Echobeat (9 page)

‘Keep an eye on him,’ Duggan shrugged. ‘Try and find out what information he has. Maybe ask the other waitresses if he’s told them anything.’

‘All right.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘He’s about twenty. Light brown curly hair, long, needs to be cut. About one metre seventy-five.’

‘What’s that in feet and inches?’

‘A bit shorter than you.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Well dressed. Polite. A little shy, I think. An English accent, but I don’t know what kind. Maybe the other girls would know. ‘

Duggan nodded. ‘And ask Mrs Lynch not to ban him yet.’

‘You think she will do what I tell her?’ she said, an edge to her voice.

‘You having problems with her?’

‘She doesn’t trust me.’

‘She say something?’

Gerda shook her head. ‘She keeps me at arm’s length. She is very wary of me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Duggan said. ‘You don’t have to do this if you’d prefer not to.’

‘It’s all right. I am not there to be her friend.’ She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and opened her door.

‘Where are you going?’ Duggan asked in surprise.

‘I’ll go for a walk.’

‘You can’t go back in now.’

‘I’ll go for a long walk.’

‘You can’t walk round here,’ he indicated the dark street, ‘for a couple of hours.’

‘I like walking in the dark,’ she said, with a faint smile. ‘It’s all right.’

‘No, that’s ridiculous. What picture are we supposed to be going to?’

‘Aren’t you on duty?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, wondering whether he was or not. ‘I haven’t really been off duty since Christmas. It’s time I had some time off.’

She opened her door wider to close it with a sharp tug. ‘All right,’ she said.

‘What do you want to see?’ he turned on the car’s headlights and let the clutch rise.

‘Every time I leave my office I see the poster for Deanna Durbin in
Spring Parade
across the road at the Savoy. It’s been there for weeks now.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s a fairytale musical,’ she said. ‘Set in Vienna.’

‘Okay,’ he said without much enthusiasm.

‘You decide what we go to.’

‘Actually,’ he said, feeling hungry. ‘I’m starving. I haven’t eaten. Have you?’

‘Yes. But I’ll watch you eat.’

‘Oh, no,’ he grinned at her as he stopped at the end of the road, before turning into Drumcondra Road and heading for the city centre. ‘That’s not a good idea. You might be disgusted. I’m really hungry.’

‘I’ll avert my eyes if it gets too disgusting.’

They parked in Cathedral Street and walked around the corner into O’Connell Street. The night was clear, the air crisp under a moonlit sky and the brighter stars were visible through the subdued city lighting. There were few people about in the in-between hour after the early cinema showings had begun and before the final showings. A ticket
tout leaning against a doorway near the Savoy offered them tickets for Sunday night in a half-hearted way, not bothering to move from the wall.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to see it?’ Duggan asked as they turned into the cinema and passed by the poster showing a large picture of Deanna Durbin against a black and white background of a ball scene in a stately building.

‘I’m sure,’ she said.

They climbed the stairs up to the restaurant and found a table at the back, away from the windows. It was still busy, mostly with couples finishing their meals and probably waiting for the next showing of
Spring Parade
. A middle-aged waitress took Duggan’s order for a mixed grill and Gerda ordered tea.

‘Would you like some dainties, dear?’ the waitress asked.

Gerda glanced at Duggan. ‘Cakes,’ he said. ‘Pastries.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘We’ll still have time to see the film if you change your mind,’ he said when the waitress had gone.

‘I’ve seen it,’ she shook her head.

‘Oh,’ he said, presuming she’d been to it with someone else. Whoever she’d been at the New Year’s Eve dance with. A real boyfriend.

‘In Vienna,’ she added. ‘It was an Austrian-Hungarian film then, called
Frühjahrsparade
and my mother brought my sister and I to it. It was our last Hanukkah there. Like your Christmas,’ she looked at him in explanation, ‘but not the same.’

The waitress came back with a plate of white bread and cups and saucers and cutlery. They waited for her to place them.

‘It’s a fairytale,’ Gerda continued. ‘A farm girl discovers her prince through some songs. It was a silly film then and it is probably more silly now that Hollywood has made it again.’

‘What’s Vienna like?’

‘A place where fairytales can come true. Like in the film. We didn’t want to leave. We cried and cried, my mother and my sister and I. We didn’t want to leave our friends and our nice gentile neighbours. That was when we still believed in fairytales.’ She paused. ‘Now it’s a place where nightmares come true.’

‘It must’ve been very hard adjusting to here.’

‘My father wanted to go to England, to London. But he couldn’t get permission. We thought Ireland was the same thing.’

‘So you ended up in Cork.’

‘That was an awful shock to the system, boy,’ she said in an exaggerated Cork accent.

Duggan laughed. ‘You’ve adjusted very well.’

The waitress brought his mixed grill of sausages, rashers, a fried egg, a lamb cutlet and some fried potatoes and came back a moment later with a large teapot. Gerda poured for both of them.

‘Time to avert your eyes,’ Duggan said, slicing a sausage.

‘Don’t they feed you in your army?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t have time to eat. Meetings.’

‘Preparing for war.’

‘Trying to avoid it.’

‘You can’t avoid it.’

‘We’ve avoided it so far,’ Duggan drank some tea and buttered a slice of bread.

‘Because they’ve let you.’

‘This is the disgusting bit,’ he dipped his bread into the yolk of the fried egg and raised it, dripping, to his mouth.

‘Ugh,’ she smiled. ‘Is that the worst?’

He nodded, doing it again.

‘That’s not too bad. I think I can keep my eyes open.’

They lapsed into silence for a moment. She sipped at her tea and he cut the meat from the cutlet.

‘We’re not entirely helpless,’ he said, continuing their serious conversation.

‘You can’t stop them.’

‘Militarily, no. But it’s not all about military action. There’s a lot of strategy and politics involved.’

‘Politics,’ she dismissed it with a shrug.

‘War is just an extension of diplomacy. Of politics.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s hatred allowed to run free.’

‘After it starts,’ he said. ‘But before it starts, it’s politics.’

‘And you think you can stop it with your politics?’

‘It’s the only way we can stay out of it. It’s not really in either side’s interest to fight here. They’ve nothing much to gain. And we have to keep making that clear to them. Keep things balanced that way.’

‘That’s what you do?’

‘Me?’ he said in surprise. ‘No, I’m only a small cog in the machine.’

‘And what these Germans say to each other in Mrs Lynch’s can make a difference?’ she made no attempt to hide her disbelief.

‘Yes,’ he said with a realisation and a conviction that surprised him. ‘The smallest things can make a big difference. That’s what I’ve learned. Am learning. That might sound stupid but it’s true.’

‘But it won’t make any difference if they defeat the English,’ she said, almost an apology. ‘They won’t even have to fight you then.’

Duggan conceded with a nod, thinking of the knock-on consequences of a British defeat and of Quinn and his friends ready to offer to help the Germans rule Britain, not to mention Ireland.

‘We can only do what we can do,’ he said, offering her a cigarette. He stretched over to light it for her and she steadied his hand with her own.

The waitress came back and cleared away his plates. ‘Would you like some fresh tea?’ she inquired. Duggan said yes and she offered to get Gerda a clean cup to replace her half-full one.

‘No, thanks,’ Gerda said and added when the waitress left. ‘It tastes like piss.’

‘I thought that was the coffee.’

‘That too. Dublin tea is horrible. Not like Cork tea.’

‘You’ve really turned into a Cork woman,’ he smiled.

‘Do you know Cork?’

‘No. I’ve never been there.’

‘Or to Vienna.’

‘Or to Vienna,’ he agreed.

‘So where have you been?’

They were the last to leave the restaurant, joining the crowd emerging from the cinema downstairs after the final show. The temperature had dropped some more and the windscreen of the car was clouded and beginning to freeze. Duggan wiped it with the cuff of his overcoat and they drove in companionable silence back to Iona Road. He parked a little beyond her digs and switched off the engine.

‘That was a very nice surprise,’ she said, touching the back of his hand. ‘Thank you.’

‘I really enjoyed it. Being a pretend boyfriend.’

‘Maybe we can pretend again sometime.’

‘Yes. Definitely.’

They got out of the car and walked, hand in hand, back to her house. The street was dark and still, the silence broken only by a car passing on Botanic Road. As its engine faded another engine took its place, the drone of an aircraft not too far away. They stopped and listened for a moment and she gave him a quizzical look. The noise wasn’t getting any louder and he shrugged and opened the iron gate in the railings. She took her key from her pocket and turned to him and the crump-crump of two quick explosions sounded, dulled by distance.

She looked at him, horror on her face, and her body slumped and she let her head fall onto his shoulder. He put his arms around her and felt her shudder as he drew her close.

‘They’re coming,’ she said in a quiet voice beside his ear. ‘Aren’t they?’

‘I don’t know,’ he whispered back, her hair soft against his cheek.

‘Where did they fall?’ Duggan asked the first person he saw after he sped back to the Red House.

‘Terenure, sir,’ the orderly replied and saw Duggan’s uncertainty. ‘Out beyond Rathmines, Rathgar.’

Near Timmy’s house, Duggan thought, as he ran up the stairs to his own office. McClure beckoned to him in the corridor. He looked stressed, his tie pulled open sideways, a cigarette in his hand. Duggan followed him into his office. ‘You want me to go out there, sir?’

‘Sullivan’s gone.’ McClure closed the door behind them with a backward kick.

Fuck, Duggan thought, I shouldn’t have disappeared for four hours. But McClure had other things on his mind. ‘Once,’ he said, pacing the room, ‘could be an accident. Twice, a coincidence. But three times …’ he stopped and stared at Duggan. ‘Three nights in a row. We need to know what the fuck is going on. And we need to know now. We can’t be waiting while the diplomats dance their minuets. We need to talk to someone who can give us a straight answer.’

‘Goertz,’ Duggan said, catching his train of thought.

McClure nodded. ‘We don’t want to arrest him. We want to talk to him. Maybe he knows. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he is a special representative of Germany. Or just an ordinary spy. I don’t know. But
we’ve got to find someone who can tell us what this is all about. If it’s retaliation for not allowing the Germans to bring in more people to their embassy, that’s fine. If it’s a warning about not giving into British demands for the ports, that’s fine too. But we need to know what they think it’s about. Otherwise we can’t be sure we’re reacting the right way. Or even to the right thing.’ He went behind his desk, lit another cigarette off the last one, and sat down. ‘Things can get very dangerous when people act and react at cross purposes.’

Duggan lit himself a cigarette and inhaled a deep lungful of smoke. ‘Can I say something? Something that may be out of order?’

‘Yes, of course,’ McClure glanced at the door to make sure it was closed. ‘You know that by now.’

Duggan took a deep breath, without smoke this time. ‘Some of our superiors are said to be close to the Germans. Maybe they could make inquiries outside the diplomatic channels.’

‘Major General McNeill,’ McClure nodded. Hugo McNeill was the deputy chief of staff and commander of the first brigade, tasked with securing the border area against a British invasion; he was a regular visitor to the German legation’s events. ‘But I can’t go questioning a general. Never mind giving him orders.’

‘Maybe the colonel could talk to him.’

McClure nodded, as if confirming that he’d already had that discussion with the head of G2. ‘I don’t know what’s going on above our heads. But we’re the ones supposed to be providing intelligence on German intentions and activities. They’re dropping bombs on us and we don’t know why. Probably a message. But about what? We can speculate but we don’t know. And until we know what the message is, we don’t know how we should respond.’

Duggan sat down and they smoked in silence. ‘Is there a barracks near Terenure?’ Duggan asked after a while.

‘In Rathmines,’ McClure said. ‘Not far as the crow flies.’

‘Maybe they are targeting barracks,’ Duggan harked back to his theory after the first bombing on the South Circular Road. ‘Which means they’re targeting us, the Defence Forces.’

‘So it’s a military message. Aimed at us, not at the diplomats and politicians.’ McClure thought about that and asked rhetorically, ‘And what are we doing that they don’t like?’ He leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk and answered his own question, ‘Christ.’

‘The liaison officers,’ Duggan said. British Army officers from the North had become regular visitors to the Red House as both forces drew up joint plans for resisting a German invasion of Ireland. ‘They’re still here?’

McClure nodded.

‘And they’re also planning an invasion if the pressure over the ports doesn’t work,’ Duggan said, trying to square the two things in his own mind.

McClure nodded again.

‘That’s fucking mad,’ Duggan blurted. ‘We’re probably giving them information that’ll help them invade us.’

McClure nodded for a third time. ‘It’s a delicate situation.’ He put his hand perpendicular to the desk and bent it slightly one way, then the other. ‘We have to prepare for all eventualities. No good seeking British help after an invasion if there aren’t plans already in place. Logistics, command structures, areas of operation, battle plans. Otherwise it’d be more of a hindrance than a help. Be falling over each other.’

‘Could the Germans know about it?’

‘Entirely possible. It’d be a major breach of security.’ McClure paused and then gave a crooked smile. ‘But it mightn’t be a total disaster if they did. They’d know how serious we are about resisting an invasion, serious enough to be planning to call on help from the old enemy. And it keeps the British happy that we will resist the Germans with all our might.’

Duggan closed his eyes and shook his head to try and clear it.

‘All in line with government policy,’ McClure smiled. ‘Neutral with a certain consideration for Britain, as Mr de Valera says. We’ll fight any invader and we won’t allow our territory to be used to attack Britain.’

‘And if the British attack us?’

‘We’ll fight them.’

‘With German help?’

‘With any help we can get, I presume.’

‘But it wouldn’t be much use if there weren’t plans in place already,’ Duggan said. ‘Would it?’

McClure stared back at him for a moment. ‘That’s another question we’ll put to Herr Goertz when we find him.’ He stood up and came around the desk. ‘Keep after him.’

‘Now?’ Duggan stood as well.

‘Yes.’

They went out into the corridor and McClure put his head into another office and asked if there were any casualty reports from Terenure. ‘Nobody killed, sir,’ a voice said. ‘A couple of minor injuries. A Jewish family and another taken to hospital.’

‘Jesus,’ Duggan said, feeling again the shudder in Gerda’s body and hearing the resignation in her voice as she whispered ‘they’re coming’.

‘What?’ McClure turned to him.

‘They’re targeting Jews.’

‘Those bomber boys have trouble hitting a haystack, never mind a needle in it. Besides, I doubt there are any Jews in County Carlow or even the Curragh,’ McClure dismissed the idea and then remembered Gerda. ‘By the way, what was Fraulein Meier’s urgent information?’

Duggan told him about the English artist, Roddy Glenn, hoping McClure wasn’t going to ask why it had taken him so long to get that information. ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t sound very urgent. Certainly not as urgent as Goertz.’

Duggan coasted up to the gate of Dublin Castle, standing on one pedal. It was chained shut and there was no one visible but he knew the guardroom was hidden from his view, to the side. ‘Hello,’ he called, his voice sounding loud in the frosty midnight silence.

‘What do you want?’ a voice responded after a moment.

‘Captain Duggan from army headquarters to see Garda Gifford in the Special Branch.’

‘Throw your identity card through the gate and put your hands up on the bars.’

For fuck’s sake, Gifford thought as he fished out his card, tossed it on the ground and raised his hands to hold onto the vertical bars of the gate. Security was all very well – the IRA had bombed the Special Branch headquarters the previous spring – but Gifford might have told them I was coming.

A uniformed guard came from one side of the gate and a plainclothes man carrying a Thompson submachine gun from the other. The guard picked up the ID and studied it and then nodded to the other. ‘You armed?’ the plainclothes man asked.

Duggan shook his head.

‘Open your coat and turn around slowly.’

Duggan did as ordered and the guard opened the gate and let him through. ‘You know where to go?’

‘Yes.’ Duggan got back on his bike and cycled across the lower castle yard and around the back to the Special Branch offices.

Peter Gifford had his feet up on a battered wooden desk and was reading the first edition of the
Irish Independent
. ‘You might’ve told them I was coming,’ Duggan said.

‘Sorry,’ Gifford dropped the paper and got to his feet. ‘Got immersed in Curly Wee and Gussy Goose. Didn’t realise the time.’ He
opened the drawer in his desk, took out his revolver, broke it, spun the chamber to check it was fully loaded and snapped it shut. ‘So who’re we shooting up tonight?’

‘Nobody.’

Gifford replaced the revolver in the drawer with the dejected air of a thwarted schoolboy. ‘Cup of tea then?’ he brightened up. ‘The height of the night’s excitement?’

‘That’d be lovely.’ Duggan pulled over a chair and sat down while Gifford took a cup from his desk and disappeared out the door. Across the squad room another man in shirtsleeves had his chair tilted back against a wall and was reading the
Irish Press.
He gave Duggan a sour glance as he turned a page and disappeared again behind the paper. Duggan picked up the
Irish Independent
and read its front page: there was nothing about the latest bombing but it carried the German denial of the earlier ones. They decided to let it be published, he thought.

Gifford came back with two mugs of tea. ‘No bikkies,’ he said. ‘You’d miss the woman’s touch.’ He settled himself down. ‘So? You want to share my lonely vigil?’

‘I’m looking for a woman who drives a Wolseley and wears a fur coat.’

‘Too old for you,’ Gifford shook his head. ‘And way above your pay bracket.’

‘She collected Goertz’s things from Quinn’s house.’

‘Ah, the Brownshirt Pimpernel,’ Gifford smiled. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if that fellow Goertz really exists. Or if you lads in the hothouse haven’t invented him so you can run around pretending to do something useful.’

‘He exists,’ Duggan said, not really in the mood for Gifford’s flippancy after his conversations with Gerda and McClure. ‘You saw those leaflets.’

Gifford took a slow sip of his tea, changing tack. ‘And you think she might have come to the attention of the Garda Síochána?’

‘She could be one of those republican women.’

‘The irreconcilables,’ Gifford looked over Duggan’s shoulder and raised a finger. ‘The very man.’

Duggan turned and saw the Special Branch sergeant from the previous night crossing the room towards them.

‘What?’ the sergeant barked.

‘He’s looking for a woman with a fur coat who drives a Wolseley,’ Gifford explained.

‘You went over our heads,’ the sergeant said to Duggan, ignoring Gifford. ‘I don’t appreciate that.’

‘What?’ Duggan asked, flustered.

‘You got that bitch released.’

‘Mrs Quinn?’

‘She might fool your lot with her I-know-nothing innocence but she doesn’t fool us. That whole family are up to their necks in irregular activity. Every single one of them. Not just her thick cousin.’

‘I didn’t know she had been released,’ Duggan said, surprised that his recommendation had had such an immediate effect.

The sergeant snorted. ‘What’s the number?’

‘The number?’ Duggan repeated.

‘Of the Wolseley?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What you do know?’

‘It’s black.’

‘Jaysus.’ The sergeant turned to Gifford. ‘You brought him in. Give you something to do. Look up the records and find all the black Wolseleys whose drivers wear fur coats. That probably includes men as well.’

‘Yes, sarge,’ Gifford said. ‘You know I hang on your every word.’

The sergeant narrowed his eyes and pointed a warning finger at him and walked away.

‘Sorry,’ Duggan said to Gifford when he had gone.

‘Not to worry. It’s not as meaningful as Curly Wee but it might be more useful.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ Duggan said. ‘He’s given me an idea. Don’t bother doing anything.’

‘Whatever you say, sir. A captain always outranks a sergeant.’ Gifford paused. ‘You’re going to talk to her.’

Duggan nodded.

‘Want me to come?’ Gifford made a theatrical move towards his desk drawer and froze halfway. ‘Shoot out her other windows?’

Mrs Quinn took her time opening the door. She was wearing a faded apron over a flowered dress and her face was scrubbed and without make-up. She looked like she hadn’t slept much. Duggan told her his name without his rank and asked if he could talk to her.

‘You’re the German,’ she said, a statement to herself.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not German.’

‘I mean the one who was talking German to my husband.’

‘Yes. Can I have a word with you?’

She hesitated a moment and then opened the door. ‘He said you had come to an arrangement with him. To have me released.’

‘They let you see him?’ Duggan stepped in and paused in the hallway.

‘When they let me go,’ she nodded towards a room at the back of the hall and he went into the kitchen ahead of her. ‘They were moving him to Mountjoy.’

‘He shouldn’t be there too long,’ Duggan offered, thinking of Quinn’s belief that the Germans would release him when they achieved their final victory in the spring.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she gestured towards the table and he took a seat.

‘No, thanks. Don’t go to any trouble.’

She sat opposite him and folded her arms, waiting.

‘Your husband was telling me all about Herr Goertz,’ Duggan began. ‘The man who was here over the Christmas.’

‘There’s nothing more I can tell you about him then.’

‘What was he like?’

She shrugged. ‘He hardly spoke to me at all. They talked in German all the time.’

‘You don’t speak German?’

She shook her head with a touch of impatience.

‘He didn’t talk to you at all?’ Duggan tried again.

‘Only “please” and “thank you” and that sort of thing. Very polite.’ The way she said it was not a compliment.

Duggan picked up on her tone. ‘He left without telling you.’

‘Without a word of thanks. Just disappeared.’

‘But he sent his thanks. Through the woman who collected his things.’

‘Mrs O’Shea,’ she sniffed.

Duggan kept his face straight, hiding both his delight and a flash of anger. That bastard Quinn had been lying to him, saying he didn’t know who she was. He’d have to think again about everything he’d said. ‘You met her?’ he prompted.