A June of Ordinary Murders Read online

  Swallow concentrated on the two bodies, trying to study the features. Father and son, perhaps? The destruction of the faces made it difficult to measure likeness.

  ‘What time were they found?’

  ‘The park-keeper turned up at the police station in Chapelizod about 5.30 or so. They sent for the priest and they telegraphed to the Commissioner’s office at Dublin Castle. The message was relayed on to me at Kilmainham. I sent one of my lads to notify the G Division.’

  The police chain of communication was slow and cumbersome. The Dublin Metropolitan Police area stretched well beyond the city proper, encompassing the great space of the Phoenix Park and many of the villages and hamlets on its periphery. Nearly all of the big DMP stations were linked by a communications system known as the ABC Telegraph. Only a few of the larger stations were connected to the new telephone system that was in the early stages of installation across the city.

  Outside of the Metropolitan District, policing was the responsibility of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Arguably the most effective communications link between the two forces was the fact that their respective headquarters’ offices were located in proximity to each other in the Lower Yard at Dublin Castle.

  ‘Do we know any reason why the park-keeper was out so early?’

  Doolan shrugged. ‘He says he was watching for a couple of stray dogs that’ve been giving trouble. We haven’t any report of that but we can check it. He might have been planning on bringing home a few rabbits or even a deer. He wouldn’t usually start work until 8 o’clock.’

  Swallow cursed silently. Close on two hours had been lost, part of which he had spent in the detective office at Exchange Court, shuffling useless paperwork to bring him to the end of his night shift. It was time that might have seen the disappearance of valuable clues, or enabled a perpetrator to get far away from the scene of the crime.

  With more than 20 years in plain clothes, Swallow was one of the G Division’s most experienced serious crime investigators. There had scarcely been a murder or suspicious death in the city during the past decade to which he had not been assigned. That the Dublin Metropolitan Police had been able to claim the highest rate of crime detection of any urban area in Britain and Ireland was in some considerable part attributable to the skills of Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow.

  When three of the ‘Invincibles’ went to the gallows for the murders of Lord Cavendish and Mr Burke, Swallow got a commendation. His boss, the legendary Detective Superintendent John Mallon, had been promoted. Some of Swallow’s colleagues told him that he should have done better out of the case himself, maybe with promotion to inspector. Swallow thought so too. In fact he was bloody sure of it. He had seen others promoted having achieved much less. It was not easy to avoid feeling bitter.

  And he could have done without this situation, he told himself. He had got through his week of night duty without a major crime being reported. A couple of years ago that would have been a disappointment. He would have relished the thrill of a new case, the challenge of the unknown, the satisfaction of putting the pieces of a puzzle together to see it emerge finally as a coherent picture.

  This time he had been looking forward to his two leave-days. He would have slept late in the mornings and then maybe spent the warm June afternoons with his board and colours, painting at Sandycove Harbour or by the rocks at Scotsman’s Bay, behind Kingstown. He liked seascapes for the way they constantly changed, even as he worked. It meant that nobody could say he had got the wrong colour in the sky or that he had exaggerated the height of the waves.

  For as long as he could remember he had been a sketcher, scratching away with a pencil stump as a boy, drawing dogs or birds or the outline of a hill or the detail of a building. In the budding stages of his romantic involvement with Maria Walsh, she had introduced him to her younger sister, Lily Grant, who was a teacher of art at Alexandra College. She encouraged him to experiment with watercolours and offered to guide him in his early efforts. He still liked to sketch, but there was something especially pleasurable in working the colour washes in and around the pencil outlines.

  Even his immediate plan for the day was forfeit now. He had arranged to collect his sister at the college in Blackrock in the afternoon, when her examination would be finished. They would walk the length of the sea road to Kingstown and she would tell him about the examination paper in the morning and how she had got on.

  Then he would take her to afternoon tea at Mr Gresham’s Marine Hotel, looking down over the harbour, busy with yachts and ships and with passengers getting on and off the mail packets.

  Swallow took his role as an older brother seriously. Harriet had hardly known her father. After he died, her brother had filled much of the void in her childhood world. He was her security, her counsellor and her confidant.

  When she had been offered a place at teacher training college a year ago it had signalled a problem. It meant she would leave her mother to operate the public house and grocery store at Newcroft. Running the business was a hard task for a widow, dependent on hired help.

  An obvious solution might be for Swallow to go home to run the place. After more than 20 years’ service with the police he was eligible for a decent pension. A detective sergeant’s pay was more than adequate for a single man. He had made some modest investments and savings too: a few shares in the tram companies and the new Dublin gas company, and a small accumulation of cash in a savings account in a Dame Street bank.

  There was the complication of his relationship with Maria Walsh. He was a single man. She was an attractive widow with her well-established public house that she had inherited from her family in Thomas Street, just 15 minutes’ walk from the Castle. There was the age gap between them. He was fit and strong for his 42 years. She was looking at 30. Without planning it, their lives had become enmeshed.

  But Swallow was not of a mind to abandon the life to which he had become accustomed in order to return to rural Kildare or even to become Maria Walsh’s partner in running her business. At least it was not what he wanted to do just yet.

  It was important to be in Dublin while Harriet was in training college. She needed his guidance as she came to know the world. Increasingly, he worried about what was in her head concerning politics. She had begun to mention too often, he thought, what she referred to as ‘Ireland’s distress.’

  When he encountered his sister recently in a café in Westmoreland Street with a young man, Harriet introduced her brother using an Irish language form of his name – Seosamh.

  Swallow did not conceal his irritation. ‘You’re going to confuse people,’ he told her sharply. ‘If I change the name I was given at birth I’ll let you know.’

  Harriet introduced the young man as Mr O’Donnell. He was ‘Seamus’ but if Swallow preferred he could call him ‘James,’ she added.

  Within a few minutes of opening the conversation, O’Donnell had used the same phrase that she had used about Ireland’s distress, but it was with an undertone of aggression that rang a warning bell in Swallow’s policeman’s head. When they parted, he scribbled the name ‘James O’Donnell’ in his notebook.

  In Swallow’s experience, Ireland’s distress was too often invoked as a cover for what was simply crime. Violence, misappropriation of funds, even murder could be presented under the guise of patriotism. It was not that he doubted the sincerity of some of the politicals, as they were referred to in police parlance. Many of them were honourable people, he acknowledged. But good causes could also be exploited.

  His boss, John Mallon, had a saying: ‘you can buy a lot of patriotism in Dublin for a fiver.’ The veteran detective had made quite a few such purchases in building up his intelligence network over the years.

  Lately, Swallow noticed, Harriet had begun to disparage the various celebrations that were being planned to take place around the city to mark the Golden Jubilee of Victoria’s ascent to the throne.

  1887 was to be a year of self-congratulation for the Empire upon which it was proclaimed the sun would never set. But conditions in Ireland were not conducive to celebration.

  The ‘land war’ continued to rage across the country as smallholders fought to free themselves from crippling rents. The Dublin Castle authorities, under the direction of a new and tough Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour, responded with draconian crime legislation, additional powers for the police and additional prison spaces for those who demanded reform. Irish nationalists argued that there was nothing for their country to celebrate. There were urgings to boycott or disrupt public events.

  But there would be no visit to Kingstown and no afternoon tea with his sister at Mr Gresham’s Marine Hotel today. The bodies of the man and child on the ground between the beech trees had put paid to that.

  Doolan removed his helmet and wiped his forehead with his uniform sleeve.

  ‘How long do you think they’re dead?’

  ‘Just a few hours, I’d say. The man’s still in rigor mortis. That usually begins after about three hours. He died sometime last night, maybe in the early hours of this morning.’

  ‘Christ, I’ve seen a lot over the years – as you have. But a father and child butchered like that…’ Doolan said.

  ‘You’d say they’re father and son?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘Well, it’s a guess. But they could be. I don’t see anything indicating a struggle,’ Doolan said hurriedly, moving from speculation to more certain ground. ‘But nobody here would have seen anything in the night or even heard shots. The lodge at the gate isn’t occupied any longer. Maybe they were killed somewhere else?’

  Swallow shook his head.

  ‘I think they died here. You can see the lividity there in the hands and the arms where the blood gathers. The bodies weren’t moved after death.’

  He pointed to the ground. ‘If you look on the moss and grass around the two of them there, you’ll see that there are small bloodstains. They’re in a pattern around the head and shoulders on the ground as well as on his clothes. They bled here. They died here.’

  Doolan shrugged. ‘I suppose you’re paid more than I am to know about these things. What do you want done now?’

  ‘We need to get a message down to Doctor Lafeyre at Harcourt Street. Tell him he’s needed up here. We need to get the photographic technician too. You’ll have to clear that with the Commissioner’s office. I want photographs here before the bodies are moved.’

  Swallow stepped back from the bodies to the edge of the copse. It was still cool and dark in the trees, and he winced slightly as the strengthening morning sun hit his eyes.

  Everything he had seen so far boded badly.

  This was not going to be a routine inquiry. It was not the result of a drunken brawl or a random criminal encounter. The remote location meant it was unlikely there were any witnesses. The extent of the damage inflicted on the corpses confirmed the application of singular brutality in the execution of the crime. The absence of any identifying clues especially worried him. Not knowing the identity of a crime victim multiplied the police task of investigation many times over.

  The only positive he could see was that there was nothing to suggest any political dimension to this case.

  G Division divided all crime into two categories: ‘special’ or ‘ordinary.’ The absolute priority was ‘special crime’ – anything with an element of politics or subversion. ‘Ordinary crime’ might be serious, but it took second place to security or politically related issues. Swallow’s instinct told him that these were ‘ordinary murders.’

  He stepped back out of the copse and into the full light, allowing his gaze to travel across the scene through a full 360 degrees.

  He tried to imagine the final moments of what had been acted out here. Was the boy shot first? Did the man witness the terrible sight of his young son – assuming that they were parent and child – being killed before his eyes? Or was the parent shot first? Did he see the child’s terror in the last fraction of time that he was given, knowing too with certainty that the boy would follow into the darkness?

  It was incongruous, he thought, that such brutalities were often uncovered in beautiful places.

  So it was here. The green park rippled away towards the city, punctuated with breaks of trees. Although he could not see the river from where he stood, a faint morning mist rising from beyond the Chapelizod Gate marked its route down the valley to the city and the bay. In the distance, over the city, he could see the rising plume of steam from Guinness’s brewery at St James’s Gate. He got the faint, sweet aroma of roasting barley and hops on the air.

  There was no way of knowing how the man and the boy had come to this place. Had they walked or ridden? Had they been driven? Had they come from the city during the night, along the wide expanse of Chesterfield Avenue, or had they entered the park through the gate nearby? If they had come through the village of Chapelizod there was a better probability of witnesses. Perhaps even of identification.

  Swallow glumly told himself the chances were slim. The dead man and child were no villagers. The light clothing and the soft hands suggested a city type. Other questions followed. What time had they come? Were they alone? Why had they come to this remote, out-of-the-way corner of the great park? And what motive could there be for such brutal killings? Robbery might be a possibility, given the absence of any money, a watch or a wallet. Could there be some motive of revenge? Or some set of relationships gone violently wrong? Until he had identification the lives of the man and boy would be unknowable.

  He gave instructions to Doolan.

  ‘Get every man you can collect, Stephen. Have them search the ground thoroughly from here to the road beyond. Collect anything they find, buttons, coins, clay pipes, cigarette ends. I want anything that looks like a good footprint or a wheel-track to be marked out for plaster-casting. How many men can you raise?’

  ‘We’ll pull them off the regular beats on the A Division. I can get a dozen.’

  Swallow nodded. ‘You’ll need more. You’ll have to preserve the scene until Dr Lafeyre is done and the photographer too. Contact D Division too. Get them to send everyone they have as well.’

  He pointed towards the end of the track where it exited the park at the Chapelizod Gate.

  ‘Get a party to follow the road right down to the gate. You’ll need a line of men across the grass, three feet apart, six men each side. Then go the other direction and follow the road up to Chesterfield Avenue. If there’s a gun or cartridges or anything discarded they’ll probably be somewhere along the track.’

  Doolan hurriedly noted the instructions in his pocketbook.

  ‘That’s all understood. I’ll send down to the city for more men, but it’ll take a while to cover all the ground. I’ll have both ends of the road closed and we’ll the seal off the extended scene.’

  He gestured to where the white-haired friar was standing patiently beside the road, clutching his box of holy oils.

  ‘We asked Father Laurence from the Merchants’ Quay friary to come out with us earlier. God bless him, he’s been standing there for more than an hour. Are you happy to let him up there to give them their last rites?’

  Swallow glanced over at the priest in his brown habit. He had forgotten about him and felt momentarily guilty. ‘That’s fine as long as he doesn’t interfere with anything. Send a constable up with him to make sure.’

  Doolan went to deploy his men and Swallow walked over to where the park-keeper stood with his gun and dog.

  The man was perhaps 40 years of age, thin and wiry. He was agitated, his eyes darting around as if expecting some new catastrophe to descend, but he offered a consistent account of what he had seen and found.

  Swallow thought he might have been mildly hysterical. That would not rule him out as a suspect. He had experienced cases of violence where the criminal, confronted with a full realisation of what he had done, had gone into shock.

  ‘I want to see your hands and to examine your clothes,’ Swallow told him. ‘Have you any objection?’

  The man seemed startled. He shrugged and stammered, ‘No … no.’

  ‘Take off your jacket,’ Swallow commanded, ‘and put your hands out in front of you with the palms up.’

  He gave Swallow the blue official jacket. It was worn and it smelled of woodsmoke and sweat. Inside, the lining was holed and torn. But there were no stains or damp spots that might indicate hurried washing. The pockets contained a few pennies, a pipe and a tobacco pouch, a dirty handkerchief and rosary beads.

  He scrutinised the man’s extended hands and turned them over. They were calloused and ingrained. Rims of black dirt lay under the fingernails, but there was no blood. These were not the hands or the clothing of a man who had committed the butchery in the copse of pine and beech.

  ‘All right,’ Swallow conceded. ‘Go along with the constables. Make your statement and then go home. You’ve had a bad morning.’

  Swallow estimated that even if the man was a poacher on the side, he was in this instance at least an honest witness.

  Doolan came across the grass, having briefed his men. He drew his half-hunter watch from his pocket and read the hour. It was coming up to 9 o’clock.

  ‘Do you want some breakfast? They’ll still be serving in the canteen at Kilmainham. You’ll want to make a report to the Castle – to get some of your own fellows up here from Exchange Court.’

  Swallow had eaten nothing since midnight in Exchange Court when he had taken his sandwiches, prepared for him earlier by Maria’s housekeeper. He was thirsty too. In earlier years, he might have finished his night-duty tour with a couple of pints of stout and perhaps a Tullamore or two in one of the early-morning houses licensed to serve drink to drovers, dealers and others whose livelihood would have them on the streets before the city was properly awake.

  The normal arrangements for refreshment and sustenance would not apply for the foreseeable future. He had a full agenda. He had to advise his superiors at Exchange Court of the details of the crime. He needed experienced detectives on the ground.