The Eloquence of the Dead Read Free Page A

back to peer through the window facing Cornmarket, but he could see no movement inside. At 10.30, when there was still no sign of life, he decided it was time to report to Kevin Street.
    Twenty minutes later, Doolan took two men in from their beats and borrowed a ladder and a crowbar from the hardware shop on High Street. One of the beat men leaned the ladder against the back wall of Pollock’s. With an agility that belied his bulk, the bearded sergeant climbed over and dropped down into the small yard. The constable followed.
    When the back door resisted the impact of their combined weight, Doolan jemmied the crowbar between the lock and the receiver, then he pulled hard on the metal bar. The wood splintered above and below the lock. They shouldered their way through.
    They were hit by the unmistakable, cloying smell of death. Doolan drew a handkerchief from his pocket and clamped it across his mouth and nose.
    It was only a few paces to the shop floor. There was no sign of Phoebe Pollock, but Doolan noticed that the high stool on which she was usually perched was now lying sideways on the floor.
    His square of flannel did nothing to alleviate the smell. As he crossed to the counter with its brass railing, he could see Ambrose Pollock’s outline through the half-frosted glass window, seated as usual in the back office. The pawnbroker was in his customary chair with his back to the door, his head inclined at a slight angle towards the desk with its ledgers and account books.
    But Ambrose Pollock was not at work. The back of his head was a dark mess. Shards of broken skull protruded through matted grey hair. When Doolan walked around the desk, he saw that the face and hands were a mottled black. A pool of crusted bodily fluid, agitated by the wriggling and heaving of white maggots, gathered where the dead man’s feet rested on the boards.
    Doolan retreated across the shop to where the door exited to Lamb Alley and flung it open. He half-gagged, drawing the clean, fresh air from the street deep into his lungs.
    The startled constable waiting in the alley placed a concerned hand on the senior man’s heaving shoulder.
    â€˜Are y’all right, Sergeant? What’s after happenin’?’
    â€˜Go down to Exchange Court and tell them to have the G-men up here fast. And get them to send for Doctor Lafeyre. There’s been murder done.’

 
    TWO
    Joe Swallow deeply resented the fact that he had to wheel and deal over the duty rosters to get the free time for his painting class.
    Regulations stipulated that leave was ‘subject to the exigencies of the service.’ With the G-Division fully stretched in surveillance and protection duties since Queen Victoria’s jubilee in the summer, there was little or no flexibility in the application of the rules.
    The jubilee had passed off without serious incident, in spite of rumours and threats. It had been all that the authorities had wished it to be. A celebration of Britain’s might and majesty, of industry and progress, of military power and civic enlightement. A full one quarter of the globe was marked out in red, ruled over now for half a century by this small, rather plump little woman as Queen and Empress.
    Ireland, however, remained the troublesome child of the worldwide British family. Even though the government had pumped money into schools, infirmaries, harbours and roads in the aftermath of the famine, the Irish were not content. The tenants on the farms, led by the one-armed agitator, Michael Davitt, were making impossible demands. Reduced rents, security of tenure and now outright ownership of the land. Each night brought reports of burnings, shootings and attacks from over the country. Meanwhile, the charismatic Charles Stewart Parnell was driving the campaign for Irish Home Rule, effectively aiming to separate Ireland from the Kingdom.
    The police had intelligence about dynamiters and assassins, poised to strike as the actual