Peeler (15 page)

He had been told that the solicitor for whom he’d be jobbing as cover would provide him with the standard and most recent code produced in Dublin. But the dogs in the street knew that the code was usually long broken by the time it reached Cork from GHQ and that it was used more as a means of passing bogus information on to the enemy than imparting genuine intelligence to IRA units around the country. So Farrell invented his own. He was sure Brennan and Hurley would be impressed.

In his code he wrote that he believed the story told by the men of Drumdoolin Company. Yes, they had seen the body on the hill and no, they had not ordered the young woman’s execution or taken part in it in any way. He believed them when they said they could hardly abide the thought of the type of men who could do that to any woman, spy or not. In fact the only men in the country they could imagine doing something of the sort were the Auxiliaries and some of the Tans they had met around the place. But, as Farrell had suspected, they were worried that the body would be assumed to have originated in Drumdoolin since it was found so close to that town. Again, Farrell believed them when the men said they had never laid eyes on the girl in life and that they would have known the young woman if she was from the area. His conclusions were: 1) The Drumdoolin Company of the IRA, West Cork Brigade No. 3, had no part in the death of the young woman and had no part in her placement on the hillside north-west of the village of Drumdoolin in the state of disarray in which she was found; 2) The young woman did not come from Drumdoolin or from any of the surrounding villages, and her identity remained unknown.

Farrell went to sleep that night in Dessie O’Driscoll’s best bed more than proud of how he’d handled the investigation thus far, telling himself that he was cutting it nicely – if he did say so himself – in this job of work that was intelligence.

***

The boy grew older.

His mother was bad for the drink by now, cracked in the head, haggard and wild. She’d lost a front tooth to one of her ‘friends’. And now the boy knew what she did. Whoring, the older boys in St Crispian’s Terrace called it. His mother. A whore for the drink. The boys stayed away from him, beat and chased him when the fancy struck them. He was smaller than they were, his clothes ragged. Their parents were disapproving of his presence. A silent, watchful soul at the margins of any group of children. Watching. Wondering what other lives might be like and unable to imagine.

It wasn’t long before he began to wander the streets of the garrison town alone. He was at home with the night sounds of the town, listening to the drunken soldiers stumbling back to barracks; listening to the songs bellowed behind the doors of pubs; listening under other families’ windows. Listening and watching.

There was a serving maid in one of the big, redbrick houses three streets over and a world away from St Crispian’s Terrace. From the high wall at the back of the house he would watch her as she readied herself for bed. It was always after she had finished in the kitchen, swept the last crumbs from the tabletops, set bread dough under a towel to rise, fresh bread for the master in the morning. And his eyes would follow her as she moved upwards, her candlelit presence appearing briefly in each of the staircase windows, then moments later in the light of her bedroom at the top of the house.

Her garret room was so small, no view of her was impeded. He watched as she slipped out of her maid’s uniform and pulled her white slip over her head. She wasn’t much older than him – maybe sixteen – and her skin seemed to glow in the light, her nakedness emanating a warmth that was as distant as the sun. And each night, when she turned to take her nightdress from under her pillow, when she turned and bent down and her buttocks and back were exposed, displayed, framed by the window, he stiffened. And his mind erupted in images of eggs, distending hens’ cunts, the servant girl’s body covered in feathers, white, dappled brown, black. And he pictured the girl, in his hen house, alone with him, where he could bide his time and look at where the eggs came from.

On top of the wall, at the end of the garden, he watched, he touched himself and spattered the hydrangeas at the base of the wall with his seed.

Before he had gone to bed, O’Keefe contacted the wireless station in Bandon in order to forward the details of the murder and post-mortem findings to other RIC barracks in the county, along with a request for any information concerning similar murders or assaults on young women. This was routine procedure and one he thought necessary. The constabulary, for all its faults, still possessed men who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of local crimes and intelligence. Many of the RIC’s opponents, in fact, accused it of being nothing better than the eyes and ears of the Crown in Ireland. There was some truth to the accusation. By 9.30 that morning, O’Keefe had received official intelligence reports from two different barracks in the county.

The first one – taken off the wire – concerned the murder of a known prostitute, found dead in a lane off Merchants’ Quay in Cork six weeks previously. It did not detail possible similarities with the hillside murder, but listed the name of the RIC Crimes Special Branch sergeant who had investigated, out of Tuckey Street barracks. O’Keefe had heard of the man – something of a legend in Cork city – and decided it would be useful to meet him.

The second message was more immediately useful, he thought, being from the head constable in Ballincollig barracks. O’Keefe knew the man personally. Kieran Synott was an aggressive copper, a man with so large a bounty on his head that he rarely left his fortified barracks and only then under the escort of some of the hardest Auxiliaries you would never want to meet. There was a certain irony to it, O’Keefe thought: the Peeler now the imprisoned. O’Keefe wondered, as he read the transcript of the telegram, why the man bothered staying in the constabulary, concluding that Synott must feel safer in than out. Ex-coppers were just as sweet a target for Volunteer gunmen as active ones.

Synott’s message read:
Costelloe family strong republican background. Daughter only child. Late birth to parents. Michael and Mary née O’Regan. Michael Costelloe involved as youth in Land League actions in district. Assumed to have been party to arson attack on Bridgeton House, Bridgeton, Co. Cork, 14 July 1879. Arrested and held. Not brought up. Assume active distrust of constabulary. Hope this helps. Best regards. KS.

There was a knock on his office door. It was Keane, the young constable looking as if he had slept a full eight hours in the finest hotel, instead of the maximum of four hours kip O’Keefe knew he’d had after patrol and another table tennis marathon with Heatherfield.

‘Sergeant, the girl’s … the victim’s father and mother are here to collect her. Detective Sergeant Mathew-Pare said I should give you the nod first.’

‘Good man, Keane.’

Keane waited until his sergeant stood. ‘Sergeant O’Keefe?’

‘Mmm?’ O’Keefe shrugged on his dark green uniform tunic and buttoned it to his neck. He gave each of the buttons a good wipe with a handkerchief. He wanted to look his best for the parents, as much out of respect for their grief as what Synott had said in his wire about their republican sympathies.
Assume active distrust of constabulary
. O’Keefe assumed as much of everybody lately, but most civilians would relax a little if it was safe to do so and if they felt the constable in front of them was there to serve them and not the Crown. Ninety per cent of Peelers were Irishmen like the people they were entrusted to protect. Pariah status was a recent phenomenon and one that could, O’Keefe vaguely hoped, be countered with professional and fair service. Or maybe, he thought, giving his black boots a final swipe of the brush, I am as naïve now as I was when I signed on.

Keane said, ‘Sergeant, I was wondering if I could sit in on your questioning of the family. I just thought that …’

‘Of course you can. I could use the help. I’ll need you to get the tea, assuming they’ll take it, and then watch and listen. I’d like you to just listen. I’ll be taking notes, so I want you to be able to confirm or reject any assumptions I make. It’s important to always have two people in an interview because two impressions of the same situation are never the same. Do you get me?’

‘Yes, Sergeant. Serve the tea and just listen. I can do that.’

‘I know you can, Constable. You’ve been doing good work lately.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

‘Go and show the family up.’

***

Deirdre Costelloe’s parents looked much as O’Keefe had imagined they would, her father a typical small farmer in his worn, patched, canvas coat and flat cap, his face ruddy and riven with weathered gullies. He had several days of grey stubble on his chin and jaw, and his eyes were red-ringed with grief. There was a cloying, stale smell of drink emanating from his dishevelled clothes. O’Keefe figured this, as much as his grief, could account for his bloodshot eyes. The Costelloe woman wore a black shawl, wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and a thick cotton skirt. Like her husband’s, her face was lined by years of poverty and exposure to the elements. It was a face that appeared to O’Keefe to have seen more than its share of sorrow.

He guided the couple to chairs he had arranged beside his desk, and introduced himself and Keane. They sat in silence, the man fidgeting nervously with his cap, the woman plucking at the frayed ends of her shawl. There was little resemblance between mother and daughter that O’Keefe could see, but countrywomen grew old before their time, pretty faces and fetching figures destroyed by physical labour and child-bearing.

‘First, Mr and Mrs Costelloe, I want to say how sorry I am for the loss of your daughter, God rest her. I know this is a very hard time for you both.’

They nodded but only the wife looked at him. Her husband kept his eyes firmly on the floor. O’Keefe offered them some tea. Perhaps some bread and jam? Mrs Costelloe seemed about to say yes when her husband looked up. There was bitterness in his voice.

‘We want nothing from you but our daughter.’

‘I understand, Mr Costelloe, but you have to realise I’m trying to catch the person or people who killed your daughter and I need your help to do it. It’s crucial I ask you these questions, do you see that?’

O’Keefe turned to the man’s wife.

‘Can I ask you, Mrs Costelloe, where did Deirdre live during the week? She was at the Barton and Sons’ plant, wasn’t she?’

The woman swallowed. ‘Yes, she was. A grand job and a grand wage in these days when there’s so little work to be had. She was so pretty, I’m sure she got the job because she was so pretty, so …’ O’Keefe finished the sentence in his head.
So full of life.

The image of the young woman’s body on the butcher’s table flashed through his mind.

‘And where did she live, Mrs Costelloe?’

‘She shared a room with a girl from Ballincollig, in a fine house on the quays in Cork. Thick friends for years they’ve been, our Deirdre and Anne. Anne had got the job in Barton’s first, on account of her uncle working there. It was she arranged it for Deirdre. Deirdre done lessons – typing lessons. She was a good girl, and clever that way.’

O’Keefe noted the address and thought about asking after suitors but decided he could get the information from her girlfriend more easily. ‘And this girl’s surname?’

‘Duffy. Anne Duffy. A kind friend to Deirdre all these years.’ The woman choked back a sob, her voice breaking for the first time.

‘Are we finished now?’ It was the father. A smell of stale whiskey wafted across with his words. ‘Can we not take our girl now, Sergeant?’

‘I’ve just a few more questions.’

‘Why? Your English friend last night asked them all already, didn’t he?’

O’Keefe appealed to the wife. ‘Mrs Costelloe, you mentioned to the Detective last evening that a man came by your farm three days ago, asking after your daughter.’

She nodded, looking to her husband before answering. ‘Yes, he did. A grand, long fellow he was.’ The woman knotted the shawl ends in her hands and gathered them into white-knuckled fists.

‘And was he a soldier, do you think?’

Her husband answered for her. ‘He was no British soldier. My daughter didn’t run with soldiers. Or Peelers.’ His eyes burned red and shone with fresh tears. He would have heard about his child being labelled a traitor. ‘She was a good girl, Deirdre. She was no informer.’

O’Keefe nodded in sympathy. ‘Can you give us a description of this man, Mrs Costelloe?’

The woman shot a look at her husband, but he was again staring at the floor, his Adam’s apple rising in his throat as if he were forcing back sobs. O’Keefe thought of the army surgeon’s Bushmills in his desk.

‘Can I offer you a short glass of something, Mr Costelloe? I know this must be hard.’

He didn’t look up but O’Keefe saw him considering the offer. After a moment, he said, ‘I told yeh, boy. I’ve come for my daughter and not to take soup from Crown spies like yerself.’ He swallowed again. His refusal to take the whiskey was costing him dearly.

O’Keefe reached into his desk anyway, taking out the bottle and telling Keane to fetch glasses. The man’s ignorance angered O’Keefe. He was trying to help him and his wife, and all the farmer could do was dredge up the rebel posturing of his youth. It crossed his mind to ask Mr Costelloe if he reckoned the IRA was doing anything to help discover who had killed his daughter. Instead, he turned back to the wife.

‘A description, Mrs Costelloe?’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding, understanding that she had no one to turn to but himself, and O’Keefe was forced to admire how women had the power to weigh matters in a way men didn’t. The freedom of Ireland could wait. The RIC might be Crown spies but maybe – just maybe – they could find the man or men who had killed her daughter.

‘He was tall and thin and he spoke like he was a Corkman. His clothes like a labourer’s. And he’d a scar …’ the woman pointed to her face and drew her finger across the skin over her eyes, ‘a red welted scar, it was. Like it’d happened not long ago.’ She pointed to the scar on O’Keefe’s own face. ‘Not like yours. Fresher, like.’

O’Keefe made a note of this and looked up to see Keane returning with three glasses.

‘Are you sure you won’t have some tea, Mrs Costelloe. Sometimes a cup helps.’

She shook her head. ‘No. As soon as we can be gone with our Deirdre, the better, Sergeant.’ Out of the corner of his eye, O’Keefe saw Mr Costelloe staring hard at the bottle on the desk.

‘And what did this man ask of you, Mrs Costelloe?’

‘Only, where was Deirdre? He said she hadn’t been to work on the Monday. That’s when I started to worry, Sergeant. She didn’t come home to us on the Sunday and then this stranger came with news that she hadn’t been at the factory.’

Tears welled in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks. O’Keefe’s stomach knotted with compassion, a vision in his head of how his own mother must have looked when she had heard about his brother’s death. He shoved the image aside, writing in his diary.
No show, home, Sunday. No show, work, Monday. Confirms post-mortem chronology?

‘Did he tell you his name, Mrs Costelloe? Or say how he knew your daughter?’

She shook her head. ‘No, only that he was called Seamus. Never saying why or how he knew her. Sergeant, he put the fear of God in me.’

‘Did he threaten you?’

‘No, no, it was the scar. But not only that. His eyes, it was. Like bogholes. They were brown and green and near black, they were. And he wore a soldier’s coat.’

‘An army coat? Long or short, Mrs Costelloe?’

‘Short. With the big pockets.’

‘But you don’t think he was a soldier?’

Again the woman looked to her husband, a heavy pleading in her eyes.
Please
, the look seemed to say.
For Deirdre
. Suddenly her husband reached across, took the bottle of Bushmills and poured a full measure into one of the glasses. He handed it to his wife. She took a sip and grimaced, tears rolling down her face. When she set down the glass, it was as if her husband had given her permission to speak for them both. O’Keefe felt a sudden respect for the man. He wasn’t going to help, but he would let his wife do so. Taking the bottle, O’Keefe poured another large measure in the second glass and handed it to the farmer. The man accepted it without a word and drank.

‘No,’ his wife continued. ‘He wasn’t that kind of soldier.’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Costelloe “that kind of soldier”?’

She looked at her husband again. ‘He wasn’t the King’s army like. But he might have been …’ She stopped, as if afraid to go on.

‘Might have been what?’

‘Might have been a Volunteer soldier.’

‘And did he give you a surname, any message for Deirdre?’

‘He said to tell her Seamus called for her, if she came back.’ The woman covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

If she came back.
It could mean anything or nothing. As he was thinking this, O’Keefe sensed a presence outside the office and glanced over at the door. ‘Hello, is someone there?’ The couple and Keane turned and looked at the closed door. It opened a crack. ‘It’s only me, Sar’nt. Keane’s after telling me ye might be wanting tea.’

O’Keefe shook his head. Tom Reilly, a retired constable allowed to live in barracks for his own safety, was a decent if awkward presence in the barracks, pitied and scorned in equal measure by the new generation of young policemen and Tans.

‘No, Reilly. I don’t think we’ll be needing any tea.’

‘Grand, Sar’nt. Just if I could be of any help.’

‘Actually, you can.’ O’Keefe stood up and went out to him in the hallway. ‘Can you run down to Casey’s for me, Tom? The parents are to take away the girl’s body and –’

‘Casey’s won’t take her, y’know. She’s been labelled and Casey’s his business to think of.’

‘I know he won’t take her and I’m sure the family will want to lay her out at home. But they have to have something to take her in.’

‘In, Sar’nt? Sure, didn’t they come with a cart?’

‘A coffin, Tom. Go round the back entrance and talk to Mr Casey. Take Keane with you. Get a coffin from them. If it’s herself answers, tell Mrs Casey we’ll pay the going rate for it. She’s an anvil, but a decent woman at heart. You can tell her who it’s for. And help get the girl’s body in it for them. It’s enough to ask them to cart home their only daughter without having to heave her off a butcher’s table.’