The Devil's Ribbon (11 page)
The cab with the greased-out windows was heading east, over the ruts and cobblestones of dockside. Bits of old turnip and cabbage leaves clogged the road, a church spire slanted grey in the distance, as a hushed conversation continued. The priest’s voice was low but thick with anger. ‘We need to turn the screws, mount the pressure. The Tooley boy did well to get the file. It was there in his father’s bindery filed under
I
for Ireland, but it should have been under
M
for murdering bastards. So, what did I tell you? I was right about the British, wasn’t I?’
O’Rourke had a pipe in his mouth, and felt a little queasy as he read
Her Majesty’s Government: Highly Confidential
. He took the pipe out, spat a tad of baccy across the floor of the cab, and hesitated, as a dark world unfolded. He shut his eyes for a brief second, breathed
surely, steadily – voices in his head, echoes of the dead – but carried on reading anyway, ‘
A New Plantation in Ireland – The Gregory Clause 1847
.’
But the priest was impatient, his voice now quaking. ‘Let me summarise it for you, John, because though it’s hard to believe, it shows quite clearly that the British deliberately chose to prolong the famine in order to annihilate a race. Rid a land of popery. To, and I quote, “use the famine as a mechanism for reducing surplus population.” That is, to destroy an entire people by evicting unwanted tenants from the land, when we were weak, when we could barely stand …’
O’Rourke ran his fingers along the lines of the Gregory Clause. ‘They really did mean to kill us, didn’t they?’
The priest nodded, said ‘They did,’ and then used the cuff of his frock coat to rub the window clean. ‘Jesus, it makes me sick to think of it. But look at them now. Our people are out in droves; we might be poor, but we’re a very literate race, and if the English wanted to wipe us out, they didn’t achieve it. And at the right time, in the right place, the details of this file will be a propaganda victory written up in one of those papers of yours.’ There was a huge crowd of men milling around by the dockside, the beginnings of a battlefield. ‘Did you circulate the handbills, by the way?’
O’Rourke pulled a handbill from his pocket. ‘Damien printed three hundred copies. Usual things –
Down with the British, Death to all Millers, Tiocfaidh ár lá!
’
‘And it shall, John. The day is fast approaching because tomorrow is the anniversary of Drogheda. Cromwell slaughtered our people like dogs two hundred years ago, but the tide is turning …’
‘I’m counting the hours and can see the headline now.’ O’Rourke shut the file and patted it, knowing that with a stroke of his pen, this story might easily be summarised as, ‘It’s a fucking coup d’état, O’Brian.’ To which the journalist quickly added, ‘Begging your pardon, Father.’
The priest opened the door of the cab, jumped out. ‘Couldn’t be better, could it? Come on now. I’ve a speech to make and a riot to start.’
O’Rourke watched the priest leap up onto the makeshift podium. He certainly looked the part in his flowing black robes with his Danton passion and a voice that was louder and more commanding than the gathering rain clouds. ‘
Tiocfaidh ár lá!
’ was the rallying cry.
Ten years, I’ve been waiting for this,
thought the journalist, and despite the heat rising off the pavers, O’Rourke was in a different world, as he blinked into the angry mob to see not the grey and brown of factory workers, but veils of snow.
The harsh winter of ’47. A frozen, merciless world where crows squabbled over ripe pickings, bones moaned in a blurring wind and a robin flitted between the trees, among the bright red berries, as snow feathered John’s lashes. He was freezing to death out here, barely able to stand after the soldiers dragged his family from their cottage. ‘Tumbling,’ they called it, like a game you might play with your sweetheart in the hay barn. From where he lay, John could smell smoke and feel walls battered in by crowbars, hear screaming and see in the distance half-naked women running for their lives. Is that my mammy? Tell me that’s not my mammy, he cried. He was sixteen at the time and John knew if he’d a loaded gun, he’d have shot the lot
of them. A bullet through the head and he would have jumped up and down on their English corpses and spat on their graves. Instead, he lay helpless, famished as he was, and did nothing
.
But not today. Today was a day for action.
A roar went up. ‘
Tiocfaidh ár lá!
’ And the priest was back at the journalist’s side with, ‘Hail another carriage, John. We need to get out of here, quick before the cavalry arrive. We’re heading west this time, to Piccadilly.’ The priest patted his pocket. ‘Fucking terrifying to think what’s in here. One false move and …’
‘Jesus, O’Brian.
Is ag magadh fúm atá tú
?’
The priest smiled, sticking his great legs out, clapped his hands in slow motion and mouthed, ‘No, son. I’m not kidding you, because one false move and … boom!’
Hatton got out of the carriage in Highgate. The body wagon was directly behind him, Patrice at the reins and the Inspector up ahead, who greeted the Professor with ‘And how do you fare this morning, Adolphus? After last night, I mean? You look a little tired. You were on the ran tan, sir. Completely drunk before we found that body. Blood sobered you up a bit though, didn’t it? When we left you with Mrs Gallant I thought you were in the safest of hands …’
‘Mrs Gallant? I don’t remember seeing her … the last thing I remember was the gombeen man, Mr Tescalini nailing down the door, the waiting carriage …’
‘I fear you were slumped against the window all the way to Gower Street, dribbling a little and talking to yourself about some girl called
Mary, and we had to stop from time to time but Mr Tescalini helped. He’s not here this morning, for the poor man needed a little respite after such a night. To cut a man in half? It would take a regular pair of hands for that kind of shovelling, a pair of Paddy hands, no doubt, for have you seen the size of some of those fellows?’
Hatton didn’t reply, still struggling to remember how he’d got home last night. All he could remember, to be honest, was the forensic highlights.
‘It’s the combination of potato with buttermilk that makes them that way,’ continued the detective. ‘It’s all they eat. And that’s the reason they only have themselves to blame. We did what we could during those terrible times. Gave them free corn, set up work committees, relief programmes, soup kitchens, and we even had the foresight to distribute recipes for cooking the corn. And they still insist that we did nothing.’
‘Recipe cards? Well, they couldn’t eat those, now could they, Inspector?’ Hatton said sniffily, his headache worse than ever. Thinking, recipe cards for the starving? He’d never heard of anything more ridiculous.
But Grey was of a different mind. ‘No, Hatton, they couldn’t eat them, but they might have used them. The fussy devils claimed they found the corn we sent unpalatable. That the corn, badly cooked, not properly milled, killed the babies. But it is
mettle
, in times of crisis, that keeps a nation great. They should have stopped with their moaning and taken a note out of our book. By rejecting what we offered, the Irish only had themselves to blame.’ Grey adjusted the hem of a black leather glove, which to his mind didn’t sit quite right. ‘Well, enough said,’ he continued, moving swiftly up the gravel path towards White Lodge. ‘Perhaps this is not the time and place for a history lesson.’
Grey knocked on the door. Somewhere beyond the house a dog barked, chickens squawked. ‘I have it on good authority that today we will at last find the wayward brother in. A whole day absent after your brother is murdered? Doesn’t look too good, does it?’
Hatton followed Grey into the house, where Sorcha McCarthy was waiting for them in the drawing room. The room was bursting with sunshine, dappling the celadon walls with shadows cast from a little copse of birch and willow in the garden. Someone had opened the French windows and drawn back the shutters.
Sorcha McCarthy must have seen something telling on Hatton’s face, because she spoke directly to him, saying, ‘It’s not normal practice, Professor, but I cannot bear to have Gabriel laid out in the dark.’
A young man with red hair whom Hatton didn’t know laid his hand upon her arm. He was clearly Gabriel’s brother.
Hatton gestured towards a low trestle table. ‘Is this where you would like us to put your husband, madam?’ The widow didn’t answer, instead looked at her brother-in-law to speak, but the young man put his fist in his mouth and turned his back on the room. Hatton could tell there was real loss here. Since the death of his father, it was a feeling he understood the truth of.
But Hatton was not here as a funeral parlour man, to fawn and cry crocodile tears. He had a job to do, and so he called Patrice in from the hallway to help with the coffin. Quietly and inconspicuously, they laid the coffin on the trestle table, which was prepared with a cloth of pure white linen, and quietly eased back the lid.
And it was at that moment that Mrs McCarthy cried out and would have swooned to the floor, but Hatton managed to catch her in his
arms. She looked up at him, as if she didn’t know who he was, her eyes quickly flickering towards the trestle table and then to the door. Damien McCarthy rushed to her side, and Hatton reassured him that he was a doctor, before turning to Patrice saying, ‘Be quick and get some porter, smelling salts … hurry!’
Mrs McCarthy squeezed Hatton’s hand. ‘Who’s that you’re speaking to? I don’t want any more strangers here.’
‘He’s no one that you should worry about, Mrs McCarthy. The boy works for me at the morgue. Here, let me help you to your feet.’
‘Please, forgive me,’ she said, the colour returning to her face a little, and taking the arm of Hatton first and then her brother-in-law’s. ‘It’s the heat, this desperate heat and seeing my poor dead husband, as if he’s not dead at all, but just asleep and he might wake at any minute, rise, speak and …’
Inspector Grey, standing aside from the others, nodded curtly to Hatton that he’d done well to intervene, as Hatton continued, ‘Here now, Mrs McCarthy, a sniff of the salts …’ He stepped away, under the watchful gaze of the brother-in-law. Hatton gestured politely towards the body. ‘You may want to have your husband laid out again before the funeral?’
The widow revived, stood up from the chair and ran her fingertips pensively along the edge of her dead husband’s coffin. ‘To lay his body out again? I hadn’t even thought on it.’ She bent down, kissed her dead husband, a mere touch of the lips to his marble skin, the quietest of moments, then turned back to Hatton. ‘And his beads? Are they to be returned?’
‘Beads, madam? I’m not sure what you mean. What beads are these?’
Hatton looked at Inspector Grey for help, who only shook his head.
At this Damien McCarthy turned back to face the room, his face like thunder, saying, ‘His rosary beads, damn you. Gabriel was never without them. They were simple things, wooden with a silver cross, given to him by an old acquaintance he’d recently met, who’d had them blessed in Rome. The beads must be returned and buried with Gabriel. Someone’s damn well taken them.’
Hatton was taken aback by this sudden effrontery, but answered, ‘With respect, we found no beads, Mr McCarthy. The clothes he died in are being kept at St Bart’s and … well, I don’t want to cause further upset, but after a death such as his, they were in no fit state to return.’
‘Yes, yes, Professor,’ said Damien McCarthy. ‘We’re not simple people. You don’t have to labour the point for the Irish among you. The rosary beads would have been in his pocket. If they’ve been lost or stolen through your negligence, you’ll answer for it. My brother was never without the sign of his faith.’
The inspector made a note. ‘I see. But surely your brother was Church of Ireland? To uphold the Union, he must have been a Protestant.’
McCarthy laughed. ‘Do you seriously think my brother didn’t have a mind of his own? That he was obedience itself, as all the British papers claimed he was? Well, perhaps he was in politics, but not where religion was concerned. He lost his faith for years but in the end returned to the One True Faith, and merely attended the Church of Ireland for show. Because your people insisted on it. Or maybe I shouldn’t say
your people
. You’re Welsh, I presume a Methodist and thus a dissenter yourself, am I right, Inspector?’
Hatton watched a flicker of pain pass across Grey’s face for a split
second, unsure of himself, as he mumbled, ‘My religious beliefs are no concern of yours and neither are they relevant to this murder inquiry.’
McCarthy was goading him because Britain – its government, the Establishment, Scotland Yard – was still run by the Old School of diehard Protestants and Grey was on the outside, just as much as any Catholic.
The younger McCarthy continued, ‘He had refound the true faith, and it was perhaps his one saving grace. His beads were a gift from a friend from the old county. Ask Mrs McCarthy here if you don’t believe me. She’s also very devout and can’t tell a lie, never mind live one. Can you, Sorcha, my dear?’
‘Be quiet, Damien. For heaven’s sake, what does all this matter now? My husband is dead, your brother, sir, and please, for pity’s sake, don’t drag all of that into this …’
‘All of what? You married all of that. Do you not understand this yet?’
The brother’s tone with the widow was rude and abrupt, and Hatton had no liking for this upstart man who seemed to threaten the peace of the room, and more important, threaten her, because he was holding Mrs McCarthy’s arm in a manner which no gentleman would do.
‘Mr McCarthy,’ said Inspector Grey firmly. ‘Take your hands off your sister-in-law immediately. Where have you been, anyway? You’ve been absent, two nights on the trot, since your brother died. To that point, I’ll need to know your precise movements from the morning of July 9th until now. We need to speak about your brother’s death, at length, and also I’d like to ask some questions of another death that’s come to light.’
‘Another death? I’m not sure I follow you.’
Grey closed his notebook and put it in his pocket. He crossed his arms. ‘A man we found last night. Name of Gregory Mahoney? A gombeen man, bloodsucker, call him what you will, who was working in the rookeries of St Giles. Heard of him, perhaps?’
‘No, I’ve never heard of him, and I’ve no wish to speak to you today, Inspector. You’ve only just returned my poor brother’s body. We’re a house in mourning, sir. I have been busy on business for the last day or so and I have plenty that will vouch for me, but first of all, before I answer any of your impudent questions, show some damn respect.’
The inspector stepped forward. ‘This is a police inquiry, Mr McCarthy. I can talk to you here, or you can accompany me to The Yard, if you prefer. Perhaps now would be a good time for me to tell you, as Mrs McCarthy already knows, your brother was known to me. On that point alone, I think we need to talk.’
‘Known to you?’ Damien McCarthy grew pale.
Inspector Grey deftly hooked his arm through McCarthy’s and steered him out into the garden without another word, where the two men quickly melded with trees, the high grass, and the tumbling roses.
How strange, thought Hatton, that Gabriel McCarthy had been known to Inspector Grey. If that was the case, why on earth hadn’t he said anything of it before? Hatton knew Scotland Yard hobnobbed with politicians, especially someone as ambitious as Grey, but as to the precise nature of this relationship? Why was the Inspector being so circumspect? If they went to the same clubs, ate in the same fancy restaurants, met at some Westminster shindig, what of it? Well, thought Hatton, he wasn’t going to be brushed off so easily, as if he was just an
adjunct to this case. He needed to know more of this relationship and would ask the Inspector when the opportunity arose.
Meanwhile, Hatton remained where he was, watching Sorcha McCarthy who stood at the window. Her face had a chill about it, and it was all that Hatton could do to stop himself reaching out to her to offer her some comfort. Instead he said brusquely, ‘Should I leave you for a moment, Mrs McCarthy?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Professor, but there’s something troubling me.’ She asked him to shut the door. ‘Call it a woman’s intuition,’ she said, ‘but I think you’re hiding something. I know Gabriel’s death was no accident, but I have solemnly sworn that I will say nothing more on the matter for the time being, at least. I understand the sensitive balance of feelings in this country, in relation to my people. I see the banners in the streets. I’ve been at mass, when rocks are hurled and heard the cries of “Death to all Catholics.” But as I told the Inspector, I’m sick to death of politics.’
She fell silent until the two men were completely out of view and then asked, with a narrowing of her eyes, ‘And why make mention of this other killing? A gombeen man in the rookeries, he said?’
‘The man who died last night came from Ardara, Mrs McCarthy. The very same place where I believe you and your late husband are from? It’s just to our mind, mine especially, this seems rather a coincidence. Ardara is a small place surely, for I’ve never heard of it?’
She put her hand on the mantel. ‘Forgive me, Professor, but you are English. I’d never heard of Highgate till my husband brought me here, and why should I? It was nothing to me, a foreign land, as Ireland is to you, but I can tell you this. Ardara was devastated. Left
empty. Tumbled, we called it. Many people left and came to London or travelled farther afield. They had little choice. They were starving, Professor. The fact that this man came from the same place as us isn’t so unusual.’ Her voice was strained, and despite the heat, she shivered as if she had a fever upon her.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Hatton. ‘It clearly pains you to speak of this.’
She shook her head. ‘I was one of the lucky ones, but I’m telling you, these two deaths are not connected and we rarely set foot in St Giles except for Latin mass. If there was a Holy Day or something special, our carriage would deliver us to the steps of the Sacred Heart, then promptly take us home again. The congregation was welcoming enough, but that priest, Father O’Brian, is a firebrand. Sure, he does good work with the poor and at Christmas, Easter, Holy Days, and so forth, and like any good Catholic, I must do what the Father says.’