A June of Ordinary Murders (20 page)

‘There's a couple of other pieces of information that have come to light, Sir. They might be important.'

Mallon raised an eyebrow inquisitively.

‘We found the return halves of two sailing tickets for the mail boat on the woman's body. It appears she and the child crossed from Holyhead on Wednesday last. And it seems likely that they travelled on the train from Chester and perhaps from Liverpool.'

Mallon inclined his head appreciatively. It was a lead, but it might also widen, rather than narrow, the scope of Swallow's inquiry. He sighed.

‘So now, in addition to searching Ireland, all we have to do is search England and Wales as well? I take it you've notified the authorities across the water?'

‘Yes, Sir. We're interviewing all the crew on the mail packets and the Railway Police are checking with the railway staff along the route.'

Mallon nodded.

‘And there was something else?'

‘We've found that the ammunition used in the killings was of a rather unusual type. It was .38 calibre, a low-propellant variety, perhaps the sort that might be used in target practice.'

Mallon raised a doubting eyebrow. It could be of value as evidence if the gun and the person who used it were ever located. But it was scarcely a breakthrough.

Mallon tapped one of the files that comprised his morning report on the desk. ‘I want to revisit the affair at the Academy last evening. Tell me, Swallow, why were you there? You weren't rostered on protection duty.'

Swallow sensed danger again. He had hoped that the conversation would not veer towards his reasons for being at the exhibition. He opted for an answer that was not untrue, but neither was it the full truth.

‘I had promised to meet my sister there, Chief. We both have an interest in painting.'

‘Yes, I remember about your painting. You weren't actually on duty then?'

‘No, Chief, I wasn't. That's why I didn't have my firearm with me.'

‘Well, it's a very good thing that the detective sergeant was there,' Smith Berry said.

Mallon seemed doubtful. ‘Anything else at the moment, Swallow?'

It was Mallon's standard question at the end of any interview with his officers.

‘Not in connection with what we've been speaking of, Sir. But there's a report of a dead woman in the canal at Portobello. The inspector at Lad Lane seems to think there's foul play. Inspector Boyle has assigned me to attend as soon as I can.'

‘Then you'd best get up there, Swallow. Don't linger on it any more than you have to. You can't afford to let the trail go cold on these killings. And with the Jubilee tomorrow we'll need every man we can spare on the streets to keep the city's wilder spirits in their place.'

He nodded towards the door indicating to Swallow to get moving.

FIFTEEN

Swallow was relieved that the topic of his sister had not gone further with Mallon. It would only be a matter of time before her name would come up in the investigation. Someone would make the connection to him. By then it might be too late for him to get her out of trouble.

He hurried to the post office on Dame Street. He scribbled a telegram to Harriet and addressed it to the training college.

MUST SEE YOU WHITES 8 P.M. THIS EVENING JOE

White's coffee shop was on Westmoreland Street, close by the terminus of the number 7 tram that Harriet could take from Blackrock. Swallow and his sister often met there. By 8 p.m., Swallow reckoned, she would be well finished with whatever programme of the day she had to follow at the college.

He retraced his steps to Exchange Court and made for the crime sergeants' room where the investigation team had assembled.

Stephen Doolan was already there, with half a dozen constables. As with the inquiries shift that had assembled earlier in the parade room, the men had sought to position themselves strategically by the open windows to gain a current of air. They supported themselves with their backsides on the window-sills, helmets upside down on their knees like flowerpots.

Detectives Tom Swift and Mick Feore were seated by the doorway, having commandeered two of the sergeants' chairs.

Doolan's left forehead sported a three-inch sticking plaster surmounting an area of black bruising. Seeing it catch Swallow's eye, Doolan pointed to it self-pityingly. ‘Hurling yesterday … yeah … I know I should have more sense at my age.'

‘Or stick to something safer, like cricket,' Swallow cracked.

Doolan grinned. ‘I heard you were engaged in some fairly strenuous physical activity yourself, tackling a pair of Fenians at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Fair dues to you. Who are the two heroes you have in the cells?'

Swallow did not want any focus on the incident, at least until he could ensure that it did not implicate his sister.

‘Two small fish,' he told Doolan. ‘I think they got out of their depth.'

‘Still, I hear they had a loaded
Reichsrevolver,
' Doolan nodded. ‘That's serious, even for small fish, as you call them.'

Swallow sat at the duty sergeant's desk, giving him an elevation over the group. He indicated to Pat Mossop to sit beside him.

‘Good morning again.' He raised his voice to still the hum of conversation.

‘I'd like to be able to tell you that we've made a lot of progress over the past 24 hours, but unfortunately that isn't so. We've got a little more information about when the woman and child crossed from Holyhead, but we still haven't got any identification.'

A murmur of disappointment went around the room.

‘They're going to be interred today at Glasnevin Cemetery. Since there's nobody to claim them they'll be buried in one of the public plots. We'll need a constable there to comply with regulations. Can you have one of your lads there, Stephen, preferably not in uniform?'

Doolan nodded to indicate that it would be done.

‘We believe they crossed from Holyhead to Kingstown on Wednesday on a mail packet that would have docked around noon,' Swallow resumed. ‘So they were here on Wednesday night and during Thursday. They had to stay somewhere and they had to eat somewhere. So the most promising line we can follow just now, I suggest, is to try to find those places.'

Doolan drew on his pipe and expelled a cloud of blue tobacco smoke across the room.

‘Every man on beat across the divisions is checking with the boarding houses and the hotels. So far, there's nothing coming up. Maybe they stayed with relatives or friends in a private house somewhere?'

‘That's possible,' Swallow said. ‘If that's the case it will make tracing their movements a lot harder.'

‘I wouldn't rule it out,' Doolan agreed. ‘The beat men are talking to shopkeepers, cabmen, tradesmen, publicans. I'll ensure they start knocking on the doors of private dwellings too.'

It was difficult to be optimistic, Swallow acknowledged silently. The beat men could not check every house in the city. Up to twenty families might occupy a tenement building that was once the city dwelling of a rich merchant or professional man. In places like these nobody took much notice of comings and goings.

‘What about missing persons in England?' Swift asked. ‘Maybe there's a missing woman and child reported to one of the police forces across the water?'

‘That's been done,' Swallow answered. ‘We telegraphed all the police forces in England, Wales and Scotland yesterday and last night. There's nothing back so far, but a lot of folk are on the move because of the Jubilee. A lot of factories and businesses have given employees a couple of days off work, so someone mightn't be missed just yet.'

Mossop looked up from his murder book. ‘Is there any progress in identifying the carriage marks on the grass?'

He checked the page in order to refresh his recollection. ‘There was to be an inquiry by … Constable Culliton at Hutton's the coach-makers.'

‘Culliton's over at the Coombe again this morning,' Doolan said. ‘Their clerical staff only works a half day on Saturday and they're closed on Sunday. They said if he came back this morning they'd see what they could do for him.'

‘Fair enough,' Swallow said. ‘Stephen, I think your men should probably get out to the F Division at Kingstown and keep checking the smaller boarding-houses there around the harbour.'

He nodded to the two detectives. ‘See what you can pick up from your own informants. There's been more than the usual crime tally over the past few days. You never know where there might be a connection.'

He gathered his papers and called over the hubbub as the policemen began to filter out of the room.

‘There's another dead woman in the canal at Portobello. I'm going up there now. And tomorrow every available man is going to be on special duty for the Jubilee holiday. We'll regroup here again on Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock. If there are any significant developments in the meantime I'll deal with them along with Pat Mossop.'

It was hot and dry across the city, and indoors at Exchange Court it was also humid and airless. Even if the rest of the day was to be a grind of door-to-door inquiries, for the men working outdoors there was the prospect of occasional shade and perhaps some cooler air from the river or the bay.

‘I've a car and driver in the Lower Yard, Boss,' Pat Mossop told Swallow as they came downstairs. ‘We can be at Portobello and back in an hour with a bit of luck.'

Swallow had thought to walk the mile and a half. It would be quicker than the tram that would be running intermittently on its late-morning schedule, but in the gathering heat it would be draining. Mossop's offer of the car was welcome.

The area of the Castle within the walls was divided into a series of Courts and Yards of which far and away the most important was the Upper Yard.

Here the apartments of the great Officers of State were ranked side by side. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Lord of the Exchequer and the Chief Herald were to be found here. So too were the offices of the ‘gentlemen ushers,' who attended the Viceroy when he resided in the Castle during the Dublin ‘season.'

Lesser functionaries like the police, the Army Medical Office and the Office of Works were quartered in the Lower Yard. It also housed the Castle stables and the riding school.

The two great Yards were divided by a cross-block with a high archway. As they made their way to the waiting car, Swallow could see through the arch that the regimental band of the day was preparing for its performance in the Upper Yard. Scarlet tunics and gold braid were illuminated by flashes of sunlight reflected off their instruments.

They crossed to where the police side-car waited in the shade of the Bedford Tower. The driver reined his horse towards the Palace Street Gate, then they were out into the city traffic, moving along Dame Street.

‘You were in with Chief Mallon earlier, Boss.'

Pat Mossop delivered the words as a statement but they were intended as a question.

‘I was.'

Mossop pretended to be interested in brushing dust from his shoes as the car moved through the busy street. ‘How'd it go?'

‘It could've been worse. He has problems from on high. He's worried about what happened last night at the Hibernian Academy, I suppose in case it's part of a wider plan by the damned Fenians or whoever else. And the newspaper stuff this morning didn't help. He had Smith Berry with him.'

Mossop laughed.

‘Well, you're moving in very exalted circles then, aren't you, Boss? That's the cost of high rank, having to worry about that kind of thing. I'd be wary about that crowd if I were you.'

‘You're right, Pat,' Swallow said. ‘It's ironic. They're so worried about the bloody Jubilee and the royal visit, they hardly care that we mistook the dead woman for a man. The main thing worrying Mallon and Smith Berry about the case is the newspaper coverage and how it might reflect on them.'

A hundred yards from where the street rose to meet the Portobello Bridge, Swallow saw the knot of onlookers that invariably marked a Dublin mishap or incident. He caught the sun flashing on a police helmet. He prayed silently that this would be little more than a tragic misadventure, but with his current run of luck he doubted it.

There was nautical chaos on both sides of the Portobello Lock. Up to a score of barges should have moved up and down the narrow waterway by this hour, but they were backed up, east and west. Swallow counted a dozen of them, moored and stationary in the water.

As they drew closer he saw another barge moored just outside the lock. Two constables stood alongside, their backs to the water, preserving the scene. To his dismay, beside the line of uniformed officers, Swallow saw a group of pressmen, among them Irving from the
Daily Sketch.

Twenty yards away, the bargemen, some civilians and another group of three or four policemen formed a half-circle around something that lay covered by a police cape.

The pressmen surged forward as one towards Swallow. He halted and beckoned to the nearest constable, then he pointed to the advancing reporters.

‘If any one of those men causes an obstruction I want him arrested and taken to the Bridewell.'

Irving pointed an angry finger at Swallow and called to his colleagues.

‘That's more fine work by the Dublin Metropolitan Police, lads. Preventing the press from doing their job when they can't do their own. Maybe this time Sergeant Swallow can tell us if it's a man or a woman that's been taken from the water.'

Swallow ignored the provocation and stepped forward to where the body lay. A constable raised the end of the cape a few inches to enable him to see the face.

Swallow did not have much doubt that he was looking at the result of foul play.

‘Who found her?'

‘It was the two bargemen over there, Sir.'

‘Have we any identification for her?'