The Wages of Desire

by Stephen Kelly

  “And mad—as I said,” Rivers repeated. “Let me go.”

  “He wants me,” Lamb said. “He made that clear.”

  “But we need a plan,” Rivers insisted. “You can’t go in there unless we have a way to get you out, hostage or no.”

  Lamb looked at Wallace and Rivers and made a quick decision that was similar to the decisions he’d made in the trenches of northern France many times—similar indeed to the decision he had made on the night that Eric Parker had been killed, which originally had turned Harry Rivers against him. But given the way in which he and Rivers had acted in concert to bring down Taney, Lamb had seen evidence enough that he could trust Rivers and that, more importantly, Rivers again had come to trust him. For that reason, and because of Rivers’s superior experience in matters of combat, Lamb wanted Rivers manning the last line of attack—or defense, if it came to a shoot-out. He was not certain that if the thing came down to Wallace versus Tigue, Wallace could act in the cold-blooded manner it would require to stop Tigue. Also, Rivers, like himself, was no longer a young man, and Lamb needed a strong, youthful man for the role he envisioned for Wallace. The plan of attack that Lamb had decided upon was, like the one he’d employed to capture George Taney, little different from the raids across No Man’s Land and into the German trenches that he and Rivers had conducted on the Somme. The difference this time was that Wallace—along with himself—was to act as the bait that drew the enemy out.

  Lamb did not relish having to put Wallace in such a dangerous situation; indeed, he had done his best to keep Wallace away from the war and combat. But in addition to being young and exceptionally strong, Wallace was a trained policeman—and a good and brave one. Lamb was mindful of the fact that Wallace and Vera obviously had formed a mutual attraction and that, should Wallace end up hurt or killed in the operation, Vera might come to blame him for Wallace’s death, as Rivers once had for Eric Parker’s. But he could not allow such concerns to stand in the way of deploying his men in the best manner open to him. He was certain that Miss Wheatley’s life depended upon himself and the others acting with intelligence and dispatch.

  He sketched out his plan to the other two. He described for them the layout of the house’s interior and the fact that it had but one way in or out—the back door. He assigned Rivers the job of stopping Tigue—killing him if all else had failed. Cashen was to second Rivers. However, before it came to that, Lamb would enter the house as Tigue had instructed and look for an opportunity in which Wallace could quickly enter the house and the two of them could overwhelm Tigue without any harm coming to Miss Wheatley. Wallace would arm himself with Lamb’s pistol and would get as near to the house as he dared without alerting Tigue, moving only if and when Lamb gave the signal to do so.

  The signal would be simple: Lamb simply would yell, “Go!” Because Lamb would be unarmed, Wallace’s first job would be to ensure the neutralizing of Lawrence Tigue. Once that was accomplished, Rivers and Cashen would follow and see first to the safe removal of Miss Wheatley and only then to the assistance of Wallace and himself. Everything would depend on Wallace’s initial rush. Simply put, he and Wallace would seek to outflank Tigue, just as he and Rivers had outflanked Taney. Once again, Lamb was to act as the lure, drawing Tigue’s attention. In the end, though, if no opportunity arose in which Wallace could enter the house without harm coming to Miss Wheatley, then Wallace was to stand down and await developments with Rivers and Cashen. If Lamb went down, then Rivers was to take command and act as he saw best, keeping in mind that the ultimate goal was to save Miss Wheatley.

  Lamb now turned to Wallace. “This job will be dangerous, David,” he said. “When you move, you must not hesitate. Your first job is to protect Miss Wheatley’s life, then your own, then mine—in that order and in that order only.” Lamb fixed Wallace with his eyes. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wallace said simply.

  Lamb handed his Webley and holster to Wallace and said, “Put this on.” He then turned to Cashen and Rivers, who had also armed himself with a Webley.

  “I’m counting on you two as well, obviously,” he said. “I want to take him alive if we can, but if he wreaks havoc you must stop him.”

  “Leave it to me,” Rivers said. Cashen merely nodded.

  Lamb nodded in return.

  “Good luck,” Rivers said and offered Lamb his hand—the first time he’d done so since the day of Eric Parker’s death twenty-five years earlier.

  “Thank you, Harry,” Lamb said, taking Rivers’s hand. Then he turned toward the O’Hare house and said, “Now, I’ve got to go.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  LAMB MOVED TO A PLACE JUST BENEATH THE WINDOW OF THE room in which Claire O’Hare had died.

  “Mr. Tigue, it’s Lamb,” he said. “I’m alone and unarmed. I’m going to enter through the rear door.”

  He still could not see Tigue and hoped that Tigue would answer and give away his position—the same maneuver he’d used in ascertaining Taney’s position.

  Tigue obliged. “No tricks, Lamb,” he said. Tigue’s voice came from the rear right corner of the room. “Any tricks and I shall kill Miss Wheatley.”

  Lamb turned from the house to face the verge and underbrush. He could not see Rivers but knew that he was there, watching and waiting. Lamb pointed toward the rear right corner of the house, signaling to Rivers that Tigue was sheltering there. Rivers and Cashen then began to move stealthily toward the rear yard.

  Lamb found the rear porch draped in darkness; its aging boards creaked as he stepped onto it and approached the shadowy outline of the back door. He pushed the door, which opened with an ostentatious creak. The interior of the house smelled powerfully of mildew and other decay. As he stepped into the narrow mudroom, the hall, shrouded in gloom, stretched before him to the front door, littered here and there with dark, indistinct detritus. The door to the room where Claire O’Hare had been found dead was a few meters away, on his left.

  “Mr. Tigue,” he said. “I’m coming in.” Tigue did not answer.

  Lamb moved up the hall and stood in the open doorway. He now saw Lawrence Tigue sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair in the right rear corner of the room. The faint light from the kerosene lantern illuminated Tigue’s essential shape but little else; his face lay obscured in darkness. Between Tigue and Lamb, Miss Wheatley sat in the middle of the room, her head drooping a bit. She emitted a low, muffled sound from beneath her gag. Then, from the corner in which Tigue sat, Lamb heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked.

  “Put your hands up, come into the room, and stand in the corner opposite me,” Tigue commanded. “If you force me to, I will kill you, Chief Inspector.”

  Lamb did as Tigue ordered. Tigue stood and approached Lamb, holding the pistol. Lamb now saw that Tigue’s right eye was swollen and dark—the result of Taney having punched Tigue in the face as they had argued in the lay-by on the previous night. Wordlessly, Tigue patted Lamb down and satisfied himself that Lamb was unarmed.

  “Keep your hands up,” Tigue said. He returned to his seat in the corner. “Now, Chief Inspector, move to the window and turn to face the room.”

  Lamb did as Tigue instructed, so that he stood with his back against the window.

  Tigue smiled, slightly. “Now, if your colleagues are entertaining any ideas of making a sudden appearance through the window they will have to clear you out of the way first, and I rather think that they’d prefer not to do that.”

  “Let Miss Wheatley go,” Lamb said. “You have me now; you don’t need her.”

  “But you and I both know that you wouldn’t be standing here, unarmed, and risking your life, if it wasn’t for the fact that I have Miss Wheatley.” At this, Miss Wheatley squirmed and emitted another muffled sound—a clear sound of protest and indignation, Lamb thought.

  “What do you want?” Lamb asked.

  “I want a boat and safe passage to Ireland. Just that—quite simple, I think, for you to arrange.”


  “The Germans constantly watch the coast. Nothing goes to Ireland that’s not in convoy. You’d be risking your life, even in a small boat.”

  “I’m willing to take that risk.” Tigue nodded at Miss Wheatley. “I shall take her with me, of course. And you, as well. As insurance against your colleagues getting any ideas. But I give you my word that once I’m safely on Irish soil I shall release the both of you.”

  “It can’t work. You know that.”

  “I know no such thing,” Tigue said, the tone of his voice rising a bit. He waved the pistol at Miss Wheatley. “It will work, Chief Inspector, and you will make it work. Or she will die.”

  Lamb intended to keep Tigue talking, to stall and potentially lull him, and give Wallace a fighting chance at entering and besting Tigue. Lamb nodded at the Wellington figure on the floor, by Miss Wheatley’s feet.

  “You defeated your brother, as Wellington defeated Napoleon,” he said. “I read the note you left pinned to his body. I also know what you and George Taney and Maureen Tigue were doing—the forged ration coupons. And I know what Maureen did to you—how she treated you and how that must have humiliated you.” He hesitated, then added, “And I know that Algernon killed Tim Gordon.”

  Lamb counted on Lawrence being proud of his defeat of his brother and therefore willing, and perhaps even eager, to speak of it.

  Tigue smiled—a strange, slight, distant smile. He glanced at the Wellington figure.

  “The toy generals belonged to Tim,” he said. “Algernon took them as a kind of memento of his first murder. He lured the boy to my aunt’s farm and strangled him in the barn. Does that shock you, Lamb—that one as young as Algernon was then could have committed such a violent murder and for no other reason than he desired to? But that was Algernon. By the time he was twelve, he’d become extremely precocious—charming, smart, and very cunning, very aware of his own power. The young maths wiz. My mother loved him, you see. And he seduced and charmed her, just as he seduced so many others, including his victims. The only person whom he failed to charm—and therefore control—was myself.”

  Tigue raised his chin, as if in a gesture of pride, then smiled again. “Algernon was very much like his father, you see,” he said. “The apple, as they say, never falls far from the tree.”

  “His father was Sean O’Hare.”

  “Yes. I knew, of course, that it was only a matter of time before you began to peel back the layers of the past.”

  “Sean also was Maureen’s father.”

  “Very good, Lamb. You have done your homework.”

  “Maureen was cruel, cold, calculating—just like her father and Algernon.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you joined her in the counterfeiting scheme.”

  “I did so only for my own benefit. She was useful to me—her offer was useful. It suited my plans perfectly.”

  “And Ned Horton?”

  “He knew the truth of what Algernon had done almost from the beginning—from the time that he first stuck his nose into the matter of the cats. Algernon began with cats, you see—practiced on them—then moved to children. Horton fancied my mother, and she allowed him to believe that she fancied him in return, even to the point of yielding to him for a time. But she did this only so that Horton would protect Algernon from the consequences of his actions. And Horton did an excellent job as a protector.”

  Tigue halted his narrative, sniffled, and cleared his throat. Lamb sensed anger welling beneath Tigue’s controlled exterior.

  “I buried them,” he continued. “All three of them. Not that I cared whether my brother was caught and punished for his sins. A part of me wanted him to be caught and punished. Then we—Mother and I—could be rid of him. But Mother loved Algernon in the same way as she had loved his father. A kind of blind love. And so I buried them, not for Algernon’s sake, but for Mother’s. As you might also have learned by now, Lamb, Sean O’Hare was not my father. To my mother, I was merely a mistake she had made with another, different man—a man who was not Sean O’Hare, the man she never stopped adoring.”

  Tigue became quiet, and for a full minute made no sound. He seemed suddenly to have drifted very deeply into reminiscence, Lamb thought, almost detaching himself from his surroundings. Lamb prepared to give Wallace the signal to enter.

  But Tigue suddenly spoke again. “You see, Chief Inspector, I outwitted my brother in the end. He believed me to be incapable of any sort of intrigue, an opinion he held of me to the end. Even years later, when we were adults and I gave him the Napoleon, he didn’t catch on to what I was up to, despite his so-called brilliance.”

  Tigue looked at Lamb wistfully—almost as if he were seeking understanding, Lamb thought.

  “Do you know that I drove to Portsmouth today in Algernon’s car and spent many hours toting around a bag full of cash along the docks hoping to find some shady character to take me to Ireland? I got nowhere, of course. Shady characters don’t make themselves known, do they? You can’t simply approach them as if they are shopkeepers with legitimate wares to sell.” Tigue smiled weakly. “Do you find that rather pathetic, Lamb? I do.”

  Tigue sat back in the chair and closed his eyes for an instant, as if hoping to erase the memory of his failure. Lamb was on the knife-edge of signaling Wallace when the sound of a creaking board came from the porch. Lamb, Tigue, and Miss Wheatley all turned toward the sudden sound and in that instant Lamb’s heart sunk. He immediately understood that Wallace had given away his approach.

  Tigue whirled on Lamb and pointed his pistol at Lamb’s head.

  “Call him in!” Tigue commanded.

  When Lamb hesitated, Tigue rose and went to Miss Wheatley. He stuck the barrel of his pistol into her right ear. Miss Wheatley’s eyes filled with terror and she began to emit muffled screams from beneath her gag. “Do it or I’ll kill her,” Tigue said evenly. “You must have figured out by now that I no longer care, Lamb.”

  “Wallace,” Lamb shouted. “Come in slowly.”

  The back door creaked; a few seconds later, Wallace loomed in the narrow door of the room. Tigue stood by Miss Wheatley with the pistol still pointed at her head.

  “Show your hands,” Tigue said.

  Wallace complied.

  “Do exactly as I say or I’ll blow the old woman’s brains out.”

  Wallace had Lamb’s loaded Webley lying in its shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

  “Keep your hands up, walk to the corner opposite, and remove your jacket,” Tigue commanded. Wallace did so, revealing the pistol.

  “Pull the pistol very slowly from the holster, open the chamber and empty it of bullets.”

  Wallace did as Tigue ordered. The bullets slid from the chamber and bounced onto the floor like so many spilled marbles.

  “Kick the bullets into the hall and toss the gun there, too.”

  Wallace hesitated.

  “Do it, Sergeant,” Tigue said. “No need to compound your mistake.”

  Wallace kicked the bullets toward the hall through the doorway, sending them spinning into the darkness, then tossed the pistol there, too.

  “Now, move back into the corner with your hands up,” Tigue said.

  Wallace moved into the corner that was opposite to the one in which Tigue had set up his chair, to which Tigue now returned.

  Tigue turned his attention again to Lamb. “I want a car to Portsmouth and a boat awaiting us there—one that is large enough to get the three of us safely across to Ireland,” he said. His voice had lost its dreamy, self-pitying tone and had taken on that of a general barking orders. “You have a half-hour to leave this room, arrange it, and return unarmed. If we’re not on the road to Portsmouth in thirty minutes I shall kill Miss Wheatley and the sergeant. The same is true, obviously, if you make any effort to storm the house. I shall kill them before you can get to me.” He smiled at Lamb. “And then you’ll have a few more bodies to contend with, Chief Inspector.”

  He pointed the pistol directly at Lamb.

&n
bsp; “Now,” he said. “I’ve finished talking.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  AS THE MINUTES PASSED, VERA’S ANXIETY ABOUT HER FATHER’S safety—and that of Wallace—grew. She could not help but recall the risk her father had taken a few hours earlier in arresting George Taney. She had not realized in how much danger he had placed himself until the incident was finished. In all the years that her father had been a policeman, Vera had never seen him handle a pistol or heard of an incident in which he’d used one. Until today, she merely had assumed—if she thought of the matter at all—that he went about his job unarmed and, in turn, was not normally menaced by armed men.

  And David? Did she love him? She was not yet certain. But she believed that she could love him, given time.

  The constable whom Lamb had instructed to call Julia Martin and then to call Harding had done so and then left the incident room to position himself by the path that led from Lawrence Tigue’s cottage to the O’Hare place, leaving Vera and Lilly in the incident room to await Julia’s arrival. But a half-hour had passed since her father and the others had set off in the direction of the O’Hare house, and Vera decided that she could no longer merely sit and wait. She did not know what she could or would do to assist her father and David, but she resolved that she must act regardless.

  “You’ll be fine here,” she told Lilly as she stood to leave. “I’m going to the house.”

  “I want to go with you. I’m worried that he’ll hurt Miss Wheatley.”

  “You can’t go. It’s too dangerous.”

  “But I’m the one who reported them.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Vera said. “You must stay here.”

  Vera turned to go.

  “But it’s not fair!” Lilly said. “I’m always the one who’s left alone—left behind.”

  Vera stopped. Lilly’s words pierced her because they were true. Lilly had been the one left alone and behind. First her father had gone to war, then Julia had gone to work in Southampton.