The City in Darkness Read online

  María waited for two hours before she was allowed into the long room, like a cathedral nave bare of colour or decoration, where prisoners and visitors finally met each other. The visit would last fifteen minutes.

  As she sat down Frank Ryan was at the bench opposite her.

  They spoke through metal netting and two sets of iron bars, separated by a gap of six feet in which a prison guard sat, watching and listening. They were not allowed touch. Two dozen prisoners and visitors stretched out across the room. It was hard to hear and so everyone shouted. Ryan had been growing deaf throughout the course of his imprisonment. For a while they just looked at one another. He was always thin, but she told herself not as thin. His skin, pale enough anyway, had the tinge of yellow she always feared was the beginning of jaundice, but she told herself it was clearer now, whiter. Where there was nothing to say the simplest things said everything; and ordinary words were charged with intimacy and love.

  ‘I brought you some olives and cheese. And cigarettes.’

  ‘Thank God,’ he laughed, ‘some decent fags!’

  ‘You do get what I bring now? They do give it to you?’

  ‘Yes, since Leo Kerney’s been coming. Nothing like an ambassador to impress a Spanish prison governor, even an Irish one. The food got better after he kicked up a hooley. Altogether a superior class of shite in fact . . .’

  She smiled. He always tried hard, but he did seem better.

  ‘You’re going back to Salamanca tonight?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How’s your mam and dad?’

  ‘Okay,’ she shrugged.

  ‘But Salamanca’s all right? It’s calmed down. Safer anyway?’

  Two of her father’s friends had disappeared only a week ago.

  ‘It’s safer, yes, much better.’

  The prison guard lit a cigarette. He was cold, bored, pissed off.

  ‘Joder! Habla español!’

  ‘Come on, Raoul, you know my Spanish is fucking brutal, besides, why would I want you to be able to understand anything I’m saying, an unmitigated gobshite like you with all the charisma of compacted effluent?’

  The guard glared at him, then shrugged and drew on his cigarette.

  ‘I’ll be back in January,’ said María. She spoke the words more quietly, exaggerating her lips and giving the words particular weight.

  ‘Los Reyes Magos?’ He put his hand on his head, like a crown.

  She was looking at him hard, as if her eyes were where the real meaning was. He smiled again, more tenderly. He understood. There was a kind of tension between them. It was something in both their faces that was brighter, even though it was nothing anyone else could have seen.

  He turned to the guard, a sense of mischief on him.

  ‘Come on, Raoul. Un poco de español!’ He half-spoke, half-sang, ‘Ya vienen los Reyes Magos, caminito de Belén! The Three Kings are coming!’

  María shot a warning glance. He chuckled, but she didn’t like games.

  ‘Olé, olé, Holanda y olé!’ Raoul laughed out the refrain.

  Ryan was looking at María; the tension was there as he spoke.

  ‘What about Mikey, is he going on this pilgrimage?’

  ‘Yes, he always wanted to go to Santiago de Compostela.’

  ‘Don’t we all, God willing? Tell him to say a prayer for me.’

  ‘There are a lot of prayers said for you, Frank.’

  ‘And for you,’ he said softly.

  She reached out her hand as if through some invisible solidity of the air she was touching him. And then the bell rang, loud, discordant, violent.

  ‘Se acabó! Acabó!’

  Prisoners and visitors stood up. Frank Ryan looked at María and winked; it was a lightness of mood neither of them felt. There was something deeper there. It was a mix of fear and anxiety, but somewhere there was faith too, faith despite everything, and hope, and above all love.

  María Fernández Duarte’s mind was still full of those things at Burgos station, waiting for the night train back to Salamanca. Next time she came to Burgos it would be over, all these agonizing months; if she believed it, if they both believed it enough. Over for him, that’s all she wanted in the world. She felt it so strongly that she had no choice but to believe it. She could hear the bells from the cathedral striking midnight. It was Christmas Day. She crossed herself and prayed, as she always prayed, for the man she loved.

  In his cell in the Prisión Central Frank Ryan was awake too. He heard the prison clock striking twelve. In an hour it would be Christmas in Ireland too. The twelve days of Christmas were coming, ending with Twelfth Night, the Día de los Reyes Magos, the Day of the Three Kings. And then it would happen. The plans were made. That was what María had told him at the end; that was the gift she brought. He would escape Franco’s gaol. He had to believe it too. He knelt and prayed. ‘Today you shall know that the Lord will come and rescue us: and tomorrow you shall witness his glory.’

  9

  The Seven Churches

  It was Christmas Day. Stefan sat at the back of the church at Talbotstown. It was part of what remained of Maeve; the agreement demanded of him by the Church that Tom had to be brought up as a Catholic. He had no real objection but it was also true that he had no choice. Yet even as a non-participant the prayers and the responses were not so different from the Church of Ireland’s; they were in his head and he didn’t dislike them being there. As the organist began ‘Silent Night’ everyone stood. It was a carol he had always known in German, ever since he could remember Christmas. That was how his grandmother had taught him to sing it; the German words belonged to it. He sang it now in German, quietly, but he sang nevertheless.

  The one Christmas card that still came from Germany, from his mother’s cousin, Alice, had found its way to Kilranelagh as usual. This year the news was that two of Stefan’s cousins were in the army. But Tante Alice’s card was a surprise; no swastikas, no flags, no red and black, but a traditional Nativity scene. It wished them all a ‘Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr’, and underneath, in shaky English, ‘Pliess God’. Kate could hear Stefan’s voice as he sang, ‘Schlaf in himmlisher Ruh’, ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’. Though he sang softly she could sense that the carol meant more to him than to anyone else at Talbotstown. She took his hand.

  Outside the church below Keadeen Mountain, the congregation dispersed at a leisurely pace. Stefan, Kate and Tom set off along the road to Kilranelagh. When they reached the turn for the graveyard, Kate carried on to the farm, to try to help Helena with the dinner. She needed a reason to go back alone. The visit to Maeve’s grave was for Stefan and Tom. She moved down the hill to the turning for the farm as they walked to the graveyard.

  ‘No ghosts today, I’d say.’

  ‘It wasn’t a ghost, Daddy!’ was the ‘don’t be silly’ reply.

  ‘Was he after the pigs?’ laughed Stefan.

  ‘At least we found them. I told Opa we would.’

  ‘You did so.’

  ‘And we’d have got them back. It wasn’t our fault.’

  ‘What, leaving the gate open or dropping the bucket?’

  ‘Opa said you were always after leaving gates open!’

  There was little German left at the farm now, though Stefan and his mother spoke it sometimes, but Oma and Opa, Grandma and Grandpa, had stuck. Stefan liked it; it was Maeve who had decided they would be the words used at Kilranelagh, before Tom even had a word for anything.

  They walked on, laughing, then growing quieter as they came close to Maeve’s grave. Tom bowed his head and clasped his hands, praying as pictures in prayer books had taught him. As Stefan looked down he saw the lily immediately, next to the spray of holly from the farm. The holly had been there a week; it was wilting, but the white flower had barely been touched by that morning’s frost. He bent and picked it up. It hadn’t been there for more than a day. His instincts had been right the night before.

  Lilies had appeared on the grave for years now, the s
ame white arum lilies with their deep green stems, always only one. They appeared at different times. Often he found them rotten and slimy by the headstone. As mysteries went it wasn’t much of a mystery. But the invisibility of someone who for years seemed to lay claim to a peculiar intimacy unsettled Stefan.

  Tom opened his eyes and looked up.

  ‘It’s another one of those flowers.’

  For Tom the flowers were just something that happened.

  ‘This feller last night, where was he?’ asked Stefan.

  ‘I don’t know, I suppose . . .’

  Tom looked round with little interest, full of too many other things. He pointed at a fallen stone and the dip beyond where Rebecca tripped, where the dark figure had risen up. For Tom there was no connection to the flower but for his father it was unavoidable. The man had been hiding, hiding from two children. It was impossible he hadn’t brought the lily. Stefan had no idea what the flowers meant. But he knew something now; the man who had brought them – he had always assumed a man – was no longer invisible.

  The puzzle that couldn’t be solved was shunted aside. The farmhouse was livelier and noisier than it had been for many Christmases. Neither Stefan nor his father obeyed Helena’s puritanical restrictions on alcohol, and since Kate was keeping up with them anyway, Helena decided that being hung for a sheep was the best option. The piano had been played more than in many years. They had all sung. Helena had swept the board at Monopoly. Now she was in the kitchen with Kate and Tom, who had almost completed the red and green Meccano crane begun on Christmas Eve. Stefan had taken tea in to his father in the sitting room, but when Kate looked in to see what he was up to he was in an armchair by the fire, like his father fast asleep.

  It was ten o’clock when the phone rang. Helena answered it and went to fetch Stefan.

  He came out from the sitting room, still yawning.

  ‘I didn’t tell him you were asleep,’ hissed his mother.

  He nodded, taking the phone from her. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You weren’t asleep then,’ said Superintendent Gregory.

  ‘I might have dozed off.’

  ‘Stefan!’ Helena glared and went back into the kitchen.

  ‘Christmas is over, Inspector. Dessie will be driving down in the morning. You go straight to Laragh and find Chief Inspector Halloran. He will have a message from the commissioner to say you’re coming. He’ll be very pissed off. But then that’s what you’re there for. To piss him off.’

  ‘That’s what I’m where for?’

  ‘You know about the Missing Postman, William Byrne?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dessie will give you the guts of it tomorrow. Your man disappeared Christmas Eve. The assumption is he’s dead, and not because he fell off his bike. Ned Broy thinks something smells about it. At the Irish Times they already think the smell is coming from the Guards over there. Pat Halloran is on it, but he’s a Wicklow man. If it turns into murder the commissioner wants to make sure Bray CID aren’t shovelling shite for their friends in Laragh.’

  ‘That’s grand, sir. I’ll be made very welcome so.’

  Terry Gregory didn’t laugh, but Stefan could almost see the grin.

  ‘But you’re a Wicklow man yourself! Just don’t turn your back.’

  The next day was Stephen’s Day. Sergeant MacMahon arrived in the black Austin. They took Kate to the station for the early train. The day with her parents wasn’t going to happen. Christmas was over. It had been too short.

  Dessie and Stefan drove into the mountains in a grubby mist that thickened as they climbed. Dessie had little to add to the story of William Byrne, except that the only thing Chief Inspector Halloran had ruled out was the fairies taking him, and that might have to be considered if no other explanation was forthcoming. Dessie wasn’t happy about being dragged out of Dublin. A bit of countryside went a long way. He had seen more than enough hunting for arms in the bogs of Kildare. The climb up into the mountains on the Military Road behind Baltinglass left him unmoved.

  It wasn’t a journey Stefan relished either. Seven years on from Maeve’s death in the Upper Lake at Glendalough, he didn’t avoid the Valley of the Seven Churches, but he wouldn’t go there by choice. Work had taken him into the mountains sometimes, when he was stationed in Baltinglass, though rarely as far as Laragh and Glendalough. In seven years he had never taken the road out of Laragh to the Seven Churches and the lakes. He hadn’t thought about it that way before, but he did as the car crossed the Avonmore River into Laragh and stopped at the Garda Barracks.

  A Garda sergeant lounged at the desk smoking a cigarette. A group of men stood in front of a map on the wall while a uniformed inspector pointed at the dense contours that marked the mountains. The countryside was being searched and the search was on a scale the barren landscape demanded. This was another search party setting off. Stefan walked up to the desk.

  ‘Detective Inspector Gillespie, Sergeant MacMahon.’

  ‘You’re the Special Branch fellers so.’

  ‘Do you know where Chief Inspector Halloran is?’

  ‘You think the IRA had him then?’ said the sergeant, grinning.

  ‘It’s “You think the IRA had him then, sir.”’

  He said it quietly, but his smile held the sergeant’s gaze.

  ‘I don’t know where Mr Halloran is, sir, but Inspector Grace—’

  ‘Take your fag out of your mouth and find him then.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is Sergeant Chisholm here?’

  The desk sergeant looked uncertain.

  ‘In the mess room, sir. I don’t know if you should talk to him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t ask him anything I shouldn’t.’

  The sergeant hurried outside. Stefan walked through a door into a corridor. Dessie followed him. Across the hall was the station mess room. Stefan stood in the open door. Three men were there. Two uniformed Guards played draughts. A uniformed sergeant was reading the Irish Times.

  ‘Not out scouring the mountainsides today, George?’

  Sergeant Chisholm was in his mid-fifties. His uniform was neat; his moustache was neat; his dyed hair was neatly plastered with Brylcreem.

  ‘You should remember me. Inspector Gillespie.’

  ‘Baltinglass. Last time I saw you it was Sergeant Gillespie.’

  ‘Dublin Castle now.’

  ‘Ah, the Branch. Halloran will be pleased.’

  ‘So what have you been up to, George?’

  ‘Ask the Chief Inspector, Mr Gillespie, he’s the detective.’

  ‘And here comes Laurel!’ Dessie spoke quietly.

  A tall, thin, angular figure was standing behind them. Detective Inspector Grace looked from Stefan to Dessie with ill-disguised irritation.

  ‘I know MacMahon. And you are?’

  ‘Stefan Gillespie.’

  ‘Fintan Grace. Chief Inspector Halloran said he’d catch you when he can. You may make yourself useful in a search party. We need anyone we can get. We’re up beyond St Kevin’s Road now, working up from the lake.’

  Stefan looked at Dessie. ‘You see what’s going on there, Sergeant.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘It’ll do you good, Dessie, and you might even find something.’

  Dessie gave a shrug of resignation and walked out.

  ‘I think I’ll just have a look around, if that’s all right, Fintan.’

  ‘The chief inspector said you’re to join the search.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I know my way about. I won’t go missing too.’

  Stefan left. For a moment Fintan Grace looked at a loss. His instructions were to keep the Branch out of the way. Inspector Grace always did what he was told; he assumed everyone else did the same. Bitter experience hadn’t knocked it out of him. Pat Halloran would be pissed off. He looked up to see Sergeant Chisholm grinning at him happily from the mess room.

  ‘There’s a man who knows a bollix when he sees one . . . sir.’

  He st
ood at the east end of the Upper Lake, looking out at the water and the fold in the mountains beyond, where the Glenealo River flowed into the lake. He knew he would have to come here at some point, where he and Maeve had pitched their tent, where they spent their last night, their son sleeping between them. Along the shore was where Maeve’s body was pulled from the water. Nothing was very different. It was a still day; the mist had gone.

  For a while there was only the silence of the past. It was a long time since it felt so close. Its proximity wasn’t hard but he was unused to it. Some of the things he had left behind, that he thought were quietly put away, were not as neatly divided from what he had chosen to keep and cherish as he believed. A death had brought him to Glendalough; it could not but open closed doors. Perhaps he had left coming here too long. It was less than a year ago that Tom had asked to come. He knew where his mother had died; it was a place in his head he needed to come to terms with as he grew older. But when he tried to speak to his father about it, Stefan had avoided the conversation more firmly than he realized. There had been nothing unkind in what he said, but even now, questioning how he had dealt with the past, he didn’t ask himself if he had helped his son cope with it.

  There was traffic on the road he had walked along; the noise of feet, the sound of voices. It pulled him back into the present. That was where he needed to be. He took his binoculars and swept the slopes of the Vale of Glendalough. He saw the line of searchers working through heather and gorse above the treeline; Dessie would be there now.

  If the Missing Postman had wandered up St Kevin’s Road into the mountains, drunk in the darkness, as one explanation had it, there was a point in this. Leaving the Garda Barracks Stefan had seen the enthusiasm for the search. From Glendalough and Laragh and down the valley in Rathdrum, there were people everywhere, coming to join the search parties; Guards, detectives, farmers, men, women, even children, all committed to finding William Byrne. Yet he had already heard that what was facing Chief Inspector Halloran, up and down the valley, was a lack of information that felt like bloody-minded obstruction.