The City of Strangers (46 page)

*

It was at the very end of August that Stefan was called to Dublin to give evidence at the trial of Owen Desmond Laserian Harris, for the murder of his mother, Leticia Grace Harris. He put his account of his conversation with the defendant on the Yankee Clipper into evidence and as he had not been involved in the investigation questions were few. But he would have to stay in Dublin for almost a week in case anything else arose, and in case he had to be recalled to answer more questions from the jury once it had retired.

By the time he took the witness stand he had already sat through the evidence of the State Pathologist and several senior detectives, including Superintendent Gregory. The State Pathologist’s evidence revolved around what conclusions could be drawn from the amount of blood found in Mrs Harris’s bedroom and in her car, and whether strands of cut hair were the result of an undiscovered razor blade or the axe found in the garage. There was a lot of information about tides from the Dublin Harbour Master, which attempted to explain why Leticia Harris’s body had never been found. Information about when and where Owen Harris had been seen on the night of his mother’s death was less than conclusive, though the maid, who had been away at the time, gave evidence about furious arguments between mother and son in the preceding days, on the subject, endlessly familiar in the home, of money. The only definite sighting came from the motorist and his wife who had given Harris a lift from Shankill to Ballsbridge that night.

The prosecution asked Sergeant Gillespie no questions. Owen Harris’s barrister, Lawson Fitzgerald, looked at him lazily, as if not entirely sure whether what he was about to do was worth the effort, and decided it was.

‘Would you say Mr Harris’s demeanour, when you arrested him in New York, was consistent with a man who had recently killed his mother?’

Stefan saw the scene in the Dizzy Club on 52
^nd
Street. It was clear that Owen Harris saw it too; he snorted as he restrained his laughter. Smirks, snorts and yawns of boredom had been a part of his court performance since the start of the trial. They alternated with long periods during which he gazed up at the ceiling and seemed completely unaware of what was going on, and times when he drew sketches of witnesses and jurors on pieces of scrap paper.

The jury-alienating snort was enough to make Harris’s barrister wish he had left the question alone, but he had to pull something back now.

‘What did you think, Sergeant?’

‘I was there to bring him back to Ireland, that’s all. I didn’t think about it. I’m sorry, I don’t know whether Mr Harris killed his mother, and I don’t know how people who have killed their mothers are meant to behave.’

‘Well, shall I simplify it? Do you know what grief is?’

‘Yes,’ replied Stefan quietly. ‘I know what grief is.’

‘Well, was Mr Harris’s attitude when you met him, his demeanour, even remotely within the range of what could be described as “grieving”?’

‘No, not really.’

‘How would you characterise it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, eccentric?’

‘Yes, by most standards.’

‘Your standards will do perfectly well, Sergeant.’

‘Then by my standards eccentric would be the word.’

‘As if he didn’t really comprehend what had happened?’

Martin Maguire, SC, stood up to interrupt.

‘My Lord, Mr Fitzgerald keeps asking every policeman who takes the stand what he thought about the defendant’s behaviour, clearly with a view to raising questions about his sanity. But I do wish he’d tell us what he’s trying to prove. Will he be asking the jury to believe Mr Harris
did
kill his mother because he’s insane, or
didn’t
kill his mother because he’s insane?’

Mr Justice Henry Hanna, KC, smiled.

‘He might be happy to make do with either, Mr Maguire. But I think we all have the point, Mr Fitzgerald. And I feel sure there is more to come.’

There was more to come, and as Stefan had to spend the rest of the week in Dublin he passed some of that time in court.

No one believed the explanation Harris had given about finding his mother dead; the fact that he had taken her body to Corbawn Lane to throw it into the sea made the idea of suicide, and a son desperate to protect his mother’s reputation, unlikely by any normal standards. In the end the defence wasn’t about whether Mrs Harris had killed herself, whether her son had taken an axe to her, or even whether someone else had come into the house and bludgeoned her to death before he found her. It was the weakness of the defendant’s mind that the focus of the defence.

The decision had been made that Owen Harris would not testify; it was as his father had hoped and as Superintendent Gregory had anticipated. His arch gestures, his snorts of laughter, his groans of weariness, were enough to unsettle the jury without letting him speak.

Stefan knew perfectly well why the defendant couldn’t be allowed to take the stand. Nothing would stand in the way of a performance, and his words were as likely to hang him as demonstrate his insanity.

It was all very cursory. The turmoil of family life that had existed between the supposed axe-murderer and the parents he called Moloch and Medea was touched on, but Stefan knew its disturbing depths were not being trawled. The issue of Mrs Harris’s breakdowns and her real threats of suicide were only skirted round. People who might have given evidence about her son’s behaviour in the months leading up to the murder would never be called; not only was the prospect of opening up the disturbing world of Owen Harris’s sexual life disconcerting for others, his barrister had concluded it was enough to hang him in the minds of any jury of decent men. Mrs Harris’s theft from the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake was still never mentioned. The possibility that Doctor Cecil Harris’s car had been in the lane at the back of his wife’s house on the day she died had vanished along with the Lost Boys.

Various psychiatrists and alienists described the consequences of Harris’s unhappy life in the vaguest way possible, and half-recognised the self-obsession of his ever-quarrelling mother and father. Cecil Harris accepted some small responsibility for that, and pleaded with the court to show compassion; he seemed to have abandoned any idea his son might be innocent. The only time Stefan Gillespie saw Owen Harris pay attention to anything during the trial was when his father testified. It was the only time he had seen him cry. The tears were silent.

When the verdict came it surprised no one. The hangman really had seemed less and less likely as the week had passed. Owen Harris was found guilty, but insane. And he would be detained at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, indefinitely.

Stefan Gillespie left the courtroom and walked down the steps to the cells, to collect the coat and hat he had left in the Garda meal room earlier. In the corridor Superintendent Gregory and a crowd of noisy detectives and Gardaí were heading towards him, in celebratory mood. Terry Gregory saw him and walked forward, slapping him cheerfully on the back. It had been a big case, and a big trial; it had been handled in the way everyone wanted it handled.

‘Are you coming for a drink, Stefan?’

‘No thanks, sir.’

‘I don’t think anyone wanted him strung up in the end,’ said Gregory.

‘I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear it,’ smiled Stefan.

‘Go on, have a fucking drink. I’m paying.’

The detectives around him laughed, moving on past them.

‘It’s almost enough to tempt me, sir. But I’ve got something to do.’

‘You can’t always be sure, Sergeant. That’s not our job.’

He was surprised Gregory knew or cared what he was thinking. But he did. And for some odd reason he wanted to explain himself to Stefan.

‘Do you think if I’d wanted him to hang I couldn’t have got it?’

There was a smile on the superintendent’s face, but Stefan saw something he hadn’t expected to see behind it; the weight of responsibility.

‘I’d have done things differently if I’d been Owen Harris though. I’d have killed them both, and done it fucking years ago! I’ll be seeing you so.’

Terry Gregory moved off to join the other detectives.

Stefan walked past several cell doors. One was open. As he looked inside he saw Owen Harris in there, quite alone, quite calm, smoking a cigarette. He looked up and saw Stefan. He smiled and raised his hand. Just across the corridor two warders from Mountjoy Prison and a uniformed guard were also smoking. Stefan nodded at Harris, who beckoned him in.

‘Can I talk to him?’ Stefan called, looking at the guard.

The guard shrugged and went back to his conversation.

‘I thought you were very good, Mr Gillespie,’ said the prisoner.

‘Well, it’s over anyway,’ said Stefan simply.

‘There were some very shoddy performances, I thought. At least you had the part prepared. And, what was it you said? “I don’t know how people who have killed their mothers are meant to behave.” Not bad! My father was very wooden, workmanlike but wooden, but then that’s Moloch, of course. My mother would have given a very different account of herself. Oh, by the way, I’ve decided I did kill her now. It seems easier that way, and really I’ve got to have some sort of career. I don’t hold out much hope for the acting. I think I have too much presence. Micheál Mac Liammóir told me as much once. It was either that I had too much presence or he wished the fuck I’d get out of his presence.’ He roared with laughter. ‘So, I might as well be what I’m told I am. I think it should give me some status in Bedlam as well. And of course, it means the final victory over Moloch. I believe Medea would almost approve. No longer the idiot son of a famous doctor! Now he’s the unremarkable father of the notorious, mad matricide! It has a Greek quality.’

The cigarette had gone out. Harris let it drop to the floor.

‘I’ve spent the week trying to decide whether I believe what you told me on the plane,’ said Stefan after a moment. ‘I thought I did believe it in the end, despite everything, but now you’re telling me you really killed her.’

‘I’m not telling you I did. That’s not the point at all.’

‘So she did kill herself?’

‘Of course she didn’t!’

Stefan frowned. Harris looked at him with some irritation.

‘It was the old man, wasn’t it? Moloch! Knocked her out, then cut her throat. That was my guess, anyway. He’d had enough. She was getting nuttier by the day. And if all that stuff about stealing the money had come out, well, she’d have ended up in prison. That wasn’t on. I didn’t see it, of course, but I’m damned sure he did it. You couldn’t really blame him. Something had to give, didn’t it? I always thought she’d kill him though.’

‘So that’s the new version. Your father did it.’

‘It’s not a version. That’s what happened.’

Stefan recalled the Lost Boys, Slightly and Tootles, and the Sunbeam Dawn. There could be an answer to the badly hidden axe; Owen Harris hadn’t hidden it.

‘This time you mean it?’

‘Of course I mean it. Why wouldn’t I? I’ve just told you.’

‘So you did it for him? You’re going into Dundrum –’

‘I’d have done the same for her,’ replied Harris, quieter. ‘Truly.’

Stefan didn’t reply; the words sounded utterly, pathetically real.

‘I really couldn’t have seen him hanged.’

Owen Harris looked intensely serious, but then he smiled broadly.

‘I take the Master’s words very seriously, Mr Gillespie, as any child should. I’m sure you know what I mean. As he said, “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness.”’

*

As he walked along the Quays towards O’Connell Street and Clery’s clock, Stefan Gillespie breathed in the evening air and listened to the laughter and noise of Dublin around him. It was a bright day still. The sun was shining, and what had happened that morning had already made him glad that Harris’s trial had kept him in Dublin so long.

He had been coming out of the Four Courts when she had stopped him. She was standing in front of him, blocking his way.

‘I was in the gallery just now. You didn’t see me?’

‘No,’ he replied.

‘I saw you were in the newspaper, when you were giving evidence. I only read it yesterday. I wondered if you’d still be here. I just came to see –’

Kate O’Donnell stopped speaking and laughed.

‘Well, here I am,’ said Stefan.

‘Here you are.’

‘So, here we are.’

‘I should have sent the Harry Clarke book back.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

‘It’s very beautiful. But my mother thinks you’re a pornographer.’

‘Does she mind?’

‘We don’t talk about such things. Look, I can’t stop, Stefan.’

‘I see,’ he smiled. ‘Is that it then?’

‘Don’t be silly. Can you meet me at Clery’s later, under the clock?’

‘What time?’

‘I’m back dressing windows there. I’m finished at five.’

She leant forward and kissed his cheek; then she was gone.

They said little about New York and little about anything that went with it. There were things that needed saying as they sat in the upstairs room at Bewley’s, at the table that looked out on to Grafton Street, but it wasn’t much more than the simple business of geography.

Kate and Niamh had moved out of her parents’ house in Dún Laoghaire, and since Kate had got the job at Clery’s again the two of them had rented a house at Inchicore, a few streets away from the Phoenix Park. She didn’t tell him that leaving Dún Laoghaire had been both rancorous and painful, except to say that when her mother started taking Niamh to Mass five days a week, she realised that being at home wasn’t going to provide a solution to her sister’s depression, even with the guaranteed personal intervention of St Anthony and St Thérèse of Lisieux. It was a joke, but he knew from the uneasy smile that accompanied it that it was something she would talk about another day.

In the end they spoke mostly about the things she only knew about him sketchily, that had nothing to do with those days and nights in New York; Tom and Kilranelagh and Baltinglass and the farm and what he cared about and what made him laugh. There would be a conversation to come when she found a way to say some of the same, ordinary things, about herself. But it wouldn’t be now. He didn’t need her to say more about Niamh to know that the way back wasn’t proving easy for her sister; when she said Niamh was seeing a doctor, he didn’t need to ask her what kind of doctor; he knew well enough.