Assassins

by Jim Eldridge

  Easter Monday, 1916. While Stark had been fighting the Hun in the trenches of France, the Irish Republicans had risen up in rebellion in Dublin, led by Patrick Pearse. Stark was interested to note that although Collins had taken part in the rebellion, and the taking of Dublin’s General Post Office, he had been bitterly opposed to the attack, insisting that the rebels would leave themselves exposed in what he believed were indefensible positions, especially at St Stephen’s Green. The rebellion would be nothing short of suicidal for those involved in it. Pearse obviously knew this, but he felt that the ‘blood sacrifice’ they would be making would lead to others rising up in rebellion.

  Whatever else he may have been, Collins was no coward, thought Stark. Aware the uprising was doomed to failure, and almost certain death for those taking part, he’d been one of the key fighters when it came to it.

  As Collins had predicted, the rebellion had been put down and the ringleaders arrested. Pearse and fourteen others described as leaders of the rebellion were executed. Collins was arrested and set for execution, but instead was sent to an internment camp at Frongoch. Another of the uprising’s leaders was Éamon de Valera, also sentenced to death, but spared because he was an American national. De Valera had been born in New York in 1882 to an Irish immigrant mother and American-Cuban father.

  After Collins was released from internment, he, along with de Valera, became a key political figure in Sinn Féin, especially when the War of Independence began in January 1919. According to the SB files, Collins created an outfit known simply as the Squad, a team of assassins whose job was to kill British agents. I wonder what weapons they used, mused Stark, thinking of the pistol that had been used to shoot Lord Amersham.

  Collins, along with Richard Mulcahy and Dick McKee, had been the main organizer of the IRA during the War of Independence, and also led the fledgling Irish government whenever de Valera was away on his frequent trips to the USA to gain support for the struggle. By 1920 Collins’ reputation as a lethal guerrilla fighter had grown to such an extent that the British government offered a bounty of £10,000 for his capture, dead or alive.

  And now, here was this gunman, negotiating with the British government on behalf of the new Irish government.

  Why Collins? Stark wondered. And why was the delegation officially led by this man, Arthur Griffith?

  Stark lifted the file marked ‘Griffith’ and flicked through it. Born in Dublin, Welsh background, as the name suggested. Founder of Sinn Féin. Anti-Semitic. The file contained articles and cuttings from newspapers, written and published by Griffith. Stark read one from the United Irishman from 1899, which began, I have in former years often declared that the Three Evil Influences of the century were the Pirate, the Freemasons, and the Jew. Stark flicked through some of the other press cuttings, other articles by Griffith. His anti-Semitic views didn’t appear to have moderated in any way.

  Another batch of notes in the file caught his eye: according to these, Griffith was a snob. He hated the Bolsheviks for killing the tsar and the Russian royal family. Apparently, he believed in a ‘natural order of superiority’. So, he was no communist, then.

  Had Griffith taken part in the Easter Monday uprising in 1916? There was no mention of it in the file if he had. So, not a warrior, then. Not a gunman. A politician.

  But de Valera was a politician. Not just a politician: he was the Irish politician of the day. A clever politician who’d negotiated himself to the very top of the Irish political world as president of the republic. The question nagged at Stark. Why hadn’t de Valera come to London himself?

  FOUR

  The clock showed half past nine as Stark locked the last of the files into the filing cabinet and handed in the keys to the super’s office at the duty desk. Bill Barnes was duty sergeant tonight. A good reliable man.

  ‘Who’s on driver duty tonight, Bill?’ he asked.

  ‘Ted Post,’ replied Bill. ‘I’ll ring through.’

  Barnes lifted the phone and called the driver’s room. Good, thought Stark. Someone who knows the way to Camden Town, so I won’t have to keep giving him directions. That was one of the perks of being a DCI: having access to the motor pool.

  Stark stepped outside, through the marbled entrance, to wait for the car to arrive. The fog was down, clouds of grey streaked with green, moving and shifting in the night air. It would be a slow journey home. Lights didn’t penetrate the fog. Nothing penetrated it. He wondered if it might be easier to walk, then rejected the idea. Stumbling blindly along, the smell of fog filling his mouth and nostrils, tasting like tar. It would be a slow journey home, but it would be safe. At least if another vehicle ran into them, he’d have the metal of the car to protect him, particularly as in this fog no one would be travelling fast. And he knew Ted Post to be a safe and careful driver. If he tried walking, there was a good chance he’d be run down whenever he crossed a road. Now, that would be ironic. To survive four years of war and then get killed crossing a road in London. Like the flu epidemic. Survive the war and then die of flu. Oh, Susan, he groaned to himself, anguished. Why did you have to die!

  Stark’s journey home was painfully slow as the fog billowed around them. At one point Ted had turned the vehicle’s lights off because the reflection back from the thick clouds of fog was just like a wall of blinding lights.

  ‘Thanks, Ted,’ he said, as he got out. ‘Who’s on duty first thing in the morning?’

  ‘I am,’ groaned Post. ‘Twelve-hour shift.’

  ‘Pick me up at eight,’ said Stark.

  ‘Will do,’ nodded Post. ‘Goodnight, sir.’ He put the car into gear and it rumbled slowly off, disappearing almost immediately into the thick fog.

  As Stark let himself into the house, the smell of cooking struck his nostrils. Stew, he guessed. His mother, Sarah, appeared from the living room, alerted by the sound of the key in the lock.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said, worried.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Stark. ‘I sent a note explaining.’

  ‘We got it,’ said Sarah. ‘A very nice young man brought it. Very well spoken.’

  ‘My sergeant,’ said Stark. ‘Sergeant Danvers.’

  His mother still looked worried. ‘There’s a stew in the oven, and I’ve done my best to keep the potatoes hot, but I didn’t know when you’d be in. It’s not fair to you, keeping you working all hours.’

  ‘I worked shifts when I was a copper on the beat,’ Stark pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t the same. All this responsibility you’ve got now.’ She shook her head in unhappy resignation. ‘Go in and join your dad and I’ll get it ready.’

  She bustled off towards the kitchen. Stark hung up his overcoat and jacket and walked into the living room where his father, Henry Stark, was sitting in one of the armchairs beside the open coal fire, reading a newspaper.

  Henry looked up as Stark came in. ‘You’re late,’ he said.

  Stark sat down in the armchair on the other side of the blazing fire. ‘It goes with the job, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’m a chief inspector. There’s a lot of extra responsibility that goes with it.’

  ‘But not a lot of extra pay,’ grunted Henry sourly. ‘They take advantage of you. And it’s not fair to me and your mum. And it’s certainly not fair to Stephen.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ said his father. He closed his newspaper and put it down. ‘He needs a mother.’

  ‘Unfortunately, his mother’s dead,’ replied Stark flatly.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Henry persisted. ‘You ought to marry again.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry again,’ said Stark. ‘I was married once. That was enough for me.’

  ‘Stephen needs someone to look after him, and you’re not here. And me and your mother aren’t getting any younger.’

  Stark studied his father. How old was he? Sixty? Sixty-one? And his mother was almost sixty. He sighed. His father was right. It was no age to be taking care of an eight-year-old boy.

 
‘Maybe I could get a housekeeper in,’ he suggested. ‘Someone young to take care of Stephen during the day, until I come home.’

  ‘You’ve got that sort of money to throw around, have you?’ Henry demanded. ‘Pay wages to some stranger. And where would she sleep? There’s only three bedrooms in this house.’ Then he added, warily, ‘Unless you’re suggesting me and your mum leave?’

  ‘No, no,’ Stark assured him hastily. ‘This is your house just as much as mine.’

  His father fell silent. Then he said, ‘Well, something’s got to be done, Paul. Things can’t go on this way. Stephen never sees you. He’s growing up without his father.’

  ‘I’ve got a job to do, Dad,’ repeated Stark. ‘It’s an important job.’

  ‘But you don’t need to work all these hours,’ Henry protested.

  ‘I do,’ said Stark. ‘If I wanted regular hours, I’d have to go back to being in uniform.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ demanded his father.

  ‘I’ve gone beyond that,’ said Stark.

  Henry sniffed. ‘Getting important, are you? Too grand for the likes of us?’

  I’m not going to argue with you, thought Stark. It doesn’t help the situation. ‘I’m going to see Stephen,’ he said, and he headed for the hallway and the stairs.

  ‘Don’t wake him!’ Henry called.

  Stark went quietly up the stairs to the landing, then to the door of his son’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. Gently, so as not to make a noise, Stark pushed the door open and crept in.

  Stephen lay asleep. The boy’s face was pale, his black hair curling around his ears. He looks just like Susan, thought Stark. He’s got my eyes, but the rest of him is Susan. The curly black hair, the short snub nose, the same shape ears. He looked down at his son and thought, How could I ever marry again, when all the time – every second of every day – I’d see Stephen and be reminded of Susan? When she died, she took my heart with her. And now I think I’m afraid to give my own son the tiny piece of my heart that’s left, in case it breaks completely.

  The crash of bombs exploding constantly. Barbed wire. Rats.

  There were rats scuttling past him, running between his legs. Huge black rats, dripping from the stagnant water swirling across the wooden duckboards under his feet. As he moved, the wooden boards sank into the mud. In his hand was a pistol. What use was a pistol against a machine gun? None.

  He trod on a body that floated out from a hole in the clay wall of the trench. The body was distended, bloated with the gases of putrefaction, and his boot punctured the rotted materials of the uniform and the skin and the gas escaped, the smell of badly rotting meat coming up and filling his nostrils. He pulled his foot out from the carcass and tried to kick the body away, but his boot caught in the rib cage.

  Another explosion, this one very close, so close that it shook the ground around him. A wall of wet clay collapsed, covering most of the dead body, and he was able to pull his boot out. The rats had vanished as the ground shook, but now they returned, tugging at the rotting flesh with sharp teeth, burrowing into the skull and the ribs.

  Stark moved forward along the trench. Smoke was there now, filling the trench, the smoke oily and black, a smell of scorched flesh and burnt metal, obscuring the visor of his gas mask. He couldn’t see, only feel the boards and the water beneath his feet, and the clay walls on either side. Suddenly, there was a massive explosion just ahead of him in the trench, earth and mud flying up, and he fell. He landed in the water and immediately felt himself sinking. He couldn’t hear – the explosion had deafened him – and he was blind, thick mud over his visor. All he could do was feel, but as he put out a hand to find a handhold to haul himself back to his feet, he felt the ground around him give a massive shake, and then clay and earth was collapsing on top of him, driving him down, further into the stinking mud and the water. More mud, the weight pushing him down, covering him. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe. The mud burying him, so deep the weight of it prevented his chest from moving, from grabbing a breath … Suffocating … drowning in mud … choking …

  ‘Help! Help me!’

  ‘There there, son …’ Stark jerked upright, his eyes wide open, panic filling him, overpowering him, as his mother put her arms around him. ‘There, there, Paul. It’s all right. You’re safe.’

  Light filtered into the darkened room from a lamp outside on the landing. He looked towards the door. Stephen stood there in his pyjamas, his pale face frightened. Stark’s father stood with him, also in his pyjamas, his hand on the boy’s shoulder, reassuring him.

  ‘Sorry,’ gasped Stark hoarsely, his voice a harsh whisper.

  He was soaked in sweat. His body ached. His head pounded. But he was alive.

  Stark sat at the kitchen table the next morning, dressed for work, dipping a finger of bread into his boiled egg, getting the last of it out. He was aware of Henry and Stephen, sitting in front of their own breakfasts, looking at him. Stark raised his head and forced a smile at his son.

  ‘Sorry about last night, Stephen,’ he said. ‘It was a nightmare. Something that happened during the war.’

  Sarah Stark brought a kettle of boiling water from the stove and filled up the teapot. ‘Are you taking Stephen to school this morning?’ she asked.

  Stark hesitated, then shook his head. ‘I’ve got a big case on. I have to get to work early.’ He turned to Stephen and again forced a smile. ‘But I’ll be home early today, I promise. We can do something together.’

  ‘What?’ asked Stephen hopefully.

  ‘Whatever you want to do,’ said Stark. ‘I can help you with that model you’re working on. The aeroplane.’

  ‘It’s a Sopwith Camel,’ said Stephen. ‘And Grandad’s helping me make it.’

  ‘I’m sure your grandad won’t mind me joining in for once,’ he suggested hopefully.

  Stephen looked at Henry Stark. ‘Is that all right with you, Grandad?’ he asked.

  Henry hesitated, then, as he caught the look of appeal in Paul’s eyes, he nodded. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.

  ‘You can help us make the wings,’ smiled Stephen.

  ‘I will,’ nodded Stark.

  ‘Huh,’ Henry snorted disparagingly.

  Stark waited for his father to make a comment about his lack of hand skills, but he didn’t.

  That was the trouble with coming from a long line of craftsmen who worked with their hands, when you didn’t have any such skills yourself, thought Stark ruefully. He remembered his grandfather, Jeremiah Stark, blacksmith, and the smell and heat of the forge, watching his grandfather shaping a lump of metal, hammering and thrusting it into the white-hot coals of the fire. It was like watching magic, alchemy.

  His father’s work as a carpenter had been no less wondrous, watching as he transformed planks and pieces of wood into something alive, three-dimensional.

  He knew his father had hoped that he, too, would work with his hands, develop the skill of an artisan. ‘An honest living’, his father called it. Suggesting that earning money by any other means was dishonest in some way. But earning a living with his hands had not been Paul Stark’s destiny. He lacked the skills, the precision needed.

  ‘Paul has a good brain,’ his teacher had told his parents.

  It hadn’t been what his father had wanted to hear. Brains were for the upper classes. People at their level of society worked with their hands.

  I was a disappointment to him then, and I’m a disappointment to him now, thought Stark.

  There was the sound of a car hooter from out in the street. Stark looked at the clock. Eight o’clock. ‘There’s my car,’ he said.

  He got up and went into the hallway and took his overcoat down from the coat stand. Then he went back into the kitchen. Stephen was still sitting at the table, poking his spoon into his egg.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ said Stark, and he put his hand on his son’s shoulder.

  ‘See you later,’ smiled Stephen.

 
Stark went to his mother and gave her a goodbye peck on the cheek. ‘I won’t be home late today,’ he promised her.

  ‘Make sure you’re not,’ she said, and her eyes shifted pointedly towards the small boy sitting at the table. Stark nodded. Then, his overcoat over his arm, he left.

  FIVE

  Stark was surprised to find Danvers already at work in the office when he reached Scotland Yard. ‘You’re in early, Sergeant,’ he commented.

  ‘Things to check, sir,’ said Danvers. ‘I’ve been doing some work on the Bolsheviks that Mr Churchill was talking about.’

  Oh yes, the Bolsheviks, thought Stark. With all the talk the night before about the Irish, he’d pushed the suggestion that it could be Bolsheviks to the back of his mind.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘By the way, thanks for delivering that note for me yesterday.’

  ‘No problem at all, sir. How did you get on with the files? Was there anything in them that might be useful?’

  Stark shook his head. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. Why would someone from the Irish delegation want to shoot Lord Amersham?’

  ‘Because he was opposed to home rule for Ireland.’

  ‘Yes, but he was a minority voice.’

  ‘He had quite a few supporters.’

  ‘But not enough to stop the government entering into talks. Still, if Special Branch say they ought to be investigated, then that’s what we’ll do. And the man to start with, in my opinion, is Michael Collins.’

  ‘The IRA leader?’

  Stark nodded. ‘Most of the others are politicians. Lots of loud rhetoric, but not so handy with a gun. If there is something here, Michael Collins will be my man.’

  ‘Shall I come along with you?’

  Stark shook his head. ‘No sense in us duplicating this. I think you ought to continue the line of enquiry you’ve already started.’

  ‘The Bolsheviks?’