by Ian McGuire
“There was that thing with the peeler. That was what warmed me to him.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It could be a coincidence still. You never know.”
“O’Connor’s nephew? It’s not a fucken coincidence. It can’t be. Not after what happened with Doyle last night.”
“So what will we do?”
Rice stands up and paces about the room, blowing out gouts of blue pipe smoke and scratching at his bristled head as if he has a dose of the scrofula.
“Is anyone watching Jimmy O’Connor? If the lad suspects something, that’s where he’ll run to first.”
“He can’t suspect anything,” Riley says. “Not so soon.”
“What about Doyle and the others? Any sign yet of them?”
“Nothing yet. They’re all away and gone if you want my opinion.”
Rice turns and gives Riley a furious stare.
“I don’t,” he says. “After this, you’ll forgive me, Jack, if I leave your opinion where it fucken stands.”
Riley shrugs and makes a contrite face.
“He fooled us all,” he says. “He’s a smart little bastard and that’s the truth.”
Rice sits back down in his chair. He rubs ash from his trouser leg and shakes his head.
“They must think we’re awful stupid, sending in a boy.”
“They got lucky, that’s all. It was a pure accident he found out about the plan.”
“I hate a fucken traitor,” Rice says. “There’s nothing I hate more. The enemy is the enemy, you know where you stand, but a traitor is something else. Like a creeping disease. Like something rotting away inside that you don’t even know about until it’s too late.”
“Two-faced bastards,” Riley says.
“We need to find out what else he knows, and what else he’s told them, then we need to show them that there’s a price to be fucken paid.”
“The boys will find him soon enough,” Riley says. “I’m sure of it. He’ll be out drinking somewhere.”
Rice nods and gnaws his bottom lip in ponderment.
“Then we’ll get over to the tannery now and wait,” he says. “I want to be standing right there when they bring the bastard in.”
They leave through the back entrance. Into the yard, past the outhouse, and then through the gate and out to the cindered alleyway. The alleyway is dark and Rice stumbles once and curses. Riley, a few feet ahead, waits for him to catch up.
“We can find a cab at New Cross,” he says. “Save time.”
“We’ll walk it,” Rice says. “I’ve been sitting up there on my arse all day long.”
They’re walking down Angel Street with St. Michael’s churchyard on the right when they hear someone calling Rice’s name from the other side of the waist-high wall. They glance at each other quickly, then turn to look.
“Who’s there?” Rice shouts back. “Who wants me?”
There’s no answer. Wind rattles the branches of the birch trees. The church’s square tower looms gray against the cloud-streaked blackness of the sky. They can see to the first crooked line of gravestones but no farther.
“I can’t see a fucken thing,” Riley says.
“Who’s there?” Rice calls again.
After a moment, Patrick Neary steps out from the shadows and nods at them both.
“Just me, Peter,” he says.
“Where’s Doyle? Is he with you? Is he back there now?”
Neary shakes his head.
“He’s not here, but I’ll take you to him. He wants to talk.”
Neary steps closer so they can see he is alone, and holds out his hands so they can see they are empty.
“What does he want to talk to me about?” Rice says.
“He needs your help to get away. There are peelers everywhere now. The town’s gone mad after what happened last night.”
“I heard he thinks I’m the one who told on him.”
“He’s not worrying much about who told on him. He just wants to get away safe. He doesn’t want to end up hanged like the others were.”
“Well, you can tell him it wasn’t me who did it, but we know who it was. We just found out.”
Neary nods but doesn’t answer.
“Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?” Riley asks him. “After you shot the fellow? You could all be on a boat to Dublin by now.”
“Things didn’t go like we planned,” Neary says.
Riley snorts.
“Trying to shoot the fucken mayor and you end up killing a peeler instead? I’d say they didn’t.”
“If Stephen Doyle needs my help, he can come to me direct,” Rice says. “I’ll be at the tannery. We’re going there now.”
Neary frowns and shakes his head.
“Too dangerous. There’ll be people out on every corner keeping watch. I’m taking a big risk myself just being here with you.”
“Then tell us where Doyle’s hiding, and we’ll go there ourselves.”
Neary shakes his head again.
“I can’t do that, Peter,” he says.
Rice looks back at him and nods.
“So that’s how it is, then.”
“He just wants to talk awhile.”
“You tell him to come to the tannery. I’ll be waiting for him there.”
Rice gives Neary another look, then turns and starts to walk away. Riley falls in beside him.
“You did the clever thing there,” he whispers. “That’s a fucken trap if ever I smelt one. I never trusted that Neary much, never liked the look of him.”
“Is he following after us?” Rice says.
Riley looks around to check.
“The shadows are too thick. I can’t exactly see what he’s doing.”
“How did they know we’d be passing this way?” Rice says. “Did you think of that?”
Riley frowns.
“How did they?”
“Because they’ve been watching us all day, that’s how.”
Riley stops walking for a moment and opens his mouth to make a comment, but Rice grabs his arm and tugs him onward. A few seconds later, a hansom pulls up to the curb just ahead of them, and a thin man in dark clothes gets out and looks about. Neither Rice nor Riley recognizes him. He turns away from them and reaches into his pocket, and when he turns back they see he is holding a pistol. He raises the pistol and tells them to stop where they are.
“And who the fuck are you?” Riley asks.
Before the man can answer, Neary comes in from behind and hits Riley across the back of the head with a bludgeon. Riley drops onto his knees, groaning, and Neary leans over and hits him again. The man with the pistol tells Rice to put his hands in the air and Neary handcuffs him, then they put a flour sack over his head and push him inside the cab. It is all over in a moment, and there are no witnesses except for Riley, who is lying facedown, unconscious and bleeding on the pavement. As the cab drives away, a cat shrieks in the bushes nearby, and the churchyard clock, like a slow-witted child, slowly counts its way up to ten.
CHAPTER 20
The Old Fleece is just around the corner from the chemist’s shop. O’Connor steps inside and asks the barman for a tuppenny ale and a tot of rum. I won’t stay here long, he thinks, but the watching is tedious work and a drink inside me will help the time pass quicker. He finishes the rum in two swallows, then takes the ale and sits down at a table. He gazes at the fire for several minutes—orange flames stuttering and curling between the pitch-black coals—then takes a long sup of the ale, licks his lips, and sighs. If he closes his eyes, the world disappears completely, but when he opens them again it surges back into him, all the colors and the noises, like water bursting through a dike. The men at the next table are arguing about the price of bacon. He takes another long drink, and then another one. T
he pint glass is empty now and, realizing this, he feels suddenly lost and alone.
He notices a woman standing up at the bar talking to the barman. Her round cheeks are shiny in the gaslight and her brown eyes are bright and full of pleasure. The two of them are laughing. O’Connor puts his empty glass down on the bar and the barman asks him if he’ll take another one.
“No, thank you,” he says. “I should be getting back now.”
The woman turns to look at him and smiles as if they already know each other.
“One more won’t hurt,” she says. “Least it never hurt me none.”
“And you’re a fine example to follow, aren’t you?” the barman says.
The woman makes a face at him and waves him off.
“You have yourself another one anyhow,” she says, giving O’Connor a friendly look and touching him lightly on the forearm. “I’m sure you must deserve it.”
“I’ll have a rum,” he says.
The barman turns and reaches for the bottle. O’Connor leans forward to check what the woman is drinking.
“And another gin.”
She smiles and thanks him. She has a broad face, almost square, and lively, wide-set eyes. She is about as tall as Catherine was, O’Connor thinks, but thicker in the shoulders and the waist. Her sleeves are rolled up to the elbow and her forearms are smattered with freckles and have a faint fledge of yellow hair. She says her name is Mary.
The barman pours the two drinks and moves away.
“I haven’t seen you before, have I?” she says.
O’Connor shakes his head.
“This is my first time in here.”
“Makes a change to see a handsome face.”
Her hair is brown and wavy and held back with a wooden comb. She has a scrim of dirt under one thumbnail and silver hoops in both her ears. There is a small U-shaped scar on her chin. He knows what she is but doesn’t mind. She is pretty, he thinks, blurred and worn away at the edges, but not so dulled or desperate-looking as some.
“Do you work in the mills? Most of the fellows who drink in here work in the mills, either the mills or the Smithfield market.”
“I don’t work in the mills or the market. I’m a detective.”
Her eyes briefly widen.
“Are you out looking for someone now? Is that what you’re doing?”
“I was,” he says, “but I’m not looking anymore. I’m resting from my labors for a while.”
“Then you’re just like everyone else in here.”
O’Connor smiles at the idea.
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“You look sad, but I know a way to cheer you up.”
“I’m not sad,” he says, “just tired.”
“You work too hard.”
She’s right, he thinks. I work too hard and all for what? However hard I work, the crimes will never end. If Doyle is caught and killed, there will be someone else and someone else again. There is no true and lasting order, no law beneath it all, just urge and counter-urge forever. Why not step away, then, surrender, accept that I’m just a man, stupid and simple like everyone else, thrashing around in the darkness looking for pleasure wherever it can be found? There’s no shame in that, he thinks, no shame in being human.
There is a pause, then he nods and raises his glass, and she raises hers. She smiles again and looks him in the eye, direct and unashamed, as if there is some strange secret absence hidden deep inside, which she is pledged to fill.
Later on, after they’ve drunk some more, they go back to her narrow room on Diggle’s Court. Mary lights a candle stub and puts more coal on the fire, then undresses herself quickly and gets under the blankets. Her movements are cheerful and careless. Her flesh, in the frail yellow light, looks sheer and unsullied, like something more imagined than real. When O’Connor lies down on the thin mattress and pushes himself into her, it is as if he is slipping out of time altogether, as if the barriers between past, present, and future are dissolving, and all that is left is a shapeless, wordless moment. Afterward, when he returns to himself, to the raw, dull surfaces of his own body and to the dark, depressing angles of the everyday, he feels sick and ashamed, as if he has betrayed a solemn trust. Mary strokes his arm and tells him to be calm. She kisses his cheek and smiles as if nothing has happened and nothing is wrong.
“Whatever it is you’re thinking of,” she says, “you should just forget it.”
“I can’t do that,” he says.
“You’re here now. With me.”
“Of course I am,” he says. “I know that.”
She has soft, rounded shoulders, small, dark-tipped breasts. It would take years to explain everything to her, he thinks, a lifetime or more.
“You can stay if you’d like to,” she says. “I won’t be going out again tonight.”
“Do you have a bottle of something?”
“No, but there’s a shop on the corner. If you give me the money, I’ll go down.”
“I’ll go myself,” he says.
They talk for a while longer, then he stands up and gets dressed. Outside, the rain repeats itself, low and constant, like the hum of a machine or the words of a prayer. He hears the creak of an ungreased axle, the low, grunting bark of a chained-up dog. The man behind the counter is drowsy and disheveled. He shuffles about the shop, scratching his bald head and mumbling to himself as he goes. O’Connor buys a bottle of gin, a penny loaf of bread, butter, cheese, and a quarter ounce of tobacco. The man asks if he wants the gin wrapped up with the rest or left separate, and O’Connor says left separate will be fine. He puts the bottle in his pocket, pays what he owes, and walks back to the room with the brown paper parcel under his arm. Mary is lying as he left her. When he comes in, she turns to look at him and smiles.
“Will you come back to bed now?” she asks.
“I will in just a minute.”
The candle is on the mantelpiece and the fire is still glowing, but the rest of the room is sunk in thick shadow. He puts the parcel on top of the dresser, unwraps it, and cuts two slices of bread from the loaf with his clasp knife. He spreads butter on the bread and gives one slice to Mary, then cuts the piece of cheese in two and gives her half of it.
“That’s good,” she says. “I’ve hardly et all day.”
Smiling, she folds the slice, bites into the fold, then chews and swallows. O’Connor twists the cork from the bottle and drinks. The hot taste takes him by surprise and makes him cough. He passes the bottle across and Mary drinks from it, then gives it back to him. She wipes butter and crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand and pushes a loose strand of hair behind one ear. He notices a kidney-shaped bruise, rough-edged and almost black, high up on her arm, as if someone has grabbed or punched her there.
“Does that hurt you?” he asks.
She shrugs.
“It’s nothing,” she says. “Just some fellow who got out of hand.”
He cuts two more slices of bread and spreads them thickly with the butter.
“Jesus. We’re the king and queen tonight, aren’t we?” she says.
“I’d say we are.”
He undresses again and gets back into the bed beside her. She smells warm and musty, and when they kiss he can taste the gin in her mouth. He has forgotten about Tib Street already, and about Stephen Doyle. This room is become a world itself, complete and entire, and whatever lies outside—the buildings and people, the dark, extended earth and weeping sky—has no more substance than a dream.
“Are you feeling better now?” she asks him. “You looked low before. As if you had something else on your mind.”
“I’m well,” he says. “That was nothing that a good drink won’t cure.”
“A good drink will cure most things,” she agrees. “That’s the truth.”
He reaches down between he
r legs. She pushes against him, then stretches and sighs and rolls on top. The second time, it is the same as the first, except easier and more familiar, as if they are old friends now and everything important between them is understood and accepted. When it’s over, they drink down the remains of the gin and fall asleep, their four pale limbs warped and wefted together like threads on a loom.
CHAPTER 21
O’Connor is woken by the clangor of factory bells. He gulps down water from the metal jug, then dresses himself slowly and gets ready to leave. When Mary stirs, he touches her hand and tells her to go back to sleep. Outside, the rain has stopped, but there is a cold, damp wind blowing in from the west. He feels weakened and queasy from the gin, and his mind is muddled. Instead of going home or back to the Town Hall, he walks to the public washhouse on Miller Street and pays sixpence for a bath and a shave. As he lies in the long copper tub, the water hot and hard against his skin, his body feels newly minted. It is as if he has remembered something about himself that had slipped his mind or been covered over by time. This is my flesh, he thinks, these are my bones. Will you look at me now, lying here?
Afterward, he buys a half-pint of rum at the Turk’s Head, then walks to the Spread Eagle Hotel on Hanging Ditch. In the vestibule, he writes a note and asks for it to be given to Rose Flanagan, then orders a pot of coffee and sits down in an armchair to wait. He pours rum into the coffee and drinks it; then, after a while, he falls asleep. He dreams that he has committed a great crime and is about to be punished for it, but he can’t remember what the crime was, or what the punishment will be. When he wakes up, Rose is standing in front of him with her hand on his shoulder. Her face is pale and angular and her green eyes are shining. She complains that he should not trouble her at work like this, and that she will get a bad reputation if Mr. Bryant, the hotel manager, ever hears that a policeman has been asking to speak to her. She asks him what is so important, anyway, and he tells her he can’t explain it all right now, but there is no reason for her to be concerned. They arrange to meet in the same place they went to before.
As he waits alone in the tearoom, O’Connor remembers Mary again, her smell and her softness, and wonders what Rose Flanagan would think of him if she knew. In Dublin, before he was married to Catherine, he had friends, other policemen, who would go to Mrs. Gleeson’s place on Duke Street on Saturday nights after drinking in the Crown, but he never went with them, even though they asked him to more than once. He would go back to the barracks on his own instead and read a book or spit-and-polish his boots. They would laugh about it afterward and ask him if he was practicing to join the priesthood. Perhaps he thought he was better than they were, or perhaps he was just afraid. Back then he was still so young, his mind was full of thoughts and feelings he didn’t understand. Now he is older and everything is clear and visible. There are no mysteries left to fathom, no hidden truths. He must take whatever kindness he can find and be grateful for it.
