In the Dark River E-Book

Conor Brady

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Swallow and the legendary Chief Superintendent John Mallon must also work tirelessly to counter espionage and subterfuge by the British secret services, who are hell-bent on destroying Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish struggle for Home Rule. If Parnell falls, the G-men of Dublin's Metropolitan Police fear the chaos that will rise in his wake. As Swallow struggles to hold his marriage together, he must choose between the life he wants and the career he has built. The pressure mounts on Swallow from all sides: a death under Dublin, an Irish journalist murdered in Madrid, the pursuit of a suspect across the breadth of Ireland and all the while, the sinister machinations of the British Empire against the 'uncrowned king'. Conor Brady returns with a masterfully thrilling tale of intrigue, treachery and suspense, the fourth book in the Joe Swallow series.

Leseprobe

Conor Brady is the former Editor of The Irish Times, and former Garda Ombudsman commissioner. He has held various professorships and teaching fellowships at the City University of New York and University College Dublin. In the Dark River is the fourth novel in the Joe Swallow series. He lives and works in Dublin.

Praise for A June of Ordinary Murders

‘A vivid and crafty whodunit … Fans of mysteries that capture the flavour of the past will hope that Swallow has a long literary life.’ – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

‘Brady’s powerful first mystery novel is evocative of the period. The many aspects of life in 19th-century Dublin are cleverly woven through a baffling mystery.’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘Swallow is an increasingly interesting protagonist who is left to face the realities of his professional future and his closest personal relationship; readers will want to see more of him.’ – Booklist

‘Making his mystery debut, former Irish Times editor Brady presents a fascinating and in-depth historical peek at crime solving in a bygone era when it took more than a few keystrokes and a phone call to catch a perp. Swallow is a complicated, earnest hero with just enough flaws to make him endearingly sympathetic.’ – Library Journal

‘Conor Brady’s debut novel is a slice of history about Dublin, Ireland, and the Dublin Metropolitan police, intertwined with a first-rate murder mystery, and peopled by characters both complex and realistic.’ – NY Journal of Books

‘Like all great historical fiction, A June of Ordinary Murders stuns us into fresh recognition of a period we thought we knew – and as if that weren’t enough, hides all of its meticulous research inside a superbly engaging mystery. Get in on the ground floor. Conor Brady is the real deal.’ – Charles Finch, bestselling author of The Laws of Murder

‘Brady weaves a police procedural that does full justice to the complex nature of the social, political and criminal labyrinth that was Dublin in the summer of 1887. He paints a vivid picture of the city … Swallow himself is very much in the mould of the classic fictional policeman, a man ostensibly dedicated to upholding law and order and seeking out justice …’ – The Irish Times

‘As in the best crime fiction, the city itself is here a kind of character – and it’s a Dublin we haven’t seen a great deal of in recent fiction … An absorbing read, cleanly written, beautifully structured and thrillingly vivid … Brady has done an excellent job of conjuring the febrile atmosphere of the city as it lurches and stumbles its way towards the War of Independence.’ – Sunday Business Post

‘Delivers a thrilling sense of the familiar, lit with the profane … the pace raises the novel above the period pastiche.’ – Sunday Independent

‘Brady handles the political atmosphere of the time with aplomb. A June Of Ordinary Murders pulsates with a vivid sense of a country on edge as the land wars rage and preparations get under way for a royal visit.’ – Irish Independent

Praise for The Eloquence of the Dead

‘In Brady’s stellar second whodunit set in Victorian Dublin … the astute Swallow is a particularly well-rounded lead, and he’s matched with a complex, but logical, page-turner of a plot.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘The second case for the talented, complicated Swallow again spins a fine mystery out of political corruption in 1880s Dublin.’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘If intricate plotting and journalistic descriptions of time and place pique your fancy, Brady is your man.’ – Historical Novel Society

‘He has given us a compelling and memorable central character in the shape of Detective Swallow … If the RTÉ drama department are looking for something to fill a Love/Hate-sized hole in next year’s schedule, they could do worse than look at the continuing development, and adventures, of Detective Joe Swallow.’ – Irish Independent

‘Swallow, a keen amateur painter, brings a sharp eye to bear on his surroundings, which in turn allows Brady to give us a vivid account of late Victorian Dublin in all its squalid glory. The result is a very satisfying police procedural/mystery and an equally fine historical novel.’ – The Irish Times

Praise for A Hunt in Winter

‘Interesting and daring.’ – Irish Examiner

‘A cracker of a book and very enjoyable.’ – Hotpress

‘A rattling tale which draws in real-life historical events, a multi-strand thriller plot, the complex web of personal relationships … an entertaining read … many mystery fans love to follow the hero on his journey through life, book after book. In Joe Swallow, they have an interesting and agreeable travel companion.’ – Irish Independent

‘The window Brady provides into the everyday lives of ordinary Irishmen caught in a dramatic moment gives his third entry a combination of the best elements of police procedurals and historical mysteries.’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘The story is engaging, and Brady does an excellent job in characterization of Swallow and the lesser players. Readers will bond with the Irishman from the beginning and care about his personal triumphs and losses. The author’s mastery of setting makes late 19th-century Dublin come alive … an enjoyable read.’ – Historical Novel Society

‘Brady’s strong third whodunit set in Victorian Ireland … seamlessly integrates the political tensions of the day into the plot … the series’ historical backdrop should continue to prove a rich source for future entries.’ – Publishers Weekly

In the Dark River

In the Dark River

Conor Brady

IN THE DARK RIVER

First published in 2018 by

New Island Books

16 Priory Hall Office Park

Stillorgan

County Dublin

Republic of Ireland

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © Conor Brady, 2018

The moral right of Conor Brady to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.

Print ISBN: 978-1-84840-702-2

Epub ISBN: 978-1-84840-703-9

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-84840-704-6

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

New Island received financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland.

New Island Books is a member of Publishing Ireland.

That was the end of the woman in the wood

Weela, weela waile

That was the end of the woman in the wood

Down by the river Saile*

*Saile – ‘Saileach’ (Irish, Adj.: Dirty, foul, filthy)

Prologue

Hotel Los Embajadores, Madrid, March 1st, 1889

The grey streets that he had walked since morning had been scoured by a dry, cutting wind.

‘Altitud,’ the waiter had told him curtly an hour ago when he shivered, complaining, in the café. It blew all afternoon, rising up from the Castilian plain beyond the city. He had sought unsuccessfully to attain oblivion with as much cheap Spanish brandy as his dwindling pesetas would allow. But when the last of the oily spirit was gone, he would have to make his way back to his hotel room. There might be money from Paris or London in the morning, he told himself. Even if there was, he knew it would not be a lot. But with any luck it might be enough to enable him to stay ahead of his pursuers for another while.

‘Altitud.’ He remembered reading somewhere about the Moors, building their stronghold, Majrit, high on the central plateau of the Iberian Peninsula so that it baked in summer and froze in winter. That was the problem with being a journalist. One collected enormous amounts of useless information in one’s head. Then some Christian king corrupted the Arab name and called it Madrid. Bloody awful place to put a city, he reflected. Dublin or London might be damp and chilly in March. But they would not have this scourging sirocco wind from Africa. The pier at Kingstown had been positively balmy when he walked it with his two boys a month ago.

Was it only a month? The brandy had him addled. It was probably less, he reckoned, since everything had started to fall asunder that morning of the commission at Westminster. One minute he was being lionised and courted by the men from The Times. They assured him he would be their star witness before the Royal Commission of Inquiry. They had billed his appearance at the top of their news column.

DUBLIN EDITOR TO PRODUCE LETTERS

Mr Richard Pigott to take the Stand

COMMISSION TO HEAR FROM DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST

He had the evidence they needed in the letters he held, linking Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of Irish nationalism, the ‘uncrowned king’ of Ireland, to Fenian violence and even to murder. The next minute, he was being torn to shreds in the witness box in St Stephen’s Hall by that clever little Catholic lawyer from Newry, Charles Russell.

He had underestimated the lawyer and had made stupid mistakes himself. Everything had happened quickly once Russell identified the spelling mistakes in the letters, challenging him to spell the key words. When he made the same misspellings the lawyer had successfully branded him a rogue and a liar. The hall had filled with guffaws and catcalls. Even the three judges in their scarlet robes struggled to contain their amusement.

Russell had started his cross-examination with deceptive courtesy. But within half an hour he was tearing at him like a terrier savaging a rat. He tried unsuccessfully to stutter out the evidence that he had so carefully rehearsed beforehand, coached by the men from The Times. He realised he was babbling incoherently, the perspiration breaking out all over his body, matting his hair and beard and staining his waistcoat and suit. The presiding judge sympathetically announced an adjournment. The rest of Richard Pigott’s evidence would be taken tomorrow.

Suddenly the men from The Times and the security detectives who drank with them in the pubs in the evenings were no longer his friends. There was anger in their eyes and in their voices. They had turned on him as a pack. There was no more back-slapping or jolly quips. There was no talk of the evening’s promised dinner at Simpsons-in-the-Strand with its exquisite food and wines. A security agent he knew simply as ‘The Captain’ had pulled him aside and tapped him angrily on the chest as witnesses, lawyers, officials and the public gallery had spilled out into the Palace Yard, making for the nearby public houses and coffee shops to dissect the morning’s dramatic collapse.

‘Take a bit of advice now, Paddy,’ he hissed, ‘make yourself scarce. Their Lordships have a distinct aversion to perjury. Make no error, there’ll be a warrant for your arrest within a day or two. Maybe even this afternoon. And none of us wants to hear you in the witness box explaining how you came into possession of evidence that turns out to be a forgery. It wouldn’t be good for any of us, would it? So, come back here in the morning and we’ll have a little present to help you take a nice holiday in Paris.’

He drank heavily that evening, on his own in a noisy saloon bar by the river. He took the furthest corner of the bar, sinking back into the shadows in case he might be recognised. He thought he heard his name being mentioned more than once in the raucous conversations going on around him. The thought of going back to the commission in the morning for more punishment filled him with dread. But he would have to turn up to get the money promised by the security agent. He slept in his clothes at the Aldwych hotel room provided by The Times, mercifully anaesthetised by the alcohol and coming to an unwelcome wakefulness around dawn. Before leaving for Westminster he packed the smaller of his two suitcases, carefully placing the Webley revolver provided by his security mentors – for ‘his own protection,’ as they had said – among the jumbled garments and other paraphernalia. After the chamber-maid had brought the morning jug of warm water, he made a desultory attempt to smarten his appearance for the witness stand. But when he saw his haggard face, crumpled suit and bloodshot eyes in the mirror, he realised it was futile.

In the event, the cross-examination by counsel representing The Times was brief and painless. Russell had destroyed him the previous day and the newspaper’s case was hopeless. In its detestation of Parnell and its visceral opposition to his campaign to secure Home Rule for Ireland, it had backed a dud, a forger and a perjurer. The Times’ counsel had nothing to argue with. Russell needed no more from this discredited witness, although the public gallery was eagerly anticipating more sport. As he made his way clumsily towards the stand that morning, Pigott saw a man in the public seating – he had no idea who he was – pound a fist into the palm of his other hand, mouthing the word ‘smashed’ at him. It was exactly how he felt.

When the commission adjourned early for lunch, The Captain was waiting for him in the Palace Yard.

‘Here’s fifty pounds,’ he said, pressing an envelope into his hand. ‘There’ll be more when you get to the other side. There’s tickets in there as well for Dover and on to Paris, and a set of travel documents authorised by the Foreign Office in the name of Roland Ponsonby. Just get on the next train for Dover and talk to nobody. Understand?’

‘But I thought I’d go back directly to Dublin. I’ve got two young sons there to look after.’

‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ the Captain said testily. ‘You’re going to be a wanted fugitive anywhere in the United Kingdom. And if you go back to Dublin they’ll probably shoot you anyway. The newspapers are baying for your blood. At least the Fenian rags are.’

He knew he had no choice but to do what he was told. It was a hurried cab ride to the hotel to collect the case he had packed the night before and then another to Victoria to catch the Dover train. The weather for the crossing to Calais was calm and uneventful. But he was sick with anxiety. His travel documents got no more than a cursory glance from a French official on the quayside. He breathed a little easier when he boarded the night train to Paris. It was warm and comfortable. He ordered a bottle of claret in the buffet car and calmed a little as its warmth spread through his vitals. At the Gare du Nord in the morning a man wearing a Derby hat and a Harris tweed coat stopped him just beyond the barrier and handed him a ticket.

‘You’re a marked man.’ The accent was broad, strong, Scottish. ‘The powers-that-be want to make an example of you. They want to jail you for perjury. You’ve made them look bad. So we don’t know how long we can protect you for. Our advice to you is to keep moving. Take the train for Barcelona at the Gare d’Austerlitz. I have tickets here for you. It’s departing in an hour. You’ll cross the Spanish border at Port Bou and then continue on to Girona. Change trains at Girona and take the first service you can get aboard to Madrid. We’ll be in contact there. Don’t worry, we look after our own.’

The Scotsman led him to a cab outside the station. He muttered instructions in French to the driver and walked away without a word to Pigott.

The train to Barcelona was overcrowded, noisy and dirty. The ticket was ostensibly for a first class carriage but when he tried to secure a seat he discovered that every one had been reserved. Eventually, having walked the length of the train three times, he squeezed into a banquette seat in a second class carriage between an overweight Catalan salesman who, he discovered, dealt in olive oil and a middle-aged French woman dressed in widow’s black.

After some desultory conversation in English, the Catalan salesman fell asleep. The French widow stared silently through the window at the darkened countryside. There were frequent stops at cities and towns, one more uninviting than the other in the gloom of the night. He would have liked to go to the dining car for some refreshments but dared not leave his place which would certainly be taken by someone condemned to stand in the crowded corridors. At some point he fell asleep. When he woke it was morning, with a bright sun rising over the countryside. Green fields and meadows had given way to brown earth, with terraces of what he guessed were vines. The houses were roofed with red terracotta. Here and there in the landscape he could make out sizeable buildings, but whether these were fine dwelling houses or more utilitarian constructions, he could not tell.

All passengers had to alight after Port Bou to be cleared by Spanish border officials. A small, swarthy officer, in a green uniform and a tri-cornered hat examined his travel document, scowled and stamped it aggressively, muttering just one word.

‘Ingles.’

A great many passengers had already disembarked at Perpignan and Port Vendres. So by the time the train had crossed into Spain it was pleasantly uncrowded. He was able to claim a comfortable seat for himself in first class and he breakfasted on coffee, some cheese and cured ham and a small loaf of fresh bread in the dining car. The Mediterranean sparkled to the south and the Albères, the foothills of the Pyrenees, were green and verdant to the north. He began to feel better about things, relaxed even. It would all blow over in time, he told himself.

He disembarked at Girona and took the next train to Madrid. It was comfortable, clean and well provided with a decent dining car and a choice of good wines at very reasonable prices. The journey passed quickly and pleasantly as he dined on fresh sea-bass and sampled the excellent Riojas offered by the railway company.

At Madrid’s Estación de Mediodía, another man, younger than the fellow in Paris and grinning cheerily, dressed in what might have been the pavilion outfit of a cricket club, greeted him on the platform. Notwithstanding the good wine and food on the journey from Girona, he was tired and dishevelled after more than two days travelling without proper sleep or ablutions and without a change of clothing.

‘You are Mr Roland Ponsonby, of course.’ The young man clapped him on the shoulder and smiled broadly.‘I’ve been waiting for you. Welcome to Madrid. I’m sure it will be a very successful visit for your business.’

Pigott disliked him instantly.

‘And what business am I supposed to be in … exactly?’

‘Oh, that’s a matter for yourself, Roland.’

The grin broadened.

‘I’d say you’d easily pass as a buyer. A merchant. Let’s say you’re here to find suppliers for good wine. You’d know a bit about that, wouldn’t you?’

He winked knowingly.

‘Who are you? Who do you work for?’ Pigott asked testily. He found himself greatly irritated by the young man’s tone of familiarity.

‘Oh, call me Brown or Black or White or Grey, perhaps. Any one of them will do. And I work for the same people you do. Or did, in London, until the other day. We … ah … solve problems for Her Majesty’s government, as you’ve gathered. And just now, Roland, you’re a problem.’

He led Pigott to a waiting cab.

‘The hotel we’ve got for you is comfortable enough. It’s not the very best. But we don’t want you running into anyone who might recognise you. Just keep out of sight until we know it’s safe to show yourself. They’ve issued a warrant in London for your arrest and they’re very serious about finding you. With any luck, they think you’re still in Paris.’

‘I want to get back to Dublin as soon as I can,’ Pigott said quietly. ‘I’ve two young boys who need their father. And I have business interests …’

The young man’s grin had vanished. His expression was tense.

‘Look, I’m only a small cog in a very big wheel, Mr … ah … Ponsonby. But I think you’d better understand the trouble you’re in. As I read the wires, you led the government to believe you had evidence that would fix this fellow Parnell. They want him dealt with. You took their money, even though they’ll always deny that, of course. They looked after you, and then it turns out that what you’ve sold them is a pathetic forgery. So, they’re going to throw you to the wolves. They have to. They can’t be seen to be complicit in perjury. So your goose is cooked, Roland. And if you go back to Ireland they’ll nab you in an instant. That wouldn’t suit you and it wouldn’t suit my bosses either.’

He opened the cab door.

Pigott stepped up to the footplate and took his seat. The man did not attempt to join him but leaned through the lowered window.

‘Now, we know that the last thing my bosses want is for you to be brought back in handcuffs to give evidence that would embarrass them. So, my job, along with my colleagues, is to keep you out of reach. You’d be best to accept that you won’t see Dublin for a long time. And if you do, it’ll be through the bars of a prison van. Now, we’ll get you settled into your hotel. The driver knows where you’re going. We’ll take care of the charges for your room and your meals and here’s some pesetas to allow you to have a little drink or whatever you like.’

He handed Pigott an envelope through the window.

‘Good day, Mr Ponsonby. Enjoy your visit.’

The Hotel Los Embajadores was a parody of its pretentious name. The tiny room he was allocated on the third floor was dingy and dark with an odour of decay. The fare in the dining room was plentiful but consisted mainly of stewed vegetables and pork, with cured fish as an occasional alternative. The wine was dry and vinegary. None of the staff and none of his fellow guests who seemed to be, in the main, commercial travellers, could speak any English. Since the only thing to do was to drink in one or other of the bars or cafes nearby, his funds had run low very quickly.

He was too drowsy from the brandy to notice the two men sitting in the lobby when he got back to the hotel that afternoon. They stood, hats in hand, as he came towards them.

‘Señor … Pon … son … bee? A word with you please, if we may.’

The man’s English was heavily accented and each syllable was articulated slowly and deliberately.

Pigott’s fuddled brain told him this was not good news.

‘Yes … that is my name … Ponsonby … of course.’

His companion dug in his pocket and produced a folded sheet of off-white paper. He dangled it in front of Pigott’s face. He could see a crown embossed at the top of the page.

The first man cleared his throat.

‘Señor Pon … son … bee, I am Subteniente Vargo of the Guardia Civil,’ he said slowly, as if remembering lines he had rehearsed very carefully. ‘I am to ask that you will accompany us to our headquarters.’

‘May I … may I inquire why?’

‘I am not at liberty, Señor, to discuss this. All I can tell you is that my superiors are acting on a request from the Embassy of Great Britain here in Madrid. Can you please now step outside? We have a carriage in the street.’

Suddenly the fog of alcohol was gone and Pigott understood with immediate clarity. The unhappy freedom that he had travelled so far to secure was threatened. This was not what his protectors at the Special Irish office in Scotland Yard had promised him. If the British Embassy was involved it meant that a decision had been taken at the highest levels to bring him back to punish him in public. It was decision time.

‘Very well,’ he told Vargo. ‘But I would like to shave and put on a fresh shirt. May I have a few minutes?’

The policeman nodded.

‘Of course. We shall wait here.’

He climbed the stairs to his room to where he knew the Webley lay in the drawer by the bedside. There was no need to check it. He had kept it loaded since leaving London.

He sat on the side of the bed. He had the gun. He had just a little money. It was decision time. His mind went to Dublin. To his two sons. To the better days and the nights of good food and drink with roistering friends. He could probably find a way out through the back of the hotel. But what then? Where would he go? How could he survive without money or friends to rely on?

A floorboard squeaked noisily outside his door. He heard men speaking softly but urgently in the corridor. One voice was English. Maybe two. He thought he could hear a key being slipped into the door lock.

The clerk on duty downstairs at the reception had served as a non-commissioned officer in the Spanish infantry. Conditioned to observe and take note, he was aware that there were men in the lobby waiting for one of the guests. They had been there since mid-morning. It was not his business to know who they were or why they were waiting for Mr Ponsonby, but he had little doubt that they were men of authority rather than Mr Ponsonby’s friends. Earlier, when one of them had yawned and stretched his arms in boredom, he had caught sight of a pistol under the man’s coat. And because he had been a military man himself, when he heard a sharp, reverberating retort from the floor above, the clerk knew that somebody had fired a shot.

Chapter 1

Dublin, Tuesday, June 4th, 1889

Swallow liked June. It was the best-behaved month of the year, he reckoned. Summer in Dublin was generally a travesty of its own name. In more than three decades living in the city he could only remember one summer that had lived up to expectations of blue skies and sunny days. That was two years previously when the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria’s coronation was marked by her loyal Irish subjects, a cohort that by no means extended to the entire population. June 1887 was so hot that the tram tracks buckled outside the Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen’s Green. But mostly his memories of July and August in Dublin were of hanging grey clouds over the Castle’s Lower Yard or, in the days when he was a young constable in uniform, of rain streaming from the rim of his helmet, on to his blue cape.

The morning was proof that June was the best of it. Maria was still sleeping in their bedroom above Grant’s public house when he left Thomas Street for the Castle just before eight o’clock. The streets were bathed in pale, lemon light, spilling over the rooftops as the sun gained height out on the bay. Unlike other Victorian cities, Dublin had little manufacturing industry, so the air was pure and fresh apart from the faintest tang of hops from the Guinness brewery at St James’s Gate. The various bells in the cathedrals and churches began tolling the hour as he passed the Augustinian Friary at John’s Lane. He could tell them individually and in their sequence. The deep, sonorous peals of Christ Church, the tinny ring of the two St Audoen’s, the metallic thump of St Nicholas’, the flat tone of St Catherine’s, the melodious harmony of St Patrick’s. Christ Church started a moment before the others as if to assert its senior cathedral status. St Patrick’s always seemed to be a chime or two behind. Or was it perhaps that it took the sound a little time to travel up the rising ground?

The city streets were quiet. No Dublin shop opened its doors before nine o’clock. Business houses and professional offices rarely started their day before ten, while the judges and lawyers across the river in the Four Courts only got down to business at eleven. But since his promotion to detective inspector the previous year, Swallow had adopted a strict regime that would always have him at his desk in the detective office at Exchange Court by half eight. The morning shifts across Dublin’s six uniformed divisions, from the crowded A, around the Liberties, to the comfortable, affluent F, along the southern side of the bay, started at six o’clock. So the sergeants’ reports from the night before would be on his desk. By nine o’clock, when John Mallon, the chief of the detective force, G-division, would arrive, Swallow could fully brief his boss on the state of crime and subversion in the second city of the Empire.

Although the wealthy south city suburbs of Ballsbridge, Donnybrook, Rathmines and Rathgar had been experiencing an unusual wave of aggravated burglaries and housebreakings over the previous twelve months or so, there was rarely much serious crime. The streets were well supervised by the 1,800 uniformed members of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, meticulously patrolling their beats in eight-hour shifts. But there was always plenty of political subversion. The bulk of G-division’s work was taken up with surveillance, gathering intelligence and countering the activities of Fenians, dynamiters, land agitators and radicals, as well as protecting important persons and buildings. The uniformed DMP men went about their patrolling unarmed apart from a short wooden baton. Each of the eighty or so members of G-division however, carried a standard .44 Bulldog Webley revolver at all times.

He crossed Cornmarket and High Street into Lord Edward Street. After the City Hall, the seat of Dublin Corporation, he turned out of Dame Street into the gloomy alleyway that was Exchange Court. Huddled in against the northern flank of Dublin Castle, the sun never touched its black cobbles or its dull redbrick walls. It was probably the coldest and dampest building in Dublin with an extraordinarily high frequency of respiratory complaints and illnesses among its occupants.

Pat Mossop, the duty sergeant for the previous night, was sifting a sheaf of papers on the wooden countertop in the public office.

‘Morning, Pat. Anything strange or dramatic?’

Mossop looked tired. The Belfast man had taken a revolver bullet in the chest two years previously while making an arrest on Ormond Quay. Only the speedy action of his colleagues, Swallow among them, in getting him to the nearby Jervis Infirmary had saved his life. His recovery was slow and something less than complete although the police surgeon at the Kevin Street Depot had eventually declared him fit for duty. Swallow’s plan now was to find him a quiet desk job with regular hours to make life easier. But so far, no opportunity had come up. As a fall-back position, he tried to have him rostered as frequently as possible for indoor duty in the public office.

‘There’s another aggravated burglary at a big house out in the countryside beyond Rathgar,’ Mossop told him. ‘A place called Templeogue Hill. It’s just in the city area, apparently. Another hundred yards and it wouldn’t be our problem.’

The boundaries of the Metropolitan policing area had been expanded in the past year as the city suburbs grew. The E-division, headquartered at Rathmines, had been given responsibility for several townlands that had heretofore been policed by the Royal Irish Constabulary, the armed body which formed the model for most of the police forces of the Empire.

‘The lads are out there now,’ Mossop said. ‘I’ve only got a preliminary report so far. The house of a Mr and Mrs McCartan. He’s a lawyer and I think he’s involved in various businesses as well. The wife is some sort of an invalid, I gather. According to the sergeant from Rathmines, there were three, maybe four in the job. At least one had a gun. Some sort of revolver, “a big gun,” the maid says. But then again, nobody ever seems to see a small gun.’

He glanced at his notes.

‘They got in the back door around ten o’clock and the intruders roughed them up. The man seems to be fairly badly injured. They kicked the housemaid around but she’s only bruised. They hit the man a few wallops on the head with some sort of a metal bar. He’s not in any danger but the doctor sent him down to Baggot Street Hospital for stitching. There’s a safe in the house and these fellows seemed to be able to pick it or break it easily enough. The lads are trying to get a fix on what was taken but it seems there was a fair bit of cash and jewellery. The householders are fairly shocked, according to the sergeant, not too coherent. The man of the house seems to be in a spitting rage about the local bobbies falling down on their duty and so on. Hard to blame them, I suppose.’

‘That’s the tenth one of these jobs now in a year,’ Swallow mused. ‘And the second in, what, three weeks? Second appearance of a gun too.’

‘Not even three weeks. More like two and a half since the one down on Anglesea Road.’

G-division still had no success in identifying a group of three men who had broken into the home of John Healy, an elderly, retired and almost blind businessman in Ballsbridge, threatened him with a gun and knives before making off with cash, silver plate and jewellery.

‘Who went out to the scene?’ Swallow asked.

‘Shanahan and Keogh. They knocked off duty at ten o’clock but they were having a pint or two in The Brazen Head. They were less than happy to be pulled out and put back to work after a full day shift. But I made it clear I wasn’t asking. I was telling them.’

It was an all-too-familiar story in G-division. In spite of personnel numbers being increased since the savage murders of the Chief Secretary for Ireland and his Undersecretary in the Phoenix Park seven years previously, G-men were frequently obliged to work extra shifts. Rising political tension demanded extra surveillance and protection duty.

‘Have they any leads?’

Mossop shrugged.

‘It’s too early, Boss. You know we’ve been watching the gangs closely since these jobs started. The Vanucchis, the Cussens and the Downses mainly. We’ve put a hell of a lot of hours into surveillance and a fair bit of money has gone out to informers, but none of them seem to be involved.’

Swallow nodded. The Vanucchi gang, headed by Charlie Vanucchi, operated from The Liberties area and were involved in crime that ranged from selling illegal whiskey to organised, large-scale theft on and around the Dublin docks. Vanucchi had inherited most of the criminal empire once controlled by Cecilia Downes, better known as ‘Pisspot Cess,’ who had been the queen of crime in the city for more than twenty years until her death two years previously. She had acquired her unflattering soubriquet due to the fact that as a young girl she had battered the skull of her employer, who had caught her stealing, with a metal chamber pot. A smaller number of her followers had refused to accept Charlie Vanucchi as their boss after her death, so they had reorganised at the western end of The Liberties, under the leadership of Vinnie Cussen, a criminal with a long record for violence. They operated around the Coombe area and had a presence across the river in the red-light district, centred on Montgomery Street. A smaller gang, including two nephews of Cess Downes, had established themselves around the Stoneybatter area.

‘I think some of the lads have even put a few bob of their own out to the snouts,’ Mossop added. ‘But they’re hearing nothing on the street. And none of the old lags have been much on the move. Besides, none of the usual clients carry guns and mostly they aren’t the kind to go lashing out with iron bars unless they had to. Could be there’s some new operators in town, maybe coming in every few weeks from God knows where.’

Dublin criminals rarely had access to firearms, even though Fenians and other agitators had guns aplenty and usually had no qualms about using them, even against fellow-Irishmen, if they happened to be in the police, the military or the magistracy. By and large the criminal gangs in the inner city tried to avoid the use of violence in their activities. The new suburbs however, now rapidly developing outside the city’s canals, offered tempting targets for housebreakers and burglars. With the City Corporation now firmly in the control of Catholic merchants and tradesmen, affluent Protestants, all strong Loyalists, many of them bankers, businessmen and wealthy professionals, preferred to move out to Rathmines, Ballsbridge, Clontarf, Glasnevin or Drumcondra. They could more happily reside in the new suburbs under town councils that were more likely to be influenced if not wholly controlled by like-minded men.

‘Have we any description of these fellows?’ Swallow asked. ‘Height, age, dress, accents?’

‘Not yet, Boss. Like I said, the man and the woman are badly shocked. And the maid says they wore masks. But when they’ve recovered a bit and if they think they can remember anything, I’ll arrange for photographs from DCR and we’ll get them to have a look.’

DCR – the Dublin Criminal Registry – was a showpiece of modern policing methods for the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Housed at Ship Street, behind the Castle, it contained upwards of ten thousand records of persons convicted or suspected of crime. Organised using the new Dewey Decimal system along the lines of a modern library, the staff could locate and retrieve the file of a named suspect in half a minute. Almost all the files opened since 1883 contained photographic images of suspects as well. In the aftermath of the Phoenix Park murders, the DMP and the Royal Irish Constabulary had been among the first police forces in the United Kingdom to be supplied with photographic equipment and with trained staff to operate it.

‘Anything else happening?’ Swallow asked.

‘Apart from that, just a few drunks from a Dutch ship down on the North Wall got into a row with the locals at McDonagh’s up on Gloucester Street. A few black eyes and broken noses but no worse than that. The head man at McDonagh’s saw it brewing and sent the cellar lad running down to Store Street. The bobbies were up there in force fairly quickly and got things under control. The four Dutchmen and three of the local heroes will be in the Bridewell court later. And a bit of traffic from around the country. I was just going to put the routes on your desk.’

The printed ‘routes’ came through the ABC police telegraph that connected the DMP’s twenty-five stations. It was the most modern communications technology, another beneficial by-product of the Phoenix Park murders.

The assassins had been under surveillance by G-division earlier in the week of the murders, but information on their plans and their movements had not been circulated through the wider police network. No expense had been spared in strengthening or resourcing the Dublin police in the aftermath of the murders. Extra men were appointed to G-division. More money was made available to recruit informers. The best of equipment, including the ABC system, field cameras and typewriting machines had been provided.

‘Anything happening in security or intelligence?’ Swallow asked.

‘There is, actually,’ Mossop tapped a file on his desk. ‘Two of the intelligence fellows from the Upper Yard took Dunlop of The Irish Times for dinner at the Burlington last night to pump him for what he knew about Mr Parnell and Mrs O’Shea. He conveniently stopped in and briefed me afterwards.’

Any mention of the security section that operated from within the office of the Permanent Under-Secretary in the Castle’s Upper Yard, set Swallow’s alarm bells ringing. It had been gradually built up over the past two years as a special agency, separate from the police and G-division, working directly for Charles Smith-Berry, the Assistant Under-Secretary for Security, a man with experience in locations as diverse as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Palestine.

The English-born Smith-Berry did not conceal his disdain and his distrust of G-division in general and its chief, John Mallon, in particular. He was blunt in his frequent clashes with Mallon, the most celebrated detective in Dublin. He believed that the G-men’s loyalties, as Irishmen on the Crown payroll, were divided. And he believed it was necessary to have a separate cadre of intelligence officers, English, Scottish or perhaps Ulster loyalist, and preferably with a military background, operating as a counterweight to G-division and reporting directly to his office.

In reality, Mallon acknowledged privately to his senior confidantes, including Swallow, that Smith-Berry was right. The security service saw itself as the instrument of the government’s will. G-division, or at least its senior members, had a different perspective.

It was the objective of the Westminster government to destroy Parnell and to kill off the campaign to establish Home Rule for Ireland. If Ireland got its own parliament, the logic went, it would split the United Kingdom. And if the United Kingdom split, it would be the beginning of the end for the Empire. Great Britain was the richest nation on the earth because of the profits it made from that empire. From the royal family down to the working men in the industrial cities, its people enjoyed the highest standards of living of any people anywhere on the planet. Smith-Berry’s department in the Upper Yard of Dublin Castle was committed to achieving the aims of its political masters.

Mallon, on the other hand, took the view that if Parnell were to fall, Ireland would descend into unprecedented violence. As long as the people could be persuaded to believe in political action, the great majority would not want to take up the message of the gunmen and the bombers. But if Parnell’s steadying influence were to be removed, the way would be open for the men of violence to take centre stage. It was a scenario that no committed police officer could countenance. Both as an Irishman and as a policeman, Mallon cared less for the Empire than for the peace and welfare of his own countrymen. And that put G-division and the security department in the Upper Yard at loggerheads.

The men of G-division were reciprocally disdainful and mistrustful of Smith-Berry’s agents. Mallon ensured that his informants around the city were well rewarded for information about them. Who they were. Where they were billeted. Where they ate and drank. Who they endeavoured to cultivate as their contacts and habitués. Some of them lived in rooms in the Upper Yard. Others stayed in hotels or boarding houses around the Castle. They were tough men, hard drinkers for the most part, keeping to themselves. When they made contacts among the population, they appeared to have access to almost limitless funds to recruit informants. But their understanding of Irish politics and of Irish ways was abysmal. Swallow knew most of them by sight and by the names they used.

‘Which of them was it?’ he asked Mossop.

‘Reggie Polson and a fellow called McKitterick.’

Smith-Berry’s men habitually adopted false names. Swallow knew the two agents calling themselves Polson and McKitterick from earlier, terse encounters in joint operations with G-division. Reggie Polson, as he called himself, was ex-army, Swallow could tell. He had an ear for accents. He placed Polson’s origins somewhere in the Home Counties, possibly Berkshire or Buckinghamshire. He guessed him to be about his own age, surmising that he was probably a replacement for the senior agent who called himself Captain Kelly before he was moved out of the security department the previous year. He reckoned that McKitterick was a junior member of the department, probably a former non-commissioned officer.

Mossop pushed the file across the desk.

‘I’ve written it up for you, Boss. It’s all in there, at least as much as I was told earlier.’

Swallow took the papers and climbed the stairs to the second floor. His rank gave him the privilege of a modest office with a twelve-paned window that afforded a view across the roofs of South Great George’s Street. Apart from the robbery at Templeogue Hill, the crime reports were routine, as Mossop had indicated. But the intelligence of the meeting between Andrew Dunlop of The Irish Times and two security agents from the Upper Yard was disquieting.

Swallow had collaborated with Dunlop a number of times, as policemen and journalists often did but seldom acknowledged. Even though he worked for the pro-unionist Irish Times, Dunlop’s sympathies lay with the cause of Irish Home Rule and with the man who was leading the struggle to secure it, Charles Stewart Parnell. He was a highly respected journalist, on intimate terms, it was said, with the highest officials of the administration, right up to the Marquess of Londonderry, whom as the Lord Lieutenant, was the Monarch’s representative in Ireland. It was a measure of the naivety of the English intelligence agents working for the Assistant Under-Secretary that they assumed Dunlop had to espouse the same political values as his employers.

Dunlop had first voiced his political opinions to Swallow at the time of the Maamstrasna murders, the bloody mass-killing of a family named Joyce in Connemara at the height of the Land War. Reporter and policeman had been drinking in a shebeen near Leenaun after the funerals of the five murder victims. The investigation of crime outside of Dublin was the responsibility of the Royal Irish Constabulary. But experienced Dublin crime detectives often travelled to give support to their less-experienced rural colleagues.

‘Neither the people who pay you nor those who pay me seem to grasp the reality that if it wasn’t for Parnell there’d be scenes like this every second week in every county across Ireland,’ Dunlop told him, as they drank the rough, illicit whiskey or poitin that was the house’s staple. ‘Politics is a dirty game, but it’s infinitely preferable to the sort of savagery that’s happened here.’

Dunlop was a Scot, with inherited family memories of the Highland Clearances. He had come to The Irish Times after a successful career in Scottish journalism and then in Fleet Street. He understood the land-hunger that could drive men and women to terrible deeds. And he had grown weary, over many years as a journalist, of reporting on the blunders and failures of the authorities in trying to pacify rural Ireland. He was happy to share information with Swallow if he thought it helped G-division to stay a step ahead of the Castle’s intelligence department.

Swallow opened the intelligence file to read Mossop’s note. Every contact or agent had a code name, so Dunlop’s identity would not appear in the written record. Mossop had, not very imaginatively, allocated Dunlop the name ‘Horseman’ for his long-jawed features.

Swallow spread the flimsy sheet on the desk.

To: D/Insp Swallow

Report from informant ‘Horseman.’ Note taken at Exchange Court, 11.30pm Tuesday, June 4th 1889.

Informant states he was invited to dine at Burlington Hotel, Trinity Street, this evening by two gentlemen whom he knows to be attached to the security section at the office of the Assistant Under-Secretary at the Upper Yard. They use the names Reggie Polson and Jack McKitterick but H believes these to be aliases. He believes them to be military rather than police. Both speak with English accents.

They expressed frustration at the difficulties of securing publication of damaging information against Mr Parnell since the suicide of Richard Pigott and his exposure as a perjurer and forger at the Westminster commission last year.

They invited H to give his views on Mr Parnell’s private life and in particular his relationship with Katharine O’Shea, the wife of Captain O’Shea, formerly Member of Parliament for Clare. The man calling himself Reggie Polson said he was angry at seeing a brother officer humiliated by his wife’s open adultery with Mr Parnell. When H said he had no knowledge of such matters, they offered to furnish him with information that might be published in his newspaper. H said he would be interested to receive such information but he doubted if his editor would allow it to be published on grounds of propriety and that it was not the policy of his newspaper to promulgate scandal.

Polson said that was all the more reason they wanted this information published in his newspaper. It had a high reputation and what it printed would not be lightly dismissed as a fiction or an invention.

H asked if they were certain that it would be in the authorities’ best interests to see Mr Parnell destroyed in his reputation. They said it remained the firm conviction of their superiors that if Mr Parnell succeeds in securing Home Rule for Ireland this would be the first break in the structure of the British Empire and that it must be prevented at all costs.