Red Herring (7 page)

The other men around the leaner squeezed together.

“Evening, gents,” she said.

“Evening,” they mumbled back, blushing in unison.

“I finished the piece on the Rowley nuptials,” she said to O’Driscoll.

“That was quick,” he said. “I could go over it with you later if you like?”

“Later?”

O’Driscoll stammered. “Later tomorrow, I mean,” he said. “Anyway. What would you like? Pimm’s?”

“G & T, please.”

“Coming right up,” said O’Driscoll. “What about you, Johnny? Another?”

“Good as gold, thanks,” said Molloy, pointing to his jug.

The young woman turned to Molloy. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Caitlin O’Carolan.” She put out her hand.

“Johnny Molloy,” he said, shaking it.

“Oh, I’ve heard about you. You’re O’Driscoll’s friend, the private detective?”

Molloy watched as she pushed back her hair and fixed it with a pin. She was slender, about five feet four, with pale skin and black hair, and eyes the colour of the Irish Sea.

“It’s not polite to stare at a girl, Mr Molloy,” she said, opening her purse and taking out a cigarette case. “Didn’t your mother tell you that?”

“My mother didn’t tell me much about girls, Miss O’Carolan,” said Molloy, coming to. “She left that sort of thing to Dad.”

“Oh?” she said, tapping a tailor-made on the lid. “And what did he tell you?”

Molloy took a box of matches from his pocket. “I’m still waiting for him to get started.”

“I bet you’ve managed to pick up a thing or two on your own, though,” she said, touching his hands with hers as she drew on the flame.

“I was always careful,” said Molloy, dropping the dead match onto the floor. “That’s one thing Dad did tell me.”

She tilted her head back, blew out a thin stream of smoke. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before, have I?”

“I do most of my boozing in Grey Lynn.”

“So what brings you here?”

“Oh, nothing much. I’m working on a case. Needed to check something with O’Driscoll.”

“Gosh,” she said, with the hint of a smile. “Working on a case.”

For an instant Molloy felt as if there was no one else in the room. “
È stato un colpo di fulmine,
” as that rat Fabrizio said about Michael when the latter saw Apollonia for the first time. Struck by a lightning bolt.

“He was saying you used to be a nurse,” he said, trying to return to earth.

“Well, I
went
nursing,” she said, waving it off. “I never sat my States. A cadetship came up at the
Star.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Be a reporter.”

“Enjoying it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh,
enormously
.” She picked a tiny piece of tobacco off the tip of her tongue and managed to make it look elegant. “I cover the social round for the Women’s Page. Deb balls, twenty-first birthdays, weddings, ‘The bride’s mother wore silk organza,’ that sort of thing. It’s the only position open to girls. Apart from copy holding or pool typing or waiting until, I don’t know, you turn thirty and become a lesbian.”

Conversation around the leaner stopped for an instant but Caitlin didn’t notice.

“The minute I’ve completed my cadetship, woosh!” she said, her hand taking off like an aeroplane. “Home, never to return.”

“What will you do over there?”

“Chain myself to the railing in front of the
Manchester Guardian
and not move until they give me a job.”

“But wouldn’t that mean living in Manchester?” said Molloy. “I’ve been there. It’s like Wellington.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be in Manchester for long.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Molloy. “Tom said you wanted to be a war correspondent.”

She frowned. “O’Driscoll’s big mouth,” she said. “But yes, I do. I want to be on the front line, wherever it is. I suppose you think that’s too silly.”

“There’s nothing silly about the front line,” said Molloy.

“No place for a girl, eh?” she said, blowing smoke straight at him. “Don’t patronise me, please, Mr Molloy. I get enough of that at work.”

O’Driscoll threaded through the crowd, shoulders hunched, carefully shielding a gin and tonic. “Sorry to take so long,” he said. He was excited. “I saw Ross Jones from the
Herald.
He’s been down in Wellington. He reckons they’re going to ram through the Public Safety Conservation Act unless the wharfies back down. The Regulations have been set, just waiting for the Government to give the nod.”

“There were soldiers in civvies prowling around Princes Wharf a few nights ago,” said Molloy. “She’s about to blow.”

“You’re so matter-of-fact,” said Caitlin. “The Public Safety Conservation Act is draconian. It’s something Hitler might have dreamed up.”

“Oh, steady on, Cait,” said O’Driscoll. “The wharfies are digging their own graves, don’t you think?”

“No I don’t, actually. I don’t think that at all.” She dropped her
cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with the delicate toe of an English shoe. “What do you think, Mr Molloy?”

Molloy shrugged. “I think the wharfies will come a terrible cropper,” he said. “Pity, because I know quite a few of them.”

“That’s it?” said Caitlin, looking at the two men in disgust. “Honestly!” She put her glass down on the leaner. “Enjoy the swill, gentlemen.” She turned and strode from the bar, moving without effort through the crowd. Molloy and O’Driscoll watched her go.

“Jesus wept,” said O’Driscoll, shaking his head. “Those ankles.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Molloy left the pub and drove to Grey Lynn. It was just before seven. He parked in Chamberlain Street along from number 3. There was no sign of the Baby Austin. On the passenger seat was a camera, a Voigtländer Bessa. In 1945, in the run-up to Trieste, Molloy had found a German hiding in a bombed-out farm building, a bloke in his forties, Oberst i.G. Egon Turtz according to his paybook, a base wallah, hands up and shaking, keen to kamerad like so many of the master race at that end of the show. Turtz held out a photograph and whimpered,
“Meine Frau, meine Sohn,”
a family portrait, himself in uniform, a woman and a child, everyone smiling, much happier in those confident days when
alles
was
über.

Molloy knew the partisans would get him sooner or later, so when the German offered a suitcase full of money in return for his life Molloy had let him go. But not before souveniring his pistol — a Luger — and his camera. The banknotes were Fascist currency as it turned out, not worth two bob. Molloy had used them to buy a Jeep from an American quartermaster in Vienna a few weeks later, and he and two army cobbers, Rex Lawrence from Carterton and Gordon Slatter from Christchurch, had swanned up to Berchtesgaden to see where Hitler used to live. He had held onto the camera. And the Luger. One never knows, do one?

Molloy took the camera out of its leather case, unfolded the lens and framed the front door through the viewfinder, the bellows moving in and out as he turned the focus dial. He cocked the shutter and set the f-top for the darkening light. He put the camera on the passenger seat. Then he took a cheese sandwich from a paper bag and ate it, keeping an eye on the boarding house.

A car drove slowly up the street. Molloy checked his side mirror. A 1939 Chrysler Plymouth four-door sedan, the deluxe P8. He could hear the low rumbling of the big six-cylinder engine, tyres quietly crunching on loose gravel. What strings would you have to pull to get a motorcar like that into the country, he wondered. What sort of baksheesh would be involved? The driver kept leaning over and looking to his left, checking letterbox numbers. He stopped in front of number 3 and got out. He was a Maori, not a common sight in Grey Lynn. He walked up the front steps of the boarding house and knocked on the door.

Molloy reached for his camera and reframed the doorway. A man came out onto the verandah and then forward into the light. In his mid to late thirties, a tough, handsome face, dark wavy hair parted off-centre and pushed back, a cowlick sprung loose. He was wearing a brown sports coat and carrying a canvas ammunition bag under his arm, a hat in his hand. O’Phelan. Or O’Flynn, or whatever he was calling himself today.

Molloy hooked the kickstand over the edge of the half-open window, took a photograph, wound the film, took another and then another. He reframed to the left and got what felt like a good snap of the driver. It would be grainy but there was still enough light. The two men walked quickly to the Plymouth. Molloy slumped in his seat as the sedan turned and drove off down Chamberlain Street. He put the camera on the seat and started the ignition. He did a fast U-turn
and almost crashed into the butcher’s red panel van, which was backing out of a driveway. The driver got out and glared at Molloy.

“Got a licence to drive that thing?” he said.

“Sorry, cobber,” said Molloy.

“Yeah, well.”

Molloy put his car into reverse and backed up a couple of yards, changed into first and drove round the van. There was no sign of the Plymouth. When he got to the junction at the bottom of Chamberlain Street the road was empty in both directions.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Molloy parked in front of the Premier Building on the corner of Wyndham Street and Queen Street where he had an office on the fourth floor. It wasn’t much of a place — one room with a desk and a filing cabinet, and a framed photograph of Phar Lap winning the Melbourne Stakes, left by a previous tenant — but it was somewhere to go during the day. He had the key to a tiny shared kitchen with an electric kettle and a compact Frigidaire, which had somehow made its way there from the US Navy Hospital in Victoria Park after the war. The plastic door on the freezer cabinet was shot and there was rust appearing around the rim, but it kept the milk cold.

He had set up a darkroom in an unused cupboard in the hallway. He closed the door, pulled a curtain across and turned off the safelight, took the roll of film from the Voigtländer and got to work. A few minutes later a strip of negative was clipped to a line with a wooden peg. He set the timer and went into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. He returned to his office and found the number of the Grey Lynn RSC in his notebook. He had applied for a phone line in May the previous year and Post & Telegraph had installed one four months later. It didn’t ring very often but Molloy knew it was the future. He picked up the receiver and dialled, turning the pot twice as the phone rang.

“Are you there?” said Bones Harrington.

“G’day, Bones,” said Molloy. “Johnny here.”

“Who’s that?” said Bones. “You’ll have to speak up.”

“Johnny Molloy.”

“Oh, g’day, Johnny,” said Bones. “It’s chocker tonight. Cops raided the Dublin Club on Sunday. Closed it down, the bastards. Roughed up Basil and them. All their members seem to have come over.”

“That’s no good,” said Molloy. “Is Billy Burgess there?”

“He is,” said Bones. “Want me to get him?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Hang on a tick.”

The receiver clattered onto the bar.

“Billy! You’re wanted on the telephone!” Molloy heard Bones shouting. “Hey, Steve! Get Billy for me, willya?”

Molloy poured a cup of tea.

“Are you there?”

“Hello, Billy,” said Molloy. “It’s Johnny Molloy.”

“How can I help you, son?” said Burgess.

“Wondered if there were any overseas sailings tonight. Auckland or Mangere?”

“There’s nothing scheduled for the next two days,” said Burgess. “The
Moana
’s going to Sydney on Thursday from Napier but she’s just stopping for crew. Otherwise everything’s stuck in the channel.”

“Thanks, cobber,” said Molloy.

“That’s all right, son.”

“Sounds like quite a show in there tonight,” said Molloy.

“Aye,” said Burgess. “All those bastards from the Dublin Club. You heard what happened?”

“I did,” said Molloy. “See you later, Billy.”

“’Night, Johnny.”

Molloy checked his watch, stirred his tea, put his feet on the desk, and opened the previous day’s
Auckland Star.
American, French and Dutch troops were fighting around the Han River near Seoul. The timer rang. He went back into the broom cupboard and unpegged the negative from the line. He got a sheet of glass and a piece of marine ply the same size from under the sink — a do-it-yourself printing frame, something he’d learned from an article in
Popular Mechanics.
Soon he was wiping a proof sheet with a sponge. The telephone rang. Molloy took the sheet into his office.

“Are you there?”

“Hello, Johnny,” said Toomey, the police sergeant. “Pat here.”

“Hello, Pat.”

“I have some information on your friend O’Flynn,” said Toomey. “Also known as O’Phelan.”

“Fire away,” said Molloy, opening his notebook.

“He was arrested for gross public intoxication and common assault on St Patrick’s Day last year, and found to be in the country without permission,” said Toomey. “I’m surprised he wasn’t deported. He wasn’t even charged in the finish.”

“Any clue why he wasn’t?”

“No,” said Toomey. “The file was sealed.”

“Is that unusual?”

“It’s not
usual,
put it that way,” said Toomey. “Particularly since the person he assaulted was a policeman. We look down on that sort of behaviour.”

“I bet,” said Molloy, taking a magnifying glass from his drawer. He looked closely at the images on the proof sheet. There were some good ones of both the Irishman and the Maori.

“On the matter of the licence plate, J328,” said Toomey. “The motorcar is registered to a Miss C. Cotterill of Marine Parade,
Herne Bay. She’s owned it since new. 1947. And before that she had a Whippet, which she had owned since 1927. I’m picturing a mature woman of a conservative bent.”

“Thanks, Sherlock,” said Molloy, hanging up. He wrapped the proof sheet in newspaper, locked his office and walked to Furst’s hotel.

“That’s him,” said Furst. “As a cop you get a feeling. Little hairs on the back of the neck?” O’Phelan’s Merchant Marine ID, the
Bulletin
story and the proof sheet were lined up on the writing desk in Furst’s room. “You’re sure he didn’t see you?”