Peeler (8 page)

‘Sergeant?’

O’Keefe turned to see that evening’s Barrack Orderly, William Dunn, approaching him from reception. Dunn was one of the older Irish constables. He had always billeted – even before the Troubles – with his mate, Constable Slainey, in the labourer’s cottage that adjoined the cowsheds. He was close to retirement and wanted an easy life. Did things by the book, not out of any great devotion to duty, but because twenty years of RIC life had taught him that there was less bother in barracks if everyone followed the rules.

‘Constable?’

He came up close to O’Keefe, raising his voice, partly in annoyance and partly to be heard over the din. ‘Do you hear that rabble? How’s a man supposed to catch a wink of kip with those …’ Dunn searched for a word and found two, ‘bloody eejits in there, playing that poxridden gramophone record fifty times twenty. And the same song, over and over. It’s not right for a barracks, Sergeant, it’s not, and them as drunk as mice fallen in a keg of stout, the fuckers.’

O’Keefe held up his hand to indicate that he should go easy. Dunn wasn’t much of a man for cursing, so O’Keefe knew he was at the end of his patience. And no doubt, being years senior to him, he felt that, despite the difference in rank, he could speak freely to O’Keefe and he would listen. Still, much as O’Keefe agreed with Dunn, there was only so much of calling a man’s fellow cons ‘fuckers’ one could take. ‘That’s grand, Dunn. Is Sergeant Daly not in?’

Dunn made a face and threw out his hands in a gesture of futility that spoke volumes. O’Keefe’s own patience was starting to fray. Jim Daly had a reputation for idleness – one he promoted best himself – but he was a full-striped sergeant and a good copper. He’d earned his rank through years of fair, tough policing and a fine knowledge of law and procedure, garnering several commendations for bravery. O’Keefe gave Dunn a look back that told the man he would brook no disrespect for Sergeant Daly.

‘He’s up in his office,
Sergeant
.’

O’Keefe ignored the sarcasm and headed for the stairs. It occurred to him to break up the party himself, but he wasn’t sure whether or not Daly might have sanctioned it for some reason. Two steps up, O’Keefe met the man himself coming down.

‘There’s Seán. Good to see you back in one piece. Bring us any eggs?’

O’Keefe raised his voice over the volume of the gramophone, the song starting again. ‘No, I didn’t. Are you letting that shower off the leash for a reason or will I shut them down?’

‘Reason?’

‘Yes, Jim. Any particular reason?’

Daly considered the question. ‘I’d rather they changed the song, but otherwise, sure, they need a knees up now and again. No harm at all, at all.’

‘They’re jarred, Jim.’

‘Better in here than out there. Out there, they might hurt someone.’

‘They might hurt someone in here. Have they locked away their arms?’

Daly ignored the question. ‘They got another anonymous letter today. Said they weren’t welcome and should feck off home to England before they’re butchered in their beds and their heads sent home to mammy in a Heinz beans’ crate. And one of their Tan mates ate a bullet in Cork. Not sure if he did it himself or had help. Of course, the fella was up on murder and robbery charges, so I suppose his passing could be considered a good thing for all concerned. Still, you can hardly blame them for waking their chum.’

‘Mind while I get me handkerchief. Did they lock away their guns before they started drinking or not?’

‘Their what?’ Daly cupped a hand to his ear.

‘Their guns, Jim.’ O’Keefe’s tea had gone cold in its mug and he was tired. The Tans were roaring, more than singing, along with the song. ‘
I can’t get the old job, can’t get the new / Can’t carry on as I used to do …
’ They were nearing a crescendo. Daly appeared amused by it all. O’Keefe said again, ‘The guns?’

The singers hit their stride and O’Keefe could hear the heavy, drunken dance steps of booted men. A chair fell over and Dunn once again appeared from reception in the hallway, glaring. O’Keefe waved him back into reception. The words to the song bellowed out.

‘
I look all around me and daily I see / Thousands and thousands of men / A lot worse off than me …
’

Daly turned to O’Keefe and mouthed the words the Tans had added themselves ‘
… and so I joined the FUCKING RIC!
’ Then he said, ‘Their guns? I haven’t the faintest. You’d think they’d have put them away themselves. They’re not children.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘Come on then, you always knew how to spoil a good hooley, O’Keefe.’

Daly and O’Keefe entered the ground floor day-room and were faced with four men standing, arms flung round one another’s shoulders. Cigarettes dangled from the lips of two men, long fingers of ash ready to drop down uniform tunics to blend in with the egg yolk and chop grease smeared there already. Two bottles of Dewar’s scotch whisky sat on a small card table surrounded by chairs, one of them upended. The Tans and many other war veterans never drank Irish whiskey if they could avoid it, thinking – correctly or not, O’Keefe didn’t know – that the Irish distilleries had sent the dregs of their product to the men in the trenches after the 1916 Rising while the Scots had sent their best spirits. It was the kind of trench story that became truth after a while.

Daly leaned in to O’Keefe. ‘You know what Churchill said about the Tans? That they were the best of a fine lot of applicants, chosen “on account of their intelligence, their character and their records in the war”.’ Daly winked and then righted the fallen chair. The Tans appeared to become aware of Daly only now, his massive frame filling the door. Daly’s was that unique country strain of hugeness that was easily masked by his genial demeanour. O’Keefe himself was considered a big man, but was slight compared to Daly. The Tans, however, after marking O’Keefe and Daly’s presence in the room, dismissed them.

One of the Tans, Taylor – a wiry Scot from Glasgow – untangled himself from the throw of arms and shoulders and, without acknowledging Daly or O’Keefe, began cranking the Victrola gramophone for another run at ‘Stony Broke’.

Daly said, ‘Now lads, I think we’ve had enough of that one for tonight. Time please, gents, time please. Have you no beds to go to?’ He smiled as he spoke. O’Keefe scanned the room for weapons and saw two Sam Browne belts abandoned in the corner. They were behind the men and, he hoped, forgotten. But Finch was wearing his belt, Webley in its holster, the holster’s fastener and flap loose.

Taylor continued to crank the Victrola. Finch looked at O’Keefe and smiled. ‘All right, Sergeants Daly and … you. You come to apologise for smacking me in the mouth?’ He reached out and grabbed one of the whisky bottles from the table. ‘It’s all right then, mate. ’Ave a fucking drink and let’s settle it right fucking now, eh? Eh, Sar’nt?’ He swigged from the bottle and then held it out.

O’Keefe said, ‘Party’s over, lads. That’s it, cork it and stow it.’

Taylor looked from Daly to O’Keefe, then manhandled the needle onto the record. Crackling static filled the room.

Daly said, ‘Turn that fucking thing off. Now, Taylor.’ He didn’t say, ‘Or you’ll be written up or docked pay and reported for insubordination.’ He knew better than to waste his breath. The Tans didn’t care about such punishments and, even if they did when they were sober, they certainly didn’t now. The war had made them men for whom the minor details of normal life mattered little. The big things – staying alive, your mates, a bottle of whisky – were the only things that mattered. O’Keefe sometimes wondered how he had avoided the bitter nihilism and impulsive violence that afflicted many of the veterans when they drank. Perhaps because, drunk or sober, he didn’t care about anything at all. And then, strangely, he remembered Katherine Sheehan and thought how disappointed he would be if one of these idiots shot him and he never saw her again.

Bennett, the other Cockney, spoke up. ‘There’s no need for that now, Sar’nt. We was only ’aving a laugh. One more time and we’ll knock it down a notch. Promise we will … Right, lads?’ His smile was slow and obvious.

O’Keefe opened his mouth to speak when, over the scratch and pop of the record, Daly intervened. ‘I’ll give ye one more chance to turn that off and go to your beds.
One
.’ He looked at each of the men. The fourth Tan, a Scouser named Reid, appeared to have passed out, hanging from his mates’ shoulders, eyes closed.

Finch took another long sup of whisky and held his rheumy gaze on O’Keefe. O’Keefe crossed his arms and felt the comforting heft of his own Webley in its shoulder holster. Still staring at O’Keefe, Finch raised his voice.

‘And I’ll give you two stuffed cunts one more chance to fuck off out of my sight.’ He turned to Daly and roared, ‘ONE!’

Bennett laughed and Taylor began to sing. ‘
I can’t get the old job, can’t get the new …
’

Daly took his Webley from its belt holster and put two bullets into the Victrola.

The shots were stunningly loud in the confines of the room. Acrid powder smoke hung at eye level for a moment, then hooked a draught and began to clear. Reid fell from Finch and Bennett’s shoulders and banged his head off the card table on his way down. Bennett stood stock still and Taylor was cowering in a corner of the room, his hands over his ears.

O’Keefe saw Finch go for his sidearm. Drunkenness made him slow. O’Keefe grabbed the second bottle from the table and whipped the remaining whisky into Finch’s face. The Tan’s hands went instinctively to his eyes and O’Keefe, skipping around the table, moving faster than he’d done in ages, grabbed Finch’s gun hand and brought it up and around his back in a wrist lock. Finch went down on his knees.

‘My eyes! You bastard, I’ll fucking gut you, you Irish bastard!’

The hallway outside the day-room suddenly filled with half-dressed constables, some holding guns.

Daly cuffed Finch’s hands behind him while O’Keefe took the Webley from the Tan’s holster and opened the cylinder, letting the six rounds drop to the floor. O’Keefe then told Bennett to lift up his mate while Daly took a handful of the cowering Taylor’s oiled hair and shoved him next to the others. Holding his revolver on Finch, Daly turned to Taylor and Bennett, ‘Ye two daft planks take your mate here down to the cells. Put him in three …’ He turned to O’Keefe. ‘Is there anyone in the cells at the moment?’

‘Not the last I heard.’

Daly turned back to Taylor. ‘You. Bring me up the key to cell three after you’ve locked this fool in it and then you sit jailer. If you fall asleep down there, I’ll rip your head off and send it home to
your
mother in a Heinz beans’ crate. You …’ to Bennett now, ‘take Reid to bed and sit by him ’til he wakes. He might have a concussion and if he starts sicking up, he’s likely to choke on it. If he dies, you die, Bennett. Understood?’

Bennett nodded, not meeting his eyes.

‘And you,’ Daly said, jerking his chin at Finch. ‘You sit on your arse ’til I decide if you’re to be court-martialled.’

Finch’s reddened eyes flared like Verey lights. ‘On what fucking charges?’

Daly placed the Webley’s barrel on Finch’s forehead. ‘On what fucking charges,
Sergeant
.’ He was smiling now, digging the barrel into the skin of Finch’s brow. ‘Well, Constable Finch, why don’t you think about that one yourself? If you can come up with a set of three charges that more accurately reflect the nature of our problems this evening than I can, I’ll let you off when you sober up. How’s that for a laugh, Finch?’

Finch said nothing but held Daly’s eyes. The gun barrel against his forehead didn’t seem to scare him in the slightest. Daly lowered the gun and holstered it. He took out his pipe and began tamping tobacco into the bowl. Looking up at the Tans, he said, ‘You three
dahs
still here?’

The Tans left the day-room and the men in the hallway drifted back to bed or to their cards or table tennis. O’Keefe made half an effort to clean up the fragments of gramophone and vinyl. Daly took up Finch’s bottle of whisky. Mira-culously, it had survived the mêlée. He poured drinks into two of the empty glasses on the table.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Problem solved. Drink, Seán?’

O’Keefe set the pieces of broken disc on top of the splintered wooden gramophone case and sat down. He took up the glass and raised it. ‘To a spanking new Victrola.’

***

As he grew older, his mother stopped caring whether the boy was in the house or not when she entertained her friends. Sometimes he watched what they did together, his mother and her friends.

Most days, he was forced to scavenge for food. Stealing apples from the orchards outside of town, vegetables from kitchen gardens, loaves of bread cooling in open windows. He had asked her only once for food and she had beaten him so badly, he’d never asked again. She still kept her chickens and used the money from the eggs she sold to buy her medicine. It came in bottles, and he was nine years old when he realised it wasn’t medicine at all. It seemed as if his father had been gone forever, fighting the boars. He’d asked his mother about it once and once more she’d beaten him, so he never asked again and his father had never come home.

Sometimes he used to sleep in the hen house, but it wasn’t the same now that he knew. He could hear them inside and picture what they were doing. The rough grunting men, his mother’s high, piercing laughter, her imprecations and pitiable pleading for more. More drink. More pleasure. More than life had seen fit to give her. And in the half-dark of the silent hen house, moonlight shafting through cracks in the walls, he listened and gathered stray feathers caught in the straw. Cupped them in his hands and brought them to his face. Listening.

‘Surgeon wants you now, Sergeant. Says he’s ready,’ Constable Keane said, putting his head around the doorframe.

O’Keefe started at his voice and realised he’d been nodding off at his desk, the hillside murder file open in front of him. He wondered had Keane noticed.

After the Victrola incident, O’Keefe had spent the night in the curtained-off section of the barracks’ attic beside the sandbagged Lewis gun emplacement, developing the photographs he had taken of the body
in situ
. He sniffed at his fingers now and noted that they still smelled of Acid Fixing Powders, despite his having washed them several times.

When he had hung the photographs to dry, he finished the duty rosters for the following two weeks and typed out a preliminary report on the murder, so that it would be ready for the surgeon and the army court-martial officers when they arrived, leaving a duplicate copy on the DI’s desk. It had been after three when he had tried to sleep on the cot he’d dragged into the ground-floor day-room, setting up camp beside the shattered gramophone player.

By half-past four, the nightmares had him, and he’d risen again at six, beaten from sleep by the dreams, fading images of V Beach, Sedd-el-Bahr and Hill 141. Katherine Sheehan had been in his dreams too, among the blood and the dust and the carnage.

Coffee then, and a solitary wait for the night patrol to return. Daly had been scheduled for a routine interrogation of the constable in charge of the night patrol, but O’Keefe blessed him with another hour in bed and did it himself. Sleep was a luxury O’Keefe enjoyed vicariously. The interrogation was short and to the point. All men accounted for, two obstructions moved from the Bandon and Dunmanway roads, no shots fired, no contact with the enemy.

The rest of the day O’Keefe spent briefing the surgeon who had arrived from Cork and tending to the daily duties of a barracks’ sergeant: supervising drill, uniform and weapons inspections, lecturing constables in their one hour of school and study of parliamentary acts, law and policing procedure.

He checked the clock on his office wall. Twenty past three. Outside, the weak winter sun was descending over West Cork. He yawned.

‘Long night, Sergeant?’ Keane asked.

‘Tell the surgeon I’ll be there shortly. Is the DI back yet?’

‘He is. He’s there with some swells in mufti, in his office.
Sasanaigh
. Closed the door when they went in.’

Sasanaigh
. Englishmen. O’Keefe remembered that Keane came from an Irish-speaking area in Donegal. He also noted how comfortably the young man had taken to the culture of the constabulary, remarking,
sotto voce
, the comings and goings of the DI and visiting strangers. Some things never changed. Nothing like a visit from strange men in suits to start the gossip wheel spinning. All cons loved a sniff of scandal.

O’Keefe let the matter drop. He’d find out soon enough who the men were. ‘Notify the surgeon I’m on my way, will you?’

Keane left, but O’Keefe couldn’t bring himself to rise. One more minute. He lit a Player’s cigarette and picked up a copy of Friday’s
Evening Standard
. Daly had left it for him, folded open at the editorial, before heading into Cork to see his wife and family. O’Keefe smoked and read:

Age-Old Conflict Reaches New Low

In the centuries of history shared between Ireland and her closest neighbour and sovereign protector, foul means have been employed by some to advance the cause of Home Rule or independence. Never in this time, stretching back to Diarmuid McMorrough and Strongbow and the abdication of the High Kings of Leinster, has one party opted for the slaughter of innocent beasts to further its cause …

Never, O’Keefe thought, unless one considered the dead dog they buried with Diarmuid McMorrough’s father. Never, unless you considered some of the RIC men and Tans shot recently. Pure beasts of burden, a few of them, God rest them. Pure innocent, as Daly would have said, and not in the virginal sense. O’Keefe smiled bitterly and stubbed out his cigarette. Horses and asses and newspapermen’s ire. It was a grand thing to know one’s place in the grand scheme of things.

***

‘Ah, Sergeant O’Keefe, just the man, just the man.’

District Inspector Walter Masterson was smiling with welcome. Beckoning O’Keefe into his office, dosing out avuncular pats on the back. Visitors always brought on fits of spontaneous good cheer in the DI. O’Keefe was surprised he hadn’t called him ‘Seán’.

‘Inspector,’ O’Keefe said, allowing himself to be guided, deciding to suffer the act just long enough to see if he was staying on the case. Looking around the room at the suited gathering of men, he reckoned his odds of doing so had dropped since yesterday.

DI Masterson was ‘Castle Kidney’: connected to the governing class of Ireland through ancestral title, marriage and religion. A tall, large-gutted man in his late forties, with thick brown hair peppered grey and worn oiled, he had a smattering of tiny red veins around his soft, puttyish nose which seemed to increase in number each time O’Keefe saw him. It was a face O’Keefe associated with too much rich food and drink. The face of a Lord Such and Such, O’Keefe had always thought. And no wonder. Masterson had come from an estate near Slane in County Meath and, like his batman, Constable Senior, had joined the constabulary as a cadet on the recommendation of the local magistrate, a close friend of his father’s.

O’Keefe said, ‘The surgeon is ready to report on the post-mortem, sir.’

‘All in good time, Sergeant. All in good time. There’s not a lot he can report if the lead in the investigation and his superior aren’t present now, is there?’ Masterson chuckled warmly.

O’Keefe forced a smile and inwardly noted two things. First, Masterson had called him the lead on the investigation. His prospects were on the move. Second, his use of the word ‘superior’. The word galled O’Keefe but also drove home the fact that the investigation was staying local. Many murder cases were taken over by the County Inspector and assigned to men hand-selected by him. Sometimes, if the murder was particularly bloody or notably political, special detectives from Dublin Castle – Murder Men – were brought in. But this looked as if it was staying in the district. And if the DI was keeping it, he must see himself benefiting from it somehow.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good, good. Now, a progress report, Sergeant. But first …’ Masterson indicated the man who sat in the leather-backed chair in front of his mahogany desk. ‘First allow me to introduce Detective Sergeant Thomas Mathew-Pare. One of us, O’Keefe. Scotland Yard. Here to lend us a hand in the investigation. Thomas, Sergeant Seán O’Keefe.’

There were two other men on a leather couch against the wall that matched the chair and O’Keefe noticed one of them smile at the mention of Scotland Yard. Masterson’s batman, Constable Senior, sat on a couch against the opposite wall, his eyes fixed on O’Keefe.

O’Keefe held out his hand and Mathew-Pare stood and took it. The first thing that struck O’Keefe was that he didn’t look like a proper copper. Like many policemen, O’Keefe was guilty of categorising people, slotting them into handy boxes. This one, civilian. That one, soldier. Fellow cop. Shopkeeper’s wife. Cornerboy. Tinker. Poitín-maker. Young one. Wrong one. He would admit the system had its shortcomings and was highly prejudicial – often he found his judgements not wrong, but oversimplified, and was forced to amend them.

He’d stand by it this time, however. Detective Sergeant Thomas Mathew-Pare didn’t fit the box marked ‘copper’. He looked to be in his late thirties, was of average height and weight – five foot nine, eleven stone, O’Keefe reckoned – and his face was smooth and boyish. It hardly looked to O’Keefe as if the man had ever shaved, and yet there was a thatching of fine wrinkles around his eyes which gave his age away and suggested heavy smoking or time spent under harsh sunlight. The eyes themselves were a watery grey that seemed to take on the light of their surroundings, making O’Keefe question their actual colour. In all, it was a face that lacked any one definable feature; a face that could blend in anywhere. O’Keefe realised that despite not looking like a policeman, the man couldn’t be easily labelled anything else either.

‘Sergeant,’ Mathew-Pare said, releasing O’Keefe’s hand. ‘Walter was just giving me a brief take on the case. Hope we can be of help.’

We?
O’Keefe had noticed the ‘Walter’ as well. Being on Christian-name terms with the DI meant one of two things: this Mathew-Pare was related socially to Masterson, most likely via the informal but exclusive network of landowning families throughout Ireland and England, or – more likely – he was a Castle man. One of the many men assigned by Dublin Castle or Whitehall or both to keep an eye on things in the outer reaches of Ireland. Castle men reported directly to Ministers and Lords Lieutenant. With a word, they could scupper your career.

O’Keefe studied the ‘we’ now: the two men sitting on the leather couch. The smiling man sat on the left smoking a cigarette. He was unhealthily thin, with diamond sharp features, dark slits for eyes, a nose that resembled a scythe in every way except that it had been broken at least once and had a pronounced lump of scar tissue on its bridge, a thin moustache, and thinning, sandy blond hair oiled and combed back from his forehead. His hat rested on his knee, the brim as sharp as his eyes.

O’Keefe’s gaze shifted to the second man. Also smoking, he was much bigger than the first, with a large, protruding jaw padded by hanging jowls and shadowed in black whiskers. His skin bore the blemishes of childhood illness or acne. The sleeves of his suit jacket strained against his bulging arms. These two slotted better into the box marked ‘copper’.

O’Keefe turned back to Mathew-Pare. ‘I think we’re coping all the same, Mr Pare.’

‘Detective Mathew-Pare,’ the DI corrected. ‘And we’re glad of any help we can get, aren’t we, Sergeant? The Yard understands the task we have here with the rebel … with the problems we’re having. How difficult it’s made the investigation of crime as such. Jolly good of them to lend us your expertise, Thomas.’

The DI had caught himself, but O’Keefe noted the slip. He had heard it called ‘the rebellion’ – the revolution, the war that it actually was. No doubt the DI’s superiors – Mathew-Pare’s as well, come to think of it – felt that a war by any other name ceased to be a war, but the men who took the bullets knew otherwise.

Mathew-Pare gave a smile of perfect blandness while addressing the DI. ‘I’m not sure, actually, how much help we can be, not knowing the local ropes, as it were. I’m here as a favour to the bureaucrats, Inspector. Spirit of co-operation and all. Some extra legs.’ He turned to O’Keefe, ‘I assure you that is all that we are. In from the neck down, as they say. The Inspector has made me aware in no uncertain terms, Sergeant, that you’re the lead on this. And I wouldn’t want it any other way frankly. Like to get back to Blighty with my head attached, what?’

‘The mandarins know best, so they do,’ O’Keefe said.

Still the bland smile. ‘You fought in the war, Sergeant? Possible we crossed paths somewhere along the Front?’ Nothing behind the smile in the eyes, O’Keefe thought, but he had to admit that the man was shrewd, letting O’Keefe know whose side he was on.

The DI tried his best, his own smile locked in place. ‘Thomas here fought in the big three at Wipers, then in Mesopotamia wasn’t it?’

Mathew-Pare turned to Masterson. O’Keefe could sense the amusement from the couch. The room was full of loaded smiles.

‘Ypres,’ Mathew-Pare said, properly pronouncing the Belgian name.

‘Indeed,’ the DI said. He stood corrected and the bonhomie faded a little on his face.

Mathew-Pare turned once again to O’Keefe. ‘Shall we go then? I expect the surgeon and the wigs will be waiting.’

‘Indeed, indeed …’ Masterson said again, allowing Mathew-Pare to hold the office door open for the others as if it were his own.

O’Keefe stayed where he was. ‘Actually, Detective, I would like a quick word with the Inspector. You don’t mind heading down yourselves?’

‘Of course.’ The smile again, bright and as unfeeling as the crocodiles O’Keefe had seen on the Nile while holding over in Alexandria on route to the Dardanelles.

When O’Keefe turned back, Constable Senior was still there. The DI had seated himself behind his desk, his smile extinguished, no longer any need for it.

‘A private word, sir?’

Anger flashed in the DI’s eyes, but his voice stayed calm, as if he’d thought better of letting it loose. ‘Constable Senior is privy to all matters concerning this investigation. Indeed, all matters that occur within this barracks or any I’m responsible for. So unless it’s a personal matter you wish to discuss, Sergeant, Senior will attend. Is that clear?’

O’Keefe nodded. ‘Sir.’

‘Get on with it then.’

The other side of the DI was coming out now, no need for the happy-barracks act with a lowly acting sergeant. About the only thing that could recommend the man, O’Keefe found himself thinking, was his constant absence. It had allowed Daly, Head Constable Murray and himself to run the shop with minimal interference.

‘I was wondering, sir, do we really need this Mathew-Pare on the investigation?’

The DI stared at him for a long moment and O’Keefe was conscious of Senior doing the same from his place on the couch. Finally Masterson said, ‘What you mean is, you don’t want him on it. Is there any particular reason why that might be, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. It’s just that I might be able to manage better on my own. With men from this district who know the ropes …’ He caught himself using Mathew-Pare’s words and winced inwardly. ‘It’s hard enough getting information from people without the imposition of strange accents. Murder Men from the Castle are one thing. They’re Irishmen at least. We know, roughly, their intentions. But these men?’

Again, the DI stared. But this time it was Senior who spoke. ‘Is it possible, Sergeant, that your intention is to allow this case to remain unsolved? That it would be uncomfortable for you should you be forced to investigate it properly?’