Women of Courage (101 page)

If Radford doesn’t come soon, Kee thought, he may not make it at all.

The gradually thickening yellow fog made Sean nervous. On the one hand, of course, it was a good thing, because it made their continued presence in Harcourt Street much less obvious to anyone who might be watching. By six thirty, visibility was down to twenty yards. But on the other hand, it was making it harder to keep a lookout for Radford.

He and Paddy had worked out a system. One of them would stand quietly in a doorway about ten yards from the hotel. The dripping brass plate on the door showed that the house was used by a dentist, and he appeared to have gone home by now. The other one would stroll slowly along the pavement away from the hotel, in the direction of Dublin Castle, until he was nearly out of sight of the first. Then he would cross the road, walk back on the other side, and they would change places.

If the man on the pavement saw someone who might be Radford, he was to signal it to the other by taking out a handkerchief and blowing his nose. Then he was to wait until the suspect came up, and if it was Radford, shoot him in the head. The man in the doorway was to come up as fast as he could, to help finish him off, if necessary. If there were too many passers-by, the first man was to engage Radford in conversation until the other people had gone on, while the second man walked casually up and shot him.

If Radford approached the hotel from the wrong end of the street, then at least the man in the doorway was near enough to the hotel to see him go in. Then they could both go home.

Sean thought about the plan as he paced slowly down the pavement. The fog seemed to fill the street with so many strange noises which he didn’t usually notice. Some were muffled, some sharpened and magnified out of all proportion. He knew there was a tram somewhere, because the ringing of its bell was as clear in his head as though he were on it. Yet he couldn’t see the machine, or hear its engine; he wasn’t even sure which direction it was coming from. There were bicycle bells too, and the clip of a horse’s hooves coming quite surprisingly fast. From down by the river, the hoot of a foghorn boomed every half-minute; and occasionally the chatter of conversation carried to him, disconcertingly, out of shops and doorways he couldn’t quite see.

The twenty yards’ walk away from Paddy had come to seem like some frightening odyssey into the unknown. The further he got from Paddy, the more lonely he felt. Apart from the sounds, there were the shapes: strange, indeterminate thickenings of the mist under the gaslights, which suddenly coalesced into something meaningful - a tram, a bicycle, a pedestrian. And if it was a pedestrian, there was so little time, in twenty yards, to know if it was Radford or not. Only a quarter of an hour ago they had nearly killed the wrong man: only at the last minute had Sean seen Paddy waving energetically from behind the victim, and realized the mistake. Same height, same build, wrong face.

He had lowered the pistol to his side and by some freak the pedestrian appeared not to have noticed it. They had watched him, and he had not gone into the hotel.

But although they had both been shaken, they had not given up.

‘Not yet,’ Paddy had said. ‘Tonight’s the best chance we’ll have, if we just keep our nerve. Another half-hour and he must come.’

And Sean had agreed.

It would be terrible to give up now. All day he had spent nerving himself for it; to give up and walk away now would be a waste, impossible. Before the near mistake he had felt as clear in his mind as he ever had; quite cold, concentrated on the one thing he had to do, empty of all other thoughts. There was something almost religious, mystical about it.

Now the feeling was a little more ragged, fraying like a flag that has been flying in the storm too long; but he still thought he could hold out for another ten minutes. Radford must come soon.

He reached the end of his beat, and looked back. Paddy was only partly visible - a dark shape beside a blur that was a doorway, with the mist behind him glowing from the invisible hotel lights beyond. Time to cross the road and go back. The noises were more eerie than ever. It sounded as though the foghorn had come closer, and there was the clanking of a bell that was quite unlike a tram. Sean peered into the mist ahead, and then stepped out into the road.

Halfway across, a dark shape began to loom towards him. A bell clanked and a foghorn groaned. It was this, he realized, that was making the noises. Whatever was it? He reached the other pavement, and waited.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph - it looked like a horse with horns! Sean shuddered and almost crossed himself - on a night like this the banshee and God knows what else could not be entirely dismissed. He stared at it wildly and then realized. Right here in the middle of the city at six o’clock some desperate peasant was driving a dogcart down Harcourt Street with a cow between the shafts! A cow with a bell hanging on its chest, for Christ’s sake!

Sean didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He turned to check Paddy and the rest of the street and then he heard the voice.

‘Are you lost then, Seamus?’

‘Never in life, sir. I do be after taking the short cut home, is all!’

‘Good luck to you then!

The voice that had asked the question - it was the same one he had heard this morning!
Radford
- but where was he?

Sean looked beside the cart and saw him. A stocky, energetic man, striding along beside the cart and laughing at the absurdity of the sight as he overtook it. He was only about five yards away from Sean.

Sean took out his handkerchief with his left hand and waved it. Radford stopped, and stared at him in surprise.

In the next minute everything seemed to happen very slowly.

Sean dropped the handkerchief and pulled the Parabellum out of his pocket with his right hand. He looked at Radford and saw the smile fading from his face. As Sean lifted the Parabellum Radford began to move, ever so slowly at first it seemed, to his right. Sean had the pistol up and the barrel followed Radford’s head all the way. Sean thought nothing at all, only:
Now
.

He fired.

Radford jerked convulsively sideways, and collapsed on the ground in front of a shop window. But he wasn’t dead, not at all. He writhed and kicked and got himself up on his knees, and Sean saw him tugging at something in his pocket. The butt of a revolver came out.

Sean fired again.

Radford’s nose disappeared. In its place was a black hole. His mouth was open too in a wide 0 just beneath it. He was blown back on his knees so that the back of his head hit the shop window and left a great smear of blood and brains across it. Then he slumped anyhow to the ground like a broken doll.

The cow bellowed, and jerked the dogcart out into the middle of the road. It nearly knocked down Paddy Daly as he sprinted across, pistol in hand. From somewhere a long way away Sean heard another eerie noise. It was the sound of the farmer screaming: ‘Mother Mary, God, Jesus Christ Almighty! Murder! Murder! Help! He’s killed him! Will you shake a leg now, you foolish beast!’

And much nearer there was Paddy’s voice in his ear, saying: ‘You did it, then. You got the devil right enough. Come on now, Sean, boy. Put the gun in your pocket and walk away with me. No need to run. Just walk briskly and we’ll be out of sight in a couple of seconds.’

Sean did exactly as he was told, and in less than a minute he and Paddy had faded into the fog, just two more eerie shadows in the thickening gloom.

Kee heard the shots and was up and halfway across the bar before anyone else moved. Then an army captain and a major got off their stools and the three of them came down the front steps of the hotel together.

Dear God,
Kee was thinking,
don’t let it be Bill, please let it not be him …

But of course it was.

By the time they had got past the terrified screaming ludicrous farmer and crossed the street to where the body was lying, there was already a small crowd around it. Kee pushed through and saw it but the face was unrecognizable. Only the hair and the clothes told him.

Kee looked up and down the street and tried to take charge. ‘Which way?’ he yelled. ‘Which way did they go?’

But the people in the little crowd shook their heads and backed away, as though they were already regretting their involvement. The nearest, a man in a soft hat and smart coat, actually turned to go. Kee seized him by the lapels and slammed him against a lamppost, yelling: ‘Which way, damn you? Which way did the swine go?’

Shocked, the man stuttered: ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

Kee threw him away in disgust. ‘Damned liar!’ He turned to the others. ‘Who saw it? Which way?’

But they shook their heads, backing away, and when Kee strode towards them the army major said: ‘I say, steady on, old chap.’

Then a woman said: ‘I came from St Stephen’s Green and saw no one running or anything, so I think they must have gone up there.’ She pointed past the hotel, towards Adelaide Road.

Kee grabbed the major and said: ‘You round these people up. Don’t let any of them go.’ Then he shouted to the younger one, the captain: ‘You come along with me!’ He sprinted off up the road into the fog, drawing his service revolver from his pocket and cocking it as he ran. But after ten yards he knew it was hopeless. Shadowy figures appeared out of the gloom, on either side of the road. He ran from one to the other, pistol in hand, peering into frightened, indignant, baffled faces; there was no possibility it was any of them. He ran on, into the fog, thinking: They’ll be running, too. I’ll stop anyone who’s running.

But no one was.

When he reached the junction with Adelaide Road, he stopped in the middle of the street, baffled. Cars, bicycles and pedestrians came and went in and out of the fog from every direction, looking at him oddly or ringing their bells to make him get out of the way. It was futile.

He turned to walk back.

The army captain who had followed him said: ‘It’s no go, I’m afraid. Are you a police officer?’

Kee nodded. But I’m not behaving like one, he thought. I need witnesses. I hope that other chap has rounded them up. He started to walk back down the street. His legs felt like lead.

‘Who was he, do you think?’ the captain asked.

Kee said: ‘He was my friend.’

Then he walked on very quickly and when he found the other officer had only collected two witnesses he cursed him for an incompetent fool and then almost immediately apologized and wondered if he was going to crack up completely. He ran out with the captain and brought in the farmer, then he rang Brunswick Street, then he began to interview them in the hotel.

None of them was any good as a witness except the farmer and he was drunk. ‘It was a young lad,’ he said, ‘he came out of the mist like a divil and then he was gone.’ Kee showed him the photograph of Sean Brennan, and the farmer said it was very like him exactly, sorr, but he would have needed to see the boy’s face to be absolutely sure, and that was one thing he hadn’t got a peep at. Then he said: ‘It was a pity ye went on down the street with the soldier when ye did, sorr, because the boy who did the shooting went the other way entirely, I had thought to mention it but there was all that trouble with the cow.’ At that point Kee got up and went out of the room.

He found Davis and Foster and a couple of other detectives in the foyer.

‘Go in and take a statement from that fool,’ he said. ‘If I stay near him a moment longer I swear I’ll strangle him.’

Then he went out to see what was happening to the body and when that was sorted out he came back into the bar for a drink.

Investigations went on all night but there was no useful evidence at all.

It was the worst night of Kee’s life.

Some time towards morning, when the first hint of dirty grey light began to appear in the east, Kee stood on the steps outside the Standard Hotel and said: ‘I’ll find them for you, Bill. I’ll find them if I have to stay in this heathen town for the rest of my natural life.’

22. A Shooting Match

‘I
T WAS good of you to come.’ Sir Jonathan shook Andrew firmly by the hand. ‘Come this way. Keneally, show Mr Harrison straight through when he arrives, would you.’

He led Andrew up a single flight of stairs into his study. It was a pleasant, masculine room: leather-bound armchairs, a desk with a stack of papers weighed down by a shell-case, rows of books, and a large stuffed pike in a glass case over the fireplace. And on the wall, a number of framed photographs.

Andrew looked at the photographs curiously. One was of a young man on a horse in a hunting coat, surrounded by a pack of hounds; another of a similar young man, slightly broader in the face, sitting quietly at a desk, a pen poised in his hand. There was another of both young men standing proudly together in army battledress. Their hair was immaculately brushed, their eyes alight with hope, the leather of their Sam Browne belts gleaming.

There was a photograph of me like that in Mother’s bedroom at Ardmore, Andrew thought. It went up in flames a month ago. Like everything it stood for.

Sir Jonathan saw him looking. ‘My sons,’ he said. ‘Richard was killed at Vimy Ridge, John at Passchendaele.’

Andrew nodded. There was no need for sympathy. They had both been there. A million young men like that had been dismembered in the mud. Andrew wondered what his own eyes would look like now, if a photographer ever sat him down.

He said: ‘There’s no picture of your daughter.’

‘No. Well, I’ve still got her with me. More or less.’

Andrew wondered vaguely what that meant. He said: ‘It was a pleasant evening the other night.’ That was what one said, wasn’t it? The uses of polite society were very distant for him.

‘Glad you enjoyed it. Drink?’

‘Whiskey and water, please. Small one.’

While Sir Jonathan was pouring the drinks he said: ‘I’ve asked Harrison to come but we may as well start. We both had a talk with Radford before he was killed, poor chap. He felt pretty bad about the way your mission failed at the last leap. Felt most of it was his fault, in some way.’