Echobeat by Joe Joyce

McClure nodded. ‘You’re the only one who actually knows what he looks like. Take this car,’ he added. ‘Hang on to it for the evening.’
     
    The night was cold, a raw edge to it that threatened more snow than the earlier hint which had left nothing more on the ground than a wet sheen now freezing on the streets. Duggan was parked on D’OlierStreet, across the road from the Red Bank. The car’s windows were steamed up and he had the driver’s window open a couple of inches to watch the restaurant’s entrance.
    He shivered and jammed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, trying to remember what Goertz looked like, how he walked, carried himself. A military bearing. Straight and straight-forward. A sharp-faced profile. It wasn’t much to go on, unless he got a long look at him, which was unlikely at this distance and in the reduced street light. And with a hat down and coat collar up …
    It was a waste of time. The straggle of people going in walked quickly and were huddled in overcoats and hats. Hitler himself could walk in there and you wouldn’t recognise him from here, he thought.
    A figure appeared at the driver’s window and two eyes glared in at him through the gap, making him jump. ‘Would you look at what the cat brought in?’ a voice said in a Dublin accent.
    Duggan watched while the figure, a shadow through the muffled windscreen, walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. Garda Peter Gifford sat in.
    ‘Jesus,’ Duggan breathed. ‘You frightened the shit out of me.’
    ‘So I should,’ Gifford said. He was a member of the Special Branch, a couple of years older than Duggan. They had been friends since the previous summer when Gifford had helped Duggan with family problems while they were engaged in a joint operation against a suspected German spy. Their friendship contrasted with the mutual suspicion between their respective organisations. ‘That’s what we do to people loitering in cars on dark streets.’
     
    Duggan turned to look back down the street and then spotted the car on the other side with a man at the wheel. The Special Branch. He hadn’t noticed it earlier. Some use I am at surveillance, he thought.
    ‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked, knowing the answer.
    ‘Same as yourself,’ Gifford said. ‘On the punishment detail.’
    ‘What’ve you done wrong now?’
    ‘Not keeping my mouth shut, as usual. And you?’
    ‘Keeping an eye out for our friend, Herr Goertz.’
    ‘Mr Brandy,’ Gifford nodded to himself, another of the names Goertz had used, and the one by which he was best known to the Special Branch.
    ‘Any sign of him? I can see fuck all from here.’ Duggan opened his coat and fished in his jacket pocket for his cigarette case and lighter.
    ‘Oh, an officer and a gentleman,’ Gifford smirked, catching sight of Duggan’s bow tie and dinner jacket. ‘This the new G2 uniform for stakeouts? Where are you on your way to?’
    ‘The Gresham.’
    ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’
    ‘Nobody. A friend of a colleague’s girlfriend.’
    ‘A blind date. The best kind.’
    ‘How’s Siobhan?’ She was Gifford’s girlfriend after flirting with both of them for a time and remained friendly with Duggan.
    ‘She’s fine. We’re like an old married couple now.’
    ‘You haven’t done it yet, have you?’
    ‘No. You’ll be the first to know. Best man and bridesmaid in one.’
    Duggan laughed and exhaled a stream of smoke out the window and looked over at the restaurant. The street was empty now.
    ‘Jaysus,’ Gifford muttered, shaking his head. ‘Don’t they teach you anything in G2? Don’t blow smoke out a car window on a stakeout on a cold night.’
    ‘It’s a tactical manoeuvre,’ Duggan nodded his head back towards Gifford’s car. ‘They’ll try to avoid me and run straight into your friend’s arms.’
    ‘That’s G2 all right. A distraction. Bit of a diversion.’
    ‘Have you seen anyone interesting tonight?’
    ‘I