Echoland

by Joe Joyce

  ‘Top secret.’ Timmy put his finger to his lips. ‘Top. Top. Secret.’

  Duggan wondered if he was drunk. He had seen Timmy down copious glasses of whiskey at family gatherings and never appear as drunk as others who had matched him. His speech sometimes became just a little disjointed, that was all.

  ‘That’s from the top,’ he began again, suddenly fixated with the word top. ‘From the very top. The top. And secret. Very secret.’

  ‘The Taoiseach?’ Duggan dropped his voice.

  Timmy nodded. ‘Men around him. Good men. Good advisers.’ He glanced around him. ‘I’ve been a bit worried about the Chief, you know. Told you that the other night. I know he sees things the rest of us can’t see. But I’ve a theory. I’m worried he spent too long negotiating with the Brits about the ports and the annuities. Big mistake to spend too long talking to them. Big mistake to talk to them at all. Look what happened Collins. Just tell them to fuck off and leave us alone. Only way to deal with them. But,’ he tapped his jacket where he had put the document, ‘he’s getting the right advice now. On the right track at last.’ He raised his glass, as if proposing a toast. ‘A nation once again.’

  Duggan raised his glass too and took a drink.

  ‘What does your father think?’ Timmy asked.

  ‘About all this? I don’t know. I haven’t been home in over a month.’ Anyway, his father never talked about politics.

  ‘He’d see through all the old British tricks,’ Timmy said. ‘From the old days.’

  Duggan’s father had been in the IRA during the War of Independence as well as Timmy but had taken no part in the Civil War afterwards. He never spoke to Duggan, or, as far as he knew, to anyone about those days. Timmy was always curious about his father’s political opinions, confirming that his father never spoke to him about them either.

  Timmy signalled to the barman for another round. Duggan protested that he had to get back to the barracks.

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ Timmy said with a heavy breath. He seemed totally sober again. ‘Nuala.’

  ‘I talked to her friend Stella today,’ Duggan said. ‘She said she doesn’t know where she is. She’s been on night duty and out of touch with everyone.’

  Timmy gave no indication that he had heard. He reached into his other inside pocket and took out a brown envelope and handed it to Duggan. He took out the single sheet of paper and unfolded it.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Duggan said and looked at Timmy with horror.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ Timmy said.

  ‘You’ve got to call in the guards now.’ Duggan dropped the sheet onto the bar, realizing that they shouldn’t be touching it at all. There could be fingerprints on it.

  Timmy snatched if off the bar and shook his head. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

  Duggan took it back from him; whatever prints had been there had probably been destroyed by now. Letters and words had been cut from newspapers and stuck to the page in a crude message. We have your daughter, they said. £5,000 to get her back. Ad in Herald before weekend to signal his agreement: Thanks to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour for prayers answered – TM.

  ‘Even if it is a joke,’ Duggan said. ‘You should tell the guards. It’s not funny.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Timmy shook his head. ‘Where would anyone get five thousand pounds?’

  Duggan folded the sheet of paper as the barman came with their drinks. He looked at the envelope it came in. It was addressed to Mr Timothy Monaghan TD PC, Dáil Éireann. Nothing else. The postmark appeared to be Dublin but he couldn’t make out the date. Somebody who knew Timmy well, Duggan thought. The PC on the envelope. Peace Commissioner. Timmy always signed his letters with that as well as TD. Some kind of private joke. Former gunman now a peace commissioner, Duggan had always thought.

  ‘When did you get it?’

  ‘Last week,’ Timmy said.

  ‘Last week,’ Duggan raised his voice and Timmy signalled to him to quieten down. ‘For fuck’s sake. Call the guards.’

  Timmy shook his head again. ‘Some Blueshirt fucker. Playing games,’ he said. ‘You should see some of the stuff I get in the post.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter who it is. How funny they think it is,’ Duggan said. ‘Let the guards deal with it.’

  ‘And be a laughing stock,’ Timmy said. ‘That’s what they want.’

  ‘They won’t be laughing if they end up in jail for blackmail. Extortion. Whatever.’

  ‘And I’ll lose my seat.’

  Duggan was about to ask how he could lose his seat over it but held back. Something to do with loss of face, he thought, not being in control. Not the man to make things happen, a victim. Nuala, he thought. She’s probably behind it. And Timmy knows that. Stella, too. She’s probably in on it. That’d explain her lack of concern about her friend.

  ‘Another one today,’ Timmy sighed and took another envelope from his pocket. No ad this weekend next message to her mother, this one said. Ransom now £10,000.

  ‘Shit,’ Duggan said.

  Timmy looked defeated. ‘Mona’d go berserk. There’d be no talking to her.’

  Would Nuala really do that to her mother? Duggan wondered. He doubted it. But he really had no idea what she would or wouldn’t do. And it could be a bluff. Probably was. But it was an effective turn of the screw. Mona would go berserk all right, force him to pay up.

  ‘You talk to her,’ Timmy said.

  ‘To aunt Mona?’

  ‘Jesus, no. Nuala.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘To that friend of hers.’

  ‘Okay,’ Duggan agreed.

  ‘Put a stop to this before it gets out of hand.’ Timmy drained half his glass of Paddy in one go.

  ‘You think she’s behind it? Nuala?’

  ‘If she wants money all she has to do is ask. I’ve never refused her anything.’ Timmy put the glass on the bar, a full stop. ‘Not that kind of money, of course. Where would I get that kind of money?’

  Four

  Duggan was on the phone waiting to be put through to the Superintendent’s office in Dublin Castle when Lieutenant Bill Sullivan came in, carrying an armful of files. Duggan put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked as Sullivan dumped the files on the other end of the table and drew up a chair for himself.

  ‘They’ve taken over the other office for the Brandy operation,’ Sullivan said as he sat down. ‘Co-ordinating the results of this morning’s raids on IRA members.’

  ‘Anything yet?’

  ‘Lot of fellows for Tintown,’ he said.

  ‘Tintown?’ Duggan shook his head.

  ‘Internment camp in the Curragh,’ Sullivan looked at him curiously. ‘Where’ve you been? The government’s introduced internment. Republicans being rounded up.’

  Jesus, Duggan thought, how did I not hear that? He had heard something about raids on IRA members. ‘I thought the raids were part of the search for Brandy,’ he said.

  ‘That, too,’ Sullivan said. ‘That’s our interest. No sign of him, though. They’re going through all the stuff picked up and the interrogations. See if there’s any leads.’

  ‘Is Captain McClure up there?’

  ‘Running it,’ Sullivan said but Duggan didn’t hear him. A gruff and bored voice had said ‘Superintendent’s office’ in his ear at the same time.

  ‘Lieutenant Duggan, G2,’ Duggan said into the phone. ‘We’re looking for the information about the deposits in the Royal Bank in Grafton Street in Hans Harbusch’s account.’

  There was a pause at the other end, then the voice, sounding even more bored, said, ‘What?’

  Duggan began to repeat himself but the voice cut him off. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

  Fucking Special Branch, Duggan thought. Not all charmers like Gifford. ‘You’ve got some information about where the money came from,’ Duggan said, ‘that we need to see as soon as possible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s okay,’
Duggan said with sudden impatience. ‘I’ll get the Colonel to call the Superintendent.’

  He thought for a moment that the Special Branch man had hung up on him. Then the voice said, still bored, ‘Hold on.’

  Duggan put his hand over the mouthpiece and let out a deep breath. He’d never have had the nerve to say that in person. Especially to someone who sounded like he’d been there since the Civil War and knew where the bodies were buried. Probably buried a few himself. The telephone was a great thing.

  Sullivan was looking at him with sudden admiration. ‘I’ll have my Colonel talk to your superiors,’ he mimicked. ‘I’ll remember that line.’

  Duggan shook a Sweet Afton out of its golden packet with one hand and lit it.

  ‘You’re the Harbusch case officer now?’ Sullivan said, half question, half complaint. Why hadn’t it been given to him? He was more experienced and not someone who was only there because he spoke German. ‘I’d heard that. How’d you manage that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Duggan shrugged, aware of what he was thinking. ‘Probably because everybody’s bored with Harbusch. A dead end. Never seems to do anything.’

  The Special Branch man came back on the line. ‘That information was sent to you. Through the usual channels.’

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ Duggan said. ‘And I’m the case officer in this case.’

  ‘Somebody probably lost it over there.’

  ‘I need it as soon as possible. Can you send it again? Please?’ Duggan held his breath.

  There was a strangled snort on the phone. ‘We’ve more to be doing than covering up for the army’s incompetence. Especially today.’ Then the voice muttered, ‘All right’, and the line went dead.

  Duggan put down the phone with a smile. Case officer, he thought. That sounded good. Even if it was a case that nobody else could be bothered about. He re-opened the Harbusch file at the spot where he had left it the night before.

  ‘That the Harbusch file?’ Sullivan asked. ‘The one with the dirty letters?’

  Duggan nodded and read aloud from the one in front of him. ‘I wriggle my toes and think of you sucking them and the sleep goes far away like you. When will you come back and suck my toes? All ten, my ten little piggy wiggys. Ah, I cannot sleep.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ Sullivan said and burst out laughing.

  Duggan joined in and raised his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Is that a code?’ he laughed.

  ‘Sucking her toes,’ Sullivan said, giving the idea some thought. ‘I don’t remember anything about sucking toes in the Catholic Truth Society booklet on sex.’

  ‘I hope you are a big boy now, thinking of me and my little piggy wiggy,’ Duggan went on reading. ‘I am too heated to sleep but will go with dreams.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Sullivan’s face was red with laughter. ‘I get that code all right. Big boy. Piggy wiggy.’ He went into another paroxysm of laughter. Duggan couldn’t help joining in, thinking this little pig went to the market. What was the rest of that? This little piggy cried all the way home. Was there a message in there somewhere?

  An orderly came in, a long brown, government-issue envelope in his hand, and looked from one to the other. He saluted Duggan who stopped laughing. ‘Captain McClure said this was for you, sir.’

  ‘Thanks, corporal.’ Duggan took the envelope, thinking that was quick, the Special Branch report on Harbusch’s money. Its flap was already open and he tipped its contents onto the table. It wasn’t the branch report: it was another letter from Harbusch to the Copenhagen address. It had been posted the previous day and been opened by the postal censors. He shook out the single page and opened it out on the table.

  The letter sounded positively enthusiastic compared to the earlier ones Duggan had seen. ‘We have a very important buyer for the surplus equipment,’ Hans had written. ‘The customer’s senior staff are enthusiastic about it and the difference it will make to their production. All that is awaited is the formal approval of the managing director. Please advise soonest on delivery arrangements and final price.’

  Duggan read through the central paragraph several times. A deal had been done, he thought. Arms for the IRA. Whatever had been blocking a deal had been unblocked. Something had happened to turn the tone positive. Was that why internment had been introduced? Could that be linked to Brandy? he wondered, conscious of McClure’s instruction to look out for changes in Harbusch’s activities. This looked like a change of activity. Certainly a change of tone. McClure had already seen it, he realized, he had sent the orderly around with it.

  ‘Any more piggy wiggy stuff?’ Sullivan broke into his thoughts.

  ‘Pages of it,’ he pointed at the file. ‘Gets a bit boring after a while though. Doesn’t go into any real detail.’

  ‘Not as boring as this,’ Sullivan indicated his pile of files.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Trawling through old files looking for references to Stephen Held. See if we can track down any of his other associates. Who might be hiding Brandy.’

  ‘I’ll tell you if I see anything else interesting.’

  ‘Them continentals,’ Sullivan shook his head. ‘All sex mad.’

  Sex mad, all right, Duggan thought. Held was half a continental and living with an English woman who was someone else’s wife. If Timmy was right. Hans had been with Inge in London, was now shacked up with Eliza, getting lovelorn letters through a secret box office from this woman in Holland who only signed herself P and sometimes didn’t sign them at all. He went back to the Harbusch file but flicked through the rest of the love letters at speed. They were repetitive. And if there was a hidden meaning in them he couldn’t see it.

  The only other thing in the file was a report on the other residents of the house where the Harbusches had their flat. There were six flats there altogether, two of them unoccupied when the report was done two months earlier. The ground floor had a newly married couple, he a junior doctor, she a civil servant until her marriage, and an elderly man who taught piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. On the first floor was a spinster who had retired home to Dublin after a lifetime working for an insurance company in London and, in the other flat, two girls from Cork who worked in the Land Commission on the other side of Merrion Square. The Harbusches were on the second floor and the empty flats on the top floor. Discreet checks on all of them had shown no connections with Germans or subversives or raised any suspicions.

  He closed the file and got up. ‘I’m off to see Hans,’ he said.

  ‘Mind your piggy wiggy.’ Sullivan set himself off giggling again.

  ‘You’re only coming here for the biscuits,’ Sinéad said to him as he passed her desk.

  ‘It’s the tea,’ he said. ‘The way you make it.’

  ‘Just like your mammy, I suppose,’ she gave him a sideways look, as if to say she knew his type. ‘You’re just in time. As usual.’

  ‘I’ll bring it up,’ he offered. ‘Save you the trouble.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said and went down the hall to the return where there was a small kitchen with an electric kettle, a bottle of milk, a packet of Marietta biscuits, and a scattering of cups on a small table. The kettle was already boiled and he waited while she made a fresh pot of tea, took a tray from behind the door and poured out two cups. She put four biscuits on a plate, then took an extra one from the packet. ‘For you,’ she said. ‘For saving me a journey.’

  ‘I’ll give it to Petey,’ he said. ‘He’s so lonely up there.’

  She gave him an odd look and he climbed the stairs too quickly with the tray in both hands and was breathing heavily when he got to the top.

  Gifford shook his head at him when he arrived. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t work. You still look like a soldier. Maybe if you put on a little white apron, a black dress. And got some new shoes …’

  ‘I was going to give you the extra biscuit,’ Duggan said. ‘But you can fuck off now.’

  ‘An extra biscuit?’ Gifford narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger at
him. ‘You keep away from her.’

  ‘Are you, ah, going out with her?’

  ‘Fucking culchies,’ Gifford took a cup of tea and three biscuits. ‘Arrive in the big city with mouths hanging open. Looking like gobdaws. Then start getting uppity. Eating your biscuits, moving into your house, stealing the love of your life. Trying to.’

  ‘Afraid you can’t compete with a real uniform?’ Duggan laughed.

  ‘Uppity or what,’ Gifford bit into the three biscuits together and they broke up and bits fell to the floor. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered through a mouthful of biscuit.

  Duggan laughed and went to the window. The spell of good weather was over, the day was dull and the heat lay heavy on the city, trapped under an off-white eiderdown of cloud. ‘Are they still digging the shelter down there?’ he asked. He couldn’t see any activity over the curtain of trees.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Gifford said. ‘Must’ve finished. Or else found themselves in Australia. Could be a useful bolthole. Run over there, dive in and find yourself in Australia.’

  ‘Could be,’ Duggan said. ‘Things are looking dangerous.’

  Gifford nodded to himself behind his back. ‘Busy morning in the Red House?’

  ‘Busier in the Castle, I’d say.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Gifford kicked a copy of the Irish Press that was lying on the floor. ‘I read all about it in the paper.’

  Duggan turned to look at him, surprised at the bitter edge in his voice. He had thought Gifford never took anything seriously, could make a joke out of everything.

  ‘We’re the ugly ducklings,’ Gifford sighed. ‘But we’ll have our day. Right, General?’

  ‘If you say so, Commissioner.’

  Gifford laughed and said to the window, ‘Come on, Hansi, show us your hand.’

  ‘Nothing moving there?’

  Gifford waved a hand at the view in answer. The leaves on the trees were a still life against the matt canvas of the sky.

  ‘Did they go out at all yesterday?’ Duggan asked.

  Gifford shook his head. But they must have, Duggan thought. One or other or both of them. To post the letter. Gifford must’ve missed it. Reading the paper, chatting up Sinéad, lying on the floor. Or else they had another way out.