“Quick work,” said Walsh, opening the clips.
“Hall arranged it,” said Henderson. “Bank of New South Wales.”
The satchel was filled with bank notes rolled up and tied with rubber bands. Walsh reached in and took out a bundle. He thumbed the money.
“Hard to believe there’s a thousand guineas in here,” he said. “It’s always disappointing. You think you’ll need a wheelbarrow.”
“Count it, if you like.”
“No need. Crikey. If you can’t take a Grand Sword Bearer’s word, whose word can you take?”
Henderson looked at him for a moment. “How did you know my title?”
Walsh blew smoke towards the roof. “Oh, I imagine there’s a few things you know about me too.”
Henderson tapped a cigarette on the case and thumbed his lighter. “There is, as a matter of fact,” he said, taking his time, drawing on the flame.
“Well?” said Walsh.
“Well, I know you shot a man in America in 1917,” said Henderson, his lighter closing with a click. “An operative from the Pinkerton Detective Agency.”
Walsh laughed. “Christ, I hope you didn’t pay too much for that hoary chestnut.”
“And I know you had to get out of Ireland in a hurry in 1920,” said Henderson, as if Walsh hadn’t spoken. “And with a different name. Landed as Pat Tuohy, left as Pat Walsh. Not sure why yet, but I’m led to believe it was connected to the murder of a British secret agent in the toilet of a Dublin boarding house. Member of the Cairo Gang.”
“The Cairo Gang!” said Walsh. “My God, sounds like J.C. Williamson’s latest, whatchamacall, West End sensation.” He blew a smoke ring. It hung in the air between them. “You shouldn’t poke around in areas that don’t concern you, my friend. Violence is a last recourse for me, but I’m no angel. This talk of a Pinkerton man, now. I did kill a fella in America, but I didn’t shoot him and he wasn’t a detective. He was an enforcer for Anaconda Mining. Him and his cobbers seized a mate of mine, Frank Little — Wobbly organiser, Red Indian of some kind, as a matter of fact, good bloke — seized him from his room in a boarding house in this godforsaken copper town in Montana first thing, Frank wearing only his drawers, allowed the poor man no dignity, tied him to the bumper of a motorcar, dragged him down the main street, shot him in the back of the head and hung him dead from a railway trestle in broad daylight, a placard strung around his neck.” Walsh drew a sign in the air. “‘Others Take Notice! First and Last Warning! 3—7—77.’ Know what those numbers mean?”
“Wouldn’t have a clue.”
“Size of a grave,” said Walsh. “Three feet wide, seven feet long, seventy-seven inches deep. It’s a vigilante warning from the Wild West. I found the stooge in a saloon that very night, laughing with his blackleg cronies, followed him into the dunny, garrotted him with my tie till his face turned blue and he voided himself.”
Walsh pulled his fists apart in a sharp, demonstrative jerk, his eyes black.
“Now you know something that no one else alive knows. No one else alive, you foller?” He pointed at Henderson, his fingers forming the shape of a pistol. “What’s that warning you blokes give to blabbermouths there at the lodge? ‘Your left breast torn open, your heart plucked out and given to the wild beasts of the field and the fowls of the air’?”
“Are you threatening me, Walsh?” said Henderson. He turned and pointed out the window. “See him?” He indicated his driver, who was leaning into the Plymouth’s now-open gullwing bonnet and explaining to Sunny how they’d got round the Chrysler’s vapour lock problem in Libya by flipping the fuel pump and moving the bowl away from the heat of the exhaust manifold. “Long Range Desert Group. Chestful of gongs. Killed more Germans with his bare hands than Charlie Upham.”
“Woo woo!” said Walsh, wiggling his fingers in the style of the Three Stooges. He pointed to Sunny. “See him? Unofficial heavyweight champion, Mount Crawford Prison, 1944 to 1946. Bare-knuckle scrappers those fellas, of course. Twenty-two bouts, twenty-one knockouts — knockouts, mind — one death. Burst some poor devil’s kidney with a low blow. Apparently the blood just” — Walsh made a slow, unfolding gesture with his hand — “pooof.”
Henderson turned and made a point of staring. “Really?” he said. “That little bloke?”
Walsh snorted, not long, not loud, but with the hint of a smile, a concession to Henderson’s concession. Henderson wound down his window, letting fresh air in and tension out.
“Look, it’s nothing to me what you may or may not have done, Walsh,” said Henderson. “Hell’s bells, I’ve cut a few corners myself. I just want you to be clear with whom you’re dealing.”
“‘With whom you’re dealing’,” said Walsh. He closed the satchel with a solid click and put it on the floor between his feet. “Right-o, my pellucid friend, I need some gelly. Two crates.”
Henderson rested his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray.
“Gelly?” he said. “Do you mean dynamite?”
“No, I mean gelignite,” said Walsh. “Dynamite is unstable. It sweats. Gelly doesn’t. Gelly needs a detonator. It can be stored safely. It—”
“I won’t allow killing.”
“Don’t worry,” said Walsh, reaching over and squeezing Henderson’s knee hard. “This isn’t Chicago. I want to wake people up, not kill them.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Molloy went into the Public Bar of the Occidental Hotel in Vulcan Lane and made his way through the heaving crowd, the clock inching towards six, men drinking, smoking, talking at the tops of their voices. He bought a jug and looked through the fog for Tom O’Driscoll.
“Johnny!” O’Driscoll shouted. “Over here.”
O’Driscoll was standing at a crowded leaner, its surface covered in jugs and glasses and spilled beer, the metal ashtray in the centre overflowing. He was a short man with stiff curly hair shooting up at an angle. He wore a sports coat and a striped tie that stopped halfway down his shirtfront. He was the Auckland Star’s police roundsman. “You know these blokes?”
“How are you, boys?” said Molloy. The men at the leaner said “g’day” and went back to yelling at each other about the difference the Northland centre J.B. Smith would have made in South Africa in 1949.
O’Driscoll eased himself out of the pack. “How are you, cob?” he said.
“I’m good,” said Molloy. “You all right?”
“I’m all right,” said O’Driscoll. “Just got back from Matamata. Family funeral yesterday. Eileen? My sister-in-law? Bruce’s missus?”
“Eileen died?” said Molloy.
“Polio,” said O’Driscoll.
“Jeez, that’s no good,” said Molloy.
“It bloody isn’t. Out of the blue, pretty much. Haymaking. Felt crook that night. Thought it was sunburn. Took the next day off. Out of character right there. Worked like a Trojan as a rule that woman, dawn to dusk. First she lost the feeling in her legs. Then her whole body seized up, apparently. Contractor called the doctor. Bruce was shearing in Waipuk. Doctor got hold of him. Bruce raced back quick as he could, but” — he shook his head — “kaputski.”
This was more detail than Molloy needed, but even so.
“And four kids. Poor old Bruce. Mum’s gone down to give him a hand. Tough on her, though. She’s no spring chicken.” He threw back the last of his beer. “So, yeah, bastard of a thing. Anyway, how can I help?”
“Oh, hell. Look, give my best to Bruce next time you see him.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Knocks you for six, that sort of news.” Molloy looked at O’Driscoll’s beer. “You right there?”
“Could go another.”
Molloy topped up O’Driscoll’s glass. “Here’s to Eileen,” he said.
“Too right,” said O’Driscoll. “May she rest in peace.”
Molloy looked round. “I was just wondering if you’d ever come across a wharfie called Frank O’Flynn in your travels?”
“Irishman? On the WWU exec?
”
“That’s the one. You know him? Under your hat?”
“I don’t know him. Know of him, sort of thing.”
“What sort of things?”
“Ah, let me see,” said O’Driscoll, taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offering one to Molloy. “He had to get out of Ireland in a hurry before the war, not sure why. He was in Spain, those battles round Madrid in ’36, early ’37.” He pointed with his cigarette. “Your old stamping ground, wasn’t it?”
“Not Madrid,” said Molloy. “How long’s he been here?”
“Year or two? He was good mates with Barnes and them but they’ve had a parting of the ways, I heard.” He drank the top inch, and lowered his voice. “There’s a rumour he was caught with his hand in the till, but—”
He saw something over Molloy’s shoulder. “Hey!” He waved. “Cait! Miss O’Carolan! Over here!”
Molloy turned. A young woman was standing in the entrance to the bar. There weren’t many girls in the Occidental, and none of them looked like this one.
“Christ, would you look at her,” said O’Driscoll, out of the side of his mouth.
“Who is she?”
“New cadet on the Women’s Page. Came here from nursing. Imagine her giving you a sponge bath.” He turned to Molloy. “She wants to be Martha Gellhorn, filing dispatches in the heat of battle sorta thing.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “I encourage this ambition in the hope that she’ll let me unfasten her stays.”
“How’s married life?” said Molloy. “Marge well?”
“The woman’s a saint,” said O’Driscoll, straightening his tie. “But still.”
The crowd seemed to part as the young woman weaved her way towards them. “Hello, O’Driscoll,” she said. She undid her scarf and shook her hair loose.
The other men around the leaner squeezed together.
“Evening, gents,” she said.
“Evening,” they mumbled back, blushing in unison.
“I finished the piece on the Rowley nuptials,” she said to O’Driscoll.
“That was quick,” he said. “I could go over it with you later if you like?”
“Later?”
O’Driscoll stammered. “Later tomorrow, I mean,” he said. “Anyway. What would you like? Pimm’s?”
“G & T, please.”
“Coming right up,” said O’Driscoll. “What about you, Johnny? Another?”
“Good as gold, thanks,” said Molloy, pointing to his jug.
The young woman turned to Molloy. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Caitlin O’Carolan.” She put out her hand.
“Johnny Molloy,” he said, shaking it.
“Oh, I’ve heard about you. You’re O’Driscoll’s friend, the private detective?”
Molloy watched as she pushed back her hair and fixed it with a pin. She was slender, about five feet four, with pale skin and black hair, and eyes the colour of the Irish Sea.
“It’s not polite to stare at a girl, Mr Molloy,” she said, opening her purse and taking out a cigarette case. “Didn’t your mother tell you that?”
“My mother didn’t tell me much about girls, Miss O’Carolan,” said Molloy, coming to. “She left that sort of thing to Dad.”
“Oh?” she said, tapping a tailor-made on the lid. “And what did he tell you?”
Molloy took a box of matches from his pocket. “I’m still waiting for him to get started.”
“I bet you’ve managed to pick up a thing or two on your own, though,” she said, touching his hands with hers as she drew on the flame.
“I was always careful,” said Molloy, dropping the dead match onto the floor. “That’s one thing Dad did tell me.”
She tilted her head back, blew out a thin stream of smoke. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before, have I?”
“I do most of my boozing in Grey Lynn.”
“So what brings you here?”
“Oh, nothing much. I’m working on a case. Needed to check something with O’Driscoll.”
“Gosh,” she said, with the hint of a smile. “Working on a case.”
For an instant Molloy felt as if there was no one else in the room. “È stato un colpo di fulmine,” as that rat Fabrizio said about Michael when the latter saw Apollonia for the first time. Struck by a lightning bolt.
“He was saying you used to be a nurse,” he said, trying to return to earth.
“Well, I went nursing,” she said, waving it off. “I never sat my States. A cadetship came up at the Star. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Be a reporter.”
“Enjoying it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, enormously.” She picked a tiny piece of tobacco off the tip of her tongue and managed to make it look elegant. “I cover the social round for the Women’s Page. Deb balls, twenty-first birthdays, weddings, ‘The bride’s mother wore silk organza,’ that sort of thing. It’s the only position open to girls. Apart from copy holding or pool typing or waiting until, I don’t know, you turn thirty and become a lesbian.”
Conversation around the leaner stopped for an instant but Caitlin didn’t notice.
“The minute I’ve completed my cadetship, woosh!” she said, her hand taking off like an aeroplane. “Home, never to return.”
“What will you do over there?”
“Chain myself to the railing in front of the Manchester Guardian and not move until they give me a job.”
“But wouldn’t that mean living in Manchester?” said Molloy. “I’ve been there. It’s like Wellington.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be in Manchester for long.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Molloy. “Tom said you wanted to be a war correspondent.”
She frowned. “O’Driscoll’s big mouth,” she said. “But yes, I do. I want to be on the front line, wherever it is. I suppose you think that’s too silly.”
“There’s nothing silly about the front line,” said Molloy.
“No place for a girl, eh?” she said, blowing smoke straight at him. “Don’t patronise me, please, Mr Molloy. I get enough of that at work.”
O’Driscoll threaded through the crowd, shoulders hunched, carefully shielding a gin and tonic. “Sorry to take so long,” he said. He was excited. “I saw Ross Jones from the Herald. He’s been down in Wellington. He reckons they’re going to ram through the Public Safety Conservation Act unless the wharfies back down. The Regulations have been set, just waiting for the Government to give the nod.”
“There were soldiers in civvies prowling around Princes Wharf a few nights ago,” said Molloy. “She’s about to blow.”
“You’re so matter-of-fact,” said Caitlin. “The Public Safety Conservation Act is draconian. It’s something Hitler might have dreamed up.”
“Oh, steady on, Cait,” said O’Driscoll. “The wharfies are digging their own graves, don’t you think?”
“No I don’t, actually. I don’t think that at all.” She dropped her cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with the delicate toe of an English shoe. “What do you think, Mr Molloy?”
Molloy shrugged. “I think the wharfies will come a terrible cropper,” he said. “Pity, because I know quite a few of them.”
“That’s it?” said Caitlin, looking at the two men in disgust. “Honestly!” She put her glass down on the leaner. “Enjoy the swill, gentlemen.” She turned and strode from the bar, moving without effort through the crowd. Molloy and O’Driscoll watched her go.
“Jesus wept,” said O’Driscoll, shaking his head. “Those ankles.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Molloy left the pub and drove to Grey Lynn. It was just before seven. He parked in Chamberlain Street along from number 3. There was no sign of the Baby Austin. On the passenger seat was a camera, a Voigtländer Bessa. In 1945, in the run-up to Trieste, Molloy had found a German hiding in a bombed-out farm building, a bloke in his forties, Oberst i.G. Egon Turtz according to his paybook, a base wallah, hands up and shaking, keen to kamerad like so many of the master race at t
hat end of the show. Turtz held out a photograph and whimpered, “Meine Frau, meine Sohn,” a family portrait, himself in uniform, a woman and a child, everyone smiling, much happier in those confident days when alles was über.
Molloy knew the partisans would get him sooner or later, so when the German offered a suitcase full of money in return for his life Molloy had let him go. But not before souveniring his pistol — a Luger — and his camera. The banknotes were Fascist currency as it turned out, not worth two bob. Molloy had used them to buy a Jeep from an American quartermaster in Vienna a few weeks later, and he and two army cobbers, Rex Lawrence from Carterton and Gordon Slatter from Christchurch, had swanned up to Berchtesgaden to see where Hitler used to live. He had held onto the camera. And the Luger. One never knows, do one?
Molloy took the camera out of its leather case, unfolded the lens and framed the front door through the viewfinder, the bellows moving in and out as he turned the focus dial. He cocked the shutter and set the f-top for the darkening light. He put the camera on the passenger seat. Then he took a cheese sandwich from a paper bag and ate it, keeping an eye on the boarding house.
A car drove slowly up the street. Molloy checked his side mirror. A 1939 Chrysler Plymouth four-door sedan, the deluxe P8. He could hear the low rumbling of the big six-cylinder engine, tyres quietly crunching on loose gravel. What strings would you have to pull to get a motorcar like that into the country, he wondered. What sort of baksheesh would be involved? The driver kept leaning over and looking to his left, checking letterbox numbers. He stopped in front of number 3 and got out. He was a Maori, not a common sight in Grey Lynn. He walked up the front steps of the boarding house and knocked on the door.
Molloy reached for his camera and reframed the doorway. A man came out onto the verandah and then forward into the light. In his mid to late thirties, a tough, handsome face, dark wavy hair parted off-centre and pushed back, a cowlick sprung loose. He was wearing a brown sports coat and carrying a canvas ammunition bag under his arm, a hat in his hand. O’Phelan. Or O’Flynn, or whatever he was calling himself today.
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