Echoland (29 page)

Duggan reached across the table for his cigarettes and lighter and put them in his pocket as he stood up.

‘Let me out of here and I’ll tell them to let him go,’ Ward said.

‘He’ll tell them to let him go,’ Gifford said to Duggan with a laugh. ‘You joined the wrong army. You should’ve joined the one where the cannon fodder gives orders to the generals.’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ Duggan said to Ward.

‘Suit yourself,’ Ward shrugged.

‘Tell us where he is. And we’ll see what we can do for you.’

Ward shook his head.

‘It’s your suspension,’ Gifford let his head hang to one side, his hand around his throat, simulating a hanging. ‘Or worse in the Curragh.’

‘It’s your choice,’ Duggan said.

Gifford stopped at the door as he and Duggan went out. ‘You still have a narrow window of opportunity before we finish our report,’ he said to Ward. ‘Tell them here you want to talk to me when the penny drops. But don’t delay.’

Outside, Gifford went off to tell the sergeant in charge of the cells that they were finished with Ward and to let him know immediately if Ward wanted to talk. Duggan leaned against a green-washed wall and let out a deep breath. Poor Bradley, he thought. He must be in a bad way. And sorry he ever came back to Ireland and even more sorry he came across the Monaghans.

‘Well done,’ Gifford said as they stepped out onto the street. ‘You almost had me confessing there.’

‘You think he’ll tell us?’

‘Fair chance. We’ve certainly given him something to think about.’

They crossed the gap between the Bridewell and the district courts. A couple of women were shouting to unseen prisoners in the upper cells of the Bridewell and a solicitor came bustling out between them, his briefcase bulging.

‘I wonder if he’s still alive,’ Duggan said.

‘I wouldn’t put money on it’

‘You think they’ve killed him already?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Whatever the likes of Ward might think the army council knows they’re not going to get anyone released in the North.’

Duggan closed his eyes, feeling sick. ‘Should we report it? That Ward was the kidnapper?’

‘Up to you,’ Gifford said. ‘It’s your family.’

‘Would it help to get Bradley out?’

‘Who knows. It’d probably get you in there,’ Gifford nodded back at the Bridewell. ‘Being interrogated by my colleagues.’

‘Great,’ Duggan muttered.

‘On the other hand,’ Gifford said. ‘We could try a little basic police work ourselves. Seeing as we’re so far out on a shaky limb at this stage. And the wind is rising.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s go and look at that garage where they took you.’

The laneway behind Clarendon Street was deserted. They stopped at the garage door where Ward and his colleague had brought Duggan. The door was bolted and a large lock, shaped like a flattened pear, hung from it. Gifford tugged at it but it remained locked.

‘They had a key,’ he said.

Duggan nodded. He tried to look inside through the crack between its double doors but could see nothing in the gloom inside. Gifford took out a penknife and looked at the screws on the bolt. They were encrusted with thick black paint and he thought better of trying to unscrew them. He stepped back and counted the houses on South William Street to see which one the garage belonged to.

It turned out to be a small women’s clothes shop among the street’s rag trade wholesalers. A tiny middle-aged woman and a young assistant were behind the counter when they went in, the assistant buttoning a blouse on the torso of a dummy.

‘Good afternoon, ladies,’ Gifford said, showing his warrant card. ‘You might be able to help us with a routine inquiry.’

The women looked at each other in alarm.

‘A minor road traffic incident,’ Gifford assured them. ‘The garage at the back of the building. Is that yours?’

‘No,’ the older woman said.

‘Would you happen to know whose it is?’

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘We’re only tenants here. Just the shop and the store below.’

‘I see. And who uses the garage?’

‘I have no idea. You’d have to talk to the landlord.’

Gifford took down his name and address. ‘Does one of the people upstairs have the use of it?’

‘You’d have to ask the landlord.’

‘I will indeed. Have you noticed any unusual activity in the last week or so?’

‘Unusual activity?’ the older woman glanced at her assistant as if she might have been responsible for something untoward.

‘Anything out of the ordinary?’

‘No. Everybody here minds their own business. We don’t pry into each other’s affairs.’

‘Thank you for your assistance,’ Gifford said.

Outside, he said. ‘Great country for minding its own business. My eye.’

‘You were looking for me,’ Duggan said to Sullivan when he got back to his office.

‘Ah, you were in the love nest,’ Sullivan tittered. ‘The captain was asking for you. Nothing urgent, he said.’

‘Any developments?’

‘There’s a report from Mayo of a submarine coming ashore last night and stealing five sheep. There was a big swastika painted on its tower in black and white and they were talking a guttural sort of
language
.’

‘What?’ Duggan laughed.

‘The local guards say it’s a farmer looking for compo. They told him to complain to the German legation.’

‘He won’t get much soot out of Herr Thomsen there,’ Duggan said, remembering the Nazi-saluting official who had come over to them outside the German ambassador’s house. ‘Where’s the captain?’

‘Somewhere around,’ Sullivan shrugged. ‘He’s as much of a
wanderer
as yourself.’

Duggan found him alone in another office.

‘The colonel was intrigued by your theory that Harbusch’s Amsterdam letters are written by an English-speaking man,’ McClure told him.

‘Oh,’ Duggan reacted, flattered.

‘He likes that kind of sideways thinking,’ McClure continued. ‘He suggested that you be moved to the Goertz case. But I suggested that
you should stay with Harbusch for the moment as you’d made so much progress there.’

‘Thank you,’ Duggan said with relief. The last thing he wanted now was a move away from the freedom he had and from Gifford, his only confidant on the Nuala fiasco.

McClure noted his relief and tilted his head to look at him askance. Duggan saw his opportunity and seized it.

‘I was wondering if I could make a request,’ he went on. ‘My
mother
is sick at the moment and I’d like to go and see her if I could.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow. For the day. We’ve got all the Harbusch people
covered
and I don’t think he’ll be getting any more communications from abroad for a couple of days so I thought …’ he petered out,
hoping
he wasn’t pushing his luck.

‘You can do it in the day?’

‘Yes. Morning and evening trains.’

‘Okay,’ McClure nodded. ‘Keep it to yourself. If anyone asks, you were doing some undercover work.’

The smoke flowed by the window, blanking out the sky and the
horizon
and restricting the view to the nearer fields and hedges. Sunshine bathed lines of drying hay mellow and men and boys worked here and there, tossing forkfuls of hay into small piles. Cattle grazed green fields, their ankles deep in the lush grass. Farmhouses and fields moved by, the hedges heavy and the ditches marked only by trickles of water if there was any at all.

Duggan sat with his back to the engine and watched the midlands go by. He shifted on the seat but its rigid uprightness wouldn’t let him slouch in comfort. He put his feet up on the seat opposite and leaned his head back and closed his eyes and tried to doze. But his mind wouldn’t let him, just as it had refused to let him sleep for hours the previous night as it tried to unravel the whole mess he had got
himself
into. Or, more accurately, that Timmy had got him into.

He didn’t want to think too closely on the state Jim Bradley might be in. If he was still alive. And he didn’t want to think through Timmy’s implication that it was his own father that had shot Bradley’s father. He didn’t know what it would mean to him – he didn’t want to think about it – but he had to know if it was true or not. Timmy was an expert in implying all sorts of things while saying
nothing. And even if it was true, so what? An RIC man was a fair target in those days. But what if his father had known about Timmy’s deal? That’s where it would get complicated.

And then there was the problem of what to tell McClure, if he didn’t know about it already. He had a passing suspicion that McClure knew he was up to something and was giving him a free hand to pursue it. But how could he know about Timmy’s and Nuala’s machinations? One part of him wanted to tell McClure everything, hand over the whole Bradley problem to G2 and the guards. But if he did that he’d probably be out on his ear. If not court-martialled. The captain and the colonel would not take kindly to his solo run, no
matter
how much the colonel said he liked sideways thinking.

He opened his eyes and the smoke had cleared from his window to the other side as the train re-orientated itself westwards and the sky opened up into a huge blue vault with a line of puffy clouds spread out in convoy near the horizon. The only hope was that Billy Ward would break or that Gifford would come up with something, he thought. Both were long shots.

The train rumbled across the bridge over the River Shannon at Athlone and he counted off the stops, recognising more and more of the landmarks as he neared his destination, an old mill, someone’s farmhouse, a tight clump of trees on a small hill, a ruined abbey, a small lake where he used to fish for perch.

He was the only one to alight at the small station and his father was waiting outside in the Ford Prefect with the windows open. He was wearing work clothes and had his shirt sleeves rolled up.

‘No uniform today?’ he said as Duggan sat in.

‘I don’t wear it too much these days.’

‘Your mother’ll be disappointed.’ His father started the car and edged it forward to the level crossing gates, waiting for the train to
build up steam and move out of the station. ‘She’ll be in two minds, actually. She’s very proud of you in uniform but then she realizes what it could mean.’

‘She’s well?’

‘Very well. Taking a close interest in the war. Even listening to Lord Haw Haw every week.’

‘Why?’

His father gave him a quizzical glance. ‘Because she’s worried about you, of course. Thinks she might learn something about their intentions.’

‘Lord Haw-Haw’s not going to let slip any secret plans.’

‘You can tell her she’s wasting her time.’ The train heaved itself out of the station and the gates swung open behind it and they drove off in the sudden silence.

‘You’re at the hay?’ Duggan asked.

‘Dry as a bone. We’ll be able to bring it home in a few days.’

They drove in silence for a while and then Duggan took a deep breath when they were less than a mile from home. ‘There’s
something
I wanted to ask you.’ His father waited and Duggan went on after a moment. ‘Remember I told you about Nuala? Supposed to have been kidnapped? She wasn’t, she was just pretending. But her boyfriend has now been kidnapped by the IRA. At Timmy’s behest. They’re claiming he’s a British spy.’

His father gave him a look of surprise.

‘His name is Jim Bradley. His father was an RIC inspector in this area.’

His father took his foot off the accelerator and let the car coast into a gateway to a field and shifted the gear to neutral. He left the engine running and they faced each other.

‘Nuala told me about the Bradleys and Timmy. That Mrs Bradley
did a deal with him. Sold him her uncle’s house very cheap in return for leaving her husband alone. But he was shot anyway. Crippled.’

His father turned away and looked through the wooden gate at the field beyond and said nothing. Duggan turned his attention to the field too; he knew it as a great area for rabbits and could see the rising ground pockmarked with their burrows.

‘I thought as much,’ his father said at last. ‘I didn’t know for sure but I always suspected something like that.’

‘He says he didn’t shoot him.’

‘He was upset when Bradley was shot. Claimed that Bradley was feeding him information and shouldn’t have been targeted. But he’d never told anybody that, had never said anything about him, good, bad or indifferent.’

Duggan took another deep breath. ‘He kind of implied that you did it.’

His father’s look of surprise answered his unasked question and Duggan felt a weight rise from his shoulders.

‘He said that? That I shot him?’

‘No, he didn’t actually say it,’ Duggan said. ‘He implied it. You know the way he talks. Warned me that was a road I didn’t want to go down. Who shot Bradley.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ his father shook his head. ‘Timmy.’

Duggan took out his cigarettes, offered his father one and lit both.

‘Nobody set out to get Bradley in particular,’ his father said. ‘All RIC men were fair game whenever a volunteer saw an opportunity. And that’s what happened with him. One of the lads saw him on his own one day.’

‘Coming from Mass.’

His father nodded. ‘He didn’t move about much on his own. Maybe that explains why he was on his own that time. Thought
he was safe because of Timmy.’

‘He didn’t know about the deal. His wife never told him. I think he still doesn’t know.’

‘He’s still alive?’

‘Lives in England. He’s in a wheelchair and his wife has had a heart attack. That’s why Nuala wanted to get money out of Timmy.’

His father blew a stream of smoke out the side window. ‘Timmy was angry afterwards. Said Bradley was going to tip him off about a visit by some of the RIC top brass. But Timmy had never told the intelligence officer that. Or anyone else. And nobody paid much attention to his complaints. He was always about to pull off some great operation or other. Always waiting for another piece or two of intelligence to be put in place. But I did wonder later when he moved into that place after the truce.’

They smoked in silence. After the relief, Duggan felt anger at Timmy’s devious attempt to deflect him. All Timmy had succeeded in doing was further alienating him.

He filled in the gaps in the story for his father, how Nuala had met Bradley, her ransom attempts, his own encounter with Ward, and how he had been pursuing all this while supposed to be working for G2. ‘Should I report it all?’ he concluded.

His father gave his dilemma only a moment’s consideration. ‘Yes,’ he nodded decisively. ‘You needn’t feel any loyalty to Timmy. And it’s your duty to report everything you know.’

‘I suppose so,’ Duggan agreed, not relishing the prospect.

‘You’ve taken it as far as you can. You have to hand it over now to people who can take it further.’ His father paused. ‘Suppose this Bradley lad is killed. How will you feel then? When you knew things that might have got him released?’

Jesus, Duggan thought. That was something he hadn’t really
thought about. He hadn’t seriously thought that they would kill him. All over Timmy’s greed. And Nuala’s games.

‘But I don’t know where he is.’

‘Maybe the extra information you can give G2 will add to other things they already know. Maybe Timmy knows. Maybe they can get information out of him that you can’t. Maybe they can persuade the IRA that he’s not a spy, that it’s a personal vendetta. You don’t
necessarily
know the whole picture. You shouldn’t assume you do.’

Duggan wondered again if McClure knew something about what he was up to.

His father dropped his cigarette butt out the window and put the gear into reverse but kept his foot on the clutch. ‘Things happen in war that should never happen,’ he said after a moment. ‘It brings out the best in some and the worst in a few. Most just try to muddle through it as best they can. Once it starts most of it is out of
everyone’s
control. It has its own logic and it can be a terrible logic. Totally heartless,’ he shook his head as if at a memory and paused, making no effort to move.

‘It was the best time of my life and the worst time of my life,’ he said. ‘And most of the time I don’t know which it was. I saw men do heroic things and I saw men do terrible things. You can’t remember one and forget the other. But,’ he looked at his son, ‘at the end of the day the rightness of the cause is not changed by the wrongness of
individual
actions.’

Duggan nodded, taken aback by the anguish in his father’s face, an anguish he had never seen before. He wanted to ask him for details, what it was he was talking about, but he couldn’t. It didn’t seem right. It was up to him to tell him or not.

His father let up the clutch and eased the car back onto the road.

‘Please God you won’t have to go through it,’ he said as they went
forward again. ‘We’ll be able to keep out of it this time in spite of all the armchair generals and amateur strategists plotting this and that.’

Duggan flicked his butt out the window and they passed a
neighbour
driving a horse and low cart with a cock of hay and two children sitting on its dipping back.

‘You won’t mention anything about Timmy and Nuala to your mother,’ his father said, half order, half question.

‘No, of course not.’

‘She’d only tell Mona and there’d be hell to pay.’

‘Mona might know some of it already,’ Duggan suggested. ‘Nuala thinks so.’

‘I doubt it. They tell each other everything. And if Mona knew about it I’m sure your mother would too. And I’d have heard about it.’

They drove up the driveway and were smiling when they went into the house.

‘What happened you?’ his mother looked at his face. The bruise was fading fast but still discoloured.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just a knock. Playing hurling.’

The sun was still well above the horizon when they arrived back at the station. Neither had mentioned Timmy during the afternoon as they worked on a neighbour’s hay, gathering it in from small heaps around the field and tossing it onto large cocks and tying them down. Duggan relaxed into the mechanical routine, enjoying the light
physical
exercise, listening to the desultory chatter around him.

The level crossing gates clattered shut behind them and a minute later they heard the tracks vibrating as the train approached. ‘Take care of yourself,’ his father said, loading the ritual words with feeling as he shook Duggan’s hand.

‘You too,’ Duggan said, holding onto his hardened hand for a moment before he got out.

The carriage was almost empty and he watched the familiar
landscape
slide by, feeling more at ease than he had been on the way down. At least he knew now what he had to do, even though he wasn’t
looking
forward to it. But his father was right. Whatever the consequences for himself, he couldn’t risk anything happening to Jim Bradley just because he was afraid of providing information to his superiors. At worst they’d probably send him back to the infantry, maybe demote him.

At Athlone station he watched the heavy trunk from the water tank swing over the engine to top it up and lit a cigarette. As they set off again he turned his thoughts to Harbusch and tried to force
himself
to go through everything he knew about him, Eliza and Kitty Kelly, the letters they had intercepted and the patterns of their daily activities.

His efforts to examine it all methodically broke down long before they reached Dublin and his thoughts roamed at random over Harbusch and Eliza and Timmy and Nuala. An idea occurred to him but he dismissed it with a half smile as being too fanciful as the train chugged into Westland Row. Gifford was standing on the platform, his hands behind his back, rocking back and forth on his heels in a parody of a policeman.

‘What’re you doing here?’ Duggan asked in surprise.

‘Pursuing enquiries,’ Gifford continued his pantomime
performance
. ‘There have been developments.’

‘What?’

‘Billy the bard wants to talk,’ Gifford fell into step beside him and they headed for the steps beside the bar and went down towards the street.

‘Now?’ Duggan felt his hopes rise. Maybe they could work this all
out and free Bradley without having to report anything about Timmy.

‘Now.’ Gifford stopped behind him on the stairs and took a small piece of hay from the back of Duggan’s hair. ‘Ah ha,’ he chuckled. ‘A clue. You went down there for a roll in the hay.’

‘Just to make hay.’

‘And was the sun shining?’

‘The sun is always shining down there.’

They came out of the station and Duggan went to his bicycle which was chained to the church railings next door. Gifford got up on the crossbar and said, ‘Onwards, and don’t spare the pedals. And mind the tram tracks. It wouldn’t do to really fall off.’

‘Stop,’ Duggan said, picking up speed. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’

‘Just listen and keep pedalling,’ Gifford said as they went up Pearse Street and crossed O’Connell Bridge. There was little traffic and few pedestrians to be seen on the evening streets. ‘I talked to the owner of that garage. He rented it to a lad called O’Brien who I think is Billy’s sidekick, the one who was with him when they interrupted your
daydreaming
in Wicklow Street.’