The City of Strangers (44 page)

Stefan Gillespie sat in the small, cramped sitting room of the farmhouse. Like the one at Kilranelagh it wasn’t used every day, but this one felt like it wasn’t used at all. There were the usual family photographs, but over the fireplace and on the mantelpiece they were bigger, much bigger; and they were all of the same man, not much older than Stefan. He didn’t need telling it was Luke McCarthy, Colm’s father. The room was a shrine.

Colm McCarthy had decided to tell the truth. Silence had been the original plan, but other people in the team had spoken now. It didn’t matter anyway. He would say what had happened and he would say what he felt. He hadn’t killed John Cavendish, but he wasn’t troubled by his death. This was the man who had shot his father in the head, seventeen years ago, because he wouldn’t give away his IRA comrades. This was the man who had ordered his Free State soldiers to drag Luke McCarthy’s body to Pallas Strand and bury it there in the sand, to show the people of Béarra the price of being an IRA man; to show what might be in store for those who sheltered the rebels and lied for them and hid their guns.

He had known John Cavendish’s name since the day he ran down to the beach and saw his father’s body, and the black holes where his eyes had been. He remembered it all. Would anyone deny a son the right to beat the hell out his father’s killer? If that’s what they were there for, he had no problem telling these Free State gobshites what he had done. And he would have done more; maybe he should have done more. If his friends hadn’t dragged him away, maybe he would have killed John Cavendish. And if he had done he’d have told them to their faces. As it was he was happy to tell them he hoped the man was rotting in hell. However his father’s killer died in New York that night, it was a better death than he had given Luke McCarthy, his father.

It wasn’t much more than Stefan Gillespie and Gearóid de Paor had anticipated. What the hurler had to say added no new information. It was the story they already knew. It was consistent in a way that Stefan recognised as being unpractised, unrehearsed. He stopped the questioning abruptly; they had heard it already. If there was more to say, McCarthy was hiding it well. And if Stefan had unsettled him by his presence at the Hampshire House that night, it had achieved nothing.

Gearóid de Paor had sat in the armchair across the room from the hurler, simply watching him. He had said nothing.

Now the older man, Aidan McCarthy, sat in the room, looking far less easy and far less defiant than his nephew. He glanced at the photograph of his dead brother, forever thirty-five, on the chimney breast. It was the deep past that was closer to him today than anything that happened in New York.

‘When the lads came back down to the party, they told you what had happened to Captain Cavendish,’ asked Stefan. ‘Wouldn’t that be right?’

It was a question, but he wasn’t asking Aidan McCarthy to deny it.

‘And you told them to clear off out of it, back to the hotel?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then what?’

Aidan McCarthy frowned, as if he genuinely couldn’t remember.

‘What did you do? Did you go and see if the captain was all right?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t think that might have been a good idea?’

‘They’d given him a beating, that’s all. I believed what they told me. And I still believe it. They gave him a going over, that’s all there was to it.’

‘You were meant to be keeping an eye on these lads. Am I right? That’s why the Cork Board sent you, to help the bainisteoir and keep them out of trouble. Did you think it was all right for them to wander round New York, pissed as fucking hell, beating up anybody they took a dislike to?’

‘As far as I knew he wasn’t badly hurt. And he wasn’t just anybody, was he? You’ve heard enough to know who he was, and what he did here, to Colm’s father, to my brother. We don’t apologise for remembering. I don’t know how he ended up dead, but I know they didn’t do it. That’s the truth.’

Gearóid de Paor got up slowly. He had been sitting in an armchair, watching Aidan McCarthy as he had watched his nephew, lighting a series of cigarettes that he hardly smoked and stubbing them out in an ashtray as the ash dropped off. He walked across the room and looked out of the window.

‘I know better than that, Mr McCarthy, and so do you.’

‘I don’t. The man was good enough when they left him. How many times do I have to say it? I’m sure there was blood and I’m sure he was hurt, but he wasn’t dead. I just sent them to the hotel and then I went back too.’

‘I’m not talking about that night,’ said de Paor, turning round, ‘though I’m sure you know more about that too. I’m talking about something else.’

‘I’m not with you, Mr de Paor.’

‘You know very well John Cavendish didn’t kill your brother.’

Stefan knew it would come at some point; he had seen the notebook.

Aidan McCarthy stared. Then his face was red with anger.

‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Everybody in Béarra knows it!’ shouted McCarthy.

‘I wouldn’t say everybody. There’d be some old IRA men who know better. Wouldn’t you be one of them, Aidan? Weren’t you there for it all?’

McCarthy frowned in a kind of disbelief, but he wasn’t shouting now.

De Paor sat on the arm of the sofa and lit another cigarette.

‘But that’s history. Know your history, that’s what we’re always told. Know your history and never forget it. Well, I know more of yours than you seem to remember yourself. Now answer the sergeant’s fucking questions!’

Aidan McCarthy’s head dropped down. There was a long silence.

‘What happened in New York, Mr McCarthy?’ said Stefan quietly.

‘I didn’t go up there. I didn’t want to see him. I just told –’

Stefan waited.

‘I don’t know how he died and that’s the truth of it. I wanted to get out of the place. He said there wouldn’t be any trouble. He said he’d sort –’

‘I see. You told someone what had happened. Who was that?’

‘It was a policeman, a New York cop. Mr Carroll introduced me to him at the Polo Ground, before one of the matches. He was a friend of Mr Carroll’s and he was a Clan na Gael man. We had a drink with him in McSorley’s one night. He said if there was a scrape or a mess, the lads –’

‘What was the man’s name?’ asked Stefan; but he knew already.

‘He was a captain, Aaron, I think it was, Captain –’

‘Phelan.’

‘Captain Phelan, that’s him.’

‘And you told him the story?’

‘I told him about the fight –’

‘No, I mean the whole story. You told him why they’d followed him up there at all, what it was he’d done. You’d have wanted him to know that.’

Aidan McCarthy didn’t reply.

‘You didn’t tell him?’

‘I told him something. I needed to explain –’

‘What did you think when you heard Mr Cavendish had fallen thirty-two floors off the Hampshire House? Some way to tidy up a mess! But there was more than one mess being tidied up for you. It must have been a relief?’

‘I promise you I didn’t know.’

‘No, I don’t think you did. But you’d have wondered.’

McCarthy shook his head.

‘All right, now get out,’ said Stefan sharply.

Commandant de Paor looked round, surprised.

McCarthy stood up. He looked at them. It was a strange look, as if he was asking for their help in some way. He didn’t want to be in the room and yet something stopped him leaving. He didn’t want what was outside either.

‘I said get out.’

McCarthy went. He was more afraid than when he had walked in.

‘Explain,’ said de Paor.

‘You know who Aaron Phelan was,’ answered Stefan. ‘The NYPD captain I’ve told you about. Clan na Gael, IRA, and the man who cleaned up after Dominic Carroll, and not only where politics was concerned either. You might remember he was the man who was going to shoot me, before Mr Katzmann decided to do some cleaning up of his own. So I’d believe Aidan McCarthy. I’d say he really did think Aaron Phelan would smooth things over with John Cavendish and make sure there wasn’t a fuss. I don’t suppose it entered his head the man would walk up there and throw him off the terrace. But that’s what I’d say he did. I don’t know why. Maybe it was an opportunity he couldn’t resist. Maybe somebody in the IRA had suspicions about John. Phelan was part of a plan they couldn’t take chances with. Or maybe he just bought Aidan McCarthy’s story, the way everybody in Béarra bought it for seventeen years. Maybe he thought it was a fitting end to St Patrick’s Day. He’d have been drunk enough. I don’t know who knew what in the NYPD. I’d guess they just thought they were covering up for the hurlers.’

‘So now we know,’ said de Paor.

Stefan nodded; for what it was worth, they knew.

‘It doesn’t make me feel any better, Sergeant.’

‘Did you think it would?’

The G2 commandant smiled, shaking his head.

‘I’m sorry, sir. There’s no crime here. There’s nowhere to go with it.’

Gearóid de Paor looked up at the photograph of Luke McCarthy.

‘There’s still the truth.’

He got up, stubbed his cigarette into an ashtray, and walked out.

In the farm kitchen Maura McCarthy was putting peeled potatoes into a pan on the range, with a kind of intensity that she rarely wasted on potatoes. Colm McCarthy was at the window, just looking out at the guards in the yard, drumming his fingers on the sill. He turned round as de Paor entered.

‘Are you going to fuck off now?’

‘Yes, Mr McCarthy, we are going to fuck off. Where’s your uncle?’

‘He went for a walk.’

‘Maybe down to the beach,’ said the commandant, coldly.

‘You’ve had your say.’ Maura McCarthy stepped from the stove. ‘Leave us alone. If you stay in Béarra any longer you might need a gun to protect you.’

‘I’ll leave you this, Mrs McCarthy,’ replied the G2 officer, ‘not that I think you need it. I’m sure you know. I’m sure you’ve always known.’

He took a paper from his pocket; a carbon copy of a typed page.

‘A report from a Lieutenant Cavendish, two days after he arrested your first husband and brought him to Castleberehaven for questioning. A guard had been killed at Kenmare. You’ve maybe forgotten about that bit.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ exclaimed Colm. ‘What’s this now?’

‘That’s right, Mrs McCarthy. Know your history. I said the same thing to your second husband, just now. Well, that’s your history, there.’

He looked round at Colm McCarthy. ‘This is what happened to your father. He was questioned at Castleberehaven, where he said nothing at all, not a single word, as you might expect. He was a brave man, though that’s only John Cavendish’s opinion. He was released around midnight. He was picked up outside the town by the IRA brigadier, Sullivan. Then he was court-martialled as an informer and shot, all in the space of fifteen minutes.’

‘You ignorant, fucking gobshite!’

Colm moved forward. Stefan stepped in front of him.

De Paor wasn’t looking at the son; he was looking at the mother now.

‘Lieutenant Cavendish doesn’t record the evidence presented against Luke McCarthy. He didn’t know of course. It couldn’t have been much though, in fifteen minutes. Anyway, some bright spark thought, why waste a body when it could be turned into another Free State atrocity? And why not? There were some real Free State atrocities to go with the IRA atrocities after all. We’ve nothing to be so proud about. We were all at it then. So they buried your husband on the beach, and the word went round that it was all the work of Johnny Cavendish and the boys in Castleberehaven Barracks.’

The commandant threw the piece of paper on to the kitchen table.

‘I’ll leave you to tell your son why that isn’t true, Mrs McCarthy.’

The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock.

Commandant de Paor turned to the door. Stefan opened it.

In the doorway the army officer stopped and looked back.

‘I forgot to say why Lieutenant Cavendish was so well informed about what happened at an IRA court martial. The real informer was there for Luke McCarthy’s execution. That would be his brother, Aidan McCarthy.’

De Paor walked out; the truth hadn’t made him feel any better either.

There were no words for a very long moment. It was only as the sound of the cars was fading into the distance that Maura McCarthy spoke.

‘A man can only give what he has. Sometimes it’s not enough. It doesn’t change who we are.’ They were the only words she would ever say.

She walked out of the kitchen, taking off her apron, and went upstairs. The bedroom door shut. When she came back down it would be as if nothing had changed. The only thing she had to throw in the face of it all was her silence. She had made a similar decision seventeen years earlier. And she still had her hate. Her son would still have his too; she had given it to him after all. But for the rest of his life he would not know what to do with it.

*

It was late when Gearóid de Paor dropped Stefan Gillespie in the farmyard at Kilranelagh. They had driven straight from the Béarra Peninsula, barely stopping, saying little. De Paor had children, and a lot of the time he was thinking about them. Just as Stefan was thinking about his son. They both wanted to be home; they both wanted to hold their children. But as the car pulled up at the farm and Stefan nodded goodbye, he was surprised to see so many lamps on in the house and Valerie Lessingham’s car parked there. It was late enough that something had to be wrong.

He hurried into the kitchen.

‘It’s the children,’ said Valerie as soon as he walked in.

‘Tom’s gone,’ continued his mother.

They were dressed in coats and carrying torches.

‘They’re looking at Whitehall Grove. We’ll start here,’ said David.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Jane and Alexander have just gone. I thought they must have come over here, but when Helena went up to wake Tom, she found he’d gone too.’

‘Will you stop saying “gone”! Gone where?’

David Gillespie was a lot less anxious than Helena or Valerie.

‘Well, I think Tom went out the window over the pigsty roof.’

Valerie Lessingham thrust a piece of paper into Stefan’s hand. He recognised her daughter Jane’s very best handwriting.