The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  Smith Berry coloured in anger.

  ‘You forget yourself again, Sergeant. How dare you speak to me in those terms?’

  ‘Now,’ he pointed to the door, ‘I repeat, I’m aware of what you have done. Because of that I’m going to pretend that you haven’t said what you just did or used the language you did. Go back to your duties and make sure that my directions in relation to Darby are complied with speedily.’

  Mallon stood. He caught Swallow’s eye.

  ‘There appears to be nothing further that requires police attention here,’ Mallon said. ‘If that is so, Detective Sergeant Swallow and I will return to Exchange Court.’

  Swallow recovered his self-control.

  ‘May I request one item of information before I go?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s that Sergeant?’ Smith Berry asked cautiously.

  ‘I’d like at least to know the identity of the chief organiser of this conspiracy. Who signed off on the imaginary land sales that the Treasury paid for?’

  ‘No, Sergeant. It’s restricted now. Only Major Kelly will need to know it. He will shortly proceed with his men to take that individual into custody and return him to London.’

  ‘You know he has the blood of quite a few people his hands? Ambrose Pollock, Arthur Clinton, Teddy Shaftoe, just to name the ones we know about.’

  ‘Yes. But I’m glad you didn’t use the term “innocent people.” All of them were involved in this criminal process.’

  Swallow shook his head.

  ‘Mr Smith Berry, the Crown doesn’t deserve the loyalty that people like me give it. I do my job because I think this country needs order and peace and a bit more fair play. I just hope we’re able to hold it together a bit longer.’

  ‘We all have our orders to follow, Detective Sergeant.’

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  In the afternoon, he went with Mallon to visit Lady Margaret Gessel for the last time at the Shelbourne Hotel. West Ridgeway had arranged for her to be escorted by one of his officials to the evening sailing from Kingstown.

  Swallow was still seething. Mallon had made an unsuccessful effort to soothe him.

  ‘They have their own ways of sorting things out,’ he said. ‘They have ways of inflicting pain.’

  ‘Maybe I’m old-fashioned,’ Swallow’s tone was bitter, ‘but I relish the idea of a cold cell, hard labour and lousy food for the criminal, whatever class he comes from. They’re protecting one of their own, I don’t doubt it.’

  Mallon did not dissent.

  They sat in the Windsor Room looking out across the square. The trees were rapidly losing what was left of their foliage. Winter was tightening its grip on Dublin.

  ‘I want to say thank you for your help, Lady Margaret,’ Mallon said when she had joined them. ‘It wouldn’t have been possible to put the full picture together without your assistance.’

  ‘You’re very welcome, Mr Mallon. And you too, Mr Swallow. I hope you have enough to nail them all, whoever they are.’

  ‘I think so.’ He was vague. ‘We got some of them. And we put a stop to their game.’

  ‘Let me ask you a direct question, Mr Mallon.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Is my husband’s cousin, Sir Richard Gessel, involved in any way in the fraud?’

  Swallow saw his boss tense.

  ‘I can say that I have no knowledge of him being involved.’

  Classic Mallon.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Mallon. That is some slight relief.’

  Later, Swallow took custody of Jack Darby at Mountjoy Prison to bring him to the mail packet at Kingstown.

  ‘You’re a lucky man, Darby,’ Swallow said as the police side-car passed by the wide expanse of Sandymount Strand. ‘If I had my way you’d be rotting in Maryborough for the next twenty years. Anyone who takes a knife to a woman shouldn’t expect any mercy.’

  Darby grinned.

  ‘Way I ’eard it from one of the screws in that Kilmain’am place, you and the Jew girl are more than just casual acquaintances anyway.’

  Swallow wanted to stop the car, take Darby out and kick him up and down the Strand.

  ‘One more word like that and I’m bringing you back to Mountjoy you little cockney shite. And don’t ask me about the charge; I’ll think of something.’

  There was silence for the next mile or so.

  ‘Wot ’appened to Teddy?’ Darby asked.

  ‘Same as will probably happen to you,’ Swallow said tersely. ‘He got involved with people who were just as ruthless as himself, only smarter and better at it.’

  At the Carlisle Pier, he opened Darby’s handcuffs. The G-man was watched by the mill of passengers, some of them nodded in silent acknowledgement as Swallow marched his prisoner to the third-class gangway.

  ‘Get on board,’ Swallow said. ‘And if I see your ugly face anywhere in this city again I’ll put a fucking bullet through each of your eyes.’

  Darby did not answer. He was staring open-mouthed past Swallow to where the first-class passengers were boarding the vessel on a separate gangway. His face registered puzzlement, then recognition of something or someone, then excitement.

  He jabbed a pointing finger towards the first-class gangway.

  ‘It’s ’im … fack it. It’s the fackin’ toff wot set me an’ Teddy up to do the robbery … there ’e goes, the facker.’

  Swallow turned to follow Darby’s line of sight.

  He saw Major Kelly on the first-class gangway. Three heavily built members of his posse were around him. In between them, clearly a prisoner although not handcuffed, was George Weldon.

  Weldon stared back at Swallow and Darby. Then he grinned and raised his hat in a mocking gesture as he boarded the mail boat.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  When John Mallon declared he was going to a public house and that he wanted company, it was as rare as the sighting of a white blackbird.

  ‘Come on,’ he inclined his head towards the door. ‘I want to get out of this place for a while. And I’m not drinking on my own. It’s too dangerous.’

  Swallow was unsure if Mallon was worried about the official consequences of going on a bender, or about compromising his security by going to a public house.

  ‘Where do you want to go, Chief?’

  Mallon had sent his clerk to fetch Swallow from the crime sergeants’ office.

  ‘We’re going to the Brazen Head,’ he said. ‘At least you can put names on the criminals down there.’

  They took a corner of the select bar, partly shielded from curious eyes by a wood and glass partition. Mallon ordered a large Tullamore for Swallow and a Bushmills for himself.

  He took his first mouthful of the whiskey.

  ‘The French have a phrase, c’est la vie. That’s life.’

  There was an edge of bitterness.

  ‘We need the wisdom to know what we can change and the patience to endure what we can’t.’

  Swallow bit his tongue. He knew enough about patience and endurance.

  ‘You’re right, Sir. You have to be philosophical.’

  ‘Aye, philosophical, that’s the word. It’ll be business as usual for the lawyers, the civil servants and the rest of them. And we’re left with a great big nought after weeks of bloody effort.’

  ‘Ah but it’s great to know that the poor sloggers in the police can take credit for keeping the system going,’ Swallow said sarcastically. ‘The landlords get their money. The farmers get their land. There’s peace in the streets. It’d make you proud.’

  He drank from his Tullamore.

  ‘What’ll happen to Grace Clinton, Sir?’

  ‘You couldn’t be sure. I expect the Attorney General will have her tried for manslaughter. If she can plead self-defence she’ll probably be let go. She’ll do a few months in prison in the meantime.’

  ‘There’s nobody to contradict her,’ Swallow said. ‘The only witness is Phoebe Pollock. And God knows where she is or if we’ll ever hear of her again.’

  Mallon chuck
led. ‘If she’s wise she’ll keep going as far as she can while her money lasts. I’ll tell you something interesting about her later.’

  ‘Is there anything to be brought against Barry?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Mallon tossed back his drink. ‘The likelihood is that he told the truth: he put her on the train to Belfast. He persuaded her to give him a few quid. Quite a few quid. But it’s hard to see how we could put any criminal charge around that.’

  ‘By the way,’ he tapped his empty glass, ‘it’s your round.’

  Swallow ordered the same again.

  The first large Tullamore had warmed him and taken the edge of any sense of deference to his superior.

  ‘Isn’t it wrong, though? We’re talking about a woman gone astray in the head and a poor bastard running a second-rate hotel who saw a chance to make a few bob. But the real robbers, the big fellows in the stripy pants and the top hats, are too big and too important to be touched. We’re only a fucking joke, aren’t we? And the law is another fucking joke.’

  Mallon shrugged.

  ‘You’re an educated man, Swallow, you’ll know the Latin saying, salus populi suprema lex esto. Let the good of the people be the highest law.’

  ‘You mean the good of the top people. It’s not the poor devils ploughing the fields or digging the roads.’

  Swallow wondered if it was time to tell Mallon about the job offer from Jenkinson at Scotland Yard. He had turned it over in his mind many times in the past forty-eight hours. He was still unsure of what he would do. But he was not going to miss the opportunity to stick the offer under Mallon’s nose. Maybe later, when they would each have had a few more drinks.

  ‘I knew that fellow Weldon,’ he told Mallon. ‘I met him a few times with Harry Lafeyre. Smooth type. Very personable. He even took my former landlady, Mrs Walsh, to the theatre.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ Mallon said dryly.

  Swallow guessed he was not telling Mallon anything he did not already know.

  ‘There had to be somebody high up behind the land fraud,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be that Gessel fellow in the Prime Minister’s office. He had the opportunity and the connections.’

  ‘We can’t say he wasn’t involved,’ Mallon mused. ‘Weldon was the fellow who gave Shaftoe and Darby their orders. He must have picked up reports of the coins being sold around the city. And he knew there had to be someone, somewhere in the plan, who wasn’t keeping to the rules. It wouldn’t have taken him long to figure it was probably Arthur Clinton’

  He sipped his Bushmills. ‘But maybe he wasn’t the top dog either.’

  ‘Maybe. These fellows know how to work the system,’ Swallow muttered.

  ‘That’s what we’re paid for, Swallow, to keep the system running, for the people at the top and at the bottom.’

  ‘Well, we do a pretty job of it for the crowd at the top anyway,’ Swallow said, putting back a mouthful of Tullamore. ‘And speaking for myself, I don’t sense that’s there any great feeling of gratitude for it.’

  Mallon chuckled.

  ‘I said I’d tell you something interesting about Phoebe. I had a visitor earlier, Mr John Leonard Barry. He wanted to show me a postcard he’d just got. From Belfast, posted yesterday, signed “Fondly, Phoebe.” It asked him to travel there and to check into the Abercorn Hotel.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. She’s in Belfast. The bloody visionaries were right.’

  Mallon looked puzzled.

  ‘Visionaries?’

  ‘It’s too complicated to explain. Forget I mentioned it.’

  ‘You’ve had a grievance over not getting the step up to inspector ever since the Phoenix Park murders,’ Mallon said when the drinks arrived. ‘And you’re entitled to that,’

  ‘Good of you to say so, Sir,’ Swallow said. The whiskey had not yet brought him to the point of open insolence.

  ‘And it’s bloody annoying to see people like Boyle moving ahead,’ Mallon said. ‘You know he’s on the promotion list for superintendent?’

  ‘Ha bloody ha,’ Swallow said into his drink.

  ‘It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow a bit of good though.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’ll go off into uniform somewhere. Rathmines or Kingstown. That’ll leave a vacancy at inspector in G-Division.’

  Swallow snorted. ‘Yeah, a nice slot for some fucking mason or time-server with a brother in the Upper Yard.’

  Mallon wagged a finger.

  ‘Don’t be so cynical. Like I said, it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good. I was in with Smith Berry just before I came up to your office.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I explained to him that if you hadn’t cracked this case so early it would have blown up in public. The newspapers and the opposition and all the agitators would make hay on it. I told him we owed you a debt.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s been that way for a while, Chief,’ Swallow said.

  ‘I got you confirmed on the list for detective inspector. You’ll be promoted just as soon as Boyle moves up.’

  Against his expectations, Swallow felt oddly emotional. First he felt that he wanted to hit Mallon between the eyes. Then he felt he wanted to slap him on the back.

  He heard himself say, ‘It’s about fucking time.’

  That was what he thought. In fact, the words did not come out. Instead he looked at the two glasses, now empty again.

  ‘It’s my round, Chief.’

  Mallon looked into his empty glass.

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard the news about Jenkinson at Scotland Yard, of course?’

  Swallow had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Gone, as of last night. Resigned, I gather. They’re bringing back Robbie Anderson to head the Special Irish Branch.’

  ‘Was there a reason?’ Swallow was wary. ‘Anything … in particular?’

  ‘I think he wanted out. He’d been at it a long time. I think he was just weary and worn out.’

  He drank from his newly-filled whiskey tumbler.

  ‘But it goes to show you, doesn’t it? Here today, gone tomorrow. You wouldn’t want to rely too much on what that kind of a fellow would be promising, would you?’

  Epilogue

  The pawn shop on the corner of Lamb Alley and Cornmarket remained closed. The windows at street level had been boarded up after a couple had been broken by late-night revellers. The constable who had been on special post there since the murder had been reallocated to beat duties.

  There was word that a butcher from The Coombe was interested in putting in a new shop when the courts would have wound up the estate of the late Ambrose Pollock. For the present, though, the pawn shop remained eerily vacant, the boarded windows staring sightlessly at the twin churches of St Audeon across the street.

  Swallow finished in Exchange Court just after 9 o’clock. He exited the detective office and turned past the City Hall for Castle Street. It was cold and dark. Soon it would be November.

  Earlier, ‘Duck’ Boyle had visited him at the crime sergeants’ office.

  ‘Me last day here, Swalla’. I kem to shake yer hand and wish ye well before I go.’

  Boyle had assembled his books and personal files in two large bundles that he placed on the desk beside the main door.

  ‘I’m startin’ in Rathmines on Monday. Ye’ll be very welcome anytime yer in th’area. Of course, I’ll be a busy man out there.’

  Swallow answered with calculated ambiguity.

  ‘Oh, as ever.’

  ‘Everythin’s in order in me own office. All reports up to date.’

  He dropped a brown envelope on the desk in front of Swallow.

  ‘You might want to have a squint at that yerself. The top copy’s gone to the chief. But I slipped in an extra carbon so that copy you have there doesn’t exist … officially, that is.’

  Swallow reached out for the envelope.

  ‘Ah, don’t bother readin�
�� it till I’m gone,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s th’ official report into that shootin’ over at Greenberg’s. The conclusion is that th’ officer in question acted properly. No case t’answer. In fact, I’m sayin’ he should be commended.’

  Swallow offered to help him carry the books and files to the main steps, where an open car waited.

  Boyle stepped up to the car.

  ‘An’ of course, I hear the word is that yer goin’ to have a bit o’ good news yerself soon. “Detective Inspector Joseph Swalla”. It has a good ring to it.’

  When Boyle had departed, Swallow returned to the office and closed down his own paperwork. Exchange Court would not be greatly diminished in its operational capacities by the departure of ‘Duck’ Boyle.

  He reached the corner of Werburgh Street, where he would generally turn to make for Heytesbury Street and his rented house. On this day, though, he crossed the street under the shadow of Christ Church. He made his way along High Street and Cornmarket. The change of direction had been instinctive rather than rational. He was unsure what he was going to do. He refused even to think about it. After St Audeon’s, he quickened his pace.

  Someone said his name and bade him good night on Thomas Street. He recognised the beard and then the brown Franciscan habit.

  ‘And where might you be going at this hour of the night, Sergeant?’ Friar Lawrence asked. The tone was genial, solicitous.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Father, I’m not entirely sure.’

  The elderly friar chuckled.

  ‘Ah, I’d say you’re going in the right direction anyway.’

  He pushed through the frosted glass doors of Grant’s, breathing in the warm, smoky air of the select bar. The house was busy. There was noisy conversation and laughter coming from the snugs. A junior barman that he did not recognise was serving from behind the counter. At the end of the bar, Maria was talking to Tom, the senior man. He walked over to her.

  Tom tactfully stepped away and busied himself rearranging glasses on the worktop behind the bar.

  At first, Maria had looked startled. Then she smiled cautiously.