Echoland (14 page)

‘That Coffey woman who was hiding Brandy was on my list,’ Sullivan was saying. ‘From trawling through the files.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Far down it, but there. Among the remnants of the widows and childers party.’

‘The what?’

‘You never heard of the widows and childers party?’ Sullivan gave him a doubting look that suggested that Duggan was not what he had thought he was.

‘No.’

‘The widows and sisters of the dead heroes of the republic and Erskine Childers. The madames and countesses and all them. And Childers. All the irreconcilables.’

‘Ah, right. She’s one of them?’

‘On the edges.’

Duggan rooted in the drawer of the table and found a large used envelope with Saorstát Éireann printed on it. ‘Are many of them still around?’

‘Not many. But a good few followers. Daughters of the widows and childers, I suppose.’ Sullivan laughed. ‘We’re widening the list. These Germans seem to like shacking up with women.’

‘Hey, you might get the Brandy medal yet,’ Duggan laughed and slipped a couple of pages from the Harbusch file into the envelope as Sullivan bent down to pick up a sheet of paper that had slipped off the table. He knew this was a step too far. Removing secret
documents
, deliberately disobeying orders. But in for a penny, in for a pound. If he could crack the Harbusch case, he’d be well set up. He closed the file and stood up and left with the envelope.

‘Curious,’ Gifford said with an air of professional detachment as he turned over the last page.

Duggan stood in the window, looking at the windows of Harbusch’s flat. They were as bland and unenlightening as usual.

‘Very curious indeed,’ Gifford said, as he finished reading the letter.

Duggan turned from the window and gave him an inquiring look.

‘Foot fetishists,’ Gifford said. ‘They’re an obscure offshoot of the original Balkan anarchists. Very dangerous. Their aim is to blow …’

‘Seriously.’ Duggan held out his hand and Gifford gave him back the pages. He had hoped that Gifford might see something that he hadn’t seen himself.

‘Seriously. We will take a closer look at Hansi’s feet the next time we are privileged with his presence.’

Duggan put the pages back into the envelope, careful not to bend them.

‘Feet to me are things for walking,’ Gifford said. ‘Or marching, in your case. My thoughts tend to hover around higher things.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We could ask Sinéad’s advice on our way out. See what she thinks of them.’

‘Jesus,’ Duggan said with a touch of irritation. ‘I could be
court-martialled
for showing these to you.’

‘Never fear,’ Gifford clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Your secret will go with me to the grave. After they’ve extracted all my fingernails and toenails.’

They walked down the stairs and Gifford blew a kiss to Sinéad as they went by the reception desk. Outside the hall door Duggan stopped and looked over towards Harbusch’s flat, hidden now by the corner of the park. ‘We’re taking a big chance,’ he said. ‘We could miss something important.’

Gifford shook his head. ‘Or we could sit here till kingdom come and nothing will happen. Come on.’

They set off towards Leinster House, doors opening in many of the houses as people left work and the numbers of passing cars and bicycles increased. ‘Could there be a connection between the house Hans is in and the others on either side?’ Duggan mused.

‘Apart from the fact that they’re holding each other up?’

‘Apart from that,’ Duggan smiled at the image of them all falling like dominoes. ‘A door from one to the other. Something like that.’

‘No. That was checked out too. The owners and occupants are different. There are no connecting doors from one to the other. Not officially anyway.’

They went down the other side of the square and along Clare Street and Nassau Street, walking with purpose and skipping around the office and shop workers filling the footpaths. They turned into Dawson Street and Gifford stopped before an insurance company and took up position against a wall.

‘How will we know him?’ Duggan asked.

Gifford reached into his inside pocket and took out a photograph.

‘How’d you get that?’ Duggan looked at it and tried to memorise the unmemorable features.

Gifford took his eyes off the main door of the building as a group of girls came out and winked at him. They watched people emerge from the insurance company in dribs and drabs, young men singly, young women in groups. All the men looked much the same to Duggan, all dressed in dark suits that seemed too big for them, their only distinguishing feature an occasional red or blond head among the shades of brown and black.

‘There he is,’ Gifford muttered as a thin young man emerged and turned left up the street. Duggan had no idea how or why Gifford was so sure but fell into step beside him as they followed the man up the street, across Molesworth Street, and on up to Stephen’s Green. The man stopped at the corner by Alys Glennon’s dress shop and seemed undecided.

‘Please cross to the park,’ Gifford muttered.

As if he had heard him, the man looked both ways and sped across the road to the path beside the park. ‘Good lad,’ Gifford said as they hurried after him, dodged through the two-way traffic and ignored the curses of an old cyclist after forcing him to brake and wobble. Gifford kept pace with the man for a few strides then hurried to catch up with him as they approached a gate into the park.

‘Richie Cummins,’ he said, stepping slightly in front of him at the gate and holding out his warrant card in front of his face. ‘We want to talk to you for a moment.’ Duggan stood behind Cummins,
leaving
him nowhere to go but into the park.

They stopped inside on the park’s perimeter path. Whatever colour had been in Cummins’s face had gone and his dark eyes flicked back and forth from one of them to the other, his fear flashing like a beacon.

‘Nuala Monaghan,’ Gifford said.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ Cummins shot back. Duggan glanced at Gifford.

‘How do you know she’s missing?’ Gifford held Cummins’s stare.

‘That’s what the other fellows told me.’

‘What other fellows?’

‘Two fellows. I don’t know who they were. Stopped me the other night. Like you.’

‘Police?’

‘They didn’t say.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They asked me’ – Cummins gulped air through his mouth – ‘where Nuala Monaghan was.’

‘And?’

‘And I told them I didn’t know.’

‘And what’d they say?’

‘They, they … One of them took out a gun and pointed it at my knee.’

‘And?’ Gifford glanced at Duggan.

‘They told me to tell the truth,’ Cummins started talking faster. ‘And I told them I was telling the truth. I didn’t know where she was. And he said he’d ask me one more time and he pulled back the
hammer
on the gun and put it against my knee and I said I couldn’t tell them where she was because I didn’t know where she was and …’ He stopped and looked like he was about to cry.

‘What happened then?’ Duggan asked, for the first time.

‘They went away,’ Cummins wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘They said that if they found out I was lying they’d come back and … finish the job.’

‘And were you lying?’ Gifford demanded.

‘No,’ Cummins raised his voice. ‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘You were going out with her?’

‘No, I wasn’t. I only went out with her once. And that was a blind date. It wasn’t even a date.’

‘The dance in the Metropole?’ Duggan asked.

Cummins nodded, like it was the worst experience in his life. ‘She was supposed to go with someone else but he stood her up at the last minute. And my sister asked me to go with her. And I did.’

‘Your sister is a friend of hers?’ Gifford shot back.

‘Not really. They worked in Clery’s together.’

‘You never went out with her again?’

‘I never saw her before or after that night,’ Cummins said
plaintively
. ‘And she hardly said a word to me the whole time.’

‘Did you fancy her?’

Cummins looked as if Gifford was mad and shook his head.

‘Your picture was in the paper with her,’ Duggan said. ‘With another couple. Who’re they?

‘I don’t know,’ Cummins looked at Duggan for the first time, relaxing a little. ‘They were just at the dance too. A photographer asked us to stand together and smile. That was it.’

‘These fellows who accosted you,’ Gifford said. ‘Who were they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you think they were policemen?’

Cummins shook his head cautiously, as if it might be a trick
question
.

‘Who then?’ Gifford asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you seen them again?’

‘No.’

‘Could you describe them?’

‘They were just,’ Cummins shrugged, ‘fellows. In their twenties.’

‘Like us?’

‘No, no. Rough types.’

‘Are you a member of any illegal organisation?’

‘No.’ Cummins looked shocked at the thought.

‘You should call the guards if you see them again,’ Gifford said.

‘Oh, I will, I will,’ Cummins lied.

‘Thank you for your assistance,’ Gifford said to him and stepped back from the path onto the grass. ‘We won’t be troubling you again.’

‘Thanks.’ Cummins lowered his eyes and walked away quickly.

They watched him go, his dark suit looking like it had become another size too large for him. ‘Another innocent bystander,’ Gifford said, as if there were too many of them in the world. ‘Fuck.’

Duggan lit a Sweet Afton and blew a stream of smoke onto the calm evening air. Across the grass from them lay the pond, its surface cut by the perfect bow wave of a stately duck. Two people were
silhouetted
against the water, sitting on a bench, their heads together.

Duggan was on his second cigarette by the time Timmy drove up
outside
the barracks, half an hour late. He dropped it on the path and ground it out with his foot as Timmy hauled himself out of the
driver’s
seat and went around to the passenger side. He lifted a copy of the
Irish Press
off the seat before settling in. ‘Home, James. And don’t spare the horses,’ he said, as Duggan eased up the clutch and they moved off.

Timmy opened up the newspaper as they went down Conyngham Road alongside the Phoenix Park, Duggan speeding up through the gears to almost sixty miles an hour. Timmy didn’t seem to notice the speed, or didn’t care. Unlike his own father, Duggan smiled to
himself
, who’d never let him drive like this. He slowed as they came to Chapelizod and crawled around the sharp bend of the Liffey bridge. Timmy chortled at something in the paper as Duggan accelerated up the hill on the other side in second gear.

‘Have you heard the latest about Frank Aiken and the
newspapers
?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘He’s having the time of his life fucking them around. Being in charge of censorship is much better than being chief of staff of the army,’ Timmy explained, not needing to specify in which army Aiken
had been chief of staff. ‘Anyway, his latest one was over something in the Kingstown Presbyterian Hall, a bridge meeting or something. There’s no such place, he said. There is no Kingstown any more. So there can’t be a Kingstown Presbyterian Hall. And, of course, that Protestant rag, the
Irish Times
, wouldn’t rename it the Dun Laoghaire Presbyterian Hall. They said there’s no such place as Dun Laoghaire Presbyterian Hall.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Timmy said. ‘Still up in the air, I think.’ He gave a short belly laugh. ‘Like his other one about the lifeboats. The RNLI. He wouldn’t let the papers use its name or initials. It couldn’t be royal and national at the same time, he told them. Had to be one or the other. And, of course, if it was royal it might be encouraging one of the belligerents and a breach of neutrality. So it had to be national if it wanted to get into the papers.’

‘Did they change it?’

‘No,’ Timmy said with a touch of regret. ‘Someone told Frank to back off, stop being silly. Must’ve been the Chief. You couldn’t
imagine
anyone else telling Frank what to do.’

Duggan glanced at Timmy as they came up the hill out of Lucan, past the Spa Hotel, wondering if he was becoming disillusioned with de Valera. That’d be some turnabout. But it was the second time in the last week that he’d heard Timmy being critical, however
obliquely
, of the Chief. As if he was reading his mind, Timmy said, ‘That was a great stroke of the Chief’s, creating a Defence Council and getting the Opposition into it.’

‘Yeah?’ Duggan increased speed again as the land levelled out and they headed for Maynooth.

‘It’s just a talking shop. No power at all. Get them in there, tell them nothing, and let them talk their heads off. Which they’re doing. And compromising themselves with every word from their mouths.’

‘How are they doing that?’

‘You haven’t heard the latest Fine Gael plan?’ Timmy sounded 
disappointed
with him. ‘They’ve gone into a total funk over the collapse of the French. Afraid we’re going to be next. And suggested that we put our army and the Brits in the North under the command of a French general so we can all fight the Germans together if they invade.’

‘Interesting idea,’ Duggan offered.

‘Interesting, my arse,’ Timmy retorted. ‘In the first place, the Germans are not going to invade. We’re not their enemy. It’s just a way of getting us onto the losing side. But it shows clearly which side those lads are on. Never mind what they say in public.’

‘Has this been in the papers?’

‘Of course not,’ Timmy sounded outraged. ‘The Chief’s just
storing
it up for a rainy day. When it’ll be of maximum use.’ He paused and then gave another of his chuckles. ‘There’s no shortage of French generals hanging around with nothing to do, I suppose. But I
wouldn’t
want any of them on my side.’

Timmy folded his paper and tossed it onto the back seat. He tipped his hat forward, its brim shading his eyes, and he settled back in his seat, arms folded over his stomach. ‘I’ll have a little nap. Prepare myself for the constituents.’

Duggan drove on, enjoying the car. It responded well, more
powerful
than anything he was used to. He’d have liked to floor the
accelerator
but there were few stretches of road straight enough for long enough to do so. And he wasn’t at ease yet with its handling in the bends and the varying height of the camber of the road. There were few other cars on the road, some horses and carts, and an occasional hay cart.

The countryside was a bright green, the hedges and trees broken up with golden stretches of ripening corn. The hay fields were few
and far between, the result of the tillage orders, and there were men in some of them, tossing the hay into cocks. Farm dogs darted out of gateways to bark furiously at the passing car and race beside it until it out-paced them. Duggan held his course, ignoring them; they knew when to turn away to avoid colliding with the car.

He went through Kinnegad and turned off onto the Galway road and continued through villages, sleepy and silent in the midday sun. Timmy slept in silence too, if he was sleeping at all – Duggan had expected him to be as loud asleep as he was awake – and only stirred himself when they eventually crawled through the narrow main street of Athlone. He straightened up, pushed his hat back on his head, and looked out at the shops as they went by. They crossed the bridge over the Shannon, by a line of men with their backs to it, watching the passing parade, and went along the other side of the river, past the military barracks.

‘They’re going to lock up the spies in there,’ Timmy nodded at the barracks. ‘If they ever find any.’

‘But there are no German spies. You said.’

‘English spies.’ Timmy took out his cigarette case and held up one for Duggan. Duggan took it and Timmy lit his and his own.

‘Do you know a fellow called McClure, a captain in your place?’

Duggan coughed over the smoke, masking his surprise. ‘Yeah,’ he said, as neutral as possible.

‘What’s he like?’

‘He seems very straight. Good at what he does.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Intelligence work.’ Duggan stated the obvious, unsure of what Timmy knew about McClure or why he was asking these questions. It wasn’t beyond him to try and trap him into lying or holding back something. Timmy liked to test people.

‘Hmm,’ Timmy said, opening his window and tipping the ash out
as they passed the last straggling houses on the western edge of the town. ‘Is he trustworthy?’

‘What do you mean?’ Duggan glanced at him.

‘I mean can he be trusted in the present circumstances?’

‘A hundred percent,’ Duggan said, with emphasis, holding back a touch of anger. Could he be trusted to implement the government policy of neutrality, unlike yourself, he was tempted to ask.

‘You know he’s a Protestant?’ Timmy said.

‘No,’ Duggan said automatically. ‘Like Wolfe Tone,’ he added.

‘His father was in the British army.’

‘Wolfe Tone’s?’ Duggan shot back.

Timmy looked at him and ignored the comment. ‘The Boer War. Wounded there and invalided out.’

Duggan rolled down his window and tossed his cigarette butt out. Timmy did the same on his side and closed his window.

‘As I see it,’ he said, ‘we have two main problems in maintaining all we’ve won in the last twenty years. More and better arms for you
fellows
, and fifth columnists.’

‘Like the IRA.’

Timmy ignored that. ‘The British won’t give us the arms. And they won’t let the Americans give them to us either. Which tells you everything you need to know about their intentions. They don’t want us to be able to defend ourselves against them. Right?’

Duggan made a noncommittal noise.

‘The other problem is fifth columnists. Not the IRA, English fifth columnists. There’s a fair few in the army these days. Too many of them. Some in important positions. People whose loyalty we can’t rely on when push comes to shove. Who’d fight the Germans all right, but won’t fight the British. That’s why we have to get as many of the right people into the right positions as quickly as possible.’

A number of things clicked into place in Duggan’s mind. That’s
why people like himself and Sullivan, lads with the right background, had been moved into G2. And maybe that was what McClure’s speech yesterday was all about; not a warning to us but a declaration of loyalty by him. He must know that he was an object of suspicion to the likes of Timmy, untrustworthy because of his family’s previous allegiance. Or what the likes of Timmy thought was his family’s
allegiance
. Just because his father fought in the Boer War didn’t mean he was a unionist.

He thought of saying some of this to Timmy but held his breath and concentrated on the driving as they went down into Ballinasloe, past the huge grey mental asylum with its prison-like walls.

‘I got an answer to your ad in the paper,’ Timmy said.

‘Oh,’ Duggan said in surprise, noting the ‘your ad’ as if it had been all his doing. He had half expected that the ad would be the end of it. That its appearance would have left the instigators, probably
including
Nuala, rolling around with laughter at the idea of Timmy offering thanks to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. No doubt, the story would circulate in political circles and surface in obscure references in the Dáil or county council or on election platforms to Timmy’s devotion. To the bewilderment of the public, if they noticed at all, and the delight of an ever-growing circle of the knowing. But the apparent involvement of the IRA had suggested otherwise, that something else was going on.

Timmy pulled an envelope from his inside pocket and took out a sheet of paper and read from it. ‘Message received. Put £500 in
envelope
addressed to your daughter in letter box of 12 Wicklow Street between 6 and 7 pm Sunday. Await release instructions.’

‘Jesus,’ Duggan said. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Timmy said. ‘It’s getting serious now.’

‘You’ve got to tell the guards now. They can watch that place. Grab whoever’s doing this.’

‘Yeah,’ Timmy said without conviction, lifting his hat to scratch the side of his head. ‘I’ll sleep on it overnight. Decide tomorrow.’

‘At least they’re asking for a lot less now.’

‘That’s still more than a year’s salary. And no guarantee that’ll end it.’

‘No,’ Duggan agreed. ‘Call in the guards. You’ve got to do it now.’

Timmy said nothing and Duggan thought, I’ll do it myself, get Gifford to report it and let the guards deal with it. Never mind Timmy’s political sensitivities. He drove on in silence and slowed and turned off the main road as he neared his home.

‘We’ll go back early tomorrow,’ Timmy said. ‘I’ll pick you up after the twelve o’clock Mass. We won’t wait for the dinner or we’ll be here all day.’

‘Okay,’ Duggan turned into the laneway leading to his home. He’s thinking of paying, he thought. Wants to be back in Dublin by the deadline.

He stopped the car on the gravel in front of the house and the sheepdog came running out, followed a moment or two later by his mother. She was wearing a wraparound apron and wiping her hands on a cloth as she squinted in the sudden sunlight at the strange car.

‘Kate,’ Timmy was out of the car, back in public form. ‘Look at what I brought you.’

Duggan retrieved his cap from the back seat and put it on as he stepped out of the car.

‘Look at you,’ his mother said with a smile. Then she burst into tears and let them run down her face unhindered.

‘Now, Kate,’ Timmy said, coming around to the driver’s seat. ‘What are you upsetting yourself for? You should be very proud of him. A fine specimen of Irish manhood.’ He raised his eyes to heaven as he went by Duggan and added, ‘One o’clock tomorrow.’

The sheepdog jumped up at Duggan as Timmy drove away,
leaving a smell of exhaust fumes on the warm air. His mother smiled at him through her tears and said, ‘Come on in’, and steered him into the kitchen with her two hands on his back. It seemed dark inside, out of the sunshine. There was a large plate of buttered slices of bread on the table and a bowl of mashed-up boiled eggs beside it.

‘They’re all at the bog,’ she said. ‘Footing the turf. I was just
making
the sandwiches for them.’

‘I’ll take them over,’ he said.

‘Do that,’ she said. ‘They’ll be delighted.’

‘I better get out of this uniform.’

‘Do,’ she said.

He went upstairs to his bedroom, feeling the staircase very narrow and the house small compared to what he had become used to now. He opened the window to let in some air and the sounds and smells of the farmyard below also flowed in, the chickens clucking and
picking
around the open door of the hayshed. The dog had gone back to sleep, lying stretched out in the sunshine. In the fields beyond, a
number
of shorthorn cattle grazed slowly and a small flock of sheep were scattered about. He picked out the growing lambs and counted them automatically. Beyond, in what had been last year’s meadow, there were drills of potato plants, cabbages, carrots and a line of staked peas, all different shades and textures of green. He changed quickly into an old pair of trousers and shirt and hung his uniform in the wardrobe and went back down.

‘I’ve just made a pot of tea,’ his mother said. ‘And you’ll have an egg sandwich?’

He poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on the range and sat down at the end of the table. She was cutting the sandwiches in half and putting them into a square biscuit tin with faded Christmas
decorations
around the side. ‘There’s ham as well,’ she said, pointing at a layer of sandwiches already in the tin.