Red Herring

by Jonothan Cullinane

“Can you be more specific?”

  Walsh looked at him. “Eight letters, starts with ‘t’,” he said. “‘Root worm, ruined later.’”

  “What’s that? An anagram?” said Henderson, writing down the clue. He looked up. “Tomorrow?”

  “A few minutes after midday. Will you be there for Sid’s address?”

  “Have to miss it, I’m afraid,” said Henderson. “Sailing down to Waiheke first thing. Longstanding engagement. We’re lunching at Connell’s Bay.”

  “A better place to be,” said Walsh, standing.

  Henderson picked up his sherry. His hands were shaking slightly. He spilled a drop on his tie.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Molloy walked down the side of Pat Toomey’s house. Brigid was hanging out the washing, covered in billowing sheets. He coughed. She cried out and turned suddenly and then looked away, but not before he saw the bruise on her cheek.

  “Hell, Brigid,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, back towards him. “I’m clumsy, that’s all.”

  “Has Pat seen it?”

  Brigid said nothing.

  “Is he home?” said Molloy.

  “Johnny, please.”

  “I need to talk to him. About something else.”

  “He’s at the station,” said Brigid. “You could ring him on the telephone if you like. We’ve got one in the hallway.”

  Molloy telephoned the Newton Police Station and asked for Sergeant Toomey.

  “Are you there?” said Toomey, after a minute.

  “It’s me, Pat,” said Molloy. “Johnny Molloy.”

  “Hello, Johnny.”

  “There was a girl taken in for questioning this morning,” said Molloy. “Her name is Caitlin O’Carolan.”

  “There was,” said Toomey. “What’s your interest in this unfortunate young woman? Is she a friend of yours?”

  “Well, that. And a client. Sort of.”

  “Sort of,” said Toomey. “Not the ideal person to have as either, just at the moment. She’s a fellow traveller, Johnny, a Red. Very slippery customers. Not that I need to tell you.”

  “Is she still there?”

  “She was released on her own recognisance about half an hour ago,” said Toomey. “Her father’s some big Epsom doctor. Arrived with Frank Haig, the lawyer. A real anarchist, this friend of yours.”

  “She’s young, Pat.”

  “Not that young,” said Toomey. “If you get my meaning.”

  “Why was she picked up?”

  “We received a tip-off,” said Toomey. “Anonymous, of course. Someone on the telephone. That’s the way it’s done nowadays. The muffled phone call has replaced the poisoned letter.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Middle-aged or older male, according to the sheet. That’s all we’ve got.”

  “What did he say?” said Molloy, knowing who it was.

  “That she was a Party member with connections to the Waterside Workers’ Union. Red rag to a bull just at the moment. What’s your interest? I thought you’d put all that Communist business behind you.”

  “Once a Catholic sort of thing, I suppose, Pat. You know how it is.”

  “You should keep your head down, Johnny,” said Toomey. “With things the way they are.”

  “Thanks for the advice. Hey, Pat, that’s quite a shiner Brigid’s sporting.”

  “She enjoys a tipple,” said Toomey, after a moment. “Between you and me.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Molloy took the stairs beside Progressive Books two at a time and stormed down the hallway.

  “Parker, you gutless bastard,” he shouted. “Get out here.”

  The door flew open. Parker dropped into a boxer’s stance, shoulders hunched, fists around his face, weight on the left leg, right heel off the floor. He had been a pretty handy fighter in his day, losing on points to Jimmy Hegarty at the Theatre Royal in Taumaranui, Hegarty’s last amateur fight. He’d never been any great shakes as a scientific performer, but he always went straight at his opponent, fearless.

  “Yeah, come on, have a go, ya class traitor,” said Parker, unhooking his glasses and flinging them onto the bed. “I’ll give you the hiding I should have given you ten years ago.”

  Molloy moved towards Parker and feinted a jab. Parker slipped and threw a right. Molloy turned and caught the punch on his shoulder, and then came under Parker’s arm with a hook that caught the wiry Commo in the ribs. Parker made a hunnh sound and moved backwards, catching his breath.

  “Sting a bit?” said Molloy. “Shit hot.”

  They circled each other.

  “You sold her out, didn’t you?” said Molloy. “Following Walsh’s orders, you rotten bastard. Who’s next on the auction block? The wharfies?”

  “You’re lecturing me, you turncoat?” said Parker. He threw a sudden right that caught Molloy on the cheek and knocked him back against the kitchen table. He stepped in, shoulders coiled for the king hit, but Molloy weaved and wrapped him in a clinch.

  “I’d sit down with the flamin’ Devil himself if it was in the best interests of the proletariat,” Parker hissed into Molloy’s ear as they danced on the spot.

  Molloy turned abruptly and shook Parker off, lowered his shoulder, jabbed with his left and threw an overhand right that hit Parker on the nose and sent him crashing backwards onto the bed.

  Parker pulled himself up, shaking his head. Blood dripped onto the floor. He put out a hand. “Pax for a tick, all right?” he said, breathing heavily. He touched his nose delicately. “Think you broke the bastard.”

  “Why did you do it?” said Molloy, keeping his fists in a loose position.

  “Why?” Parker dabbed at his nose with the back of his hand. “Caitlin’s a useful idiot. A pretty one, certainly, and sexually progressive which, y’know, shit, good on her, but a dilettante. It suited Walsh to get rid of her and was no particular loss to me.”

  “That’s it, is it? Walsh says ‘jump’, you say ‘how high?’”

  “Oh get stuffed, Molloy.” Blood and snot were now bubbling in Parker’s nose like soup. “You know me better than that! I won’t allow the wharfies’ lunatic action to destroy the Party. You think I’ve spent me whole life fighting for a fair go for the working man in labour camps and shearing sheds and factories and railway yards and wharves and hydro schemes and every other bloody thing way to buggery up the backa beyond, no plonk, no women, everything I owned in a swag or left-luggage, in and out of clink, battened by Specials and farmers and policemen and fascists of every stripe, you think I’ve done all that just to sit there and watch a mug like Barnes pour everything I’ve fought for since I was a little fella, everything, just pour it down the gurgler? Fuck that for a joke.” He gently squeezed his bloody nose. “If giving Caitlin the boot was part of the price that had to be paid, then so flamin’ what? In the schema of historical materialism, she’s small potatoes.”

  “Go to hell,” said Molloy.

  “I’ll see you there,” said Parker, nostrils now stuck together, his voice taking on a nasal quality, like Michael Joseph Savage on the radio.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  It was mid-afternoon. Molloy hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He stopped at the cake shop next to Progressive Books and bought two dried-out sausage rolls and ate them on the footpath, and then called in to the Shamrock for a glass of beer. His cheek burned from Parker’s punch. Caitlin had been sacked from the Star. Furst had left the country. Parker and Walsh were collaborators. Collaborating on what? Where did O’Flynn fit in to all of this? Molloy finished his beer and walked to his office. He went up in the lift to the fourth floor and got out. There was a figure waiting in the shadows. Caitlin. She threw herself into his arms, bursting into tears.

  “Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Someone informed on me to the Star. I was given the sack this morning.”

  “I know. It was Parker.”

  Caitlin looked as though she’d been hit.

 
“Gets you, doesn’t it?” he said, unlocking his office door.

  “But why would he do that?” she said.

  Molloy shrugged. “For the good of the Party,” he said. “He’s thrown his lot in with Walsh. A temporary and pragmatic reaction sorta thing.” Molloy opened a drawer in his desk and took out a bottle of brandy. There was an inch left. He halved it and slid a glass across the desk to Caitlin.

  “But Walsh barely knows me from Adam,” said Caitlin.

  “He knows you know about O’Flynn, though,” said Molloy. “And that you’re a reporter. Better to have you out of the picture.” He shook two cigarettes from a pack and offered her one.

  “You’ve talked to Vince?” said Caitlin, leaning into the match.

  “I went round to his flat. We had a barney.”

  “Did you give him a hiding?”

  “A bit of a one.”

  “Good. He was forever trying to put his grubby hands on me, now I think about it. Didn’t seem terribly fraternal, I must say.”

  The telephone rang. Molloy picked up the receiver. “Are you there?”

  There was a clanging sound as two pennies dropped into a slot.

  “Is that bold Molloy, the private investigator?” said an echoing Irish voice.

  “It is,” said Molloy. “Who’s this?”

  “The name’s Frank O’Flynn,” said the voice. “Well, it is at the moment. I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

  “I understand you drowned.”

  “As your man said, miracles happen to those who believe. We need to have a wee talk, the two of us.”

  “Suits me,” said Molloy. “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Number 2 Shed in the Lighter Basin,” said O’Flynn. “You know it?”

  “I do,” said Molloy. “Up from the Municipal Baths.”

  “Seven o’clock. Come by yourself.”

  The telephone went dead.

  “Well, well,” said Molloy, slowly returning the receiver to its cradle.

  “O’Flynn?”

  Molloy looked at his watch. “He wants to meet me on the waterfront tonight.”

  “Will those two hoodlums of Walsh’s be there?”

  “I hope so,” said Molloy, standing.

  There was a rectangle of worn carpet on the office floor. Molloy rolled it out of the way and opened his pocketknife. He prised up a short length of floorboard. In the gap between the joists was a shoebox. Molloy lifted it out and took off the lid. Wrapped in a faded Afrika Korps pennant eaten by silverfish and stained with gun oil was Oberst i.G. Egon Turtz’s 9 mm semi-automatic Luger.

  “Where did you get that?” said Caitlin.

  “Italy.” Molloy pressed the catch, took out the magazine, and removed the cover plate with a screwdriver he kept in a toolbag in the bottom drawer. He blew dust from the workings and gave them a squirt from a tiny can of sewing-machine oil. He reassembled the pistol and pushed the magazine into the grip with the heel of his hand until it clicked into place. He slid the toggle back as far as it would go and let it snap forward, locking the breech-block into place, and turned the safety lever down and to the rear. Gesichert. Made safe. He put on his jacket and put the Luger in the right-hand pocket.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Caitlin, standing.

  “No. You could get in the way.” Before she could say anything he added, “It really is no place for a girl. I mean it.”

  He gripped the pistol’s textured stock. He hadn’t thought about shooting anyone since 1945.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Molloy turned into Packenham Street. There was a row of army trucks parked in the darkness, khaki-coloured three-ton Bedford QLDs, with the dear old fern leaf on the front mudguard, motors idling, headlights covered, canopies snapping in the unseasonal wind. The glow of cigarettes came from darkened cabs, and soldiers double-timed between vehicles, boots thumping on the bitumen.

  Molloy stopped as a rooster in uniform — three stripes, a clipboard under his arm — marched towards him, his hand up in a stop motion, very pukka, beret just so, insurance agent’s tiny moustache.

  “Oi,” said the NCO, a Pom. “This is a restricted area. On yer bike.”

  “What’s the story?” said Molloy.

  “Fook off,” said the soldier, waving his arm. “That’s the story.”

  Molloy almost saluted, knowing it would irritate the NCO, both for its sloppiness and its insolence, but even more so for its breach of etiquette. Only officers had the King’s Commission, so when you saluted an officer you were actually saluting the King. But the King couldn’t be a non-commissioned officer because, well, the very idea. Something along those ridiculous Pongo lines, anyway. Saluting Red Caps had been great fun in Cairo. The little bastards hated it. But Molloy controlled himself. This was not the time to have a bloke on, he thought to himself, not with a gun in my hand.

  He turned and walked to Market Place and down an alley by the Municipal Baths. The fish market was closed, the timber yards and warehouses in darkness, the streets empty. Fishing boats were moored in the basin, bumping against the wharf piles, hawsers squeaking and groaning. Molloy could see the mechanical bridge in Halsey Street lifting for a late trawler and hear shouted instructions drifting faintly on the wind across the water.

  No. 2 Shed was at the entrance to a boatyard. He took the Luger from his pocket and pushed the safety up and forward. Ready to fire. He went inside. He could make out the faint shape of a vessel on blocks. Other than that the space was pitch black.

  He called out. “O’Flynn.”

  There was no reply.

  He called again.

  The click of a torch and everything went white. “Stay where you are,” a voice said. “Keep your mitts where I can see them.”

  Molloy raised his hands.

  “This your idea of a wee chat, is it, Frank?” he said, his eyes closed tight against the blinding glare.

  O’Flynn moved forward slowly, his boots crunching on sand and broken glass. The torch beam moved slightly to one side. Molloy could make out his shape and the faint, moonlit gleam of a pistol.

  The Irishman was tall and well-built, wearing a pea coat with the collar turned up, his gun hand steady. “So it’s him himself,” he said. “The private detective, neither tarnished nor afraid.” He laughed. “You know how there’s always that moment in the fillums,” he said, “when the baddy’s holding a gun on the hero and saying he’s going to shoot him in a minute, right after he’s sorted out a couple of things? And you’re sitting there in the stalls with your ice and your sweeties and you’re thinking why doesn’t he just pull the trigger and be done with it because the hero’s going to clobber him if he doesn’t? But the baddy just keeps talking and talking, revelling in it like, getting himself deeper and deeper into the shite?”

  “I don’t go to the pictures much,” said Molloy.

  “No? Well it happens,” said O’Flynn, thumbing the safety. “I suppose in the flicks it’s a way of tying up the loose ends. Still, it’s hard not to savour the moment. Right now, for example, there’s a part of me saying Jaysus, you’re courting fate with your delaying and your talking, just shoot the fucker and be done with it. But at the same time there’s another part saying hold yer horses there, big fella! Before you put one in his guts and two in his head, take a moment to rub it in, to clarify the situation, you know?” He paused, enjoying the role of the happy-go-lucky gunman. “So, I may be an eejit of the first order, but—”

  Molloy dived to his left and rolled on the floor, then up on his feet, taking the Luger from his pocket, banging against something in the gloom, pain shooting up his legs like being whacked on the shin with an iron bar. The pistol dropped onto the floor and into the darkness. O’Flynn fired twice. Molloy ran towards the moonlit door, knowing it would make him an easier target but thinking, if he was thinking at all, easier than what?

  A woman’s voice. “Stop! Or I’ll shoot.” Caitlin, backlit in the d
oorway, holding — oh, hell — a piece of wood! Molloy shouted, “Get down.” O’Flynn fired once at her then back in the direction of where he thought Molloy might be — bang, bang, bang —

  Click.

  “Out of ammo,” said Molloy. “I remember that from the pictures.”

  A cylinder snapped open, the tinkle of spent cases hitting the floor.

  “Keep talking there, boyo!” said O’Flynn, reloading. “I’m all fockin’ ears.”

  “Caitlin!” yelled Molloy.

  “Here.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They ran from the building. A car, its big six-cylinder engine roaring, turned into the alley from Fanshawe Street and caught them in its headlights.

  “Is that the police?” said Caitlin.

  “Not when you need them,” said Molloy.

  They turned and began running in the other direction. O’Flynn came out of the building and fired twice, the shots going wild. The car skidded to a halt and doors opened.

  “Watch out. He’s got a gun,” said Sunny.

  “Stop them, damn youse,” said O’Flynn.

  Molloy and Caitlin reached the edge of the wharf. They heard the sound of running feet.

  Molloy looked at Caitlin and down at the dark, oily water.

  He took her hand. “Hold your nose,” he said, and they jumped.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Mrs Philpott put a shovelful of coal into the range, closed the door, and opened the damper. Caitlin was sitting on a chair, wrapped in a blanket, her hair in a towel. Molloy was wearing an old jersey that smelt of mothballs, and a dressing gown, part of the Philpott estate. Mrs Philpott took a bottle of whisky from a high shelf in the pantry, standing on a stool to reach.

  “Normally I disapprove of alcohol, as you know, Mr Molloy,” she said. “But under the circumstances.” She poured a splash into two glasses and gave one each to Caitlin and Molloy. “Pre-war,” she said. “A weakness of my late husband. One of a number.”

  “Would you mind if Miss O’Carolan slept here tonight, Dorothy?” said Molloy, disregarding convention.