Echoland (20 page)

‘But he wouldn’t let them do anything to her.’

‘I’m sure he told them not to kill her. But he might have told them to teach her a lesson.’

Stella looked at him as if he was insane.

‘I mean,’ he said, pointing at his face, ‘I don’t think he told them to beat me up. Just to follow the money. Which I had delivered for him.’

Stella looked at the envelope of money and stepped away from the table as if it was contaminated.

He got to his feet. ‘That’s why I don’t want anything more to do with Nuala and Timmy and whatever they’re up to.’

‘So what are we going to do with that?’ she pointed to the money.

‘You take it down to Timmy in Leinster House. Ask for him at the gate, say you’re a friend of Nuala’s and you have a message for him.’

‘All right,’ she nodded as if she was memorising the instruction. ‘And if he asks me where I got it what’ll I tell him?’

‘Tell him the truth. Nuala left it for you.’

She gave a nervous nod and he had a sudden change of heart. He couldn’t let her walk into the forefront of Timmy’s mind. He might send his thugs after her, wouldn’t believe that she didn’t know where
Nuala was. And they might decide to use their usual interrogation techniques on her.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it myself.’

‘No, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I can see why you don’t want anything more to do with them.’

‘I need to have one final talk with Timmy to make that clear,’ he lied. ‘So I might as well give the money back to him. I’ll keep you out of it,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Thanks,’ she said. She gave an involuntary shudder and folded her arms under her breasts.

Duggan picked up the envelope and put it into his inside pocket. The brownish stain on it couldn’t be mud, he thought idly, the ground is too dry for that. He took the envelope out again and looked at the stain. No, it wasn’t blood either.

‘Is there going to be war?’ Stella asked behind him.

‘What?’

‘I mean an invasion.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows. I mean nobody here knows.’

‘One of the girls is from Waterford,’ Stella said. ‘She says there’s a lot of army activity there. They’re expecting an invasion.’

‘Training exercises,’ Duggan said. ‘It’s just manoeuvres.’

At least you’d know where you were with an invasion, he thought. You’d know what you were up against and what had to be done.

He cycled back down Baggot Street, into Stephen’s Green and
rounded
the corner at the Shelbourne Hotel into Kildare Street. The streets were almost empty now in the hiatus between the rush hour and the city’s nightlife. The sun was beginning to drop into the west, still lighting the top floors of Leinster House and mellowing Queen
Victoria’s dour look as he stopped at the entry kiosk to the Dáil and asked for Timmy.

‘He’s not in the House,’ the usher at the desk said. ‘He left a little while ago.’

‘Is he across the road?’

The usher said nothing and Duggan added with ambiguity, ‘I’m one of the family.’

‘You might find him there,’ the usher glanced across at Buswell’s Hotel.

The bar was jammed and tobacco smoke hung heavily under the low ceiling, stirred into swirls by the raised voices and bellows of laughter. Duggan couldn’t see Timmy anywhere and threaded his way through the groups until he found him in a tight circle beside the bar with four other men who all looked alike. Timmy was telling a story and Duggan circled around the group until he was opposite him. Timmy gave no sign of seeing him and finished his story. The other men spluttered into laughter and Timmy took a large swallow,
waiting
for the laughter to subside.

‘You’ll have to excuse me now, men,’ he put his empty glass on the bar. ‘I have to talk to this man here. Someone who knows what’s going on. Unlike you useless fuckers.’

They made their way out to the small lobby, now beginning to fill up with the overflow from the bar. They found space near a back wall and leant against it, facing each other.

‘Good,’ Timmy pointed at the bandage. ‘You had that seen to.’

Duggan ignored the comment and took the envelope from his pocket and handed it to Timmy. Timmy immediately moved to the side to shield it from everyone around them.

‘Is that dried blood on it?’ Duggan asked.

Timmy stopped stuffing it into his inside pocket, glanced at it. ‘No it’s not.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ve seen enough blood in my time. It’s not.’ Timmy moved back against the wall and faced him again. ‘You’ve seen her.’

‘No. That was left for me. I got a message, that’s all.’

‘Where’d she leave it?’

‘How’d she know to come to me?’

‘So you did meet her?’

‘No. How’d she know to send the message to me? Asking me to return the money to you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Timmy looked perplexed.

‘How did she know I was involved in any of this?’

‘Christ,’ Timmy threw his hands up, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with her at all.’

‘Well you got your money back now.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Timmy lit a cigarette, too wrapped up in his own thoughts to offer Duggan one. ‘I need to sit down and have a talk with her. Find out what this is all about and straighten out whatever problem she has.’

‘Well I’m out of it now anyway,’ Duggan said.

‘Tell her I’ll meet her anywhere she wants. Any time. And we’ll sort this out between us.’

‘I don’t know where she is.’

Timmy gave him a sly look. ‘But you got a message through to her.’

Duggan lit one of his own cigarettes. Stella, he thought. But she couldn’t be lying to him about Nuala. Unless she was an astonishing actress. She must’ve mentioned him to somebody else. Somebody who was in touch with Nuala. He sighed cigarette smoke and became aware of the dull ache in his cheekbone.

‘Why don’t you leave her alone?’ he suggested. ‘You got your money back. Just let her be. And she’ll come back in her own good time.’

Timmy paused as if he was giving serious thought to the
suggestion
. ‘I’m not sure she’s a free agent,’ he said. ‘I can’t take the chance that she’s not. That she needs help.’

‘To be rescued?’

‘Exactly.’

‘From who?’

‘I don’t fucking know.’ Timmy’s frustration made him flatten his back against the wall and kick it with his heel.

That’s it, Duggan thought. That’s what’s really bugging him. That Nuala is manipulating him, and not he her. Like he tries to
manipulate
everyone.

‘Look,’ Timmy recovered himself, ‘get word to her that I want to meet. You can come along too.’

‘Why would I go along? I don’t want to be involved in any of this anymore.’

‘In case she’s worried. Wants someone else there.’

‘Maybe she should go and talk to her mother. Let her act as an intermediary. If she needs one.’

Timmy dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and looked down as he ground it out with his toe. When he looked up his face was a mask of menace that Duggan had never seen before. ‘You’re a good lad, Paul,’ he said very quietly, putting his hand on Duggan’s shoulder. ‘Don’t try to be too fucking smart.’

Duggan was stunned for a moment. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to tell you I want nothing more to do with it. That I don’t know where Nuala is. And if I got a message to her I don’t know how I did it.’

‘All right, all right,’ Timmy raised his hands in surrender and his normal jovial self returned. ‘You’ll have a drink.’

‘No, thanks. I’ve got to get back to the barracks. It’s been a long day.’

‘And how are things back there?’

‘Busy, busy. Lots of false alarms.’

‘You have to check them all out,’ Timmy sounded solicitous.

Duggan nodded.

‘One day it’ll be the real thing,’ Timmy added as if it were a fact. ‘Any day now.’

‘The British?’ Duggan asked.

Timmy didn’t answer directly. ‘D’you feel the buzz around here?’ He indicated the area around them. The noise level had increased and it had become more crowded. ‘Always the same when momentous events are upon us.’

‘The talks with MacDonald?’

‘Only a sideshow,’ Timmy shook his head. ‘Like I told you. The last feeble twitch of the lion’s tail.’

‘And you think they’ll invade instead of doing a deal on the North.’

Timmy shook his head and leaned closer. ‘The Germans are coming.’

Duggan felt his stomach sink. ‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘Any day now.’

‘Where?’

Timmy raised his index finger. ‘Now you’ve put your finger on it.’

Duggan waited and Timmy looked around and dropped his voice. ‘The North. Any day now.’

Plan Kathleen, Duggan thought. The invasion plan that was found in Brandy/Goertz’s lodgings. The one that McClure said was unrealistic. How did Timmy know about that? He looked around. Maybe everyone knew about that.

‘How do you know?’ he asked.

Timmy tapped his nose a couple of times. ‘It’s top secret.’

‘Does everyone know?’ Duggan indicated the crowd around them.

‘No, no,’ Timmy said as if he was being patient with a child. ‘They don’t know the plan. But they know big things are afoot. That the day we’ve been waiting for for twenty years is approaching.’ He smiled and gave Duggan a slow wink. ‘A nation once again.’

The phone rang, breaking Duggan’s reverie about his conversation last night with Timmy. ‘Your cousin,’ the switch said, a different voice to the usual orderly.

‘Which one?’

‘He didn’t say.’

Duggan waited a moment. ‘Peter,’ he said.

‘Acting like a general now, I hear,’ Gifford said. ‘Like I was telling your young lad here, give these culchies an inch etcetera etcetera.’

‘Any news?’ Duggan didn’t feel like exchanging mock insults this morning.

‘Well, yes, general. As a matter of fact there is.’ Gifford paused but Duggan waited for him to go on. ‘Your young man has been busy. I’m sure he’s dying to tell you himself, get a pat on the back. But I got to the phone first.’

Duggan sighed. ‘What is it?’

‘Sinéad sends her love. I think. She didn’t say that exactly. Just some culchie talk about how you were no loss. Which I think means she’s in love.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Duggan moaned.

‘Right,’ Gifford paused. ‘Hope you heard the heels click. General
busy man. And so on. And, sir, the thing is that your legman has found the postman’s other letter box.’

‘Right,’ Duggan said, taking a second to interpret the information. Sullivan had found where Kitty Kelly collected letters.

‘He wanted to barge in and ask questions. But I pointed out to him that this was a police matter. Required tact and delicacy. Which you brute force merchants don’t understand.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Meet me at the station beside the church in half an hour and we’ll go take a look.’

‘Is that area okay?’

‘Oh, yes. The post’s been and gone. Got Mass and all.’ Gifford hung up.

Gifford was lounging by the wall inside the entrance to Westland Row station, reading a newspaper when Duggan arrived. He looked like he was planning a crime and a woman in front of Duggan gave him a quick suspicious glance before she passed by and climbed the stairs to the platform.

‘Just across the road,’ Gifford said, folding the paper under his arm. ‘Your legman followed her in there after Mass next door and heard her asking if there was any post for her.’

‘I told him to keep back. Not to let her see him.’

‘Just as well he went in. Or he’d never have heard what he heard.’

‘Better not let him hear you call him my legman.’

‘Sensitive, is he?’

‘He looks on himself as a real G2 man. I’m only in there because I can speak some German.’

‘
Maith an buachaill
,’ Gifford retorted illogically. Good boy.

They stopped on the footpath and looked across at the line of shops opposite. ‘Which one is it?’ Duggan asked. Gifford pointed to a small newsagent’s.

‘The same one where Harbusch gets his letters from the woman in Amsterdam,’ Duggan said. Odd, he thought, that they would both use the same place if they were working together. A definite breach of security. There was no shortage of shops that provided a post restante service.

‘The dirty letters,’ Gifford nodded.

They crossed to the shop and went in. There was a middle-aged man behind the counter. ‘Men,’ he said, looking from one to the other.

‘Mr Johnson,’ Gifford showed him his warrant card. ‘You’re
helping
us out already with a quick look at any post for Herr Harbusch.’

‘Indeed,’ the man nodded. ‘Always happy to help you lads.’

‘We think that a Miss Kelly is also using your service.’

The man nodded again.

‘Does she get many letters?’

‘Only an occasional one. They come from abroad. Switzerland.’

‘Switzerland?’ Gifford sounded surprised and glanced at Duggan. ‘Only Switzerland? Does she get any post from anywhere else?’

The man thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. I
recognized
the stamps. I’m a collector.’

‘Only Switzerland,’ Gifford agreed. ‘And how often?’

‘Nothing regular. Maybe one every few weeks or so.’

‘And when was the last time?’

‘Would’ve been ten days ago, maybe more. Could’ve been two weeks. I don’t pay a lot of attention. Not up to now.’

‘We think she might be expecting another one,’ Gifford said. ‘And we’d appreciate it if you’d let us know as soon as it arrives. And hold
it for us before you give it to her. Like with Herr Harbusch’s post.’

‘Certainly,’ the man said. ‘Actually, she was in this morning, asking if there was anything for her.’

‘Really?’ Gifford sounded surprised.

‘Yes,’ the man said with enthusiasm. ‘But there wasn’t anything. Not for the last ten days. Maybe two weeks.’

‘We’d appreciate it if you could alert us the next time.’

‘Always happy to oblige. I know you have a hard job these days.’

‘Could I ask you,’ Duggan intervened, ‘if you get any post here for a Mr Jameson?’

‘As in the whiskey?’ the man sounded surprised. ‘No.’

Duggan added the names of the other tenants in the Harbusch building. ‘Or for any one of those names?’

The man thought a moment and then shook his head.

‘Okay,’ Gifford said, turning to leave. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘I thought she might have a relative who was a prisoner of war,’ the man said.

‘What?’ Gifford turned back to him.

‘Well she’s not a married lady,’ the man said confused. ‘Or
widowed
. So I thought it might be a nephew. Someone like that. Not a son.’

‘Did she ever say anything like that?’ Duggan asked.

‘Oh, no, no,’ the man said. ‘She never said anything at all. It was just the letters from Switzerland, you know. The Red Cross.’

‘What about the Red Cross?’

‘Well I hear they organise letters from prisoners of war. So one of my neighbours told me. His son’s in the British Army and they’ve been told he’s been taken prisoner. They’re up the walls. Trying to get information from the Red Cross. He says they have lists. Can pass messages back and forth.’

‘Was there anything on the letters to indicate that they came from the Red Cross?’ Gifford asked.

‘No, no,’ the man sounded sorry that he had volunteered his
theory
. ‘I was only just thinking myself. Idly wondering.’

‘Anything on the letters to say who they came from?’

‘There was some kind of an address. In Zurich. But no mention of the Red Cross.’

‘Okay,’ Gifford sought confirmation from Duggan that they were ready to go. ‘Sure we’ll see it when the next one arrives.’

‘I’ll call the usual number the minute it does,’ the man promised.

Cycling back to headquarters a thought that had been niggling at the back of his mind came to the fore. Timmy hadn’t seemed surprised to have got his money back. Didn’t even ask if it was all there. Only wanted to talk to Nuala in person. Almost like he knew he would get the money back. All of it. How come? he wondered as he pedalled down the quays.

It was another beautiful day, the gentle breeze exaggerated by his speed, tempering the heat of the noonday sun. The tide was ebbing from the river and its stench was beginning to rise as the foul grey mudflats were exposed. I should watch my back too, he thought. If Timmy thinks I know where Nuala is it’s not beyond him to get some of his friends to follow me.

He veered suddenly onto Capel Street Bridge and stopped halfway across it and looked behind him. A couple of cyclists
followed
him onto the bridge and he watched each of them as they passed by. None of them caught his eye or looked suspicious. This spy business is giving you some queer notions, he imagined his mother’s voice saying. And he couldn’t disagree.

He rested for a moment, sitting on the saddle, the bicycle propped up by his left foot on the footpath and lit a cigarette. He looked down the Liffey towards the sea, not seeing the view, scarcely registering the train chugging across the loop line bridge, thinking. He came to a decision, topped the half-finished cigarette into the gutter and put it back in his box. He pushed off from the footpath and cycled up Parliament Street and down Dame Street. He went right at the gate of Trinity College and up Nassau Street and turned into Kildare Street.

He left the bicycle at the entrance to the National Library beside Leinster House and went in. He had to wait twenty minutes to be issued with a reader’s ticket and then climbed the stairs to the reading room where he asked to see the
Irish Times
for November 1920. He sat at a table with a lectern-like newspaper stand, waiting and
watching
the clock above him tick forward, becoming more impatient with every minute. This was supposed to be a quick visit, have a look and get back to the office.

An attendant eventually gave him the newspaper file and he turned it over and began to flick back through the pages from the end of the month. It only took a moment to find it, on page five of the last paper of the month, the report of the Kilmichael ambush that had been in Nuala’s flat and that she or someone else had taken away. ‘Auxiliary Police Ambushed In County Cork’, the headline said. ‘Fifteen Killed, One Wounded, And One Missing’.

He read down through the report but couldn’t see anything in it that would have explained its importance to Nuala. It was based on British reports that claimed the ambush was carried out by seventy to a hundred IRA men. He looked at the other main report on the page, the military court of inquiry into three IRA men shot while ‘trying to escape’ from Dublin Castle and he read through it quickly and its continuation overleaf. All propaganda, he thought, both of the
reports. But that was hardly the reason Nuala had them. He glanced at the other reports on the two pages. They were a collection of
weekend
incidents: an RIC constable shot dead in Cappoquin; a district inspector recovering from wounds in Galway; an insane asylum inmate shot dead by the military in Clare; firebombs in Liverpool; more shootings; searches, arrests; letters to the editor; parliamentary reports.

He sighed and handed back the file at the desk. He didn’t have time to go through every item in detail. It had taken more than an hour and a half and he was no wiser at the end of it. Nothing had leapt out at him. Whatever it was that Nuala was interested in was not apparent to him.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Captain McClure demanded when he walked into the office.

‘I’m sorry,’ Duggan reddened. ‘I was following a hunch but—’

‘I’ve let you have a very loose rein. Don’t abuse it.’

‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘Well, you have justified my faith in you so far,’ McClure relented. ‘Get a car and drive me to Dublin Castle. Things are happening.’

Shit, Duggan thought, knowing better than to ask what, and went to get the keys of a car. He sat into the driver’s seat and had the engine running when McClure got into the passenger seat.

‘Your Miss Kelly has just had a meeting with Goertz,’ McClure said as a sentry at the gate raised the barrier for them.

‘What?’

‘Sullivan followed her into Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street where she met another woman of her own vintage. They chatted for a while and then the other woman left and a man arrived and joined her. Had a cherry bun and a coffee.’

‘It’s Goertz?’

‘Sullivan is certain. Says it’s the man you followed from Hempel’s house.’

‘Jesus,’ Duggan overtook a horse and cart and sped by the Four Courts. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Sullivan followed him to a house in Raglan Road in Ballsbridge.’

‘He’s still there?’

‘As far as we know. We’ve got some more men there now, covering the front and back.’

‘We’re going to move in?’

‘We’re going to plan this one properly,’ McClure said with a hint of steel. ‘We don’t want any more fuck-ups with this fellow.’

‘Right.’ Duggan slowed to a stop at the top of Capel Street,
waiting
for a couple of bicycles to pass on the other side before turning onto the bridge.

‘Drop me outside the Castle,’ McClure said as they went up Parliament Street. ‘I’m going to talk to the Superintendent. Make sure they don’t move in until we know everything there is to know about this house, who owns it and who’s in there.’

Duggan slowed again as they came down Dame Street and pulled into the kerb outside the Olympia Theatre.

‘I want you to go to that stakeout place you have on Merrion Square,’ McClure said. ‘Sullivan should be back there, debrief him fully. Find out everything.’

‘You know about the post box he discovered this morning?’

‘Just briefly,’ McClure said.

Duggan told him what they had found and the shopkeeper’s theory that the woman might have a relative who was a prisoner of war.

‘That might be interesting if she wasn’t meeting Oberleutenant Goertz,’ McClure said. ‘This puts a whole different complexion on
what she’s up to. I think you might have found the key that unravels this whole thing.’

He opened the door and paused with one leg out. ‘What was your hunch?’

‘Oh,’ Duggan blustered. ‘It was … nothing. Stupid.’

McClure looked at him and Duggan felt himself redden, guilt all over his face. Oh, Christ, he thought. ‘You’re doing well. Keep it up,’ McClure said. He stepped out, banged the door shut and slapped the roof of the car twice.

Duggan let out a breath with the clutch and drove down Dame Street. Jesus, he thought, if McClure ever finds out what I’ve been up to he’ll skin me alive. And it was too late to tell him anything about it now. It’d only beg the question of why I didn’t tell him earlier.

He parked the car in Merrion Square, opposite Leinster House and well away from Sinéad’s office. He walked the rest of the way,
trying
to think through all the threads of the Harbusch story, or maybe it was really the Kitty Kelly story. Was she just a go-between, a central communication point, or something more? What if she was the
master
or mistress spy? It didn’t seem possible. Such a harmless looking old woman, just like everyone’s grandmother.

‘Well, well,’ Sinéad said as he stopped at her doorway. ‘Do we have to stand up and salute?’

‘At ease,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t mind what all those begrudgers say.’

‘I’m not making tea anymore for all that lot,’ she said.

‘What lot?’