Echoland (16 page)

‘Ah, no, you wouldn’t need to do that.’

Duggan shook his head and stayed silent as he drove past the
barracks
and along the quays. ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he said at last. ‘If you pay them anything they’ll just look for more. And we don’t even know if they have Nuala.’

‘She’ll be happy with this,’ Timmy said. ‘This’ll be the end of it.’

‘You’re sure she’s behind all this?’

‘Of course she is. Sure who would kidnap her? She’s just trying to get her own back on me.’

‘For what?’

Timmy shrugged as they drove up Grafton Street. ‘Turn into Wicklow Street,’ he directed. ‘And go left here.’

‘For what?’ Duggan repeated as he turned into Clarendon Street.

‘For not wanting her to get that flat. Giving up the job I got her. For everything. Who knows with women.’ He paused. ‘Park along here.’

Duggan pulled into a space outside Clarendon Street church and turned off the engine and they heard the Angelus bell ringing in the silence. Timmy took a long brown envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to Duggan.

‘That’s what five hundred pounds feels like,’ Timmy said.

Duggan weighed it on his hands. ‘Not much,’ he said.

‘A good year’s pay.’

‘It’s all there? Five hundred?’

Timmy nodded. ‘And a letter for Nuala. Telling her there won’t be any more and to stop this now and it’ll be all forgiven and forgotten. There won’t be another word said about it.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’

‘Then I’ll call in the guards and all hell will break loose.’ Timmy pointed at the address on the envelope. ‘It’s just back down there near the corner. You go and drop it in the letter box there while I drop into the church.’

Duggan gave a short laugh and shook his head. Timmy’s face broke into a large smile. ‘I’ll say a prayer for you,’ he said as he got out. He closed the door and opened it again immediately and bent down to look into the car. ‘To Our Lady of Perpetual Succour,’ he smiled again.

Duggan watched him go into the church, thinking this whole thing is ridiculous. He was sorry he had ever taken it seriously. It was just Timmy playing his games again. And Nuala, too. She was
obviously
as bad as him. And Timmy of course was being careful, not doing any of the direct work himself. So nobody could say he put the ad in the paper, dropped the ransom money off.

Duggan got out of the car and walked back down to Wicklow Street. There was hardly anybody about, only a couple going into the Wicklow Hotel where the doorman held the door open for them. He found the address easily, a door beside a dressmaker’s shop and he popped the envelope into the letter box, wondering if it really
contained
£500. It was hard to imagine Timmy parting with that much money so easily. Even with a smile. Even to his own daughter.

He stood outside the building for a moment looking up and down
the street, but there was nothing and, for the moment, no one to be seen. The odd car and some pedestrians passed on Grafton Street but Wicklow Street seemed to be an abandoned byway, dozing quietly in the still shade of the evening. He walked back to the car, sat in and lit a cigarette.

He had almost finished it before Timmy sat in. ‘I got Benediction there,’ he said, as if that had been his objective all along, and told him to drive on as if he was in a hurry to get away from the area. ‘Well?’ he asked as Duggan turned left into Chatham Street and went down Grafton Street where there was a queue forming already outside the cinema.

‘What’s that address?’ Duggan asked. ‘Does Nuala have
something
to do with it?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Timmy said. ‘What did it say?’

‘It’s a dress shop. A furrier and a jeweller upstairs.’

‘Did you see anyone?’

‘No. There was no sign of Nuala. Or anyone else.’

‘Good. Good,’ Timmy said as if that was good news. ‘You might keep an eye on if you happen to be passing.’

Duggan did not reply and they went in silence down the quays to Collins Barracks and cruised to a halt just past its gate.

‘Well, thanks for the lift,’ Duggan said, opening his door.

‘Thank you for the lift,’ Timmy said. ‘It’s great to be driven. Gives you time to think.’

He got out and came around to the driver’s side and sat in. ‘Great to get down the country, too,’ he said. ‘Clears the head.’

‘It does all right,’ Duggan agreed and closed the door on him.

The war seemed further away than ever.

‘Any news?’ Duggan asked as he arrived in the Red House the next morning.

‘Yeah,’ Sullivan said casually. ‘The Germans have invaded. At Tramore.’

‘Ha, ha.’ Duggan sat down at his place at the table.

‘There’s a news blackout.’

‘And that’s why everything’s so calm around here?’

‘Exactly,’ Sullivan smiled. ‘It’s official. There’s no news. But the Wehrmacht is here.’

‘Fuck off,’ Duggan said.

‘So how’s everything in culchie land?’

‘Restful. They’re saving the turf.’

Sullivan groaned. ‘My father keeps trying to drag me up to the Sally Gap where he got a bit of bog from someone. It’d break your back, that turf business.’

‘It’s good for you.’ Duggan looked at the Harbusch file. ‘A little real work.’

‘Hah. Says the fellow who’s just had a weekend pass.’

‘Any word on Brandy? Or, what’s his real name? Goertz?’ Duggan flicked the pages of the file, looking for inspiration.

‘No sign of him. But the Branch is still hauling in IRA lads.
They’ve got hundreds locked up now.’ Sullivan paused. ‘You weren’t listening to Lord Haw Haw last night were you?’

‘No. Not on my night off.’

‘He was insulting us again.’

‘I thought he liked our neutrality.’

‘Us. The army,’ Sullivan said. ‘Said the Irish army couldn’t beat the tinkers out of Galway.’

Duggan snorted. ‘Someone beat him out of there anyway. Did you listen to Mühlhausen as well?’

‘I had to,’ Sullivan said with an accusatory note, ‘since you were off. It was the usual stuff. The Black and Tans. Kilmichael. Balbriggan.’

‘Kilmichael?’ Duggan perked up. ‘What did he say about it?’

Sullivan dropped his voice. ‘My Irish isn’t as good as yours, you know.’

Duggan nodded. ‘But what did he say?’

‘Just that the Auxies got their answer at Kilmichael. I think. It was just a passing reference.’

‘Nothing else?’

Sullivan shook his head. ‘What’s important about Kilmichael?’

‘I don’t know,’ Duggan said, thinking his own thoughts. ‘But he hasn’t mentioned it before. As far as I know.’

‘So?’

‘It’s probably nothing.’ Could it be a coincidence? Duggan
wondered
. The cutting about Kilmichael in Nuala’s flat, Mühlhausen mentioning the ambush in his radio broadcast from Berlin. It had to be. There couldn’t be any connection between Nuala and the Germans. ‘I’ll listen out for it next week. When you’re up on the bog.’

‘Or at the beach head in Tramore. I’d sooner that.’

‘Mocking is catching,’ Duggan warned.

It was another beautiful day, occasional clouds alternating the
sunlight
with shade, a warm breeze blowing from the west, the heat bouncing off the buildings, the footpaths shaded by shop awnings, hall doors on the sunny sides of streets protected with striped covers. Duggan cycled along the quays and turned up at O’Connell Bridge, heading for Merrion Square and Gifford’s lookout post. He didn’t really know why he was going there but he had nowhere else to go. Captain McClure didn’t seem to want him to do anything else other than keep an eye on Harbusch. And Gifford, perhaps.

He was about to turn into Nassau Street when he suddenly changed his mind and went on up Grafton Street and pushed hard on a pedal to turn quickly into Wicklow Street in front of a bus. He left his bicycle on Clarendon Street, against the back wall of Switzers and walked back to the corner and stopped outside the Alpha Café. He stared for a moment at the dress shop and doorway where he had dropped Timmy’s ransom payment, then went into the café and took a table at the window.

He ordered tea and a scone from an elderly waitress in a black and white uniform and watched the street. Most of the shops along the stretch opposite were dress shops with hairdressers on the first floors. The passersby were mainly women, middle-aged and overdressed for the weather.

He buttered his scone and put a dab of strawberry jam on each side, taking his time, keeping an eye on the building across the street and still wondering idly if he was being sidelined by McClure. Or, as Sullivan seemed to think, being treated like a favoured son. ‘Why do you think you got the weekend pass?’ he had asked rhetorically when Duggan had voiced his concerns that he was being given nothing else to do.

He finished the scone and poured himself another half cup of tea,
the remainder of the pot, and added milk and sugar. He lit a Sweet Afton and his thoughts flicked between Nuala and Timmy and Mühlhausen and Kilmichael and his father’s silent but thoughtful reaction to what he had told him on the bog. Maybe I should go and look up that paper in the National Library, he thought. See exactly what it says about Kilmichael.

The waitress came around the tables, leaving a handwritten lunch menu on each. It had a choice of soup starters, oxtail or tomato; beef or pork chops with potatoes and turnip; jelly and ice cream or rice pudding for dessert. He glanced idly at it and then returned his gaze to the street. The women passersby reminded him of his aunt Mona, Nuala’s mother – she could be one of them, well-dressed, presumably fashionable, in a middle-aged way. No one went in or came out of the dress shop and the door beside it.

The lunchtime crowd was beginning to fill the café and a man came and sat down at his table with a cursory lift of one eye to inquire if the seat was free. Duggan nodded and paid the waitress when she took the man’s order. Outside, he stood on the footpath for a moment, then crossed to the door where he had left Timmy’s
envelope
. It swung in under the pressure of his hand and he stepped inside. A steep stairs led up from a gloomy stretch of hall. A letterbox on the back of the door was open and he took out a few letters. They were addressed to Inishfallen Jewellers and looked like bills. The one he had left addressed to Nuala was gone.

He went up the steep stairs, passed a small toilet on the return, and continued up to the first floor where a sign said Dixon Furriers. He knocked at the door and it was opened by a middle-aged woman.

‘Ah, I’m looking for Miss Monaghan,’ he said. ‘Nuala Monaghan?’

‘There’s no one of that name here,’ the woman said.

‘Maybe it’s upstairs,’ Duggan said.

‘There’s no one upstairs,’ the woman said. ‘They’ve been gone for months.’

‘Sorry. I must have the wrong address.’

The woman closed the door and Duggan continued up the stairs, as quietly as he could on the linoed steps. He came to a reinforced grey door with a faded sign saying Inishfallen Jewellers. He knocked on the door, noticing that it was covered in a light coating of dust. There was no answer.

Back on the street, he went into the dressmakers on the ground floor and asked for Miss Monaghan. A young woman told him he must have the wrong shop and he apologised and left.

A total waste of time, he thought as he crossed the road to pick up his bicycle. Anyone could walk in there any time and walk out with the post. It would only take a second to pick up Timmy’s letter. And five hundred quid. If that really was what was in it.

Duggan became aware of someone pressing against his right shoulder and he looked sideways and half saw a short young man in a long coat walking just behind his shoulder.

‘You know what this is?’ the man said, holding out the right-hand side of his coat with his left hand and Duggan saw his right hand sticking through the torn inside of the pocket. He was pointing a Webley 45 at him, his thumb on the hammer.

Duggan nodded, becoming aware that there was someone else just behind his left shoulder.

‘Keep walking,’ the first man said. ‘Or I’ll use it.’

The man on his left poked something into his side and they went up Clarendon Street at a faster pace. Duggan could hear the man on his left breathing through his nose and caught a whiff of his stale breath. He tried to think but his thoughts were running out of control, scattering on the edge of panic. Could they be guards?
he thought hopefully. But he knew they weren’t.

‘What—’ he tried to say.

‘Fuck up,’ the man on his right said.

They walked on and Duggan tried to catch the eye of the few pedestrians here but they all looked away and stepped out of the way of the three men.

‘In here,’ the short man said, steering him into an archway which led into a lane behind the houses. Duggan’s spirits sank even further – there was no sign of anyone around here. The man stopped him in front of a padlocked garage door and the second man stepped in front of them and opened the lock. He was taller than the first man and wearing a long brown coat. Duggan didn’t see his face. He pulled open one side of the door and the short man pushed Duggan through.

Garden tools and bits of cars lined the walls and the short man pushed him to the back to where an old car seat was propped up.

‘Don’t move,’ the man said.

Duggan stood still staring at the back wall. The door banged behind them and the interior was cast into gloom.

‘Sit,’ the man said.

Duggan turned around, sat down and looked up at them. They had put cloth caps on their heads and tied handkerchiefs over the lower halves of their faces. Bright spots of sunlight came through gaps in the garage door and its wooden walls, accentuating the gloom. He couldn’t make out their features.

‘Where’s the money?’ the short man pointed his Webley within inches of Duggan’s forehead.

‘I don’t have any—’

The man hit him across the face with the gun barrel, its sight
cutting
his right cheek on the bone. Duggan slumped sideways, his body in shock at the sudden violence, his mind grasping for some anchor
to hold onto. The second man stepped forward and searched the pockets of Duggan’s jacket. He shook his head at the short man.

‘Where is she?’

‘Who?’ Duggan muttered, the shock giving way to the growing pain in his cheek. He put his hand against it and took it away,
looking
at the blood on his palm.

‘D’you want another belt?’ the man said, raising the revolver to one side.

‘She’s my cousin,’ Duggan said, squeezing his eyes against the pain.

‘Who?’ the man said.

‘Nuala Monaghan.’

The two men looked at each other. The short one let the revolver drop to his side without thinking. Duggan looked from one to the other, aware that something had changed. Things were not working out as they expected.

‘Where is she?’ he said, and winced at a stab of pain in his cheek.

There was a sudden hammering at the garage door and a voice shouted, ‘Police. Come out with your hands up.’

The short man muttered ‘Fuck’ and raised the revolver like he was going to hit Duggan again. Duggan put his arms up on either side of his head. But the man dropped the gun again and indicated with a nod of his head to the other man the door at the back of the garage. The other man opened it slowly, lifting it as it began to scrape off the dirty ground. There was no sound and he gave a quick look outside. He shrugged at the short man and they both slipped out, leading with their revolvers as there was another heavy knock at the garage doors and the voice shouted, ‘Open up!’

Duggan sank back on the old car seat and closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. Then, he stood up and staggered slightly as he went to the garage door, blinking away a sudden dizziness. He pushed the door out a little with his foot and the sunshine blinded him. He put
his two hands through the gap, palms open and upright, and said, ‘I’m coming out.’

He pushed the door open further with his foot and stepped out. The lane was empty. Then he saw a gun pointing at him from an adjoining doorway and a face appeared above it. Gifford.

Gifford beckoned him forward with his spare hand. Duggan looked behind him. There was no one else around. He dropped his hands and walked towards Gifford. ‘They’re gone,’ he said.

‘You sure?’ Gifford kept his eye and gun on the garage door, still half open.

‘They went out the back.’

Gifford stepped quickly up to the garage door and took a look inside. He let the gun hang by his side and closed the door with his foot. He turned back to Duggan and seemed to see him for the first time. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

Duggan nodded and felt a trickle of blood running down his face. He wiped it away with the ball of his hand and slumped back against the wall facing the garage. He fished in his jacket pocket with his other hand and took out his cigarettes and put one between his lips.

‘What was all that about?’ Gifford asked, putting his revolver away.

‘Nuala.’ Duggan lit the cigarette and inhaled and picked off a flake of tobacco that had stuck to his lip.

‘They really are looking for her,’ Gifford shook his head in surprise.

‘And the ransom money,’ Duggan said. He told Gifford about
paying
the ransom and what had happened.

‘He’s mad,’ Gifford said of Timmy.

‘I don’t know what he’s up to,’ Duggan admitted. And I don’t want any part of it anymore, he thought.

‘Well at least we know that the IRA haven’t got her,’ Gifford said
as they walked back down the lane towards Clarendon Street.

‘They were definitely IRA?’

‘Yeah. The small one is a fellow called Ward. A low-level hard man. He’s definitely on the list for the Curragh. I don’t know the other one.’

‘Thanks for arriving at the right time,’ Duggan said, still feeling slightly groggy.

‘We aim to please. But you can really thank Hansi. I was just
coming
out the side door of Switzers behind him when I saw you cross the road and Ward and his friend fall in behind you.’

‘Where were they?’

‘I’m not sure. Up the road a bit, I think. I only noticed them when they hurried across the road and came up behind you. So I tagged along too.’

Duggan staggered a little as he stepped off the footpath to let two women pass. ‘You need a drink,’ Gifford said.

‘No. There’s something I need to do.’

‘It can wait.’ They passed Duggan’s bicycle and Gifford led him around the Alpha Café into Wicklow Street. It seemed to Duggan to be a long time since he had sat inside the window eating a scone.