All the Dead Voices

by Declan Hughes

  “Farney Park?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Yeah. I remember it. A murder stood out back then. Not like today, bowsies and corner boys going around shooting each other over the price of a pint. Back of his head stove in, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” I said. George was staring at his hands the while, so it was hard to know how much he knew and how he knew it. But then it would have been just as hard to know by looking into those coal-black eyes.

  “Word at the time was that there was some kind of paramilitary thing going on all right,” George said quietly.

  “The IRA?”

  “The INLA was what I heard. The Irish National Liberation Army. Like the Provos, only worse. They took him out in part as a favor to some Provo he was investigating—”

  “Jack Cullen?”

  “Don’t be putting words in me mouth. In part as a favor to some Provo, but the stated reason was to strike a blow against I don’t know what, the INLA were Marxist Leninists as well as being fucking savages, the unjust oppressive forces of state repression as represented by the revenue inspectors, they got that bit right at least.”

  “Who are we talking about, George? Anyone in particular? Anyone still around?”

  “Well…I’m just telling you what I heard, right?”

  “Go on then, tell me it.”

  “Well, one of the names I heard was Ray Moran.”

  “Ray Moran? Jack Cullen’s representative on earth?”

  “The very same. Moran was a student back then, ran the student union in Trinity there, the Ents Officer they called him, entertainment, running all the gigs and so on, involved in every fucking thing. We used to…associates of mine used to supply him with drugs, small stuff, hash and E mostly, little bit of coke but no one could afford coke back then, he’d deal it around the college. And then he got in with the IRSP, what’s this that stood for?”

  “The Irish Republican Socialist Party.”

  “The very ones. The political wing. Funny how they all had four names, like the landed English gents they were up in arms against, Jocelyn Fortesque Ffyffe-Trumpington to you son. The INLA were in the doldrums at the time, on account of how they’d spent the previous five years splitting into factions and shooting the fuck out of each other. In the name of Ireland, or socialism, or some shite. Story was the IRSP were behaving as if they were clamping down on drugs, but were actually getting into dealing, to raise money for the lads in the north so that they could, I don’t know, finish each other off for keeps. All in a good cause, you might say, and I wouldn’t fucking disagree with you.

  “But then of course, in dipping a toe in the drug trade, they drifted out of Trinity and down the Lombard Street flats and over the river and who did they bump into only Jack Cullen and his Provo friends, who wrote the book when it came to that particular mode of organization: intimidate the local dealers and keep in with the locals by organizing Concerned Parents vigilante groups. Then make sure the dealers are kicking ten percent of whatever they’re making into your coffers. Finally, take a piece of the action yourself by letting dealers operate with your say-so, and under your protection, because they’re basically your lads, although you don’t concede that until well after everyone knows anyway, but is too scared to do anything about it.”

  “And so what, Ray Moran ends up taking out Brian Fogarty as a favor to Jack Cullen?”

  “Well, a bit more than a favor. Moran had trespassed on Cullen’s patch. For that alone, he could have ended up in the river.”

  “Would the INLA and the IRA not have been rivals? I thought there was major strife between competing paramilitary groups?”

  “Maybe to begin with, but not at that stage. They weren’t quite proxies, although occasionally they did the IRA’s dirty work—out-and-out sectarian murders, you know, plugging the Prods they wanted rid of at a time when the IRA were trying to make out their war had nothing to do with religion or tribe. But the truth was, they were let operate with the permission of the Provos, and of course that permission could be withdrawn at any time.”

  “So a favor was an order.”

  “Something between that and payback. Take this guy out and we’ll overlook you infringing on our turf, and you can trot back across the river and we’ll leave you alone. Now we know who you are.”

  “And Moran’s association with Jack Cullen built from there?”

  “That’s what I heard. Have to understand, Ed, this was all the word on the street, and a long time ago, and the fellas who told me are probably dead. But yeah, that was how they sealed their deal. Blood brothers, you might say. Whether Moran done it himself I doubt, but he was behind it. And few years later, Raymondo’s an accountant, he’s suddenly setting up in practice in an entire floor of a house on Pembroke Road and living in the other three stories, twenty-eight years old, he’s done very fucking well for himself, hasn’t he? How did that happen?”

  “Laundering drug money for Jack Cullen. And for the IRA.”

  “Is my question to you.”

  George eyeballed me then, twinkling in a knowing kind of way, as if he had presented me with a gift that would prove to be of inestimable value, if only I had the wit to figure it out. He picked up his drink then, the lime and the gin a viscous green ooze, and tipped it down his throat in one long draft. Tears came into his eyes, and his face flushed. I wasn’t sure that much gin could be good for you when you were dying of lung cancer. But if it made you feel better, what odds? The odds were against it having made George feel any better, however; having gasped for breath as he surrendered his glass, he was now coughing, his flushed face turning a deeper hue of red, coughing as if he was never going to stop. Steroid Man swung into the room at speed; he was at George’s side and pouring a glass of water and helping him drink it in seconds; gradually, mercifully, the coughing abated, like a freak storm that blows over.

  I didn’t think I’d ever see George Halligan again. I was wrong.

  CHAPTER 9

  Steve Owen lived in an apartment building on the main street in Blackrock. Anne Fogarty had rung to arrange the meeting, and when I announced myself at the front door, he buzzed me in and stood waiting in the corridor when I got out of the elevator on the third floor. The building looked modest enough on the street, wedged between a pub and a Starbucks, but when you walked into Owen’s apartment, the view was spectacular: the rear of the building looked directly out over Blackrock DART station and right across Dublin Bay. The great promontory of Howth lay straight ahead; the candy-striped towers of the Pigeon House marked the southerly approach to Dublin Port; the sea roiled from slate gray to aquamarine as shafts of late-afternoon sunlight pierced the dirty sky. I became aware of Owen smiling at me and raised a hand in acknowledgment of the spectacle.

  “It’s a pleasure that never diminishes,” he said in a crisp, careful voice mildly flavored with the almost camp accents of old Dublin. Owen was in his fifties, tall and slim, almost gaunt, with lank, graying brown hair swept off his high forehead in a side parting. His cheekbones were sharp, his sallow complexion flecked with red; he had a full mustache above a thin mouth and a weak chin; he wore a brown corduroy shirt, blue jeans and brown clogs; a small wooden cross on a leather cord hung around his neck. The apartment was neat and sparsely furnished. There were posters for musicals on the walls, and framed photographs of a younger Owen in costume for what looked like Oliver! and The King and I; as I suspected from the mustache, it had once been partnered by a beard, and Owen’s hair had fallen to his collar. An acoustic guitar leant in a corner, and orchestral music played at low volume from wall-mounted speakers.

  “School musicals. Silly of me to set so much store by them, but at the time they were such big events,” Owen said.

  He nodded me toward a cane table and chairs in a sunroom whose glass doors gave onto a small balcony.

  “Coffee? Or tea? Or something else? I normally have something else around now,” he said hopefully.

  I asked for a gin
and tonic, and he smiled his approval. The drink he brought me was very light on tonic; I took a sip and left it down on the table; Owen sank half of his in two eager drafts; his unsteady hands were dry and worn; the knuckles red and raw.

  “Anne Fogarty said you didn’t really want to talk about her father’s murder,” I said.

  Owen raised his eyebrows and exhaled quickly, almost laughing, as if surprised that I’d got into it so quickly.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s more I don’t really think I know anything. I mean, the three suspects, I don’t know them, I’ve never met them, all I know about them is what I read in the papers. And of course, what I read in preparation for the appeal. So I don’t see how I can help.”

  He shrugged, and took a sip of his drink. The music stopped, and an announcer said something I couldn’t hear, and then more music started, big band jazz this time.

  “Lyric FM. Gets me through the day,” he said.

  “Are you retired, Mr. Owen?”

  “Steve, please. Yes, I went back to teaching after prison, but I couldn’t get the hang of it again, really. They were very good to me, made sure I got the full pension. And I had a house bought, not far from here. Sold it and bought this, and made a fair few bob in the process. Back a few years ago, when you could.”

  His energy was that of a man twenty-five years his senior, a widower measuring out his days in crossword puzzles and radio programs and afternoon drinks, a brave, wistful smile on his handsome, weak face; I felt a surge of irritation at what looked to me like passivity and bad character. Then I reminded myself that he had spent five years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and by the time he got out, the woman he loved was dead, and I felt ashamed at my rush to judge him so harshly.

  “Did it ever occur to you that you were set up for the killing?” I said.

  “They could have done a better job of it if that’s what they were up to,” Owen said. “I mean, they could have planted evidence, got a coat or a scarf of mine and left it near the body. There was no physical evidence at all. They found traces of my fingerprints throughout the house, but then, why wouldn’t they, I was there often enough.”

  “You were a guest in the family home,” I said.

  Owen laughed.

  “There must be a lexicon they give you guys. Phrases no one but a cop would use. I thought you might be different, being private, but no. ‘A guest in the family home.’ Yes, I was.”

  “Anne said they didn’t know about you and her mother until after her father died.”

  “We took care that they never knew. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t take risks. I taught in Marian College, about five minutes’ walk from Farney Park. There were several days when I’d have an hour or two free during the day. And we were having an affair. So you’d hardly have been human if you didn’t duck in and out of the house once the kids were in school, and himself was at work. And of course, there’s always going to be scares with that kind of crack, people coming home early, hiding under beds and climbing out onto the garage roof. In the early stages, it sometimes feels like that’s what having an affair is all about.”

  The memories, and the gin, had warmed Owen up; I could see devilment in his eyes, and considerable charm; back in the day, that must have been very attractive, particularly to a woman who had been betrayed. A weak face looks different on a younger man: it can suggest sensitivity and gentleness and other classically feminine qualities that might appeal to an older woman whose husband had betrayed her.

  “Was that what it was all about for you?”

  “At first, sure. The girls were at St. Mary’s in Haddington Road, and one of them, not Anne, the younger one—”

  “Margaret.”

  “Midge, that’s right, she was in the chorus when we did Oklahoma!, Marian and St. Mary’s together. And Irene came along to see it, and that’s how we met. She made it clear she wanted to meet me again. Made it clear why, too. She was very direct. I was flattered, to put it mildly. And she was about fifteen years older, so there was a bit of a Mrs. Robinson thing going on there. And initially I thought, well if this is what it is, what’s wrong with it? Every man’s fantasy when he’s young. And then it turned into something else. It turned into love.”

  Owen’s eyes fell then, and he took a hit on his drink and looked out to sea.

  “And the running around became a little more desperate, and a little less like fun. Odd, isn’t it, we don’t see it coming, even though we should. We say, of an affair: it’s getting serious. We don’t want it to be so serious it hurts. But that’s what happens. We bring it on ourselves.”

  “Anne said Brian Fogarty knew about the affair.”

  “Sure, but he didn’t want it thrust in his face, and fair enough. I felt sorry for him in a way. He was the previous generation, where the bloke can play around and get away with it. And then Irene turned the tables on him, like some feminist novel, you know? Or a French film. She told him he’d had his fun, she was going to now, if he didn’t like it he could take a hike. I don’t think he liked it, but he stuck it out. And fair play, only Anne kept loyal to Irene, but all the girls stood by their daddy. Because he stuck around. When people were laughing up their sleeves at him. He stuck around for those girls.”

  “It sounds like you admired him.”

  “I did. Well, not at the time, but later. Now. I never hated him or anything. But back then, he was in the way.”

  “There were letters between you and Irene. Letters that explicitly wished he was out of the way.”

  “And the prosecution made the most of them. I know, they were…well look, they are what they are, if you want to take one thing from them you can, but…I think we all say things like that, oh I wish so and so was out of the way, I wish he was dead.”

  “But we don’t all write them down. And the fact that Irene wouldn’t leave her husband, the fact that you were urging her to leave but she refused—”

  “We talked about it as well, it wasn’t just the letters. I wanted her, I didn’t care about the kids, I’m being honest now. The way I saw it, he could look after them. Midge and Aisling were barely civil to her anyway, and even Anne…”

  Owen held up his hands as if disowning his own defense.

  “Look, I admit it, I was selfish, I was a little obsessed, I put Irene under a lot of pressure to walk out. Now I see that she was right and I was wrong. But that’s as far as it went. In truth, his death was the last thing I’d’ve wanted: it would have left Irene with the girls, who were in full-blown adolescence by then, moody as get-out. God, they’d eat you. So it wouldn’t have been in my interest.”

  “But if you’d just called to have it out with him, say. Tell him to let her go. He doesn’t want to know, he tells you where to go, he turns his back on you, you get mad and you attack him. I think we can all, in the grip of passion, of obsession for the woman we loved, I can certainly imagine doing something like that myself, carried away in the moment.”

  Steve Owen looked at me then through eyes that, if not exactly angry, flared with irritation. Instead of speaking, he drained his drink and went to fix another one. As he was preparing it, slicing limes and pouring gin and breaking ice, he began to speak in a low, terse voice that accumulated considerable force as he went on.

  “I’m pretty sure when I spoke to Anne Fogarty she told me I should cooperate with you because you were determined to help her bring the man or men who killed her father to justice. I’m pretty sure she didn’t suggest she had any suspicion that I was in fact the guilty man. Indeed, since that’s what the Guards apparently still believe, despite my name having been cleared by the appeal court, I’d’ve told her that, if she did harbor any such suspicions, the last thing she should do is hire a private detective to try and prove them, that she would just be wasting her money. They’re hardly going to try me again for it, are they? But then she doesn’t believe I did it in the first place. The question is, why do you?”

  Owen joined me at the table then
, his angular face set, his breath hard, his eyes clouded with passion, his spare frame rigid, shaking, as if it might suddenly buckle and break. His gin sat on the table, the tonic fizzing, the ice cracking; he clutched the glass with both hands as if it were a talisman or a holy relic that could bring him protection and comfort.

  “I don’t believe you did it either,” I said. “Not now. But I guess I wanted to see for myself what I thought of you. What I thought you were capable of.”

  “And have you reached a verdict?”

  “I’m a hung jury when it comes to people,” I said. “I try to defer my verdict indefinitely. But I don’t think you murdered Brian Fogarty. I can see why the Guards wanted you to have, though.”

  “Because if it isn’t the spouse it’s the spouse’s lover.”

  “There’s that. But also, if it was some kind of organized crime hit, it was going to be very hard even establishing a suspect, let alone making a case.”

  “And better the wrong man than none at all.”

  “That’s not how I operate. And I’m grateful to you for talking to me. And I’m sorry if I caused you any more pain than I needed to.”

  Owen looked at me then, and for a moment I thought I saw rage flare in his eyes; if it had, it quickly damped down; he nodded, gratefully, it seemed, and drank half of his gin, and came up with a bewildered smile that didn’t take, and turned his gaze out to sea again.

  I stood up, but before I made another move, the door to the apartment opened and a woman came in. She had a full head of dark red corkscrew curls and wore a shiny red raincoat and carried a brown leather satchel and a transparent plastic tubular case that looked like it contained architect’s plans; her legs in black opaque tights were thickly muscled; her yellow bandolier suggested she had been cycling, as did the pinkness of her cheeks.

  “You must be Ed Loy. Janet Ames. Stephen said you were coming. Stephen?”

  Owen didn’t speak, or turn around. Janet Ames walked around in front of him and her expression darkened. She whipped the glass of gin out of his hand and marched back toward the front door, gesturing for me to follow. By the time I caught up to her, she had removed her raincoat to reveal a gray business suit. Her face was all business too.