Echobeat (12 page)

‘So far,’ McClure replied. ‘Up to now he appeared to be an irritant rather than anything else.’

‘Have you seen him?’ Egan asked Duggan.

‘No, sir. I haven’t gone in there.’

‘We’re keeping our distance,’ McClure explained. ‘Relying on our source to keep us informed of anything of interest. As she has done.’

‘It’s a woman who works there?’ Egan said.

McClure nodded.

‘We all know the conduit for the earlier documents you’ve brought us,’ the colonel said to Duggan. So they all knew about Timmy, Duggan thought. ‘Is there any connection between him and Roddy Glenn?’

‘Not that I know of, sir.’

‘Is it possible?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought it likely but I don’t know for certain.’

‘Or between the conduit and your source in the café?’

‘No, sir,’ Duggan shook his head.

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Certain, sir.’

The colonel reached for his matches again to relight the pipe. ‘We should bring her in and debrief her properly,’ Anderson said to him.

‘That’s not a good idea,’ Duggan retorted, horrified at the idea of Gerda being interrogated and the effect it might have on her. Everyone turned towards him and he felt his face redden. ‘I mean—’

‘There are extra sensitivities involved,’ McClure interrupted, coming to his rescue.

‘What sensitivities?’ Anderson demanded.

‘There are reasons to keep her identity as secure as possible,’ McClure addressed the colonel, ignoring Anderson.

The colonel sucked in and puffed out a series of small clouds of smoke. ‘Very well,’ he said and then looked at Duggan. ‘You will talk to her and find out everything you can about Glenn.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Duggan replied, deciding that the colonel knew who Gerda was.

‘We need to know everything we can find out about Glenn,’ the colonel said to the table at large.

‘We could ask Captain Collison,’ Egan said with a dry laugh. ‘In his capacity as passport-control officer.’ Collison was the British official in charge of issuing permits for travel to and from England but his real job was as MI6’s man in Ireland, running the British covert intelligence service.

‘That’s an idea,’ the colonel gave a dry smile. ‘Perhaps it would be best if the request came from the guards rather than us. As a follow-up to a complaint about some minor indiscretion, a little public drunkenness or something of the like.’

The colonel pushed back his chair, indicating that the meeting was over, and everyone got to their feet. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘you can stand down everyone except the normal staff. There won’t be any bombers tonight.’

Duggan drove as smoothly as he could, taking care to ease the car into gear with every change and braking with caution only when he had to. There were few tracks in the snow along the quays and he held his breath as the car climbed the hill at Christchurch and went under its arch, and again as it picked up speed downhill on the other side, past St Patrick’s Cathedral. People were emerging from a morning service and he drove slowly, rounding the bend into Kevin Street and then right into Heytesbury Street.

Gifford was waiting for him, leaning against the railings outside his flat, his hands deep in the pockets of an overcoat the same navy as a guard’s uniform. He came around the back of the Ford Prefect as it slid to a stop, and sat in.

‘This the best you could do?’

‘What?’ Duggan asked.

‘I expected a larger limousine.’

‘With pennants on it?’

‘Something appropriate to our importance.’

‘It is appropriate to our importance,’ Duggan said. ‘Where’re we going?’

‘Rathgar,’ Gifford clapped his hands and rubbed them, like the destination was a special treat. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’

‘I didn’t assume it was about going to Mass.’ Duggan got the car moving again.

‘Never underestimate the truth as a form of deception,’ Gifford said. He waited while Duggan nosed the car onto the South Circular Road, checked there was nothing coming, and crossed into Stamer Street. ‘The new love of your life, the woman in the fur coat and Wolseley, goes to half-ten Mass in Rathgar every Sunday. So this is your chance to see her in person. Unfortunately, she will also be
en famille
. That won’t upset you, will it?’

‘No,’ Duggan drawled as he turned at the canal and went up to the bridge. ‘I’ll punch the husband in the nose, grab her hand and run away with her.’

‘Won’t work,’ Gifford said, with mock sadness. ‘She’ll never get into a Prefect.’

‘I see your point,’ Duggan laughed as he went over the humpback of the bridge. The car gathered speed and waltzed to the right and then to the left before it recovered traction on untouched snow near the pavement.

‘Of course,’ Gifford observed in a disinterested voice, ‘we may not live long enough to get to Rathgar.’

They parked facing up Rathgar Road before a line of shops and the crossroads beside the church. The kerbs were beginning to fill up with parked cars and groups of families moved towards the church. There were ten minutes to go to Mass time.

‘Let’s walk up the road a bit,’ Gifford suggested. ‘The O’Sheas live up that way. With any luck they’ll be bringing your German friend to Mass with them.’

‘I doubt he’s a Catholic.’

‘Of course not. He’s a heathen. Probably sex-mad as well, like our old friend Hans Harbusch.’ Harbusch was a German spy, now interned, whom they had watched the previous summer before his arrest.

They got out of the car. The footpath on this side was almost empty, people going to Mass crossing towards the church.

‘You might get lucky,’ Gifford continued in a conversational tone. ‘Herr Goertz might think it polite to accompany his hosts to Mass. If he’s staying with them.’

‘I’d say he’s too careful for that,’ Duggan said, watching the families streaming towards the church. Its bell began to peal, giving five minutes’ warning.

‘You never know,’ Gifford shrugged. ‘When in Rome …’

They crossed Frankfort Avenue and were facing people coming from the other direction towards the church across the road, some hurrying as the bell stopped. ‘There they are,’ Gifford said, keeping his tone conversational. ‘The couple with the three children.’

Duggan glanced across. The man was tall and upright, wearing a well-cut dark overcoat with a fur collar and a hat and gloves. The woman had on a brown fur coat, a felt hat of similar colour, matching gloves and handbag. Ahead of them were three boys of different heights, as formally dressed as their parents. They were not hurrying.

‘Do you know anything about him? O’Shea?’ Duggan asked as they continued.

‘A pillar of the community.’

‘Pro-German?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Gifford said. ‘But well got with the people in power. Which should be your main concern.’

‘I know,’ Duggan looked sideways at him. McClure had already warned him to be careful how he followed up the information about Mrs O’Shea. ‘Not a man to cross.’

‘Unless you want to get back to the infantry. Sleeping in tents, crawling through muck and all that.’

‘He must know about Goertz if his wife is ferrying him around the place,’ Duggan was thinking out loud.

‘That’s a non sequitur. These Germans have a way with women. Like dear old Hansi.’ Gifford paused. ‘I feel sorry for him, separated from the lovely Eliza in their lonely prison cells. In Athlone, as if internment wasn’t bad enough.’

‘They’re lucky they weren’t hanged as spies,’ Duggan said.

Gifford gave a short whistle. ‘Heartless bastards, you lot.’ He nodded across the road. ‘That’s the house over there.’

The house was a substantial three-storey with a well-tended garden and a Wolseley and a Jaguar parked in front. There was smoke rising straight up in the calm air from two chimneys. ‘Coal,’ Gifford sniffed the air. ‘A proper fire. None of that sodden culchie bog stuff for them.’

‘There must be somebody in,’ Duggan offered. ‘Probably a maid.’

‘Or two. Do you want to go over?’

‘What, knock on the door? Ask for Herr Goertz?’

Gifford sighed like he was dealing with a slow student. ‘Shout “
Heil Hitler
” through the letterbox. And listen.’

‘For what?’ They stopped as they came to a bus stop.

‘For his heels to click as he jumps to attention and shouts “
Heil Hitler
” in return. And, if you’re lucky, he might overturn a table or smash some crockery as his arm shoots up automatically.’

‘And then what?’ Duggan gave a short laugh and got out a cigarette.

‘Then he realises he’s been tricked and runs out the back door and I nab him.’

‘So you get the glory.’

‘I’ll share it with you.’ Gifford bowed twice like he was in front of an audience and addressing it. ‘Thank you, thank you, but let me say first that this remarkable achievement would not have been possible without the support and help of my slow-witted assistant from what is jokingly known as military intelligence.’

Duggan bent down, scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at
him. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘we mightn’t get any credit for arresting him. Maybe the opposite.’

‘Oh,’ Gifford cocked his head to one side. ‘Tell me more.’

‘I’m supposed to find him. Then await further instructions.’

‘Interesting. We can’t just shoot him on sight.’

‘That’s why we’re in intelligence, not the Special Branch.’

‘Cheeky,’ Gifford nodded to himself as if Duggan had confirmed something. ‘Make a culchie a captain and that’s what happens.’

‘That’s for your ears only,’ Duggan said. ‘That we’re just trying to find him, not take any action.’

Gifford made the sign of the cross over his heart. ‘So he has the ear of the men as well as the eye of the women?’

‘I don’t know that for a fact,’ Duggan shrugged. ‘But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s more than a simple spy.’

‘There’s such a thing as a simple spy?’ Gifford inquired.

‘You know what I mean.’

They began to saunter back down the road again, watching the house and the twin columns of grey smoke rising into the brighter grey of the sky.

‘By the way,’ Gifford said, ‘you put the heart crossways in Sinead yesterday.’

‘How?’

‘Pushing notes through the letterbox.’

‘She was there?’ Duggan remembered the sound he thought he had heard in Gifford’s flat when he had left him the note about Mrs O’Shea the previous morning. ‘I didn’t knock because I thought you’d still be in bed.’

‘Yeah,’ Gifford laughed. ‘She was terrified you’d look in and see her.’

Duggan flicked his cigarette butt down the path ahead of them, realising what Gifford was telling him. ‘She’s living with you?’

‘Only for the weekend. Her flatmates think she’s gone down to culchie land. “Back home” as you lot call it.’

Duggan squashed the butt into the snow with his toe as they walked over it.

‘She’s afraid you’d think less of her if you knew.’

‘Why should I?’ Duggan said, trying to come to terms with the information. He didn’t know of anyone who’d spent a night with their girlfriend, never mind a weekend.

‘See her as a fallen woman,’ Gifford shrugged. ‘She’s terrified that anyone will find out.’

‘So why are you telling me?’

‘So I can reassure her that you won’t think less of her. She still has a soft spot for you. A soft spot in the head, if you ask me.’

‘Of course not,’ Duggan said. ‘Maybe we could all go out for a drink later?’ And invite Gerda, he thought.

‘Not during the weekend,’ Gifford said. ‘She won’t go out at all during the weekend in case anyone sees her.’ He gave a dirty wink. ‘Which is fine with me.’

They were passing the church and Duggan stopped and said, ‘I’m going to have a look inside.’

‘Okay,’ Gifford looked at him sideways. ‘I’ll keep an eye out in case any Germans try to sneak away early.’

Duggan handed him the car keys.

‘You’ve got to live while you can these days,’ Gifford said, taking them. ‘You never know when …’ He made a whistling sound and sketched a falling bomb with his thumb and forefinger and added, ‘Boom.’

Duggan crossed to the church and tried to inch his way into the porch through the group of men packed into it. Two of them had one foot on the step outside, cigarettes cupped in their hands away from the building. He managed to slide through the door and the porch
and sidled to one side to a narrow space amongst those standing against the back wall.

The church was packed and an almost continuous series of coughs and snuffles sounded like an accompaniment to the mumble of Latin coming from the altar. He recognised from the well-known ritual that it was coming up to the communion and moments later the first pews began to empty into a line in the aisle. Some of those around him shuffled out the door and he knew the porch would empty in a moment as most of the men there left for the pubs that would be open illegally behind closed doors.

He watched the line of communicants returning from the altar, wondering what was the best way to follow up the O’Shea lead. The obvious thing was to try and follow Mrs O’Shea and hope she’d lead them to Goertz. But that could take a lot of time and effort. And upset some powerful people if she realised what was happening. A better option was to approach Mrs O’Shea directly, he thought. We know for a fact that she knows Goertz, whether her husband does or not. Even better if he doesn’t know. Something to use as a lever. Get her to pass a message to Goertz. Ask him what was going on, why the Luftwaffe were bombing Dublin and other Irish targets. Then he’d know they were after him, but he knew that anyway. And it would be interesting if he didn’t know the answer to the question. He wouldn’t be what they thought he might be, just a low-level operative.

He tired of watching the slow-moving line of communicants and joined the stealthy movement of men out the door.

Gifford was leaning against the driver’s door of the Prefect, his arms folded. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow as Duggan approached. Duggan shrugged and shook his head and joined him, leaning against the car. They watched in silence as men left the church in dribs and drabs until the Mass ended and crowds began to pour from the main door and side doors.

‘There they are,’ Gifford muttered as the O’Sheas emerged from the door on their side of the church.

They watched Mr O’Shea move slowly through the throng outside, his wife and children hidden until they came out to the footpath and turned towards their home.

‘What do we do now, general?’ Gifford demanded, handing him back the car keys. ‘Come between them and the Sunday roast? Or escort them safely home?’

‘I don’t—’ Duggan cut short what he was about to say as the O’Sheas stopped to talk to a woman in a fur coat with two teenage daughters. ‘Fuck me,’ he breathed.

Gifford followed his gaze. ‘What?’

‘That’s my aunt,’ Duggan said, watching his aunt Mona smile at something Mrs O’Shea said to her.

‘Timmy Monaghan’s wife?’ Gifford sounded aghast. ‘And your cousins?’

Duggan nodded, his mind going into overdrive. Mona knew the O’Sheas? Which meant that Timmy knew them, too. So, did he know Goertz as well? Was he part of a group who were protecting the German? Wouldn’t surprise him at all.

‘Ah Jaysus,’ Gifford sighed, turning his back on them. ‘I’m out of here. I’m not getting involved in another Timmy Monaghan fuck-up conspiracy.’

O’Shea raised his hat to Mona as the two families separated and the Monaghans crossed the road towards Frankfort Avenue. Duggan turned away from them, bent his head to open the driver’s door and sat in. The Monaghans disappeared into the avenue and he breathed a sigh of relief, sure they hadn’t seen him.

Gifford sat in and asked, ‘Was one of them the lovely Nuala?’ She was Timmy’s eldest daughter and the cause of a lot of previous trouble.

‘No,’ Duggan replied. ‘She’s working in London.’

‘Jaysus,’ Gifford repeated. ‘The English are in more trouble than I thought.’

Gerda’s landlady opened the hall door and told Duggan to come into the parlour. ‘She’s titivating herself again,’ she added in a conspiratorial tone.

‘I better not,’ he said. ‘I left the car engine running.’

‘Aren’t you the lucky man that doesn’t have to worry about wasting petrol these days,’ she said, masking her disappointment in disapproval.

‘I’ll wait for her in the car,’ Duggan said, happy that his ploy had worked. He had avoided another interrogation.

‘I’ll hurry her up,’ the landlady said in a curt tone.

Duggan sat back into the car and left the engine ticking over. Gerda came out a few minutes later, smiling, and kissed him lightly on the lips when she sat in. ‘She said you were in an awful hurry. What did you say to her?’

Duggan told her and she laughed as he drove off.