The Dolocher

by Caroline Barry

  The courtroom nodded in sympathy; women clutched their hankies over their hearts imagining the grim, dripping interior of Olocher’s last confinement. Mister Freedman let a pause hang beneath the domed ceiling, understanding that silence was a useful tool when wielding the precision of the law.

  ‘Martin Coffey arrived and then what happened?’

  ‘We talked for a moment. I said how Olocher was peculiar, sitting quiet mostly, sometimes muttering, and to comfort me Martin offered me a bit of peach and then there was this sound. At first, I thought Olocher had fallen, but . . . he’d cut his own throat.’

  ‘Remember, you are in a court of law.’ Mister Freedman wagged his finger. ‘You have sworn an oath.’

  ‘On me life, on my wife’s life. Olocher sliced his own throat.’

  ‘And where was the Keeper when this calamity occurred?’

  Boxty’s head bobbed. ‘In his office.’

  Mister Freedman rolled his tongue over his lower row of teeth and stood waiting with his lower lip bulging out.

  ‘Doing what?’ he finally asked.

  Boxty’s right shoulder rose higher. ‘Doing some young one who wanted to get her father out of trouble.’

  Hawkins shook his head and bellowed, ‘That’s a lie.’

  Mister Freedman spun round and snarled over Hawkins’ protestations. ‘I have here in my hand the witness statement of one “Miss M”, who shall remain nameless on account of the shame you have heaped upon her.’

  Hawkins grinned and fervently shook his head.

  ‘She’s a lyin’ cow.’

  The courtroom hissed.

  Mister Freedman waved a sheaf of yellow pages at the gallery. ‘And several other accounts of distressed females all saying that they were violated by you.’

  The men and women jumped to their feet, waving hankies and pipes, outraged. Hawkins coloured, his large forehead jutting forward, his eyes hard as steel.

  ‘They’re lyin’ bitches,’ he complained. ‘They’re whores and queans. You can’t take their word for it.’

  Judge Coveny downed his glass of claret in one gulp and let the room shout down Hawkins’ remarks, before hammering his gavel and telling Hawkins to desist from such profanities.

  ‘The Board,’ Mister Freedman archly announced, ‘of the Black Dog gaol share the burden of responsibility to these women, for it was by their council that this reprobate standing in the accused’s stand before you was set in his position of Keeper.’

  Beresford shifted uncomfortably at Mister Freedman’s chastisement, the edges of his pale face burning with repressed rage as he felt his political aspirations diminish greatly.

  ‘So,’ Mister Freedman continued, ‘while Hawkins was satisfying his lust, Olocher was bleeding to death.’ Freedman turned to Hawkins and sneered sarcastically. ‘What a pretty house you kept, sir. Moving on, it was you, Boxty, who alerted Hawkins to the situation in the nunnery. What happened then?’

  Boxty nodded, his crooked mouth snarling. ‘Then there was a right set-to. Him and Martin Coffey went at loggerheads. Hawkins said that Martin Coffey killed Olocher.’

  ‘Why would Hawkins think that Martin Coffey had killed Olocher?’

  ‘On account of Martin hated Olocher. Ye got to understand, Olocher had a way of getting under yer skin. But Martin never did it, as true as I’m standing here. I saw it with me own eyes, Olocher did himself in, but Hawkins was havin’ none of it. He roared and shouted that this would bring the roof down on us. Hawkins knew there would be terrible trouble so he let fly at Martin and it turned to fisticuffs.’

  ‘Hawkins beat one of his own employees?’

  ‘Aye.’ Boxty’s head bounced and a thin line of spittle drooled from the sloping edge of his mouth. ‘That’d be him. He’s a shockin’ temper.’

  ‘Go on.’ Mister Freedman poked his tongue up under his upper lip and waited, his huge magnified eyes blinking as Boxty spoke.

  ‘He came out the worst in that set-to. Martin gave more than he got and Hawkins curled up on the floor shielding his head and I had to pull Martin away on account of it had all got out of hand.’

  ‘So Hawkins was furious.’

  ‘Oh aye. And he bided his time too before he exacted his revenge. God rest me colleague Martin, ended up gutted like a fish by him there.’

  Boxty pointed a jumping finger at Hawkins, who above a sea of catcalls and hisses yelled, ‘Yer honour, yer honour, I never killed Martin Coffey.’

  ‘Oh, you killed Martin Coffey.’ Mister Freedman lurched forward dramatically, his arm waving accusingly at the prisoner. ‘You killed him and disembowelled him. Just as surely as you murdered poor Gertrude Baker and Margaret Fines. Is this your knife, sir?’

  Mister Freedman drew a bone-handled knife with a six-inch blade from beneath a sheaf of papers on his desk and held it above his head for the court to see. He then handed the weapon to the jury to examine. Hawkins glowered at Mister Freedman, his ugly scar livid, his features distorted in aggressive revulsion.

  ‘What of it?’ Hawkins spluttered. ‘I’m holed up with vagabonds and criminals. A man’s a right to protect himself.’

  ‘I put it to you that this is the knife that eviscerated Martin Coffey.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Hawkins shouted.

  ‘You,’ Mister Freedman roared, ‘you, Mister Hawkins, concocted the idea of the Dolocher as a means to exact revenge. You saw a way of deflecting the Board’s inquiry into Olocher’s suicide by manufacturing a demon from your own polluted imagination. You attacked your employees. That man there’ – Mister Freedman pointed at Boxty leaning sideways, his head constantly bobbing, one eye drooping while he mopped his drooling mouth with a hanky – ‘you affrighted that man so much that he took an apoplexy. And do you feel remorse? No.’

  Hawkins said nothing.

  Satisfied that his case was sound, Mister Freedman returned to his seat.

  The crowd turned to the defence lawyer, examining his face and frame, disapproving of the very fact that Hawkins should have the gall to muster up any defence at all. Jeremy Lightfoot had been in Solomon’s class. He had been a bumbling boy of eighteen the last time Solomon had seen him and now he was a bumbling man of twenty-eight, with sweaty hands and oily skin.

  ‘Mister Sorrell . . .’ Jeremy stumbled, aware of the crushing atmosphere emanating from the crowd, pressuring him to sit down. ‘Isn’t it true that you and Martin Coffey disliked Mister Hawkins?’

  Boxty shook his head. ‘I never minded him much. Hawkins could be difficult. But then he did this to me and I’ll never forgive him.’

  ‘Isn’t it true that Martin Coffey beat the prisoners?’ Jeremy glided over Boxty’s last remark.

  ‘Only to keep them quiet when they got rowdy.’ Boxty’s eyes darted to the floor.

  ‘Didn’t Mister Coffey have a temper?’

  ‘What of it?’ Boxty snorted. ‘The poor man’s dead.’

  Mister Freedman jumped to his feet and objected. ‘Your Honour, I appreciate that the defence is trying to discredit my witness. However, it beggars belief that he is also trying to insinuate that a dead man brought about his own demise.’

  ‘I’m trying to establish that my client acted in self-defence,’ Jeremy Lightfoot feebly countered.

  The courtroom laughed.

  Jeremy did his best to disentangle Hawkins from his predicament, but the truth was Hawkins was an unlikable man with savage tendencies and a penchant for exaggerated self-interest and nothing Jeremy Lightfoot could do or say could dilute the overwhelming evidence laid out by the prosecuting council.

  The stout clerk with the drooping moustache called Solomon to the witness stand. Solomon stood tall and confident as he recited the oath and the gathered ladies nudged one another with approval, glad to have a handsome man to admire, his blond hair and proportional features adding to the glamour of the day.

  ‘This mopsy,’ Hawkins muttered, his manacles clinking as they knocked against the witness stand. ‘Yer Honour,’ Hawkins pleaded to J
udge Coveny, ‘this man is a broadsheet writer. Every word out of his mouth is a gilded lie.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Judge Coveny scribbled something and sipped on a fresh glass of claret.

  ‘It is, Yer Honour.’ Hawkins tugged at his collar button. ‘His profession is to twist the truth. He dissembles. He’s not to be trusted.’

  Mister Freedman guffawed. ‘The audacity,’ he bellowed, pointing at the accused. ‘The audacity. This man, as you can see, has a skewed sense of honesty.’

  The courtroom laughed while Hawkins nearly burst a blood vessel in his forehead.

  Solomon settled himself and waited while the prosecution lawyer licked his top and bottom gums and read a short statement.

  ‘“Hawkins robbed me of my monies when I happened to call into the Black Dog to investigate the disappearance of Martin Coffey.”’ The tall lawyer curled his tongue behind his upper teeth and paused with his mouth open. ‘This was your first encounter with the Keeper of the Black Dog Prison, Mister Fish?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Solomon nodded.

  ‘From the statement of one Mister Charles Bartle,’ Mister Freedman continued, the low timbre of his voice now punching through the air with tremendous gravitas. ‘“Hawkins beat me regularly to within an inch of my life. Broke my arm. Took money from me. From all the inmates.”’ Then turning to Solomon, Mister Freedman asked, ‘You witnessed this beating, Mister Fish?’

  Solomon nodded. ‘And was beaten myself trying to save Charlie.’

  ‘Would you consider Mister Hawkins a strong man?’

  ‘Extremely.’

  ‘Despite his slight stature?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mister Freedman pulled a printed advertisement from one of his portfolios showing a pair of boxers dancing bare-chested and bare-knuckled. It read Bulldog MacCabe Takes on the Firebrand.

  ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, is an announcement that informed the general public of a fight that took place on Stephen’s Green some ten years ago. You, Mister Hawkins, are none other than the Firebrand illustrated in this advertisement. A pugilist of some renown back then. A skill you have kept well-oiled by exercising yourself with the prisoners of the Black Dog.’

  Hawkins now stood subdued, his face turning pale, his features locked in grim subordination, submitting to his fate. Turning to Solomon, Mister Freedman tapped his spectacles.

  ‘Then you discovered that Mister Hawkins ran an efficient black-market operation, not only in the Black Dog but on the Southside of the city?’

  Solomon nodded. ‘I overheard two associates of the plaintive talking about shifting merchandise. Their names are Fred and Jessop, I don’t have surnames. I believe they are Mister Hawkins’ henchmen. They reported to him, called him “the boss”, and acted on his behalf. They organised the slaughtering of the pigs.’

  Solomon outlined his investigation of the schoolhouse, his mapping of the robberies and sightings of the Dolocher.

  ‘Initially,’ Solomon continued, ‘I suspected them of nothing more than using the Dolocher’s attacks as some kind of screen to shield their nefarious criminal activities. I realised that the attacks coincided with robberies and the one place my mind kept going back to was the Black Dog.’

  ‘How fortuitous for us that your instincts were correct.’ Mister Freedman stood next to the jury. ‘You informed a board member and then what happened?’

  ‘I and Lord Beresford went to the prison to question Mister Hawkins but we couldn’t find him. As we searched, I happened upon a secret room and that’s when I found his disguise.’

  ‘And here we get to the crux of the matter,’ Mister Freedman hopped in. ‘You found a carcass, hidden away in an upstairs room. You found the Dolocher’s den. A grisly discovery.’

  ‘And I knew then and there for certain that the Dolocher was not a demon but a man.’

  The silence of the courtroom was ruptured, filling with gasps and whispers, everyone conferring, satisfied with the abundance of evidence. Hawkins jolted in defiance, his manacled hands punching the air, a spray of spittle issuing over his contempt.

  ‘Y’er twisting the facts to suit yer tale,’ he shouted. ‘Twistin’ the facts.’

  Mister Freedman paced to the middle of the courtroom. He stood directly beneath the oval window in the centre of the dome, taking full advantage of the shaft of light shining directly down on him, illuminating him like a messenger bathed with divine sanction.

  ‘Mister Hawkins’ ingenuity knows no bounds.’ Freedman raised his voice and arms, revelling in the energy of being centre stage. ‘The depths of his hideous personality knows no end. His character is so barbaric, so lawless and godless, so bereft of the barest shreds of human decency that he maliciously and wickedly invented the Dolocher from the blackened recesses of his disfigured nature. Out of his malignant soul, he looked on a dead pig and saw an opportunity. Only when he had ruined Boxty’s health and murdered a fellow guard did he recognise the full potential of the Dolocher. How quickly he saw the Dolocher as a mechanism for satisfying his own dark leanings. How quickly he saw the Dolocher as a way of furnishing himself with macabre opportunities to enhance his own wealth. And then, when the basest of instincts took him over, how malevolently and deviously did he prowl on the women of this city attempting to have his way with them. Think of Florence Wells, think of Ester Murphy, think of poor Gertrude Baker, a sixteen-year-old girl horribly raped before being brutally murdered.’

  The courtroom exploded in seething fury. The crowd stood and heckled, the women hissed, the men roared for vengeance. Hawkins’ narrowed eyes scanned the room, his knuckles white as he clutched the edge of the stand.

  ‘The devil take the lot of ye,’ he bellowed.

  The crowd shouted him down. Solomon watched as Judge Coveny blustered, whacking his gavel off the bench furiously.

  ‘There isn’t enough money on this earth to recompense a man for being a keeper,’ Hawkins roared.

  Enraged, the crowd took this to be a complete confession of guilt. And suddenly, like a tide, the front rows of the courtroom surged forward, overrunning the guards, pushing Mister Freedman to one side and dragging Hawkins kicking and screaming from the accused’s stand, while Judge Coveny hammered and bellowed and screamed at the guards to hold them back.

  But the crowd was feral and unanimous. The men pulled at Hawkins, shunting him forward, kicking him, lifting him overhead and ferrying him towards the entrance. Solomon leapt from the witness box and pushed his way through the melee, past ladies wailing, crushed by the frenzied squeeze. Men climbed over the knocked benches and slammed forward, roaring at the top of their lungs, ‘Hang him. Hang him.’ And the regiment sent to oversee the trial fractured, dispersing into knotty groups, discharging muskets into the air to no avail.

  The execution was speedy and cruel. Clumps of Hawkins’ hair were ripped from his scalp, his face was bloody and his coat was shredded. He was hastily noosed, the rope fastened to a horse, and without pause or ceremony he was suspended from the gallows, kicking and choking while the crowd cheered and laughed and flung stones at his thrashing body.

  Solomon reeled from the shock of the sudden execution. At the same time he couldn’t help but feel a certain satisfaction that justice was being served. Hawkins squirmed and jolted, and Solomon thought of Maggie Fines being lowered into her grave, of Gertie violated and cut open, of Merriment lying wounded in the snow. Hawkins was paying the highest price for his deviance and, disgusting as his last moments were, his life was a fair exchange for all the horror that he had initiated.

  A stream of urine dribbled from Hawkins’ legs, his last gasps drowned out by the chanting crowd. Solomon stared as Hawkins’ body jigged and reeled, suspended high up on the portable gallows, framed by the sky. As Solomon watched Hawkins fight for breath, he thought of the pig carcass swaying from the butcher’s hook in the secret room in the Black Dog. He recalled the gloomy lair, the covert den where Hawkins had hidden his stolen items; he thought of the crumpled bed, the fireplace. An
d slowly, like the ground crumbling away from beneath him, a creeping, unsettling doubt began to gnaw at the edges of Solomon’s satisfaction. Something – he couldn’t put his finger on it, couldn’t quite pick it out – something wasn’t right, but for the life of him Solomon couldn’t define what was wrong.

  ‘Die, Dolocher, die,’ the crowd chanted, and Solomon stared at Hawkins’ tiny feet as they kicked furiously. Something in his mind started to twitch, and then Hawkins stopped moving and at last swung limp on the end of the rope. The mob had had their justice and the corpse now turned slowly in the air, but Solomon was still staring, his eyes fixed on the size of Hawkins’ feet, this singular detail pricking him with curiosity. The crowd hummed with satisfaction, but Solomon’s thoughts reeled with doubt.

  He frowned, looking on with disgust as the crowd tugged and ripped at Hawkins’ remains, pulling tokens from his strangled corpse. Solomon stared at the Keeper’s swollen tongue and distorted face and then pushed his way towards the main gate, away from the clawing fray and chattering women. He stared down at the dark waters of the Liffey, a half-formed observation undulating like a serpent at the back of his mind. He was trying to remember something, but it just wouldn’t come to the surface.

  As Solomon was leaning against the quayside wall, Corker plunged through the gate and ran over to him.

  ‘Hell of a way to go. Someone’s cut one of his fingers off.’

  Solomon thought of the token on the bedstead in the garret room of the Black Dog Prison and shuddered. Across the way he saw Billy Knox with a group of cohorts laughing. Billy’s head suddenly turned: his glittering eyes bored into Solomon’s face, picking him out and holding him to the spot. Unnerved, Solomon patted Corker’s back and swallowed.

  ‘Have you enough sketches?’ he asked.

  ‘Plenty.’

  26

  Kill-Grief

  The execution of the Keeper of the Black Dog and the trajectory of Hawkins’ crimes, culminating in the Dolocher attacks, were covered in microscopic detail by Pue’s Occurrences. The paper sold out on the first day of publication and Chesterfield Grierson made the optimistic decision to quadruple the print run of further copies, much to the satisfaction of the Board, who were delighted to see at the quarterly meeting that the quadrupled order had also sold out. It was put to a vote that Solomon’s wages should be increased and the motion was passed uncontested.