Peeler (7 page)

***

Liam Farrell went to O’Sullivan’s cowsheds to sleep, but found it impossible. Despite his promotion to Intelligence under the command of Seán Brennan, his gut still ached at his expulsion from the flying column. In the sheds he listened to the preparations the men around him were making in the lantern-light – cleaning rifles and loading rounds into magazines, smoking, chatting, giddy with anticipation of combat. Three young men said the Rosary. When he could take it no longer, he got up and sat by a friend of his from home.

Diarmuid O’Shea looked up at him. ‘Well, Liam, heard you’re in with the bossmen now. First feckin’ off to college and now joining the top dogs at the table. Secret missions and all, boy.’

Farrell shook his head and offered him a cigarette. ‘Not something I went looking for. Wish to God I was going with you fellas. Tear the arse out of the Auxies.’

O’Shea caught the note of bitterness in his voice. ‘You never know, Liam. They could tear the arse out of us, so they could. You could be lucky sure, not going at all.’

‘Do you really think that will happen, Diarmuid? And would you trade places with me?’

O’Shea ran the cloth cleaning plug through the barrel of his Enfield one last time. Farrell wondered was it one of the guns they had taken from the coastguard station, together with the Kilbrittain lads, the summer before. O’Shea was two years younger than him. Back then, he had looked up to Farrell, followed his lead, as Farrell followed that of the older lads. But O’Shea had proven himself to be a fierce and loyal Volunteer in his own right, able to walk tens of miles of countryside in any weather, fervent, cheerful and alert on odd hours of snatched sleep, while Farrell had been away at college. How soon things changed, Farrell thought.

‘No, Liam. I figure we’ll paste the Auxie bastards and then Lloyd George and the King and the whole shaggin’ lot of Peelers, Tans, Tommies, Auxies, spies, traitors, touts, taxmen, magistrates and fuckin’ friends to the Crown will all feck off home, boy, and leave us to run our own affairs. That’s what I believe.’ He pulled on his cigarette. ‘And no, I don’t think I’d want to trade places with you for the world. No disrespect,
sir
, but you officer lads make me nervous.’ He shot Farrell a mock salute.

Farrell smiled sadly. ‘I’m no officer, Diarmuid. Just a failed gunman.’

‘You wait.’ O’Shea clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You were made for it, boy. Dishing out orders, poring over maps and all.’

‘Sure, going by what Tom Barry thinks, I could hardly see what’s on them. What’s more, Diarmuid, no matter how soon the Brits feck off and leave us to the running of Ireland, there’ll always be a taxman.’

‘You’re not serious, Liam.’

‘If you don’t get yourself shot, sure you can sign up for a tax collector’s job in the new republic.’

‘And you can get a lovely new pair of specs on your IRA pension. Quick, Liam! How many fingers?’

‘I’ll give you fingers, boy.’

Diarmuid laughed and began loading .303 rounds into the Enfield’s box magazine. Each man on the ambush would carry thirty-five rounds. Thirty-five rounds Farrell would never fire for the liberation of his people. O’Shea stood, held out his hand and pulled Farrell to his feet. Without letting go, he pumped his friend’s hand. ‘Liam, I wish you were going. You know that, don’t yeh?’

Farrell’s grasp was hard and firm. ‘Just plug one of the bastards for me, Diarmuid.’

O’Shea fired off another mock salute as he left the shed, his precious Enfield slung over his shoulder like he’d been carrying it all his life. Farrell watched him leave, his chest tight with longing and envy.

‘Farrell.’

Startled, he turned to the voice. Farrell knew Seamus Connors from his time at University College in Cork. Connors had been studying medicine, though Farrell could hardly have imagined a more unlikely man to succour the ill or help bring new life into the world. He was tall and gaunt, with pale skin drawn over knife-sharp cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes that seemed to soak up and extinguish light. He had the welt of a recent wound on his forehead.

Connors had been two years ahead of Farrell in his studies, but he too abandoned them for the cause. He was a younger son from a large farm and, like Farrell, the first of his family to attend college. But all similarity between them stopped there. Connors was a gunman through and through. Most of the medical students who joined the IRA were used as medics. But Connors, it was discovered early, had a gift. And his gift was taking life, not saving it. It was rumoured that he had shot seven, some said up to ten, soldiers and policemen. He had been a member of the 1st Cork City Brigade’s heavy boys. People said that he had just returned from Dublin, that he’d been working for the Big Fella himself and that Collins had wanted him as member of his Squad, but that Barry had convinced him there’d be more fighting done in West Cork. Farrell had also heard that Connors had fired the shots in the Cork City and County Club which killed Lieutenant Colonel Bryce Ferguson Smyth, Munster RIC Divisional Commissioner.

But though they knew each other, Farrell and Connors had had no contact within the camp that week. Connors socialised little, being silent and sullen by nature.

‘Seamus.’

Connors gazed unblinking at Farrell. It was a habit he had and Farrell wasn’t the only man in the Brigade unnerved by those eyes. Then Connors asked bluntly, ‘What do you know of the girl they found on the hillside?’

For a second, Farrell was taken off guard. He hadn’t really thought much about the girl in the past few hours. And then two things struck him. The first was: how had Seamus Connors come to hear of the matter? Farrell knew that his demotion – or promotion, depending on one’s perspective – was common knowledge within the camp, but at no time had he mentioned the girl on the hillside to anyone. He had taken it as a given that her existence and his orders to investigate her murder were not fodder for camp gossip. Brennan himself had impressed upon Farrell the importance of dis-covering if a fellow IRA man had been responsible for her
death.

The second thing that struck Farrell about the question impressed him as the more sinister by far: why did Connors want to know? Unconsciously, he answered Connors’ question with one of his own.

‘And what have you heard, Seamus? Have you heard anything yourself, man?’

Connors’ eyes narrowed. Instinct dictated that Farrell hold his gaze, keeping on his face an expression that strove to appear neutral, unchallenging.

‘You were promoted, so you were. Lieutenant Farrell is it now?’

Farrell nodded. ‘For all it means, I was, Seamus,’ he said, realising that, although he was younger than Connors and despite the man’s lethal reputation, he was now Connors’ equal in rank and thus not obliged to share operational details with him unless ordered to by someone of higher rank.

‘Intelligence?’ Connors said, as if reading Farrell’s thoughts.

‘The Spooks and Question Men, Seamus.’ Farrell smiled, as if he were making a joke of it, all the time aware that as a Corkman himself, Connors understood innately that there is nothing so serious as a joke. He returned Farrell’s smile, his angular features unmoved by the effort.

‘You’re good ones for the questions, you law boys, so you are. You know I heard you speak one time, back at college? For the Law Society. A debate on physical force republicanism. You remember it, Farrell?’

Farrell did remember it, but not what side he took or how he had performed. ‘I think I do, Seamus, but –’

‘You were good at the auld questions then, Farrell. Tore strips off the other fella. Had even me thinking there was no use for force in the cause of freedom. That to use it was to lower ourselves to the … how did you put it? Something about how we’d be drowning with the Crown in the same pool of blood? And that our hands would be stained red, much the same as our oppressors. You remember that speech, Farrell?’

He didn’t remember what Connors had quoted but, embarrassingly, they sounded like his words. His face reddened. But then, that had been years ago, before all hopes of Home Rule had been so thoroughly abandoned. Before he’d been searched and beaten by foreign soldiers, lads younger than himself, on the streets of his own county town. Never mind that he’d been assigned his position in the debate on the House’s motion through the toss of a coin. He could have, Farrell reminded himself, not without pride, just as convincingly have argued in favour of physical force republicanism had the King’s head landed up instead of down. Anger, stoked by vanity, rose in Farrell’s chest.

‘I take it you didn’t much care for my argument, Seamus?’

Connors appraised Farrell coldly. There was something so outside the bounds of normal human interaction, Farrell thought, to stare so directly at another person. Then Connors’ lips twitched, as if he could look into Farrell’s head – into his heart – and was amused by what he saw there.

‘Sure it was only a debate, Farrell. One side against another. Could have been tennis. A sport, like. You must think we’re not up to much intellectually, us medical boys, as to take a law student’s empty words as anything but the heap of shite they are. I knew you were spouting, Farrell. Of course I did.’

‘I never thought you didn’t, Seamus. I was only –’

‘Pay no mind Farrell. If I’d thought you were serious I would have put you first on my list for a bullet when it all kicked off. But sure …’ his lips twitched again, no light in his eyes, ‘… we’re on the same side now boy, aren’t we?’

***

Returning from Katherine Sheehan’s house, O’Keefe entered Ballycarleton barracks through the rear door that opened onto the stable yard, and headed downstairs to the kitchen in the hope of a cup of tea. The kitchens were located on the lower ground floor of the barracks, across the hallway from a short corridor of four cells and a small day-room, which some of the more enterprising young constables and Tans had converted into an exercise room. There was always a set of barbells and a medicine ball around the barracks, even in the days before the men had been forced to billet in, but Ballycarleton now had a weights bench, exercise cycle and canvas heavy bag, as well as a table tennis table made from a sheet of painted board resting on two sawhorses, the net and bats brought over from England by one of the Tans. The sport was a recent import to Ireland and was proving addictive to constables around the country. The distinctive tick-tocking of bat and celluloid ball was as common a sound in barracks as the flutter of playing cards being shuffled. O’Keefe heard the sound now and went towards it. He had been a messy, if relentless, handball player when he was younger and could see the appeal of a game that could be played indoors and behind barbed wire; a game that would erase the outside world for the time it took to play a match. Wipe the mind clean with the metronomic rhythm of the rallies.

Young Keane was playing against a Tan called Heather-field. They were both about the same age and had formed a fast friendship in barracks. O’Keefe reckoned that this could be either a positive or a negative development, depending on who influenced whom, but it was the way of things in the police. You hung around with the fellas of similar age and rank. In the days before the shooting war started, you’d go to dances together, court women, drink in the pubs and go to race meetings and football matches. Now you played table tennis and watched each other’s back on patrol.

He watched the two of them, in uniform breeches and cotton undervests, sweat beading on their foreheads as they leaned in, pushing, chopping the ball over the net. Keane noticed him first and caught the ball in his hand, ending the rally. In the sudden silence O’Keefe could hear a gramophone playing upstairs, but couldn’t make out the song.

‘Sergeant,’ Keane said, wiping his brow with a threadbare towel hanging from his belt. He took a crumpled bag of sweets from his pocket and held it out to O’Keefe. ‘Ju-jube, Sergeant?’

O’Keefe was embarrassed that they had stopped because of him. He had hoped to watch them play and now he’d interrupted them. It hadn’t been long – eight months – since he’d been made acting sergeant and he was sometimes still surprised by the respect shown to the rank. It wasn’t real power, like that wielded by the officers of head constable rank and above. But it was the power to make a constable’s life in barracks a misery if he wanted to. Or make it a lark if he so chose, if such a state was possible in the times they were in. He wasn’t used to the deference shown to him, by the Irish cons at least, and sometimes he wondered whether or not he deserved it. Were the men under him happy? O’Keefe realised that he had no idea. He thought to ask Daly and then imagined the answer he’d get.

‘Sorry to break it up, Keane, Heatherfield. I was just watching. Carry on.’

Keane seemed unsure whether or not to begin playing again. He swallowed one of the sweets. ‘Any developments on the case, Sergeant?’

‘No, none at all so far. We’ll get a jump on it once the girl’s identified. That’s the important thing now.’

Keane nodded, his face serious. ‘Anything I can do to help, Sergeant? I’m on a late tomorrow, but I don’t mind working the morning for you.’

O’Keefe smiled, thinking that young Keane might be a positive influence on the likes of Heatherfield after all. ‘That’s grand, Keane. I can pull you after drill if I need you.’ He made to leave them. ‘Good work today, Constable. Well done.’

Before he turned away he thought he saw Keane blush. Outside the room he heard the ball tock back into play and the deep Geordie voice of Heatherfield. ‘Bloody boot-lick you are, lad.’

Smiling a little, O’Keefe thought,
Nothing I wouldn’t have said myself
once
. He heard Keane laugh and tell his friend to go and shite.
Would have said that too
. He mounted the stairs.

As he reached the ground floor hallway, the music he’d heard from below grew louder. The song was a popular one with the war veterans among the Tans, a group that numbered four or five who stuck fairly close together in barracks. O’Keefe recalled that Heatherfield had also fought in the war, but that he kept away from the Tan mob that centred on Jack Finch and another Londoner, Derek Bennett. The song was ‘Stony Broke in No Man’s Land’. A sentimental number, the lads tended to play it more when they were on a spree. O’Keefe realised that while he’d been downstairs, the record had been repeated several times. DI Masterson must be out, he thought, and wondered again if Head Constable Murray would ever return from his leave. Murray wouldn’t tolerate the heavy drinking and singing that had sprung up in his absence. He only just put up with some social supping in barracks as an alternative to the lads being out smashing up pubs or giving the barracks password away to IRA spies and getting sniped at as they weaved home.