The Eloquence of the Dead (24 page)

Swallow got to his feet. ‘You have me interested, Teddy. But things take time and it's been a long night. You just relax here now and enjoy the hospitality. I'll go away and do a bit of thinking.'

He turned as he reached the door.

‘One other thing. When did you get here to Dublin?'

‘Three days ago, it was Sunday, I think. Why?'

‘Just curious.'

If Shaftoe was telling the truth, then he and Darby were still in London when Ambrose Pollock was killed. Swallow was not surprised. But it helped to seal off at least one line of inquiry.

 

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 5
TH
, 1887

 

THIRTY-EIGHT

Morning was breaking east of the city when Swallow emerged from the police canteen in the Lower Yard. A thin sun was spreading in from the bay, and there was a hint of ground frost on the cobbles.

There had been no point in making for Heytesbury Street or his bed.

He had no sleep, and he had drunk far too much the night before. But the initial sense of exhaustion when he had made it home after dinner with Lafeyre had given way to exhilaration at the arrest of Teddy Shaftoe at the cathedral.

As the new day formed out of the dawn, he began to feel a little better. The alcohol was beginning to pass out of his system. He thought briefly of Maria's evening at the theatre with George Weldon, and then pushed the subject to the back of his mind before his anger would take over again.

He focused on what Shaftoe had told him about the job he had been sent on from London. If his story was true, it was serious news for the authorities both at Westminster and in Dublin. If it emerged that the land transfer process was corrupt, it could collapse the entire programme. He would have to brief Mallon as early as possible.

But how did any of it connect to the coins that the Clinton woman had brought in to Katherine Greenberg? Johnny Vizzard had still not located her. Wherever she was, she and her family were almost certainly now in danger.

So too was Katherine. But with an armed G-man around the clock at Greenberg's she could be protected. Vizzard's efforts to find the Clintons would have to yield results sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, he had to hear what Mick Feore's inquiries might have turned up in relation to the front hall porter at the Northern Hotel.

He needed the soakage of the police canteen breakfast. He had sausages, bacon, black pudding and two fried eggs. There was bread in from the bakery, butter and strawberry jam in a big glass pot. It was a blessed change from Harriet's porridge and figs. He filled his mug three times with strong tea.

The canteen was abuzz with the dramatic events of the night. Uniformed constables plied the G-men for details. Two of them sat on the bench seat facing Swallow across the trestle table.

‘Busy night, Skipper,' the younger one grinned, forking half a sausage away under his moustache. ‘You grabbed this English character above in the cathedral, I hear. Did he give any trouble?'

Swallow cursed silently. If the morning uniformed shift knew about Shaftoe, it would in the newspapers by noon. He could have done with a bit of slow time before it became public knowledge.

‘Nah,' he answered. ‘Just a small-time gurrier that got out of his depth. Should have stayed in London.'

He finished his breakfast and checked the roster to see if Johnny Vizzard was back on duty after his night protection duty at the Viceregal Lodge. He had returned to the Exchange Court dormitory just an hour ago. Swallow reckoned he would let him sleep for a while before rousing him.

He went down to Mallon's office in the Lower Yard.

‘What time will the boss be in?' he asked the clerk. ‘I want to brief him on a few developments.'

‘Come back at half nine. He's got an appointment with the Security Secretary in the Upper Yard an hour after that.'

Pat Mossop and Mick Feore were waiting for him at the crime sergeants' office. Swallow told them the story behind Teddy Shaftoe's arrest at the Cathedral.

‘He's a lucky man that the Vanucchi crowd didn't do for him straight away,' Feore said.

‘There's got to be some connection with the murders, Boss.' Mossop shook his head. ‘I'm damned if I can see it, but all my instincts tell me yes.'

Swallow shrugged.

‘Maybe so.'

He turned to Mick Feore. ‘What new on your friend Rowan?'

‘I got the file from DCR. He's ex-army. Did two years in the glasshouse at the Curragh for robbery with violence of a camp shopkeeper. Then he's got convictions for assault in Limerick and Kilkenny. In all cases the victims were women.'

He turned a page on his notebook.

‘He says he was never near the first floor of the hotel at the time Phoebe Pollock went up there. But we have a chambermaid saying she passed him up there on the corridor. The reception clerk says that around the same time there was no porter on the front door. He had to keep an eye to it himself in case anyone needed assistance.'

‘What do think we should do, Boss?' Mossop asked.

‘I think it's clear enough,' Swallow said. ‘Bring him in.'

 

THIRTY-NINE

John Mallon felt good about the day.

The divisional crime reports for the previous night on his desk offered nothing other than the usual. The city's six divisions, from the crowded, poor ‘A' to the affluent, coastal ‘F' had an almost crime-free night. A street fight here and there. The usual drunk-and-disorderly incidents. A housebreaking at Drumcondra.

The most important report was always that compiled by the duty sergeant at G-Division, and this morning's was positively good news. It narrated the arrest, in the precincts of St Patrick's Cathedral, of the second man believed to have been involved in the attempted robbery at Greenberg's jewellers shop on Capel Street two days previously.

He riffled through the morning newspapers, the
Freeman's Journal, The Irish Times,
the
Daily Sketch.
He could find nothing critical of the police. There was a matter-of-fact paragraph in
The Irish Times
about the Lamb Alley murder and the presumably connected disappearance of Ambrose Pollock's sister, now almost a week ago.

He was due to meet the Security Secretary at his office in the Upper Yard, and he would be the bearer of at least some good tidings. The Pollock murder was still unsolved. Phoebe Pollock was still missing. But the arrest of the Capel Street gunman was evidence of the police force's exertions. He relaxed a little behind his desk, satisfied that he could put a fair gloss on things for the day.

When Swallow arrived shortly after 9.30, the conversation helped his mood initially. Swallow related what Mick Feore had learned about Rowan, the hall porter at the Northern Hotel.

‘We'll bring him in, and if he's our man we'll get it out of him fairly quickly,' he told Mallon.

‘Good work,' Mallon enthused. ‘You'll keep me informed, of course.'

But ten minutes later into the conversation, when Swallow had relayed what he had been told by Teddy Shaftoe, Mallon's happiness was ebbing.

‘Jesus, do you believe what this character is saying?'

The chief of detectives appeared to have deflated in his chair.

‘I'd say he's telling us the truth as he understands it. Or enough of the truth to get himself out of Dublin and out of trouble if he can manage it.'

Mallon put a knuckled fist to his temple.

‘Let me get this straight. He says he's working for some toff in the government in London. He's going around stabbing and threatening people and pretending he's from the Land League or some other crowd of assassins. He's been sent here to find out who's putting these bloody Greek coins about. And somewhere, there's a gang aiming to make money out of land deals here in Ireland. Is that it?'

‘That seems to be it.'

‘Jesus, at least it's original, I'll give him that. God be with the days when all we had to deal with was old-fashioned murder and robbery.'

‘What do you want me to do, Sir?' Swallow said after an interval.

Mallon rose to pace the room.

‘If this is true, Swallow … and mind you, I'm saying, “if,” it could destabilise things more effectively than any of the extremists ever thought possible. It's been the devil's job to get either the landlords or the tenants to believe in the land transfer scheme. If it turns out that some crowd are on the make it could bring the whole bloody thing to a halt.'

‘I realise that, Sir.'

Mallon scratched his beard.

‘What's the significance of these Greek coins … these tetra … whatevers?'

‘Tetradrachms. We don't know. But they must be important to someone if Shaftoe was sent here to find out who's been putting them into circulation.'

‘I assume we've still got protection on the Greenbergs.'

‘There's a G-man over there on special post since the attack.'

‘Is there any progress on locating this Clinton woman who sold the damned things to the Greenberg girl? Didn't we send out an information request to the constabulary?'

‘Johnny Vizzard is following that one. But there's nothing back from the RIC, which seems strange. They got on a train at the Broadstone, and went off to County Meath. They must have got off someplace.'

Mallon snorted. ‘The RIC will always claim that they can find anybody, anywhere in Ireland in twenty-four hours.'

Swallow hesitated. ‘There's one other thing. It may be just coincidence, but I'm wondering if there might be more to it than that.'

‘Yes?' Mallon cocked his head impatiently.

‘I was wondering about that silver turning up in Pollock's basement. It comes from one of the big estates in Galway that's just been broken up. There might be a connection to the land story that Shaftoe is telling.'

‘I see where you're going. But there's nothing we know of to connect the two.'

‘No, Sir. I acknowledge that. Could I ask, when do you expect to have some word back from London about interviewing this Lady Gessel?'

‘Lady Gessel?' For a moment, Mallon seemed to have forgotten her. ‘I'll probably hear something over the next day or two. I didn't ask them to treat it with any particular urgency. Do you think I should have?'

Swallow diplomatically avoided the question.

‘If there's nothing to it, we're better off knowing that. We can close down one line of inquiry to follow others.'

‘I'll telephone London again,' Mallon said. ‘In the meanwhile, what do we do about Shaftoe and Darby?'

‘Darby's only a hang-on. He's feeble-minded, and he hardly knows if Dublin is in Ireland or India. But Shaftoe is a smarter type. Let's assume his story is more or less true. He knows the one thing we'd want is the identity of this fellow in London who sent him over here. But he knows that the moment he gives me that he'll have nothing left to trade.'

‘Does he know he could be looking at a lot of years breaking stones in Maryborough?'

‘I've used that line. But he's clever enough to realise that putting him away for a stretch is of no great profit to us. On the other hand, he knows that anything involving high-level corruption could be important in political terms as far as we're concerned.'

Mallon mused silently.

‘You could threaten to give him back to Vanucchi's gang. They'd get the name out of him fairly quickly.'

Swallow gave a hollow laugh.

‘In principle I'd not have much against it. But we can't just throw him out the Ship Street Gate.'

Mallon resumed his chair. ‘What do you propose?'

‘I think we'll have to play his game,' Swallow said. ‘Let's hold off from charging him over Greenbergs, at least for a while. We can charge Darby, but there might be a case for doing a deal with Shaftoe.'

‘What would that entail?'

‘A ticket to London.'

‘You mean let him go?'

‘I mean we send him back where he came from … with conditions.'

‘What conditions?' Mallon sounded doubtful.

‘That we'd get the identity of who set him up for the job,' Swallow said. ‘And if we get that, we might learn what this land business is about, along with the names of anyone else involved.'

‘He could give you the names of Robin Hood and his merry men. Once he's out of here we'll not see him on these shores again.'

‘I agree, Sir. We need some way to verify what he tells us while we still have a grip of him. But he won't tell us anything useful until he feels he's safely away.'

Mallon sighed.

‘I'm due up with the Security Secretary. I think I'll say nothing about this land business just for the present. I'll confirm that we have two men in custody for Greenberg's and that we're taking a suspect in for questioning on the Phoebe Pollock case.'

He swept a sheaf of papers from the desk into a file cover.

‘So you go and do a bit more thinking, Sergeant.'

‘Yes, Chief.'

Swallow moved to the door. ‘By the way, Sir, there's a request I'd like to make.'

‘What's that, Swallow?'

‘You know I've been going to a class at the Metropolitan Art School on Thursdays and I'm due another class tomorrow. I'd be glad if I might have the afternoon free.'

Mallon paused.

‘Art class? I thought you were going to tell me about something else.'

‘Chief?'

‘I'd heard you'd gone to new accommodation. I thought you'd have stayed on at Thomas Street. You seemed to be well looked after there by Mrs Walsh.'

‘It wasn't an altogether satisfactory arrangement.'

‘Well, that would be a matter for your own judgment. I gave you certain advice in the past, told you to make a decent woman of her. But I won't repeat myself.'