Red Herring (12 page)

Warren recognised Molloy. He put the barrel of his weapon next to Molloy’s cheek and fired into the pillow. Molloy jerked and slumped and managed to pull the canvas blanket up over his face. The shot careened round his skull for months afterwards, and he still didn’t hear as well as he should out of his left ear, but he was alive. He didn’t like to think what became of the Australian. The International Brigades were no place for sentimental blokes.

Molloy landed back in New Zealand at the end of July 1939. Parker wanted him to do a public speaking tour around the country
to raise funds for Spanish refugees in France. The announcement of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact upset that plan — Stalin and Hitler on the same side. For a few days there was silence from Vince. Then he showed up at Molloy’s to fill him in on the revised Party line. The impending European conflict was an imperialist one, Vince said, of no significance to the working class.

Molloy exploded. What about anti-fascism? What about the Popular Front? What about
¡No pasarán!?

They’d had a go, in the kitchen, out on the front lawn, along Arthur Street, neighbours egging them on. The plods had come and broken it up and both men had spent the night in the cells behind Newton Police Station, cooling off. Next day Molloy resigned from the Party and a few months later he was in Egypt with the First Echelon. He hadn’t seen Parker since.

“Well I never,” said Molloy. He turned to Caitlin. “A cadet reporter who takes her orders from a red-hot Commo.” He turned back to his host. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Vince,” he said. “This really is revolution from within.”

“Takes orders?” said Parker. “Not Cait. She bows only to the will of the proletariat, isn’t that right, Comrade?” He put out his hand. “Good to see you, you backslider. Come in.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

One wall of Parker’s room was lined with bookshelves. There was a single bed in the corner. A small postcard of Lenin unveiling a memorial to Karl Marx in Voskresenskaya Square in 1918 was pinned to the wall above the mantelpiece. An open window looked across rooftops, curtains deliberately arranged to obscure the view of Smith & Caughey’s, bourgeois emporium that it was. On the table stood a Gestetner machine and ink and wipers. Washed dishes dried on a bench next to a gas ring and there was an open bottle of milk and a half a pound of butter under a net cover on the windowsill in the breeze.

“Have a seat,” said Parker, pulling the stools out from under the table. He put the duplicating equipment on the floor and pushed aside a floral curtain under the sink.

“Let’s have some plonk,” he said, taking out a flagon. “Pass us those cups will you, dear.” He poured three nips of sherry. “This stuff’s not bad,” he said. “Old Dally out West called Farac makes it. His uncle was a
Potemkin
man, he reckons, although he could be pulling me leg.”

He raised his cup in salute. “
Za vas
! Here’s to the Great Patriotic War, eh? I heard a bit about your army exploits, Johnny. Big hero and that.”

“What do you want, Vince?” said Molloy.

“Never any beating about the bush with Comrade Molloy,” said Parker, putting the flagon on the floor. He pointed at the dried scab on Molloy’s nose. “That wasn’t from the thumping I gave you that time, was it?” He shook his head. “Those were the days, eh? When you could get an argument going? Now all they’re interested in talking about is footy and the ponies.” He straightened up. “Anyway, you want to know why we brought you here?”

Molloy shrugged. “My line of work, you end up in some odd places.”

“Work? Is that what you call it?” Parker shook his head. “One of my proudest moments,” he said to Caitlin. “When I brought this fella into the Party.” He reached for the flagon. “Now look at him. A
Pinkerton
man.”

“Right-o,” said Molloy, reaching for his hat.

“Comrade!” said Caitlin, looking sharply at Parker.

“Yeah, no, that was out of order,” said Parker quickly, holding up one hand. He put his cup on the table. “Sorry, Johnny. I’m not meself. Have a seat, please. It’s this waterfront business. I can’t sleep worrying about it. Will you hear me out?”

“Go ahead,” said Molloy. “But don’t take all night.”

“Good. That’s good. I appreciate it.” He pointed at the postcard of Lenin on the wall. “First of all, let me read you something that little fella wrote. For context.” He leaned over and opened a drawer in a cupboard next to the bed. He took out a booklet. It was bulging with little strips of torn newsprint denoting key passages. He opened to a bookmarked page. “This is from his
On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State.”

He began reading. “‘The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a
single working class.’” He looked up. “You see that? ‘Conscious of themselves as a
single working class.’”
He gazed at the hectoring Lenin and shook his head in admiration. “The
acuity
of the bloke.” He put the booklet back in the drawer. “Three Musketeers sorta thing. All for one and one for all. United we stand, divided we fall. The
collective will.
Yet there’s Barnes and them, off down the adventurist road,
on their own.”

He ticked his fingers one by one. “Oh there’ll be talk of solidarity, but when it comes to the crunch? The Meat Workers won’t stick with them. Disciplined, see, they know how to take advice. The Seamen? Not a show. Drivers? Likewise. Postal Workers? Never. Magnificent, those bastards. That parasite Walsh has the Clerical Workers and the craft unions wound round his little finger, so forget them. Of course there’ll be the usual renegade elements. Carpenters spring to mind, the ungrateful swine. Miners? Possibly — who can predict which wild path those West Coast Doolans will follow? But no one of
significance,
you get it? None of the
foremost representatives.”
He leaned forward. “The wharfies are walking into a trap pretty much on their own. The wharfies! The Brigade of Guards of the industrial movement! Hard bastards. Street fighters. Control the waterfront, you’ve got the country by the throat. But not these clowns. Not Barnes and them. Jock’s strutting round with his chest puffed up like flamin’ Mussolini, but he’s no Ulyanov, I think you’d agree, you know, in terms of strategic foresight. Instead of controlling the waterfront they’re giving control away! Handing it to Holland and his Yankee cobbers. So why are they doing it? Who’s pulling the levers? Who’s the
controlling element?”
He slammed the table.
“What the fuck is going on?”
He looked at Caitlin. “Pardon me French, Comrade.”

She brushed it off. Molloy sipped his sherry. He wasn’t a sherry man as a rule but Parker was right. It wasn’t bad.

“There’s an agent provocateur in the WWU,” said Parker. “We think it’s — or
was
— Frank O’Flynn. We know you’re poking around, asking questions about him. Can you tell us why? For old times’ sake?”

“Jock wants to know the same thing,” said Molloy.

Parker threw up his hands in disgust.
“Now
he does, when it’s too flippin’ late! I tried to warn that ditchdigger about O’Flynn but he didn’t want to know.”

“Can you help us?” asked Caitlin.

Molloy put his cup down on the table. “What’s in it for me?”

Parker made a growling sound. Caitlin ignored him. “We know something you might find useful,” she said.

“Try me,” said Molloy.

Parker reached for the flagon. “Ah, go ahead, tell him,” he said to Caitlin, pulling the cork.

“O’Flynn isn’t his real name,” said Caitlin. “Which you probably know. But did you know he spent time in prison in Ireland for Republican activities?”

“What sort of activities?”

“He was part of an IRA bomb squad,” she said.

“What the Fenians call the Chemical Wing,” said Parker, putting the flagon back on the floor. “He tried to assassinate the Earl of Galway at the opening of the Cork Town Hall in 1938, amongst other things.”

“He was caught but he escaped,” said Caitlin.

“From
Mountjoy Gaol.
” Parker shook his head. “In the heart of Dublin! More people have escaped from blimmin’ Alcatraz than the Joy.”

“What are you saying?”

“That he ratted on his cobbers,” said Parker. “So the authorities let him go. See, this is a bloke with a history of informing.”

“How do you know all this?” said Molloy.

“It’s the Party’s business to know. He was given a new name and passage to America. Perfect place for a rat.”

“How did he end up here?”

“Bugger off,” said Parker. “It’s your turn.”

Molloy paused for a moment. “Well, Miss O’Carolan saved my bacon tonight. So I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Jolly good,” said Parker. He tapped the flagon. “Touch more?”

Molloy shook his head. “There’s a Frank O’Phelan wanted in California for insurance fraud,” he said. “Swept off a boat and drowned, supposedly. The insurance company thinks that O’Phelan might be this O’Flynn.”

“The same one as supposedly drowned at Piha?”

Molloy nodded.

“Bloody right!” said Parker, holding up his sherry. “More likely to have drowned in this. Johnny, look,” he said, getting serious again. “We can work together. Let Caitlin help you. She’s as smart as a whip. Time is running out.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Someone’s paying this stooge. We find out
who
we find out
why
.”

Molloy finished his drink and put the cup on the table. “I think your offsider’s going to stick to me whether I want her to or not. And I owe her one for tonight.” He stood. “I’ll be in front of the Auckland Railway Station tomorrow morning at nine. There’s something I want to check. Caitlin, if I see you there, I see you there.”

“I’ll be there,” said Caitlin.

Molloy put on his hat.

“Would you like a lift back to your car?”

“No thanks,” said Molloy. “I need some fresh air. See ya, Vic.”

“
Das vedanya,
Comrade,” said Parker. “When this blows over we’ll have a beer and a proper natter, eh, what do you reckon?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Sunny Day stopped the Plymouth on a gravel road and switched off the motor. A hand-painted sign — P
RIVATE
P
ROPERTY
! N
O
A
DMITTANCE
! — was nailed to a padlocked wooden gate. A dirt track led down to a hydro site. The track was steep and rutted. At the bottom, a narrow river widened out in front of a small concrete dam with a race on either side.

In a cleared area next to the dam was a green corrugated iron Ministry of Works shed with a flat roof. The site was deserted. One side of the valley was gorse. From the river up the bank on the other side was steep, dense bush.

Sunny had two keys, one for the padlock on the gate and the other for the shed. He thought he would probably rip the sump out of the Plymouth going down the track, and even if he didn’t, he doubted he’d be able to get her back up.

He took off his jacket and left it in the front seat of the car. He took a hammer and a torch from the boot. He unlocked the gate and made his way delicately down the track, dancing over ruts and cowpats, his leather-soled shoes sliding on the wet grass. He walked around the shed. No windows, strictly for storage. The padlock was sound. There was a sign on the door warning K
EEP
O
UT
! and one below it saying D
ANGEROUS
G
OODS
. N
O
S
MOKING
! He put down his tools and walked over to the dam, shaded his eyes and checked for
trout, but the morning sun was on the water and he could only see himself looking back.

He unlocked the padlock and opened the door, switching on his torch. There were some tools in the corner, a metal drum with a lid, a pile of empty sugar bags. There was a shape against the wall covered with a tarpaulin. Sunny removed the tarp. There were five wooden boxes, one smaller than the others. He took the smaller box and one of the larger ones outside and opened the lid of the larger with the claw of his hammer. He peeled back the waterproof paper.

Beautiful. Red Diamond tunnel gelatin, made by the Austin Powder Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Gelignite. Sunny loved gelly. Stable, dependable, deadly. Rhymed with jelly, smelt like marzipan, safe-crackers called it soup. When he was a kid he’d worked as a second-storey man for a safe-cracker named John Newman, blowing strongboxes in provincial picture theatres in the Lower North Island. Newman began by tying the office typewriter to the bolt work handle. He then wrapped a tiny amount of gelly around a detonator and poked it into a French letter, pushed the Frenchie, through the keyhole with the detonator hanging out, stuck the shebang in place with chewing gum, and lit the fuse. The resulting explosion, no louder than an empty cake tin dropping on a kitchen floor, shifted the levers holding the bolt for an instant, just long enough for the falling weight of the typewriter to turn the handle, opening the safe. The first time Sunny had seen the operation he had laughed out loud at its simplicity. You’d be a mug
not
to be a crook. All right, you ended up back in the jug eventually. But then you learned a new skill.

Sunny opened the other box. Hunkin T Series detonators. He kept one stick of gelly aside, closed the lid and tapped the nails gently back into place. One never knows, do one? He untwisted
the bottom of the stick and poked a detonator a couple of inches or so into the base. He walked over to the bank, lit the fuse, threw the stick into the dam, dropped to the ground and covered his ears. The explosion rocked up the valley and water rained down all around him. At least twenty fat brown trout and as many eels floated to the surface.

He took off his shoes and socks and trousers, waded into the river, and made a considered selection — three hens, each at least four pounds. He gutted the fish on the bank, using his pocketknife. He washed the blood and slime off the knife and off his hands and wiped them on the grass. There was watercress growing in the shallows. He cut an armful.