Red Herring (25 page)

“We’re ready now, sir,” said the voice.

“Excellent,” said Holland. “Count me down.”

He waited for the pips to finish and began speaking.

“Good evening, everyone,” he began, reading slowly, his voice rising and falling. “I have not previously approached the task of making a broadcast to the people of New Zealand with a greater sense of responsibility, or with a deeper sense of public duty, than I do at this very moment. When I took the oath of my office I swore on my honour that I should do my duty to my country and to the
people who put me where I am. Tonight, I honour my pledge to my King and my country, and difficult though the task may be, I feel that my colleagues and I have the backing and goodwill of the people to whom I address myself.”

He turned a page. “The industrial crisis in which New Zealand has been gripped has taken a dramatic and grave turn. A very determined and dramatic effort has been made to overthrow orderly government by force.”

Oh this is good, he thought. This is rousing stuff.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Through connections Caitlin was offered a position on the
Birmingham Post.
It wasn’t the
Manchester Guardian,
but it was getting there. She stood with a cluster of family and friends as all around her excited passengers walked awkwardly up the wooden gangway to the
Rangitata,
bound for London. Cranes swung bales of wool into the
Rangitata’s
hold. Soldiers and sailors, shirts off, loaded wool, butter and frozen mutton onto pallets. Caitlin kissed her mother and shook her father’s hand. He took an envelope from his inside pocket and gave it to her, ignoring her protestations.

She picked up an overnight case, adjusted her scarf, looked around for Molloy one last time, and saw him, leaning against the wall of a cargo shed.

She dropped her bag and ran to him.

“I don’t want to go,” she said.

“It’s where you belong,” he said. “The big wide world.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re just saying that to make me leave.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true,” he said, passing her a handkerchief. “If that boat leaves and you’re not on it, you’ll always regret it.”

“I thought you didn’t go to the pictures,” she said, blowing her nose.

“The USO had a projector at our embarkation camp in Venice,” he said. “And two flicks. A John Wayne and that one. There was nothing else to do.”

“Italy,” said Caitlin. “Of course.”

The
Rangitata
’s foghorn blew. A tugboat’s propeller churned the water. A cheer went up from the crowd on the wharf, followed by a ragged chorus of “Now is the Hour”.

Eyes glistening, she turned and walked up the gangway. At the top she found room and leaned over the rail. She blew him a passionate kiss.

He reached up and caught it in mid-air, closed his fist and brought it in, thumb facing out, hand angled towards his cheek, the salute of the Left Opposition.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Molloy spoke to Tom O’Driscoll, the
Star’s
police roundsman, about the situation with Tom’s younger brother Bruce, and their mother June, who was staying on Bruce’s farm just out of Morrinsville, and looking after his children following the death of his wife from polio. Bruce’s boys were a handful. Molloy told Tom that he knew someone who might be looking for work as a housekeeper and was used to big families. Tom spoke to Bruce, who said that that sounded good. June came up on the train and met Brigid Toomey at Farmers. They got along. Brigid was respectful, and June knew about men like Pat Toomey.

They drove to Arch Hill. June waited in the car while Molloy and Brigid went inside. Brigid packed a suitcase. Molloy climbed up into the ceiling and had a poke round. He drove both women to the station and bought Brigid a ticket to Hamilton with a bus connection to Morrinsville. He gave her a hundred pounds in a sealed envelope, and a kiss on the cheek.

Later that evening Molloy parked outside Toomey’s house. There were lights on inside. He approached the house and knocked.

“Who is it?” said Toomey.

“Johnny Molloy.”

The door opened. Toomey was wearing braces over an unbuttoned white shirt, and holding a glass of beer. He brewed his own from a set-up under the house.

“The man of the hour,” said Toomey, standing back. “Long time no see, as the Chinaman said. Come in. I’m just sampling a new brew.”

Molloy held a glass at an angle as Toomey slowly poured. The policeman put the flagon on the bench. “Cheers.”

“Good luck.”

They drank. It was a lively brew with a good head and a hoppy flavour.

“Not bad,” said Molloy, putting his glass down.

“Tell me,” said Toomey. “And this is the beer talking, probably. Loose lips sink ships, sorta thing? But what’s it feel like to shoot a bloke? Never had the pleasure, myself.”

Molloy put his glass on the kitchen table. “Depends on the bloke,” he said, looking Toomey in the eye. “Some ratbags I wouldn’t think twice about.”

Toomey straightened slightly. “What’s on your mind, John?” he said.

“I want to talk to you about Brigid.”

Toomey looked at him. “What about Brigid?”

“About that shiner you gave her.”

“The effrontery,” said Toomey, putting down his glass. “It’s none of your blasted business. What goes on between a married couple in the—”

Molloy spun off his right leg, sending a hook smashing into Toomey’s ribcage, the false ribs at the bottom, the ones easiest to break.

The policeman doubled over, gasping, one hand on the bench for support, the other wrapped around his middle. Molloy stepped in and hit him again.

“The first one was for Brigid. The second was for setting me up with Sunny Day outside the RSC that night, you gutless bastard.”

“Are you mad?” Toomey said eventually, his eyes watering, face contorted. “Battery on a member of the police? You’ll swing for this, you fucking Communist.”

“Brigid’s gone away,” said Molloy. “She won’t be back. I’ve stashed four hundred quid in a paper bag somewhere round this section. Bloodhounds couldn’t find it. But if I hear Brigid’s so much as stubbed a toe you’re for the high jump, Pat. I’ve got mates on
Truth.
They won’t ignore open corruption, even in the gaming squad.” He washed his glass and put it upside down on the bench by the sink. “Thanks for the beer.”

Molloy drove to the Municipal Baths and stood under a hot shower for a long time. He was hungry. He drove to Greys Avenue and parked outside the Golden Dragon. The dining room was empty apart from a waiter making notes with a pencil on a copy of
Best Bets,
and a woman sitting alone in the corner, smoking. He sat down by the door. The waiter padded over with a plate of bread and butter. Molloy asked for chow mein and a pot of tea. There was a brief outburst of shouting between the waiter and the kitchen, which Molloy assumed had something to do with the lateness of the hour. A pot crashed onto a stovetop. The woman, who had red lipstick and a tight dress, gave the private detective what Sister Colleen would have described as a brazen look. But Molloy didn’t feel like it. He shook his head and the woman went back to her cigarette. He ate dinner, and went home.

T
HE
E
ND

to

MAURICE CULLINANE

and

REX LAWRENCE

with love and respect

Everything that was good from that small, remote country had gone into them — sunshine and strength, good sense, patience, the versatility of practical men.

—John Mulgan,
Report on Experience

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Red Herring
is fiction, “pure bunkum from end to end”, as Jock Barnes might have said, with historical events reordered to suit the demands of the plot. I’ve read a number of books and articles written during and about the period, not so much for their factual content as for their colour. “Pure bunkum from end to end”, for example, is a quote from Barry Gustafson’s history of the National Party,
The First 50 Years
(with its ominous implication that there will be 50 more), as was Sid Holland’s response to the suggestion that he get some flunky to shine his shoes. Bones Harrington’s line to Molloy, “get that down your rotten guts”, is from the late Gordon Slatter’s account of the Italian Campaign,
One More River.
“You pansies never knew what a real war was” is from Slatter’s wonderful novel,
A Gun In My Hand.

The material about F.P. Walsh was suggested by Dean Parker’s 1988
Metro
article, “The Black Prince”, and Graeme Hunt’s 2004 Walsh biography,
Black Prince: The Story of Fintan Patrick Walsh.
V.G. Parker is a salute to Dean’s legendary uncle, Uncle Vic, “the Dzerzhinsky of Grafton Gully.”

Material about the Maori Battalion is based on Monty Souter’s magnificent and moving
Nga Tama Toa,
the reading of which has been one of the delights of this whole exercise. The Thomas Cook heist was suggested by a passing remark in Peter Winter’s vivid account of the Crete Campaign,
Expendable.

I came across the line, “His last radio message was ‘Japanese coming. Regards to all’” in Michael Field’s memoir,
Swimming with Sharks.
The message was sent by Coastwatcher Arthur Heenan, a farmer’s son from Middlemarch, executed by the Japanese in October 1942, on Tarawa in what is now Kiribat.

The description of the colour of the earth on Chunuk Bair — “I would say it was a dull, browny red. And that was blood” — was recounted by Vic Nicholson, a veteran of the Wellington Battalion, in the 1984 TVNZ documentary,
Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story.

Both Michael Bassett and R.C.J. Stone have written about the Kelly Gang, described by the pre-war American Consul-General in Auckland, Walter Boyle, as “dissatisfied conservatives naively endeavouring to run affairs of state from their deep leather armchairs in Princes Street.” Conrad Bollinger, in
Grog’s Own Country,
says that the gang got its name “not because it shared any of the Robin Hood qualities of Ned Kelly’s cohorts but merely because of the similarity of their business methods to those of bushrangers”.
Grog’s Own Country
is also the source of Sid Holland’s remark about the complexity of the Emergency Regulations, “It would take a Philadelphia lawyer to understand them.”

The term “stonking” — described by
The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War
as “the terrifying concentration of the fire of all the divisional artillery upon a single crucial point” — is from Haddon Donald’s
In Peace and War: A Civilian Soldier’s Story.
Donald was CO of the 22nd Battalion and the epitome of the long-service soldier — “22 right through” — from Greece to Trieste.

“The New Zealand Division’s first combined exercise was a battle and they did pretty well” is a reworking of a line from
The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War.
The original is, “Instead of being a training run, our first combined exercise was
to become a battle.” Material on the Greek Campaign is from Christopher Pugsley’s utterly engaging
A Bloody Road Home
and Monty Souter’s
Nga Tama Toa.
My version would not stand a historian’s scrutiny but I think the tone is true.

I read or was told or overheard
somewhere
the description of a young and pregnant woman waiting with her mother for the Limited at Taihape while her father remained in the car, but have been unable to find the source. My apologies. The original is very moving and much better.

“He was a strange bugger, old Peter. Loved funerals.” This line was suggested by material in Gavin McLean’s biography of Peter Fraser on the nzhistory.net.nz site. I have spent many happy hours on both nzhistory.net.nz and TeAra.govt.nz, both of which took me down endless and thoroughly enjoyable rabbit holes of diversion and speculation.

“Landed as Pat Tuohy, left as Pat Walsh.” One of the few unquestionably true things in this book is the fact that why Walsh changed his name and the circumstances of his stay in Ireland has never been satisfactorily explained. There is a caption beneath a photograph of Walsh on page 123 of Redmer Yska’s history,
Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People’s Paper,
that reads, “In 1959 feared union strongman F.P. Walsh threatened to hire a Sydney hitman to shoot
Truth
’s leading lights Cliff Plimmer and J.H. Dunn.” And on the following page, “In a legendary exchange in Wellington’s supreme court Dunn
[Truth’s
publisher] got Walsh to provide his real name and to confess to having once been a communist.”

“Paul Jeffrey, a seagull and part-time music teacher at Seddon Tech, who occasionally sat in for Crombie Murdoch with Ted Croad’s big band at the Orange Ballroom on a Saturday night . . .” This over-egged detail is an opportunity to salute Chris Bourke’s
Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918–1964
about which Gordon Campbell wrote in
Metro,
“If there is any justice
Blue Smoke
will become the
Edmonds Cookbook
of New Zealand popular culture — because truly, every home in the country should own a copy of this impeccably researched, spectacularly illustrated history of how popular music evolved here.” I picked it up initially in the hope of finding where you might get a good cup of coffee in Auckland in 1951.

“The bomber who leaned his armed bicycle against the wall . . .” In trying to work out why O’Flynn might have left Ireland I read about the IRA and came across a number of references to the Mainland Campaign. In a site called
Historic Coventry
run by Robert Orland I read an article on the Broadgate bombing — the low point of the campaign — written by Simon Shaw. The article included this line: “The unknown bomb maker completed his task the following morning.” Unknown bomb maker, eh? I wrote to Simon who said he had got that detail from Tim Pat Coogan’s rollicking history of the IRA (called, prosaically,
The IRA),
which I read for details about the Broadgate bombing and the wider campaign. The bomber’s identity is still unconfirmed although in 1969 a Cork man named Joby O’Sullivan told a journalist with Ireland’s RTÉ, Mike Burns, that he was the perpetrator but that the carnage was accidental. “The intention was to bomb the Broadgate police station but the bicycle wheels kept getting stuck in the tram tracks so O’Sullivan abandoned it and took off.” My nephew, Ed White, told me about the “Twelve Apostles”, Michael Connelly’s squad of IRA assassins.