Echobeat (15 page)

‘The whole country thinks it knows what’s going to happen next,’ Duggan said. ‘Without knowing half of what’s going on.’

Sullivan picked up a message and waved it at Duggan. ‘Your girlfriend’s looking for you again.’

Duggan glanced at the handwritten note. ‘Please contact Gertie as soon as possible.’

‘Can’t get enough of it, can she?’ Sullivan sniggered. ‘What does she see in you anyway?’

‘No point trying to explain it to you,’ Duggan smiled, as he picked up his phone, ‘if you can’t see it yourself.’ He glanced at his watch: it was just after half-four. He put the phone back on its cradle before the switch answered, deciding he’d call around to Gerda in person. He
grabbed his coat, wondering if he should take the car again. He still had the key in his pocket. It was tempting. This was probably work, though he hoped it wasn’t. Or not entirely.

‘Is this Gertie a real person?’ Sullivan watched him with a crooked smile. ‘Or just another code name for that fucker Gifford?’

‘Can’t talk now,’ Duggan put on his coat. ‘Got to run.’

‘You’re not a pair of homos, are ye?’ Sullivan said as he left and shouted after him. ‘Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’

Duggan paused a moment in the corridor to reach back his arm and give Sullivan a backwards victory sign through the open doorway. Sullivan’s laugh followed him out.

He took his bicycle, reckoning it could be quicker as the evening traffic built up, and wanting some exercise. He cycled fast on the tracks cleared in the snow by the metal-rimmed wheels of carts, along by the tenements on Benburb Street, by the back of the Four Courts, by the deserted markets, and up to O’Connell Street. He chained his bike to a lamp post outside Gerda’s office, glancing up at her window. The reflection from a shop’s lights across the street bounced off it and he hurried inside, fearing he was too late. She was at the top of the stairs, locking her office door, and turned and looked down as she heard the street door close. A slow smile spread over her face. He went up the steps two at a time and took her in his arms.

‘You were running,’ she said when they broke apart.

‘Cycling,’ he said. ‘Just got your message.’

She opened the door and they stepped inside and she locked it behind them. Neither said a word and she took his hand and led him into the inner office. He shrugged off his coat and she undid the knot in her scarf and shook her black hair free and he opened the buttons on her overcoat as she gave him a series of urgent kisses on the lips. When they had undressed each other they spread his coat on the cold linoleum, she rolled up her coat as a pillow and they lay down.

‘Is it safe?’ he murmured before he entered her.

‘
Keine Sorge
,’ she whispered. Don’t worry.

Afterwards, he lay on his back and she rested her head on his shoulder. He became aware of their surroundings as their bodies cooled and he ran his fingertips up and down her back, onto the hollow of her waist, over the hump of her hips and down the outside of her leg, feeling the firm smoothness of her skin. The corner of her boss’s desk loomed over them in the murky light and cinders glowed through the ashes of the dying fire. From outside came the sounds of the evening rush hour, hurrying footsteps, a newsboy’s repeated shouts of ‘
Herald!
’ or ‘
Mail!
’, an occasional door banging, the screech of bus brakes, the metal grind and clang of a tram, and the clip-clop of a trotting horse.

After a while she raised herself and went onto her hands and knees towards the fire. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said over her shoulder and she picked up a poker.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, watching her.

She shook the poker at him and then prodded the fire to bare the burning coals. She exchanged it for a tongs and hovered over a coal scuttle. ‘Will we risk some more?’ she turned to him, holding up a small lump of coal.

‘Hmm,’ he agreed. ‘What’s the risk?’

‘I think Mr Montague counts the lumps of coal.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m serious,’ she looked at the lump of coal. ‘He’s very careful. Counts the pencils and paper. I have to ask for a new one and explain what happened to the old one if I’ve lost it.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true.’ She dropped the coal on the fire. ‘There. We’ve done it. Will we risk another one?’

‘Yeah,’ he raised himself on an elbow and sifted through the pile of clothes, looking for his jacket pocket. ‘Or maybe it’d be safer to burn the pencils.’

‘Oh, no,’ she picked up another lump of coal and dropped it on the fire. ‘How would I explain the missing pencils?’

‘How are you going to explain the missing coals?’ He found his cigarette case and felt for the lighter in the other pocket.

‘How would I know what happened to the coals?’ She dropped a third coal onto the fire. ‘There,’ she said with satisfaction and crawled back to him. He flicked open his cigarette case and held it out to her.

‘We can’t smoke,’ she lay down and snuggled up to him again.

‘Why not?’

‘Mr Montague hates cigarette smoke.’

‘He won’t notice.’

‘Oh, he will. He notices everything.’

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘No, I’m serious.’

‘No, you’re not.’

She raised her head to look him in the eye. ‘Yes, I am.’ She bent forward to kiss him lightly. ‘Are we having our first fight about Mr Montague’s nose?’

He laughed and she put her hand on his stomach and said, ‘Do that again?’

‘What?’

‘Laugh.’

He laughed and she pressed her hand on his stomach. ‘It’s nice to feel a laugh as well as hear it,’ she said.

‘You’re great,’ he said.

‘What I am is cold,’ she replied.

‘We’ll get under the coat,’ he said, and they rolled off it and back under it again.

‘Ouch,’ he said as the linoleum touched his skin. ‘That’s colder.’

She rolled on top of him and said, ‘That’s better.’

‘For you.’

‘And not for you?’

‘Yes,’ he pulled the coat over her and slid his hands under it. ‘For me too.’

They made love again and then lay as they were, their feet cooling beyond the cover of the coat. Flames licked around the new lumps of coal, casting jumpy shadows around the room while the sounds from outside eased. The traffic noises had become more sporadic and the newsboys’ cries had been replaced by a ticket tout outside the window offering tickets for the main evening showing at the Carlton cinema.

‘I do have something to tell you,’ she said. ‘Why I called you.’

‘I thought you just wanted to see me.’

‘That’s why you came in a hurry?’ she smiled.

‘Of course.’

‘And I wanted to see you too.’ She moved off him and onto the floor with an intake of breath as her side touched the cold lino. He turned on his side and moved back, letting her share the area his body had warmed. ‘But there is something to tell you too.’

He said nothing, closing his eyes, not wanting to come back to the real world with its uncertainties and dilemmas and threats. She said nothing either and he opened his eyes after a few moments and she was looking into them in empathy. They kissed slowly, a confirmation of mutual understanding rather than passion, and then he said, ‘Tell me.’

‘I got a phone call from Yvonne,’ she sat up.

‘Yvonne?’ He sat up beside her.

‘You met her. A waitress in Mrs Lynch’s? Who saw you when you were waiting for me outside?’

He nodded, remembering.

‘Roddy Glenn stopped her in the street today when she was out
shopping during her break. He said he wanted to contact me. Asked her where I live.’

Duggan nodded, aware this could be a breakthrough, but still reluctant to break the passing moment. He sighed and asked what Yvonne had told Glenn.

‘She said she couldn’t tell him where I live because she doesn’t know. But that she would give me a message next time she saw me. He was very insistent, she said. Kept saying it was important, very important, that he see me again. As soon as possible.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Down in Mary Street. Around the corner from the café. You know?’

He nodded.

‘She said she’d give me the message when she saw me but she didn’t know when that would be as I didn’t work there all the time. She asked him how I would get in touch with him.’

‘And?’ Duggan felt his interest come fully alert.

‘He said he was moving digs at the moment and it’d be easier for him to contact me.’

‘So he is in hiding,’ Duggan nodded to himself. ‘She wanted to know what she should say to him if he contacts her again. I said I’d think about it and asked her to call me tomorrow. And then I called you.’

Duggan stared at the fire, repressing the urge to have a cigarette and trying to focus on the best thing to do. The obvious thing was to arrange a time and place for Gerda to meet Glenn and nab him. Which might put her in danger, depending on who Glenn really worked for. She didn’t have to turn up but that wouldn’t ensure her safety: Glenn and his masters would know who had set him up.

‘When’s she going to meet him again?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve any definite arrangement.’

The best thing was to find out when Yvonne was meeting Glenn: surveillance could pick him up then. That’d get them onto him and keep Gerda out of it.

‘Yvonne thinks he fancies me. That’s what it’s about.’ Gerda put her head to one side and gave him a wry smile. ‘Would that make you jealous?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll beat him up the first chance I get.’ She looked shocked and he gave her a broad smile and added, ‘Everything that keeps us apart make me jealous.’

‘That’s a better answer,’ she kissed him, partly with relief.

They stood up and dressed and she looked around the room to make sure nothing was disturbed. In her office, she tied the scarf under her chin and asked him what she should tell Yvonne when she called.

‘Let me think about it,’ Duggan said. ‘I’ll call you first thing in the morning.’

‘I can meet him again,’ Gerda looked him in the eye. ‘And get more information.’

‘It could be dangerous.’

‘Why? Who do you think he is?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what we need to find out.’

‘I’ll ask him.’ She shrugged like it was the most obvious thing to do.

Duggan shook his head. ‘Let’s think about it overnight.’

‘You have to talk to your superiors,’ she said, a statement of realities.

He nodded. ‘But I want to think about it myself first. I don’t want you to be in any danger.’

‘I don’t think he’s dangerous. He’s harmless.’

‘Maybe. But the people he’s working for may not be.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because he has very serious information.’

‘What?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Very secret documents.’

‘For the Nazis?’

Duggan nodded. ‘For everybody. For the Americans, too.’

‘What have the Americans got to do with it?’

He kissed her to stop her questions, not wanting to refuse her anything. She responded but when they had finished she was still giving him an inquisitive look, not diverted. He shook his head in a silent apology.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

‘I just don’t want you to be in danger,’ he repeated. ‘Of any kind.’

She gave him a grateful look and he followed her down the stairs and onto the footpath and waited while she locked the outer door. The air was cold and sharp, tinged with turf smoke and the acrid smell of the city’s gasworks drifting up from the docks. The ticket tout made for them but Duggan shook his head while he was still at a distance and he veered away towards another couple. Duggan glanced at the sky to see if it was clearing but couldn’t make out anything above the haze of the limited city lights.

‘Are they coming again tonight?’ Gerda asked, following his glance.

‘I think we’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘The weather isn’t due to clear yet.’

‘Just in time,’ she said, catching sight of her bus approaching and moving towards the stop

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he said.

‘I thought you were cycling.’

‘On my bike.’

She gave him a soft punch in the arm. ‘I’m not getting up on any fella’s crossbar,’ she laughed, putting out her hand to stop the bus. ‘I’m a respectable woman from Cork.’

The bus pulled in and she placed her open palm on the side of his
face and stepped onto the platform. The conductor hit his bell and the bus got into gear and heaved itself away, leaving a belch of oily exhaust smoke behind. She remained on the platform and he watched her recede until the bus went into Parnell Square and he couldn’t see her any more.

He cycled back along the quays, feeling his feet were barely pushing the pedals, tasting the hint of snow on the air, savouring the limited lights and wider shadows, energised. He took his time, smoking as he cycled, but seemed to get there faster than ever, pushing up the last stretch of hill, in the gate and back around to the Red House.

His office was empty, Sullivan’s end of the table cleared of everything, indicating that he had left for the night. He found Commandant McClure in his office, twiddling a pencil instead of his usual cigarette and frowning at a page of what Duggan knew from the flimsy paper was a carbon copy of a garda report.

Duggan told him of Glenn’s attempt to contact Gerda and McClure leaned back in his chair and tossed the pencil on the desk with relief. ‘What do you think we should do?’ he inquired.

‘Pick him up when he contacts the other waitress,’ Duggan suggested.

‘Arrest him?’ McClure said in surprise.

‘I mean put surveillance on him.’

‘And how do we know when that’ll happen?’ McClure sounded disappointed. ‘When he’ll approach her again.’

‘We don’t know exactly,’ Duggan admitted, aware how weak the idea sounded.

McClure stared at him for a moment, increasing his discomfort. ‘Is our friend willing to meet him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you think she could handle it?’

Duggan nodded.

McClure lapsed into silence again, keeping his eyes on Duggan. ‘What do you think of her?’

Duggan shifted in spite of himself, not wanting to have this conversation but unable to stop himself signalling his feelings. ‘She’s reliable. Observant. Reports regularly and accurately. As far as I know.’