Читать книгу The City of Shadows - Michael Russell - Страница 8

Dublin, December 1934

The woman was obviously preoccupied. As she stepped off the pavement to cross from Kildare Street to the Shelbourne Hotel a horn blasted at her. She stepped back abruptly. A taxi, turning in from Stephen’s Green at speed, swept past without slowing. A string of abusive words cannoned back at her in the broadest of Dublin accents. She smiled, pausing to catch her breath. Even those insults carried the flavour of a Dublin she had missed far more than she was ready to admit. She looked down Kildare Street and back to the Green. She crossed and walked on past the Shelbourne, her head up now, determination in her eyes. She was doing what she had to do. It wasn’t easy, but she wasn’t supposed to be afraid of things that weren’t easy. She wasn’t supposed to be afraid of anything. She stopped for a moment, by the entrance to the hotel, looking up. A man was leaning out of an upstairs window, where a flagpole carrying the Irish tricolour, green, white and orange, extended over the pavement. There was a second pole beside it and the man was unfurling another flag. She knew the colours even before it dropped down beside the tricolour; red, white and black, and at the centre the swastika. She glanced round, expecting other people to be surprised, but no one else had noticed. She walked on quickly. She had other things to do.

The woman was in her early twenties. She was tall. Her hair was almost black, flecked in places with red. There was a warmth about her dark skin that could almost be felt, as if it had known a fiercer sun than ever shone in Ireland, even on the best of summer days. It was a sun that certainly didn’t shine on grey and soft December days like this one.

The purpose in her step was firm and unwavering as she walked along Merrion Row. She moved to avoid a crowd of winter-pale faces, bursting noisily out from a pub. She caught the breath of beer. It was another memory, almost comforting, but she wasn’t here for comfort. She turned into Upper Merrion Street. It was quieter. The flat fronts of Georgian houses gave way to the pillared buildings of government at Leinster House. She saw the trees that marked out Merrion Square. What preoccupied her was the tall terraced house at number twenty-five, with the closed shutters and the green paint peeling from the door, and the big room at the end of the long unlit corridor where the man who smiled too much did his work. Briefly her pace slowed, but only briefly. There was no real fear in her about what she had to do. The fear was about the darkness that might lie on the other side of it.

‘She’s back, your dark-eyed acushla.’

It was the fat policeman who spoke, squeezed uncomfortably into the driver’s seat of a black Austin 10, exhaling smoke from a Sweet Afton, the last of a packet of ten he had bought just before he’d parked the car two hours earlier. They were several hundred yards along from twenty-five Merrion Square. Detective Sergeant Stefan Gillespie, sitting in the passenger seat, opened his eyes. He wasn’t tired, but closing his eyes and feigning sleep was one way to stop Dessie MacMahon talking to him. He had already taken an hour of Dessie’s problems with his innumerable in-laws; gougers and gurriers the lot of them, and all the worse in drink, which they were in a lot it seemed. But Detective Garda MacMahon was right. It was the same woman. They had watched her make the same journey yesterday. They had watched her pass the house at twenty-five Merrion Square twice before she made herself mount the steps and knock on Doctor Hugo Keller’s door. They had watched her go inside, watched her emerge fifteen minutes later, and watched her hurry away again. They knew why she was back now.

‘She was making the appointment yesterday. This’ll be it I’d say.’

Dessie drew on his last cigarette one more time. Stefan nodded, his eyes fixed on the woman. She wasn’t what he’d expected. Even yesterday she didn’t seem to fit. That was the only way he could put it. There had been nervousness and uncertainty then. That made sense. Now she had her head high. It was more than grim determination though. It was in the way she held herself. As she paused for an instant at the bottom of the steps, she tossed her hair back, sweeping it off her face. There was nothing there that said shame. He could almost feel anger in that determination. There was something more too, something like pride. They were all words that didn’t belong here, words she couldn’t have any right to, doing what she was doing. And suddenly he found himself conscious of her as a woman, elegant, tense, beautiful. He hadn’t really noticed it yesterday. He frowned. It was a squalid business and that was the end of it. He didn’t like the intrusion of feelings that challenged that simple fact. The woman went inside the house and the green door closed behind her. The smell of sweat and smoke that came from Dessie swept over Stefan Gillespie again. There was a job to do and they needed to get on with it. As he turned, Dessie was grinning.

‘Your woman’s a looker. You wouldn’t blame the feller who wanted to give her a go.’

It would have been an exaggeration to say that the fat policeman had read his sergeant’s mind. It wasn’t even close. But it was still a lot closer than Stefan was comfortable with.

‘We’ll give it a few minutes, Dessie.’

‘I need a piss first.’ Garda MacMahon opened the car door and squeezed out, dropping his cigarette end in the gutter with the other nine. He walked quickly through a gate into the square, in search of a concealing tree. Sergeant Gillespie got out of the car himself and took a welcome breath of air. He was taller than his colleague and thinner, quite a lot thinner, and where Dessie was balding he had a mop of thick, brown hair that was shapeless rather than long, as if he didn’t remember to get it cut very often, which he didn’t. He looked younger than his twenty-eight years and people often assumed he was the garda rather than the sergeant. He put on his hat. It was colder than he’d thought. He stood looking towards the house. The dark-skinned woman was making him uneasy. It wasn’t a job he’d feel good about at the best of times, but it was more than that. He felt like getting back into the Austin and driving away. He pushed the thought from his mind. At least he wouldn’t have to sit there all afternoon with Dessie and his family rows and the smoke from another packet of Sweet Afton. Detective Garda MacMahon came back from the square, still buttoning up his fly.

The two policemen walked to the house. Stefan mounted the steps and rapped on the door. After a moment, he knocked again. It opened a crack. A middle-aged woman in spotless nurse’s uniform looked out at him.

‘Yes?’ It was supposed to be a question, but as yesses go it meant something much more like ‘no’.

‘We’d like to speak to Mr Keller.’ He took off his hat.

‘He’s not in just now.’

‘We can wait.’

‘He’s not here. And he sees no one without an appointment.’

‘Then I’d like to make an appointment. Now would be fine.’

Detective Sergeant Gillespie took his warrant card from his pocket and held it up. The woman’s first instinct was to slam the door in his face, but Dessie MacMahon had anticipated her. With surprising speed for his size he moved forward, past his sergeant, and put a foot and a portion of his not inconsiderable torso against the fast-closing door. He applied his weight in the opposite direction to the nurse, pushing her and the door firmly back into the hall. He had slammed her against the wall quite hard, but even as the two policemen walked into the house she had recovered her breath sufficiently for her furious and now panicking voice to fill the echoing hallway.

‘Hugo! Doctor Keller!’

‘You think he might be back then?’ said Dessie, grinning.

A door at the far end of the long hall opened. A small, rather avuncular man stood with the light behind him, peering through the thick lenses of his glasses as if he couldn’t really make out who was there. But if there was concern beneath that puzzled look it was well hidden. There was already a half smile on his face, even as Detective Sergeant Gillespie started to walk towards him. He knew what the two men were. He had absorbed that information and accepted it. He was not a man who bothered about the inevitable. He didn’t move as the detective approached him; instead his smile broadened. Stefan had only seen Keller at a distance before, going in and out of the house. He was always well dressed; today was no exception. Even though he was in shirtsleeves, the shirt was gleaming white; the yellow bow tie was perfectly tied; the braces had a floral pattern that was bright, almost loud, yet expensively tasteful; the suit trousers had knife-sharp creases; and his black shoes were spotlessly clean. By now Keller’s benign smile was irritating the detective. It was altogether too pleasant to be anything other than extremely unpleasant. Wherever it came from the effect was to make him want to wipe the smile off the man’s face with his fist. But even as that thought flashed through his mind he had an unsettling picture of Keller getting up from the floor and wiping the blood from his mouth, with the smile still there, broader and more unctuous than ever.

‘Hugo Keller,’ said Stefan flatly.

‘Doctor Keller.’ The German accent was stronger than he had expected. But he knew German accents. Austria, probably Vienna.

‘It’s Mr Keller I think.’

‘My doctorate is from the University of Graz. You may not know it, but it’s the second oldest university in Austria. Doctor Keller is correct.’

‘In Wien hat jeder streunende Hund ein Doktorat, aber sie sind noch immer Hunde, nicht Ärzte, Herr Keller.’ He stressed ‘Herr’. It was true. In Vienna every dog in the streets had a doctorate in something. They were still dogs, not doctors. The smile wavered on Keller’s lips. This wasn’t quite the Dublin detective he had anticipated. Contempt might not be so wise.

‘I am Detective Sergeant Gillespie. I will be conducting a search of your premises. I believe you have instruments here that have been used to procure miscarriages, contrary to Section 58 of the Offences against the Persons Act, and I believe you are, even now, engaged in procuring a miscarriage for a woman. You will be taken into custody, Mr Keller.’

‘Naturally, Sergeant. I’ll get my jacket.’

He turned back into the room. Stefan followed. He passed an open door on his right, a small office full of books and files. He paused, looking in, registering it. The nurse had composed herself now. She brushed back her hair and walked past him into the office. Unlike her employer the look on her face was familiar; it was fear. He watched her as she sat at the desk.

‘Please don’t try to leave,’ he said quietly.

‘Why should I?’ Despite the fear, this was her territory.

He carried on into the back drawing room of the house. It was a startling change after the dark corridor, with its stained wallpaper and blackened ceiling. The room was bright and clean and looked as if it had been transported there directly from an expensive private clinic. But while Stefan took this in his attention was fixed on the dark-haired woman he had watched enter the house. She stood in the window, framed by the sunlight that had momentarily broken through the grey December clouds. It shone through her hair in a gauze-like haze. For a second the startling brightness made him blink. And then it was gone. She was looking straight at him. Now, more closely, he saw there was indeed neither fear nor shame in her dark eyes. There was anger, and it seemed to be directed at him.

‘If you’d wait in the hall, Mr Keller.’ He didn’t look round.

‘I’m sorry, my dear.’ Keller smiled a slightly different smile at the woman. It was kinder and more reassuring than the one he had for Garda sergeants. He picked up his jacket from the back of a chair and pulled it on. ‘I don’t know if you heard any of that, outside in the hall. This gentleman is a policeman, a detective. My advice would be to say nothing, but that’s entirely up to you of course. You need offer no explanation for why you are in this room, as he well knows.’ He walked to the door. There was a mirror on the wall and he stopped to straighten his bow tie. Stefan Gillespie hardly noticed him go out. His eyes were still on the woman at the window.

‘Can you tell me who you are, Miss?’

She shook her head, but only in irritable and frustrated disbelief.

‘You couldn’t have done this on another day, could you?’

He just looked. Nothing at all about this woman was right.

‘How long has this man been doing this, procuring miscarriages, whatever it is you call it? How many years? It’s just what I needed, you and your great policeman’s boots stomping in before I’d even got started!’

‘I need your name. I’m sure you know why I’m here.’

The woman gazed at him and shook her head again. All at once the anger was gone. He saw something else in her eyes now. It was a mixture of contempt and suspicion. She looked at him as if he was the one in the wrong.

‘No, I don’t know why you’re here. I think I’ll reserve my judgement on that, Sergeant. In the meantime I shall take Mr Keller’s advice about keeping my mouth shut. You may be his best friend. So I shall say nothing.’

*

Pearse Street Garda station was the main police station for the South City, built for the old Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1915, the year before Padraig Pearse was executed after the Easter Rising, when the road was still Great Brunswick Street. It took up the corner of Townsend Street, looking towards Trinity College, a grey, austere building that echoed the Scottish-castle style of architecture popular with insurance companies, all chiselled stone and mullioned windows. The DMP was only a memory now, except for two small corbels supporting the arch over the main entrance; the sour faces of a DMP officer and a helmeted constable still looked down in disapproval. As stations went it wasn’t a bad place to work. The offices upstairs were brighter and cleaner than most of Dublin’s Garda stations, but downstairs the cells smelt like they always smelt – of stale sweat and urine and tobacco.

Stefan Gillespie sat in a room on the ground floor, close enough to the stairs for the odour of the cells to hover in the air. A bare table separated him from the dark-haired woman. The room was bare too, lit by a naked bulb. There was a window high in one wall, no more than a foot square, the glass painted over with the remains of what once must have been whitewash. She had still given him no information and no explanation. She denied nothing, admitted nothing, said nothing. He didn’t even know her name. She returned his gaze with quiet self-assurance. He was the one who kept looking away to scribble something he didn’t need to scribble on the sheet of white paper in front of him. She was beginning to make him feel she was the one running this.

‘You’re from Dublin, thereabouts anyway. The leafier parts I’d say.’

She didn’t answer.

‘You’ve clearly been out of the country though.’

‘An accent and a suntan, I can see you’re nobody’s fool.’

She didn’t need to smile to make him feel foolish.

‘Do you realise how much trouble you’re in?’

‘As a matter of fact I don’t.’

‘I can see you’re an intelligent woman. You’re not what I expected.’

He knew those last words were another mistake.

‘You were expecting some sort of idiot, were you?’

‘That’s not what I meant. ’

‘Idiot enough to be pregnant. Well, how idiotic can a woman get?’

‘Sooner or later you’re going to tell me who you are. You know that as well as I do. The only thing that can help you in this situation is to cooperate with us as fully as possible. It’s Mr Keller we want, not you.’

‘I’m sure even he knows you’ve got him. What do you need me for?’

She reached across to the packet of cigarettes on the table. They were Stefan’s. She hesitated, looking at him. He shrugged. She took one and put it between her lips. He pulled the lighter out from his pocket and flicked it, then stretched over and lit the cigarette with what he hoped was an appropriately reassuring smile. But if he thought the woman’s silence was about to end with this small act of human contact he was mistaken.

‘Thank you.’

She drew on the cigarette, then shook her head.

‘I can’t do what I went there to do. And that’s your fault. I’m not sure where that leaves me. Well, apart from being stuck here in a police station with you. That’s all I’ve got suddenly. I want to see what happens next.’

‘What happens? This is about a life, a life that would have ended this afternoon. It’s about God knows how many other lives that have ended in that back room.’ He was speaking the words he was supposed to speak now, but he knew they didn’t sound like his own. He knew too that this clever, unfathomable woman would understand that immediately. And she did.

‘Yes, it is about a life. I know that already. I wish I didn’t.’

Stefan saw something else in the woman’s face now. It was sadness, a deep and uncertain sadness. He also saw that it had nothing at all to do with why they were here. Whatever she was talking about it wasn’t the conversation he had just felt obliged to start. The interview was still going nowhere. He was not controlling this. She was. The words ‘stuck-up bitch’ were in his head. He’d had enough. He got up, pushing the cigarettes at her.

‘I’ll leave you the fags. It’ll be a long night.’ He went. Let her stew.

As he left the room he found himself smiling unexpectedly. He remembered another time he had walked away from a conversation with a woman and thought the same thing – ‘stuck-up bitch’. It was nearly six years ago. A pub in Nassau Street. Maeve. Seven months later he’d married her. And now she had been dead for nearly two years. One year, nine months, eight days. He had thought about that night in Nassau Street a thousand times in those months, waking and sleeping. He had relived it as he had relived every moment of their lives together. But he had never smiled about it in quite the same way before. It wasn’t that the woman from Merrion Square reminded him of Maeve. Perhaps she reminded him of something about himself he had forgotten. Instead of feeling angry she made him want to laugh. These thoughts came at him out of nowhere. He pushed them away. He saw Dessie MacMahon walking towards him, with a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea.

‘Has Keller phoned his solicitor?’ he asked.

Dessie nodded, taking a bite of the sandwich.

‘But he’s still not saying anything?’

‘No. He’s very polite about it though.’

‘Is the solicitor on his way?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Stick him in a cell for the night and see how polite he is about that.’

Garda MacMahon took another bite of the sandwich.

‘What about the nurse?’ said Stefan.

‘She’s still giving out, but it’s the same story. Nothing to say.’

‘The evidence is all in Merrion Square. I don’t understand how Keller thinks he can explain that away by keeping his mouth shut and grinning.’

‘Do we give him another go, Sarge?’

‘No, I’ve had enough. Just lock the three of them up for the night.’

He wasn’t sure that would wipe away Hugo Keller’s smile. It looked like it was painted on. He was too cocky. He seemed to think he was untouchable. The nurse would keep insisting that she was just a nurse. He didn’t believe her, but Sheila Hogan was hard. She wouldn’t talk till there was something in it for her. The dark-haired woman was different. She had no place in this. Twelve hours in a police cell might bring her to her senses.

It was dark in Merrion Square as Detective Sergeant Gillespie approached the house again, but it looked brighter now than it had in daylight. The shutters were open and all the lights were on. The front door was open too and a uniformed guard stood on the steps. Stefan smiled a greeting.

‘How’s it going, Liam?’

‘Great, I can never get enough of standing around in the fecking cold.’

Stefan went in and moved down the hall to the back drawing room. A man in his late fifties was sitting on the edge of the couch, writing notes. Edward Wayland-Smith was the State Pathologist. He was tall, overweight, bearded, dressed in tweeds that made him look like he had just been blasting pheasants with a shotgun or pulling fish from a stream with a rod and flies. There was a silver-fresh salmon in the boot of his car to say he had been.

‘He’s certainly got some extraordinary equipment here. You wouldn’t find better in any hospital in Ireland. Well, in most hospitals you’d be grateful to find anything at all.’ He continued to write as he spoke, not looking up. ‘Nota bene!’ he announced, finally raising his eyes.

‘Suspended from the ceiling a 170 centimetre shadowless operating lamp. You also see a state-of-the-art gynaecological chair; German, almost brand new I’d say, with some very clever modifications. There’s a well-equipped workshop in the cellar too. It looks like your man Keller was making his own equipment, or at least improving on what he’d got. Ingenious, some of it. He must be rather bright, certainly not your average backstreet abortionist. There’s also an X-ray transformer of very high quality. I haven’t seen one like it in Ireland. It’s a modification of another continental piece of apparatus. I’ve made a full inventory, which I will have typed up tomorrow. You have looked at the office I assume, Sergeant?’

Stefan nodded. ‘I’d like you to make a note of the books.’

‘It’s done.’ Wayland-Smith got up and walked out to the hall, turning back the pages of his notebook as he did. He went into the office. He stood beside a bookcase, scanning his notes, then pointing at some of the books.

‘They are mostly standard medical texts, nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘Except that Mr Keller was a quack posing as a doctor.’

‘Well, I’ve encountered no shortage of highly qualified colleagues I’d describe as quacks posing as doctors. It’s unfortunate that there seems to be no law against that. In several books you’ll see sections on abortion and miscarriage have been marked and quite heavily annotated. I’ve recorded those. There are also a number of books dealing very explicitly with sex, in ways that might shock even a policeman, some in German that would not be readily available on our island of saints and scholars, and would normally be sent back whence they came with much sprinkling of holy water. It seems clear Mr Keller was handling a lot of what the profession likes to refer to, in a hushed whisper, as “women’s complaints”. Again it’s not your run-of-the-mill abortionist. He certainly had no problems writing prescriptions that were acceptable in any chemist in Dublin. A Merrion Square address never fails to impress. There are very detailed financial records, almost proof in itself that the man is not a real doctor. Never any names though. All very discreet. And all very expensive from the look of it. He was certainly earning more than I do. Oh, and there’s a revolver too. German, I think’

‘It is. I’ve seen it,’ replied Stefan.

‘And a box of contraceptives, also German.’ Wayland-Smith smiled.

‘Yes, Dessie’s recorded all that.’

‘Splendid! You’ll have the opportunity to prosecute the man simultaneously for the provision of contraceptives and for attempting to deal with the consequences of not using them in the first place. Good stuff, eh?’

‘You don’t like this very much.’

‘I don’t like the state asking me to count contraceptives for a living, no. But then I don’t like what Mr Keller does very much either. Who does? However, as a doctor I have always found it gratifyingly simple that virtually all of my patients are dead. Nothing to like or dislike. And that brings me to an observation about the cellar. Have you been down there?’

Stefan shook his head.

‘Dessie took a quick look. More medical equipment.’

‘There is also an unusually large stove. I’m not an expert on plumbing, as several plumbers I’ve been fleeced by will testify, but a cursory glance suggests it isn’t connected to the heating system. I would say the stove is more than adequate for disposing of whatever it was that Mr Keller may have found it necessary to dispose of in the course of his work.’

Sergeant Gillespie stepped into the black hole that was the stairway down to the cellar. He fumbled for a light switch. There was a dim glow over the stairs as he walked down into the darkness beneath the house. At the bottom of the stairs he found another switch. This illuminated the whole cellar more brightly. He saw a workbench and rows of carefully ordered tools, neatly stacked boxes of screws and bolts, coils of wire and electrical hardware, medical equipment in various states of repair. It was a place of strange calmness and order. Beyond the workbench, through a brick arch, was the cast-iron stove Wayland-Smith had seen. Stefan approached it through the arch. Coal was heaped up on one side, carefully stacked timber on the other. He could feel the heat from the stove now. He picked up a cloth that lay on the ground and opened the door, letting go of the handle sharply as the heat reached his hand. The stove was blazing fiercely, so much so that he had to step back. He turned, hearing someone on the stairs. Dessie MacMahon, flushed and sweating, was roaring down at a speed that was rarely seen.

‘I don’t know when I last saw you run. Confessions all round?’

The fat detective was still struggling to get his breath.

‘I wouldn’t want you risking your life for less,’ laughed Stefan.

‘They’re gone.’

‘Who’s gone?’

‘Two fellers from Special Branch walked into the station half an hour ago, asking about Keller. Seán Óg Moran, you’d know him, an arse-licker who’d crack his mammy’s skull if someone told him. And a sergeant called Lynch. I’ve maybe seen him, but I’d know the smell anyway. He’ll have a trench coat in the car. Straight out of the IRA and into the Branch.’

‘I know Jimmy Lynch. You’re right. A flying column man. If there was a landowner to shoot he’d have sulked for a week if he didn’t do it.’

‘First thing I heard they were in with Inspector Donaldson and there’s shouting and bollocking going on. But it’s your man Lynch doing the bollocking. Next thing they’re going out of the station with Keller and the nurse and the woman in tow. I asked them what they were doing. And I told this Lynch you weren’t going to like it. He said you could fuck yourself.’

‘A way with words too. But what the hell is it to Special Branch?’

‘They took them off in a car.’

‘What about Inspector Donaldson?’

‘I don’t know what your man Lynch told him, Sarge, but the words head and arse were in there somewhere. After that the inspector said the case was closed. Forget it. It’s out of our hands. Then he went back in his office and shut the door. I’d say he’ll still be in there with the holy water.’

‘Did he ask for any paperwork?’ Dessie shook his head. ‘Course he didn’t,’ continued Stefan with a shrug. ‘If Special Branch dumped a body on his desk and told him to have it in court on a drunk and disorderly the next morning he’d only stand up and salute. Did Hugo Keller say anything?’

‘No, but I reckon the cute hoor looked happy enough.’

‘And not exactly surprised. He never expected to stay locked up.’

The thought hadn’t occurred to Dessie before, but Stefan was right.

‘What about the woman?’

‘She did say something, when she was going out the door. “I told Sergeant Gillespie I wanted to see what happened next.” Are we the only ones not in on this, Sarge? The Branch? What the fuck is going on here?’

Stefan didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he’d find out.

Inspector James Donaldson was a small, precise man who wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look disconcertingly bigger than they were. He disliked disorder. He also disliked detectives. Quite apart from the fact that they were rude, ill-disciplined, sloppy, generally drank too much, and had the ability to turn the word ‘sir’ into an insult, they were the ones who were guaranteed to bring disorder into his police station. They thrived on the chaos he hated. And there were times when Stefan Gillespie or Dessie MacMahon knocked on his door that he had to resist an overwhelming urge to turn the key in the lock and pretend he wasn’t there. Normally Inspector Donaldson sought refuge from the disorder that went with being a policeman in his faith. He attended Mass every day at the Pro-Cathedral at eleven o’clock, and when he returned to Pearse Street Garda station, with the incense still in his nostrils, he had just enough spiritual calm to get him through the rest of the day. But the events of this particular day meant that he had little calm left. If it wasn’t enough to have his own detectives treating him like an eejit he now had detectives walking in off the street, pulling criminals out of his cells and telling him, in front of his own men, that if he didn’t like it he could stick his bald head up his arse. And they were from Special Branch too. Those fellers were a law unto themselves. They were supposed to protect the state from the people who wanted to destroy it. That was mostly the IRA of course, but these days you were hard pressed to tell whether a Special Branch man had worked with Michael Collins and his crowd bumping off British agents during the War of Independence, or with the anti-Treaty IRA bumping off Free State soldiers and policemen during the Civil War. What was guaranteed was that they’d done their share of bumping off somewhere along the line. They were thieves set to catch thieves after all. You didn’t want to cross them. They did what they liked.

The raid on Hugo Keller’s abortion clinic had been a rare thing at Pearse Street, an operation instigated by Inspector Donaldson himself. He was the one who had gathered the first intelligence. Well almost. The facts had been presented to him at a Knights of St Columbanus meeting, and as treasurer he had no choice but to act. It never occurred to him that there was a reason the so-called Doctor Keller could operate with apparent disregard for the laws of the land, among the real doctors and consultants in Merrion Square. A blind eye was being turned at a much higher level than James Donaldson. Now, for his pains, he had not only been humiliated by a Special Branch sergeant, his own CID sergeant was standing in front of him, berating him because Special Branch had just walked off with the prisoners.

‘Why didn’t you kick the bastards out?’

‘I wasn’t in a position to, Sergeant,’ replied Donaldson defensively.

‘We hadn’t even put a case together. You were the one who pushed for this. You ordered the raid. Then you let Keller waltz out of here.’

‘It’s not in our hands any more. Special Branch will deal with it.’

‘How is inducing miscarriages anything to do with Special Branch?’

‘That’s not my business. Or yours.’

‘Keller knew.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The expression on his face. When we walked into the surgery. When he sat in the cell and didn’t say anything. When he phoned his solicitor. Who didn’t bother to turn up. I’ll bet he made the call to Special Branch though.’

‘It’s clear there are other issues here, Sergeant. Quite possibly issues of state security. We can’t expect Special Branch to reveal that sort of thing.’

‘That sort of thing my arse, sir.’ There it was, that ‘sir’.

‘That’s enough, Gillespie. I’m not happy about this either. They were extremely heavy handed. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s done.’

‘And what about the woman?’

‘They took her too. There’s no more to say.’ Donaldson wanted Gillespie to get out now. He had had enough. But Stefan wouldn’t let go.

‘I don’t know what was up with that one. There was something. And it didn’t have anything to do with being in Keller’s clinic for an abortion.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Leave it alone!’

Stefan had no idea what he was talking about either. He was angry about what had happened for all sorts of reasons. Somewhere it wasn’t much more than territorial. He’d been pissed on and he didn’t like it. He knew how Special Branch detectives loved to throw their weight around. But why was he so wound up? It was Donaldson who had insisted on the raid. Now it was someone else’s problem. What did it matter? It was the woman. She mattered. He didn’t know why, but she was still there, still in his head.

The telephone on Inspector Donaldson’s desk rang. He picked it up.

‘What does she want? What? All right, I’ll talk to her.’ The inspector put on a smile as he waited a moment. ‘Hello, Reverend Mother, how are –’

The cheerful greeting was cut off abruptly, and it was clear that what he was listening to was a tirade. He tried to speak several times but the words barely escaped from his mouth before they were cut off. ‘She was here –’ ‘The case is no longer –’ ‘I gave no instructions –’ ‘I didn’t know –’

Stefan turned away. It was probably the right time to make his exit.

‘Stay here!’ Donaldson hissed after him.

He stopped and turned back to the desk. The inspector glared.

‘I’ll send Detective Sergeant Gillespie across right now!’ He slammed down the phone. It wasn’t over yet. It was always the damned detectives.

‘That was the Mother Superior at the Convent of the Good Shepherd. This woman, the one having the – the one at Merrion Square.’ Abortion was not a word Donaldson found easy to say. ‘Those bollockses from Special Branch dumped her over there. Now the Reverend Mother is blaming me for it. Well, why wouldn’t she? The only name the woman knows is yours. So it all comes back here, straight back on to my desk as usual, Gillespie!’

‘What did they take her there for?’ said Stefan, puzzled.

‘The woman’s pregnant, isn’t she? And I assume she’s not married!’

‘How do I know, she didn’t even give us a name!’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not our business any more.’ Donaldson changed tack abruptly. He was about to give every good reason why the woman should have gone to the convent. Wasn’t it where the police took women like that? ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but the Reverend Mother wants her out of the place. She’s beside herself. And she thinks I’m responsible. You brought the woman in here, Sergeant. You go and sort this bloody mess out!’