'

‘No, I couldn't ask you to do that,' said Stefan, laughing.

‘No, you couldn't.' Dessie took out an unopened pack of Sweet Afton. ‘That could get me into some real shite!'

*

When Sister Brigid opened the door of the house in Earlsfort Terrace she knew she recognised Stefan Gillespie. She wasn't quite sure where she'd seen him, but so many people came to her brother's meetings nowadays. They were so full that she couldn't expect to remember half the people.

‘Hello, Sister, I was hoping to talk to the monsignor.'

‘He's not here just now, can I help at all?'

‘Are you expecting him back? It is important.'

‘He won't be long,' she smiled. ‘Well, you can wait if you like.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Come in and have a cup of tea.'

He followed her into the hall and down the stairs to the basement, into a kitchen that was dark and old-fashioned but scrupulously neat. There was the smell of baking and a kettle was already steaming on the black range.

‘I get so little time to bake now. There's so much work. But this afternoon I thought, blow it! I haven't baked a scone in a month and Robert loves scones. Well, I tell him he loves them but I'm the one who does really. You need someone to make cakes for though. There's no pleasure just making them for yourself. If you wait till they cool you can have one as well.' She poured hot water into the teapot as she talked and while it was standing she opened the oven door and took out a tray of fruit scones. She put them out on a rack, one by one, in tidy rows. When she had finished she looked pleased with the results. She went to the teapot and poured a cup out. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar, it's on the table. I didn't ask your name?'

‘It's Gillespie. Detective Sergeant Gillespie.'

‘Oh, yes. I do remember you, Sergeant.' Then she frowned. ‘It was before Christmas, wasn't it? Robert was really very upset. He didn't tell me what you were discussing with him, but I know he didn't like it. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked you in. I don't know if the monsignor would want –'

‘I need to see him. It isn't something that can wait.'

‘When you were here before, it was about Francis, Father Byrne, I do remember that. You wanted to know where he was. But he's dead now. We heard last week.'

‘I know.'

‘He drowned.' She shook her head. ‘We hoped he would come back.'

There was something about the way she spoke that suggested more intensity than just a train across Europe and a Holyhead boat.

‘Come back?'

‘He lost his way.' She smiled sadly and crossed herself. ‘But where he is now, he will never lose his way again. When we ask forgiveness, we are forgiven.' She turned her head. Stefan could see that she was close to tears.

‘I'm sorry, Sister.'

‘Francis meant a lot to both of us. He lived in this house for many years. He was very special to my brother. He always felt that Francis would be beside him in his work and that one day, when the time came, it would be Francis who carried it on. When he turned away from everything Robert had taught him –' She started to re-arrange the scones on the rack. ‘I don't know why you're here, Mr Gillespie. I don't know what you can have to say.'

Stefan looked round as the door opened behind him. The monsignor was there. And there was no question that he remembered exactly who Stefan was.

‘What are you doing here?'

Stefan stood up slowly, his eyes fixed on the priest.

‘I need to talk to you, Monsignor.'

Robert Fitzpatrick's face showed a mixture of anger and indignation, but Stefan saw uncertainty too, somewhere behind all that.

‘I don't believe we have anything to talk about, Sergeant.'

‘Perhaps we could go upstairs. There are still questions –'

The monsignor was more agitated now. He walked forward.

‘He's dead! Don't you know Father Byrne is dead?'

Brigid stepped forward and took her brother's hand. He was immediately calmer.

‘I did tell him. I'm sorry, Robert. I didn't know who he was.'

‘It doesn't matter, Brigid. I think you can get out, Sergeant.'

But Stefan had no intention of getting out. His eyes hadn't left Robert Fitzpatrick's since he turned to see him in the kitchen. He had all the cards he needed.

‘I do know he's dead, Monsignor. I saw him in Danzig. I was with Bishop O'Rourke, at the undertakers, after they pulled his body out of the river.'

The priest and the nun stared at him. Fitzpatrick frowned as if he couldn't relate these ideas: the garda sergeant, Danzig, Francis Byrne. Brigid closed her eyes and bowed her head. As she looked up her lips were moving silently; her fingers were clasping the beads on the rosary at her waist.

They stood in Fitzpatrick's study. It was a room at the back of the house, behind the office and the bookshop. It looked out on a small, high-walled garden. There was a flowering cherry, full of white and pink blossom. The priest stood with his back to the window. He didn't ask Stefan to sit down.

‘As I understand it you were suspended from the Gardaí earlier this year. I don't know whether you've been re-instated, but if you have, the best thing you can do is walk out of this house now, or I'll make damned sure you're kicked out completely. Don't think I haven't got the ability to do it either.' The threat was cautious and considered. He was trying to weigh Stefan up as he spoke. He didn't know what to make of him. The idea that the policeman he had been in Danzig, talking to Francis Byrne, was still as startling as it was unexpected.

‘Let's forget the lies about Father Byrne, shall we? He did have an affair with Susan Field. He did pay for an abortion for her at Hugo Keller's clinic. You not only knew Keller, you put Francis Byrne in touch with him. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you what I know. And when the abortion went wrong and Susan had to be taken to hospital, you sent someone to sort it all out.'

‘Is that what Francis said?'

There was quiet calculation in the priest's eyes. This conversation meant nothing after all. These were just words, and the man they were talking about was dead.

‘It's also what Mr Keller said,' replied Stefan. Fitzpatrick couldn't know Keller was dead. He had no links to what had happened in Danzig.

‘Mr Keller is still in Germany?' The monsignor was less sure now.

‘He's in Danzig at the moment,' said Stefan. That much was true.

‘And he'll be coming back to testify to all this?' smiled the priest. If Keller wasn't in Ireland it didn't matter.

‘You don't deny you knew Hugo Keller, Monsignor.'

‘He was a friend, at least an acquaintance, of Adolf Mahr's, the director of the National Museum. I'm sure I met him a few times, at dinners or receptions. I have close ties with the German community, especially the German Catholic community. If what you say about his involvement in abortions is true I am deeply shocked. We can't always know where the bad apples are in a barrel. As far as Father Byrne is concerned I was satisfied with the answers he gave to your questions in December. It was my impression your senior officers were too. Unsubstantiated and scurrilous allegations about a priest who died tragically won't endear you to anybody.'

The monsignor was used to being believed. He had no reason to think that lying would change that. This policeman knew a lot, but in the end it counted for nothing, not against his word. The man wasn't important enough to matter. He was a problem though and he would have to be dealt with. Stefan could feel the confidence growing in the eyes that now fixed his. He had caught the priest off guard, but it hadn't taken him long to regain his composure. Fitzpatrick already thought it was over. However, it wasn't.

‘The guard you sent didn't take Susan Field to hospital,' continued Stefan, ignoring the denials he had just heard. ‘He took her to the Convent of the Good Shepherd. They couldn't do anything. She'd already lost too much blood. I'm not sure what happened next. Either she died or the guard killed her. And if he didn't actually kill her, he went to some lengths to make sure she was dead. I don't know what his instructions were, but I know you sent him.'

‘I don't understand what you're talking about. This means nothing to me, nothing.'

He spoke quietly. It wasn't so much about confidence now. Stefan's words troubled him in some way, but it wasn't the right way. He still felt he was untouchable, but there was something else. He looked puzzled. The indignation was gone and it was hard to read what was in his face now.

‘I don't think my superior officers are going to be satisfied with what Father Byrne told us in his letter,' said Stefan, ‘however much they want to be. You wrote most of it for him anyway. But that's only the beginning. There was another body next to Miss Field's. You'll remember him.'

Monsignor Fitzpatrick looked confused. ‘What other body?'

‘The one you longed to feel throbbing next to yours – Vincent Walsh's. That's what it said in your letter, didn't it? I've seen them, the letters. Obviously Vincent's body won't have been throbbing next to anyone else's for a long time now. Not since someone shot him in the head with a captive bolt pistol, which is, oddly, what happened to Susan Field as well.'

The priest stared blankly.

‘Vincent.'

It was all he said but he made no pretence that he didn't know who Stefan was talking about. He moved towards the desk, very slowly. He stood for a moment, leaning on it. He repeated the name quietly. ‘Vincent.' It was barely a whisper. He seemed unaware that Stefan was still there. He sank into the chair. Stefan hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this. And it wasn't right. He couldn't believe that the man in front of him knew anything at all about Vincent Walsh's death. But there was still Detective Sergeant Lynch; Lynch and the love letters, Lynch and Keller, Lynch and the car that came for Susan Field.

‘Tell me about Jimmy Lynch, Monsignor.'

‘What?' Robert Fitzpatrick looked up again.

‘Detective Sergeant Lynch.'

‘I don't know any Detective Sergeant Lynch.' Fitzpatrick was a beaten man. It was hard for Stefan to believe he was dragging this lie out of himself, but it couldn't be the truth.

‘You sent him to help Father Byrne. You sent him to get Susan Field.'

‘I didn't send anyone,' he said. ‘When Francis called, he said he needed a car. I told him we'd see to it. So we sent a taxi, just a taxi. I don't know anything about a guard.'

They were automatic words, like automatic writing. He was somewhere else, and the fact that he was somewhere else testified to the truth of the words. And suddenly Stefan was looking at another face. It was the face of Hugo Keller, dying in the kitchen of the house in Eschenweg. Keller talked about the guard driving the car, the guard who took Susan Field away, the guard the monsignor sent. He didn't know who that guard was – Hugo Keller, the man who knew everything about everybody. But Jimmy Lynch had been selling him information for years. He was bought and paid for. Stefan had been so fixed on the one connection he had that linked Vincent Walsh and Susan Field that Hugo Keller's nameless guard had automatically become Detective Sergeant Lynch. But now, suddenly, it wasn't him at all.

As Stefan came out into the hall of Fitzpatrick's house again, Sister Brigid was climbing the stairs from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a cup of tea and a plate of scones and jam. She pursed her lips disapprovingly at him.

‘I'm sure you've upset him again.'

‘Yes.' He didn't feel like apologising, but he did. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Did Francis look peaceful when you saw him, Mr Gillespie?'

There wasn't any point telling her he looked the way people do when they've been beaten to death, and that peacefulness isn't really in it.

‘He looked peaceful enough, Sister.'

‘I think in a way he has come back to us.' She smiled sadly and walked to the door into the study. She knocked. There was no answer. As Stefan stepped out into Earlsfort Terrace, Brigid opened the door. Monsignor Robert Fitzpatrick was sobbing, his head buried in his hands on the desk. She put down the tea and the scones and folded her brother in her arms.

The man who followed Stefan Gillespie from Earlsfort Terrace across into Stephen's Green would not make the mistake of being seen. He wasn't good at everything he did, but he was good at that. He could keep his distance; he had the instincts that told him when to disappear; he could always see his man again in a crowd. It didn't much matter if he lost him anyway, he wouldn't be difficult to find. If not today tomorrow, but today would be best, before he made more trouble. It was still early. It wouldn't be dark till after nine, but when night came he'd know where Sergeant Gillespie was. That would be the time to do it.

Twenty-four hours earlier Stefan had known who killed Vincent Walsh and Susan Field. If Detective Sergeant Jimmy Lynch could be bought by Hugo Keller to collect information, he could be bought by Robert Fitzpatrick to clean up after him. A priest with such a high profile, who was in the habit of having sex with men like Vincent Walsh and writing them letters describing it, was always going to need help with his dirty laundry. The image of the moral crusader didn't sit very well with arranging abortions for priestly protégés who got themselves into trouble either. That's how Stefan had put it all together. The only question had been how far Lynch was following Fitzpatrick's instructions and how far he'd been, in the way of the Nazis the monsignor saw as the Church's salvation, working towards his Führer. Now, as he sat over a bony kipper and stewed tea in Bewley's Café he could see how much of it didn't fit after all, and how much he had ignored to get an answer.