Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  But perhaps that was the attraction of it from the German gunrunner’s point of view. No one would think of looking for him here. It showed a sense of discretion which was vital if they were not to be detected, especially after the police had arrested him once.

  If he was genuine, that is.

  Paddy had his doubts about that. Dick Davis’s remarks about the ‘German plot’ had begun to prey on his mind. If I were in British intelligence, he thought, what would I do? I might try and tempt Michael Collins to a meeting, where he could be shot or arrested. Well, the meeting place was all right. He should be able to lead the German there without any detectives following. He knew most of the G men by sight, and over the past year he had become an expert at losing them in the city streets.

  There was one other possibility that had occurred to him. Last time, at Brendan Road, he had let Hessel in to meet Collins with two automatic pistols in his bag. Daly had woken up sweating last night, as he realized that those pistols might not only have been loaded but intended for use. He had not thought of that at the time, when he had failed to check. The German had been too convincing. But then he himself had been convincing the other morning, in Mountjoy Prison: he could have shot the governor if he had wanted.

  This time, the German was going to meet Collins unarmed and well escorted. Daly had brought along one of his biggest men, Brendan O’Reardan, to make sure of that. The two of them waited uncomfortably in the foyer of the Lambert Hotel.

  The manager, a little bald-headed man in half-moon glasses and a pepper-and-salt suit, was dealing with an enquiry from two ladies about a laundry bill. A grey-haired woman, his wife perhaps, emerged from the office behind the counter. She peered at Daly and O’Reardan doubtfully. ‘If it’s a delivery, the door is round the side,’ she said.

  Daly took his cap off respectfully. ‘No, missus, we’ve come to see one of your guests. A Count von Hessel, it is.’

  She reached past her husband for the registration book. ‘Ah yes. He arrived this morning. Wheatcroft will show you up.’

  It was the same room as last time, Daly saw. Count von Hessel stood up as they were shown in. He had a newspaper in his hand, and was dressed, as before, in a well-cut, slightly crumpled English suit. He clicked his heels, bowed, and held out his hand.

  ‘Mr Daly, you are prompt.’

  ‘You said there was only today. This is one of my soldiers, Volunteer O’Reardan.’

  Andrew bowed again. ‘Mr Collins received my letter?’’

  ‘He did that. He wants to meet you.’

  ‘Good. When, and where?’

  ‘Now. We’ll take you.’

  ‘Right.’ Andrew went to the door and put on his coat.

  Kee had been up until three in the morning. He had managed to persuade the military to mount a dozen raids on suspected addresses all over the city, and he had been out on two himself. The night had been full of bright lights, the roaring of engines in sleeping streets, soldiers hammering on doors with rifle butts, little clusters of surly, terrified individuals clinging to each other as their homes were ransacked, the arrests of young men, the banshee screams of their wives or mothers .. .

  And no Sean Brennan.

  Five of the young men were still waiting in police cells for interrogation. None of them appeared to be anything but minor hangers-on of Sinn Fein. One had had a revolver in his bedroom, one a Lee Enfield beneath the floorboards. All had had some kind of subversive literature. All had been sullen and defiant: all would involve Kee in a great deal of paperwork and interrogation over the next few days. None, he was almost sure, had a connection with anything as important as the murder of Bill Radford.

  And if I’m not damned careful, Kee thought, half of them will bloody well escape in the next few days.

  His rage against Davis still shook him. After a hurried breakfast, he went to Brunswick Street where he spent twenty minutes on the phone pleading with an army brigadier for an increase in the number of roadblocks and army patrols throughout the day. The soldier said his men were young and tired. Kee thought: Since when has that been an excuse? Two years ago they’d have been woken every dawn by an artillery barrage. He had arranged to have another hundred copies of Brennan’s prison photograph printed and distributed by midday, and then wondered which addresses he could ask the army to search tonight.

  The trouble was, he didn’t know. Their information just wasn’t good enough. The only people with decent information in this city were the damned Shinners.

  He called for Foster, and stormed downstairs to the cells where Davis was kept.

  Davis had spent a long, cold, lonely night. He had spent most of it hunched on the corner of his bed furthest from the door, his knees clasped to his chin, shivering. He had lived so long with success he had come to believe himself invincible. He could point the finger at one of his colleagues and the man would die; he could bring Michael Collins right into G Division HQ; he could plant false information that would send soldiers chasing wild geese all over the city. He could set men free from Mountjoy.

  And now he had no power at all.

  It was the suddenness of the collapse that had shocked him. No hint of suspicion, nothing - just immediate, total arrest. And the contempt in the eyes of Kee and Foster.

  He wondered if Collins would try to get him out. They said Collins valued his men above anything - look at what he had done for Brennan. And last year he had travelled over to England to free de Valera from Lincoln Gaol, had spirited thirty over the walls of Mountjoy. But those men were Collins’s colleagues in Sinn Fein, in the Volunteer movement itself. Davis had none of the companionship, the sense of working in a team, that they had. Now, even if they got him out, his use as a spy was ended. Would any of them risk their lives for a man they had hardly seen?

  The cell door slammed open and Foster burst in. ‘On your feet, traitor!’ he yelled. ‘Stand to attention, damn you!’

  When he got up too slowly, Foster wrenched him upright, and a uniformed man came in to snap the handcuffs on behind his back.

  ‘That’s better. Now, along this corridor - march!’

  Davis knew the routine. He had used it himself. Deny your prisoner any chance of autonomy or self-respect, wake him up throughout the night so that he doesn’t sleep, break him down with continued, ferocious questioning. He could resist it, he thought. But he had never seen young Foster quite so incensed.

  In the interrogation room Kee sat, Davis stood. A uniformed man brought Kee a cup of tea. Kee sipped it, and stared at him.

  ‘You’re going to hang, Davis,’ Kee said.

  ‘Why? I haven’t killed anyone!’

  ‘You killed Bill Radford. You put the finger on him.’

  ‘You can’t prove that.’

  ‘I can. I’ve got a magnetic recording of Brennan saying it. And two witnesses who heard it - plus the prisoner he was speaking to. He’ll testify.’

  ‘They never said my name. I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone, sir!’ Foster bawled.

  Davis glared at the younger officer in disgust, then lowered his eyes. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, sir.’

  ‘Oh yes, you did,’ Kee said. ‘You’re a nasty, stinking little Judas, Davis. How much did they pay you?’

  ‘They didn’t pay me anything, sir.’

  ‘Don’t say you did it for idealism. An independent Ireland for the bog-trotters, ruled by murder. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Listen to me, Davis.’ Kee stood up. He gripped Davis’s ear and jerked it suddenly upwards, so that his head was tilted sideways on his neck. ‘You’ll hang all right, boy, just like that, if I say so. And richly you’d deserve it. But it all depends on the charge, as you know. Now you’re not a stupid man, even if you are a Judas. You know what I want. I want the men who killed my friend Bill Radford, and I’m not going to leave this city until I’ve found them. There were two men in Harcourt Street that night. One of them was Sean Brennan, the man who you he
lped escape. So what I need is the name of the other man, and an address where I can I find him. You tell me that, and I’ll drop the murder charge and just put you away for the other things. Understand?’

  He let go of Davis’s ear and sat back on the table, looking at him. Davis stared straight ahead.

  ‘I said, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes what’’ Foster bawled.

  ‘Yes sir, I understand, sir.’

  ‘Right.’ Kee spoke softly. ‘I’’ve got two charge sheets here. One charges you with being an accomplice in the murder of a senior police officer. The other charges you with passing information to criminals, but it doesn’t mention murder at all. You’re going before a court with one of these today. Which will it be?’

  No answer. Kee spread the papers out on the desk, so that Davis could see. He took out a pen, and looked up. There was a faint sheen of sweat on Davis’s forehead. Kee said: ‘Don’t worry about your friends. They won’t ever know what you said. They won’t need to. Who was the other man?’

  Silence. Kee waited. ‘Think of the drop, Dick. That little shed at the back of Kilmainham. You’ve seen it. Early morning, a few weeks from now, you walk out there all alone, they put a hood over your head, a noose tightens round your throat. And you didn’t even do it, you didn’t pull the trigger.’ He paused. There was sweat on Davis’s forehead, he could see it. Little beads of sweat that grew on the pale skin. One grew too big and trickled down towards his eyebrows, gathering others as it went.

  Kee said: ‘They don’t care about you, Dick, you know. Nobody really cares about a traitor. A traitor has to care about himself. They’ll still be snoring in their beds, and you’ll be alone on that trapdoor. And you didn’t even pull the trigger. Who did it?’

  Davis’s lips moved. A word came out, a whisper. ‘Daly.’

  ‘Daly? First name?’

  Another whisper. ‘Patrick.’

  ‘Patrick Daly. He was the other man who killed Bill Radford?’

  Davis stopped staring past Kee at the wall, and his eyes looked at him for the first time. Kee saw how wide the eyes were, haunted. Davis gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod.

  Kee forced himself to smile. It was vital to engage the man’s sympathy at this point, make him feel valued, not scorned. ‘There. That wasn’t so hard, to save your life, was it? He won’t know, no one’ll ever know who told me. Now, where can I find them?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. They move around all the time. I don’t know where they sleep.’

  ‘All right. Let’s try it another way. Have a look at this.’ He took a notebook out of his pocket. Davis recognized it as his own. ‘There are some telephone numbers in here. I can check them through the exchange but that’ll take time. What are they?’

  Davis looked at them. He didn’t speak.

  ‘Come on now, Dick.’ Kee held up the notebook so that he could see it clearly. ‘I’m a man of my word, you know that. But I can only keep a promise for the whole bargain, not half of it. It’s lonely on that dawn walk.’ He pointed to the number at the top of the list. ‘Let’s take that one first.’

  Davis licked his lips. His mouth felt dry, parched. There was an empty, aching feeling in his stomach. He thought of the man he had seen hung, standing straight to attention like this, his hands bound behind him, the black hood over his head. He remembered the obscenely stretched neck, the empty bowels afterwards.

  He looked at the telephone number again, and began to talk.

  34. Rats, Fire, and Rain

  CATHERINE HAD never been good at sitting still. Even as a student, when she was reading, she would twist a strand of hair around her finger, chew her pencil, or tap it on the table. Often she would get up and walk around with the book in her hands, trying to remember what she had read. She was a born fidget.

  Now she had no books and nowhere to go. She moved around on the sofa, trying to find a more comfortable position, but with the chain on her ankle only a limited number were possible. She had read the newspaper but it was a month old, it told her nothing about Sean. She had used the bucket and it stank, so she had moved it as far as she could from where she sat. Her dirty plate was on the floor too, together with a bottle of water and a cup.

  Apart from that there was nothing useful except some matches and the oil lamp, which he had topped up and relit. The lamp was both a curse and a blessing. It stood on the floor in front of her, spluttering and muttering sometimes as its flame threatened to go out. It gave out a yellowish light and a faint hint of warmth. But it also smoked, used up air, and gave her a headache.

  Halfway through the morning she blew it out. At first the darkness was a relief. She wrapped herself in her coat and the blankets and lay there, waiting for her eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. There was just a faint suggestion, a hint of grey light which seeped through the grille on the opposite wall. It must provide some ventilation, then, she thought, some link with the outside world. She listened very hard and she could hear tiny, distant noises, like those of small people far away. She tried to identify them: feet on the pavement, a cart maybe, pulled by a horse, then another, then what might have been a car. And then, for long periods, nothing at all.

  Then there was a much bigger sound. A scrabbling, scratching sound, from the wall behind her. The sound was enormous. There’s someone in here, she thought, a man, a dog, a cat - what the hell is it? She had the box of matches in her hand; quickly she struck one, fumbled with the oil lamp, lit it, held it up.

  A rat stared back at her.

  It was quite a big rat, about a foot long, with a scaly tail twice that length behind it. Its eyes reflected the yellow flame of the lamp and its whiskers twitched. It sniffed at her nervously and bared its teeth. Then it resumed its exploration of her lavatory bucket.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Catherine groaned. She put the lamp down on the sofa, picked up one of her boots, and flung it at the creature. The boot struck the rat’s back, and sailed away into the corner. The rat, startled, ran behind the sofa and disappeared. Catherine peered over the back of the sofa and saw the tip of its tail vanishing down a hole in the wall.

  She groaned again. No rat. No boot either.

  This won’t do, she told herself. I’ve got to get out of here, I can’t stand it. She tugged angrily at the chain, aggravating the sore places it had made on her ankle. I’m lucky the bloody rat didn’t come in and eat my toes in the night. Anyway I’ve got to get out to go and see Sean before he dies.

  ‘Sean!’ she yelled. ‘Sean! SEAAAN!’

  The scream echoed back at her in the cellar, making her headache worse. As the echoes died away, she listened, wondering if it had reached the ears of the distant people pattering on the pavement beyond the grille. At first she could not hear the footsteps at all, the sounds were so tiny in comparison. Then she heard them. There was no change, no evidence of interest in what was going on below the street. Why should there be? If their sounds were almost inaudible to her, they would never hear her, with the busy noise of the city street all around them. Andrew had fired a gun in here, confident that no one would hear it.

  She looked at the chain again. If only he had fastened the padlock one link further down, she could have managed it. If she tried very hard she could almost slip it over her heel, but not quite. Neither the chain nor her bones would give; the only thing that could be pressured was her skin and flesh, and after four efforts that was bruised and swollen now. It couldn’t be done.

  The only thing was to cut the chain, or undo the lock.

  She couldn’t cut the chain. But she might pick the lock.

  That was what burglars did, wasn’t it? They were experts at it - there was a magician called Houdini who could pick any lock in a few seconds. As soon as the idea came to her she cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner. She could have done it last night; she could have lain in wait for Andrew when he came down and smashed him over the head with something.

  Never mind that. How was
it done?

  She examined the padlock and saw a slot with two indentations in, to fit the key. Inside there must be more ridges and grooves and - what were they called? Tumblers, was it? Wheels? Anyway, things that moved. The key must push them back somehow, like the bars that stuck out of a lock in a door, and then the hasp of the padlock could be pulled out smoothly and she would be free.

  Since she had no key she had to slide something into that slot and jiggle it about. What? She looked around and saw the knife and fork on the floor from her breakfast. She picked them up and tried. The knife blade was too wide; the tines of the fork might just go in if there weren’t four of them. She bent one of the tines back by pressing it on the floor and tried. It went in, for about an eighth of an inch, and then … stuck.

  That was no good. She tugged it out and threw it away. What else? A wire, a pin. She ran her hands through her hair but it was smooth and clear. No hairpins. No hatpin either, she hadn’t worn a hat. She searched her coat pockets: handkerchief, train ticket, purse - nothing useful in the purse. There must be something.

  She remembered the brooch on the front of her dress.

  She unfastened it. It was a big, heavy brooch of an Irish queen, Maeve, riding horseback. Her mother had given it to her long ago. There was a pin in the back about two inches long.

  She drew her ankle up to her knee, and bent to work.

  After half an hour she had got nowhere. Nothing had moved inside the lock. Her back and legs ached, and her head throbbed when she moved it. She sat back for a rest, exhausted.

  But there was nothing else to do. After a minute or two she moved the oil lamp closer, lifted her ankle, and began again.

  ‘Yesterday morning?’ Sir Jonathan said.

  Over the telephone, David Ferguson’s distant voice answered: ‘Yes, sir. By the morning train. I drove them to the station.’

  ‘Good Lord. I knew Major Butler was coming back, but I thought Catherine would stay on. It’s very strange.’