The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  Near midnight, he meets O’Connor at the edge of the pauper burial ground. It is cold and dry, and the only noise is the wind wheezing through the bare branches and the distant grind and squeal of trains from Victoria Station. Sullivan tells him about Neary and the parcel.

  “How big was this parcel?”

  “So big.”

  “Then it could be guns. Did Rice take it with him when he left the tannery?”

  “I don’t believe so. Least he was empty-handed when I saw him.”

  “So it’s most likely still there in the office?”

  Sullivan nods. He is cold and weary, and would prefer to be inside by a fire rather than out here in the darkness with the bones of dead people lying all around.

  “Most likely,” he says.

  “If they’re buying guns, it means whatever’s going to happen will happen soon. Could you get inside the office to check?”

  “Rice keeps the only key in his waistcoat pocket. I’d have to break a window.”

  O’Connor shakes his head.

  “That won’t do. You need to watch Rice carefully, see what he does with that parcel, take note of who he gives it to. If there are guns inside it, like I think there are, then my bet is that Stephen Doyle ordered them himself.”

  “How much longer will all this take, Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know that. You can quit any time, remember.”

  “I want that hundred pounds, though.”

  O’Connor rubs his jaw and sighs. The three-quarter moon casts a thick net of shadow over both of them. There is a smell of mold and leaves and autumn rottenness.

  “You need to be patient, then,” he says. “This isn’t how we planned it, I know. We thought you’d find Stephen Doyle and we’d arrest him and that would be that. This way is different, but it may still work out well.”

  Sullivan looks suddenly solemn, struck with gloom, as if reminded of something he would rather forget.

  “A fellow could topple into one of those damned tanning pits and drown in a moment,” he says.

  “Not if he’s careful he won’t,” O’Connor tells him. “Not if he does exactly what’s he’s told and no more.”

  Next morning, Sullivan is shoveling mulch from one of the pits, when he hears angry shouting coming from the far end of the beam room. A minute later, Slattery the foreman appears in the yard, shaking his head and frowning. He is a tall man, big-boned and awkward in his movements. He strides past the tanning pits and knocks hard on Rice’s office door. Rice comes out, they talk briefly, and then Rice follows Slattery back into the beam room. There is more shouting and cursing. Sullivan stops shoveling and listens. He hears Rice and Slattery and someone else who he thinks might be Kirkland, one of the beam men, but he can’t tell what they are arguing about. He pulls himself out of the tanning pit and takes the barrow out to the frosted-over mulch pile. When he gets back to the yard, he tells Neary that the bark grinder has jammed again and needs to be looked at. He waits for Neary to leave, then wheels the empty barrow around the perimeter of the yard until he is standing beside Rice’s unlocked door. He lowers the barrow and looks about. The yard is empty and he can still hear raised voices coming out from the beam room. He pauses a moment to check his courage, then opens the door and steps quickly inside.

  It is warm and silent in the office, there is a dirty rag carpet in the middle of the floor and a cast-iron stove up against one wall with an empty coal scuttle next to it. The desk is empty aside from a leather-bound account book and a folded-up newspaper. Behind it are shelves filled with papers and books. There is a cupboard by the window with an almanac pinned to the door. Sullivan looks around for Neary’s parcel but can’t see it anywhere. He opens the cupboard door and looks inside. It is filled up with machine belts and bridles and sample strips of tanned hide in various shades of brown and black. He glances out the window to check that the yard is still empty, then starts going through the desk drawers one by one. There are bundles of receipts tied up with string, pen nibs, candle stubs, a bag of nails, a ring of rusted keys, empty tobacco tins, a nutcracker, a tape measure, a twelve-inch rule. The bottom drawer, the deepest one, is locked. Sullivan takes out his clasp knife and tries to jimmy it open, but it won’t give. He takes the keys from the other drawer and begins to test them in the lock. One of them fits, but it won’t turn. He takes it out, tries all the others again, then goes back to the one that fits. He eases it back and forth, feeling about for the right notch. After a minute of trying, he stands up and looks around the office again in case there is another, easier hiding place he hasn’t thought of, but then shakes his head and goes back to jiggling the key. He is ready to give up, when it turns.

  Inside the drawer is a metal box, secured with a small brass padlock, and, next to it, two handguns wrapped in oilcloth. Sullivan unwraps one and picks it up. It is new and smells of metal and oil. He likes the way it feels in his hand, its heaviness and tilt. He holds it out straight and squints along the shining blue-black barrel as though ready to shoot someone. When I get my hands on that hundred pounds, I will buy myself a fine gun, he thinks, like this one here, but even better. He gazes at the gun awhile longer, then puts it back. It takes him several more minutes of fiddling to relock the drawer. Then he goes over to the window and looks out again. He can see the tanning pits and the entrance to the finishing shed, but there is no sign of Neary or anyone else. He imagines what Jimmy will say, the astonished look on his face when he tells him what he just did. He opens the door and steps outside into the cold air. Fifty feet away to the left, he sees Rice and Slattery coming out of the beam room. They have a clear view of everything. He grabs the handles of his barrow, turns sharply, and starts to walk away from them, but Slattery calls out for him to stay where he is. He lowers the barrow and waits.

  “Turn out all your pockets and give me your cap,” Slattery tells him.

  Peter Rice, thick-necked, eyes hard and staring, is silent by his side. Sullivan can tell that they are both still riled up from whatever just happened in the beam room. He does what he is told, but all he has in his pockets is a lump of chalk, two pennies, a box of matches, and a clasp knife, and there is nothing concealed in his cap. Rice asks him what he was doing in the office.

  “I wanted to ask you a question, Mr. Rice,” Sullivan says. “That’s all. I saw the door was open so I thought you must be at your desk. I only stepped inside for a moment. When I realized you weren’t there, I turned right around and left straightaway. I didn’t touch anything, nothing at all, I swear.”

  “Why didn’t you knock?”

  “I didn’t think to. I saw the door was left open.”

  “What would you need to talk to Mr. Rice about?” Slattery says. “If you have any question, you come to me.”

  Sullivan scratches his forehead, glances at Rice.

  “It’s a private matter,” he says.

  Slattery snorts.

  “You were in there robbing, and then you saw us coming back and tried to get away. That’s the truth.”

  “No, sir,” he says. “It isn’t.”

  “You stay there,” Rice says.

  He opens the office door and goes inside. Sullivan and Slattery watch him checking over the room, seeing if anything has been touched or interfered with. He takes a key from his waistcoat pocket and bends down to open the desk drawer. Sullivan feels his stomach clench.

  “Anything taken?” Slattery says.

  Rice stands up and shakes his head.

  “We scared him off in time, then,” Slattery says. “That’s all.”

  Rice comes back outside. He leans in close and looks at Sullivan.

  “Were you robbing me, Michael Sullivan?” he says. “Tell the truth now.”

  “No, sir, I swear. I wanted to talk to you, that’s all.”

  “Talk to me about what?”

  Sullivan hesit
ates for a second, looks at the ground.

  “The Brotherhood,” he says. “I want to take the oath.”

  Rice looks surprised at first, then amused. He glances at Slattery, then back at Sullivan.

  “What do you suppose I know about the Brotherhood?” he says.

  “Jack Riley told me you and him were both a part of it.”

  “Did you ask Jack Riley about taking any oath?”

  “I wasn’t interested then, but I’ve changed my mind. There’s a pile of old newspapers down in the cellar where I sleep—The United Irishman, The Nation—I’ve been reading them through at night, before I go to sleep. All about the famine and the rack renters. Everything. It’s opened my eyes.”

  Rice puffs out his cheeks and shakes his head. He turns to Slattery and tells him he can get back to work now.

  “I’ll manage this one, Frank,” he says.

  They watch Slattery walk off toward the finishing shed. The sky is a brindled slab of white and gray, and a faint mist is rising from the tanning pits. Rice bends down and prizes a rusted nail from the impacted gravel, looks at it a moment, then tosses it away again.

  “You knock before you go in somewhere,” he says. “Did they never teach you that in New York?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Sullivan says again.

  “What do you know about the Brotherhood?”

  “I know that it fights for the freedom of Ireland.”

  “And you like the sound of a good fight, is that it?”

  “I want to help my country if I can,” he says. “I want to play my part.”

  “It’s not a game, you know. People are killed in this, murdered, hanged.”

  “I know that.”

  “Jack Riley thinks you’re bold.”

  “I wouldn’t let you down. I swear.”

  “What if you were ordered to kill a man?”

  Sullivan checks to see if he is being serious and realizes that he is.

  “Then I’d kill him for sure,” he says.

  “You wouldn’t hesitate even for a moment?”

  “Not even for a moment.”

  Rice looks him up and down, and Sullivan tries to keep himself steady and calm, not to tremble or flinch under his silent gaze.

  “I’ll talk to Jack,” Rice says. “I’ll see what he thinks about it all. You can go back to your work.”

  Sullivan thanks him and picks up the wheelbarrow. He is about to walk away when Rice calls out.

  “Jack tells me your people are from the Liberties. I knew a George Sullivan who lived on Park Street. He used to work at the North Wall. He married a woman named Martha McCord from the village in Clare where my father was born. Would he be any relation of yours, I wonder?”

  “That’s my cousin George, most likely,” he says. “My auntie Sheelah’s son. My da was the middle one of nine.”

  “Then you’re less of a stranger than I thought you were.”

  “I haven’t seen George and Martha since I was a boy. I don’t know where they’re living now.”

  “And you have no one here in Manchester?” Rice says. “No aunts or cousins? No one.”

  “No one,” he says. “No one at all. That’s right.”

  As he steers the barrow along the narrow walkway between the tanning pits, Sullivan’s breath steadies and he feels a swell of relief. He is proud of his quick thinking—if they let him join the Brotherhood it means he will be closer to Stephen Doyle and closer to that hundred pounds as well. Slattery and Rice just gave him a dreadful fright, to be sure, but it worked out fine in the end.

  It is only later, after he has met O’Connor at the burial grounds and told him about the guns and the oath taking, and he is back in the dank and dreary cellar sitting on the single rickety chair, unlacing his hobnails, that it occurs to him that he might have made a mistake by admitting that George Sullivan is his cousin. He frowns and licks his lips. Should he tell Rice that he was mistaken about George, he wonders? But no, that would only draw his attention to it and make him more suspicious. Better to leave things just as they are and trust that Rice is too busy with his own plans to worry about something so small. He turns this conclusion over in his mind a few times until he is satisfied that it makes good sense, then he pulls off his boots and lies down on the cot. He tightens the blanket around his chest and shoulders, closes his eyes, and, soothed like an infant by the shallow mumbles of the poisoned Irk, tumbles backward into a dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER 12

  Tommy Flanagan visits O’Connor late at night. Half his face is shot away, but he has a black veil artfully arranged to cover the wound. When he speaks he has a woman’s voice. Did you forget me? he says. Did you forget me already, Jimmy O’Connor? O’Connor tries to answer him, but he can’t form the right words. He drools and grunts. His tongue is grown too fat for his mouth. They are sitting at a table together, and when Tommy stands up he is naked; his body is white and hairless, and he has no cock or balls. This is what the saints look like when they ascend to heaven, he says. Couldn’t you guess? Looking at him standing there, O’Connor is filled with lust, but when he steps closer and lifts the black veil, he sees it is not Tommy at all but Rose. Oh, forgive me, Rose, O’Connor says, forgive me. I didn’t know.

  * * *

  —

  In Maybury’s office next morning, a rare winter sun is slanting through the sash window and casting yellow rectangles across floor and wall. O’Connor feels the sunlight on his thigh like the heat of a hand. He explains about the discovery of the guns, and they talk about whether they should arrest Peter Rice immediately or wait. If they delay, there is a risk that any information Sullivan discovers will arrive too late, but if they act, it will give Doyle the chance to escape. O’Connor would like to move quickly, before Michael Sullivan gets himself into any more trouble, but Maybury decides they will hold back for now. If they foil a fully fledged plot and capture Doyle and the others, he reasons, it means a public victory, a visible success to balance what happened on Hyde Road. In the meantime, he will increase foot patrols around the city and put guards on all of the public buildings. He reminds O’Connor to inform him the moment he hears any more news, then picks up his pen and turns back to his papers to signal that the interview is concluded.

  “There’s something else,” O’Connor says. “Tommy Flanagan’s sister.”

  Maybury shrugs lightly and puts down his pen.

  “Flanagan had a sister?”

  “Yes, a sister named Rose and an aging mother also. Their neighbors have turned against them since the truth came out. They’re being punished for Tommy’s sins, and in a place like that if the people single you out, then your life’s hardly worth living.”

  “It’s not enough for them to kill the brother?”

  “It seems not.”

  Maybury shakes his head.

  “I talked to her the other day,” O’Connor continues. “She wants to leave Manchester, to go somewhere new where the history isn’t hanging over her, but she doesn’t have the money to move. I was thinking it might be possible to make her a small allowance. Just until she and her mother find their feet. If the chief constable would agree.”

  Maybury frowns.

  “We paid Tommy Flanagan for the information he provided, is that right? So there’s no question of us owing him anything?”

  “Whenever it had any value, yes, sir, we did.”

  “Does the sister know anything that would be useful to us?”

  “I don’t believe she does.”

  “So what would we be paying her for?”

  “It would be in recompense for Tommy’s death.”

  “Did you make any promise? Did you tell Tommy that if he was ever killed we’d give money to his sister?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t, but when I met her, I felt it was something we should do. I believe we�
�re under an obligation, given the circumstances.”

  “Then I’m afraid your notion of obligation is different from mine. The detective office is not a charity for distressed ladies. The best way we can help Tommy Flanagan’s family is to try to catch the men who killed him. That’s our only obligation here.”

  “Even a small amount would help. Could you raise it with the chief constable?”

  Maybury shakes his head.

  “The chief constable is a busy man. He wouldn’t thank me for wasting his time.”

  O’Connor tenses, then looks away. He rubs his trouser leg with one hand, and sees the glint and shimmer of dust motes rising in the brightened air.

  “What difference would twenty pounds make to Palin?” he says. “Or fifty even?”

  Maybury narrows his eyes and looks at him.

  “Why do you care so much? Do you have some interest in the sister?” he says. “Is that it?”

  O’Connor hesitates.

  “That’s not it,” he says.

  Maybury shakes his head dismissively.

  “Here in England we generally pay for our own pleasures, O’Connor. I’d suggest you learn to do the same.”

  He knows the chance is gone now. Perhaps there never was a chance.

  “That’s not it,” he says again.

  Maybury picks up his fountain pen and points at the door.

  “You can go,” he says. “For a policeman, you make a dismal liar.”

  * * *

  —

  For the rest of the morning, O’Connor does his work as normal, but his mind is elsewhere. Just past noon, he makes his way to Hanging Ditch and waits near the back entrance of the Spread Eagle Hotel. When he sees Rose Flanagan come out, he steps forward to greet her. She has a scarf tied tight around her head and is walking with another maid. He has to call her name twice before she notices him.