Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  ‘Good luck to you then!

  The voice that had asked the question - it was the same one he had heard this morning! Radford - but where was he?

  Sean looked beside the cart and saw him. A stocky, energetic man, striding along beside the cart and laughing at the absurdity of the sight as he overtook it. He was only about five yards away from Sean.

  Sean took out his handkerchief with his left hand and waved it. Radford stopped, and stared at him in surprise.

  In the next minute everything seemed to happen very slowly.

  Sean dropped the handkerchief and pulled the Parabellum out of his pocket with his right hand. He looked at Radford and saw the smile fading from his face. As Sean lifted the Parabellum Radford began to move, ever so slowly at first it seemed, to his right. Sean had the pistol up and the barrel followed Radford’s head all the way. Sean thought nothing at all, only: Now.

  He fired.

  Radford jerked convulsively sideways, and collapsed on the ground in front of a shop window. But he wasn’t dead, not at all. He writhed and kicked and got himself up on his knees, and Sean saw him tugging at something in his pocket. The butt of a revolver came out.

  Sean fired again.

  Radford’s nose disappeared. In its place was a black hole. His mouth was open too in a wide 0 just beneath it. He was blown back on his knees so that the back of his head hit the shop window and left a great smear of blood and brains across it. Then he slumped anyhow to the ground like a broken doll.

  The cow bellowed, and jerked the dogcart out into the middle of the road. It nearly knocked down Paddy Daly as he sprinted across, pistol in hand. From somewhere a long way away Sean heard another eerie noise. It was the sound of the farmer screaming: ‘Mother Mary, God, Jesus Christ Almighty! Murder! Murder! Help! He’s killed him! Will you shake a leg now, you foolish beast!’

  And much nearer there was Paddy’s voice in his ear, saying: ‘You did it, then. You got the devil right enough. Come on now, Sean, boy. Put the gun in your pocket and walk away with me. No need to run. Just walk briskly and we’ll be out of sight in a couple of seconds.’

  Sean did exactly as he was told, and in less than a minute he and Paddy had faded into the fog, just two more eerie shadows in the thickening gloom.

  Kee heard the shots and was up and halfway across the bar before anyone else moved. Then an army captain and a major got off their stools and the three of them came down the front steps of the hotel together.

  Dear God, Kee was thinking, don’t let it be Bill, please let it not be him …

  But of course it was.

  By the time they had got past the terrified screaming ludicrous farmer and crossed the street to where the body was lying, there was already a small crowd around it. Kee pushed through and saw it but the face was unrecognizable. Only the hair and the clothes told him.

  Kee looked up and down the street and tried to take charge. ‘Which way?’ he yelled. ‘Which way did they go?’

  But the people in the little crowd shook their heads and backed away, as though they were already regretting their involvement. The nearest, a man in a soft hat and smart coat, actually turned to go. Kee seized him by the lapels and slammed him against a lamppost, yelling: ‘Which way, damn you? Which way did the swine go?’

  Shocked, the man stuttered: ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

  Kee threw him away in disgust. ‘Damned liar!’ He turned to the others. ‘Who saw it? Which way?’

  But they shook their heads, backing away, and when Kee strode towards them the army major said: ‘I say, steady on, old chap.’

  Then a woman said: ‘I came from St Stephen’s Green and saw no one running or anything, so I think they must have gone up there.’ She pointed past the hotel, towards Adelaide Road.

  Kee grabbed the major and said: ‘You round these people up. Don’t let any of them go.’ Then he shouted to the younger one, the captain: ‘You come along with me!’ He sprinted off up the road into the fog, drawing his service revolver from his pocket and cocking it as he ran. But after ten yards he knew it was hopeless. Shadowy figures appeared out of the gloom, on either side of the road. He ran from one to the other, pistol in hand, peering into frightened, indignant, baffled faces; there was no possibility it was any of them. He ran on, into the fog, thinking: They’ll be running, too. I’ll stop anyone who’s running.

  But no one was.

  When he reached the junction with Adelaide Road, he stopped in the middle of the street, baffled. Cars, bicycles and pedestrians came and went in and out of the fog from every direction, looking at him oddly or ringing their bells to make him get out of the way. It was futile.

  He turned to walk back.

  The army captain who had followed him said: ‘It’s no go, I’m afraid. Are you a police officer?’

  Kee nodded. But I’m not behaving like one, he thought. I need witnesses. I hope that other chap has rounded them up. He started to walk back down the street. His legs felt like lead.

  ‘Who was he, do you think?’ the captain asked.

  Kee said: ‘He was my friend.’

  Then he walked on very quickly and when he found the other officer had only collected two witnesses he cursed him for an incompetent fool and then almost immediately apologized and wondered if he was going to crack up completely. He ran out with the captain and brought in the farmer, then he rang Brunswick Street, then he began to interview them in the hotel.

  None of them was any good as a witness except the farmer and he was drunk. ‘It was a young lad,’ he said, ‘he came out of the mist like a divil and then he was gone.’ Kee showed him the photograph of Sean Brennan, and the farmer said it was very like him exactly, sorr, but he would have needed to see the boy’s face to be absolutely sure, and that was one thing he hadn’t got a peep at. Then he said: ‘It was a pity ye went on down the street with the soldier when ye did, sorr, because the boy who did the shooting went the other way entirely, I had thought to mention it but there was all that trouble with the cow.’ At that point Kee got up and went out of the room.

  He found Davis and Foster and a couple of other detectives in the foyer.

  ‘Go in and take a statement from that fool,’ he said. ‘If I stay near him a moment longer I swear I’ll strangle him.’

  Then he went out to see what was happening to the body and when that was sorted out he came back into the bar for a drink.

  Investigations went on all night but there was no useful evidence at all.

  It was the worst night of Kee’s life.

  Some time towards morning, when the first hint of dirty grey light began to appear in the east, Kee stood on the steps outside the Standard Hotel and said: ‘I’ll find them for you, Bill. I’ll find them if I have to stay in this heathen town for the rest of my natural life.’

  22. A Shooting Match

  ‘IT WAS good of you to come.’ Sir Jonathan shook Andrew firmly by the hand. ‘Come this way. Keneally, show Mr Harrison straight through when he arrives, would you.’

  He led Andrew up a single flight of stairs into his study. It was a pleasant, masculine room: leather-bound armchairs, a desk with a stack of papers weighed down by a shell-case, rows of books, and a large stuffed pike in a glass case over the fireplace. And on the wall, a number of framed photographs.

  Andrew looked at the photographs curiously. One was of a young man on a horse in a hunting coat, surrounded by a pack of hounds; another of a similar young man, slightly broader in the face, sitting quietly at a desk, a pen poised in his hand. There was another of both young men standing proudly together in army battledress. Their hair was immaculately brushed, their eyes alight with hope, the leather of their Sam Browne belts gleaming.

  There was a photograph of me like that in Mother’s bedroom at Ardmore, Andrew thought. It went up in flames a month ago. Like everything it stood for.

  Sir Jonathan saw him looking. ‘My sons,’ he said. ‘Richard was killed at Vimy Ridge, John at Passchendaele.’

&nb
sp; Andrew nodded. There was no need for sympathy. They had both been there. A million young men like that had been dismembered in the mud. Andrew wondered what his own eyes would look like now, if a photographer ever sat him down.

  He said: ‘There’s no picture of your daughter.’

  ‘No. Well, I’ve still got her with me. More or less.’

  Andrew wondered vaguely what that meant. He said: ‘It was a pleasant evening the other night.’ That was what one said, wasn’t it? The uses of polite society were very distant for him.

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it. Drink?’

  ‘Whiskey and water, please. Small one.’

  While Sir Jonathan was pouring the drinks he said: ‘I’ve asked Harrison to come but we may as well start. We both had a talk with Radford before he was killed, poor chap. He felt pretty bad about the way your mission failed at the last leap. Felt most of it was his fault, in some way.’

  Andrew took the whiskey and held the cut-glass tumbler thoughtfully between himself and the fire. The flames were refracted into strange orange shapes in the peaty liquid. ‘He was right, too,’ he said calmly.

  Sir Jonathan frowned. The arrogant self-assurance of this young man was one of the least attractive things about him. But it was also one of the reasons why he had been chosen for this job. He reminded himself of the medals Andrew had won, the success of his escape from behind German lines, the devastating fury he had unleashed in the trenches. If the man felt fear, Sir Jonathan thought, he seemed drawn to confront it.

  Keneally knocked at the door. ‘Mr Harrison, sir,’ he said.

  The drab little man with the pebble spectacles came in, carrying a briefcase. He nodded to Sir Jonathan, and held out a hand for Andrew to shake. The hand was soft, clammy.

  Sir Jonathan poured him a drink and they all sat down. Harrison leaned forward on the edge of his chair, peering carefully at Andrew. ‘You’ve been unlucky,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. So was Radford.’

  ‘Quite. Which makes it more urgent than ever to deal with Collins and his murderers. We wanted this meeting to know what your plans are now.’

  ‘Now?’ Andrew raised an eyebrow at them both in faint surprise. ‘To go back to Ardmore, that’s all.’

  ‘But what about Collins?’

  ‘The German officer, Count von Hessel, has been deported. You don’t expect me to bring him back to life again, do you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not? Mr Harrison, these men may be bog Irishmen, but they’re not completely stupid. They’re probably deeply suspicious about the whole story already. What do you want me to tell them - I knocked out my guards at Dun Laoghaire, caught the first train back, and now here I am ready to do the arms deal all over again?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. We could supply you with a cover story. Plant a tale in the newspapers to say that you’d escaped.’

  Andrew thought, and said: ‘No. There would be too many people involved. Somebody would be bound to tell Collins.’

  There was a silence. Sir Jonathan asked: ‘So what do you intend to do, then?’

  ‘Nothing. I tried, the police cocked it up. It’s finished.’

  ‘And Bill Radford? Don’t you want to avenge him?’

  ‘He knew the risks. The same could have happened to me.’

  Sir Jonathan frowned. ‘I expected more of you than that, my boy.’

  Andrew looked at him, and said nothing.

  Harrison coughed. ‘Before you, er, decide to drop out of the whole business, something came to my attention the other day which perhaps you should see.’ He fiddled with the locks of his briefcase, opened it, and passed across a slim manila folder with two typed sheets of paper inside. ‘Have a look at those, would you. I’ve marked the relevant paragraphs in the margin.’

  The sheets of paper were police reports about an investigation into the deaths of three young men who had been found in the river Blackwater with their car two weeks ago. At first it had been thought they had drowned, but the pathologist’s report showed that one had been shot, one had been stabbed to death, and the third had had his skull crushed by several blows to the head. Two, it seemed, had had some connection with Sinn Fein, but the third had not. The RIC were treating the deaths as murder.

  Harrison had marked two paragraphs. The first stated that two of the dead men were connected with another investigation into a fire at Ardmore House, which was now being treated as arson. Servants stated that the men had been seen there on the night in question, and that they had apparently had a quarrel with the owner, Major Butler, some days before. There was therefore some suspicion that these men might have started the blaze.

  The second marked paragraph referred to a witness - a Dr Scartan - who had driven across the bridge on the afternoon when it was believed the murders took place. He had met a fisherman there, who was just packing up his tackle to leave. He had had a short conversation with the man, and offered him a lift, but the fisherman had declined. The police were most anxious to meet this fisherman, and Dr Scartan was quite convinced he would recognize him if he met him, or if he saw a photograph.

  Andrew read both paragraphs carefully, and then handed the folder back. ‘So?’ he said. ‘I don’t see the connection.’

  The huge eyes peered at him carefully from behind the thick spectacles. ‘Well, Mr Butler, the point is really this. The local police are anxious to solve this crime, and it would appear that you, as the owner of Ardmore House, would have had at least some motive for wishing these men dead. Now if Dr Scartan were to see this photograph of you …’ He fumbled in the briefcase again, and brought out a small black-and-white print of Andrew in army battledress, not unlike the one on the wall of Sir Jonathan’s two sons. ‘… together with a description of the wound on your face, then he might possibly identify you as the fisherman. Which would be strong circumstantial evidence to link you with the unfortunate deaths of these three young men. Do you get my drift?’

  Andrew sipped his drink, and contemplated him scornfully. ‘It’s hardly proof, though, is it? A decent barrister would make mincemeat of it in five minutes.’

  ‘I quite agree. In … normal circumstances. But if this case were brought before a jury, say, in the city of Cork, perhaps - there are unfortunately very strong prejudices at present against landlords with an army background, such as yourself, and in favour of what are misguidedly seen as innocent young Sinn Feiners. An Irish jury might not have quite the same grasp on logic and the rules of evidence that you might hope for.’

  There was silence in the room. A clock chimed loudly somewhere outside. Andrew said: ‘Are you saying that if I don’t go on with this Collins business, you’ll throw me to the wolves?’

  Harrison coughed apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite as crudely as that, Major Butler, but yes, that is the general idea.’

  ‘You’re forgetting something. I have a document in my possession which states quite clearly that I will be paid £10,000 for the arrest of Michael Collins, dead or alive. It was signed by Sir Jonathan in the presence of yourself and Commissioner Radford. If I were on trial, I could produce that in court.’

  ‘That would, indeed, be very embarrassing. Sir Jonathan and I would say it was a forgery, of course, but we would rather not have to. But you see, Major Butler, even if it brought us down, it would scarcely do you any good. One glance at a document like that, and your guilt in the eyes of the jury would be established. And the penalty for murder is still hanging. Even for the murder of Sinn Feiners.’

  Andrew looked incredulous. ‘So you are saying that the only way you will save me from hanging for the murder of three Sinn Feiners, is to carry on and murder some more. Is that it?’

  ‘Precisely, Major Butler. And one Sinn Feiner in particular.’

  There was another silence. Sir Jonathan had been looking stern, but increasingly embarrassed throughout the previous conversation. When Andrew glanced at him, he cleared his throat and said: ‘And of course, when you do kill Collins, the reward will
be paid in full. You have my word on that. It’s just that we can’t afford any backsliding now, you see.’

  ‘I see,’ Andrew said thoughtfully. ‘So much for the concept of honour.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Sir Jonathan’s face, Andrew noticed curiously, was actually quite red. Clearly this attempt at blackmail wasn’t Sir Jonathan’s idea, Andrew thought. But he’s going along with it, nevertheless. Now I know who’s running the show, anyway.

  He turned back to the small, bug-eyed figure of Harrison. ‘And do I have your word that this RIC investigation goes no further, if I agree to carry on?’

  ‘Of course. We have no interest in harming you, only in defeating the enemy. It’s a war, you see, just a different kind of one. Everyone supports the troops when they’re fighting. But if they turn away, they get shot.’

  ‘My God.’ What do you know about fighting? Andrew thought. Or do they have wars under the stones, too, where the slugs are?

  Sir Jonathan interrupted, clearly still embarrassed. ‘Our only interest is in defeating these swine before they ruin the country completely. If Lloyd George would give us martial law, we wouldn’t need this sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff. But he won’t, so it’s up to us to fight the Shinners by their own methods, that’s all. I’m sure you see that, Andrew, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Andrew softly. ‘I see it absolutely.’

  ‘Good. So you’ll do it?’

  ‘I’ll carry on, yes. But you can’t expect me to come up with a new plan, just like that.’

  ‘No, of course not. But you may want to carry on with the one Harrison put to you before? Resurrecting Count von Hessel?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’ll think about it. But no silly stories about him escaping at Dun Laoghaire. If he comes back, it’s from Germany. And that’ll take time.’

  ‘In that case it may be best that you drop out of sight for a few days,’ Sir Jonathan said. ‘I was thinking that before you came. We don’t want you seen walking around Dublin if you’re supposed to have been deported, do we?’

  ‘They may already have seen me,’ said Andrew bitterly. Though on reflection he thought it unlikely; he had been out of the house in Nelson Street only three times since the raid on Brendan Road. Once to buy food, and twice to come here.