The City in Darkness Page 28

  24

  Mullacor

  Close to the Upper Lake at Glendalough was a dirt road leading up to the Lugduff Brook that flowed from the slopes of Mullacor and Lugduff. It crossed the small river and became a narrow track that climbed Mullacor more steeply, to a low stone house halfway up the glen. The house, named for the mountain, sat on a flat pan of land with a sharp slope behind it. From a distance it looked as if it had been built into the hillside. It was an isolated spot. Mullacor House had started life as a hunting lodge in the eighteenth century. It was a hundred years since one of the Sinclairs decided that the valley where their original family house stood was too closed in and too full of people. He wanted to sit closer to the top of the wide mountains he owned. The hunting lodge was extended, stables and barns added; high and wild as it was, Mullacor became the Sinclairs’ home.

  The road up from the Vale of Glendalough didn’t take long in a car, but as it emerged out of the trees and approached the house, the high slopes were stark and empty. The estate was no longer farmed by the Sinclairs; it was let to others. The family had little to do with the life of the valley. Year by year the money to keep up the house grew less as investments were eaten away by the business of living. The staff were few and growing fewer; only the housekeeper lived in now; the rest cycled up from the valley. Margaret Sinclair, now over sixty, led a solitary life when she was at home. Her husband had been dead for ten years, broken by the estate he could not make pay and could never face selling. His wife’s friends were in Dublin and London. Alex, her younger son, was just an occasional visitor. Only her elder son, Stuart, really belonged to the house and the mountain, and he, like his mother, no longer lived there all the time. His absences had been spent over the years not with his friends, as he had none, but in mental institutions the length and breadth of Ireland and Britain.

  Stefan Gillespie and Dessie MacMahon drove through the grounds of Mullacor. Stefan had sometimes been close to the house long ago, walking in the hills, but that was all. He didn’t know it. But for Maeve, as a girl, it had been a part of every summer when she was staying with her cousins in the Valley of the Seven Churches. Stefan still had a vision of a gang of children with the run of the Vale of Glendalough and no one ever to harm them. It was not so different from some of his own childhood, with Kilranelagh, Keadeen and Baltinglass Hill taking the place of Mullacor and Lugduff. She had always remembered Mullacor House as a happy place, he did recall that, driving towards it, but even when he first knew her she had put a distance between herself and those childhood years. There were no real reasons for that, at least none he ever knew about. It seemed only what time did.

  As the two detectives got out of the car there were dogs all round, barking furiously; a Jack Russell, two black Labradors, a cocker spaniel and a mastiff which was, despite its size, the least interested. Dessie was uneasy with dogs in numbers.

  ‘You just ignore them,’ said Stefan.

  ‘They’ll understand that, will they?’ Dessie eyed the mastiff.

  Stefan walked on to the front door. Sergeant MacMahon followed more tentatively. The dogs crowded round Stefan, sniffing at his legs and finding the scent of Tess at Kilranelagh. Only the Jack Russell followed Dessie, suspicious of any human who didn’t smell of some dog or other.

  Stefan hammered on the front door as Dessie lit a Sweet Afton.

  ‘Jesus, why would anyone want to live up here, Stevie?’

  ‘There’s worse places.’ Stefan laughed and knocked hard again. There was no answer. He tried the handle. They stepped inside to a square hall, full of dark, heavy Victorian furniture; black, sombre pictures lined the walls, paintings of the mountains and lakes that surrounded the house, of hunts and dogs and stags at bay. A dark oak staircase led upstairs.

  The dogs had followed them in.

  ‘Hello! Anyone at home? Anyone here?’

  A door opened under the stairs and a short, elderly woman appeared.

  ‘God save us, you let them dogs in? Do you not know better?’

  She walked past them, shooing the dogs back outside.

  ‘Mrs Sinclair is out,’ said the woman. ‘There’s no one here now.’

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Sinclair, Mr Stuart Sinclair.’

  The woman looked at Stefan with her head slightly tilted to one side, as if she couldn’t really think of a reason why anybody would be doing that.

  ‘You may find him in the back garden. Are you from the hospital?’

  ‘No, we’re not.’

  ‘You’d be better waiting to see Mrs Sinclair, I’d say.’

  ‘If we could have a word with Mr Sinclair now, that would be grand.’

  She frowned and then shrugged; it wasn’t her business.

  ‘Go round to the back of the house. You’ll see the garden wall.’

  She walked to the front door and held it open.

  ‘Well, go if you’re going, or we’ll have them dogs back in.’

  Stefan took a guess at where they were supposed to go and turned a corner around the house. There were trees to the side and back, oaks barely in leaf now and high Scots pines, and between them dense, green, tree-like rhododendrons. The grass by the house was cut, but beyond that it was brown and choked with weeds. There was a wire enclosure of broken, moss-covered tarmac; a sodden piece of netting still sprawled across the centre; it had been a tennis court. With the mountains behind and the darkness of the trees and rhododendrons, it was a tight, closed-in space now. The plantation round the house had crept in, closer and closer, as years of neglect let it take over borders and flower beds and much of the lawn. Behind the house a range of square stone buildings made up a stable courtyard. A Dutch barn was full of mildewed hay. There was a rusting tractor, an array of broken farm implements and carts. From one of the stables came the sound of a horse, but it was the only sign of life except for the continual cawing of the rooks.

  Stefan stopped, looking at a motorcycle, clean and bright, in the doorway of one of the outhouses; he remembered the noise of the motorbike at Kilranelagh Graveyard on Christmas Eve. He walked on. Beyond the stables there was a long, rough-rendered wall with a wooden door. He nodded at Dessie. It seemed to be what they were looking for.

  They walked through the door in the wall. Inside was something very different from the neglect everywhere else. It was a small walled garden, given over mostly to vegetables; there were rows of them, neatly tilled and free of weeds. Things were just beginning to grow but the green leaves that would soon be rows of potatoes, turnips, cabbages, carrots, kale, beans, peas, were already showing. Against one wall a glass hothouse sloped up at an angle from the ground; inside were espaliers of plums and peaches and cherries, some in blossom. Beyond this, tucked into a corner, was a wooden greenhouse. They could see no one.

  They carried on to the greenhouse and went in. It was hot and humid; there were benches full of trays of seedlings, ready for planting out. On one side, where the glass had been whitewashed for shade, there was a hotbed. As Stefan walked by it he stopped, staring down at a bed of thick, dark green leaves, and at the small white flowers emerging from them that were only just beginning to turn into the waxy white trumpets of arum lilies.

  Then he saw a man watching him, smiling. A big man, in his mid-thirties, maybe older. He was balding; his features, round and fleshy, were deeply lined.

  ‘Do you like those?’ he asked.

  ‘The lilies? Yes, I suppose . . .’

  ‘They don’t want it too warm, but I try to get some early ones.’

  ‘You’re Mr Sinclair?’

  Stuart Sinclair hesitated, as if unused to being addressed like that.

  ‘Did you want my mother?’

  ‘No, we were looking for you.’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  He looked harder at Stefan, puzzled, not because he didn’t recognize him now, but because he shouldn’t be there. He had seen Stefan in Laragh after Christmas, and he had placed him then, easily enough. There was no reason for him to be at M
ullacor though.

  ‘You won’t remember me. My name is Stefan Gillespie.’

  Stefan knew that Stuart realized who he was now, and that he was uneasy.

  ‘You’ll remember I married Maeve Joyce, a long time ago.’

  Stuart still looked baffled; he didn’t like things that didn’t fit.

  ‘Yes, it was a long time.’

  ‘Perhaps you remember I’m a policeman. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Why? Why would you need to talk to me?’

  ‘Because I think you can help us.’

  ‘I don’t think I can. Not at all. What would I help you with?’

  What Stefan and Dessie could both see now was fear.

  ‘I’m sure you could try, Mr Sinclair.’

  ‘Can you make me? Are you arresting me?’

  ‘Is there a reason we should arrest you?’

  Stuart Sinclair shook his head vigorously.

  Stefan looked down at the lilies again.

  ‘I’ve seen these in a few places. The places you put them.’

  Stuart frowned, then he shook his head again.

  ‘I need you to come to Dublin with us, Mr Sinclair.’

  ‘I can’t. I have work to do. Work to do here. In the garden.’

  For almost a minute there was silence. Stuart was trembling.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Albert Neale, in Spain. You know who Mr Neale is?’

  The interview room in the basement of Dublin Castle was a large cell with a table and chairs, almost entirely below ground. The only natural light was from a small, square window close to the ceiling, so dirty that it let in barely any light. The paint on the walls could have been green. The light from the bulb above the table was harsh but didn’t reach the room’s dark corners. Stefan sat opposite Stuart Sinclair. Dessie sat on a chair a little way back.

  ‘I mentioned Albert Neale before,’ said Stefan. ‘Did Billy Byrne ever tell you he calls himself Jim Collins now? I was in Spain a week ago, I saw Mr Neale. You’d have a good idea what he would tell me about you.’

  Though Stuart Sinclair had said nothing, Stefan spoke as if he was simply discussing what they had already talked about and agreed on.

  ‘He told me how Charlotte Moore died all those years ago.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean, Mr Gillespie.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go over what I know and you can put me straight.’

  ‘You can’t keep me here.’

  ‘This is the statement from the man you knew as Albert Neale. At one time he worked for your father at Mullacor House, I think. But you’ll know who it is I’m talking about. Shall we start with his statement so?’

  It wasn’t a statement of course, simply a story, but as Stefan told that story he had no doubt Sinclair knew every detail and more. Few people can hear the full truth of their actions, face to face, and look as if they have no idea what is being said. Stuart’s face, his whole body, could hide nothing. His knowledge of what Stefan was telling him was in every gesture. And he was terrified. But none of it mattered without a confession. He had to admit everything to Stefan. In the quiet, relentless build-up of the detective’s words he had to see there was no other choice. It had to feel as if there was nothing that wasn’t known. And what Stefan could only imagine about the death of Charlotte Moore had to be hammered home as certainty. There were so many things he didn’t know still, that he could only imagine, but he would concentrate on what he did know, saying the same things over and over, sometimes one way and then another way, until Stuart Sinclair saw there was no way out.

  Stefan had taken three small lilies from the greenhouse at Mullacor. He had put them on the table in front of him. There were few solid facts; the lilies were solid. He would make Stuart Sinclair feel as if he had seen him place lilies on the memorial to Charlotte Moore and the headstones of Marian Gort and Maeve, and so many times. He wasn’t going to beat a confession out of him physically, but in a way, gently, insistently, continually, and relentlessly, as the hours passed, he would beat it out of him mentally. There were times as he looked at the man in front of him, trembling, sometimes sweating, barely answering except to keep saying ‘no’ over and over again, that Stefan Gillespie felt almost sorry for him.

  The story of Charlotte Moore’s death was repeated in all the detail Albert Neale, as James Collins, had given. Stefan could see how vividly it brought that day in the woods by the Upper Lake back. That day had marked Stuart’s life; it was being relived now in his head. But as Stefan moved on to Marian’s death on the Spinc, and Maeve’s drowning in the Upper Lake, he was on unsure ground. He didn’t know exactly what had happened; he didn’t know what had motivated the killings. Some kind of sexual assault had to be behind what was done to Marian. But whether Sinclair had attacked her again, or wanted to stop her revealing the original assault Stefan knew about from George Chisholm, was unclear. He kept to what did seem clear. He focused on the Spinc. He felt he had that right. When he gave Stuart his version of events, an argument, a struggle above the Upper Lake, a push that was too hard, perhaps something unintentional, he stopped shaking his head. He stopped saying ‘no’. It was as if he was seeing it all, as if everything Stefan was saying was exactly what had happened.

  There could have been no sexual assault when Maeve died. What Stefan believed was that she had found something out. She had discovered the truth about Marian or at least a hint of it. Stuart had revealed it, or confirmed it, or said something that made her suspicious, when she met him by the grave in St John’s churchyard. That was what she must have wanted to talk about when they left the Vale of Glendalough. However it came about, Maeve suspected Stuart. Stefan would never know what she heard unless Stuart told him, but it had to be why she died. She had seen into the darkness that he kept hidden away; she had to be silenced.

  As Stefan described how he thought Stuart had drowned Maeve, he kept coming back to what he assumed the man in front of him would want him to believe, that these deaths were accidents. That was what, as little more than a boy, he had persuaded Albert Neale to believe about Charlotte Moore. Perhaps it was what he believed himself. The lilies suggested that. They were a peculiarly sentimental gesture for a murderer; and he had kept it up for years. The lilies seemed to speak of a place inside that could not live with what he had done.

  Dessie MacMahon said nothing throughout. He smoked and provided Stuart with cigarettes. At times he went out for tea that only he drank. He knew what Stefan was doing, and as a policeman not averse to beating things out of suspects, he still felt uncomfortable. Stefan’s determination was a kind of attack; at no point did he let up. His only concession was to tell Stuart that he knew he never meant to harm the women. Apart from that the words kept coming; when they were used up, there were more. Time and again Stuart Sinclair sat with silent tears streaming down his face, shaking, burying his head in his arms, while Stefan Gillespie kept talking, talking, telling him what he had done and how he had done it.

  When Stefan came to the death of William Byrne he gave his own version again. He implied that there was far more was in the postman’s notes than was true. He made more of the letters to Spain than there was to make, and let Stuart Sinclair infer they were damning proof of guilt. He described the Missing Postman’s journey from Laragh on Christmas Eve, drunk, dazed from the brawl in Whelan’s. At some point Stuart had found him, whether he stumbled on him or came looking for him, and he took the opportunity to rid himself of the man who was not only blackmailing him but tormenting him. And when Billy Byrne was dead, Stuart had found a way to get him up into the mountains. He hid the body as only he knew how, as he and Albert Neale had once hidden the body of Charlotte Moore.

  ‘This isn’t the end, Stuart. It’s only the beginning. Unless you tell us everything. All of it. It’s not just what I say, or what Albert Neale says, or all the things we know about Marian and Maeve and Billy Byrne. We have that. But we need to put the missing pieces together. You have to give us those pieces. I don’t know why you�
��re holding back. It’s too late. You don’t want it to be like this. Once we know, it can stop. So the sooner you say it all, the sooner we end this. All you have to do is to tell the truth, now. There’s no other way.’

  As Stefan spoke he pushed the three lilies across the table to touch Stuart’s Sinclair’s trembling hands. Stuart gazed at them with a look somewhere between sorrow and disgust, then he swept them to the floor. He put his head back and let out a sound that wasn’t fear, or rage, or self-pity, but all of them somehow. It was like the noise Stefan had heard as a child, when he and his father took cattle into the slaughterhouse in Baltinglass. He had never been convinced that the animals didn’t know, didn’t smell what was about to happen to them.

  Then Stuart Sinclair bowed his head. He crossed himself and looked up at Stefan.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘everything you said is true. I did kill them.’

  25

  The Central Asylum

  It was two days later that Stefan Gillespie arrived in the Police Yard to find several messages on his desk from Kate O’Donnell. She had been trying to contact him urgently. There was no privacy in the detectives’ room and as Superintendent Gregory was out Stefan went into his office. He put a call through to London and waited five minutes to be connected. A woman he did not know answered at the other end; she was expecting the call, and Kate was there almost immediately. He could hear immediately that something was very wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stefan, I had to talk to you.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry. Are you all right?’

  There was silence for some seconds.

  ‘I’ve been attacked, assaulted, whatever I’m supposed to call it.’