Peeler (18 page)

The old man winked and smiled for the first time. ‘I was.’

Farrell stood up and held out his hand to the man. ‘Thank you. Thank you for your help, Mr …’

‘Reilly. Tom Reilly. Sure, as long as no fella catches a bullet on account of my help, I don’t mind giving it.’

***

The barrack orderly at Tuckey Street barracks had told them with a smirk that Lorcan Connolly – the Crimes Special Branch sergeant who had wired O’Keefe that morning about the recent killing of a known prostitute in the city – could be found on personal protection detail in Sutton’s Tavern. When they entered Sutton’s, the Branch man saw them first. ‘Now, I know ye fellas can only be Peelers, just by the cut of you’ – the voice had come from behind them as they faced the bar – ‘but take out your personals all the same, just so Johnny Sutton there can tell the bossman I do some work round the place.’

When O’Keefe turned around with his constabulary identity card, the Branch man had a Colt automatic pointed at his chest. Lorcan Connolly, O’Keefe recalled, had been a legend in Cork since before the war. Crimes Special Branch men primarily served as intelligence-gatherers within the constabulary. Many of them spent a good deal more time searching train stations and Irish-language classes for ‘disaffected subjects’ than they ever did prosecuting genuine criminals. Connolly, however, had a reputation for working the streets and backrooms, the laneways, bookmakers, docks and brothels. It was said he had more touts on the ear than most men had hair on their arse.

In his forties, big, like most old-time Peelers, Connolly was dressed every bit like the dandy O’Keefe had heard he was. He wore a fitted, light woollen suit jacket and waistcoat, and a bright-red tie under a starched, fashionably wide, white collar. His hair looked to be meticulously dyed an unnatural shade of brown and his thick eyebrows were combed out and upwards as if he had been cycling into a strong wind.

The Crimes Special man squinted for a moment, appearing to study O’Keefe’s identity card, then smiled and set the Colt on the table next to his Sweet Aftons. ‘So what’ll it be, lads? Drinks are on me today.’

Joining Connolly at the table with Mathew-Pare, while Keane and Mathew-Pare’s men went to the bar, O’Keefe asked, ‘So what did Mr Sutton do to deserve the personalised protection of a famous Branch man like yourself?’

The publican, Connolly explained after he’d finished chuckling, was an outspoken defender of the King and Crown in Ireland. He had lost two sons in Flanders and wasn’t about to let a shower of criminals too windy to serve in a real war tell him what to do and whom to serve in his pub. He had a need to feel that his sons had died for something and that something was the British Empire. So he served police, soldiers, Tans and Auxies in his pub. This made him a marked man and thus he was afforded a protection detail twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Connolly punctuated the story by emptying the dregs from his bottle of Wrastler stout and calling for Sutton to set the men up with more of the same. Turning back to O’Keefe, he winked and said, ‘Besides, a fella of my reputation just might be of use to somebody down the road. Can’t have me out getting shot at every auld day, so brass gives me a bit of a hollier. Good as a fortnight’s leave, this number here. I’ve not been sober since I started, nor put my hand in my fucking pocket except to throw copper after nags. Sure, there’s lads who’d stick a knife in you to get a week of PP detail here in Sutton’s. Need to be cosy with the high hats, I’m tellin’ you, Seán …’ he winked for a second time and O’Keefe wondered was it a nervous tick of some sort, ‘or know where they’ve buried the bodies, to get a
day
of this detail, never mind a week!’

The three men laughed. O’Keefe stole a glance at the four empty bottles on the table in front of Connolly and wondered did Sutton ever question the logic of supplying the man who was assigned to protect his life with free drink all day. He turned and watched as Sutton – a short, thick-set man with a shining bald dome of a head and thick spectacles – served the men at the bar and then came to their table carrying large bottles of stout and three glasses.

Connolly seemed thoroughly pleased with himself, clapping and rubbing his hands in anticipation of the drinks. The publican went away and returned, setting three generous whiskeys on the table to accompany the stout. ‘Sure, isn’t that right, John?’ Connolly said, clapping Sutton on the arm. ‘A week here looking after your auld wreck of a body, Johnny boy – better than a week in the finest hotel, I’m telling yeh.’

The publican gave a weak smile. O’Keefe imagined the man was reaching a point where he was willing to risk being shot to make up for the money he was losing in free booze to Connolly and his Peeler friends. As they poured their beer, a young boy of about ten – barefoot, with dark circles under his eyes, a pale, thin face that spoke of rare meals and harsh tenement winters – entered the pub and turned straight for the table, stopping in front of the Branch man. He didn’t bother removing his tattered flat cap. ‘First Class fell at the third, Mr Connolly, the fuckin’ bastard. Leading by two lengths as well.’

Connolly grinned at the boy. ‘Ah sure Denis, better luck on the next.’ He picked up his racing sheet, dug into his pocket and came out with some coins. ‘Put that on Western Beauty in the 2.15. And get yourself another lemonade there.’ The boy took the money with a serious look on his face and went out the door again.

‘Now, lads,’ Connolly said, when the boy had left. ‘You’ve a murder there and you’re wanting to know about one of ours. Not, I should tell you, that there’s much in common between the two, from what I can gather, but that you’d evidence of strangulation and so did we. And I suppose you could stretch to a possible sex motive in ours, if you were so inclined, but it’s a fair stretch.’ He took a sip of whiskey and then a long swig of stout.

O’Keefe nodded and swallowed some of his own. ‘You said in your message the murdered girl was on the cobbles?’

‘She was. A grand girl too. Not a bad bone in the poor crathur, ’cept some of them she was paid to have in her. Not the sharpest tool in the box she wasn’t and fierce fond of the gin – of all your poisons – but not a bad girl. Janey Plunkett. From the Barracka laneways. Mother was the same ’til she fell off the harbour wall in Queenstown and drowned, stone drunk with the
Invincible
in port. In 1915, I think it was. Sure, she was rich that week, the mother, though she’d never been an oil painting. Sailors in wartime would ride anything with a hole in it. No, there was no way the daughter wouldn’t go into the same trade. Luck and birthrights and all that, lads.’

‘You knew her well?’ Mathew-Pare asked.

Connolly winked again and sipped his whiskey. ‘Mother and daughter and many more like them. Two of my better working girls, the Plunketts. When the mother was sober, she had as grand an ear for conspiracy as any Peeler. The daughter, like I said, was a bit loo-laa, but now and again came up with the odd bit of info.’

‘And the cause of death was manual strangulation?’

‘One last embrace, so the song goes.’ He lit one of his Sweet Aftons, holding the pack out to O’Keefe and Mathew-Pare. They both accepted and lit up.

‘Was there a proper inquest held?’

The Branch man appeared amused. ‘On a dead doxie? You’re joking. Maybe before …’ he waved his cigarette around vaguely, ‘the lead started flying. In fact, there
would
have been. I would have made sure of it myself, but now? Not a chance, Seán, you know that as well as me. As it was, we were lucky to get one of the sawbones from the Vic Army Hospital to give her a poke and a prod and pronounce cause of death. She was put in the ground a day after she was found.’

O’Keefe nodded, knowing exactly how such a case would be dealt with in a city at war with itself. ‘Is there a file I could look at?’

‘There is. As far as suspects go, I went and pumped her whoremaster. Fella called Noonan. Jackeen runs a house in the Marsh where Janey used to set up. Mind, she worked the docks and corners as well.’

O’Keefe looked to Mathew-Pare and he took over. ‘Did you get anything from him?’

Connolly shook his head and swallowed another mouthful of beer. ‘No. Said she’d been doing private parties for some swells in the country. And that she’d been working the streets more than usual to keep herself in gin. Was acting more cracked by the day. Galloping syphilis, no doubt, and half-pickled in gin. Pity to the punters, though it serves them right.’

‘Any name on the private parties?’ Mathew-Pare asked.

‘No. Noonan said he didn’t know. I thought about pushing it, but she was found down on Merchants’ Quay where she was known to work, her skirts bunched up around her waist, so I reckoned it to be some fella’d picked her up there and lost the run of himself. I never had a chance to work any further with it. I was on to the Smyth shooting shortly after, same as every detective in the city. Never got anybody on that either, though every mutt in town knows who the shooter was.’

Lieutenant Colonel Smyth, a one-armed war veteran, a King’s Own Scottish Borderer, had been made Divisional Police Commissioner for Munster earlier in the year. He had become famous for instigating the first known mutiny in the RIC since the beginning of the Troubles, having given a speech to Listowel barracks in June, telling the boys that they would please him mightily the more Irishmen they shot. Naturally enough, being Irishmen, the local constables took offence and handed in belts, swords, guns and caps, calling the man a bloody-minded murderer. A month later, Smyth was shot dead by the IRA in the City and County Club in Cork. O’Keefe wasn’t alone in the constabulary in thinking the man might have had it coming, but he kept such thoughts to himself. So it was no mystery to him how the murder of a young prostitute could be neglected in the wake of Smyth’s shooting. ‘Only one gunman? I thought a mob of fellas plugged him,’ he said.

‘Oh, there was a gang with him all right, but sure the shooter, Connors, needs no help, the bastard. Cool as Christmas Eve, that fella.’

‘Connors?’ O’Keefe said. ‘What’s the Christian name?’

Connolly looked at him now, seriously, for the first time since they had come in. ‘Seamus. Seamus Connors.’

Mathew-Pare was smiling again, brighter this time, as if his face actually meant it. ‘Jesus, that’s the second time today we’ve come across that name.’

‘Long as you don’t come across him in person, you’ll be all right. How’d he come up?’ Connolly asked.

O’Keefe explained to him what Anne Duffy had said about Connors and how it was most likely he who had visited the Costelloe farm in the days after the girl had gone missing. Connolly lit another Sweet Afton and slid the packet across to them. ‘That sounds like him all right. You fancy him for killing the girl you found?’

‘I don’t know, but if he’s as bad as everybody seems to think he is …’ O’Keefe shrugged. ‘I’m willing to point the dogs that way, but one thing bothers me.’ He was thinking aloud now. ‘Why did Connors visit the girl’s parents and claim to be looking for her if he’d killed her?’

The three were silent for a long moment. Connolly spoke first. ‘Guilt? Or maybe he wanted to deflect interest in himself by going there, acting as if he didn’t know she was dead.’

O’Keefe considered it, sipping some whiskey and chasing it with stout. Mathew-Pare turned to the Branch man. ‘This Connors – did he fight in the war?’

Connolly laughed. ‘Did he fuck! That boy was too busy making plans for his own war right here in Cork. He was a medical student in the college, if you can believe it. From a decent family, the word is. Republican family, sure enough, but respectable like. Brother’s a padre in King’s County and the two sisters are schoolteachers. Big farm this side of Crossbarry. Don’t know where he got it from, but he’s good, our Seamus. V-A-B, that fella. No sight of him since the Smyth job though. The gossip is he’s gone to the hills to shoot in one of the new mobile units they’re forming.’

O’Keefe noted all this in his diary as Connolly spoke, copying down the commonly used but unofficial RIC acronym. VAB.
Very Active Bastard.
He particularly noted Connors’ background in medicine. A medical student would be aware of how to kill someone with one blow, wouldn’t he? He thought of the mutilation of the breasts, the reasonably clean cuts.

Connolly asked, ‘Why do you ask did he serve?’ He gulped more whiskey and followed it with the Wrastler.

O’Keefe looked up from his notes. ‘I mentioned the wound that killed our victim. She had bruising on her neck as well, mutilation to the chest – the victim’s breasts were cut off. Initially I thought throttling was the cause of death, but the surgeon found a puncture wound at the base of the girl’s skull that actually killed her. He thought it looked like the wound a professional would make. A veteran, possibly with hand-to-hand combat experience. Trench raiding, that sort of thing. Just speculation, mind.’

Mathew-Pare was silent, smoking. Connolly took more stout and seemed to think it over. ‘Fairly wide pool of suspects – fellas with hand-fighting experience. War vets. Must be hundreds of them in County Cork alone. Sure, half the Tans and every bloody Auxie in the place fits that bill. Can’t imagine brass would like it to be one of them anyway. Not when you have Seamus Connors as the last known jockey for your horse.’

O’Keefe took another sip of whiskey. Connolly was right. ‘It doesn’t work for me as a passion killing. A scrap between lovers that took a turn. It’s too …’ he gestured a box with his hands, ‘squared away somehow. The way she was laid out on the hill. The single puncture wound.’

‘Your wire said she was labelled. I’ll see if I can dig up anything on her as a mouth. Thing is, there’s more operators in this town than there are tits on a sow. She could have been touting for anyone – Red Tabs, Auxies, Secret Service, Division Intelligence. Even my own esteemed colleagues in Crimes Special.’ He drank and then burped. ‘Or maybe she just broke Connors’ heart of stone, lads, and he didn’t like it.’

O’Keefe considered it again. It was possible – a crime of passion made to look like something political. But what of the feathering? The single blow that caused her death? There was too much that was clinical about the killing itself. If Connors had loved the girl and been enraged at her dismissal of him, she would have shown the marks of his rage. Severe bruising. Multiple stab wounds.
But there was the strangulation and the mutilation of the chest.
O’Keefe reckoned that despite his misgivings, Connors still seemed as likely a suspect as any for it, crime of passion or otherwise.