A June of Ordinary Murders (54 page)

He paid the barman for the drinks and scanned Swallow's face.

‘And what about yourself? How will things work out now between yourself and Mallon? And how will it go with Smith Berry?'

Swallow downed a third of his pint.

‘I don't much care at this stage. I always thought that the law came before politics and that good police-work would be backed up by the people at the top. I'm not sure that anyone in authority shares that view. There's big stakes being played for in this country. And there won't be much tolerance extended to an awkward policeman who won't do what he's told.'

Lafeyre shook his head in disagreement.

‘I'd hate to see you throw it in now. I think when all this washes through you'll come out of it well. Go and sleep on it and see what tomorrow will bring.'

They finished their ale and walked towards the river. Lafeyre hailed a cab at the quay and Swallow started for Grattan Bridge.

EPILOGUE

Swallow crossed the river and made his way up Parliament Street towards the Castle.

The lines of carriages that had brought the guests to the state dinner jostled in uneasy order on Cork Hill. Drivers stood about, smoking and talking in the night air. The city gaslights reflected off the bevelled windows of the larger carriages. Some of the drivers kept their car lamps burning too.

When the tableau started to remind him of a Venetian
carnival
that hung in the National Gallery, he checked himself. Life was life. Art was art. He had to stop trying to define one within the other.

The strains of the orchestra playing in St Patrick's Hall drifted down Cork Hill into Parliament Street.

Gaggles of children from the tenements had congregated at vantage points on steps and window-ledges, hoping to wheedle a few coppers from the guests as they would make their way back to their carriages.

Some of the more daring urchins whistled at the sentries in their ceremonial uniforms at Cork Hill Gate. Others jeered at the policemen placed at intervals along the pavement, safe in the knowledge that none of them dared to leave their assigned place of duty.

Swallow wanted to avoid the crowds. He turned down to Dame Street and went into the Castle by the Palace Street Gate.

In the Lower Yard he saw that the lights were burning in John Mallon's office. That was unsurprising. With the security of a royal visitor at issue, the head of the G Division would not turn in until he could be sure that Prince Albert Victor was safe in his bed, or at least within the sanctuary of the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park.

Swallow wanted to check at the police telegraph room to see if any additional information had come through from Liverpool concerning Louise Thomas. As he started towards the police office he saw John Mallon step out of the shadows where the high archway connected the Upper and Lower Yards.

Swallow guessed that Mallon had taken a vantage point from which he could survey the full sweep of the Upper Yard.

At one end of the spacious quadrangle were the entrances to the State Apartments and St Patrick's Hall. At the other were the gates leading out to Cork Hill. This was where the royal party would enter and exit the Castle and it was where the prince would be most at risk, moving through a large crowd in a confined space.

‘Bloody nerve-wracking,' Mallon said quietly. ‘We've got three more days of this. You've been over at Jervis Street to see Mossop?'

‘Yes, Chief, he's doing well. Dr Lafeyre was with me. He says he could be a couple of weeks in there.'

‘Mossop's a good man,' Mallon said, ‘I'd give him as much time as he needs so that when we can get him back he'll be in good order.'

He gestured to the upper window. ‘Come on upstairs. We could both do with a drink.'

In Mallon's room, the head of G Division opened a bottle of Bushmills whiskey and poured two heavy measures. He handed one to Swallow.

‘I know you like your Tullamore, but that's good Ulster stuff. It's from Antrim.'

They sipped the whiskey neat.

‘That was a damned good whisper you got on that fellow O'Donnell and his two pals, Locke and O'Reilly,' Mallon said. ‘I don't know that they'd have been able to get an accurate shot from where they were, even with those Navy Colts. But the very fact of an attempt being made on the prince's life would have been a disaster for us.'

Swallow was silent. He wondered what his sister would have to say about the object of her romantic interests when next he met her. But she was safely out of the frame. And James O'Donnell, with a death sentence hanging over him from the Hibernian Brothers, would not be back from America for a long time – certainly long enough for Harriet to lose interest.

He made a mental note to check how her examinations had gone. It would be a poor bargain to have extricated her from the mischief-making of the Hibernian Brothers only to have her fail in her teacher training studies.

‘Thanks, Chief. It comes down to a lot of donkey work – and using your informants well, as you say.'

‘And you got a result earlier on the Sarah Hannin case,' Mallon said conversationally.

‘It fell into our lap. If the girl – Hetty Connors – hadn't tried to pass off the bank draft, we'd still be nowhere.'

‘A lucky break is a lucky break, Swallow. But you make your own lucky breaks sometimes. You followed her into Naughton's in Crow Street when you might have just walked on.'

‘I was on the wrong track though. I was fairly sure that someone in the Fitzpatrick house was responsible for Sarah Hannin's murder. It turns out to have been a simple case of robbery with extreme violence.'

Mallon smiled. ‘You were off the case, Swallow. It was up to the clever fellows in the Upper Yard to solve it. They weren't exactly making great progress, were they? And it wasn't just a simple case of robbery. You felt there was a link between Chapelizod Gate and the Hannin death. And you were right.'

A flicker of a smile crossed Mallon's face.

‘Wasn't it fortunate that Fitzpatrick was at the Jubilee regatta when you went in at Merrion Square?'

‘Yes, Sir,' Swallow said impassively, ‘very fortunate indeed.'

‘Mind you, organising a search and arrest on the basis of Harry Lafeyre's warrant isn't something I'd want to encourage as an everyday method of doing police business.'

‘It was all perfectly legal, Chief.'

‘Legal, yes, but … well, you took the risks. Nobody forced you.'

‘I suppose so,' Swallow acknowledged. ‘Will there be … consequences … do you think?

Mallon was silent for a moment.

‘I hope not. The game's gone against our political masters now and they know it. They're very pragmatic people, in my experience. Fitzpatrick is a lost cause, a beaten docket, as the bookies would say. They can't rehabilitate his reputation.'

He sipped at his Bushmills. ‘Fitzpatrick is politically dead. And there's nobody will run faster from the stench of a rotting political corpse than the civil servants. So will there be consequences? No, not of the kind that should worry either you or me, I think. Be sure, they won't forgive or forget the fact that a couple of G-men thwarted their grand design. But they wouldn't dare to take any action – at least not at this stage.'

‘But in the longer term?'

‘Let me put it this way. I wouldn't hold out fervent hopes of seeing your name on the G-Division promotion list in the very near future. You know I don't have the final say in that.'

Mallon poured another two good measures of Bushmills.

‘I'd like to be able to tell you something different. But there are realities we have to live with. I got to where I am in spite of my religion and my background and because I knew how to play the system. You're not that kind of man. You're a first-class policeman and detective, but you buck the system. They don't trust you. They never will. You can walk on water and it won't be acknowledged. I'm sorry, but that's the reality of it.'

He chuckled as he drank from his whiskey glass.

The chuckle died. There was an earnest look in Mallon's eyes.

‘Do you not think it might be time for you to look for that transfer to uniform? You'd move to inspector and maybe up to superintendent in a few years. Would you not send in the application? I can probably make sure that it goes the right way. And when you're at it, you could make a decent woman out of Mrs Walsh and take her on a nice honeymoon to Killarney or some place. Great scenery for painting there, you know?'

Swallow felt himself flush.

‘I'll think about that, Sir. It would be a big decision for me to take. There are … personal considerations,' he said flatly.

Mallon caught his tone. He changed the subject.

‘I've read the two statements that you and Mossop took from McDaniel and Fitzpatrick. It's hard to credit that people could put up pretences and bury the truth over, what, more than 20 years.'

‘I think it took its toll on Fitzpatrick,' Swallow said. ‘In a way I think he was relieved to have it all come out.'

Mallon looked doubtful. ‘He paid a high price to protect his wealth and his family's place in society, as he saw it. He lost the woman he probably loved. He lost his children. And now his reputation is gone as well.'

‘And it's hard to think that a woman like Ces Downes could keep her secrets over the same long time,' Swallow mused. ‘I guess both of them felt they were doing the right thing for their children. Different people have different natures. They want different things out of life.'

‘Human nature,' Mallon snorted. ‘It's a brute nature that allows your own daughter to be raised in an orphanage and your son to be raised as a stranger – even if he's well looked after in the material sense.'

He drank from his Bushmills again. ‘We're talking about old-fashioned greed and avarice, Swallow. Fitzpatrick was going to get rich – richer than he is – with government contracts. And Ces Downes knew that as long as she stayed quiet about her past she could count on Fitzpatrick's protection in all the years that she was engaged in crime.'

Swallow could see the summer night darkening through the window.

‘Yet you'll hear that she could be good to those she had a soft spot for.' he said. ‘You'll find those who speak well of her.'

Mallon nodded.

‘We've both seen that in police work, Swallow. You learn that the worst blackguards can perform acts of what seems like kindness. Do you know
The Pirates of Penzance?
'

‘I haven't seen it performed, Chief. But I know of it.'

Mallon grinned and broke into a low baritone.

‘When a felon's not engaged in his employment

or maturing his felonious little plan

his capacity for innocent enjoyment

is just as great as any honest man.'

Swallow wondered if the head of G Division might not have had enough Bushmills for the evening.

*   *   *

He walked through the Lower Yard and the Palace Street Gate, making for Thomas Street and Maria Walsh's.

The ale he had drunk with Lafeyre and the stiff Bushmills poured by Mallon had combined to blur his senses. He felt tired with a deep sense of anti-climax.

He thought about John Mallon's advice. It was wrong that his choices should be between retirement, going into uniform or remaining in the rank he held until the end of his service. It was hard to think of carrying on, watching time-servers like Boyle move ahead of him. But if he left, he was certain, he would have to make up his mind finally about his relationship with Maria. He was not ready to do that, just yet.

At the corner of Fishamble Street and Christchurch Place he saw Duck Boyle. The inspector was carrying a heavy book under his arm. They greeted each other without much warmth.

‘Do want a drink?' Swallow asked reluctantly, feeling that he should not be ungenerous close to his own turf.

‘Nah, thanks Swalla', I'll pass this time. I have to get home to do a bit of work, studyin' for the superintendents' exam.'

He waved the book.

‘Do you know what … I'm readin' here? There's a fella out in India … He has a theory that in a few years we'll be able to identify every single human bein' be the ridges on their fingertips. He's writin' about what he calls ‘the science of fingerprints.' Did ye ever hear the like … he must be a right eejit.'

Swallow thought he could already see the gold braid glinting off Boyle's new uniform.

*   *   *

In the morning, after 13 days of drought, the rain started to fall on the city. It came in from the west as a light drizzle and gradually built to a steady, slanting downpour.

Soon it obscured the mountains and the harbour and the high facades of the public buildings. Then it began to veil the features of the houses and the churches from the people hurrying along the city streets. At noon, with visibility at the water's edge down to a few yards, the men combing the shoreline along Dublin Bay gave up and stopped searching for Simon Sweeney.

 

The End

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS
.

An imprint of St. Martin's Publishing Group.

A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS
. Copyright © 2012 by Conor Brady. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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