The City of Shadows

12. Weaver’s Square

The tricycle left the window of Clery’s the day before Christmas Eve. It found its way to Baltinglass on the train, via Kingsbridge and Naas, and Declan Lawlor’s horse and cart brought it up the hill to Kilranelagh. On the morning of Christmas Eve, Stefan and David and Tom cut a pine tree in the woods below the farm. That afternoon the chosen goose was eaten enthusiastically by Stefan, David and Helena and, less enthusiastically than he had expected, by Tom, who had chosen it after all. At least he made sure the bird did not go unmourned. After dinner, keeping Christmas as they always had, to the German calendar, there were the presents, and the tricycle from the newspaper cutting by Tom Gillespie’s bed was finally a real thing. He was still riding it round the farmyard in the dark when David and Helena left for the midnight Eucharist in the Church of Ireland church by the abbey, and it was dragged into the kitchen with him when he finally came inside.

Father and son sat by the range with the fire door open, and Stefan started to read the book David and Helena had given Tom, Mary Poppins, but by the time Mary had arrived with her carpetbag, Tom was asleep. Stefan carried him upstairs. Then he sat staring into the fire for a long time, long after David and Helena were home and asleep. There was a bottle of Powers on the table beside him. When he finally went upstairs to bed himself the bottle was half empty. And it was already Christmas morning. Christmas was still not easy, it shone a light on the empty place at the table. And what had happened with Hannah didn’t make it easier.

The presbytery that housed the curate and the parish priest stood where the ground started to rise up behind Baltinglass towards Baltinglass Hill. It was built slightly higher than the church it served and looked down on Weaver’s Square and the eastern end of the town. It was a squat, inelegant building, put together in a way that seemed to say nobody had cared very much what it looked like. There were lace curtains at all the windows, though it was not overlooked. Stefan stood in the bare front room. There was a dining table and a desk. A print of the Sacred Heart sat above a fireplace where there was no fire burning. It was a long time since one had been lit from the look of the dust on the kindling and newspaper ties in the grate. There were half a dozen cards on the mantelpiece but there were no other Christmas decorations. A grandfather clock ticked loudly. It felt like it was the only sound in the house. On the table were newspapers, The Irish Independent, The Wicklow People, The Carlow Nationalist, The Irish Catholic; all dated before Christmas and all unread. Fanned out in a careful display, next to the papers, were several Catholic Truth Society booklets; ‘Stand and Deliver: a Call to Social Action’, ‘The Soviet War against God’, ‘Tolerance: Too Much of a Good Thing?’ Stefan recalled a display of the same pamphlets at Monsignor Fitzpatrick’s house in Earlsfort Terrace. The door opened. Father Carey entered, brusque and businesslike as always. He shut the door. There had been a summons, delivered via Mary Lawlor when she brought Tom home from Mass on Christmas Day. It was Stephen’s Day now and Stefan was here as requested. He had assumed it would be about Tom starting school in January. That was all agreed though; what did the bloody man want now?

‘It didn’t seem right to speak to you yesterday, Sergeant, on Christmas Day. But something has come to my attention, so utterly fantastical that my first instinct was to dismiss the thing entirely. Yet it appears to be true.’

‘I’m not with you at all, Father.’

‘I’m right in thinking Tom was in Dublin with you before Christmas?’

‘Yes. He came up for a day with his grandparents.’

‘And were they party to this? I would hope not.’ The look of sanctimonious shock would have made Stefan laugh under different circumstances, but the aura of satisfaction that hung about the priest told him that there was nothing funny going on. He still made no connection though.

‘Party to what?’

‘You took a Catholic boy into a Jewish place of worship?’

For a moment he was puzzled that Father Carey had this information at all. What was Tom’s Christmas outing and the bit of police work that had intruded into it to do with him? Stefan’s job and the farm at Kilranelagh rarely touched. It was nothing he worked at; it wasn’t a separation he sought. It was just how it was. But the two worlds had touched, for a few moments, that afternoon in Dublin. He’d barely thought about it since, even if he had thought about Hannah Rosen. It was only as the curate brought the worlds into collision that the implications of those minutes in Adelaide Road hit home. Tom would have talked about it, of course he would. Why wouldn’t he? It was something new, something exotic, something he had enjoyed. The rabbi had made him laugh. Stefan finally understood why there was satisfaction behind the look of holy pain on Father Carey’s angular face.

He saw a winter’s day, fourteen years ago. He was fifteen. A crowd of men and women and children, forty or fifty, stood in front of the ruined abbey in Baltinglass, as his grandfather’s coffin was carried into the little Church of Ireland church beside it. Snow had fallen the night before. Thin ice was breaking up on the Slaney below the abbey. Among the crowd were some of his grandfather’s closest friends. Three men came forward to walk into the church behind the other mourners. The rest would bow their heads in the cemetery beside the church, as the coffin was lowered into the ground; some would wipe away tears; but they would not walk through the door of the church that their own Church said was not a real church at all.

‘He lit a candle there, that’s what I’m told!’

‘There were children lighting candles. He lights a candle whenever he goes into the church, to say a prayer for his mother. He wouldn’t know — ’

‘Are you telling me he was praying there now?’

‘The priest was telling them a story from the Bible. He was listening.’

‘You told him the man was a priest, did you?’

‘All right, the rabbi. I didn’t tell him anything. We’re talking about minutes, a few minutes. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.’ It was hard not to wonder whether he would have thought if it hadn’t been Hannah he had been meeting. There had been no real reason to be there with Tom. It could have waited.

‘You stood there and let this happen?’

‘It was a candle holder, like the one we put in the window at Christmas, and children lighting candles, like we do at home. That’s all.’

He had to say something, but he realised that nothing he said would satisfy the curate. Every word was a trap Father Carey was waiting to spring.

‘I will have to speak to Tom.’

‘I’ll explain it to him.’

‘That can hardly be enough. He has to know that it was wrong for him to be there, let alone participate in what was going on. Even a child must be made aware when a sin has been committed, even unwittingly, and ask for the forgiveness that always comes. I’m sure the boy understands that.’

Stefan’s hackles were rising at the thought of what Carey would put Tom through to make sure he really did understand that forgiveness. But the traps were all around him now; any protest would spring another one.

‘This is a serious matter, Sergeant. Righting this shocking error of judgement is one thing, but comprehending how you could make it is much harder. Even from a Protestant point of view, your behaviour must appear extraordinary. I have to ask, are you in the habit of associating with Jews?’

‘I’m a guard, Father, I don’t choose who I meet.’ He was evading the issue and he felt ashamed of himself, even as he did so. Hannah was looking at him. He saw the expression on her face. He shouldn’t even have answered the question. By answering it, he had given the priest the right to ask it.

‘You know that a Roman Catholic should not enter any place of worship that isn’t Catholic. But a Jewish synagogue is disturbing in a very particular way. I have to make some allowances for ignorance on your part, and I do.’ There seemed no choice except to allow Carey to make those allowances. ‘The Church is under attack. Christianity itself is under attack. I know we’re not immune from the menace of communism and atheism in our quiet West Wicklow backwater, but I feel as if you have brought the agents of all that among us, because the Jews are its agents, make no mistake. You exposed an innocent child to that, your own child. Don’t you understand?’

Stefan understood very well. These were not the curate’s words. The voice and intonation were almost Robert Fitzpatrick’s. Stefan could have no doubt Father Carey had heard him speak. He spoke the monsignor’s words as if he had been waiting to say them for a long time. He was a prophet now. And there was nothing Stefan could say in reply. Anthony Carey had his burning bow and Stefan was the one who had given him the poisonous arrows. The priest shook his head and stepped down from the mountain.

‘The question is where we go from here, Sergeant Gillespie.’

‘I’m sorry about what happened. But you’re making more of this — ’

‘Did you tell him it was a place of people who turned their backs on Christ, who handed Him to the Romans for execution, who rejected God?’

‘I said it was where Jewish people prayed.’

‘The boy told Mrs Lawlor’s son that Jesus was a Jew.’

‘Should I have said he wasn’t?’

‘You’re a man of many talents. Now you’re a theologian too.’

‘It’s hardly theology.’

‘No, it’s not. But on top of everything, I’m afraid it is too much.’

‘Just tell me what you want me to say — ’

‘I have had every consideration for your feelings, Sergeant, and for the boy’s. I have been patient. I have put the fact that you are Tom’s father before other concerns. Too much so! He has another Father, a Father you are distancing him from, whether it is your intention or not. I have felt it for a long time. I have nothing against your mother and father personally, but they are not the right people to raise the boy in the faith you committed him to when you married. And even if you were here, you are not the father his dead mother would have wanted for him, I am sure of that now.’

‘How dare you say that! You know nothing at all about his mother.’

This was more than temper; anger was in his heart and it was pounding in his chest. His hands were clenched very tight.

‘I wonder what she thinks as she looks down now,’ said the curate.

‘You have no right to even begin to wonder what Maeve might think. My God, if she was looking down on us here, your ears would be burning.’

‘I have expressed my concerns to Father MacGuire.’

‘Where is Father MacGuire?’

‘He always has his week off after Christmas. He’s not here just now.’

‘I bet he isn’t,’ replied Stefan. The parish priest wouldn’t like this. It was no accident he wasn’t there. But it would make no difference. He was an old man. Even when he disagreed with his curate, he no longer argued.

‘I’ve spoken to the bishop. And to your brother-in-law in Portlaoise.’

‘Dermot? What the hell’s Dermot got to do with anything?’

‘They have three children, Tom’s cousins. They’d happily take him.’

Stefan stared. He hadn’t seen where this was going at all. He thought it was still just another opportunity for Father Carey to throw his weight around. But as soon as the words were said, he knew it had been obvious.

‘No, under no circumstances. I’m not even going to discuss it.’

‘We will discuss it, and I’m sure you’ll agree what’s best for Tom — ’

‘I said no.’

‘I can’t leave it there.’

‘Jesus, there’s a fucking Christmas card on the mantelpiece, from Dermot and Kathleen. “Happy Christmas, all the best for the New Year, hope to see you soon!” Not a word, not a fucking word. See you soon!’

‘I think if you reflect on the situation — ’

‘I won’t be reflecting on anything.’

‘Then I need to make myself clearer. Mixed marriages are a bane to the Church. They are against God’s law and against natural law. The Church shows her displeasure, even when she gives dispensation, refusing the Holy Sacrifice during the marriage. My own view is that too much leeway is given in approving them at all, even with a commitment to bring children up as Catholics. But the commitment is there, irrespective of your wife’s death.’

‘And I am carrying that out.’

‘Not as far as I’m concerned. Not as far as the bishop is concerned.’

‘What do you want me to do? Give up my job?’

‘It’s not about you being here. The boy’s home is entirely unconducive to the health of a young and impressionable Catholic soul. There is no shortage of evidence to demonstrate your inability to bring him up in the faith he was born into. But the sight of Tom praying in a synagogue is beyond anything the Church can accept. His place is with his cousins, with his mother’s brother. For his sake, and your own, I would advise you not to fight this. The courts are no place for families. And the end result will be the same, I promise you. As for the damage to your career — ’

‘Are you threatening me now?’

‘I’m telling you what will happen, Gillespie.’

‘I promised Maeve — ’

‘There is no more to say, Sergeant. You need time to calm down. When you have, we’ll talk about this again and put the arrangements in place. It doesn’t mean you won’t see your son. But when you do, he’ll be part of a family, his family. In time you’ll understand that the Church’s interests and your son’s are the same. Those interests should be yours too.’

Stefan stood very still, looking at the satisfaction that Anthony Carey made no real attempt to hide. The curate stood taller than he had, straighter.

‘You’ve always wanted this, haven’t you?’

‘It’s about what’s right.’ The priest shook his head, frowning, almost as if he really did regret what he was doing. ‘It’s not about what I want.’

‘That’s shite and you know it.’

Carey pursed his lips; he wasn’t finished yet.

‘From my little talk with Tom’s playmate, Harry Lawlor, I gather that your visit to the synagogue was all about seeing a lady, am I right there?’ He smiled a man-of-the-world smile; his sanctimoniousness turning into a sneer as he fixed his eyes on Stefan. ‘All in a day’s work for a policeman, eh? I wonder, what would your Maeve have thought about that?’

As Stefan’s fist hit the curate’s face it was Maeve’s name that propelled it rather than the taunt itself. Carey had taken her name and thrown it into a mire of shabby and spiteful innuendo. He spoke as if he knew her, as if there was some part of her precious memory that belonged to him. He staggered back against the desk, but he didn’t fall. He was hurt, there was no doubt, yet he could still find a smile. He wiped his mouth and looked down at the blood on the back of his hand. It was Stefan Gillespie’s final mistake.

Christmas was over. Stefan was back in the detectives’ office at Pearse Street. The letter from Father Francis Byrne in Danzig had arrived on Inspector Donaldson’s desk with a glowing affidavit from Monsignor Fitzpatrick. It seemed completely at odds with the barely controlled anger the monsignor had shown when Stefan had asked him about the priest little more than ten days ago. Donaldson had made the arrangements, clearly in consultation with Robert Fitzpatrick. The questions Stefan wanted asked had been asked in such general terms that the answers, not worth much in a letter anyway, were worth nothing at all; some questions had clearly not even been put to him. Father Byrne was shocked and saddened to hear of Susan Field’s death, naturally. She had been one of his brightest and best students. It was a tragic and irreplaceable loss to her family. He had not known her well outside the confines of the lecture room, but he had certainly liked her and remembered her fondly. He was puzzled where the idea of any close or particular friendship came from. He wasn’t fully able to understand the circumstances of her death, of course, but it was all very shocking, and he prayed she was at peace. By the way he didn’t know Doctor Hugo Keller.

That was where it ended.

Monsignor Fitzpatrick spent several more pages of his own letter eulogising Father Francis Byrne’s almost saintly integrity. He went on to express his indignation that the Gardai would presume to ask questions based on the fantasies of a woman who was evidently disturbed. He didn’t quite say Susan Field had brought it all upon herself, but he didn’t need to.

It was as pointless as Inspector Donaldson could have wished. But what Stefan saw clearly was that Francis Byrne had too little to say about the woman he’d had a passionate love affair with, and Robert Fitzpatrick had too much to say about the man he’d felt such aversion to so very recently.

‘Jesus, Stevie.’ Dessie McMahon sighed, watching as Stefan re-read the letter.

‘I know,’ replied Stefan. ‘Don’t start again.’ He didn’t want to talk about what Dessie was trying to talk about. He didn’t want to think about it.

‘I mean what the feck?’

‘What the feck indeed,’ he shrugged. Dessie wasn’t going to stop.

‘Would he ever just forget about it?’

‘Father Carey’s not a turning-the-other-cheek kind of priest.’

‘Did you ever meet one that was?’

The telephone rang. Dessie MacMahon picked it up.

‘It’s Inspector Donaldson. He wants you in there, now.’

When Stefan Gillespie walked into Inspector Donaldson’s office, the first person he saw was Detective Sergeant Lynch. It wasn’t the Jimmy Lynch he’d last met turning over his room. This one had had a bath and was wearing a suit that nearly fitted him and a white shirt that was even ironed.

‘We need to sort these bodies out.’ It was Inspector Donaldson who spoke. ‘Sit down, Gillespie. You know Detective Sergeant Lynch of course.’

The two sergeants nodded. Stefan already sensed something was wrong. There was no smirk or smile on Lynch’s face. He looked serious, alert, attentive; you could almost have mistaken him for a real detective.

‘The woman first,’ announced the inspector. ‘We know she was pregnant. Sadly you’ve seen the evidence of that yourself. Sergeant Lynch has established that she probably did procure a miscarriage from Keller.’

‘Was that before or after I established it, sir?’

Donaldson ignored him. ‘As is the way with these things, there were complications. And it seems very likely that she died at Merrion Square.’

Lynch looked grim, as saddened by the awful events as the inspector.

‘And how did Sergeant Lynch establish that?’ enquired Stefan.

‘Sheila Hogan,’ said the inspector. ‘Keller told her what happened.’

‘She was at it with your man, you know that.’ Lynch offered up this additional information as if it provided a complete explanation in itself.

‘With a dead woman in his clinic, he had to do something,’ continued Inspector Donaldson. ‘The assumption is he put the body in his car and took it out to the mountains and buried her. Unfortunately, I don’t imagine it’s the first time that sort of thing has happened with these backstreet abortionists.’

‘Is that what Sheila Hogan said too? It’s not what she said to me.’ Stefan’s words were addressed to Donaldson, but he was looking at Lynch.

‘She didn’t know the details, Stevie,’ said the Special Branch detective grimly. ‘I’m filling in the gaps, but I got what I could out of her.’

‘I know. That’s why she was in the Mater Hospital.’

‘That will do!’ snapped the inspector.

‘Is there some reason you’ve decided to help us with this now, Jimmy?’

Lynch said nothing to Stefan; he didn’t need to give explanations.

‘I think we’ll concentrate on the case please, Gillespie.’ Donaldson glared at his sergeant. ‘I haven’t been idle on this myself. Mr Keller has questions to answer. We didn’t know that before, neither did Sergeant Lynch. If we had he wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the country of course. We have good reason to believe he is somewhere in Germany.’

‘Since he was driven to the mail boat by our local Nazi chief, Herr Mahr, after Detective Sergeant Lynch dropped him at the Shelbourne for a Weihnachtsfest do, I’d say it’s not a bad guess. Are we all agreed on that?’

‘Let me make something clear, Sergeant. There are a number of reasons why this case is being handed over to Special Branch — ’

Lynch just watched, smiling confidently.

‘Like hell it is!’

‘Shut up, Gillespie!’

James Donaldson’s fist thumped on the desk.

‘Enquiries about Hugo Keller’s whereabouts will obviously have to be directed to the German police. That’s not a job for us. It isn’t our business to ask exactly why Mr Keller had a relationship with Special Branch in the first place, but we have to accept that in their area of activity, which is the security of the state after all, they encounter their own share of unsavoury informants, in the same way you do as a detective. That doesn’t alter the fact that this man Keller is responsible for the death of a young woman and, naturally, every effort will be made to find him and bring him to justice.’

‘My arse!’ proclaimed Stefan.

Jimmy Lynch laughed. Inspector Donaldson didn’t.

‘Enough! You’ll hand any information you have to Sergeant Lynch.’

‘That’s one down, sir. What about Vincent Walsh?’

‘Don’t waste your time, Stevie.’ Lynch stretched back in his chair.

‘Is that a Special Branch case too, Jimmy?’

‘No, I’m just saying the boy had been up there a long time.’

‘You knew him then?’

‘Poofs aren’t my speciality.’

‘No?’

Stefan looked at the Special Branch man for a long moment. There was no point arguing with Inspector Donaldson now. There was no point even starting on the way the inspector had pushed aside the need to question Francis Byrne. And there was no point letting Detective Sergeant Lynch know what Billy Donnelly had told him about Vincent Walsh’s letters. If Lynch thought it was all done and dusted, it was better to let him think it. Stefan needed to know what it meant; then he might have something to use.

‘The discovery of these two bodies so close to each other seems to be a coincidence. There’s nothing to connect them.’ Inspector Donaldson put his hands together on his desk; he had dealt with it. However much he disliked Special Branch, Lynch would take it away. That would be that.

But Stefan wasn’t done.

‘Except that they were both shot in the head by a captive bolt pistol.’

James Donaldson nodded complacently; he wasn’t unprepared.

‘It’s an imaginative theory on Doctor Wayland-Smith’s part. I know he likes to play the detective, but I understand that what’s actually there is simply damage to the skulls, along with all sorts of damage to other bones, all exacerbated by the landslip. I think he’s rather cooled off on the idea.’

As Stefan walked back to his office, Jimmy Lynch caught up with him.

‘I’ve never liked you much, Stevie, but you’ve surprised me.’

‘What’s the matter now?’

‘I tell you, I’ve a list of priests I’d like to knock the crap out of, that’s as long as your arm. I never quite had the balls. Could you do a few for me?’

‘Good news travels fast.’

‘Donald Duck doesn’t know yet?’

‘No, but I’m sure he will.’

‘Me too, Stevie, me too.’

Lynch carried on downstairs, whistling cheerfully. Stefan watched the swagger as he went. If he was really looking at a murderer he was looking at one who was being paid by An Garda Siochana to cover up his own crimes.

Stefan walked slowly back into the detectives’ office to find Dessie MacMahon looking more forlorn than when he’d left him half an hour ago.

‘You’re wanted at Garda HQ. It’s the Commissioner.’

They turned to see a slightly wild-eyed Inspector Donaldson standing in the doorway. Only minutes ago, Stefan had left him congratulating himself on getting rid of an uncomfortable case and bringing his detectives under control. The call from the Garda Commissioner had come only seconds later. The news about Stefan’s Christmas had reached him at last.

‘You ignorant, fucking, Protestant bollocks, Gillespie!’

Through the windows of the Garda Commissioner’s office Stefan could see the bare winter trees of the Phoenix Park. Across the desk in front of him sat the Commissioner, Ned Broy, turning the pages of a slim file of letters. His round face was deceptively benign; the severely cropped hair and the small, piercing eyes told more. They didn’t really know each other. Broy had been head of the Detective Branch when Stefan joined in 1932. Not long afterwards he had moved into the top job when the new president, Eamon de Valera, had sacked General Eoin O’Duffy, the hostile commissioner he had inherited from the previous government. In response O’Duffy put his Blueshirts on the streets and threatened to march on Dublin. No one was quite sure what the Gardai would do if it came to a coup. Ned Broy’s answer was to draft scores of ex-IRA men into Special Branch. They were immediately dubbed the Broy Harriers after a pack of Wicklow foxhounds. Their job was to take on the Blueshirts if they had to, but no one had any doubt they would take on their new comrades in the Garda Siochana if it came to the crunch. It didn’t. That was history now, but in Ireland history never quite goes away. Stefan was reflecting on the conversation at Pearse Street. Jimmy Lynch was one of the Broy Harriers. He was Ned Broy’s man.

There was a knock on the door. An elderly priest came in. Father Michael McCauley was the Garda chaplain. Broy gestured to him to sit.

‘You’ll know Father McCauley, Sergeant?’

‘Not really, sir.’

‘I’m here to pray for you, Sergeant.’ The priest gave a wry smile.

‘You know you broke this curate’s nose?’ said the Commissioner.

‘I didn’t know, sir.’

‘I have that from his bishop. I have quite a lot from his bishop.’

‘I’ve got no excuse, sir.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I got your father into the station at Baltinglass this morning. I spoke to him on the telephone. I knew him in the DMP.’

Stefan looked at Broy with considerable surprise. He was unaware of any past connection between his father and the Commissioner, but when his father left the Dublin Metropolitan Police, before the War of Independence, Ned Broy had been both a detective and an IRA spy. David Gillespie had always said he resigned because he wouldn’t take sides. But it was true that he had never elaborated on his choice; maybe it hadn’t been a choice at all. It had never occurred to Stefan that it might have been because of what he knew.

‘It was a long time ago, but I have reason to remember him.’ The past hung over them for a moment. It was all the Commissioner was going to say. ‘The point is I know what it was about.’

‘Does that help, sir?’

‘No. It still means it was the stupidest thing you could have done.’

‘He was goading me. I think he almost wanted me to do it.’

‘That wouldn’t surprise me. And you gave him what he wanted.’

Stefan nodded; he knew that all too well himself.

Broy turned to the chaplain. ‘Do you know this Father Carey?’

‘I’ve never met him, but I’ve asked around now. He has a history of this kind of thing. In his last parish there were complaints about him refusing to sanction mixed marriages, even when dispensation had been given, and there was some insulting behaviour towards the Church of Ireland minister. There was also a child taken away from her father in similar circumstances to Sergeant Gillespie’s. In the end the man converted to keep his daughter. It caused such bad feeling that Carey was moved on. But even though I’ve never met the man, he has written to me, about you, Sergeant Gillespie.’

‘What for?’ Stefan was puzzled.

‘He wanted my opinion on your suitability as a father, in the light of your wife’s death, and bearing in mind that you weren’t a Catholic. I told him it wasn’t my business to have any opinion on your abilities as a father, but that the Garda Siochana had a very high opinion of you as a policeman. He wrote again asking me to put what he called “professional pressure” on you to convert to Catholicism. I have to say I didn’t bother to reply to that.’

‘You’ve made a pig’s ear of it, Sergeant,’ interrupted Broy.

Stefan didn’t need telling.

‘Look, sir, when I was married I agreed our children would be brought up as Catholics. I took it seriously and I’ve stuck to it — so have my parents. There’s hardly a Sunday Tom misses Mass. And it’s not even what my wife would have wanted. I persuaded her we should marry in a Catholic church. I knew what it would do to her family if we didn’t. Now, whatever I do it’s never enough. It’s not like I’m ramming anything down Tom’s throat, I don’t even believe — ’ He stopped, feeling he was making things worse.

‘There you go again, Sergeant. If you’re going to be an atheist you need to be a Catholic atheist, not a Protestant one!’ The chaplain smiled.

‘There’s a pile of shite here any self-respecting bishop would have thrown back at the man.’ Ned Broy gestured at the file on his desk. ‘You can feel the spit coming off the page. Jesus, you’d think you were running the Hellfire Club down in Baltinglass. He’s got lists of books in your father’s sitting room we should all be out there burning. There’s even the year you spent at Trinity to show what an evil-thinking bollocks you are. God only knows what kind of low-life Protestant bastards you were associating with! It goes on. I don’t know how many nights you’ve had a few too many in Sheridan’s in Baltinglass with Sergeant Kavanagh. It can’t be that many. You don’t live there! But you’re a drunk as well. I know Kavanagh as it happens. Now he is a drunk! This gobshite’s got it in for you and he’s got his bishop behind him now. But what was this jaunt to the fecking synagogue?’

‘It was ten minutes, that’s all. I was just following up on some information in a case.’ He stopped, unsure. It wasn’t exactly the truth. ‘It was a stupid thing to do. I should have left it. I wasn’t thinking …’

‘You picked the wrong curate,’ said Father McCauley, shaking his head. ‘I can’t say your boy standing in the Adelaide Road synagogue would keep me awake. I know Rabbi Herz. I wouldn’t be sorry to see some more priests who knew the Old Testament like he does. But Father Carey belongs to a different school; the nest of Christ-killers and communists school; the Monsignor Fitzpatrick crowd. Do you know who I’m talking about?’

Stefan knew all too well. He was slightly uncomfortable. The Commissioner was looking through the file on the desk again. This was a personal matter, but that didn’t mean Ned Broy hadn’t had something to do with putting the lid on his investigation. There was the way any serious questioning of Father Byrne had been pushed aside, and the way everything was now in the hands of Special Branch. Broy continued reading. Father McCauley spoke again.

‘Where do they want your son to go? It’s Tom, isn’t it?’

‘My brother-in-law’s, in Portlaoise.’

‘That’s not so far.’

‘He’s not even five. I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘If it came to a court case, I’m not sure what the consequences would be,’ replied the chaplain. ‘There are a lot of people in the Church who don’t like this sort of thing, I assure you, but there are risks in taking a bishop on. And it’s not as if you’re with the boy all the time. You’re working in Dublin. Is it really so different, seeing him in Laois and seeing him in Wicklow?’

‘It’s not his home. It would be different to him.’

‘To him or to you?’

‘I know my son.’

‘You need to think hard, Sergeant, very hard. It’s not easy advice — ’

‘I don’t need to think at all, Father.’

‘I wish you would. I will do what I can on your behalf. I know the bishop. But they are serious about this, that’s all I can say, very serious.’

‘Thanks, Derek.’ The Commissioner closed the file.

The chaplain got up. He smiled at Stefan and then left.

‘It’s good advice, Gillespie,’ said Broy. ‘Perhaps it’s the only advice. I can’t help you with that side of things. I wish I could. I’ve got enough on my plate with your assault on the fecking curate. I can’t ignore it, can I?’

Stefan said nothing.

‘The bishop’s full of threats about a prosecution for assault. It’s bollocks. I can probably sit on that one. But he wants me to kick you out.’

Stefan nodded. Why would he have expected anything else?

‘There are a variety of disciplinary charges involved. I don’t know where we’d end up if we went down that road. So we won’t bother. I’m going for the chaplain’s approach. That means I won’t fight everything.’

‘So I’m out?’

‘No, we go along with it, but only so far. I have the power to suspend you, without any recourse to formal disciplinary procedures. I don’t need to ask anyone or explain it to anyone. I’ll write to the bishop and express my horror at what you’ve done, and say I’m suspending you forthwith. I can make that sound as near to a dismissal as makes no difference. You go away. We all shut up and forget about it. And in six months’ time I reinstate you.’

‘When would my suspension — ’

‘For now, just make Inspector Donaldson a happy man. Go home.’

‘I’m in the middle of a case.’

‘Not any more. You know what forthwith means. Fuck off, now!’

As Stefan Gillespie walked through the Phoenix Park it was colder. There was ice in the air. Uppermost in his mind was what waited for him in Baltinglass. The threat that was hanging over the house and over Tom was a real one. He had pushed it aside because he couldn’t believe it, but the chaplain’s words were in his head now. Other people did believe it. Tom couldn’t know, whatever else happened. His parents would have to share the burden though. So far he’d only told them of another row with the curate, but they already knew it was more serious than anything that had happened before. Now his father had spoken to the Commissioner too. He still had his job after a fashion; if he shut up and kept his head down. That was the real message from the Commissioner and the Garda Chaplain. But how far was Ned Broy really sticking his neck out? They were telling him to do what the Church wanted and pretend it was a way out. People always said the Irish had three curses: the English, the drink and the Church. The English had faded away; the drink was your own choice in the end; but the priests were always there. And once he took the first step, once he accepted that they could decide what happened to his son, there’d be no turning back. He couldn’t do it, not to Tom, not to himself, not to Maeve. If losing his son was the price for keeping his job, then the job wasn’t worth having.

He didn’t bother to go back to Pearse Street. They could have Susan Field and Vincent Walsh. They could have Hugo Keller and Jimmy Lynch. It didn’t matter. The only thing left from that was Hannah Rosen. He wondered where she was. But there was no point needing a woman he would never even see again. He walked on faster. Kingsbridge was just beyond the park gates. He reached Albert Quay and crossed the Liffey to the station. Fifteen minutes later the train was taking him back home to West Wicklow.

The upstairs room looked out over Main Street in Baltinglass. The solicitor’s office was untidy, cluttered with papers and files and books. But it was a bright room. The big windows let in the pale midwinter light and the dust that hung in the air showed how rarely the place was cleaned. A man in his sixties stood at the window looking out. He leant on a walking stick. In Dublin, thirteen years earlier, during the War of Independence, the Black and Tans had thrown him from the first floor of a solicitor’s practice in Leeson Street. His legs had been broken in too many places to ever mend properly. Ever since, he had been more comfortable standing up than sitting down. Through the window came the noise of cattle being driven through the town to the market place. Emmet Brady had listened to Stefan without interruption. Now he paced slowly in front of the window, while Stefan sat on a chair in front of the desk the solicitor only used to pile papers on.

‘There is a simple solution of course, Stefan. You could convert.’

‘Is that all there is?’

‘It would certainly be the end of it.’

He watched Brady limping slowly up and down. The old man was thinking hard, but what he was thinking wasn’t what Stefan wanted to hear.

‘Are you telling me they can do this, Mr Brady?’

‘No, of course I’m not.’

‘But — ’

‘But it doesn’t mean I’m telling you they can’t.’

‘It’s one or the other surely?’

‘You know the law better than that. A wife would be another option.’

‘What?’ Despite everything Stefan laughed.

Brady stopped, grimacing as pain shot down his leg, then paced again.

‘You’re not unattractive. Admittedly your employment prospects are slightly uncertain right now, but then you’ve a bit of land coming to you up at Kilranelagh one day. A good Catholic girl would do the job nicely. Maybe it’s time you put off the black armband, metaphorically speaking.’

‘I hope the fact that you think it’s funny is a good sign, Mr Brady.’

‘I don’t think it’s funny at all. But why not convert?’

‘I can’t convert to something I don’t believe in.’

‘You mean you’d rather not lie.’

‘I shouldn’t have to lie.’ Stefan turned in the chair, angry again.

‘You shouldn’t, I agree, but what if Father Carey and the bishop take this all the way to the Four Courts? What if the Church drags you into a courtroom and persuades a judge that the interests of your son would be best served if he lived with his uncle and aunt. I’m not saying they can or will.’

‘But it’s possible,’ said Stefan quietly.

‘Stick with the question. Wouldn’t a lie be better?’

‘I suppose it ought to be.’ He said the words with a frown. It wasn’t easy to know why he felt he couldn’t even contemplate that. Why should it matter so much, if one simple lie could take the vindictive curate off his back? Emmet Brady had stopped again, rubbing his leg as he watched him.

‘You did promise the boy would be brought up as a Catholic.’

‘And he is.’

‘And you’re a fit man to do that?’

‘I’m his father.’

‘How many of us have ever really been fit for that?’ The solicitor smiled, setting off again, pacing up and down in front of the window.

Stefan shifted uneasily in the chair, following Brady’s movements as he walked back and forward. The constant motion was irritating him.

‘Let’s look at you, Stefan. You’re a guard who’s on suspension for assaulting a priest. That’s quite some place to start, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What’s being a guard’s worth? I’d probably be better out of it.’

‘No, that won’t do.’ The old man halted abruptly, shaking his head. ‘You have to stick with the job, at all costs. You’ll be back in what — ’

‘Six months. That’s what the Commissioner said.’

‘A man with a job is better than a man without one. A Garda sergeant with a blot on his record is better than a man who looks like he was kicked out. Hitting Father Carey is the biggest thing they have against you. The rest adds up, but on its own it wouldn’t amount to much. No one’s going to take you to the High Court brandishing a copy of The Communist Manifesto and a King James Bible! Walking into a synagogue with Tom for a couple of minutes might be high on Father Carey’s list of abominations, but it wouldn’t normally cut much ice elsewhere. Although taking the woman you had to talk to so urgently on Garda matters to your bed, is something else.’

Stefan’s lips tightened. It wasn’t Brady’s business or anyone else’s.

‘Is the curate right about that?’ insisted the old man.

‘If that’s how you want to put it.’ Stefan shrugged.

‘It’s not about how I want to put it, it’s how a barrister in the Four Courts would put it, when he describes you taking your four-year-old son into the synagogue, so that you could make arrangements for a sex session with your Jewish mistress. That’s what he might say. How does it sound?’

Stefan knew the courts; he could hear the words.

‘I see, and it’s even worse if she’s Jewish, is it?’

‘You need have no doubt that there are judges who would think exactly that. It’s a side of our Free State no one would want to admit to, but this isn’t about what’s right, Stefan. It’s about what you might have to deal with.’

The implications were sinking in. The man he had come to for help was making it sound worse than the Commissioner or the Garda Chaplain.

‘How does Carey know?’ The solicitor started to pace again.

‘He doesn’t. A good guess, that’s all.’

‘Come on, you said he’d written to the Garda Chaplain about you, even before this. He told him to feck off, but it doesn’t mean our curate hasn’t been busy elsewhere. Who else has he talked to? Who else knew?’

‘One other guard. Dessie wouldn’t — ’

‘For God’s sake, man, I hope you’re a better detective than that! You’ve lived in a Garda barracks before. Do you really think there’s a single guard at Pearse Street who didn’t know what you were up to?’

Stefan couldn’t help laughing. Who had he been kidding?

‘So who would Father Carey have talked to?’

‘Maybe my inspector. Inspector Donaldson. He’s a real Holy Joe. You know, Mass every day, novenas, the Knights of St Columbanus, the lot.’

‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one? So are there any more?’

‘Any more what?’

‘Any more women you’ve been fucking. Any affairs? Have you got a string of mistresses? Do you spend your evenings in a whorehouse? They need to find all the reasons they can to prove you’re not a decent man to bring up a Catholic child. If they go for it they won’t hold anything back.’

‘There’s been no one else, not since Maeve died.’

‘All right, next question. Do you believe in God, Mr Gillespie?’

‘What?’

‘If I was their barrister, I’d ask. You can always lie.’

‘This is crazy.’

‘You bet it is! Come on! Do you believe in God, Mr Gillespie?’

‘I was brought up to believe. I believe in what Christianity — ’

‘Do you believe in God? Yes or no.’

‘I don’t, but I — ’

‘There are no buts in the witness box. If I were you, I’d say yes. If you don’t, the next question will be how can this court believe a word you say? Didn’t you just swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Why did you do that if you don’t believe in God?’

Stefan couldn’t sit there any more. He stood up, angry, confused.

‘So are you saying they can take Tom away, or not?’

‘No.’ Emmet Brady stopped again. He smiled. ‘I’m not saying that.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘How far are you accommodating Father Carey now?’

‘Well, Tom starts at Kilranelagh Cross National School next week.’ Stefan found he was walking up and down beside the old man. ‘That’s what Carey wanted before. We’ll make sure he never misses Mass on Sunday. I’ll teach him his catechism and his rosary. My mother and father will never say a word about God or religion in the house. We’ll all keep our mouths shut.’

‘It’s personal with Carey. He’s made it very obvious, Stefan.’

‘I know that.’

The solicitor stood by the window. He turned briefly, looking out. Stefan stood behind him, saying nothing. It was quiet outside now. The noise of the cattle in the street below had gone. A car drove past.

‘So would you be happy taking on the Church, Mr Brady?’

Emmet Brady turned back towards him with a combative grin.

‘Why not, it’s my fucking Church, isn’t it?’

*

A week later Stefan drove his father’s John Deere tractor the mile or so along the road into the mountains, to the low stone building next to the chapel at Kilranelagh Cross. It was Tom’s first day at school. He sat on the trailer behind Stefan, by the pile of turf they were taking to the school, to keep the fires burning in the two classrooms. The crossroads below the big, long mountain called Keadeen was a bleak place on a January morning. There was nothing much there; the chapel and the school, a farm and a holy well, and further on along the road a shop with a bar in the back room. But Scoil Naomh Teagain, St Tegan’s School, was noisy with children starting back after Christmas now, and Tom’s nervousness was quickly swept away as he ran off into the classroom with his friend Harry Lawlor. He knew nothing about what was happening around him, only that he was suddenly going to school. Stefan and David and Helena all believed, in different ways, that the threat to Tom would pass; because to believe anything else was still impossible.

By the time Stefan had unloaded his turf into the shed at the back of the school, classes had begun. Driving back to the road he could see the desks in Tom’s classroom through the window. He saw Tom looking out, hearing the familiar noise, and waving. Then he saw Anthony Carey, stepping over the stone wall that divided the school from the chapel. The curate raised his hand in greeting; Stefan did the same. But Father Carey’s smile wasn’t a smile of reconciliation. It was a statement: don’t let yourself think this is the end. He had no intention of losing face. It wasn’t over.

Stefan didn’t go straight back to the farm. He took the road to Baltinglass, to collect cattle feed for his father. On the way he stopped at the post office to post the letter he had written to Hannah Rosen. He didn’t know where she was, but he addressed it to her father’s house as she’d asked him to. It would find her eventually. She wouldn’t like what he had to tell her. She had trusted him. He wanted to believe it was more than trust. But there was nothing he could do now. The investigation into the deaths of Susan Field and Vincent Walsh was over. The files were sitting in a Special Branch office somewhere in Dublin Castle, and he had no reason to believe they would ever be opened again. It was beyond his control, but he still couldn’t help feeling he had let her down. He knew how much it would matter to her. He wondered if it mattered as much to her as it did to him that they would never see each other again. He couldn’t know. And even if it did, it didn’t change anything. The case was finished. It was no use pretending otherwise.