The Sleepers of Erin

by Jonathan Gash

  Gerald’s van was in the tiny car park. A single neon lamp gave shadows everywhere. Its light showed that Gerald’s weird glass bubble had gone from the van’s roof. As I climbed in and groped for the wiring I saw his long thin case had vanished, too. The rope lashings and the old tarpaulin had been chucked in a heap. The silly sod had probably gone fishing, at this time of night. Or maybe he and Sinead were, erm, upstairs and . . . A bloke like him is really beyond me. I shrugged off the irritating image of him and Sinead and got the engine going. In the quiet night of Limerick City it sounded like a spaceprobe blasting off. Naturally I couldn’t guess reverse and had to climb out and push the bloody crate myself to get room to turn. As I did so I noticed a white Ford saloon, about three cars off. Its front offside wing was badly damaged, as though it had run into a wall somewhere. I went and had a peer at it. Maybe it really was the one which had been parked next to Michael Fenner’s grand posh Rover outside his bookseller’s place. So it hadn’t been Jason driving after all. Well, birds of a feather and all that.

  Mulgrave Street was the direction I wanted out of town, parallel to the railway and heading for Tipperary. Only one headlamp worked so I was fortunate to see the turn-off. Within minutes the lovely safe city had ended, and horrible countryside was all around. Rain made it more difficult, speckling the windscreen. The wipers didn’t work, and I couldn’t get top gear. The fuel gauge showed Empty. The wind whistled in through the holes in the bodywork. Wrestling with the wheel, I bungled the lunatic vehicle through the worsening weather, peering blearily out for the signs I knew would be there.

  The dawn came up on the lake shining right into my eyes and the surface glittering. An entire picture of innocence with blandness all around.

  The rain had packed it up about three hours before dawn, thank God. It was quite picturesque, really, if you weren’t drenched, shivering under a filthy old wet tarpaulin and hungry. A fish plopped somewhere and a bird chirped happily, bloody fool. Time to look around and see precisely where Lena’s merry mob were going to hide the repro gold torcs and pull their miraculous ‘find’. There couldn’t be many places, not here in all this remoteness. So I thought, though a duckegg like me can be wrong without even trying.

  Walking ploshily down to the lake from the roadside was not as easy as it sounds. For a start, you can hardly ever tell where these lakes begin and end. Not like lakes anywhere else, which have definite edges. This had a sort of longish brown grass fringe. You go towards the lake and the ground just gets wetter and this brackeny stuff more prolific, until finally you realize you are up to your calves in water and are actually awash. It’s a rum business. From my position in the van reaching the crannog looked easy, but proved hopeless. A crannog’s a small fortified island – sometimes artificially constructed as a kind of little waterbound citadel. They were made in the distant past and proved highly effective – after all, the powerful Republic of Venice began as nothing more than a kind of posh multiple crannog. I stared across, ankle-deep in water. The little crannog was out of reach on foot and there were no signs of any regular disturbances of the terrain between the road and the lakeshore nearest the crannog. It could have been the obvious place to plant a considerable number of gold torcs even if they had been manufactured by poor old Joxer in his workshed back in the grounds of St Botolph’s Priory last month.

  Squelching to drier ground, I went left and began to work round the lake. The size deceived me. From the road it had looked small, coming into the growing daylight from the amorphous slopes of brownish green. Now I realized it was over a mile across, and was indented on the opposite side into large smooth bays, to north and south-west of a fairly considerable hill. There was nothing for it but to go the whole way round.

  Our library had pinpointed the known archaeology of the place quite well, though construction diagrams were not available. Still, I could tick off on my mental list the antiquities as I found them. The village of Kilfinney had been even smaller than I’d learned to expect, a mere thirty or so terraced houses asplay a single unlit street, with one shop, a couple of narrow tracks leading off to nearby crofts, and a diminutive chapel. The lake was a handful of miles off. Remoter farms were shown on the map far over the western side of the lake but nothing immediately in view. One stroke of luck was that the main Limerick-Cork road ran over to the east, and you wouldn’t want to reach Mallow or Tipperary by this route. No car had passed once I’d found the lake in the small hours. I was clearly ahead, in a narrowing race.

  It took two hours. Between road and lake were two stone circles, nothing like Stonehenge but still the real thing, and a ring fort. If you’ve never seen one of these, they are merely earthworks thrown up in a circle. Archaeologists and other wastrels burn air exchanging theories about ring forts (they were probably nothing more than cattle-pens easily defended against pilferers from neighbouring tribes). They have always disappointed treasure seekers. Stone circles, whatever they were actually for, were certainly too sacrosanct for the ancients to go digging and burying many trinkets.

  The ground outcropped stonily when I reached the north-west corner where the foundations of old dwellings stood, maybe nine or ten. Each was double, like spectacles, linked by a narrow strip – maybe cottages with adjacent storehouses. For me they’d be too recent by at least a thousand years. In any case, ruined houses were places people were always robbing in the Middle Ages and later for building material. Moral: too unbelievable that a whole hoard might have remained unviolated. I went on, south now on the sheltered side of the lake. I could see Gerald’s tatty van waiting like a faithful friend in the weak sunshine.

  A lane ran a couple of miles east, ducking round Kicknadun, the lake’s hill. The remains here were far more likely candidates for Lena’s sleeper trick. Ring ramparts were only to be expected on a hillside. What interested me more were the Stone Age house, and the lone burial tumulus. The self-effacing mounds are all over the British Isles. They are smooth, sometimes longbarrows, shaped like inverted boats. This one showed no signs of having been tinkered with. I walked a couple of furlongs towards the Stone Age house site, over the rough tussocky hillside, then paused. A horseman was moving along the distant lane, making as if to skirt the eastern side of Kicknadun Hill. He was riding casually, not looking.

  The ground was undisturbed round the site. Genuine, though, from the strong inner vibes its lopsided stone mounds emitted. The question was whether Heindrick had the nerve to use a place like this – not quite in the right period, obviously partly excavated. I scanned to the south-west where the two stone fort ruins showed. Well, the hotel’s guide book had explained they’d been occupied till the tenth century at least. No, Heindrick. The forts were out. There was no movement on the hillside. That horse had looked useful rather than racey. A crofter? A riding-school leader sussing out the day’s route? The rider had been carrying a stick.

  Going round the southern extremity, the lake’s terrain included a castle ruin, pretty prominent on a small mound. It was infused by legends of the White Knights. It looked lovely, good enough to eat, but I was becoming edgy. A saloon car came along the road, slowed near the van, then droned on towards Kilmallock. Not quite Lena’s style, however, and too far off for me to spot any occupants.

  A horseman showed beyond the castle mound as I walked on. Now I was heading for the van, which came in sight in another few furlongs. Different horse, different bloke. He too held a stick-shaped thing, carrying it lance-like, the way Red Indians do in Westerns. He remained motionless, just facing the road.

  That left only one archaeological site. The hotel’s local guide marked it as a wedge, calling it ‘ancient grave’. These things are small, but as I came on to it I guessed it would be a gallery grave. Vibes began shivering through me as I approached. Gallery graves date from about 3000 BC for half a millennium. They consisted of a long wedge-shaped gallery made of big stones arranged to form compartments. At the mouth was a space indicated by standing stones. Of course it was now only revealed by mound
s and the odd projecting stone, but you could easily guess where the grave’s entrance might be. Big medicine, I decided, but which of all these places was the likely one? And still no sign of disturbance by busy little Heindrick-motivated diggers, except for a recent pile of dark brown peat a hundred yards off, probably drying and waiting collection for the fire.

  Was the scam therefore going to be pulled somewhere in that tiny hamlet of Kilfinney, then? If so, how? It was bright day now. The horseman by the castle ruins was moving slowly parallel. In another few minutes he would reach the road a mile or so off. I stood on the nearest stone and looked back across the Lough. The first horseman was silhouetted on the skyline, moving along the crest by the ring rampart. Great. In the distance a shrill engine whined, maybe from that lane beyond Kicknadun Hill, too far off to be any help. Well, they were both behind me if I headed for the van. I hungered for streets and traffic, but keep to a steady walk, Lovejoy. In this state I’d never make it running. I struck out north, converging on the road along the western edge of the lake, hurrying and covering the uneven ground really well.

  Apart from an ugly reedy patch near where I’d gazed at the crannog, I made fast if rather breathless time. The horsemen showed no intention to hurry, moving steadily behind me at a distance, one heading for the road, the other following me round the lough. I was almost past my first two stone circles and in hailing distance of Gerald’s van when it dawned on me. They were merely herding me back. I was supposed to come this way.

  Stumbling across the tussocks I kept an eye out northwards. Sure enough, there was another rider on that bend of the lake. He must have just watched from there all the time as I’d been shepherded nearer and nearer. The trap was closed.

  Wearily I plodded slowly towards the van. Of course I could have sprinted to it and tried a dashing Brands Hatch start, but I’m not that daft. Nor were the Heindricks loony enough to send their cavalry to herd me into a getaway vehicle.

  I made it and climbed in, utterly panned out. A big hand clamped on my shoulder though I’d made no move to start the engine.

  ‘Look,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘If you’re trying to frighten me to death, yahboo doesn’t work after puberty, okay?’ And continued into the disappointed silence, ‘Joe Bassington, isn’t it? The sleeper king? Dropped off from that car, and hiding under the sacks as I got in, right?’

  ‘Okay, mate,’ Kurak said. He looked close to tears I’d not run screaming. ‘Don’t start yet.’ We waited till the three riders clumped up. Their sticks were shotguns, only crummy modern gunge but still superior armament of a kind I did not possess. Two of the blokes were the boozers from the hotel reception area.

  ‘Top of the morning,’ I said.

  ‘All right, is it, Mr Kurak?’ one said, eyeing me with curiosity.

  ‘Eeess agutt,’ Joe Bassington said, narked off that I was there to witness his phoney Slav act.

  I fell about laughing to get him madder. One of the riders held up a warning hand. We all listened obediently. The shrill whine of an engine came quite clearly to all five of us.

  ‘Not a car,’ the horseman from the castle mound said.

  The second nodded, said something in Gaelic. All three riders looked over the lake.

  ‘Sure, from the lane.’

  ‘Lambretta?’

  It actually did sound like one of those motorized scooters.

  ‘Who’ll be having one of them things?’ the north horseman said. He stood up in his stirrups to see further. They were quite at home on their bloody great animals. One stuck its nose in the van and frisked me for sugar with its snuffler. I’ve always found horses real chisellers.

  ‘Sod off, mate,’ I told it. Now I’d been rumbled I wanted my own breakfast. Besides, the selfish creature had helped to catch me.

  ‘That teacher down in Rath Luirc, and the O’Donnells in Croom.’

  ‘Not them.’

  We all listened as the tinny little sound buzzed into a fade-out. Fed up, I started the van’s engine. One horse started but settled down at a word.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll be saying so long to you,’ the hillside rider said courteously. I felt I’d been knighted and gave them an arm-wag to show there were no hard feelings. They even waved back. I ask you. It’s a frigging rum world right enough.

  I trundled the van northwards.

  ‘Don’t tell me, Joe,’ I said to Kurak. ‘Through Limerick on to the old Ennis road, eh?’

  ‘Eeess arite.’ He shrugged with embarrassment when I turned to stare disbelievingly. ‘Well, Lovejoy. Heindrick’ll do his nut if you’ve sussed me out.’

  ‘Okay, okay, mate,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep pretending you’re Kurak. Let’s hope Lena’s got the kettle on. Here, Joe. That sleeper job you pulled in Northampton that time, with those rectangular folding card tables. You remember, copied from Stalker and Parker in walnut? How did it go? I never did hear the finish of it . . .’

  I drove on, into captivity.

  Chapter 19

  Coming down the wide staircase, I felt like Noel Coward, a right lemon. The dressing-gown was all I had on, dragon patterns and those flame-shaped clouds copied from Ming Period stuff. A maid – in this day and age – had knocked about the bedroom while I bathed. She’d taken my clothes, leaving one penny and a coil of four violin strings on the dressing-table, all I possessed, thanks to Shinny’s mistrust. The girl was pretty but wanted to do my nails with a sandpaper spatula. I said no thanks, and she opened the door indicating I was wanted downstairs. The point is, you can’t escape attired in only a dressing-gown.

  The house was magnificent, antique furniture and trappings everywhere. If it could be faulted at all, it was in the mixture of styles. The Heindricks had accumulated paintings of different character and periods and simply put them wherever they had the next bit of space. On the stair wall, for example. You’ve never seen such a jumble: a Rembrandt etching, a swirly modern Henry Moore drawing, a Dante Gabriel Rossetti watercolour of the wife of William Morris (DGR reckoned he loved her, but I think he only ever loved his own wife, Lizzie Siddall, who died so soon). This hotchpotch gallery went on through a modern John Nash, a Rowlandson (I hate those) and ended in a painting of a Shakespeare scene labelled ‘H. Fuseli, 1741–1825,’ which gave me a laugh. I moved on down the last three stairs because Joe’s big fist grabbed me and pulled me across the marble-floored hall and into a vast plush room.

  ‘Here, Joe,’ I whispered, annoyed, ‘stow it, mate.’

  ‘Eessa Lovejoyee, modom,’ Joe said.

  ‘How pleased we are that you could come.’ Lena Heindrick, Heindrick, and Jason. In that order, I think, though I’m still not certain.

  ‘How do,’ I said, making sure my dragon gown was arranged right. ‘Hiya, Jason.’

  Lena rose, placed a hand on my arm and led the way smiling through double doors. We followed, dithering about who went first. Give Jason his due, he was not in the least put out when I gave him one of my special glances, just nodded back. Mixed oak-panel-andplush breakfast room. We were helped to the grub – arranged buffet-style like in rep theatre – by another maid, as if the kidneys and bacon and eggs were heavy as lead.

  That breakfast was really great, plenty of grub, and chat about antiques. Some chat is more innocent than ours was.

  ‘Mind if I ask,’ I started up, thinking no time like the present, ‘if that Christ Conversing With Law Doctors is the one nicked from Lausanne?’ The thieves had done a simple switch, with copies made from an art book. The curators said the stolen originals were so famous they would be unsaleable, which is a laugh. The antiques game is in a right state, but you still don’t have to give Rembrandts away.

  Heindrick was amused, sipping a minuscule glug of juice at the head of the table. ‘The Musée de L’Elysée got them both back, did they not?’ So he didn’t mind if the maid heard about the odd antique rip. I’d hoped a quick seduction of an honest Limerick lassie would spring me from all this, and now quickly abandoned that imp
romptu plan.

  ‘Oh.’ I was a picture of innocence. ‘Were there two?’

  ‘Touché!’

  ‘You admired our collection of paintings, Lovejoy.’ Lena nodded for the toast to keep coming.

  ‘Well, in a way. I like genuine paintings, one of the most satisfying artistic—’

  ‘Genuine?’ Heindrick’s voice sharpened. ‘Are you implying—?’

  ‘Your Fuseli’s duff.’

  ‘You mean . . . a fake?’

  Jason was eating breakfast like the true ex-military officer he was, scrambled egg patted into squares and precise kidney slivers doing a flanker. His knife and fork paused.

  I nodded. ‘The goon who sold you it didn’t get the surname right, either.’ I spelled it for them, having a high old time. ‘Henry Füssli, though everybody else spelled it Füseli. I’ve a soft spot for him because he too was a right robber.’

  ‘In what way, Lovejoy?’ I could have sworn Lena was enjoying the consternation my patter was creating.

  ‘Füssli was Zurich Swiss. Not much imagination but great technique.’ I cleared a mouthful to explain. ‘And a real talent-spotter. Admitted that William Blake was the most superb source for the art copier.’ I gave a benign grin. ‘Though he used the word steal. Naturally, he made it into London society – wealth, position, status, the lot. Blake didn’t.’

  ‘That painting is genuine, Lovejoy.’ Jason’s edible army hadn’t moved.

  ‘Sure.’ I gave him an ostentatious wink. Divide and conquer, somebody once said. Heindrick had gone quiet. Either Jason had charged them the earth for the Füssli or Heindrick was thinking of other possible fakes in his possession. Lena was smiling, full of hidden mirth, but then she’d learned how to divide and conquer many moons ago.