THIRTY-FOUR

‘I suppose the mystery of my father’s death was one of the reasons I became a journalist,’ said Moira Henchy. ‘You always hope you can get to the bottom of a story, though you seldom do. I’ve prayed that one day I may get to the bottom of his. I can only remember him as this remote, awkward, shadowy figure, standing in the doorway of our cottage in Cork, or at the front gate, looking towards me. Never inside, never at home. Always … leaving.

‘My mother told me he was dead, of course, but years passed before she admitted he’d been murdered. She didn’t know – or want to know – why. It was the kind of scandalous end she’d expected of him. Probably related to unpaid gambling debts. I was determined to find out as much as I could, so I looked up the newspaper reports of how it had happened.

‘At Seapoint railway station, south of Dublin, at about seven twenty on the evening of Friday the fifth of July, 1940, my father, Lorcan Parnell Henchy, was shot dead by a man leaning in through the doorway of the train he was on. Witnesses disagreed about whether the killer had just got off the train or was waiting for it to arrive. He tried to shoot another man, who was apparently travelling with my father, but missed. I’m certain that man was your uncle Eldritch Swan, who struck the killer with his bag, causing him to fall and become trapped between the platform edge and the train as it started moving. The main artery in his leg was severed before the train came to a halt and he bled to death at the scene. He was never identified.

‘Eldritch had vanished by the time the police and ambulance arrived. No one had noticed him leave the station amidst the general confusion. The gun had also vanished. I assume he took it. He had good reason to be in fear of his life, after all.’

‘How can you be sure it was him?’ I asked, though I didn’t for a moment doubt it.

‘My chance to make further enquiries came when I moved to Dublin as a student. I checked the last address we had for my father: thirty-one Merrion Street. Mrs Kilfeather, the old lady who owned the house, told me he’d moved out of his flat a couple of weeks before his death. She also mentioned that the new tenant, an English elocution teacher called Eldritch Swan, had been arrested there the day after my father’s murder. Oddly, she didn’t know why. “But he must have been up to no good” was how she put it. I couldn’t find anything in the papers about this man, Swan, but there was a court record of his trial later that month on charges under the Offences Against the State Act. It was held in camera and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, that was altogether strange. The Offences Against the State Act was designed for use against the IRA. They always acknowledge their own. But they clearly knew nothing about Eldritch Swan. Neither did anyone else.

‘I didn’t have much to go on. In my father’s pocket the police found a single ticket from Blackrock, the station before Seapoint, to Dun Laoghaire, but he had a large bag with him, containing most of his worldly possessions, including his passport, which suggested he was planning to go far further than Dun Laoghaire. England would be my guess, with or without Eldritch. Both men were supposed to be killed, but one got away, only to be arrested the following day. Why? What had they done? What did they know?

‘I worked as a reporter for the local paper in Cork after university and it wasn’t until I got a job in Dublin a few years later that I was able to go back into the case. I cajoled the Justice Department into telling me which prison Eldritch was being held in: Portlaoise. I applied for permission to visit him. It was refused. I went to see the barrister listed as representing him at his trial. He’d retired and refused to speak to me. But his office suggested I contact the solicitor who’d brought the case to them: Ardal Quilligan. He wouldn’t tell me anything either. He claimed the police had never divulged to him exactly what Eldritch was supposed to have done.

‘Then my editor called me in and said he’d been officially warned off by the Justice Department. He wasn’t best pleased, since he didn’t have a clue what I’d been doing. I agreed to drop it. I didn’t, of course, not completely. But there wasn’t much more I could do anyway. I found out Ardal Quilligan’s brother, Desmond, had been an IRA activist, but he’d renounced the struggle and been released from internment in July 1940. There it was: that month again. I tried to track Desmond down in London. But he was dead by then. It was all tied together somehow. I knew it was. I just couldn’t see how.

‘Eventually, earlier this year, Eldritch was released. I only found out after the event. It was as unpublicized as his original imprisonment. I couldn’t establish where he’d gone. I was actually planning to call in on you and your mother in Paignton when I caught the news that Ardal Quilligan had been murdered in Ostend. I knew it had to be the break I was waiting for, although nothing the police said at this afternoon’s press conference told me anything about Eldritch. I suppose I’m relying on you to do that, Stephen.’

I told her as much as I could then: about the Quilligans and the Cardales and the Linleys; the forgery, the lawsuit, my efforts, along with Eldritch and Rachel, to prove her family had been cheated – and how those efforts had ended in disaster. What I didn’t mention was that if I found such proof now I’d help suppress it to win Rachel’s freedom. Nor could I solve for Moira the mystery of why her father had been killed and Eldritch incarcerated thirty-six long years ago.

‘Who can solve that mystery, Stephen?’ she asked when I’d finished.

‘Eldritch. And his old schoolmate, Sir Miles Linley.’

‘Who was using the flat in Merrion Street as a love nest.’

‘Supposedly. But that doesn’t quite fit with Eldritch being arrested there, does it?’

‘No. In fact, it sounds like a cover story.’

‘Cover for what?’

‘The secret I’ve been trying to gouge out of the solid stone wall they put up round this case thirty-six years ago.’

‘And who are they?’

‘Linley’s Secret Service friends and their Irish equivalents. I have a few contacts in the Dublin Government. Someone in my line of work has to. I tapped them for information after I learnt Eldritch had been released. They made it clear to me – very clear – that I should leave the story alone. There was a, quote, “security” dimension to it, whatever that meant in the context of something that took place so long ago. Of course, the IRA haven’t gone away in all those years. Quite the reverse. So, do they have something to do with it? I couldn’t persuade anyone to do more than frown enigmatically at me and change the subject. The one thing – the only thing – I got was almost a throwaway remark. “They’d never have let him go while Dev was living.”’

‘When did de Valéra die?’

‘Last August, two years after stepping down from the Presidency. And within months Eldritch was out.’

‘Does that imply de Valéra would have blocked his release, or simply been offended by it?’

‘I don’t know. But it certainly implies he knew what Eldritch was in for and wasn’t likely to have forgotten. Though, to be fair, Dev had a famously long memory and an old-school attitude to crime and punishment. Perhaps Eldritch is lucky he wasn’t hanged. A good few IRA prisoners were executed during the Second World War at Dev’s say-so.’

‘Whatever Eldritch was up to in July 1940, Moira, I can guarantee he wasn’t aiding and abetting the IRA.’

‘No. Of course not. But he was up to something, wasn’t he? Something big. Something it’s still very dangerous to know the truth about.’

‘Perhaps you should heed those warnings, then.’

‘Perhaps you should too.’

‘I can’t.’

‘No, well …’ Moira stubbed out her cigarette forcefully. ‘We have that in common, Stephen.’ Then she lit another.

‘Eldritch mentioned Linley was nursemaiding a government minister from London when they met in Dublin.’

Moira nodded. ‘That would have been Malcolm MacDonald, sent over by Churchill to have a go at persuading Dev to take Éire into the war. He’s supposed to have offered Irish unity in return, though how Northern Ireland was to be forced down that road never became clear, because, after a lot of humming and hawing, Dev rejected the offer. Maybe he regretted turning it down when the current Troubles broke out. More likely not, though. He wasn’t a man prone to regrets.’

‘Could that be the “something big”?’

‘I don’t see how. It’s not a secret. And what Eldritch was caught up in definitely is – to this day. It seems to me you badly need to find him.’

‘I know.’

‘Any clues?’

‘None, at the moment. I’m hoping he’ll come to me.’

‘Well, if he does, tell him I can get his story into the public domain – anonymously and lucratively. That must be what he wants: the truth, on the record. It’s certainly what I want. And I think he owes my father that much.’

I doubted if Eldritch felt he owed the late Lorcan Henchy anything. Thirty-six years in prison didn’t leave much room for moral niceties. I assured Moira I’d put her offer to him if I got the chance, but I had no real intention of doing so. If Eldritch had the proof Ardal Quilligan had been carrying, I needed to persuade him to let me hand it over to Tate and bury his doubtless highly marketable story in the process. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done. If I got the chance.

*

I took another futile prowl round the diamond district before returning to van Briel’s house. He wasn’t there. I cut myself a sandwich and sat in the kitchen, glumly munching through it. I was weary with the effort of trying to devise a way out of the difficulties that confronted Rachel and me. And knowing the agonies of uncertainty she must be going through didn’t make my thinking any clearer.

Van Briel seemed similarly at a loss when he got in. He’d taken Lasiyah out for dinner and a film and I sensed, in his tone and manner, a growing exasperation with my invasion of his life, maybe stoked by complaints from Lasiyah.

‘I’ve pulled clients out of all sorts of trouble, Stephen, but trouble isn’t a big enough word to describe your situation. You need to find that uncle of yours. You need to find him fast.’

‘Any suggestions how I go about that?’

He seized his hair in both hands and tugged at it, then dolefully shook his head. ‘Not one. Except …’

‘What?’

‘Get some sleep. Problems always look smaller in the morning.’

This one didn’t. Anything but. And van Briel gave a poor impression of believing it did himself. ‘I’m sorry, Stephen,’ he said as we consumed a liquid breakfast. ‘Today could be tough.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mrs Banner flies in around now. I’ll have to tell her how things are for Rachel. She’ll probably want you to explain how you got her daughter in this mess. I would if I was her. Then there’s Lady Linley. She won’t be exactly happy either.’

‘I’m not bothered about making Isolde Linley happy, Bart. I have as many questions for her as she has for me.’

‘You see? This is what worries me. You’ve got to be … careful. She might bring a lawyer with her. You know, one almost as smart as me. Actually, the less you say, the better it’ll be for you.’ He sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, this is how we’ll play it, right? I’ll go to the office. You wait here. I’ll call you when I know how we’re going to set up these meetings.’

‘I don’t like the sound of just sitting by the phone, waiting to be summoned.’

‘Maybe not. But you have to—’ Van Briel broke off, frowning at the bing-bong of the doorbell downstairs. ‘It’s too early for the postman. Hold on.’ He went into the lounge and looked out of the window. ‘Goddank. It’s not the police. I thought maybe … Leysen had come for you.’

‘Who is it, then?’ I asked, following him to the window.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.’

But I had.

Marie-Louise was anxious and confused. She kept apologizing for calling at such an hour. It took a cup of van Briel’s potent coffee, laced with brandy, to untangle her meaning. Joey, it appeared, had vamoosed.

‘Madame Banner will be here soon. What do I say to her? I got up early because I heard him moving around. But he was already in the hall, with that army kitbag of his packed, ready to leave, when I went down. “I’ve hung around Antwerp long enough,” he said. “Time I was rolling.” What does that mean – rolling? “What about your mother?” I said. “Tell her I’ll be back someday.” Some day? Mon Dieu! She will say I should have stopped him. But I couldn’t do anything. He gave me a hug, told me to … look after myself, then … he walked out.’

‘Which way did he go?’ asked van Briel.

‘Towards Berchem station.’

‘I guess that figures. More connections than Centraal. His destination could be … anywhere in Europe.’ He shrugged. ‘Or beyond.’

‘How did he seem last night?’ I asked.

‘I did not see him. He came in very late. That is why I came, Stephen. I wanted to ask if you spoke to him yesterday. You said you were going to the Zoo … to try to find him.’

‘I found him all right. But he didn’t say anything of any consequence – certainly nothing about going away.’ But at that moment I remembered he might have done – just not to me. I went to my coat and took out his postcard. This time, I would read it to the end.

Antwerp March 29 1976 Dear Sis You’ve asked me more than one time why I like to compose these messages to you in one sentence and I wonder if you’ve guessed it’s because I have a mortal fear of full stops on account of all the rude interruptions I witnessed in Nam that pretty soon revealed themselves as sudden terminations and also because I neurotically suppose that if I don’t pause for breath you won’t either and that way we’ll get to talk the only way I feel I can which is right out and right on for a dare even when there’s nothing much to tell you which is pretty much all the time in my cotton-wooled exile of a life here and which I’d have staked all the little I have on being as true of yesterday as all the days before days before yesterday but actually isn’t on account of a rare caller at our sunburst-paneled door who was a stranger to me but maybe isn’t to you and a stranger with a mission to boot that he was set on with a kind of guttering candle desperation and for the sake of that desperation if nothing else because it reminded me so of other desperations I’ve witnessed or experienced and wished oh wished hadn’t been futile but were I’ll tell you that he said he’d left something you’d want over Cheng-Sheng in that place we’ve been to the namesake of in NJ before I light out for a while guaranteeing my next card will at long long last come from some place else though always with my love Bro

‘What do you think all that’s supposed to mean, Stephen?’ asked van Briel, when the three of us had read it through.

‘Eldritch doesn’t have the proof. Ardal dropped it off somewhere along the way. He must have realized the danger he was in, so he put it in a safe place and asked Joey to tell Rachel where that was in the event of his death.’

‘Why don’t you go get it, then?’

I glared at him. ‘Because I can’t understand the message.’

‘That’s no problem.’ He winked. ‘I can.’

‘How?’

‘Local knowledge. “That place we’ve been to the namesake of in NJ” must be Hoboken, New Jersey, named after Hoboken, suburb of Antwerp.’ Suddenly enthused, he grabbed the Antwerp phone book from amongst a stack of papers and began a search through its pages that ended in a whoop of triumph. ‘Cheng-Sheng is a Chinese restaurant in Hoboken. Let’s go.’