The City of Strangers (40 page)

‘Just get a cab to the consulate, Sergeant!’

‘Tell him to come here,’ said Stefan.

‘What?’

‘You heard me, you gobshite. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Have you been drinking, Gillespie?’

‘No, Geoghegan, but by the time he gets here I’ll be well on!’

He slammed the phone down and picked up the bottle of Jameson.

When Stefan Gillespie left his room at the Hotel Pennsylvania he left the NYPD cap that Michael Phelan had given him on St Patrick’s Day in the wardrobe. He knew that Tom would love to have it. It would be the source not only of excitement and pride but of endless games of cops and robbers. Played in that cap, with toy guns and pretend deaths, those games would never sit very easily with him, however far away from New York the fields and woods of Kilranelagh were. Too much real blood came with it now.

*

In St Patrick’s Cathedral Mass was in progress. The pews in front of the altar were full of New Yorkers, among them the dark uniforms of far more of New York’s finest than anyone would expect to see except on Ash Wednesday. The thick overcoats the detectives seemed to wear whatever the weather were there too. And as the Mass proceeded many more officers came and went at the back. They knelt briefly to say a prayer in the pews near the great doors; they walked to the shrines that lined the walls and lit candles.

Three policemen had died the previous day. Joe Lynch and Freddy Socha were blown to pieces in Flushing Meadows; Aaron Phelan’s body had been seen floating in the Hudson River just after dawn, by a passenger on the Hoboken Ferry, as it came into the Christopher Street Pier. He had died from a single bullet. There was nothing to say where he had been shot, let alone who had shot him. The manhunt that was already cranking up would be no more successful in finding out how he died than the investigation into the World’s Fair bomb would be.

But even all that was on hold for reasons that didn’t sit easily with many of New York’s police officers. No one would investigate any death, however deeply it cut, until the English king had paid his scheduled visit to the World’s Fair and was on his way to Washington.

Stefan Gillespie stood in the entrance to the cathedral, listening to the Latin words he knew so well, though they had never been his words. The stone pillars and arches and the vaulted ceiling high above were familiar enough as well. There was the smell of incense as well as the smell of cold stone, but it could have as easily been the Anglican St Patrick’s of his Dublin childhood as New York’s Catholic cathedral. ‘Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.’ Our help is in the name of the Lord.

Michael Phelan, standing next to him, spoke the response. ‘Qui fecit caelum et terram.’ Who made heaven and earth. Then he turned away and walked across the narthex to the flickering candles of the shrine of Saint Anthony. As he did several officers stopped him and shook his hand. He seemed not really to notice.

Stefan watched him bow his head and cross himself. He watched him use a taper to light a candle. He watched him pray. He bowed his own head and let words he still held close trickle through his mind. He didn’t want to be here. He was not a man who prayed. But this was a place that demanded something of him. It even demanded that those words were not only for him, and for those he loved, but that somewhere they were for the man who had tried to kill him as well. ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’

It was daylight outside and the noise of the New York traffic drifted in through the cathedral’s heavy doors, but for Stefan Gillespie the previous night still felt close.

It hadn’t been easy to walk into Police Headquarters in Centre Street that morning. The mood was as grim as anyone could expect it to be with three police officers dead. The Headquarters Detective Division knew the two Bomb Squad men well. And they had lost one of their own. The son of Inspector Ernie Phelan and the brother of Sergeant Michael Phelan had been shot down and his body had been tossed into the river. Aaron Phelan had been an administrator, not a detective; no one even knew what questions to ask yet.

The only person in Police Headquarters that morning who did know said nothing. He had no choice but to say nothing. All he wanted to do was get his prisoner out of the cells and leave the city of towers and lights behind. Its wonders had become a cellar room on 116
^th
Street and a dead body in the Hudson that ought to have been his own.

Stefan had hoped that the last thing Michael Phelan would want to do that day was to drive him to the Marine Terminal at La Guardia, but drive him he did, intermittently raging, silent, bewildered, tearful, but in his grief feeling a sense of connection with Stefan’s Irishness that Stefan himself found hard to bear.

Owen Harris followed behind them in a squad car, but there was to be a diversion that Stefan had not expected. The two cars headed north from Centre Street to St Patrick’s Cathedral. With all that connectedness Sergeant Michael Phelan expected that Sergeant Stefan Gillespie would want to say a prayer for his brother, as probably every other police officer in New York would do that day.

Stefan understood; he understood how much it mattered that other people felt something too. And all he could offer was silence.

As he waited for Michael Phelan to finish his prayer, he was aware of someone standing at his shoulder. He turned to find Dominic Carroll there. It was clear from the cold expression on Carroll’s face that the usual pleasantries weren’t to be pursued. The question was what the Clan na Gael president knew about the previous night. Aaron Phelan had made it clear enough that what he was doing was his own decision. It was no more likely that he would have involved the man he solved problems for in Stefan’s death than in Jimmy Palmer’s. And Phelan had tried to dispose of him without any of the usual Irish connections. There was no police involvement, no Clan na Gael involvement, no Irish involvement at all. Killing an Irish policeman was not something anyone would like. But Dominic Carroll would surely know about Niamh; he would know about Kate; he would know Stefan had helped the women get across the border to Canada.

‘You’re here with Mikey.’

‘I am,’ Stefan nodded.

‘Aaron told me. He knew you were there.’

‘This wouldn’t be the place to talk about it, Mr Carroll.’

‘I don’t intend to talk about it, Sergeant Gillespie.’

‘She’ll be with her family. Does how that happened matter so much?’

‘And that’s the whore of a sister’s story, is it?’

Stefan could see Michael Phelan walking towards them.

‘I’m sure you’ll think what you think, Mr Carroll. But it’s over.’

‘No, it’s not over. Remember that. When you see my wife, tell her.’

*

‘The honeymoon suite, Sergeant Gillespie, I’m touched.’

At the rear of the Yankee Clipper’s passenger deck there was a separate, self-contained cabin. Now it provided a place for Stefan Gillespie to keep Owen Harris out of sight of the rest of the flying boat’s passengers. The plane was an hour out of New York, over the Eastern Seaboard and the New England coast. Harris was drinking a glass of champagne. Stefan had only coffee; he would not be drinking during the journey home. But he saw no reason not to let Owen Harris have something. It might be the last drink he had for a very long time; it was very possible that it might be the last drink he had before he was offered a glass of beer the night before an appointment with the English hangman. And maybe it would keep him quiet. Stefan was in no mood to listen to his endless meanderings about murder, mothers and Owen Harris.

The steward entered the suite at the back of the flying boat with a nervous knock. Apart from the fact that Stefan Gillespie was an Irish policeman, returning to Ireland with a prisoner, the crew weren’t meant to know who Owen Harris was, but naturally enough they knew everything. The steward carried a bottle of champagne. Stefan shrugged and nodded. He poured another glass. Harris looked up, smiling broadly; then he sang.

‘“As he walks along St Stephen’s Green

With an independent air he

Can hear the boys declare he

Must surely be a fairy – ”

Do you know that one?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t, sir,’ replied the steward with grit-like politeness.

‘I’m sure you’d pick it up in no time.’

The steward walked out.

‘She has to be, Sergeant, wouldn’t you say?’

Stefan had already had enough.

‘I’ll give you two choices, Mr Harris. You can shut up and spend the next twenty hours in here, free to move around, free to go to bed when you want, free to eat when you want, free to have a drink, or you can carry on with the bollocks and I can cuff you to the seat, and I’ll just spend the rest of the journey sitting out there in the main cabin. It’s entirely up to you.’

Owen Harris scowled petulantly. He looked out of the window.

‘All right, but it’s going to be extremely boring either way.’

Stefan picked up a copy of
The
Irish Times
.

Owen Harris sipped his drink, gazing at the Atlantic. He picked up a map of the flying boat’s journey. He idly traced his finger along the route.

‘When do we get to this Botwood place?’

‘It’ll be the early hours of the morning.’

‘Do we get out?’

‘No.’

‘It says here we can.’

‘You don’t leave this cabin.’

Harris groaned. He put his head back, looking at the ceiling.

‘Newfoundland is a rather wonderful name. “O my America, my Newfoundland, My kingdom safest when with one man manned.” But Botwood leaves a lot to be desired, as names go, don’t you think?’

Stefan turned a page of the newspaper and continued reading.

The authorities in Washington have announced that Seán Russell, the IRA leader, has been released from detention, following his arrest at Detroit at the time of the Royal visit to Windsor. He is officially at liberty on five thousand dollars bail, guaranteed by Mr Dominic Carroll of New York. Mr Russell was recently seen at a Clan na Gael meeting in New York, where he called on Americans of Irish birth to lend their moral and financial support to the ‘organised will-o’-the-wisp’ bombings of English cities. Russell said that all the bombings had been arranged so as to avoid loss of life but, he added, ‘if any of our men are executed we cannot give assurances that we will exercise the same care’. At the meeting Mr Russell predicted that the English would be so terrified in the next few months that the government would grant all IRA demands and leave Northern Ireland.

Owen Harris still stared up at the ceiling, mouthing words to himself, slowly, rhythmically, quietly, and snorting as if what he was saying was extraordinarily funny and he was forcing himself to hold back his laughter. ‘Botwood, Spotwood, Blotwood, Rotwood, Clotwood, Begotwood, Snotwood, Dotwood, Shotwood, Whatwood, Notwood, Totwood, Sotwood.’ After several minutes he stopped. And as Stefan looked round he was asleep.

When the flying boat landed at Botwood in Newfoundland, most of the passengers disembarked. Stefan Gillespie stayed in the suite with his prisoner. Owen Harris had said little after the first hour of the flight. He had slept until dinner and had eaten in sullen silence. When the beds were made up he climbed into one of them and pulled the curtains shut. Stefan still sat in his seat, sometimes trying to read, sometimes trying to bring some clarity to what he would have to tell Military Intelligence in Dublin; he still had John Cavendish’s work to finish. It had almost cost him his life. He wasn’t pleased when Harris opened the curtains and got out of bed. The fact that he felt he had to stay awake didn’t mean he wanted company, let alone Harris’s company. But when the almost-actor asked if he could have a brandy, Stefan called the steward.

Owen Harris sipped the drink and looked out at the lights and the fishing boats in the harbour at Botwood. Then he started to speak, very quietly, in a voice so unlike the shrill, mocking tone Stefan had always heard before, that he hardly recognised it as belonging to the same man.

‘My mother had been in hospital since Christmas, after a nervous breakdown. She quite often had a nervous breakdown at Christmas, usually around the time my father was sitting down to Christmas dinner with his mistress. I came home two weeks after my father decided they could let her out of the convalescent home. I’d been sharing a flat with Charlie Mawson, from the Gate. That didn’t work out. Just because you enjoy being in bed with a man doesn’t mean you can bear sitting across a table eating toast with him every morning, listening to him tell you what a grand feller he is. Of course, Medea didn’t want me back. She told me to go and live with my father. Well, the only thing worse than living with Medea is living with Moloch. The thing was I needed money, desperately. I’d been waiting for an opportunity to really start acting, and the Gate tour was my chance. I had to have the money for the passage though. I really did think Medea would cough up. Yet she wouldn’t give it to me. She told me she didn’t want me in the house, but she wouldn’t give me the money to go. That’s Medea, of course. She’s never got any dosh, because Moloch doesn’t give her enough. Well, he gives her a damned sight more than he gives me, and she has ways. She has her little tricks for getting her pointy fingers on some cash when she needs it.’

He turned to Stefan and shook his head.

‘You don’t need all that. You only need to know what happened.’

Stefan said nothing. He had been told that questioning Owen Harris wasn’t his business. But it wasn’t his business to stop him talking. The first time a suspect told a policeman his story mattered a lot. Whether every word was true or every word was a lie, or whatever mix of the two it presented, it was as much a key to a crime as any piece of forensic evidence. He didn’t know Harris, but he had seen enough to realise that if the man wanted to speak, he had to be allowed to speak. He had heard the different voices Harris put between himself and the world; this sounded like the man himself. For all Stefan knew it might be the only time that voice would be heard.