The City in Darkness Read online

  ‘When?’

  ‘The day after you went back.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, not . . . I didn’t call . . . I had to think. I need to tell you . . .’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ She hesitated. ‘It stopped, that’s the first thing. In the end he – he didn’t – he went. I’ve a few bruises, that’s all. But I don’t know what would have happened if Helen hadn’t come back. I was on my own at Chancellors Street, there wasn’t anyone else at home—’

  ‘So you know him? You know the man?’

  ‘I know him. You do too. It was Alex Sinclair.’

  Stefan didn’t reply. This would have been a shock at any time. Now it was not only that; the echoes in his head were as disturbing and confusing as the facts.

  ‘Tell me what happened, Kate.’

  It was a policeman’s question as much as a shocked friend and lover’s.

  ‘I’d been working late, so I was coming home – in the blackout. I walked from the Broadway and he was there at the top of the road, in the dark. There’s a seat and a little . . . he was waiting. He’d been drinking but he wasn’t drunk. He said he was at the Blue Anchor – he thought he’d call. I wasn’t easy – I didn’t have any reason but . . . I don’t know him . . . I thought someone would be here, so I said come and have a cup of tea. It didn’t seem so odd.’

  She stopped; he could still hear panic in her voice.

  ‘But it was difficult – because I knew about his brother. I didn’t know what might have happened – with you back home – if he knew . . .’

  ‘His brother’s under arrest now, but he couldn’t have known then.’

  ‘It was like when we saw him in the Dove at first, talking in the kitchen, I don’t know what about, then he started asking about you and Spain. He made a joke of it – what did you get up to? – did you say more about where you’d been? I couldn’t think what to tell him. It was as if he suspected something. Then he was talking about Maeve . . . when he was a boy, how they’d been friends. It was quite ordinary – funny stories – yet it wasn’t right. Then he suddenly said, if it wasn’t for you she’d still be alive.’

  The last words separated themselves from all that went before.

  ‘If it wasn’t for me? What the fuck did he mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Stefan. How the hell would I know?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kate, I don’t understand what this is. I don’t—’

  ‘That’s what he said. Then he came very close, saying he’d liked me, as soon as he saw me. He backed me into a corner – trying to kiss . . .’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘I pushed him, but he wouldn’t move. He was laughing. He said, “You don’t want me to stop.” I tried to get past – he was too strong – he had my wrist. Then he slapped me. He said, “You do want it, and he’s not good enough.” He was staring the way I thought . . . I thought he’ll kill me.’

  There were tears behind Kate’s words but her voice was calm now.

  ‘Then I heard the door – and it was Helen. I kicked his shin as hard as I could – and then he just stepped back . . . and he grinned. And he left.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Stefan very quietly.

  ‘It wasn’t only about me, Stefan.’

  ‘I know that, Kate, but I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘I think you need to find out.’

  ‘That’s not as important as you—’

  ‘It’s over for me, I promise you. Nothing else happened.’

  ‘Have you been to the police?’

  ‘I won’t be telling the police, Stefan.’

  ‘You need to, Kate. You shouldn’t have left it.’

  ‘How long are you a Guard?’ It was the first time he felt a smile in her voice. ‘Don’t most women ignore it, even if it’s more? And here, now? Isn’t he one of their brave boys in blue ready to save us when the Luftwaffe comes? Helen knows a girl who was raped by an Irish Guards officer, a hell of a grand feller everyone says. She went to the police. The sergeant told her she should be careful what she said about a man fighting for his country. But he did give her a bit of advice so. A bit of comfort for a man like that wasn’t the worst thing a fucking Paddy bitch could do to help Britain.’

  ‘I don’t have an answer for that, Kate.’

  ‘There isn’t one, Stefan. I’ll mend soon enough. I’ll thank God it stopped when it did – and forget it. It means more to you now than me . . .’

  The line went dead. The connection was broken. The operator couldn’t tell him when there would be another. But Kate had said what he needed to hear. He didn’t even see Terry Gregory opening the office door.

  ‘Comfortable there, Inspector?’

  Stefan stood up. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I had to phone England.’

  ‘Something else you’ve fucked up?’

  ‘I’m not with you, sir.’

  ‘Are you ever with us, Gillespie? Let me have my desk back and I’ll fill you in. You know your man Stuart Sinclair is in the Central Asylum?’

  ‘No, I thought he was still in the cells here.’

  ‘He was trying to hang himself from the bars on the window, when they brought him his tea and jam sandwich this morning. If he’d had anything better than a pair of trousers to use he’d probably be dead.’

  ‘Shite.’

  ‘Shite indeed. And whatever else he did, he didn’t kill your man Byrne.’

  Stefan was startled by the certainty of it.

  ‘You’ve seen the confession, sir.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m glad I sat on it before I sent it to the commissioner. It’s about to turn into the confession of a madman who wasn’t even in Glendalough when our friend the Missing Postman disappeared. You’ve said he was in your graveyard at Kilranelagh that evening, delivering his Christmas lily?’

  ‘On his motorbike. He had plenty of time to get back.’

  ‘You’re right about the motorbike, and probably right he was there, but at seven o’clock that night he drove over the bridge in Aughrim and hit a car going the other way.’

  Stefan remembered Alex Sinclair mentioning the accident.

  ‘He wasn’t badly hurt, but by the time the doctor patched him up and they got a message to his mammy, he’d spent most of Christmas Eve with the Guards in Aughrim Barracks. His brother picked him up at one a.m., by which time the Missing Postman was well and truly missing. You don’t need me to tell you that if death number four is a good, fat, solid lie, then any lawyer will knock the others down like a row of skittles. And if you ask, why did he say it? – well, he’s barking mad and some bastard Guard with an obsession about his dead wife wrote it all out and made the eejit sign it.’

  ‘Whether he’s mad or as sane as me, nothing I said surprised him.’

  ‘Don’t push your sanity, Inspector. If this got to court a good barrister would have a field day proving you need to be in the Central Asylum more than your man does. But it doesn’t matter. It won’t go near a fecking court now. You’ll drop it, and you’ll be lucky if that’s the end.’

  Stuart Sinclair sat on the floor in the corner of a small room with a barred window, in the Central Lunatic Asylum in Dundrum, a leafy suburb of Dublin. He wore a straitjacket, but he was calm. He kept his eyes closed, though he was awake. With him were Stefan and John McEvoy, a doctor.

  ‘He hasn’t said anything?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘Not since he came in. I don’t think he needs the jacket now, but we do have to make absolutely sure he is not going to try to harm himself again.’

  Stefan sat down on the bed, not too close.

  ‘Do you feel better here, Stuart?’

  Sinclair did not move his eyes from the floor.

  ‘Well, they’re people you know, aren’t they?’

  Sinclair looked round at Stefan, then at McEvoy.

  ‘I want to stay here now, Doctor.’

  ‘You know you can do that, Stuart.’<
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  ‘My mother was here. And a man. I didn’t want to talk to them.’

  ‘There’s no need.’ Doctor McEvoy smiled amiably.

  ‘Do you remember what you said yesterday?’ asked Stefan.

  Stuart turned back to him with a barely perceptible nod.

  ‘I thought it was all true, Stuart.’

  Sinclair frowned. He was confused but he didn’t want to deny it.

  ‘It is true, Mr Gillespie.’ He looked at Stefan with an almost childish expression of accusation. ‘You said if I signed it there wouldn’t be any more questions. I wouldn’t have to talk about it. You said it would be over. That’s all I wanted. For it to be over.’

  ‘Why did you try to hurt yourself?’

  ‘There were still questions. I didn’t want to say any more.’

  ‘Someone said you couldn’t have killed Billy Byrne?’

  ‘I did. I signed the paper to say I did.’

  ‘But you were somewhere else when he disappeared.’

  ‘I told you what you wanted, Mr Gillespie.’

  ‘I wanted the truth, Stuart.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about me. That’s the truth. Isn’t that enough?’

  There was agitation in Stuart Sinclair’s voice now. His eyes were fixed on the floor but he was shaking, trying to push himself further back into the corner he had already pushed himself into. He shook his head over and over again and muttered unintelligibly. McEvoy touched Stefan’s arm and shook his head. It was time to go. Stefan got up. The doctor held the door open for him, and as he walked out he heard Stuart Sinclair beginning to sob.

  Stefan walked towards the main doors of the Central Asylum. In his head were the last words Stuart Sinclair had said. It doesn’t matter about me. He remembered the housekeeper at Mullacor, two days earlier, before she knew he wanted to speak to Stuart. There’s no one here, she said. But there was someone there. When he mentioned Stuart, she told him. He was no one, somehow, even in his own home. He didn’t matter. Stefan could not help thinking that there was someone who mattered more, much more; so much more that he had to be protected. Someone who, despite the fact that he was everything his older brother was not and never could be, Stuart had been protecting for twenty years. He had protected him when he was little more than a child himself. He had taken the responsibility for Charlotte Moore’s death in Albert Neale’s eyes even then. And all those years on, when William Byrne discovered what Neale knew, and used it to worm his way into the secret places in Stuart’s head, he had taken the responsibility for two more deaths. He had paid the Missing Postman to keep silent. He had been battered into revealing things to Byrne, but he never revealed the real truth. The confession made no sense unless it was there to protect someone else. What had happened to Kate in London told him who that was. He had heard the echo of what George Chisholm had said, about the night Marian Gort was attacked and raped. The arum lilies were not in expiation of Stuart Sinclair’s sins; they were there for his brother’s.

  Leaving the asylum, he saw a tall, elegant woman in her early sixties walking towards him. Beside her was a shorter man in a dark jacket and pinstriped trousers. He recognized the woman, though he hadn’t seen her since Maeve’s funeral, and she knew him too, in almost the same instant.

  ‘You have seen my son again.’

  ‘Mrs Sinclair.’

  She turned to the man Stefan assumed was her solicitor.

  ‘You told me this would cease.’

  ‘It will, Mrs Sinclair. I will be talking to the Department of Justice.’

  ‘Then find a telephone in the hospital and do it now, Mr Welby.’

  ‘There is a statement, Mrs Sinclair. The police do have legitimate—’

  ‘You’re paid to deal with people like this. Please get on with it!’

  The solicitor smiled patiently and went on into the hospital.

  Stefan Gillespie and Margaret Sinclair looked at one another.

  ‘My son could have died in that cell.’

  ‘From what I understand, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’re as complacent as you are unpleasant.’

  ‘No one is indifferent to your son’s welfare.’

  ‘I never liked you very much, Mr Gillespie. I didn’t like what I heard about you years ago, and I didn’t like what I saw when I met you. You didn’t belong in the places you insinuated yourself. I knew you were extremely ordinary, but I hadn’t realized what a nasty little man you are.’

  Stefan ignored her; he tried to talk about what was happening now.

  ‘Do you have any idea why Stuart tried to kill himself?’

  ‘Are you entirely stupid as well? He is frail, very frail mentally. For reasons I can’t imagine you bullied him into saying the most despicable things. Do you think it’s hard with a man whose mind is broken, to fill it with horrific things, to terrify him until he says anything to make you stop?’

  ‘He didn’t say just anything. He said some very specific things.’

  ‘And why? Because you told him to.’

  Stefan held her contemptuous gaze.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Mr Gillespie. Don’t you think my son’s illness has been enough of a burden to bear down the years? Surely when you knew Maeve Joyce, you knew something about him, something of what it meant to us all. No family is unaffected by these things. Maeve was a dear girl. She cared about Stuart. What would she think of your behaviour?’

  ‘I’m sorry you see it like that. None of this is easy for me.’

  ‘She would be disgusted. Maeve had no business marrying a man like you. It was a dreadful mistake. Didn’t you do enough damage then?’

  ‘Enough damage? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean the poor girl’s life was over, even before she died.’

  He saw how deeply Mrs Sinclair felt what she said, how simple it was for her. He could not but hear an echo of what Alex had said to Kate about Maeve.

  ‘I mean the life she should have led was gone.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a life Maeve should have led.’

  ‘You caused more hurt than you knew. She would have found out. But it was too late. At times, I have thought it was almost a blessing in—’

  Stefan thought he had heard enough not be shocked.

  ‘You are some woman, Mrs Sinclair.’

  ‘You must hate us, that’s all I can imagine. But your superiors will put a stop to this. You won’t come out of it well. When this ridiculous business of the postman began, Alex said he saw you. He said he asked you to the house. I’m sure he was only being polite. I was relieved you didn’t come. Now Alex has had to come back from England, of course. When Stuart falls into his depressions, Alex is the only one who can handle him.’

  Stefan’s attention was no longer on what Mrs Sinclair thought.

  ‘Alex is actually doing something, something real, something that matters. But his squadron has been considerate enough to give him a week’s leave. He’s better out of Ireland, though. This country has been inherited by the begrudgers and the gombeen men. What else is there? My husband believed in it all, poor man, the blood-sacrifice, the glorious future. I can’t say I ever did. I knew the dregs would come to the top. And now they have.’

  Stefan was in no doubt he was one of the dregs, but Margaret Sinclair’s insults interested him only because they told him where Alex was.

  ‘I see. So is Alex in Ireland now?’

  ‘He arrived this morning. He’ll be at Mullacor now. I shall take Stuart home soon. I think the lies on your scrap of paper have been disposed of. Knowing his brother is waiting will make all the difference. They love each other. I doubt you’re familiar with such depths of feeling. I’ve always seen through people. And I did tell Maeve what I thought of you.’

  ‘I never have met anyone quite like you, Mrs Sinclair. I only hope I won’t again. I don’t know who to feel sorriest for, you or your sons.’

  It was less than two hours later that Stefan Gillespie pulled up at Mullacor House.
He had taken a car from the Special Branch garage without asking. He had no intention of explaining himself to Superintendent Gregory. The dogs raced round from the side of the house and leapt up against the car doors. There was another car, a navy blue MG. It was the kind of car Alex Sinclair would have. Stefan leant across to the glove compartment of the Austin 10 and put the Webley into his jacket pocket. He walked to the front door, ignoring the dogs.

  He knocked once and opened the door. As he walked in he could only hear the ticking of a grandfather clock. He crossed the hall and looked into the dining room. The table was huge, running half the length of the room. There were silver candelabra; there were more hunting scenes on the walls; a high gilt mirror reflected the room back at him. It was a room that had the casual order of a country house, but it felt dead. No one had sat in it for many years. He walked across the hall to the drawing room. It was brighter, full of comfortable sofas and books, yet it had the same smell as the dining room, too much polish and not enough people. As he moved back into the hall again he waited for a moment, then called out.

  ‘Is there anybody at home? Alex, are you here?’

  ‘There’s no need to shout, Stefan.’

  Alex Sinclair stood in the front doorway behind him, the dogs sniffing about him. He cradled a rifle casually in his arm, as only a man used to shooting does.

  26

  Poulanass

  I saw the car coming up,’ said Alex Sinclair, walking into the hall. ‘I was surprised when you got out of it, Stefan, in the light of what’s just happened.’

  ‘In the light of what’s just happened, perhaps you shouldn’t be.’

  ‘I had to come back, for my mother as well as Stuart. It’s irritating, but she can’t cope with him at all. God knows the state you left him in. He’s harmless, of course, except to himself. All he wants is to be left alone.’

  ‘I did make a mistake about Stuart,’ said Stefan softly. ‘Probably one I had to make. And I’m not alone. There’s a man in Spain who made the same mistake twenty years ago. He almost hanged for it. And somewhere there’s the body of a postman who made that mistake too. I don’t know if Maeve made the same mistake before she was killed. You’d know, Alex.’