The City of Strangers. Michael Russell

overcoat that was too small for him, a brown trilby that was too big. The smile on his face was temporary; it would change to a sneer shortly. But the smile, like the imminent sneer, advertised displeasure.

      Behind him stood two detectives in belted raincoats and hats, like leftovers from an IRA demob sale. They were there because Special Branch superintendents never travelled alone. It would not be their job to speak.

      ‘So, you’ve been specially asked for by Mr Mac Liammóir?’

      ‘It seems that way, sir.’

      ‘Close to him are you?’

      ‘I’ve met him.’

      ‘You’d be well advised to guard your backs with this one, lads.’

      The two detectives laughed; that was one of their jobs.

      ‘Still, you’re down in Wicklow with the mountainy men and the sheep shaggers, so maybe you’ll be just the man to take our Mr Harris in hand. So what’s it about, Sergeant Gillespie? That’s what I’d like to know. What are you doing here, and why the fuck is Ned Broy sending you to New York? You’re only a culchie station sergeant who couldn’t make it as a detective.’

      ‘I’m here because I’ve been told to be here, sir.’

      ‘And I’ve told Ned Broy what I think about it.’

      ‘He did say something about that.’

      ‘I see, you think you’re a clever fucker as well, do you?’

      Stefan said nothing. Gregory turned to Dessie.

      ‘And what the hell are you doing?’

      ‘Nothing, sir,’ replied Detective Sergeant MacMahon.

      ‘No, nothing is what I told you to do, Dessie, but what you’ve been doing is taking our farmer’s boy on a scene-of-crime tour, as if he’s got something to do with this investigation.’

      He swung round to Stefan again; any trace of a smile was gone now.

      ‘I don’t like people interfering with what I do. I don’t care if they come from Garda HQ or the Taoiseach’s office, it pisses me off. Now they’re coming from the poofs’ paradise at the fucking Gate Theatre. I’m stuck with you because Ned Broy hasn’t got the balls to tell the politicians where to put it. So this is what you do, Stevie boy. You get the plane, you look out the window with your eyes agog, and you go to New York. You get back on the plane with Harris and sit next to him until you get off at Foynes next week. I’ll be there, and when you’ve handed him over to me, you get the next train back to Baltinglass. In between you don’t ask him anything, you don’t talk about what happened, about Mrs Harris’s death, about how he killed her, what he did with the body, where he went, who he saw, who he spoke to. You do nothing that could fuck this up. You’re the courier and he’s the parcel. Is that clear enough?’

      ‘I’d say so. But what do I do about him talking to me?’

      Superintendent Gregory had given Sergeant Gillespie his orders. He wasn’t asking to have a conversation about it. ‘You tell him to shut up too.’

      ‘What about the Gate?’ asked Stefan quietly but insistently.

      ‘Would you like me to write it down, Sergeant?’

      ‘He’s got friends there. He’s been with them since the day after the murder. He’s been shut in a hotel room with some of them since he agreed to come back to Ireland. Wouldn’t you want to know what he’s been saying?’

      ‘I’m sorry, Stevie, I didn’t realise Ned told you to take over.’

      ‘It’s a simple question, sir.’ Stefan allowed his irritation to show.

      Terry Gregory walked forward until he was only inches from him. For the first time he spoke very quietly. The whiskey was strong on his breath.

      ‘You might not have much of a job down there, Sergeant, but if you screw this up, you’ll be sitting on an island off the Atlantic till the day you draw your pension. Nobody wants to know what you think. Now fuck off.’

      He spun round and strode rapidly across the grass. The Special Branch detectives followed him. There was only the sound of the sea breaking slowly, rhythmically on the rocks below. Dessie MacMahon too started back towards the house.

      Stefan was still for a moment. It was a peaceful place. The thought of what had happened barely a week ago seemed to collide in his mind with the image of a small boy playing in the garden, running down to the sea. He looked at the boarded-up French windows and remembered a photograph on the bloodstained wall at Herbert Place. He had barely noticed it, yet it had stayed in his head; a boy, freckled, in shorts and a white shirt and sandals, smiling by the same big windows, wide open then, pulling a wooden cart full of sand.

      Stefan heard the buzz of the plane, searching for any signs of Leticia Harris’s body. He turned and walked on after Dessie.

      *

      It was just starting to get dark as Stefan Gillespie walked through the fields on the western side of the farm at Kilranelagh, across the Moat Field towards the woods that abruptly fell down the steep escarpment on the far side of the townland. The sheep were thick-coated and filthy with the winter’s rain; the grass was bare and poached, still waiting for the spring flush to show. He noted a ewe hobbling painfully, another down on her knees trying to find some grass worth eating. He had meant to help his father with the foot rot at the weekend; he wouldn’t be here.

      He could hear the sound of children’s voices, and he altered his course down the slope towards the high mound that sat just beyond the corner of the field, a cluster of trees rising out of the woods, higher than everything else around it, looking down at the narrow gash of rock and earth and scrappy hazel woodland that was the steep-sided valley they called Moatamoy, after the mound itself.

      It was no more than a smooth, round hillock, with a flat top full of twisted trees and brambles and ivy. Eight hundred years ago the top had been surrounded by a wooden palisade. A Norman village of grass-roofed, wattle-and-daub-and-stone houses had clustered at the corner of the field below it, indistinguishable from the grass-roofed, wattle-and-daub-and-stone houses of the Celts the palisaded motte was there to protect its inhabitants from. The Anglo-Normans who had lived here had sometimes fought the people around them, sometimes traded with them, sometimes killed them, sometimes married them, until eventually they had been absorbed into their surroundings so completely that they became, in the words that would always define them, níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil iad féin, more Irish than the Irish.

      Now the sheep grazed where the village had been, but the motte was still a castle, at least in the minds of the children who played there.

      Stefan could pick out the voices as he climbed over the wire fence into the ditch that surrounded the motte. Tom’s first of all, shrill and enthusiastic and, it couldn’t be denied, with more than a hint of bossiness about it when the game was his game. He could hear the voices of the Lessingham children, Alexander who was seven, Jane who was ten, and the voice of the Lawlors’ son, Harry. Stefan started up the slope of the mound and found himself grabbed forcefully from behind; an arm was round his neck, holding him.

      ‘Surrender!’ The words hissed into his ear.

      ‘I surrender! Just don’t choke me!’

      As the arm released him he turned, coughing and spluttering, to see a woman laughing at him.

      ‘Be quiet,’ she whispered, ‘and we’ll see if we can creep up on them.’

      He nodded and smiled. He was used to it. For a moment the woman looked at him, and he looked at her. They were standing very close among the trees. He bent forward and kissed her lips. It was fond rather than passionate, but its familiarity told a deeper story.

      At thirty-four Valerie Lessingham was a year older than Stefan. She lived with her children in the big house across the valley from the Kilranelagh farm. Her husband, Simon Lessingham, was an officer in the British