The City of Shadows

9. The Gate

At Pearse Street Garda station there was a note on Stefan’s desk. Wayland-Smith wanted to talk to him at the morgue. As he turned back to the door Inspector Donaldson was there, eyeing him, with the strained expression that meant he knew he wouldn’t relish the answers to the questions he had to ask.

‘What’s happening with this body at Kilmashogue?’

‘I’m just going to find out if Doctor Wayland-Smith’s got anything.’

‘Was he killed?’

‘I don’t suppose he buried himself.’

Donaldson pursed his lips impatiently.

‘Is it going to be an active investigation or not?’

‘If there’s anything to act on.’

A shrug was not what the inspector wanted either.

‘You know what I mean, Sergeant. How long was the body up there?’

‘He’s not sure. It could be two or three years, or it could go back to the twenties. We’ll find out. It doesn’t smell like some old IRA job to me.’

James Donaldson would go a long way to avoid a conversation about the Civil War or the IRA, but a death you couldn’t investigate because of ‘all that’ was in many ways preferable to a murder you had no choice but to investigate. Whenever he couldn’t get a straight answer out of Stefan Gillespie it usually meant trouble. He could smell it now. The kind of trouble his detective sergeant brought into the station like old dog shit on his shoes.

The black mottled bones had been laid out like an archaeological exhibit in a museum, on the white marble slab at the centre of the big room in the mortuary. The scent of carbolic didn’t altogether hide the reek of putrefaction that was not just in the air but in walls and floor and ceiling. It got you as you walked through the doors, a strange sweetness that caught at the back of your throat. The State Pathologist stood over the skeleton they had brought back from the mountainside, with an expression of almost tender concern. He spoke, as always, in the businesslike, dismissive tone that seemed to imply this was a job and nothing more, but his eyes showed something else. Two things in fact; that the dead mattered and that he would enjoy telling Detective Sergeant Gillespie everything he had found out.

‘A young man, in his twenties or thirties; nothing to contradict my judgement there.’ Wayland-Smith walked slowly round the slab. ‘A number of broken bones. Now he’s been scrubbed up rather more broken bones than I counted up at Kilmashogue. You’ll see the left arm, multiple fracture of the humerus; broken ribs here and here, along with the sternum; in both legs, femur left, tibia right. He has suffered severe trauma. The fractures indicate it happened quickly, and with some force. A fall from a considerable height or, more likely, something hit him. The injuries would be consistent with a traffic accident for instance.’

‘And that’s what killed him?’

‘It was certainly enough to result in death. But I can’t say it did.’

‘And what about this hole in the skull?’

Wayland-Smith smiled. It was the question he was waiting for.

‘Certainly not a bullet. I didn’t think so.’ The words ‘of course’ hovered in the air. ‘It could have happened during the accident, collision, whatever we choose to call it. Maybe something sharp, a protruding metal spike, narrow in diameter, hammered into his head by the force of impact.’

‘Which might have killed him?’

‘Again I can only say something of that sort would have had the potential to. With no soft tissue and no exit on the other side of the skull I can’t know how far the projectile went into his brain. I don’t much like the idea anyway.’ He peered down at the hole. ‘And it still seems remarkably neat, don’t you think, if we’re talking about smashing and hammering? There’s nothing about it that strikes you as in any way familiar, Sergeant?’

‘You mean you know what it is and I should know too?’

‘Doesn’t your family have a farm?’

Stefan nodded and waited. Wayland-Smith enjoyed these moments.

‘I’m sure you’ve seen the butcher arrive to stick the pig.’

He turned and walked to a table close by. He picked up a heavy pistol, wood and grey metal, square and clumsy. Stefan was puzzled by the weapon; it looked like something that had been cobbled together from other guns, but as the State Pathologist held it up he recognised what it was.

‘A Messrs Accles and Shelvoke captive bolt pistol,’ proclaimed Wayland-Smith. ‘Not a pretty thing. I borrowed it from the slaughterhouse which is, in the absence of cadavers, the source of carcasses, usually pigs, for my anatomy students. The skulls always come with a neat, round hole, where the animal has been, as we like to say — to show what nice fellers we all are — humanely stunned before slaughter. Now, if we take a pig’s head — ’

In a gesture that was unashamedly theatrical, he picked up a piece of oilcloth to reveal a pink pig’s head, sitting on a large white plate; it only needed an apple in its mouth to go into an oven. He cocked the pistol and held it to the pink, bristly skin, just above the eyes, and fired. The blank cartridge discharged violently in the echoing mortuary; there was the smell of cordite. They were both deafened for several seconds. ‘There are pistols that operate by means of compressed air,’ shouted Wayland-Smith. ‘It’s all I could find, I’m afraid.’ He put down the pistol and pointed at a small hole. ‘Remove the flesh and we’d have a match for the hole in our friend’s skull.’

‘Which may or may not be the cause of death,’ said Stefan.

‘Yes. The function of the gun is to render an animal unconscious so that its throat can be cut for bleeding. I don’t know if that killed him. But between whatever smashed into him and the bolt from the stunner piercing his brain, we can at least say death couldn’t have come as a great surprise.’

‘So when did it happen?’

‘1932. Some time in June or July.’

‘Now you’re showing off.’ Stefan hadn’t expected that much.

Wayland-Smith gestured at several dark shapes sitting on a sheet of white paper. Beside them were the remains of the dead man’s leather wallet.

‘I’ve cut open the wallet. There are several pieces of what was originally paper. Naturally most of it has perished, but the conditions have preserved some things rather well. I’ve done as much as I can to clean up the scraps and dry them out; much more and we’d simply destroy the things. There’s a little corner of a ten shilling note. It might get you some sort of date if you can find a serial number, but not terribly useful unless it was a new note. Some of the paper has simply congealed into papier mache. You won’t do much with that. And then there’s this, which I think has two clearly discernible words, if you look here, and part of a date as well, just here.’

He handed across a magnifying glass and Stefan bent over the scrap of blackened paper. After a moment he could make out some letters and what looked like a number, all slightly darker than the surrounding brown.

‘It’s a three, or an eight?’

‘One or the other I think.’

‘And that has to be July, doesn’t it? But no year.’

Wayland-Smith shrugged cheerfully and pointed. He had more.

‘Do you think that says “the word” or “the world”? I’d go for “world”.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ said Stefan, smiling slowly as he looked up at the State Pathologist. It was his turn now. ‘The Way of the World.’

‘What do you mean, Sergeant?’

‘William Congreve. I saw it at the Gate, a couple of years ago. I suppose it would have been summer. It’s July thirty-two. A theatre ticket.’

Dessie MacMahon heaped a third spoonful of sugar into a steaming cup.

‘Jesus, you’d want to keep your back to the wall in that place!’

‘But your virtue’s intact.’

‘Sure that’d be telling!’ Dessie grinned and gulped the tea. It had been his first visit to the Gate Theatre. Even if he’d got no further than the box office and front of house manager, its exotic reputation could not go unremarked. Closer examination of the ticket in the dead man’s wallet had confirmed the date and the name of the play. It had also revealed a seat number.

‘They thought I was joking them when I wanted to know who’d bought a ticket for a play two years ago. This front of house feller, Sinclair, was rolling his eyes at the woman in the box office like I was an eejit straight from the eejits’ home.’ Dessie grinned and drank some of the tea.

‘But?’ asked Stefan.

‘Hmm?’

‘There’s a but.’

‘The date on the ticket wasn’t any old date, Sarge. It was the first night.’ He was pleased with himself. ‘When they put the thing on after — ’

‘I know what it is, Dessie.’

‘That’ll be why you’re a sergeant so.’ He drained the cup. ‘Anyway, most people there wouldn’t have bought tickets. They’d have been invited.’

‘So there would have been a list?’

‘There would.’

‘And?’

‘They’re going to see if they can dig it out. I wouldn’t say it’s the best organised place. You wouldn’t expect it to be, would you? The arty type.’

Stefan surveyed the debris piled on Dessie’s desk. Garda MacMahon laughed. Suddenly they both sensed someone watching them. They looked round to see Inspector Donaldson in his usual position, in the doorway, debating whether he really wanted to walk in and have a conversation with Detective Sergeant Gillespie or whether it could be left for another day.

‘This body’s a nasty business. I’ve just seen the autopsy report.’

‘Very nasty, sir.’

‘Are you any nearer identifying him?’

‘We’ve got something.’

‘What about this woman you’re looking for?’

‘Susan Field.’

The inspector hesitated. This was what was really on his mind.

‘I understand there’s a connection with the man Keller, Sergeant.’

Donaldson sniffed uncomfortably, but it had to be said.

‘There is. We know she was going to him for an abortion.’

The word still offended Inspector Donaldson and he thought he’d seen the back of it. ‘Didn’t they look into her at Rathmines? They didn’t find anything.’

‘There’s more evidence now, and more reason to be concerned.’

‘They concluded she’d gone to England,’ persisted the inspector.

‘I’m not convinced of that sir. There’s no evidence at all. It’s an assumption, just that. The abortion is still the last thing we know about Susan Field. Of course, if Keller was still here we’d have someone to talk to about it.’

Stefan and Dessie gazed blandly at Donaldson, waiting for him to say something. He was the one who had allowed the Special Branch detectives to pull Hugo Keller out of the Pearse Street cells. But as far as the inspector was concerned it wasn’t his business any more, and that was the end of it.

‘You’d better take that up with Special Branch.’

‘It didn’t go down well last time.’ Stefan pointed at his bruised face.

‘Is that some kind of accusation, Gillespie?’

‘It should be. What do you think, sir? Shall we have a go?’

Stefan glanced at Dessie and Dessie tried hard to keep a straight face. Inspector Donaldson bristled. If there was any truth to the suggestion that Detective Sergeant Lynch had something to do with Gillespie’s injuries it was between the two of them. Lynch was a thug; Gillespie ought to have known better than to cross him. No one would thank James Donaldson for poking his nose into Special Branch’s sewer and he had no intention of doing so.

‘I suggest you get on with your job and put personal matters aside.’

He was pleased with that; it came very close to sounding like leadership. But there seemed no need to cross the threshold into the CID office now. He turned and walked away. The soles of his always highly polished shoes echoed loudly and decisively along the corridor. Dessie looked at Stefan.

‘You haven’t told him there’s a priest in it somewhere?’

‘Hasn’t the man got enough to worry about?’ laughed Stefan.

The telephone rang. He reached across the desk and picked it up. The voice at the other end was an odd combination of the punctilious and lazy.

‘Is this the CID office? I’m afraid my front of house manager took the number, but not the name. His best suggestion was that I ask for the fat detective who smokes Sweet Afton. I don’t know how many fat detectives you have, and perhaps they all smoke Sweet Afton; however it may give you a clue and, given your line of work, that should be more than enough.’

‘Is that the Gate?’

‘Faultless! You see, I didn’t underestimate you.’

‘I’m the thin one who doesn’t smoke Sweet Afton.’

‘It’s about the first-night ticket. We have a name for you.’

Crossing over the Liffey and on to O’Connell Street Stefan Gillespie looked at the Christmas window full of toys at Clery’s. Tom’s tricycle was there. He had paid the deposit at the beginning of November and a little more at the start of December. When his wages came next week he would be able to find the rest. It was a long walk to the far end of the wide street, past the statue of O’Connell the Liberator, past the GPO, past Parnell and the incongruous Nelson’s Column. The other Christmas windows went unnoticed. His mind was full of things that didn’t connect with each other. He hoped the Gate Theatre would at least show him a way forward for the body on the hillside at Kilmashogue.

The theatre made up one side of the Rotunda Hospital, where its grey eighteenth-century facade turned sharply into Parnell Square. A small door, almost unnoticeable until you reached it and fell up the steps, led into a dark and narrow corridor, more like the entrance to a Georgian town house that had seen better days, as most of the houses in this part of Dublin had, than to a theatre whose reputation was not measured by its size but by the grace and the compassion it brought to its cramped and untidy quarters. When you walked into that corridor and up the steep steps, to an auditorium that seated barely three hundred people, you had done more than enter a theatre. If there was anywhere in Dublin where the writ of the city’s squinting windows didn’t run, it was here. The Gate was an island. Its founder, Micheal Mac Liammoir, an actor who gave his life’s greatest performance as an Englishman triumphantly playing an Irishman, had made the play the theatre’s only purpose and in doing had created something more than a theatre. The Gate had ignored Dublin and had made Dublin, a city that was nothing if not contrary, love it for that. Along the way, almost unnoticed, it had given lungs to a city that, despite all its passions and its furious energies, was wheezing and consumptive and in constant need of God’s clean air.

Detective Sergeant Gillespie sat in the Green Room, high-ceilinged, and small like everything else; the walls were dark, green as they had to be, lined with photographs of actors and productions. Light poured in from a high Georgian window on to the street below. When the door opened he knew the man who came in. He had sat in the auditorium here with Maeve; it seemed like a long time ago now. Was it five years? Diarmuid and Grainne; love and death. Micheal Mac Liammoir had been Diarmuid. The actor shook Stefan’s hand firmly, fixing his gaze hard for some seconds. It was a look that told Stefan he would be judged here, and precisely what he would be told would depend on that judgement. It was as obvious as that.

‘Your colleague said very little. I didn’t speak to him myself. But I imagine this is something rather serious. I think you should tell me more.’

It was an odd start to the questions Stefan was there to ask, but he sensed this was a place where he would find honesty and trust reciprocated.

‘We have the body of an unidentified man. We don’t know the circumstances of his death, but they are, for the moment, suspicious. I can’t say any more than that. The fragment of a theatre ticket was found in a wallet buried with the man. So far it’s the only thing that’s given us any chance of identifying him. For now we’re assuming the ticket was his.’

Mac Liammoir didn’t waste time showing surprise or shock.

‘Well, we’ve dug out a list of people who were invited to the first night of The Way of the World. The ticket in question was given to a young man called Vincent Walsh. I didn’t know him well myself but he did work here as a dresser from time to time. He was never on our permanent staff.’

‘Was the ticket used?’

‘No. There’s always someone ticking off the names of guests at a first night and Vincent Walsh’s name wasn’t ticked. I presume he didn’t come.’

‘Would you have expected him to?’

‘He was very close to our wardrobe master, Eric Purcell. He was his guest.’ He pronounced all his words with an unusual, almost mannered care. He spoke the words ‘very close’ quite slowly, watching Stefan’s eyes again. It was not a statement but a question. ‘Do you understand?’ He did. He also understood that the best answer to the question was to say nothing. Mac Liammoir would decide if that answer was the one he wanted to hear.

‘I have spoken to Eric. He can remember the evening very clearly. He was expecting Mr Walsh and he was rather upset when he didn’t arrive. As it transpires he didn’t see his friend again. No one did. He simply disappeared. Of course, that makes some sense now. You will want to talk to Mr Purcell.’

Stefan nodded. Mac Liammoir left the Green Room for a moment and returned quickly with a man of around forty. He looked nervous and as they were left alone, the nervousness seemed closer to fear. Stefan recognised the species of fear precisely. Eric Purcell was a small man whose effeminate features and movements were a part of his being; he would have encountered policemen in very different circumstances, without the protection of the Gate’s walls. He would have had reason to be nervous.

It was obvious that Purcell was upset; it was obvious that Vincent Walsh had mattered to him, in a way that already told Stefan the world the dead man had inhabited. And because of that it wasn’t surprising that the wardrobe master knew very little about the dead man’s family. He knew Vincent had had a mother and father in Carlow, and that’s where he’d grown up. They had a shop there; Purcell thought it was a tobacconist’s. That was all. As far as he knew, Vincent Walsh hadn’t kept in touch with his parents.

‘I thought something was wrong, Sergeant.’

‘You expected him to be at the first night?’

‘He’d never have missed it. It wasn’t just the play. I got him a little bit of work here when I could. I’d told him there was something in the offing.’

‘Did you try to contact him?’

‘I did. But he’d gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘People go, don’t they?’

‘Who told you he’d gone?’

‘He worked at Billy Donnelly’s, Carolan’s, in Red Cow Lane. He’d a room there. It was Billy who said he’d left. Well, why wouldn’t he? There isn’t much to stay for.’ It was clear Vincent Walsh’s disappearance had left a bitter taste. It was all the more bitter now that Eric Purcell knew the anger and hurt he had harboured for so long afterwards had been unjustified.

‘What made you think something was wrong?’

‘I don’t know. I just thought Vincent was better than that.’

‘When did you last see him?’

There were tears in the wardrobe master’s eyes, of grief and guilt. He hesitated. Stefan could see there were things Purcell didn’t want to say. He had been gentle enough with him at first. Now he needed to be tougher.

‘Mr Purcell, your friend didn’t meet a happy end. He was killed. And when he was dead someone took him out to a mountainside, dug a hole and dumped his body in it. I want to find out who did that. I need your help.’

‘I’ll help if I can.’

‘You remember the date?’

‘Yes.’ He had made his decision; to stop feeling sorry for himself.

‘I couldn’t tell you the date off the top of my head, but it’s easy to remember the day. It was the night after the Eucharistic Mass in the Park. He pulled me out of bed, hammering on my door at one o’clock in the morning.’

‘Did he often do that?’

Eric Purcell shook his head. It still wasn’t easy. He was fighting the old habits of self-preservation that told him never to say anything to the Guards, about anything, about anybody. Stefan knew that and he waited.

‘He’d been at the Mass in the afternoon, then he’d been working in Carolan’s. When the pub closed some fellers came in, Blueshirts, a gang of them. They started roughing up Vincent and Billy the way the Guards — I’m not saying — I mean it happens sometimes, you’d know yourself, Sergeant.’

Purcell assumed Stefan wouldn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about a couple of queers being beaten up. It wasn’t as if it was entirely unreasonable. Didn’t the police have a go at it now and then too?

‘So what happened?’

‘He got away, and eventually he turned up at my flat.’

‘Was he hurt?’

‘There was a bit of blood, a few bruises.’

‘Did he stay?’

‘He left after a couple of hours. He was worried about Billy.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your friend gets you up in the middle of the night. There’s blood on his face. He’s been beaten up. He stays a bit, then he goes back to the pub where he was attacked. You’re worried about him. But you’ve arranged to meet him here the next week. Then he doesn’t turn up. He’s just gone. You never see him again. And you don’t remember what he talked about?’

‘He didn’t say very much. That’s the truth. He didn’t want to talk.’

‘So what did he do?’ persisted Stefan.

‘Nothing really. I cleaned him up. I washed the blood — ’

‘Did he know these men, the Blueshirts?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘So did you just sit there and look at each other?’

‘He wrote a letter.’

Stefan looked at him, surprised.

‘He wanted an envelope. He had some papers in his pocket. I didn’t really see. He put them in the envelope with a note. Then he wanted a stamp, but I didn’t have one there. He asked me to post the letter the next day.’

‘Did you?’

The wardrobe master nodded.

‘Did you look at the address?’

‘It was addressed to Billy Donnelly.’

‘Which was where he was going when he left?’

Purcell nodded again.

‘Didn’t that strike you as odd?’

‘It wasn’t my business.’ Grief was still there; so were old jealousies.

‘Did he say anything about this letter?’

‘No. He seemed a bit happier when he’d written it though. He laughed when he gave it to me. He said they wouldn’t look in the same place twice.’

‘Did you know what he meant?’

‘No, I told you, he didn’t want to talk about what happened.’

Stefan Gillespie believed him. He believed him all the more because of the note of bitterness he could hear, even though tears were still in Eric Purcell’s eyes. Vincent Walsh had mattered to him, perhaps more than he had mattered to Vincent. When Vincent was in trouble he’d knocked on the wardrobe master’s door; he needed help, but he didn’t offer trust in return.

‘What’s going to happen to him? I mean his body.’

‘We’ll contact his parents now. He’ll be buried in due course.’

‘I’d like to know when.’

‘I’m sure Mr and Mrs Walsh — ’

‘I doubt they’ll be inviting his friends, Sergeant.’

Walking down the stairs on his way out of the Gate, Stefan was surprised to see Wayland-Smith sprawling in an armchair by the box office, frowning over the crossword in The Irish Times. He laughed, finally seeing something he should have seen immediately, and wrote in the answer. He got up.

‘My car’s outside. It seemed quickest to come here and get you.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve found another body at Kilmashogue.’

It was almost dark as Stefan Gillespie and Wayland-Smith stood on the road below the woody mountainside again. The rain had gone now. It was a clear, crisp December night. Below them the great sprawl of Dublin was just starting to disappear into the darkness. The lights from the tractor and the State Pathologist’s estate shone on the heap of earth and rock that still slewed across the track. It was only when the workmen had started to clear the landslip that they discovered the second body. It lay in several pieces where it had broken apart as it tumbled down the slope with the soil that had covered it; a leg, an arm, the torso and head. Black skin still held some of the bones in place, barely, like a wet paper bag about to split apart; other bones had already lost most of their flesh. It was immediately clear, to Stefan as well as to Wayland-Smith, that the body had been buried far more recently than the first. The jaw and the face were already almost a skull, but on the top of the head there was still skin and hair. It was long hair, a woman’s. The pathologist turned to a guard behind him, who held a small cardboard box.

‘So show me.’

The policeman moved forward, stepping up on to the mound of earth, opening the flaps of the box. Stefan needed to shine a torch in to see. It could have been no more than earth and leaves, muddy, compressed; it could have been the carcass of a young rabbit, the fur stripped away, rotting. But the tiny skull was human. It was a foetus. Wayland-Smith crossed himself. It was a gesture Stefan didn’t expect; he was conscious that he had never seen the State Pathologist make it over any adult corpse before. He moved closer to the torso and the head of the woman, stumbling in the slippery mud. He bent down, shining the torch on to her skull. He brushed away the mud on the forehead. There was something, quite small, blacker than the blackened skin; it was a round hole. Wayland-Smith squatted down beside him.

‘She’s been dead no more than a year, maybe less.’

He took the torch from Stefan and bent nearer the head. The work of the soil had nearly removed the smell of putrefaction from the dead flesh, but this close it lingered. Stefan coughed as it hit the back of his throat. Wayland-Smith took a pencil from his pocket. He poked it into the hole.

‘I’d say so too, Sergeant. It’s our captive bolt pistol.’

In the light from the torch something glinted in the mud. It was tiny. Stefan brushed it with his finger. It glinted more. He eased it away from the wet earth. A thin black cord came with it, circling the vertebrae that were all that was left of the neck; a silver chain. What had glimmered in the torchlight was silver too, barely half an inch in size. It was a Star of David.

Detective Sergeant Gillespie sat in the Austin outside the house in Lennox Street. It smelt, as always, of Dessie MacMahon’s Sweet Afton. Usually that irritated him, if he bothered to notice it, but for now it seemed to drive out the smell of rain and soil and death that he had been breathing for the last twenty-four hours. Inside, Hannah Rosen was telling Susan Field’s father that his daughter’s body had been found. Stefan had not been on the wet plot of earth at Kilmashogue very long before he knew. It was scarcely an hour later that her handbag had been found, still full of the ordinary business of her life; comb, lipstick, pens and powder compact. There was a purse packed with shillings and pennies and threepenny bits and bus tickets, and there was a cheque book from the College Green branch of the Hibernian bank. The name inside the cheque book — still clearly legible — was Susan Field’s.

Hannah had not been surprised by the fact that her friend was dead of course. Instinct had already told her that. But the circumstances threw her back into the kind of bewildered disbelief that made acceptance hard. Faced with death, knowing is never enough, not at first. She had known but she didn’t believe. And now her heart, for a short time at least, had to fight the truth, in the futile, painful battle that can only be lost. Stefan could see it in her face; he had fought that battle once himself. He hadn’t told her everything. There was still too much he didn’t understand. Now there was more. How did the murder of Susan Field relate to the death of Vincent Walsh, dumped on the same hillside two years before, his bones broken and smashed, his head spiked like an animal in a slaughterhouse, just as Susan’s head had been spiked?

It was only a few minutes before Hannah came back out to fetch him. He went into the house. Brian Field stood by the fireplace, hands clasped tightly behind him, like the last time Stefan was there. It felt as if the cantor had been standing there all that time, knowing he would come back to say, no, she didn’t go anywhere, Mr Field; her bones are scattered on the mountainside. Stefan expressed his sorrow for the old man’s trouble, with the handshake that always accompanied those words and, as ever, when the words were said and the hand-shaking done, there was nothing else to say.

‘I should see her,’ said Brian Field very quietly.

‘She’s been in the ground a long time, Mr Field. I’m not asking you to identify your daughter now, not from the remains. It might be best — ’

‘I should see her.’ He simply repeated the words. ‘I should see her.’

‘I’ll go with you.’ Hannah put her arm through his. All at once the composure on the old man’s face was gone. There was a look of anguish.

‘Her sisters — ’

She tightened her grip on his arm.

‘We’ll telephone. Rachel can be here from London in no time.’

The cantor shook his head slowly; he didn’t want to telephone.

Stefan recognised what he saw in that anguish. He remembered it well enough. Each person you tell makes death more real; each word of telling takes away the little breath of life that still survives inside your heart.

They stood over the body as it lay on the mortuary slab. They were the only people in the building. There were no questions to ask. Not now. It was the necessary business of death. Brian Field’s fingers trembled as he took the blue kippah from his pocket. He put it on his head. He trembled again as he tried to fix it there with a hairgrip. Hannah took it from him and slid it on. He seemed unaware she was doing it. Stefan’s eyes were fixed on the hairgrip. It was exactly the same as the two lined up on his desk, with the compact and the lipstick and the purse and the pens and the comb from Susan Field’s handbag. And then quite suddenly, strong and clear, somewhere between singing and speaking, the cantor’s voice filled the mortuary. ‘Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’mei rabbaw. Amein.’ May his name be exalted and sanctified in the highest. ‘B’allmaw deev’raw hir’usei.’ In the universe created according to his will. ‘V’yamlih malhusei b’hayeihon uv’yomeihon. Amein.’ May his kingdom swiftly come in our day and in the days of the house of Israel. Amen. As he continued, each amen was echoed more quietly by Hannah. Stefan watched her. He could feel how much it mattered to her. Sometimes you didn’t have to believe it for it to matter.

Stefan and Hannah sat in Neary’s in Chatham Street and said very little. She didn’t talk about what had happened to Susan, only about their friendship, half-remembered events, unfinished stories, times and places and people she was trying to bring back, just for a moment. Some of the time she said nothing at all and for a while he felt he had to speak. When he tried to ask her about herself, about Palestine, about what she did, where she lived, her replies didn’t tell him anything. Eventually she shook her head and laughed.

‘You don’t have to say anything when there’s nothing to say.’

‘I’m sorry. I should know that. It was always my line.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘When Maeve died, and afterwards, for ages. I couldn’t move for people talking to me. It was as if they’d organised themselves into shifts. One went and there’d be someone else. If it wasn’t my mother or father, it was a stream of neighbours, or some cousin or aunt I hadn’t seen for years. “Whatever you do, don’t leave him on his own. And keep him talking!”’

‘It’s only because people care.’

‘And Jesus, how they care! They all felt so bad about how I felt I ended up comforting them! I swear I’d never seen some of them in my life.’

‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’ she said, still smiling.

‘Sometimes people need to know when to shut up.’

‘So are you going to shut up now?’

‘If that’s what you want, Hannah.’

‘I suppose I’m running away from all that a bit.’ She was more serious again. The strain in her face couldn’t be hidden by a smile for very long. ‘All the people I know, the people we grew up with. It’s like you said. They’ll be in and out of Lennox Street tomorrow, and we’ll sit and say the same things, over and over. I will do it, of course I will. I will sit there. But not tonight.’

Stefan nodded.

‘Sometimes it was easier being with people I didn’t really know.’

‘That’s not what I meant, Stefan.’

He was aware it was the first time she had called him that.

‘It doesn’t feel like I don’t know you.’

Stefan reached out and took her hand. She held his hand tightly.

‘It doesn’t for me either. It hasn’t from the first time we met.’

‘Time, please! Let’s have you two out of here!’ The barman’s voice boomed across the room in their direction. The glasses were rapidly snatched off the table. They looked round, laughing. The bar had been full when they came in two hours earlier. Now they were the only people left.

As they walked out of the pub towards Grafton Street it was bitterly cold. The long street of Christmas shop windows was almost empty now.

‘Do you want to get a taxi, Hannah?’

He was already turning towards Stephen’s Green and the taxi rank.

‘No.’

‘I’ll walk home with you then.’

‘I don’t think I’ll go home,’ she replied quietly, gently, her eyes fixed on his. She was shivering. She put her arm through his, pulling herself closer to him. It was not what he expected, but it wouldn’t be true to say he hadn’t thought about it, and suddenly it seemed not unexpected at all. Perhaps it had been clear from the beginning, to both of them, and now there was a need for comfort that had pushed away all the reasons why it wouldn’t happen. There was nothing they needed to say to each other. They turned away from Stephen’s Green and walked on, down towards Nassau Street.