Blind Arrows

by Anthony Quinn

  Once he was sure that the red-haired woman was not following him, he doubled-back and slipped into the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street. The lounge bar was almost full, but upstairs, in the guest bar, the only occupants were huddled at a table in front of a large bay window. A few of the men raised their eyebrows and muttered greetings as he pulled up a seat. He was the only reporter invited to these clandestine meetings, and he instinctively felt the group draw closer together as if to shepherd away the secrets they had been discussing.

  The man dressed in a civilian suit at the top of the table gave Kant the most lacklustre welcome. General Jack Stapleton seemed at best indifferent to the reporter’s arrival, if not perturbed by it. The head of British Intelligence at Dublin Castle, he needed neither uniform nor medals to announce the fact that he was a military leader. His face was lined with colonial wrinkles, his greying hair combed back from his forehead in two smooth bands, his chest upright, his moustache clipped, and his grey eyes sharp and straight. He stared hard at the reporter as if he was a stranger, his automatic recoil barely disguised. Eventually, some form of recognition must have dawned upon him, for he gave the reporter a barely perceptible nod, and went back to addressing the table.

  Seated opposite the general was Corporal Derek Isham, head of Special Branch at Dublin Castle. The corporal smiled at Kant. It wasn’t a charming smile. Kant saw arrogance and scorn curl the corners of his mouth, and in his eyes, something else, something thwarted and dark.

  The other faces at the table belonged to the hush-hush men, common spies, watchful suspicious faces. Ex-convicts, former soldiers, adventurers and mercenaries, some of whom were missing fingers or carried scars. They eyed each other in the way a grotesque man glances at himself in a mirror, searching for a less gruesome reflection, a more accommodating angle.

  These irregular meetings in the Gresham Hotel were known as the Crow Club, although none of the men were bird-lovers. The name sprang from a joke at the general’s expense – his orders made plenty of noise, but quite often little sense, and the shadowy group of spies he had assembled to prowl the streets of Dublin had cheerfully adopted it. The general had originally thought it a shrewd move to recruit a reporter like Kant to the club, encouraging him to bring details of the stories his colleagues were working on, and in return the general fed the Daily Mirror reporter pieces of propaganda to disseminate through the newspaper offices of the big London titles.

  It went entirely against the point of good journalism, but then the Irish War of Independence was a tangled conflict, and Kant, jaded from salvaging truth and colour from the battle fronts in western and eastern Europe, had craved a taste of adventure himself, a desire sharpened by the fact that his doctor had recently decided he was suffering from consumption. The diagnosis did not worry him unduly; his older brother had lived with the disease for more than ten years. What concerned him was the dread that he was suffering from something else, an inner restlessness more destabilising than tuberculosis. Before taking the Dublin post, he had briefly thought of fleeing to a monastery or becoming a missionary. He had even considered joining a revolutionary movement such as the Bolsheviks. The truth was that sometime during 1919, he had grown tired of the ordinary reporter’s life he had returned to in London. He wanted to remain a journalistic outlaw, an in-between, not quite committed to the daily routine of work and family life. He wanted to come and go as he pleased in a mood of subterfuge, adopt a new name, a fictitious past, a cover story to avoid being discovered by hidden enemies, and what better place to do it than in the Dublin of 1919, a city that had become the settling pond for the dregs of the Great War.

  There was nothing new in the Crow Club’s discussion that night. The same rumours and suspicions about the IRA and the whereabouts of its leader Michael Collins that had been floating in the air since winter began. Evidence of the search for Collins, whom the British had branded the most wanted man in Europe, was everywhere in Dublin, the reward posters flapping at every train station, the news of his latest exploits shouted by newspaper vendors and filling column after column of leaded type, sweeping to the back pages news of war and famine, Russian revolutions and presidential elections. Collins’ details had been circulated among the country’s entire population of policemen and soldiers. It should have been impossible to escape the scouring attention of so many loyal and armed men.

  ‘I’ve been studying your reports,’ the general gruffly told the Crow Club. ‘As a result of your tip-offs in the last month, my men have raided 27 boarding houses, and arrested 18 individuals suspected of belonging to the IRA. I’ve counted them all up. Not one of them has brought us any closer to catching Collins.’

  ‘We’ve turned Dublin’s hotels and boarding houses into busy hives of spies and informers,’ explained Isham, ‘but as soon as we find any trace of Collins, he vanishes.’

  ‘Then does it upset you, corporal, that a Cork gombeen has made your mission a regular farce?’ asked the general.

  Isham caught Stapleton’s grey eyes. ‘What do you think?’ His voice grew taut. ‘Collins has made his life an enigma and fools of us all.’

  For the Crow Club, finding the IRA leader was proving more difficult than trapping the invisible particles of air. He appeared to be made from an element that was undetectable to the eyes of Isham and his fellow Englishmen. He was the mystery they could not fathom; the plot they could not penetrate. He might even be among the clientele in the bar below; however, they did not know the secret signs that would reveal his whereabouts.

  ‘What else can we do?’ asked Isham. ‘My men have pulled in all the suspicious looking fellows from the street. We’ve combed the boarding houses, cleared out the slum tenements, raided the bars and watering holes.’ The dark rings beneath his eyes were evident in the dim light. ‘We have been carrying out our duties to the best of our abilities in spite of the severe constraints.’

  For the next half an hour, they discussed the hunt for Collins. Kant could not find a way into the conversation. He was lost for something to say. Instead, he found himself transfixed by the sight of the snowflakes falling against the window, their lengthening streaks against the darkness. He felt a cold draught penetrate the air, and it seemed to him that the flakes were seeping through the glass, drifting towards him. A familiar pain rose in his chest. Suppressing a coughing fit, he sank back into his seat, seeking comfort in the memory of the mysterious woman who had kissed him with such desperation in the hansom cab. Slowly, the coarseness and anger of the Crow Club began to dissolve, and a warm darkness folded itself around him, full of her breathless presence, her fingers and lips seeking him out, her body leaning across the heavy belt of his greatcoat, her touch warming the nape of his neck.

  He sighed to himself. Her appearance in the cab had been so sudden, her intimacy so agile and disconcerting, she had rendered him defenceless. He was a war correspondent, and had survived months as an outlaw at the front lines, sending back uncensored reports while shells exploded around him and soldiers’ smoking bodies disintegrated into the French mud. He should have been immune to her touch, not dazzled like a lovesick 16-year-old.

  A prolonged silence among the members of the Crow Club wrenched him from his reverie. He had only been daydreaming a moment or two, and was unsure of when the atmosphere in the group had changed. Somehow, he had missed the glance or word that had stopped the discussion.

  The general broke the silence with a hoarse voice: ‘While you are still spies in the pay of the British Crown you must obey the rules of the intelligence game.’

  ‘And what are those rules?’ asked Isham.

  ‘Whatever I damn well please.’

  The men of the Crow Club looked at each other gloomily. Their eyes shifted in the glare of Stapleton’s anger.

  ‘Your job as agents of the Crown is to collect information and bring it to Dublin Castle. There your commanders will analyse it and make the correct political decisions.’


  ‘A good agent should make his own decisions,’ snapped Isham. ‘He should carry out his own plans. We operate at the centre of extremely dangerous events.’

  ‘None of you is entitled to influence the future of this country to that degree. Your actions are subordinate to a political course that has been chartered in advance.’

  ‘Then the danger is Dublin Castle will be overwhelmed with an abundance of information,’ said Isham. ‘An intelligence agent should be allowed to find the most expedient solution when a problem or opportunity presents itself.’ He lifted his empty glass and waved it at a waitress.

  The general looked at him with a wary expression.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  By now, the spies had turned their attention to Isham, their cautious, ingratiating faces like cats around a saucer. Thornton, a Cockney ex-soldier, leaned forward.

  ‘We should be given permission to kill Collins,’ he hissed.

  The general squinted at him. ‘I’ve already made it clear that Collins should be arrested, preferably without injury to his person. Certainly not killed.’

  ‘Let us embark in combat with Collins, sir,’ pleaded Thornton. ‘We are at the end of our tethers, collecting snippets of information and feeding them back to Dublin Castle. By the time your department organises a raid or search party Collins and his men have long flown the nest.’

  ‘I echo his complaint,’ said Isham. ‘My men are itching to shoot the IRA leader on sight. And every one of his murderous accomplices. Give us the go-ahead, otherwise, prepare for us to stay here forever, and send us a bottle of whiskey each for the duration.’

  Isham grinned and the table of spies added their guffaws. It was hard to tell whether it was the suggestion of free alcohol or Collins’ murder that had induced their good humour.

  Thornton’s throat grew thick with spittle. ‘I’d like to slip into Collins’ bedroom at night with a knife between my teeth and stick him like a pig.’

  ‘I’d kill him with a bomb,’ said a hollow-faced Scot called Riley. ‘Like Alexander the Russian king.’ A rush of exhilaration animated his pale face.

  ‘That’s a clumsy and savage means of assassination,’ said Isham. ‘But even the world’s greatest escapologist would have trouble crawling out of a crater filled with rubble.’ He turned to the bar. Shaking his empty glass, he shouted, ‘Can a gentleman not get a drink?’

  ‘What kind of man slays his enemy with a bomb?’ The general’s eyes flashed at the table of spies. ‘Can you imagine the political scandal if the explosion harmed women or children? God in heaven, what would the foreign press make of it?’ He glanced uneasily at Kant. More calmly, he added, ‘No, we must eliminate the threat posed by Collins in a more efficient manner.’

  ‘Poison,’ suggested Riley cheerfully. ‘Or shall we just smash in his brain box?’

  Another voice spoke from the middle of the table. ‘I propose we take him from his bed, and carry him blindfolded to Dublin Castle where we’ll hang him from the gallows ourselves.’

  Outside the snow kept on falling, colliding with the darkness, hordes of flakes thickening against the glass. The idea of Collins’ murder was now firmly entrenched in the spies’ imaginations.

  ‘Listen to me carefully,’ ordered the general. ‘Collins is only 26 years old and yet he’s achieved things that many generals never manage in an entire military career.’ His voice quietened, and he gave a slight smile. ‘Success changes a soldier; it makes him vulnerable.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Men with gilded reputations like Collins’ come down in flames very quickly. Do you know why?’

  The spies listened intently.

  ‘Because people like to see them fail,’ said the general. ‘Not only their enemies but also their comrades, the ones they call their closest friends. I imagine there are plenty of people on the sidelines of the IRA who would like to see Collins a broken man.’

  ‘What do you propose we do?’

  ‘I want you to subject Collins’ closest associates to the most thorough observation. It is a fact of human nature that at least one of them will be prepared to betray or undermine him in order to advance his own position. It is the same as any political game.’

  ‘We are men of action,’ said Isham. ‘Not political intriguers or gossip-mongers.’

  ‘I insist we shall have no unnecessary killing. Men of your generation have seen too many deaths. Instead, my dear fellows, I want you to settle into Dublin life, frequent the bars and hotels. Strike up acquaintance with Republicans instead of killing them. Communicate with their secret cells. Pry into their private lives. I want to know what cigarettes they smoke, their favourite tipples, their habits and dress size, what debts they owe, their domestic situations, any history of alcoholism or insanity in their families.’

  The spies hung over the table, their eyes expressing doubt at the general’s directive.

  ‘It sounds to me that it’s a sketch artist you want,’ replied Isham.

  The men laughed again and turned their attention to the waitress, who was busy replenishing their glasses.

  Kant watched Stapleton staring grimly at the uninhibited committee of spies and informers. The general appeared at a loss to control them. He ran his fingers over the white linen of the tablecloth as though searching for an escape in familiar luxuries. He caught Kant’s stare and scrutinised him for several moments.

  It struck Kant that, if there was a network of English spies in Dublin, it existed not as a functioning organisation but as a law unto itself, and the general had little control over its actions and their timing. In spite of his sympathy for the general, he could understand the Crow Club’s frustration and impatience. Michael Collins was a void and they were a horde of spies falling without a place to land. If they had been soldiers in the trenches, they could have fought their foe face to face. But where was the enemy they must eventually fight it out with? A faceless figure pushing a bicycle into the twilight mist; an office clerk hiding behind a labyrinth of files; a gunman slipping into the bewildering sea of faces filling Dublin’s busy streets. There was no longer a battlefield, an arena to engage the enemy, just this sense of endlessly drifting downward into darkness, like blind arrows, like snowflakes descending from the night sky.

  ‘What are you doing here, Kant?’ The general’s sharp voice interrupted his thoughts.

  The reporter cleared his throat. ‘You asked me, sir, to bring you any reports of missing or murdered women. You said there was something important you wanted to discuss.’ He removed a folder from his jacket and passed it across the beer-stained table.

  ‘Of course, I remember,’ said the general. He gathered up the reports and began reading them.

  At one point, the general’s puzzled gaze hovered over Kant, and then he returned to the papers. He looked back through them as if searching for something he might have missed. He rubbed his forehead and said nothing. The furrows of his brow deepened.

  After a long pause, Kant asked, ‘Sir?’

  Stapleton turned his tired eyes to the reporter. He took a long mouthful of gin.

  ‘Something distracts me,’ he explained.

  The general’s discomfort ignited Isham’s interest. ‘Perhaps Mr Kant would care to share his little list with the rest of us,’ he said.

  Kant began to describe the gist of his findings, including the dead body he had viewed that evening in the hospital morgue. He spared no details, and for the first time the entire table directed his attention at him. Isham watched him, smug and amused, while the other spies listened with an air of bestial expectation.

  ‘The dead woman, 24-year-old Susan O’Brien, had been a prisoner at Dublin Castle but was reported to have escaped on Sunday evening. Less than 24 hours later, her body was found lying face up in a forest south of Dublin. The police know very little about what happened to her. Her clothes were torn and her
body badly mutilated. The unusual thing was that her eyes had been attacked in a very brutal way and her eyeballs removed. The police have no clues as to who murdered her, or why. At the minute, they are simply trying to figure out how. They’ve found no evidence of footprints or wheel marks in the snow around the body. Just the victim’s footprints and the paw marks of what might have been dogs or foxes. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire occurrence of her death is a complete mystery to them.’

  Kant went on to describe how the body of another woman had been found in similar circumstances the week before. ‘Police believe the unidentified victim had been led to the forest clearing by a lust murderer. But, yet again, the perpetrator left no evidence of his presence. Her eyeballs had also been gruesomely removed.’

  ‘What colour was her hair?’ asked the general.

  ‘Red and long,’ replied Kant.

  ‘The full Celtic mane,’ remarked Isham with a little smile.

  Stapleton stared hard at his corporal.

  ‘I’ve also included in the file a series of newspaper clippings describing a number of missing women,’ Kant continued. ‘Several of whom had been suspected of helping the IRA.’ He ran through the names. ‘Aileen Keogh, a nurse at Mount St Benedict School, arrested for possession of an incendiary device. Rosaleen O’Neill, an artist’s model, captured driving a car load of IRA members. 16-year-old Mary Bowles who had been sentenced for trying to hide an IRA machine gun from Crown Forces. Madeline Mullan, arrested for keeping a military patrol under surveillance. All of the women vanished while being held in custody at Dublin Castle.’

  ‘You mean they escaped and went on the run,’ said Isham. ‘They didn’t just disappear like rabbits down a hole in their cells.’

  ‘According to the prison guards and the police there were no clues as to how they escaped from custody,’ said Kant. ‘No evidence of a conspiracy to free them. Their families have mounted a prayer vigil at the prison gates, demanding news of their whereabouts.’