The City of Strangers (21 page)

‘So how’s New York treating you, Mr Gillespie?’

‘Well enough, thank you.’

‘Maybe too well. You look like you’ve been in a fight. Not that I’d be the sort of woman who’d judge a man by appearances. An accident was it?’

‘In the line of duty, I promise.’

He grinned; she was getting her own back on him. She already knew. It struck him that if she already knew, then she must have asked Cavendish. That wasn’t such a bad thought. There was a hint of mischief in her eyes. But almost immediately it was gone, as if a switch had been thrown. The sparkle had gone; she looked at the captain with questioning expectation.

‘I’ve just got a couple of things –’

John Cavendish gave Stefan an apologetic shrug and didn’t finish a sentence that he didn’t really have an end to anyway. He touched Kate O’Donnell’s arm and steered her away. For a moment the two of them were talking in what was a whisper, despite the noise all around them. There was something intense about it that made Stefan think it was a conversation she wanted and he didn’t; at least he didn’t want it here, in public. The army officer looked at his watch. The woman’s whispers seemed more urgent. Cavendish nodded several times. Then Kate walked off. Unquestionably an arrangement to meet had been made.

Stefan turned away from them, looking towards the children still playing music. He didn’t know why he had been watching them at all. He had no business doing it. But he did know of course. He didn’t like what it seemed to say about the relationship between John Cavendish and Kate O’Donnell. He had only seen her twice, but absurd as it was, he rather wished there wasn’t a relationship between her and another man that required whispers and assignations. As Cavendish came back something was different; he was tense now; his mind was elsewhere.

‘I’ve got a few people to talk to, a few goodbyes to say, but I’m going to think about heading home. I’ll pick you up around ten tomorrow, if that’s all right.’

‘That’s fine. I think I’ve had enough myself,’ nodded Stefan.

Cavendish said nothing for a moment then walked away. It could have been the conversation with Kate O’Donnell, but Stefan wasn’t sure that the incident with the young hurler wasn’t still on his friend’s mind. It had been unpleasant, and there had definitely been more to it than mere drunken misbehaviour. John Cavendish drifted through the crowd of party-goers, stopping briefly to shake hands, joking and exchanging farewells. Stefan watched him. Whatever it was about, the army officer was distinctly uneasy.

Stefan felt suddenly quite isolated. He knew hardly anybody and it felt like everybody else knew everybody. He walked to the window again and looked out at the night. Part of his own reflection looked back at him. He smiled as he thought of the woman again, Kate O’Donnell. It wasn’t that hard to know why he’d been watching her with John Cavendish. He liked her. She made him realise that he needed to be with someone he wanted to be with too.

As he looked out over the park and uptown Manhattan, the room and the party was reflected back at him. He saw the face of Kate O’Donnell again in the glass. He turned to see her a few feet away, looking out of the window too. He was sure she had been looking at him too, via his reflection in the glass. She opened her bag and took out some cigarettes; she put one in her mouth; then she rifled the bag for a lighter or matches she couldn’t find. She looked up, irritated, and met his eyes. He saw that mischief again.

‘Since you’re staring at me, perhaps you can light this cigarette?’

‘I’m sorry. It was –’

‘I’m old enough to work out what it was.’

He laughed, but laughing seemed all right.

‘It’s OK, Mr Gillespie. I guess if you’ve got nothing better to do.’

He took out a box of matches and stepped closer.

‘Do you live in New York?’ he asked; it sounded harmless enough.

‘I didn’t say I didn’t have something better to do.’

He lit a match and held it out. She bent forward to light the cigarette. It could be a moment of odd intimacy, lighting a woman’s cigarette, when the people involved let it be. He felt she was letting it be exactly that now. But as she lifted her head, drawing in the smoke, she was distant again.

A voice behind them was singing now, accompanied by the piano. Kate was looking past him towards the stage. She shook her head with a look of distaste; it seemed even stronger to Stefan; more like contempt.

‘Jesus, here we go.’ She turned and walked away abruptly.

Stefan looked round to see it was Dominic Carroll who was singing now. ‘The minstrel boy to the war has gone, in the ranks of death ye will find him. His father’s sword he has girded on, and his wild harp slung behind him.’ It wasn’t a bad voice, almost in tune, and Carroll was almost sober. People were applauding even as he started singing.

Applause was expected.

‘Worth a try, Steve.’

The voice beside him was Michael Phelan’s.

‘What?’

‘Kate O’Donnell.’

‘Is that her name? I didn’t get that far –’

‘You didn’t get far at all, did you?’

‘It’ll teach me not to stare.’

‘She’s worth staring at some,’ grinned the detective.

‘You know her then?’

‘I wish I did. I’ve met her though. Pretty stuck up. But I guess she’s got a bit to be stuck up about. She works at the Irish Pavilion. I don’t know what she does there. But be careful, Steve. She has friends in high places.’

Stefan looked at Michael Phelan, not sure what he meant. He thought for a moment the grin was about John Cavendish, and what he had witnessed himself. Maybe that was common knowledge, but it seemed unlikely, and he’d hardly have called Cavendish a friend in high places.

‘She’s Dominic Carroll’s sister-in-law,’ said Phelan, lowering his voice. ‘He’s married to her sister, Niamh. Not that you’re going to see her here. But that’s another story altogether. Jesus! Come on, let’s get some food inside us. It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting much else tonight, does it?’

‘No luck either?’ smiled Stefan.

‘Half way there, if she could have got rid of her boyfriend!’

They walked through the crowd. Stefan glanced back at Kate O’Donnell, further along the row of windows, still looking out, still somehow determinedly not a part of what was happening. Dominic Carroll was finishing his song. ‘Thy songs were made for the pure and free. They never shall sound in slavery!’ The applause and cheers were echoing round the room. The boy with the bodhrán and the girl with the accordion struck up a jig.

There was a buffet table in the next room. Michael Phelan, slightly unsteady on his feet, picked up a plate and joined the line. Stefan stood behind him.

As they waited he saw the grey-haired man with the beard, who had put an end to that unpleasant, seemingly unmotivated confrontation between the young Cork hurler and John Cavendish. The man was sitting at a small table on his own. There was a drink in front of him and a plate of sandwiches. Both were untouched. People moved all round him, talking, laughing, pushing, humming snatches of the jig from the other room. Yet it was as if the man with the beard was sitting in an empty room. He saw nothing around him. Stefan was sure he was crying, though his face was as unmoving as his body. He was in another place. It wasn’t a very happy one.

Outside the Hampshire House there was green bunting underfoot and there were green paper flags and green paper flowers in the gutter. It wasn’t so late. People were still out celebrating the day, sober and less sober; families from the suburbs were still occupying midtown Manhattan, though they were only the stragglers now. Stefan had found it hard to get away from Michael Phelan and his friends, as more NYPD men found their way to Dominic Carroll’s party; he had stopped drinking an hour ago, but they hadn’t; they had no intention of stopping. The party had got noisier and more crowded; the big rooms had got hotter. It was a relief to get out into the air.

After everything New York had to offer Stefan found himself thinking about half a dozen tractors parading through Baltinglass and a crowd of children waving the green crêpe-paper flags they had made at school. It was five hours earlier at home; the parade would be long over; Tom, Helena and David would be asleep.

He saw Kate O’Donnell standing at the kerb, trying to hail a cab; the cabs were thin on the ground tonight. She looked frustrated and irritated as several swept by. He watched her for a moment. It was more than irritation. She was upset or worried. It still wasn’t his business. He wanted to walk back to the hotel anyway.

‘For fuck’s sake!’

The voice was Kate’s as yet another yellow cab ignored her.

He smiled and turned back towards her.

‘Are you all right?’

She looked round.

‘Don’t worry, Sergeant Gillespie, I’ve found some matches.’

She took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket. He said nothing as she got one out and lit it. It was another expression of irritation, or whatever feeling it was that she wasn’t hiding very well. But she was good to watch. She did irritation well.

‘Can I help you get a cab?’

‘Do you think I’m beyond calling a cab?’

‘I wouldn’t say beyond –’

‘You try then,’ she stepped back. ‘Show me how it’s done.’

Stefan wished he’d chosen different words, but having chosen them he had to act on them. He stepped off the kerb. Three cabs were heading towards them. He held up his arm and took a few steps further out on to 59
^th
Street. The first cab blasted its horn and swerved out round him. He jumped back, more quickly than he had stepped out.

Kate O’Donnell was laughing.

‘How long have you been in New York?’

‘Nearly two days! It’s not like I don’t know my way around.’

‘I can see you do, Sergeant.’

‘Stefan. It’s Stefan.’

‘I’m Kate, Kate O’Donnell.’

He didn’t tell her he already knew.

She held her hand out. He shook her hand.

‘You were talking to John Cavendish earlier,’ she said.

She looked more serious, as if she was trying to weigh him up.

‘Do you know him well?’

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. A conversation at a party was one thing; he wasn’t certain it was a good idea to advertise how well he knew John Cavendish.

Despite the fact that he had exchanged only a few dozen words with this woman, there was already something complicated about her relationships that suggested he should be careful. She was involved with Cavendish in some way, probably the way he’d rather she wasn’t. She was Dominic Carroll’s sister-in-law. That didn’t make her a very sensible choice for a clandestine relationship on the G2 man’s part. But it wasn’t his business, he reminded himself for the tenth time. Or maybe it was. The intelligence officer had turned up in his hotel room to make at least some of his business Stefan Gillespie’s business. Where did that stop?

She was still looking at him, but in the end she didn’t wait for an answer.

‘Do you know where John is?’ she asked.

‘He said he was going home. That was a while ago –’

‘He wouldn’t have just gone without –’

There it was again; frustration and irritation, and it wasn’t about a cab. It was even more obvious that it went deeper. And alongside all that there was anger, concern, even distress, maybe something like fear too. The smile had gone and the intensity was there again. But she wasn’t going to say any more. She had stopped, aware she was revealing more than she wanted to.

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.’

She turned back to 59
^th
Street. She held out one arm and put the fingers of her other hand to her mouth. She gave a loud, shrill whistle, and this time a yellow cab pulled into the kerb and stopped. Stefan laughed.

‘You’ll have to teach me to do that.’

She opened the cab door and got in. She looked up at him.

‘I’m going to Queens. If you want dropping in Manhattan –’

‘I think I’ll walk, but thank you. I need to clear my head. Besides, I’m only here another day, and I want a walk through New York at night for some reason. No reason in particular except I’ll probably never do it again. And I think I might remember that more than 5
^th
Avenue this afternoon.’

She looked at him. It was the same kind of look he had seen moments before, when he thought she was trying to weigh him up. This time it looked as if she had seen something she could make sense of. She smiled. She understood perfectly, and she liked the fact that he’d said it.

As the cab pulled away he watched it go. He thought she had turned her head and looked back through the window of the cab. Or maybe she hadn’t. He laughed to himself, turning the other way, heading along the south side of Central Park towards 7
^th
Avenue; wishful thinking and a drink too many perhaps. But Michael Phelan was certainly right; Kate O’Donnell was worth staring at. And he was right himself, about that walk back to his hotel through the streets of New York, now quieter and emptier as he went. The New York night had already given him something special to remember.

*

The phone woke Stefan Gillespie up abruptly, though it had been ringing for several minutes. He had been in a deep sleep. Not an easy sleep, and not a sleep that would offer much refreshment; he had had too much to drink for sleep to do anything other than fill up the rest of the night.

His first thought, as he reached out for the telephone, was that he must have said something stupid to the woman, the woman outside the Hampshire House, Kate O’Donnell. It didn’t matter much. He wouldn’t see her again. He was still pulling himself out of sleep as he answered the phone. He didn’t recognise the voice, but there was an urgency in it that pulled his mind back into focus.

‘Slow down will you, Roland. And will you tell me Roland who?’

‘Roland Geoghegan, at the consulate! Mr McCauley told me to call.’

Stefan looked down at the watch on the bedside table.

‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’

‘Mr McCauley is already there. You need to get a cab –’

‘Get a cab where?’

‘He’s waiting for you now!’

‘What?’