A June of Ordinary Murders (18 page)

There would be no Tullamore tonight, or even Phillipstown.

The master wiped his hands on his trousers and shook his head.

‘Ah, fuck it … this is dirty work. We're here for the day … fuck it anyway…'

He turned to the lock-keeper.

‘Do ye know where to find a bobby at this hour of the mornin'?'

‘I do, surely. There's nearly always one on the beat, ‘cross by the Portobello hotel.'

‘Well, go and get him, like a decent man. Ye can tell him he's got work to do … for a change.'

THIRTEEN

The uniformed divisions of the Dublin Metropolitan Police worked an eight-hour, three-shift system, known as ‘the regular.' Some G-Division men also worked ‘the regular,' ensuring that armed detective support was available around the clock for the uniformed divisions.

But for the most part, G-Division officers worked what was called ‘inquiries shift,' a period of duty that could be anything from 8 to 12 hours, as determined by the workload of the day and at the diktat of the shift inspector or senior sergeant.

Four detective sergeants and a score of detective officers had assembled for the inquiries shift. At 10.30 they would meet in ‘parade' to be briefed on the city's crime tally from the previous night and to be assigned their day's duties.

By the time the day room had filled for parade, the sun had already begun to raise blisters on the lead paint of the window frames. Although the sash windows had been fully opened along the length of the room, the air was already fetid and humid. The detectives jostled for sitting space on desks and tabletops where there might be a draught of air. Jackets were draped across knees and collars were unbuttoned. There was a heavy odour of perspiration and stale smoke.

Swallow had worked at Exchange Court until after midnight on Sunday completing his report on the incident at the Royal Hibernian Academy. A couple of G-men questioned James O'Donnell and John Horan separately, but without significant success. Neither man was prepared to answer any questions beyond giving their names, addresses and occupations.

That neither prisoner was forthcoming at this stage did not surprise or dishearten the G-men. The ‘politicals' were always like that at first.

Under Balfour's Coercion Act, the G Division could hold them more or less indefinitely in police custody without bringing them before a court or lodging them in prison.

It suited investigating officers to hold suspects in close proximity while preliminary questioning was going on. Shuttling forward and back to one or other of the prisons was time consuming, and there was always the risk that suspected persons might establish contact with other inmates in prison and thus be fortified in their resolve to resist interrogation.

There were no such risks in the cells in the Lower Yard behind Exchange Court. After a day or two, the dankness, the inedible food and the attentions of vermin usually persuaded prisoners to start talking to their captors.

The G Division's intelligence files linked the two men to a splinter group calling itself the ‘Hibernian Brothers'. It saw itself as providing armed support for the actions of the Land League, even though the newly aligned National League publicly dissociated itself from violent action.

Horan, the intelligence recorded, was employed by the post office. O'Donnell described himself as a student and part-time journalist, but the files did not offer any details of where he studied or where he plied his supposed trade.

Swallow was secretly relieved that the two suspects had elected to stay quiet for the moment. The less said about Harriet and her friends the better.

He knew that as soon as he could get an hour or two, he had to talk urgently to his younger sister about the dangerous waters in which she was moving. He was angry and worried. With luck, he calculated, there would be a safe interval before one or other of the prisoners would want to talk in the hope of saving their own skins.

Swallow knew the pattern. Initial defiance would begin to fade after a few nights in the cells where they would be held in isolation from one another. Some time after that, the prospect of 10 or 15 years in a prison cell would inevitably cause someone to rethink the policy of noncooperation.

For the moment, though, he had to deal with other matters.

‘Duck' Boyle was the detective inspector in charge of G Division's inquiries shift this morning.

If there were moments still when Joe Swallow bitterly regretted the failure of his medical career, they usually occurred in the days or nights when Boyle was rostered to run the detective office.

Shortly before 10.30, Duck Boyle was standing in the centre of the parade room, a bundle of files under one arm and a sheaf of incident reports clutched in his right hand. Perspiration rolled down his florid face, coursing along the fleshy rolls of his squat neck and forming into patches of dampness on his shirt and waistcoat.

‘Holy Mother of Christ,' he waved the sheaf of incident forms at nobody in particular. ‘What was going on last night in this bloody city? How're we going to deal with all this? Jesus, we'll all be on the transfer list.'

In Swallow's estimation, Boyle embodied police bureaucracy at its worst. His sole object was to keep the books and the records accurate, proofing himself against any possible reprimand or mark of disfavour from higher authority. Weighed down with volumes of regulations and green cloth files, he scuttled around the detective office in a curious, waddling gait, as fast as his short, corpulent frame would allow, earning himself the soubriquet ‘Duck' or ‘Duckfoot.'

The contempt in which Swallow and most of his colleagues held Boyle was compounded by his being devoid of detective skills. Rumour had it that he was the landlord of half a dozen tenement buildings around the city, the management of which occupied most of his energies and all of his intellectual capacities.

His appointment to the G Division was a mystery. As far as was known, Boyle was not a churchgoer and he swore like an artillery man. It was said that his advancement was effected through his brother, a Church of Ireland canon and reputedly a man of influence in the corridors of power.

‘That bloody canon must have had a lot of pull to get Duck into the G Division,' Stephen Doolan observed one evening as he and Swallow worked their way through a few pints in a public house at the South City Markets, neighbouring the Castle. ‘The shagger couldn't track an elephant in snow.'

‘The whole city seems to have gone berserk last night,' Boyle was shrieking as he stabbed a pudgy finger into the sheaf of incident forms. ‘How in the name of God are we going to deal with all this?'

His voice rose a further octave when he saw Swallow coming into the office. ‘Swalla', you took your time gettin' in, didn't ye? And the whole city of Dublin bein' swept be crime an' depredation.'

Swallow had learned that the best method of defence with Boyle was to attack.

‘I haven't been sitting around idle,' he said sharply. ‘I've already been over to talk to Chief Mallon. I've been down to the morgue with Dr Lafeyre. I'm to parade here at 10.30, before getting on with the murder investigations,' Swallow said. ‘I believe it's there in the orders for the day.'

He nodded to the sheaf of papers in Boyle's hand and glanced at the wall clock. ‘It's two minutes to the half hour.'

‘Jesus,' Boyle wailed. ‘That's a great attitude and we facing a bloody epidemic.'

He waddled to the trestle table running across the centre of the room and began to fling down the incident reports, one after another.

‘We have two dead bodies last Friday at the Chapelizod Gate and then we learn that havin' spent a full day investigatin' them as a man and a boy, Sergeant Swalla' finds out that the man is a woman.' He shook his head. ‘Jesus … could you believe it? Six breakin' an' enterin' in the A Division, four shops along James's Street and two private dwellin's in the Coombe. Murtagh's public house in Pimlico half burned out with a bucket of oil flung through the window. Two Fenians of some sort arrested for attemptin' an assault on the Assistant Under-Secretary and Alderman Fitzpatrick and for possession of a loaded German revolver. It seems as if Sergeant Swallow was on the spot in that particular incident so he hasn't been altogether wastin' his time.'

He paused to glare around at the detectives. They tried hard to give an impression of shared outrage. He hurled three more incident reports to the table.

‘There's four serious assaults, two men across the river in Mecklenburgh Street and two men in Rutland Street. There's one victim critical in the Meath Hospital with his skull broke' open and another in Doctor Steevens' with an eye gone. I remember when Sunday was supposed to be a day of prayer and reconciliation.

‘And…,' he threw the remaining papers on the table, ‘there's fears bein' expressed by Lady Londonderry about intruders in the grounds at the Viceregal Lodge … the bloody Viceregal Lodge, no less.'

Swallow acknowledged to himself that it was an unusual night's toll.

‘Then, as if we hadn't anythin' else to worry about, we're goin' to have to watch the gangsters at Ces Downes's removal and funeral today. The scum will be full a' drink and ready for fight over whatever she left behind her.'

Boyle slumped his shoulders like a man who had finally calculated the certainty of defeat in the face of overwhelming odds.

‘Meanwhile,' he intoned wearily, ‘the crack detective of the Dublin Metropolitan Police can't even put a name to the poor woman found murdered with her child dead beside her. Mind you, I suppose at least we know the gender of the deceased at this stage.'

Swallow winced inwardly at the jibe.

Tony Swann, a detective who specialised in organised criminal gangs, chimed in cheerily from a window-ledge, ‘Ah hell, Inspector, it's not the end of the world. Sure we've a full unit here and the day is long.'

One of the curiosities of the detective branch was that it counted half a dozen men among its ranks whose names were ornithological synonyms. In addition to Swallow and Swann it had Wren, Crowe, Pigeon and Swift. A uniformed superintendent who fancied himself as a wit once dubbed G Division ‘the birdie club.' It did not go down well with John Mallon.

‘Speak when yer spoken to, Swann,' Boyle hissed. ‘Don't be tryin' to make light of things. Ye might bear in mind that the detective unit from College Street is out on them breakin' and enterin' cases. We'll get no help off them today.'

‘Swann's right,' Swallow said. ‘We can deal with things by dividing them out sensibly. Let's have a look at the incident reports and see if we can get a grip of what's going on.'

He scanned the forms thrown on the table by Boyle, drawing the reports on the assault cases together. He recognised the names of the assault victims and saw the pattern at once.

The two men badly beaten in Rutland Street were runners for Charlie Vanucchi. One of the victims of the attack in Mecklenburgh Street was Tommy ‘Tiger' McKnight, Vinny Cussen's right-hand man, and Murtagh's public house in Pimlico was a favoured drinking haunt of Cussen's gang.

The turf war between the Cussen and the Vanucchi factions had broken out already. Boyle might have stared at the sheets for a month and not seen the connections. Swallow reckoned it was better to deal with it diplomatically.

‘I've got a couple of good informants across the river in the C Division right now, Inspector,' he said. ‘They know what's going on. Put Swann on it, I'll give him the names of my contacts and let him look after these assaults. That'll cut the workload.'

Swallow's solution had been put forward mildly and pleasantly, but Boyle was not going to be pacified.

‘You won't tell me how to run me unit, Swalla'' he snarled. ‘I'll decide who does what.'

Swallow shrugged his shoulders. Behind Boyle's back he saw Tony Swann raise his eyebrows towards the ceiling. The door opened and the constable operating the ABC telegraph in the Lower Yard put his head into the room.

‘Urgent crime report here for the duty inspector.'

He handed a manila folder to one of the detectives who passed it across the room to Boyle. He read it silently for moment.

‘Jesus, have mercy. Is there no end to it?'

He waved the folder in front of him. ‘Now there's a dead woman in the canal by Portobello Bridge. The sergeant at Lad Lane says there's signs of foul play.'

He jerked his head towards Swallow.

‘Swallow, you can get up to Portobello and see about this woman. She's up there on the canal bank with a couple a' constables holdin' the scene. There's a director of the Grand Canal company on the telephone to the Commissioner's office, roarin' to get his feckin' boat under way. Ye'd think it was a voyage t'Austhralia they were at.'

For a moment Swallow thought about protesting the instruction to attend the scene at Portobello.

He had his hands full with the Chapelizod Gate inquiry. If he protested, though, it would invite further vituperation from Boyle. It was easier to go along with it and hope that it was nothing too complicated.

‘I've got a conference on the Chapelizod Gate case so I can't get to Portobello until maybe 12 o'clock,' Swallow interjected as Boyle began to hand out the incident sheets to the detectives.

Boyle waved his pencil at two officers perched on the window-ledge.

‘Officer Feore and Constable Collins, you'll do the assaults.'

Mick Feore combined intuition with valuable experience built over his years of service. Collins was a neophyte, just newly arrived from uniformed duties. Although he worked in plain clothes he was not yet formally appointed as a detective.

‘Seein' as I'm the senior man, naturally I'll g'up to the Viceregal Lodge with Tony Swann and Pat Mossop. I'll want to check that all the protection posts are manned and to reassure the household that they have nothin' to fear,' Boyle announced.