Echobeat (13 page)

‘The girls are all jealous,’ she said. ‘That I have a boyfriend who’s an officer and has a car.’

‘Which part of that is the more important?’

‘The car, of course.’ She punched him in the shoulder, her Cork accent turning more pronounced.

‘But they know it’s not mine.’

‘They think you must be very important to have a car at your disposal. And not just one car. Cars.’

‘But they don’t know what I do?’ he asked, a note of caution entering his voice.

‘No,’ she said. ‘And they don’t care either. Just that my boyfriend must be important.’

‘That’s okay,’ he smiled, stopping at the junction with Drumcondra Road and checking the traffic.

‘My pretend boyfriend,’ she looked at him. ‘Are we still pretending?’

‘No,’ he turned his attention to her. ‘Are we?’

She shook her head and leaned towards him and they kissed lightly.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, as he turned towards the city centre.

‘For a walk on the beach,’ he said,

‘Are you mad? In this weather?’

‘It’ll be lovely. Blow the cobwebs away.’

‘I don’t have any cobwebs.’

‘You don’t want to do that?’ He turned left into Clonliffe Road, driving gingerly on the packed-down tracks of previous vehicles.

‘I don’t mind. Whatever you want to do.’

They drove in silence for a while. The road was deserted, people huddled inside in a Sunday afternoon slump. The only sign of life was the smoke coming from chimneys.

‘There’s something I have to ask you,’ he said. ‘For work.’

‘Hmm,’ she mumbled, as if her thoughts were miles away.

‘I need to know everything you can tell me about Roddy Glenn.’

‘That letter was important?’ She sounded surprised, brought back to the present.

He nodded to her, taking his eyes off the road for a moment.

‘Really important?’

‘Could be,’ he nodded to himself. Especially if it’s real, he thought. And even if it isn’t real. He had come to realise that everything could matter, that a lie was as important as the truth in this business. The difficulty was in telling them apart and then interpreting them correctly. ‘Yes,’ he corrected himself. ‘It is. Really important.’

He felt rather than saw her inquiring look but ignored it; he couldn’t tell her anything about the letter.

‘It’s hard to imagine,’ she said after a moment. ‘That he really knows anything important.’

‘Why?’

‘He seems … harmless really,’ she said, thinking. ‘He’s young. Nervous. Unsure of himself. Not like a spy.’

‘He is an agent of some kind.’

‘You’re sure?’ she shook her head in disbelief.

‘Yes. Do you have any idea where he lives? Where he’s staying?’

‘No. Mrs Lynch might know. He might have told her when he was trying to sell his paintings.’

That’s a possibility, he thought, nodding in agreement. ‘Did he ever mention anything?’

‘About what?’

‘Anything that would give us a hint about where he lives?’

She thought for a moment. ‘No.’

‘Ever have anybody with him? A girlfriend? Other artists?’

‘No,’ she repeated, still thinking. ‘He was always alone when I saw him. He seems a little lost. A lonely person. Uncomfortable.’

‘Yeah?’ he encouraged her, turning left at Fairview and heading out the coast road to Clontarf, following the map he had memorised before leaving the office.

‘A loner. In a strange place. Strange to him, I mean.’ She paused and then added, ‘Not like a man carrying out a mission.’

But he is a man carrying out a mission, he thought. The question was on whose behalf. ‘We have to find him again,’ he said. ‘And he can’t go back to the café since Mrs Lynch barred him.’

‘It’s important that you find him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the information he wanted to give to the Nazis? That was important too?’

He nodded.

‘What will you do with it?’

‘That depends,’ he said. ‘That’s why we have to find him. Find out who he’s working for.’

She turned sideways in the seat and her tone sharpened. ‘You might give this information to the Nazis?’

‘No, no,’ he glanced at the sudden anger in her face. ‘It’s important for us. For Ireland. For our neutrality.’

‘And it would help the Nazis?’

‘It could.’ He slowed in the centre of the road to turn onto the Bull Wall. ‘But we won’t give it to them.’

‘You are sure?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said with more confidence than he had any reason to feel. They won’t, he told himself. They can’t. It’d be a huge breach of neutrality.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why do you need to find this man then?’

‘To see who he’s working for. Find out if his information is accurate.’

‘What does it matter if it is accurate if you’re not going to tell the Nazis?’

‘Because it has implications for us too.’ He let the car glide to a halt, pulled up the handbrake, switched off the engine, and turned to her in the silence. ‘And as long as he’s free he could always tell the Germans again. Find another way of getting the information to them.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve told you everything I know about him.’

‘Would you describe him to me again?’ he turned the question into a request, thinking of Anderson’s suggestion that they bring Gerda in for a debriefing. An interrogation.

She described him again: about twenty, one metre seventy-five, light brown hair, sandy really. Usually wore a tweed jacket and cavalry
twill trousers, open-necked check shirts, polite, well-mannered, English accent.

‘What kind of English accent?’ he prompted.

She gave him a look that said you’re asking the wrong person. ‘I don’t know. It’s not hard.’

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘We’re very grateful for all you’ve done. It’s really appreciated.’

‘I haven’t done anything much,’ she shrugged.

‘Yes, you have.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her deep eyes. ‘Let’s go for a walk. Blow all those cobwebs away.’

She held his gaze for a moment, then gave a barely perceptible nod.

The wind was stronger than they had expected and they had to catch their breaths against the cold as they got out of the car. They turned up their coat collars and he took her hand and put it with his into his deep coat pocket and they walked into the wind, heads bowed, close together.

The beach was deserted apart from a distant figure with a dog which chased back and forth after a stick or ball they couldn’t see. Loose sand skimmed along its surface towards them and the incoming tide broke in nonchalant waves, following their own rules. Beyond it, the flashing light from the Poolbeg lighthouse at the mouth of the port was beginning to become visible, an advance warning that the winter daylight was beginning to wane.

They walked in silence, slowed by the wind and their closeness, deep in their own thoughts. She leaned her head against his shoulder and they slowed to a stop and she turned to him, her hair blowing forward to narrow her face. He kissed her frozen forehead and the tip of her icy nose and found her warm mouth. She slipped her hands between the buttons of his overcoat and under his jacket and around his back.

After a long moment they turned and were hurried by the wind back towards the car.

‘What’s a metre in feet and inches?’ Duggan asked Sullivan, stopping in the middle of typing Gerda’s description of Roddy Glenn.

‘A bit more than a yard,’ Sullivan yawned.

‘How much more?’ Duggan scratched his head.

‘Three foot and something inches.’

‘Yeah, but how many inches?’

Sullivan shrugged. ‘What do you want to know for?’

‘That’s classified information,’ Duggan turned back to the typewriter. He didn’t want to write Gerda’s estimate of Glenn’s height in metres as that would make it clear that his informant was from the Continent. She had said before that Glenn was a couple of inches shorter than himself. Estimated height, five feet nine to ten inches, he wrote and tried to decide how to describe Glenn’s English accent. Not hard, Gerda had said. What did that mean? She was no expert on English accents. But neither was he. Soft English accent? Was there such a thing? Undetermined English accent, he wrote.

‘Can I bum another cigarette?’ Sullivan asked.

Duggan slid his cigarette case and lighter along the table to him. ‘When are you going to buy some?’

‘I’ll buy you a packet next time I’m out.’

‘Buy one for yourself, too.’

‘Ah, I don’t really want to start smoking,’ Sullivan lit a Sweet Afton and slid the case and lighter back to Duggan.

‘Smoking other people’s is still smoking,’ Duggan flicked his lighter to a cigarette.

‘I’m just bored,’ Sullivan sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘This Mulhausen fellow’s broadcasts are boring as hell. Only talks about the
Black and Tans and the lovely days he had in the
currach
and bits of old Irish poetry. It’s like listening to the old man. Without the
currachs
and the poems. I prefer Haw-Haw any day.’

‘They could be coded messages,’ Duggan said idly. ‘The poems.’

‘That’s what the commandant said.’ Sullivan took a pull on the cigarette and blew out the smoke without inhaling it. ‘Had me looking them up, to see what they were about. All double Dutch to me.’

Duggan rolled the paper out of the typewriter, took the carbons from between the sheets and dropped them in a waste basket. He looked at his watch.

‘You off again?’ Sullivan sighed.

‘No rest for the wicked.’ Duggan stood up and put his overcoat on his arm and took the report and copies he had typed.

‘You’ll come back with a whiff of perfume again?’

‘Goes with the job,’ Duggan sighed like it was a burden. ‘There’s not going to be any raid tonight, is there? What’s the weather forecast?’

‘That’s classified information,’ Sullivan smirked.

‘I’ll be back anyway.’

‘I won’t be here,’ Sullivan said. ‘Got a big date tonight. A foursome. We’re going out with your friend Breda and her new beau.’

‘The American?’

Sullivan gave him a meaningful nod. ‘She’s eternally grateful to you for not bothering to turn up on time that night.’

‘Tell her I’m very happy for her,’ Duggan said, meaning it, still feeling Gerda’s hands on his skin and the taste of her lips.

‘
An bhfuil sé fein sa bhaile,
’ Duggan asked the young maid who opened the door of Timmy’s house.

‘
Tá sé ina sheomra
,’ she inclined her head towards the room Timmy used as his office.

Duggan heard music from inside as he knocked on the door and opened it after a moment. Timmy was sitting at the table, his jacket off and the collar of his shirt freed from its studs and open like two wings from his thick neck. His sleeves were rolled up and he was writing with a fountain pen on a sheet of lined foolscap. There was a well-stacked coal fire behind him and a wind-up gramophone was playing a tenor singing ‘Love Thee Dearest’ at high volume.

‘Well, ’tis yourself,’ Timmy grunted, leaning back in his chair.

‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’

‘What?’ Timmy waved at the gramophone. ‘Turn that down a bit.’

Duggan stepped over to it and twisted the volume knob.

‘Have you heard him?’ Timmy’s casual words were at odds with his cautious eyes. ‘The new McCormack. Michael O’Duffy.’

Duggan shook his head and slipped off his overcoat as sweat broke out on his forehead.

‘That’s what your mother gave me for Christmas,’ Timmy repeated.

‘You’re just back from home,’ Duggan said, half statement, half question, glancing at what Timmy had been writing. He knew he was jotting down notes of requests from constituents and other bits of political information from his weekend down the country.

‘Aye,’ Timmy said, still cautious. ‘They’re all well.’

‘I’m sorry for interrupting,’ Duggan waved towards Timmy’s notes. ‘But I need your help.’

‘Half the fucking country wants my help all of a sudden.’ Timmy screwed the top onto his fountain pen and placed it on the foolscap page with an air of finality. He didn’t seem perturbed by the idea. ‘You’ll have a drink?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Duggan took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair facing Timmy’s across the table. He wondered what the
temperature in the room was.

Timmy went to the sideboard and took out a bottle of Paddy whiskey and two glasses. Then he changed his mind and left back one glass. He dropped on one knee to peer into the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of Guinness and a half-pint glass.

‘Better not feed you whiskey,’ he said, putting the bottles and glasses on the table, ‘or your mother will have my guts for garters.’

‘You see them?’

‘Just coming out of Mass,’ Timmy handed him the bottle of Guinness. ‘There should be a corkscrew somewhere in there.’ He pointed to a drawer in the sideboard. ‘They’re in grand form. I told your father where to get the petrol if he needed some.’

Duggan found the corkscrew and opened the bottle of Guinness and poured it slowly into the glass. Timmy half-filled his glass with neat whiskey, raised it, said ‘
Sláinte
’ and drank half of it. They sat down. ‘Now,’ Timmy said, putting his glass down and tossing Duggan a cigarette.

‘First of all, thanks for the information about Quinn,’ Duggan leaned across the table to light Timmy’s cigarette and then his own.

‘That’s not a good place to start.’ Timmy held up his cigarette between two fingers and waved it at him. ‘You didn’t have to lock up the harmless little fecker.’

‘Wasn’t our doing,’ Duggan protested. ‘That cousin of his wife’s started shooting at the Special Branch.’

Timmy sighed as if that was a minor matter. ‘There’s still too many Blueshirts in that outfit,’ he muttered, his usual comment about the Special Branch. ‘Should’ve been cleared out properly long ago.’

Duggan inhaled a lungful of smoke. ‘You know Surgeon O’Shea?’

Timmy gave a half nod at the sudden change of direction.

‘And his wife?’

‘Why?’ Timmy cut to the chase.

‘I think they might be able to help us,’ Duggan took an unconscious deep breath. He didn’t like doing this, letting Timmy in on any information. But he had to use any avenues open to him. ‘Get in touch with a German intelligence officer.’