Irregulars

by Kevin McCarthy

  Indicating the empty place at the table, Murphy says, ‘Of course, please. You’ll excuse me, I shall continue to dine.’

  With Just Albert remaining standing behind him, O’Keefe takes the proffered chair and reaches into his trenchcoat for the photograph of Nicholas Dolan. As he does, Roger and Arnold mimic his action, hands sliding into their own coats in readiness. O’Keefe smiles. ‘A picture, lads. I’m taking out a photograph is all,’ he says, and one of the big men returns his smile but his hand remains inside his jacket until O’Keefe produces the photo.

  As O’Keefe attempts to hand the picture to Murphy, the arms trader raises a finger to stop him before taking up another small square of bread and beginning again his regimented mastication, appearing to silently count out an even number of chews before swallowing. When he has done this he takes two careful spoonfuls of soup, then wipes his lips on the corner of a linen napkin.

  ‘Now,’ he says, ‘what might you be in the market for, Mr O’Keefe?’

  ‘Information. Nothing more. I’m employed by a local woman to find her son, Nicholas.’ He places the boy’s picture on the table in front of Murphy. ‘He’s been missing for over a week and his mother’s frantic with worry about him.’

  O’Keefe watches as Murphy picks up the photo and examines it. He waits for some response from the man before he continues, hoping the gun merchant might show a sign of recognition. But Murphy’s face remains neutral, betraying nothing.

  ‘I’ve been told that the boy runs errands, messages for men you might be doing business with …’

  ‘And what business might that be, Mr O’Keefe?’ The arms merchant smiles, and O’Keefe notes how small and even are his teeth, as if ground down to a bureaucratic standard.

  ‘Your business is no concern of mine, Mr Murphy. I’m looking for the boy, nothing more.’

  Again the gun dealer interrupts. ‘Who exactly are you working for, Mr O’Keefe? Out of curiosity. Professional curiosity, let’s say.’

  ‘I told you. I’ve been employed by a woman to find her son.’

  Murphy raises the soup spoon to his mouth twice, and then another square of buttered bread. He holds his eyes on O’Keefe as he takes his time chewing.

  Anger stirs in O’Keefe’s gut. Either this man knows something about the boy or he doesn’t, but O’Keefe senses that he will not say either way. And his heavies, sitting on either side of him like rough centurions—bored with being confined by their work to this staid hotel—appear easily amused by mugs asking after lost boys, no doubt hoping for the chance to leaven the boredom with their fists.

  O’Keefe swallows down his anger as it rises to his throat, realising just how weary he has become of hard men. Thugs who hire out their violence to the likes of Murphy—a soft man making his living from the instruments of death. Irony compounded by vicious, bloody irony. He is weary of men like the Mahons and the soldiers on either side of the civil war raging around them. Gunmen and bullies making up the laws of Ireland as they go along, making them up to suit themselves. How had this happened? Ireland had been a peaceful place when he was growing up. Subjugated, conquered, but peaceful for a child, for a family, to live in. Or had it been? Perhaps it had only been that way for him and his family, his father a copper—one of the subjugators. There had always been a bad, red streak of violence running in the blood of Ireland’s men. It is in himself, he knows, and his mind begins to reel a little and the anger shunts again into his throat. Irony of ironies. Bone tired of violent men, he is on the edge of violence himself. He clenches his fists in his lap and breathes out through his nose.

  Murphy finishes chewing and swallows. ‘So I take it you are neither employed by Free State nor Irregular. Correct?’

  ‘Yes, I …’

  ‘And the woman’s name who employs you? You can’t be too careful, you know, in my line.’ Murphy’s bland smile has returned to his lips but there is a trace of mockery in his voice.

  O’Keefe reins in his urge to upturn the table and hopes that Albert might have missed the man’s tone. Whatever his own urge to mayhem, there would be no reining in Albert’s. ‘Her name is Mrs Dolan. Ginny Dolan. She’s a local merchant woman here.’

  The larger of the guards turns to his employer, smiling. ‘Local merchant? Fucking fanny merchant what she is. Runs a stew in Monto, not ten minutes’ walk from here. Arnold and me have been. Local merchant, my arse! My prick’s still stinging for that old doll’s merchandise.’

  Just Albert moves for the man and O’Keefe stands, knocking his chair over behind him, holding out an arm to obstruct Albert’s lunge. Two Colt automatic pistols are slipped silently from jackets, barrels levelled, one at O’Keefe, one at Albert.

  O’Keefe turns back to Murphy. ‘Mr Murphy, have you or your men had any contact with the boy or not?’

  Murphy holds his gaze for a long moment, his smile perfectly bland, his teeth small and neat. ‘Not,’ he says finally. He puts the last square of buttered bread into his mouth and begins to chew.

  O’Keefe takes up the photograph from the table and turns to leave, hoping Just Albert will follow.

  In the hotel lobby, O’Keefe tips his hat to the receptionist at the desk and slips Nicholas’ photo into his jacket pocket. He tries to think of something to say to the woman, wondering if she has seen what transpired in the dining-room. He hopes she hasn’t, and then thinks how little it would matter if she had. On impulse, he turns and goes over to the desk, taking out the photo again.

  ‘Miss, if you’d be so kind. Would you mind looking at this picture? We’re looking for this boy, and were told he’d been to see a man in this hotel …’

  ‘Mr Murphy?’ the woman says, taking the picture, concern in her eyes now.

  ‘Yes, Mr Murphy.’

  ‘Nothing untoward, I hope. Here at Burton’s …’

  O’Keefe smiles. ‘No. Nothing like that I don’t think. The young lad’s missing. We’ve been asked by his mother to find him. You didn’t see him by chance?’

  Slowly, the woman shakes her head. ‘His mother …’ she says, looking up at O’Keefe. There is concern in her eyes. He smiles, wanting to reassure her somehow.

  ‘I’m sure he’s grand,’ O’Keefe says. ‘You know youngfellas.’

  She smiles and nods. ‘I’ve four brothers.’

  O’Keefe smiles back, and wonders is there something in the look she gives him, her eyes holding his, briefly, before going back to the photo. After a long moment, she hands it back to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, not meeting his eyes this time. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. We do have a good few boys, in and out with messages. I can ask some of the other staff if you’ve a copy of the photograph to leave us …?’

  O’Keefe feels foolish suddenly, realising he should have had copies made of the photograph so that he could leave them with people. It is a basic error, but then he’d hardly thought that finding the lad would be so difficult. Or perhaps he’d thought it wouldn’t be possible to find him at all. Either way, he had not taken the job as seriously as he should have. And as he thinks this, a thread of fear for Ginny Dolan’s boy unspools in his blood. And he is a boy, he thinks, running in a world of wolves like the Mahon men in Gormanston, or those in the dining-room he has just left.

  ‘I’d be much obliged if you would. I can come back with copies and you could show them around.’

  ‘Yes, please do. I’ll be working tomorrow from nine. You can drop them by any time, Mr …?’

  ‘O’Keefe. Seán O’Keefe,’ he says, suddenly glad that he has told her. Glad that she will register his name at the very least and is now aware, however slightly, of his existence in the world. ‘That’d be grand, Miss. Thank you.’

  ‘Not a bother, Mr O’Keefe. I only hope you find him.’ She smiles again and O’Keefe’s heart feels light, weightless for a passing moment.

  ‘And who should
I ask for, then, when I drop off the

  pictures?’

  ‘You can ask for me. Nora Flynn.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you, Miss Flynn.’

  ‘And you, Mr O’Keefe. And have you an address or a telephone where you can be reached? If I hear anything?’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, taking the proffered pen and jotting his name and address on to a page of hotel stationery.

  ‘Grand so, Mr O’Keefe.’

  O’Keefe leaves the lobby smiling.

  On the footpath outside the hotel, Just Albert lights one of his cigars. The Indian summer’s warmth is fleeing the concrete at their feet, chill descending from above.

  Just Albert says, ‘You think now’s a good time for mottin’, Mr O’Keefe?’

  O’Keefe frowns. ‘What are you blathering about, Albert?’

  ‘Your one. The foxy-haired girleen at the desk. I’ve eyes, Mr O’Keefe, and you’ve a job to do. You worry about the bints when the job’s done.’

  Rage ignites in O’Keefe, like a smashed paraffin lamp on bedding hay, scorching the small joy he’d felt on meeting the woman. He takes a step towards Albert. ‘You mind what you say to me, Albert, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Or what?’ Just Albert gives him the same dismissive smile he gives to all men.

  ‘Or … Fuck it, Albert. You’d try the patience of a saint.’ O’Keefe turns away, exhaustion claiming his anger, an oily slick of despondency settling over him.

  Albert appears to sense this and shuts down his smirk. ‘Nicholas is only a boy, Mr O’Keefe. We need find him before he comes to harm.’

  ‘I know that, Albert, and I’m trying to help you and Mrs Dolan find Nicky. I want to find him, by God I do. But you have to let me do it the way I know how.’

  Just Albert’s face darkens. ‘Them cunts inside know something.’

  ‘They might, but we’ll never hear it now after you going for your man in there.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have run his mouth about Mrs Dolan.’

  O’Keefe sighs. It was like talking to a child, sometimes, explaining things to Just Albert.

  ‘I know he shouldn’t have, Albert. But he was sending up a balloon … a test. Like was done in the war. He was trying to see how far he could push us. Probably because he was bored, fecked off with listening to rubbish all day. Who knows? And didn’t you give him the response he wanted? Brightened up his bleedin’ day and got us nothing. Look … sometimes, when you’re working a case, interviewing a fella, you have to eat things you normally wouldn’t. It’s the way the world works, Albert.’

  Just Albert ponders this for a moment. ‘Not my world.’

  ‘We’re not in your world at the moment. Neither is Nicholas, and we’re not going to find him if we don’t ask the right questions in the right way. That girl in there might be a grand help to us if one of the other staff at the hotel has seen Nicholas. That’s how investigations work … how they break open. The offhand comment. The odd sighting. The last person you expect to know something, knows something.’

  Ginny Dolan’s man drops his cigar to the ground and crushes it under his boot. ‘I’ll get what we need to know out of them fuckers in there.’

  ‘You’ll get killed, Albert, and Mrs Dolan doesn’t need that, does she?’

  ‘Them? Kill me?’

  ‘Yes, Albert. Those two are more than just docker muscle or drunken punters. They know how to hurt people and have done it before.’

  Just Albert shakes his head and smiles his smile, squinting up at O’Keefe under his hat brim. ‘And here I thought you were getting to know me better, Mr O’Keefe.’

  ‘You’re a hard man to know, Albert.’

  ‘Hard men are good to know in this town, Mr O’Keefe.’

  ‘You’re right about that, and that’s what’s wrong with the place.’

  ‘You’re hurting me feelings.’

  ‘Jesus, give us peace,’ O’Keefe says, smiling again despite himself. He needs food, cigarettes. A drink, sleep. ‘Don’t go near them again until I think over what to do. Nine tomorrow I’ll call for you.’

  ‘Don’t be late, Mr O’Keefe.’

  ‘God forbid.’

  ‘It’s not God you need worry about.’

  O’Keefe smiles wearily. For the love of all that’s holy. Dublin. You could lose sleep trying to get the last word in.

  Nora Flynn watches the two men on the footpath in front of the hotel from behind a curtained window in the lobby. The shorter man is smiling and shaking his head, and the taller man, Mr O’Keefe, removes his hat and rubs the back of his head as if he is exasperated or tired.

  An urge to go out to this Seán O’Keefe comes to her, rising up in her chest on a swell of something like guilt; redeem her lies by confessing to him that she has seen the boy, Nicholas Dolan. The man is working for the boy’s mother. Stop, now, Nora. It does no soldier any good at all, thinking on the mothers who have been left at home. The urge to confess passes and the cruel, handsome face of Charlie Dillon comes into her mind. She pushes it away. Do your work, Nora. The boy’s a soldier. A runner for O’Hanley. Old enough to know better, she thinks, but she is not convinced.

  She watches as O’Keefe turns and mounts a motorbike. Without waiting for him to ride off or stopping to think of the consequences, she moves quickly to the hotel switchboard and rings the men on duty in the Flowing Tide pub, different ones this time but assigned the same duties.

  As she sets the receiver back in its cradle, she hopes that these duties will extend only as far as shadowing this Mr Seán O’Keefe. There is something about him that interests her—a warmth in his tired eyes. A certain strength tempered by kindness. Don’t be daft, Nora, you’ve hardly spoken hardly two words to him. But she had seen, watching from the doorway to the dining-room, how he had handled the scene with Mr Murphy and his men. He had not been afraid of them or what they represent. Perhaps in this he is a fool. You should be afraid, Mr O’Keefe, if you’ve any sense at all.

  Nora says a small prayer for the man’s safety and that he will find the boy he seeks—and blesses herself before she returns to the reception desk, hoping no one has seen her in the act.

  Silly superstition, she thinks, knowing in her heart that such prayers are rarely answered by a God who seems to have stopped listening.

  24

  No more than two miles from Burton’s Hotel, just off the North Circular Road, Jack Finch pulls up—the Chevrolet’s engine spluttering, radiator steaming—in front of a house with a plaque reading ‘Doctor’s Surgery’ beside its front door. Holding his side, his trouser leg and trenchcoat tail saturated, he slides off the blood-slick bench seat and out of the car.

  He stumbles on the footpath, vision blurring, and lunges a hand out for the support of an iron fence that fronts the redbrick surgery. It takes more than a minute to right himself before he is able to mount the steps to the doctor’s door, fragments of thought coupling, shattering in his head as he shuffles, his boot leaving a snail’s wake of blood on the flagstones. One thought only snags his consciousness: If the doctor’s out, ol’ chum, you’re for the common grave ….

  He thumps on the door, oblivious to its brass knocker, and his fist leaves a bloody imprint. After a short wait, a young woman answers the door.

  ‘Yes? Oh, Jesus, sir …’

  ‘I’m shot, Miss. Is the doctor in?’ Finch manages before he collapses on the doctor’s doorstep.

  Dr Stephen Hyland examines his insentient patient and cleans and staunches the wound as best he can before sitting back and examining his conscience.

  There is a simple way to avoid bother, he knows. Simple as undressing the wound and letting the man bleed out and die and say nothing more about it. The man was dead on arrival at his surgery, he could easily enough say, and there had been nothing he could do to save him. Anyone would understand that surely. Neither Irregula
r nor Free Stater could blame him for the man’s death. If he were to save him and ring the army or police, however, there is no telling who would come looking for an explanation; the same if he simply brought the man to the hospital. This man had come to his humble and unsuitable surgery because a hospital is off limits to him. Hyland has no illusions about this. The wounded man is not a patient of his, nor has the doctor ever seen his face before. Sheer dumb luck has brought him, and he owes this man nothing. But at the same time the doctor knows there is nothing to be gained, in the days that are in it, from making enemies on either side of the conflict. Keeping the head down is the only way, and Hyland has been good at it thus far. Simpler, for all concerned, if this man should die here now.

  But is it in him to will a man to die when he can, at very least, attempt to save him? A bullet wound does not speak well for a man’s character, but there are innocent men shot, and can he live with letting a man who might be innocent die?

  The doctor thinks of the lethal weight in the pocket of the man’s bloodied trenchcoat and decides that innocence is less than likely, whomever he is fighting for.

  Dr Hyland lights his pipe and watches the patient’s slow, laboured breathing. He then sets down his pipe and rifles the wounded man’s trouser and suit jacket pockets, his billfold.

  Bloodstained but legible, behind a solid sheaf of pound notes in the billfold, the doctor finds a scrap of paper and on the paper is an address and a name. Seán O’Keefe, 24 Fumbally Lane, Blackpitts, Dublin.

  Realising he will not have to let this man bleed out in his surgery, Dr Hyland smiles, relieved to think that the man can now bleed out somewhere else.

  ‘Janey,’ he calls out of the surgery door to the young nurse receptionist who had answered the door. ‘Ring for a motor cab, will you? Our patient is in need of transport.’

  25

  O’Keefe awakes to steady hammering on the rear, garden access door of his flat. A bar of October morning sun cuts through a gap in the curtains and carves light across his blanket.