The City of Shadows

‘Can you tell me who you are, Miss?’

She shook her head, but only in irritable and frustrated disbelief.

‘You couldn’t have done this on another day, could you?’

He just looked. Nothing at all about this woman was right.

‘How long has this man been doing this, procuring miscarriages, whatever it is you call it? How many years? It’s just what I needed, you and your great policeman’s boots stomping in before I’d even got started!’

‘I need your name. I’m sure you know why I’m here.’

The woman gazed at him and shook her head again. All at once the anger was gone. He saw something else in her eyes now. It was a mixture of contempt and suspicion. She looked at him as if he was the one in the wrong.

‘No, I don’t know why you’re here. I think I’ll reserve my judgement on that, Sergeant. In the meantime I shall take Mr Keller’s advice about keeping my mouth shut. You may be his best friend. So I shall say nothing.’

*

Pearse Street Garda station was the main police station for the South City, built for the old Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1915, the year before Padraig Pearse was executed after the Easter Rising, when the road was still Great Brunswick Street. It took up the corner of Townsend Street, looking towards Trinity College, a grey, austere building that echoed the Scottish-castle style of architecture popular with insurance companies, all chiselled stone and mullioned windows. The DMP was only a memory now, except for two small corbels supporting the arch over the main entrance; the sour faces of a DMP officer and a helmeted constable still looked down in disapproval. As stations went it wasn’t a bad place to work. The offices upstairs were brighter and cleaner than most of Dublin’s Garda stations, but downstairs the cells smelt like they always smelt – of stale sweat and urine and tobacco.

Stefan Gillespie sat in a room on the ground floor, close enough to the stairs for the odour of the cells to hover in the air. A bare table separated him from the dark-haired woman. The room was bare too, lit by a naked bulb. There was a window high in one wall, no more than a foot square, the glass painted over with the remains of what once must have been whitewash. She had still given him no information and no explanation. She denied nothing, admitted nothing, said nothing. He didn’t even know her name. She returned his gaze with quiet self-assurance. He was the one who kept looking away to scribble something he didn’t need to scribble on the sheet of white paper in front of him. She was beginning to make him feel she was the one running this.

‘You’re from Dublin, thereabouts anyway. The leafier parts I’d say.’

She didn’t answer.

‘You’ve clearly been out of the country though.’

‘An accent and a suntan, I can see you’re nobody’s fool.’

She didn’t need to smile to make him feel foolish.

‘Do you realise how much trouble you’re in?’

‘As a matter of fact I don’t.’

‘I can see you’re an intelligent woman. You’re not what I expected.’

He knew those last words were another mistake.

‘You were expecting some sort of idiot, were you?’

‘That’s not what I meant. ’

‘Idiot enough to be pregnant. Well, how idiotic can a woman get?’

‘Sooner or later you’re going to tell me who you are. You know that as well as I do. The only thing that can help you in this situation is to cooperate with us as fully as possible. It’s Mr Keller we want, not you.’

‘I’m sure even he knows you’ve got him. What do you need me for?’

She reached across to the packet of cigarettes on the table. They were Stefan’s. She hesitated, looking at him. He shrugged. She took one and put it between her lips. He pulled the lighter out from his pocket and flicked it, then stretched over and lit the cigarette with what he hoped was an appropriately reassuring smile. But if he thought the woman’s silence was about to end with this small act of human contact he was mistaken.

‘Thank you.’

She drew on the cigarette, then shook her head.

‘I can’t do what I went there to do. And that’s your fault. I’m not sure where that leaves me. Well, apart from being stuck here in a police station with you. That’s all I’ve got suddenly. I want to see what happens next.’

‘What happens? This is about a life, a life that would have ended this afternoon. It’s about God knows how many other lives that have ended in that back room.’ He was speaking the words he was supposed to speak now, but he knew they didn’t sound like his own. He knew too that this clever, unfathomable woman would understand that immediately. And she did.

‘Yes, it is about a life. I know that already. I wish I didn’t.’

Stefan saw something else in the woman’s face now. It was sadness, a deep and uncertain sadness. He also saw that it had nothing at all to do with why they were here. Whatever she was talking about it wasn’t the conversation he had just felt obliged to start. The interview was still going nowhere. He was not controlling this. She was. The words ‘stuck-up bitch’ were in his head. He’d had enough. He got up, pushing the cigarettes at her.

‘I’ll leave you the fags. It’ll be a long night.’ He went. Let her stew.

As he left the room he found himself smiling unexpectedly. He remembered another time he had walked away from a conversation with a woman and thought the same thing – ‘stuck-up bitch’. It was nearly six years ago. A pub in Nassau Street. Maeve. Seven months later he’d married her. And now she had been dead for nearly two years. One year, nine months, eight days. He had thought about that night in Nassau Street a thousand times in those months, waking and sleeping. He had relived it as he had relived every moment of their lives together. But he had never smiled about it in quite the same way before. It wasn’t that the woman from Merrion Square reminded him of Maeve. Perhaps she reminded him of something about himself he had forgotten. Instead of feeling angry she made him want to laugh. These thoughts came at him out of nowhere. He pushed them away. He saw Dessie MacMahon walking towards him, with a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea.

‘Has Keller phoned his solicitor?’ he asked.

Dessie nodded, taking a bite of the sandwich.

‘But he’s still not saying anything?’

‘No. He’s very polite about it though.’

‘Is the solicitor on his way?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Stick him in a cell for the night and see how polite he is about that.’

Garda MacMahon took another bite of the sandwich.

‘What about the nurse?’ said Stefan.

‘She’s still giving out, but it’s the same story. Nothing to say.’

‘The evidence is all in Merrion Square. I don’t understand how Keller thinks he can explain that away by keeping his mouth shut and grinning.’

‘Do we give him another go, Sarge?’

‘No, I’ve had enough. Just lock the three of them up for the night.’

He wasn’t sure that would wipe away Hugo Keller’s smile. It looked like it was painted on. He was too cocky. He seemed to think he was untouchable. The nurse would keep insisting that she was just a nurse. He didn’t believe her, but Sheila Hogan was hard. She wouldn’t talk till there was something in it for her. The dark-haired woman was different. She had no place in this. Twelve hours in a police cell might bring her to her senses.

It was dark in Merrion Square as Detective Sergeant Gillespie approached the house again, but it looked brighter now than it had in daylight. The shutters were open and all the lights were on. The front door was open too and a uniformed guard stood on the steps. Stefan smiled a greeting.

‘How’s it going, Liam?’

‘Great, I can never get enough of standing around in the fecking cold.’

Stefan went in and moved down the hall to the back drawing room. A man in his late fifties was sitting on the edge of the couch, writing notes. Edward Wayland-Smith was the State Pathologist. He was tall, overweight, bearded, dressed in tweeds that made him look like he had just been blasting pheasants with a shotgun or pulling fish from a stream with a rod and flies. There was a silver-fresh salmon in the boot of his car to say he had been.

‘He’s certainly got some extraordinary equipment here. You wouldn’t find better in any hospital in Ireland. Well, in most hospitals you’d be grateful to find anything at all.’ He continued to write as he spoke, not looking up. ‘Nota bene!’ he announced, finally raising his eyes.

‘Suspended from the ceiling a 170 centimetre shadowless operating lamp. You also see a state-of-the-art gynaecological chair; German, almost brand new I’d say, with some very clever modifications. There’s a well-equipped workshop in the cellar too. It looks like your man Keller was making his own equipment, or at least improving on what he’d got. Ingenious, some of it. He must be rather bright, certainly not your average backstreet abortionist. There’s also an X-ray transformer of very high quality. I haven’t seen one like it in Ireland. It’s a modification of another continental piece of apparatus. I’ve made a full inventory, which I will have typed up tomorrow. You have looked at the office I assume, Sergeant?’

Stefan nodded. ‘I’d like you to make a note of the books.’

‘It’s done.’ Wayland-Smith got up and walked out to the hall, turning back the pages of his notebook as he did. He went into the office. He stood beside a bookcase, scanning his notes, then pointing at some of the books.

‘They are mostly standard medical texts, nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘Except that Mr Keller was a quack posing as a doctor.’

‘Well, I’ve encountered no shortage of highly qualified colleagues I’d describe as quacks posing as doctors. It’s unfortunate that there seems to be no law against that. In several books you’ll see sections on abortion and miscarriage have been marked and quite heavily annotated. I’ve recorded those. There are also a number of books dealing very explicitly with sex, in ways that might shock even a policeman, some in German that would not be readily available on our island of saints and scholars, and would normally be sent back whence they came with much sprinkling of holy water. It seems clear Mr Keller was handling a lot of what the profession likes to refer to, in a hushed whisper, as “women’s complaints”. Again it’s not your run-of-the-mill abortionist. He certainly had no problems writing prescriptions that were acceptable in any chemist in Dublin. A Merrion Square address never fails to impress. There are very detailed financial records, almost proof in itself that the man is not a real doctor. Never any names though. All very discreet. And all very expensive from the look of it. He was certainly earning more than I do. Oh, and there’s a revolver too. German, I think’

‘It is. I’ve seen it,’ replied Stefan.

‘And a box of contraceptives, also German.’ Wayland-Smith smiled.

‘Yes, Dessie’s recorded all that.’

‘Splendid! You’ll have the opportunity to prosecute the man simultaneously for the provision of contraceptives and for attempting to deal with the consequences of not using them in the first place. Good stuff, eh?’

‘You don’t like this very much.’

‘I don’t like the state asking me to count contraceptives for a living, no. But then I don’t like what Mr Keller does very much either. Who does? However, as a doctor I have always found it gratifyingly simple that virtually all of my patients are dead. Nothing to like or dislike. And that brings me to an observation about the cellar. Have you been down there?’

Stefan shook his head.

‘Dessie took a quick look. More medical equipment.’

‘There is also an unusually large stove. I’m not an expert on plumbing, as several plumbers I’ve been fleeced by will testify, but a cursory glance suggests it isn’t connected to the heating system. I would say the stove is more than adequate for disposing of whatever it was that Mr Keller may have found it necessary to dispose of in the course of his work.’

Sergeant Gillespie stepped into the black hole that was the stairway down to the cellar. He fumbled for a light switch. There was a dim glow over the stairs as he walked down into the darkness beneath the house. At the bottom of the stairs he found another switch. This illuminated the whole cellar more brightly. He saw a workbench and rows of carefully ordered tools, neatly stacked boxes of screws and bolts, coils of wire and electrical hardware, medical equipment in various states of repair. It was a place of strange calmness and order. Beyond the workbench, through a brick arch, was the cast-iron stove Wayland-Smith had seen. Stefan approached it through the arch. Coal was heaped up on one side, carefully stacked timber on the other. He could feel the heat from the stove now. He picked up a cloth that lay on the ground and opened the door, letting go of the handle sharply as the heat reached his hand. The stove was blazing fiercely, so much so that he had to step back. He turned, hearing someone on the stairs. Dessie MacMahon, flushed and sweating, was roaring down at a speed that was rarely seen.

‘I don’t know when I last saw you run. Confessions all round?’

The fat detective was still struggling to get his breath.

‘I wouldn’t want you risking your life for less,’ laughed Stefan.

‘They’re gone.’

‘Who’s gone?’

‘Two fellers from Special Branch walked into the station half an hour ago, asking about Keller. Seán Óg Moran, you’d know him, an arse-licker who’d crack his mammy’s skull if someone told him. And a sergeant called Lynch. I’ve maybe seen him, but I’d know the smell anyway. He’ll have a trench coat in the car. Straight out of the IRA and into the Branch.’

‘I know Jimmy Lynch. You’re right. A flying column man. If there was a landowner to shoot he’d have sulked for a week if he didn’t do it.’

‘First thing I heard they were in with Inspector Donaldson and there’s shouting and bollocking going on. But it’s your man Lynch doing the bollocking. Next thing they’re going out of the station with Keller and the nurse and the woman in tow. I asked them what they were doing. And I told this Lynch you weren’t going to like it. He said you could fuck yourself.’

‘A way with words too. But what the hell is it to Special Branch?’

‘They took them off in a car.’

‘What about Inspector Donaldson?’

‘I don’t know what your man Lynch told him, Sarge, but the words head and arse were in there somewhere. After that the inspector said the case was closed. Forget it. It’s out of our hands. Then he went back in his office and shut the door. I’d say he’ll still be in there with the holy water.’

‘Did he ask for any paperwork?’ Dessie shook his head. ‘Course he didn’t,’ continued Stefan with a shrug. ‘If Special Branch dumped a body on his desk and told him to have it in court on a drunk and disorderly the next morning he’d only stand up and salute. Did Hugo Keller say anything?’

‘No, but I reckon the cute hoor looked happy enough.’

‘And not exactly surprised. He never expected to stay locked up.’

The thought hadn’t occurred to Dessie before, but Stefan was right.

‘What about the woman?’

‘She did say something, when she was going out the door. “I told Sergeant Gillespie I wanted to see what happened next.” Are we the only ones not in on this, Sarge? The Branch? What the fuck is going on here?’

Stefan didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he’d find out.

Inspector James Donaldson was a small, precise man who wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look disconcertingly bigger than they were. He disliked disorder. He also disliked detectives. Quite apart from the fact that they were rude, ill-disciplined, sloppy, generally drank too much, and had the ability to turn the word ‘sir’ into an insult, they were the ones who were guaranteed to bring disorder into his police station. They thrived on the chaos he hated. And there were times when Stefan Gillespie or Dessie MacMahon knocked on his door that he had to resist an overwhelming urge to turn the key in the lock and pretend he wasn’t there. Normally Inspector Donaldson sought refuge from the disorder that went with being a policeman in his faith. He attended Mass every day at the Pro-Cathedral at eleven o’clock, and when he returned to Pearse Street Garda station, with the incense still in his nostrils, he had just enough spiritual calm to get him through the rest of the day. But the events of this particular day meant that he had little calm left. If it wasn’t enough to have his own detectives treating him like an eejit he now had detectives walking in off the street, pulling criminals out of his cells and telling him, in front of his own men, that if he didn’t like it he could stick his bald head up his arse. And they were from Special Branch too. Those fellers were a law unto themselves. They were supposed to protect the state from the people who wanted to destroy it. That was mostly the IRA of course, but these days you were hard pressed to tell whether a Special Branch man had worked with Michael Collins and his crowd bumping off British agents during the War of Independence, or with the anti-Treaty IRA bumping off Free State soldiers and policemen during the Civil War. What was guaranteed was that they’d done their share of bumping off somewhere along the line. They were thieves set to catch thieves after all. You didn’t want to cross them. They did what they liked.

The raid on Hugo Keller’s abortion clinic had been a rare thing at Pearse Street, an operation instigated by Inspector Donaldson himself. He was the one who had gathered the first intelligence. Well almost. The facts had been presented to him at a Knights of St Columbanus meeting, and as treasurer he had no choice but to act. It never occurred to him that there was a reason the so-called Doctor Keller could operate with apparent disregard for the laws of the land, among the real doctors and consultants in Merrion Square. A blind eye was being turned at a much higher level than James Donaldson. Now, for his pains, he had not only been humiliated by a Special Branch sergeant, his own CID sergeant was standing in front of him, berating him because Special Branch had just walked off with the prisoners.

‘Why didn’t you kick the bastards out?’

‘I wasn’t in a position to, Sergeant,’ replied Donaldson defensively.

‘We hadn’t even put a case together. You were the one who pushed for this. You ordered the raid. Then you let Keller waltz out of here.’

‘It’s not in our hands any more. Special Branch will deal with it.’

‘How is inducing miscarriages anything to do with Special Branch?’

‘That’s not my business. Or yours.’

‘Keller knew.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The expression on his face. When we walked into the surgery. When he sat in the cell and didn’t say anything. When he phoned his solicitor. Who didn’t bother to turn up. I’ll bet he made the call to Special Branch though.’

‘It’s clear there are other issues here, Sergeant. Quite possibly issues of state security. We can’t expect Special Branch to reveal that sort of thing.’

‘That sort of thing my arse, sir.’ There it was, that ‘sir’.

‘That’s enough, Gillespie. I’m not happy about this either. They were extremely heavy handed. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s done.’

‘And what about the woman?’

‘They took her too. There’s no more to say.’ Donaldson wanted Gillespie to get out now. He had had enough. But Stefan wouldn’t let go.

‘I don’t know what was up with that one. There was something. And it didn’t have anything to do with being in Keller’s clinic for an abortion.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Leave it alone!’

Stefan had no idea what he was talking about either. He was angry about what had happened for all sorts of reasons. Somewhere it wasn’t much more than territorial. He’d been pissed on and he didn’t like it. He knew how Special Branch detectives loved to throw their weight around. But why was he so wound up? It was Donaldson who had insisted on the raid. Now it was someone else’s problem. What did it matter? It was the woman. She mattered. He didn’t know why, but she was still there, still in his head.

The telephone on Inspector Donaldson’s desk rang. He picked it up.

‘What does she want? What? All right, I’ll talk to her.’ The inspector put on a smile as he waited a moment. ‘Hello, Reverend Mother, how are –’

The cheerful greeting was cut off abruptly, and it was clear that what he was listening to was a tirade. He tried to speak several times but the words barely escaped from his mouth before they were cut off. ‘She was here –’ ‘The case is no longer –’ ‘I gave no instructions –’ ‘I didn’t know –’

Stefan turned away. It was probably the right time to make his exit.

‘Stay here!’ Donaldson hissed after him.

He stopped and turned back to the desk. The inspector glared.

‘I’ll send Detective Sergeant Gillespie across right now!’ He slammed down the phone. It wasn’t over yet. It was always the damned detectives.

‘That was the Mother Superior at the Convent of the Good Shepherd. This woman, the one having the – the one at Merrion Square.’ Abortion was not a word Donaldson found easy to say. ‘Those bollockses from Special Branch dumped her over there. Now the Reverend Mother is blaming me for it. Well, why wouldn’t she? The only name the woman knows is yours. So it all comes back here, straight back on to my desk as usual, Gillespie!’

‘What did they take her there for?’ said Stefan, puzzled.

‘The woman’s pregnant, isn’t she? And I assume she’s not married!’

‘How do I know, she didn’t even give us a name!’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not our business any more.’ Donaldson changed tack abruptly. He was about to give every good reason why the woman should have gone to the convent. Wasn’t it where the police took women like that? ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but the Reverend Mother wants her out of the place. She’s beside herself. And she thinks I’m responsible. You brought the woman in here, Sergeant. You go and sort this bloody mess out!’

3. Harold’s Cross

The Convent of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd lay south of the Grand Canal in Harold’s Cross Road, behind high walls. As Stefan Gillespie drove in through the black gates, two nuns closed and bolted them shut, then disappeared into the night. The house was Georgian. Once it stood in its own park; an avenue of fifty chestnut trees lined the drive. The park was gone now. The trees came down; roads and houses had spread out where the lawns and shrubberies had been; and when the nuns came, the walls went up. Low brick buildings, almost windowless, extended out from the old house to the back and sides now, shutting it in. But the great windows still filled the front, looking out over the cobbles to the gates. They were all dark now. The only light came from the front door where another nun waited for Stefan.

As he walked towards her, the small, neat woman looked at him accusingly. ‘Reverend Mother is waiting for you.’ She turned abruptly. He followed her in. His footsteps echoed loudly on the tiled floor of the dimly lit hall. What light there was came from two small table lamps. An elaborate glass chandelier hung from the high ceiling, but it carried neither candles nor bulbs; it was never used. An oak staircase led up from the centre of the hall to a galleried landing and darkness. Darkness and silence. There was a faint smell, not altogether unpleasant. It reminded Stefan unaccountably of one of his grandmothers. His eyes were drawn to the floor, polished so ferociously that it was the only part of the entrance hall that really reflected any light. It wasn’t only praying that kept the women on their knees here.

The nun led him through a door behind the great staircase. Beneath her long skirts, reaching almost to the ground, he could see her black shoes, shining like the floor, oddly similar to a pair of regulation issue Garda boots. Yet while his footsteps filled the silence of the place, the nun made no sound at all. He smiled. If he hadn’t seen those polished boots he would have been tempted to consider the possibility that she was on wheels. A long corridor stretched ahead, still only dimly lit. On either side were doors, evenly spaced, firmly closed, each one bearing a number in Roman numerals. The smell was stronger now, and more unpleasant. At the end of the corridor the nun took a key that hung from her robes, beside her rosary, and unlocked a heavy door that led outside. She held it for him as he walked through, back into the cold night, though it felt barely colder than the house they had left.