The City of Shadows

7. The Mater Hospital

The room was at the rear of the terraced house in Lennox Street, looking out over a small yard and the backs of another row of houses. There was a neat pile of cardboard boxes, stacked on the floor. Two suitcases sat on the bare-mattressed bed. The bookshelves were empty, as were the wardrobe and the chest of drawers. There was no sense that anything was being thrown out, but everything had been put away. It was part of a process Stefan knew too well himself. For a long time after Maeve died her clothes simply stayed in the bedroom where they were. He cleared the dressing table, but only by putting brushes and combs and bottles of make-up into the drawers. Then one day he had to do more. He packed everything into boxes and old suitcases and carried it into the attic at Kilranelagh. It was all still there, but he knew he would have to take the boxes and the cases down soon. He would take out the few things he wanted to keep; the rest would go. There was a time. That time would eventually come for Susan Field’s father too.

Stefan didn’t know what he was looking for; something real or just something to give him more sense of who this woman was. He opened a cardboard box and saw the things he expected to see; brushes and bracelets, brooches, powder, make-up. There were clothes that gave off the faint, stale smell of old scent. There were books. There was an album with photographs. He was struck by the photograph of a man and a woman with three small girls; they were feeding swans by the Grand Canal. One of them was Susan. He turned to see her father standing in the doorway, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. Brian Field didn’t really want to watch all this.

‘You can wait downstairs, Mr Field. I won’t disturb anything.’

The small, nervous man, grey-haired, grey-skinned, nodded and went away, relieved that he wasn’t needed. Stefan looked back at the photograph album. He found a picture of two girls in school uniform, twelve or thirteen, their arms round each other, laughing. Behind them were the blurred bars of a cage. It looked like Dublin Zoo. He easily recognised Hannah Rosen beside Susan Field.

Half an hour later Stefan came downstairs. He had found nothing that helped him. Mr Field was sitting in an armchair in the cluttered front room, looking out through the net curtains at nothing. He stood up. It was clear that the detective’s arrival had made him uncomfortable. He moved in front of the fire, standing with his hands clasped tightly behind his back now. He didn’t want the conversation that Hannah Rosen’s stubbornness was forcing on him. His daughter’s disappearance was in a box and he had closed the lid as far as he could. He knew Hannah thought Susan was dead, but he still didn’t believe that himself. Shame played a part in it. He felt shame for his daughter, as well as grief and loss. He couldn’t bring himself to contemplate Hannah’s dark, insistent questioning. He didn’t want to go there with her. There was enough shame to explain why his daughter might have run away.

When Brian Field’s father, Abraham Breitfeld, arrived in Dublin from Kiev in 1896, via Warsaw, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Manchester, he had worked as a peddler, tramping the roads of South Dublin, Wicklow, Carlow, and Wexford. After three years he opened a grocer’s shop in Clanbrassil Street. He moved his wife and his children from a tenement in Malpas Street to a flat over the shop. Two years later he bought the terraced house in Lennox Street, just north of the Grand Canal, in the part of Portobello that became known as Little Jerusalem. It was the first year of the twentieth century, the year of Queen Victoria’s last visit to Ireland, and the year Abraham Breitfeld became Abraham Field. He had brought with him from Russia a view of the world that adapted very easily to his new home. The English were the Russians, the Irish were the Jews; Queen Victoria was the Czar. He was immediately a staunch nationalist. Though his English was never very good, his children could not only speak it perfectly before they went to school, they could even read Irish, when the Irish friends they played with in the street could barely understand a word of it.

Brian Field still lived in his father’s house. His children had grown up in it and his wife had died in it. When his friends made the move over the Grand Canal to leafy Harold’s Cross and Terenure, he stayed where he was. The business was sold now and his life was devoted to something else. He was the cantor at the Adelaide Road Synagogue. His children were grown up; Judith was dead. He had a daughter in New York, a daughter in London, and had long known that when Susan left he would be an old man on his own. There would be no woman to light the Shabbat candles in the house in Lennox Street any more. In recent years Susan had done it, but more often than not she hadn’t been there. Now she was gone altogether. He still had the memory of the noisy family at the table. It was a painful memory. It wasn’t a long walk to shul; that was what had come to matter. It was only when he sang in the synagogue that he didn’t feel old.

Absence was in Jewish blood in the same way it was in the blood of the Irish. People were always going. That’s how it was. His father’s brothers and sisters were in Poland and Germany and England and South Africa and America; they had left their parents in Russia and never seen them again. Mr Field had always known Susan would go, sooner or later, like her sisters, to Palestine perhaps. That was why she wanted a degree, so that she could teach there. He’d never been comfortable with the young Zionists she used to bring home. He enjoyed the arguments, but there was too much socialism and communism flying around for his taste. He didn’t really notice when she stopped bringing anybody home at all. He was too busy at the synagogue.

‘There’s nothing more I can tell you, Mr Gillespie.’

‘She has a sister in London.’

‘Yes, in Finchley.’

‘Would she have contacted her?’

‘Susan’s nearly ten years younger. Rachel has a family now.’ It wasn’t an answer; it was empty evasion. It was a man trying not to think.

‘What does she say about it?’

‘We just don’t know, Sergeant, none of us know.’

‘She must think something.’

‘I went to the police again, when Rachel came over, but there was nothing more to find out. Susan was living her own life. She lived in the house, but we hardly saw each other. Sometimes she was here, sometimes she wasn’t. I know she was very unsettled. I should have talked to her, I know I should. Rachel felt the only thing we could do was wait — ’

Stefan took a small photograph of Susan Field from his pocket. He had found it upstairs in one of the boxes. It was a head-and-shoulder shot, taken not long ago. Her hair was cut short; she wore a dark, tailored jacket.

‘Can I borrow this? I’ll get a copy made.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I will do my best to find out what happened to Susan, Mr Field. Would you mind if Hannah Rosen looked through her things? She might see something I can’t see. She knew Susan. If there was anything out of place — ’

The cantor nodded, but there was really no hope in his tired eyes, only growing resignation. He had already waited too long to look for anything now, let alone hope.

‘Is there anyone else she was close to? Anywhere else she could have gone? Was there anyone else she knew in England?’

Mr Field shook his head. ‘We talked to everyone we could think of.’

Stefan waited. He could see that the old man was holding back tears. But there were still questions he had to ask, however difficult they were.

‘You know she was going to have an abortion?’

Brian Field shrugged, pushing away the tears.

‘It’s what she said to Hannah, in her letters. I didn’t know before.’ He turned his eyes back to the window. ‘I knew she was unhappy. I didn’t know why. And if I’d asked her she wouldn’t have told me. That’s how it was.’

‘What about the man who was the father?’

‘I know what Hannah told me.’ The words were short and curt.

‘Do you think Hannah was the only person Susan confided in?’

He turned back towards Stefan and nodded again.

‘Yes. It doesn’t say much for us, does it, Sergeant?’

Bewley’s Cafe in Grafton Street was quiet. It was still early. Breakfasters were lingering over morning papers and the waitresses were laying the tables for lunch. Hannah Rosen and Stefan Gillespie sat over empty tea cups. He had asked her to go to Lennox Street to look through the belongings in Susan Field’s room. There was at least a chance she might see something significant that would have meant nothing to him. He had talked about the letters. He had tried to piece together what they said about the time leading up to Susan’s disappearance. Now he had faced the most difficult part of the conversation; telling her that Hugo Keller had left Ireland. There would be no opportunity to ask any questions about the day Susan Field went to the clinic in Merrion Square now, or even to confirm that she really did go there. Hannah saw how uncomfortable he was and that did something to curb her anger, but she also knew he wasn’t revealing everything. She had talked easily before; now there was distance. It wasn’t mistrust, but it was doubt.

‘When did you find out he’d gone?’

‘Yesterday, after I saw you.’

‘From the Special Branch man, Sergeant Lynch?’

‘No, I haven’t seen Lynch again.’

It was an answer, but she could hear it wasn’t the full answer.

‘You just heard?’

‘He’d been released. There were no charges against him. There was nothing to stop him leaving the country. He took the mail boat on Saturday.’

‘He wasn’t wasting any time then.’

‘That’s how it looks.’ Stefan shrugged.

‘You think that’s just a convenient coincidence?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You’re the detective, aren’t you? You’re the one who was going to ask him what happened when Susan went to see him. Isn’t there something a bit odd about the fact that he’s suddenly not here any more? No questions, so no answers, when that’s the last place we definitely know she was going.’

He couldn’t even begin to talk about Hugo Keller and Adolf Mahr, or about the spat that was going on between Special Branch and Military Intelligence. He didn’t know what any of that meant anyway, and if he found out it was hardly likely to be information he could tell anyone else, even Hannah. There were a lot of things going on that might explain Hugo Keller’s abrupt departure. It certainly seemed as if the leader of the Nazi Party and the Garda Special Branch wanted him out of the way. Whether that had anything at all to do with Susan Field’s disappearance five months ago it was impossible to say; it was hard to believe it could do. It really did feel like a coincidence, but even while Stefan thought that he questioned it. As Hannah had put it, it was a very convenient coincidence.

‘You’re not going to tell me everything, are you?’

‘I am going to find out what happened to Susan.’

She smiled. ‘All right. That’ll have to do. For now. I’ll have to put up with it and trust you. But don’t lie to me, please. Will you promise me that?’

‘I’m not going to lie.’

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.

‘The letters did help though?’ she said.

‘I’m sure it won’t be hard to identify the priest.’ He was trying to find something positive to say, a way to leave all the secrecy and evasion behind.

‘It’s the only place left now, isn’t it? Now that Keller’s gone.’

‘It’s one place.’ He was silent for a moment. There was a question about the letters, Susan’s last letters, that was still in his head.

‘There are things in the letters … I’m talking about how she felt, the last few times she wrote. She was in a very dark place. It doesn’t always sound like that. She was still making jokes, but you know what I mean.’

Hannah was surprised. ‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘She was very unhappy, more than that,’ Stefan continued.

‘Is this mail boat territory again?’ She was tight-lipped.

‘No. Dark places can be dangerous.’

‘Is that from the Garda psychology manual?’

‘When I’m not a guard I’m a human being. Only part-time of course.’

He let his irritation show and it seemed to make her rein in her own.

‘Are you telling me you think she killed herself?’

‘I need to look at it all. I have to try and understand her. You can only have so much emptied out of you sometimes. Not everyone can take it.’

Hannah was looking at him harder as he spoke. She could see that he wasn’t trying to explain anything away. He was talking about himself.

‘I’ve thought about it, of course I have,’ she said more calmly. ‘I still think I know her though. I don’t believe she ever had suicide in her head.’

‘All right,’ he replied. ‘When will you go to Lennox Street?’

‘I’m going straight there.’ She was pleased to have something to do.

They got up and walked through Bewley’s to the street.

‘Do you live in Dublin?’ Hannah asked unexpectedly.

‘I’ve just got a couple of rooms. It’s not much, but it’s better than the Garda barracks. That’s where you’re meant to be if you’re single — ’

‘Your son’s in Wicklow though.’

They came out into Grafton Street and stopped.

‘He lives with my parents. My wife died.’ He said it simply enough, because it was a simple fact about his life. He was used to saying it.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry — I hadn’t — ’ She looked away.

‘It was two years ago.’

‘It must be hard for him, you being away.’

‘It’s hard for both of us. But you do the best you can.’

They were very ordinary words, but she felt their weight.

‘Phone me at Pearse Street when you can.’

‘Yes, I’ll phone you later.’

He smiled and walked quickly away. She watched him go, until he finally disappeared into the crowds further down Grafton Street, then she turned to walk up to Stephen’s Green to get the tram to Lennox Street.

Stefan Gillespie walked through the empty rooms at twenty-five Merrion Square. There was nothing to see that hadn’t been seen. It was a mess, what with the searching downstairs and hurried packing upstairs, and more policemen than you’d wish on anybody. But of course there was nobody to care one way or another now. He could sense that Hugo Keller wouldn’t miss what he had left behind. There was valuable equipment in the clinic and the basement; that was money. But upstairs only a few rooms had been inhabited. Stefan had no sense that this was a home. There were no pictures, no photographs; the furniture was no more than functional. He was standing in the room that had been Keller’s bedroom now, looking out at the gardens in the middle of Merrion Square. On the unmade bed were clothes that had been pulled from the wardrobe and chest of drawers and never packed. Dessie took out a packet of Sweet Afton and slowly extracted a cigarette.

‘Liam Dwyer was still on duty when your man came back from the Shelbourne. Jimmy Lynch was with him. About half an hour later a car came across the square from the German consulate. Keller brought a suitcase out and Jimmy did the honours with another one. Then the car took Keller off. I’d say they must have driven straight to Dun Laoghaire for the mail boat.’

‘Who was driving?’

‘From what Liam says, probably your man Adolf Mahr.’

It didn’t make much sense, but it wasn’t a surprise.

‘If I was director of the National Museum, I’d have classier pals,’ continued Dessie.

‘But if you want a job done you’re maybe better doing it yourself.’

‘You mean getting him out, Sarge?’

‘He knew he’d be going, I’d say the moment we walked in here.’

Dessie waited for a moment. ‘You’d think after us and Special Branch the place deserved a rest.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

Garda MacMahon lit the cigarette and held it between his fingers, not smoking it, just smiling. Stefan knew the expression well enough. It always gave Dessie a little bit of pleasure to know more than his sergeant did.

‘I was in O’Donaghue’s for a pint on Sunday, on my way home like.’ He drew on the cigarette. ‘And I thought I’d walk back through the square afterwards. Jesus, I swear to God there was two more of them at it in here.’

‘At what?’

‘They were searching the place. They weren’t the best. They had the sense not to turn the lights on, but they were flashing a torch all over the place. They broke in at the back. There’s a window into the cellar smashed.’

‘It couldn’t have been Lynch. He’s got the key.’

‘No, they weren’t Special Branch.’

‘So who were they?’

‘I walked down Fitzwilliam Lane and waited for them to come over the back wall. From the laughter you’d think they were at it for a lark. They went into Baggot Street, and along Fitzwilliam Street, and into a house in Fitzwilliam Place. I’ve got the number here — ’ Dessie fished in his pockets.

‘One of them was a tall, fair-haired feller?’

Dessie’s lips tightened round the cigarette. He drew the smoke deeper into his lungs. The pleasure of being one up on his sergeant was short-lived.

‘He was watching us at the Shelbourne. I don’t know the other one.’

‘Who are they?’ Dessie waited for an explanation. It didn’t come.

‘I couldn’t tell you what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. Let’s say they’re freelancers. What did you find out about Keller’s nurse?’

‘She’s a couple of rooms off Dorset Street, but when I was in O’Donaghue’s for that pint the little dark feller, Max he calls himself, reckoned Sheila Hogan spent much more time here. She’d be in the pub with Keller a lot, always at it they were, arguing, the two of them. Then back here to make up. That’s only Max’s opinion and the man’s a hoor for the gossip.’

Stefan walked to a table that stood at one side of the bed. Papers were piled up on it. There were tumblers and empty beer bottles, and an ashtray heaped with cigarette ends. There was a small mirror, and next to it a brush and a comb and a powder compact. It was a makeshift dressing table. He opened the drawer and took out a pair of crumpled silk stockings.

‘She wouldn’t buy those on what he paid her, not as a nurse anyway.’

‘Beat me to it again, Sarge. Will we talk to her, then?’

‘Where is she now? Dorset Street?’ Stefan asked.

Dessie smiled, stubbing his cigarette out, finally ahead of the game.

‘She’s in the Mater Hospital. It seems she fell down the stairs.’

Sheila Hogan’s face was swollen and bruised; her arm was in plaster. She was propped up on pillows in a ward full of women who were a lot older than her; most of them without the strength or the desire to do anything other than lie flat. Mixed with the smell of hospital antiseptic was the smell of old age. As Stefan Gillespie approached the bed the first thing he saw in the nurse’s eyes was fear. It wasn’t just any fear; it was the fear that he was going to hit her, there and then, lying in the hospital bed. She already knew he was a guard before she recognised him from the raid at Merrion Square. He could see it was that way round. Nobody was born with the instinct to spot a policeman and know what he was. You needed a reason to learn that.

She said nothing as he introduced himself again.

‘I need to ask you some questions.’

‘How many more answers do you want?’

‘I didn’t have a chance to get any before.’

‘Didn’t your friends tell you what I said?’

‘You mean Sergeant Lynch. You’ve been talking to him then?’

She didn’t reply, but he knew who’d put her in hospital.

‘That’d be before you fell down the stairs, would it? Just before.’

There was something else in her eyes now; defiance, contempt.

‘Did he find what he was looking for?’

‘You’d be better asking him.’

‘You know Hugo Keller’s gone? Germany probably.’

‘I wouldn’t blame him. If I had somewhere to go, I’d go myself.’

‘Come on, Sheila. You were playing doctors and nurses in more ways than one in Merrion Square. I know there’s fellers who keep stockings and knickers by their beds, but I wouldn’t have put Hugo down for that game.’

‘Maybe he’d surprise you.’

‘Did he tell you he was going?’ asked Stefan.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Not a lot. But then it wasn’t much to him. You, I mean. He didn’t stop by on the way to the boat to pick you up, Sheila. He’d have been sitting down for a beer on board I’d say, about the time you fell down the stairs.’

‘With a bit of luck it choked him.’

‘He didn’t even say goodbye then?’

‘This is the only goodbye I got.’ She lifted her plastered arm and gestured at her battered, blackened face as best she could.

‘We’ve got something in common then. Sergeant Lynch and his friend called on me too. They thought I must have taken it. I don’t know if it was a guess, or maybe it was what you told them the first time round?’

‘Is it sympathy you’re looking for, Sergeant?’

‘I don’t really know what Jimmy Lynch wants, but if I haven’t got it and you haven’t got it, maybe we’re both done with falling downstairs.’ He waited for a response. There wasn’t one, just the same look of contempt. He took the photograph of Susan Field from his pocket and held it up to her.

‘Did you ever see this woman?’

She looked at the photo and shook her head.

‘She’d have visited Keller.’

‘A lot of women did. I’d hardly remember them all.’

‘It was about five months ago.’

‘I’m not saying she didn’t. I’m saying I don’t remember her.’

‘Susan Field.’

She shook her head again.

‘I do know the name’s not in the appointments book, Sheila.’

‘You think they use their real names?’

‘The last thing we know about Susan Field is that she was going to Merrion Square, to see Hugo Keller for an abortion. She’d an appointment. The twenty-sixth of July. She hasn’t been seen since. She’s disappeared.’

‘That’s not my business. I don’t know her.’

‘How many abortions did he do in the last six months?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on! It can’t be that many.’

‘There were people he didn’t want me to see. Special.’

‘What do you mean special?’

‘It’s not hard to work out, is it? Important people, people with money, politicians from over the road in Leinster House. Bigwigs who want extra privacy. People who wouldn’t like to walk into a hospital with a dose of the clap, or let anyone know whose wife they got pregnant. Important people.’

‘I don’t think there was anything very important about Susan Field, except to the people who loved her. All they want to do is find her.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want them to.’

Her words were cold. It didn’t tell Stefan that Sheila Hogan knew more than she was saying, but if she did it was very clear sentiment wasn’t going to open her mouth. He put the photograph back in his pocket.

‘They change their minds,’ she said. ‘They don’t always turn up.’

‘What would you think if I said the man who sent Susan Field to see Herr Keller, to get the abortion, was a priest? Would that surprise you?’

‘I wasn’t paid to be surprised.’

‘So has that happened before?’

‘You’d have to ask Mr Keller. I wasn’t paid to ask questions either.’

‘I wish he was around to ask, Sheila. He wasn’t a great talker, then?’

‘There were two things he wanted me for. The second one didn’t involve a lot of talking, not the way he did it anyway.’ There was a disdainful sneer on the nurse’s face again. It could have been for Hugo Keller, but Stefan felt it was for men in general. And he wasn’t excluded.

‘This book of Keller’s, the one Jimmy Lynch is looking for, the one neither of us knows anything about, is that what he kept in there? Names, addresses, appointments? The things he didn’t want anybody to find out?’

He threw this at her, not expecting an answer, but hoping for more than he’d got from Jimmy Lynch or Lieutenant Cavendish. Whatever the book was, it had to contain answers to some of the questions he couldn’t ask Keller face to face now. All he wanted to know was whether there was anything in it about Susan Field. But Sheila Hogan had nothing to give.

‘If I knew where it was I wouldn’t be in here, would I? You think I give a toss about anything of Hugo Keller’s? I’ve got him to thank for this. I don’t care about any fecking book or any fecking women or anybody else. He can screw himself as far as I’m concerned. If ever I saw him again it’d be to spit in his eye. If you want to take the message I can always spit in yours.’