Peeler (17 page)

The girl nodded and lowered her head to stare at the wrinkled handkerchief balled in her fist. O’Keefe asked her, ‘Did she stay with Seamus Connors, Anne?’ Sometimes it was easier to speak of things if you were asked.

‘She had done,’ she said, still looking down, ‘but he was always going from room to room. On the run, like. Sure, he used show up at the oddest hours; any time at all. Our landlord, Mr Timulty, said he wouldn’t put up with it any more and that we’d be evicted.’

‘So he stopped calling then?’

‘Oh no. He still called whenever he could.’

‘And why, then,’ Mathew-Pare asked, ‘did your landlord not throw you out?’

She looked up. ‘Because Seamus told him he’d put a bullet in him if he did.’

O’Keefe caught Mathew-Pare’s eye and the Detective returned a look O’Keefe couldn’t interpret.

‘And so they were lovers, Miss Costelloe and Mr Connors,’ Mathew-Pare continued.

The girl’s face flushed red. ‘Yes, but they never, I don’t think they ever …’

‘Were intimate?’

She nodded, looking down at the carpet. ‘Deirdre was fierce frightened of having … of getting in trouble. She always says … said that life ended when a baby comes. She wanted to live. To see Dublin, maybe even London some day. You couldn’t do that if you got yourself landed with husband and child. And anyway, she’d grown tired of him. He was so …’

‘So what, Anne?’ O’Keefe asked.

‘I’m not sure. He wanted everything from you. From Deirdre. Like he wouldn’t take only the half of you, Deirdre said once.’

‘And what did she mean by that, do you think?’ Mathew-Pare asked. ‘Did he want to marry her, Anne?’

‘I don’t know, but I know she’d not have had him. I think it was exciting for her at first, courting a gunman. But she said that he scared her sometimes and that she was worn down by him. He wouldn’t only take the nice part of you,’ she crinkled her brow, searching for the words, ‘the part of you you give a fella, like. The part you like when you look in the mirror. Deirdre said it that way.
The part of you you like when you look in the mirror.
I remember it because I spent days afterwards looking in the mirror for that part of me.’ She smiled sadly.

O’Keefe said, ‘What part did he want then, Anne?’

‘She said he wanted the dark part of you. The part you’d show nobody. The black part of your soul you keep hidden from the world.’ She flushed again. O’Keefe couldn’t imagine the black part of her soul; she seemed too young to have one.

‘And Deirdre thought this was … too much?’

‘Yes, she did. Deirdre liked men who were bad and a bit wild – the gallivanters. But only because they were fun to be with. They kept her laughing, she used to say. But Seamus Connors couldn’t have made a madman laugh, the graveyard face on him. Anyway, he hadn’t called in a while. Deirdre’d
said he was on the run in the hills and good riddance to him.’

O’Keefe asked her to estimate the date Connors had last called on Deirdre and noted this in his diary. Next to the dates he scratched:
Approx. 6 wks. Courtship ended?

Mathew-Pare asked the question before it formulated in O’Keefe’s mind. ‘And who was Deirdre seeing then, Miss Duffy? She was stepping out with someone new, wasn’t she?’

Anne Duffy nodded. ‘She was coming home with lovely presents. I was jealous.’

The tears flowed freely and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. ‘Lovely earrings and a beautiful dress, a dress suit like, with a pointed French collar.’

O’Keefe remembered the one earring. ‘Were they pearl, Anne, the earrings?’

‘Yes, how did you …’ She seemed then to understand.

‘We found only one.’

‘She looked a picture, wearing those earrings and her hunched over the typing. We had a laugh over that, myself and the other girls in the office. Deirdre wearing those earrings to work. Making a show of herself. We meant no harm, we only …’ Her voice cracked and the tears coursed down her cheeks. O’Keefe thought of an expression his mother used:
The tears cutting ditches in her face.

‘What was this man’s name, Anne?’ O’Keefe asked.

But she shook her head, wiping the tears again with her handkerchief. ‘She never told me and I never saw him.
My card-sharpie chappy
she called him.’ Anne Duffy smiled through the tears. ‘She said he bought her all the things from the money he made playing cards. And she said he lived in a smashing big house in Montenotte and he used to call for her in a lovely blue motor.’

Montenotte was one of the wealthiest areas of Cork, where the merchant princes looked down on their city and subjects from their mansions on the hill. The man had money. He noted on his page:
Montenotte. Blue car. Wealthy. Card player. Gifts.

‘Do you know what kind of car it was, Anne?’

She shook her head. ‘I know nothing about cars. I only saw it from the window. He used park in front of the house and press the horn. He never called to the door. It looked like …’ She shrugged. ‘It was shiny blue and longer than a normal car. And it had a tan top that folded back in the fine weather. Deirdre called it his “Fancy Spaniard”, whatever she meant by that.’ The girl laughed sadly at the memory.

O’Keefe noted the details.

‘And is he an Irishman, this card player? Do you think maybe he is a nationalist?’ Mathew-Pare asked. O’Keefe noted his use of the neutral term. This was good interviewing, he thought, because they did not know where the girl’s sympathies might lie. The girl shook her head.

‘She never said but that he was a gentleman. And a rogue. She laughed when she told me.
A proper gentleman rogue
, she said once.’

‘And did Connors know about this new man, Anne? Had he found out?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Obviously he did. And now Deirdre’s dead, God rest her.’

The two of them gave Anne Duffy time to wipe away her tears. ‘We’re almost finished,’ O’Keefe said. ‘Anne, why did Miss Costelloe and Mr Connors part company? Do you remember why it was?’

The girl paused. ‘He wasn’t a laugh any more. He’d gone too serious for Deirdre and she was sick to her teeth of talk of a republic and all the wash that Connors was forever going on about. God and Ireland and the bloody English.’ Her eyes darted up to meet Mathew-Pare’s. ‘No offence, sir.’

‘None taken, Anne.’ Mathew-Pare smiled and lit a cigarette. ‘And do you know any of the houses where Mr Connors may have stayed when he was seeing Deirdre?’

‘No. I don’t think Deirdre knew more than one or two either because she’d complain that she could never get a message to him. That she had to wait for him to come calling for her. It was romantic at first, his being like … like he was, a soldier. A rebel. But it wore away after a time. The romance of it.’

‘Did Connors ever tell Deirdre what he did for the Volunteers? The men he worked with? What he got up to?’

‘Not that she told me. I think all the secrets were part of why she liked him, in a way.’

O’Keefe said, ‘There are no secrets for Deirdre any more, Anne. Anything you say will help us find who murdered her. Do you understand?’

She nodded. ‘I don’t know anything about houses – where he stayed, what he did. We never spoke about such things. I told her she was a fool for seeing him in the first place. You have to believe me.’

‘We believe you, Anne.’

***

Shafts of watery sunlight cut through cloud as the four left the factory. Eakins stood up from where he’d been leaning on the Ford’s bonnet. Approaching the car, the men turned at the sound of another motor. It was a black Rolls Royce, more than a few years old, O’Keefe noticed, but well maintained. Almost instinctively, O’Keefe’s hand went inside his jacket to his gun. He removed it when he saw who it was. The rear window glass rolled down.

‘Did you get everything you needed, Sergeant?’

O’Keefe leaned into the window, noticing that the Rolls’ driver was turned in his seat and looking back at him. He thought it strange; most chauffeurs maintained a studied indifference concerning their boss’s affairs. But Barton didn’t appear to notice or object to his driver’s attention.

‘We did, Mr Barton. Thank you. I don’t imagine Miss Duffy will be in any fit state to continue work today.’

‘Of course, of course. I’ll arrange for her to be sent home. Full day’s wages.’ He extended a gloved hand out of the window. ‘I wish you all the best in your endeavours, Sergeant. Anything we can do here to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.’

O’Keefe shook hands with the man, the feel of the calfskin glove leather dry and dead to his own hand.

***

Stephen McGowan was a thin, neatly dressed man in his forties who never seemed to smile. His hair was short and side-parted. Eyeglasses, trimmed moustache – the perfect picture of a small town Irish solicitor.

Liam Farrell had been expecting a comrade like the men in the flying column. Hale and hearty. Someone with whom he could share his experiences of Drumdoolin. Instead, Farrell felt as if he was being interviewed for an actual clerkship. McGowan showed Farrell the offices and library, his family home at the back of the offices and the room at the top of the stairs where Farrell would sleep.

‘My wife and the children are staying in Cork with her sister until things are safe to return. I’ve a girl comes in to cook and clean. Dinner’s at seven. You can fend for yourself for breakfast and lunch. You’ll be getting a small wage from me, so you’ll be expected to work.’

Farrell nodded, though he wasn’t sure what kind of work McGowan had in mind.

‘You can start by finding any cases involving motor car accidents and stray sheep. The vehicle needn’t be motorised. I’m sure there’s precedent with horse and trap. Compensation, awards, liability. You were reading law, weren’t you?’

It seemed like another life to Farrell. ‘Yes. Yes, I was.’

‘Good. You should have no problem then.’

‘Mr McGowan, is this case to be tried in the republican courts?’

McGowan frowned. ‘Of course. The magistrate’s court hasn’t sat for months and no man, Catholic or Protestant, would attend it anyway.’

‘Even Protestant?’

‘The republican courts are the courts of the land now, son. Loyalist and republican alike recognise fairness, no matter what their political outlook. Besides,’ McGowan turned away into his private office to the right of the stairway, ‘no one has a mind to get shot looking for a small cut of compensation.’

Three hours later, stacks of open law books on the table in front of him, Farrell still hadn’t found what he was looking for. He held his head in his hands. If this was what practising law meant, then he’d stick with the soldiering … spying … policing … whatever it was that Brennan had him doing, he thought.

He hadn’t wanted to read law in the first place, but his father had insisted. His eldest brother Cian would take over the draper’s business, his youngest brother Patrick would be a priest, Liam would study the law, and his sister Mary would become a teacher. As if any of them had any choice in the matter. As Farrell thought of his father, a wave of bitterness washed over him. The tyrant who could rule any kingdom but the self. Forever subject to the clamouring whims of drink. Irish fathers. Bad as the Crown in their own way, he thought. Between the two, there was no liberty to be had in the country.

There was a knock on the library door. A young woman came part way into the room. ‘Mr Farrell, there’s a man to see you, sir.’

Farrell looked up. The girl had wide, dark eyes and long, brown lashes. Her brown hair was tied back off her face with a loose ribbon and she wore an apron as if she’d been called out of the kitchen.

‘What’s your name?’

The girl blushed and colour rushed to her cheeks. ‘Maureen O’Connell, sir. He’s waiting – the man to see you.’

Farrell leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. He would have liked to confide in pretty Maureen that he was more than just some lowly clerk working for McGowan, but realised that it would be reckless.

‘Show him in, Maureen. And thank you.’ He gave her a smile he thought was warm, conspiratorial. The girl ignored it and turned away.

The man was in his sixties, white hair combed back neatly. He was big, with a lined face and forehead. He wore no jacket, as if he’d just stepped out.

‘You the new man, are you?’ No formalities. No introductions.

Farrell said, ‘What do you mean “new man”?’

The visitor frowned. ‘Don’t you be smart with me, sonny Jim. I’m risking my neck coming to you.’

Farrell dropped his hands from behind his head and sat forward. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to imply that – ’

‘Just you put a stopper in it and listen here. The dead girl from the hillside. Her name’s Deirdre, Deirdre Costelloe, and she’s from Ballincollig. Her parents were visited in the days after her death by some chap going by the name of Seamus. Might be one of yours.’

Farrell began to write the information on a sheet of notepaper.

‘Jesus, don’t write it down, you cabbage.’ The older man’s voice was stern, as if he was used to telling people what to do. Farrell was offended by the order but scratched out the words he had written.

‘The murder’s being investigated by Sergeant O’Keefe. Seán O’Keefe. A Dublin lad. Good man; fair. And there’s another fella, Mathew-Pare. He’s two lads with him as well. English. Heavy boys, they look. Word is they’re from Scotland Yard. I’ll try to get more, but it will mean sneaking a poke around the murder book. O’Keefe, the sergeant, is keeping fierce close about the whole show. You got all that now?’

Farrell nodded, then said, ‘Repeat the names.’

The old man repeated them and one was familiar to Farrell. It couldn’t be the same one. No. It had been seven or eight years at least.

The man stood up to go. ‘One more thing. If you see me on the street, you be polite and say hello. I’m a client of McGowan’s; he’s handling the sale of my land. That’s why I can come and go here as I please. And you can get word to me in the barracks if you must. Say that McGowan’s finished the contracts on the land or needs more details to finish them. Something like that. Right, son?’

‘The barracks? Are you a Pee – a policeman?’