A Hunt in Winter

by Conor Brady

  ‘Mr Swallow, I didn’t expect to meet you here,’ Vanucchi called aloud. ‘What will you have?’

  ‘A Tullamore would be grand, Charlie.’

  ‘A large Tullamore here,’ Vanucchi called to the barman. ‘And another large Power’s for myself.’

  Swallow waited until the drinks were served. He raised his glass to Vanucchi.

  ‘Cheers, Charlie. Your good health.’

  Vanucchi raised his glass.

  ‘And yours, Mr Swallow. And a happy New Year to you.’

  Swallow came directly to the point.

  ‘We’ve got good information that someone in your outfit was responsible for the murder of Nellie Byrne, or Helena Moyles as you might know her better, in Chapel Court in November. We know she had money left to her by Ces Downes. Someone went to try to get hold of it. We know it’s in a bank book or a post office book. You can probably tell me who that person is.’

  Vanucchi sipped at his Power’s. His expression seemed to be one of genuine surprise, Swallow reckoned.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Swallow. I told you, Nellie was good to Ces. But I don’t know anythin’ about money bein’ left to her. I swear it.’

  Swallow grimaced.

  ‘Well, Charlie, someone took the view that they were entitled to whatever Ces had left behind. So you’d best come up pretty fast with a candidate. I’m under pressure from Chief Mallon to present a result on this. So go and find out. Then let me know.’

  Vanucchi shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. I can only do me best, Mr Swallow. But it’ll take a bit o’ time. If you’re tellin’ me that one of our lads did for Nellie, I’d be very upset. Angry, like. I wouldn’t let it pass. Gimme a couple a days to get to the bottom of it.’

  Swallow threw back what remained of his Tullamore.

  ‘Right, Charlie. That’s your job now. And let me be very direct with you. In the ordinary course I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. We’ve been very useful to each other in the past. But I need an answer on this one. And if you don’t come up with it, you’re going to find yourself quick as a wink in the Bridewell, then into Mountjoy. I can put you down for ten years without the slightest bother at all, Charlie. Are we clear then?’

  Vanucchi winced visibly.

  ‘Mr Swallow, you’ve absolutely no call to start takin’ that sort of attitude with me. I’ll do what I can. I always do. You know that. But I can’t say I’ll come back with what you want on this one. Will you give me a couple of weeks?’

  Swallow patted the back of the gang leader’s hand.

  ‘I’ll give you one week, Charlie. And I know you’ll do your best with that. I just hope for your own sake that it’s good enough now.’

  Friday December 28th, 1888

  Chapter 27

  More than once in his career, Swallow would concede, sheer coincidence of events in time, happenstance or good luck, as distinct from good police work, had impacted dramatically upon the course of important investigations.

  A wholly fortuitous sighting by an off-duty policeman of the Phoenix Park assassins had given G-Division an early start in their pursuit of the ‘Invincibles’ in May 1882. Similarly, two years later, a G-man travelling from the North Wall to Liverpool to attend a family funeral had found himself by random chance sharing a third-class cabin with a Fenian gun-runner that Swallow had been pursuing for a year. The man was arrested by Liverpool police once the vessel docked in Merseyside.

  Late on the Friday evening, one of those formless, fallow days that run between Christmas and New Year, Swallow made his way through the gloom from Exchange Court to the ABC telegraph office in the Lower Yard. Had he not done so, he later reflected, had he sent a clerk to discharge a routine task, it was likely that he would never have known about the telegram from Berlin.

  Earlier he had recounted his conversation with Charlie Vanucchi to Mallon.

  ‘You gave him a week?’ Mallon was incredulous.

  ‘Yes, chief. I’d say he genuinely knows nothing. So I think he needs the time.’

  ‘Sounds as if you’re going a bit soft, Swallow,’ Mallon said.

  Swallow could not be sure how seriously the quip was intended to be taken.

  Mossop wanted to make good on his promise to young Debbie Dunne that her fishmonger’s stand would be protected from predators until she was strong enough to go back to her trade at Misery Hill and Cardiff Lane. Would-be usurpers were to be threatened with prosecution for failure to hold or display street-trading licences unless they allowed her young sister to do business in her place.

  ‘You’d be best advised to have the divisions put out warnings first,’ Mallon had counselled. ‘If you start issuing summonses without notice there’ll be a lot of stink. The beat men will start getting hell from the fish-ladies and God knows what might happen.’

  ‘The plan would be that there wouldn’t be any summonses, chief,’ Mossop explained. ‘It’s just a threat. Sure, if we locked up a fraction of the unlicensed street traders in the city there’d be standing room only in Mountjoy and Kilmainham.’

  ‘Even so,’ Mallon countered, ‘do it by the book. Get a notice out on the routes and let the beat men start issuing the warnings. That way nobody can say we’re not playing fair.’

  And so it was that on Friday afternoon Swallow spent an hour drafting an instruction in Mallon’s name for distribution to all stations on the ABC. It would be included in the daily and nightly charges delivered by the shift sergeants before their sections went out on their beats. All street traders were to be cautioned that their licences needed to be in order and that there would be consequences for any who did not comply with the law’s requirements.

  He stepped into the telegraph office a few minutes after six o’clock. Reports from all thirty-five police stations across the city were transmitted promptly on the hour, so the room was filled with the chattering noise of printer machines, spewing out details of petty crime, property both stolen and recovered, missing animals and snatches of what was supposed to be criminal intelligence: a known housebreaker seen in a suburban street and a pickpocket spotted boarding a tram that would take him to Sackville Street to ply his trade.

  An icy gust came through the door with him. A heavy-set constable, in the act of tearing a sheaf of telegraph paper off a printer, shouted above the din without turning around.

  ‘Shut the bloody door.’

  Swallow grinned tolerantly. The men who worked the ABC office were notoriously ill-tempered. Virtually without exception they had been taken off the regular roster and allocated to telegraph duty because they were unfit for outdoor work.

  When the constable did turn around, Swallow recognised Pat Cummins, the C-Division constable who had encountered the man running from Chapel Court on the night that Helena Moyles was murdered.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d got off the regular, Cummins. When did you start here?’

  ‘Sorry, Inspector, I didn’t realise it was yourself,’ he began apologetically.

  Swallow raised a hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’d say you’re glad to be indoors. Diabetes is a tough condition.’

  Cummins shrugged resignedly.

  ‘It knocks th’ energy outta you. You’re no good on the street then. You’re only a danger to yerself. But no use complainin’. Dr Lafeyre put in a word with the surgeon at the Kevin Street hospital right away after Nellie Byrne was murdered, and he got me back in here.’

  ‘Got you back? Did you work here before?’

  Cummins nodded.

  ‘I’ve not been well for maybe three years. So I had more than a year of light duties here. Then the surgeon said I was fit for outdoors again. I was only back on the regular a few weeks before that night.’

  ‘Still no name for the fellow you saw at Nellie Byrne’s?’ Swallow asked.

  Cummins shook his head.

  ‘No, sir. Sergeant Mossop took me around all the big stations to see if I could recognise any of the “
polismen”. Ah, sure maybe it was only in me imagination that I thought I knew him. You know, th’oul diabetes can muddle the thinkin’ a bit on top of everythin’ else.’

  He reefed a sheet of flimsy off one of the clanking telegraph machines.

  ‘Now, what can I do for you, Inspector?’

  Swallow handed him the circular he had drafted earlier.

  ‘A routine notice from Chief Mallon. He wants the divisions to start tightening up on street traders’ licences.’

  Cummins chuckled.

  ‘I’d wish him well. Them ladies don’t take too readily to payin’ out for that kinda thing. Can’t say I blame them. But sure, I’ll get it off within the half hour.’

  He reached for a wire tray piled with telegraph paper tear-offs.

  ‘By the way, there’s an unusual wan in here for G-Division. I suppose you might as well take it back with ye.’

  He rummaged in the tray.

  ‘It’s down here somewhere. From Berlin no less. Th’ English is good though. Near enough word perfect. It’s for the attention of the Kriminalpolizei. That’s you lads, I suppose.’

  Swallow nodded.

  ‘I suppose so. Is it anything serious?’

  ‘Not for us, I think. They have an Irish fella in custody there. Name of Carmody. He’s up for a serious assault on a chef in a hotel where he’s workin’ in Berlin. The Berlin police want a check on his background here.’

  He pulled a length of flimsy from the pile and handed it to Swallow.

  ‘Here it is. That’ll keep wan o’ your lads busy for a while.’

  For a moment Swallow toyed with the idea of handing the paper back to Cummins with an instruction to put it in the file that would go to the duty officer at G-Division later in the evening anyway. Then he decided that since he had to pass Exchange Court to make his way home to Thomas Street, he might as well take it with him.

  He climbed the stairs to his office, and when he had wrapped himself in his overcoat he smoothed the sheet on his desk in order to read the message.

  Königliche Schutzmannschaft

  Kriminal Directorat

  BerlinWaterstraße 11

  To

  Direktor von Detektiven

  Polizei Kriminal

  Dublin

  Vereinigtes Königreich von Großbritannien und Irland

  Herr Direktor,

  In the matter of an injurious assault in the Hotel Oslo, the Berlin police hold in its custody a British citizen, Michael James Carmody. Prisoner states to be born in Dublin, United Kingdom in 1865.

  Prisoner Carmody has been in Berlin since November. Prisoner by trade is assistant kitchen chef. He states he was employed at Dublin at the Dolphin Hotel and at New Vienna Hotel. States there are no criminal convictions in United Kingdom.

  This department would thank you to confirm records for Prisoner Carmody for return quickly please. If necessary fotograph likeness may be sent to you through international postal.

  Trusting yours cordially

  Johann Pfaus

  (Hauptmann/Kapitän)

  Swallow read the message a second time with gathering excitement. Michael James Carmody might be spinning a false yarn to the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. But if he was telling the truth about working at the New Vienna, there was a gap in the details that Stefan Werner had given to him and Pat Mossop in November. There was no Carmody on the list of employees at his restaurant that he had furnished to G-Division.

  And if this Kapitän Pfaus was right about the timing of Carmody’s arrival in Berlin, it was just days after the murder of Alice Flannery.

  Saturday December 29th, 1888

  Chapter 28

  The Dublin Criminal Registry was housed in two cavernous brick-faced buildings on Great Ship Street, just outside the back gate to the Castle’s Lower Yard. Something in excess of 100,000 files had accumulated in its storerooms and corridors over the half-century since its establishment.

  The clerk-constable on duty took less than five minutes to locate three files under the name of Michael James Carmody. DCR was acknowledged as a model of its kind, and police forces from across the kingdom had visited Dublin to see and learn from its operation. Latterly it had been organised on the decimal system of library classification, devised more than a decade previously by one Melvil Dewey of New York.

  ‘Take yer pick there, Inspector.’ The clerk dropped the three bulky folders onto the counter in front of Swallow. ‘There’s another score of Carmodys there too. There’s a couple of Michael Johns and Michael Josephs. There’s even a Michael Marmeduke, if you don’t mind. Sure, you know yerself, a lotta them fellas drop names and pick up new ones to suit themselves.’

  Swallow knew that too well. It was little more than twenty years since the authorities had introduced the compulsory registration of births. Anyone born before 1836 could change identity more or less at will since there were no central records, and local baptismal records were notoriously unreliable and inadequate. But according to Pfaus’s telegram, Michael James Carmody was born in 1865. If he had a criminal record it was less likely that he could succeed in leaving his past behind.

  Nor did he. The topmost file showed a birth date of June 2nd 1865 for Michael James Carmody, born at the vast workhouse known as the South Dublin Union, to Mary Anne Carmody, aged eighteen years. Father: unknown. Mother’s occupation: none stated. She was probably a street-girl, on the bottom rung of Dublin prostitution. Hardly the best start in life, Swallow reflected, for baby Michael James.

  Yet remarkably, he had just two convictions. Petty theft at twelve years of age. And then, at sixteen years, a conviction for assault that drew a sentence of eighteen months’ imprisonment at Mountjoy. The file showed his last known address in Dublin as a tenement house in Gardiner Street. His last recorded employment stated him to be a kitchen porter at the Dolphin Hotel, Essex Street, Dublin.

  If, as the Berlin police appeared to have been told, Carmody had been employed at the New Vienna in South Great George’s Street, it was not recorded in the Criminal Registry. That was not necessarily surprising, Swallow knew. The filing system was superb; information could be retrieved within minutes, but details were frequently out of date. The system could only give out what had at one stage or another been put into it. It was simply impossible to keep every file up to date with the most recent information. The full facts about anyone who figured in the files at DCR almost always had to be established by the time-tested methodology of knocking on doors and asking hard questions.

  It was time to put a few of those questions to Stefan Werner.

  Chapter 29

  The New Vienna was bustling. The lobby’s glowing gas lights created an inviting space to welcome diners in from the gloom of the wintry midday. There was a noisy hubbub from the bar. When the doors opened a heavy cloud of cigar smoke wafted into the lobby. Swallow could nearly feel it, like a green film, on his face and hands. It was distinctly unpleasant, sickening almost, but Mossop sniffed it appreciatively. Swallow grinned in spite of his distaste.

  ‘I’d say that Cuban tobacco’s a bit out of your price range, Pat. You’ll have to stick to the Navy Plug.’

  Stefan Werner was not pleased to be called from the dining room to meet the two G-men.

  ‘Gentlemen, may we please be very brief. I have been very co-operative, very gewesen. You must realise that this is one of the busiest days of the year. Every businessman in the city wants to take lunch with his friends.’

  As he spoke, the bar doors swung outwards to disgorge a noisy, already inebriated band of half a dozen gentlemen making their way across to the dining room. Swallow recognised one or two of the florid faces from routine inquiries at banks or businesses around Dame Street.

  ‘Ye’ve a full house all right,’ Mossop observed when they had passed. ‘There won’t be much work got outta them lads for the rest of the day.’

  Werner permitted himself a thin smile.

  ‘It is a tradition in Dublin, as you understand, I’m sure. Men of comm
erce use the days between Christmas and New Year to engage in a little Gastfreundschaft, hospitality, with business acquaintances and friends. For us it is very important business.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Swallow said. ‘And we won’t keep you from it. But something has emerged in routine inquiries that we need to clarify with you.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘The Berlin police have an Irishman in custody on serious charges. He claims to have been an employee of yours.’

  Werner shrugged.

  ‘This is possible, I suppose. But why do you tell me this? He is in Berlin. It is a matter for the authorities there.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know his name?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘Not particularly. But you will tell me, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes,’ Swallow said. ‘He gives the name of Michael James Carmody. Thirty-three years of age. He claims he worked here at the New Vienna and previously at the Dolphin Hotel.’

  ‘Yes, I believe I remember him,’ Werner nodded slowly. ‘Carmody. He was here for a short time. He left some weeks ago. He was quite difficult. Quite aggressive. He had difficulties with other employees.’

  ‘Difficulties?’

  ‘He threatened a kitchen porter with a knife. He said he would kill him after they had finished work. The kitchen porter did not want to come back after that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘It didn’t seem important. What could it have to do with the matter you came to inquire about? The death of . . . that poor girl.’

  Swallow wondered if Stefan Werner had genuinely forgotten Alice Flannery’s name or if he was affecting amnesia.

  ‘It’s no trivial thing when one man threatens to kill another, Mr Werner. In fact it’s a crime, and a very serious one. And the girl’s name was Alice Flannery, by the way.’