The Second Assassin

by The Second Assassin (retail) (epub)

  ‘Odd.’

  ‘Very,’ King said. ‘Question is, what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t see that there’s much we can do,’ Lascelles answered. ‘But I must say this would seem to confirm my original opinion – entertaining guests in one’s hotel room doesn’t sound like something an assassin would do.’

  ‘Well,’ said King, ‘I can’t say I’ve known too many assassins in my time but the whole thing’s got me worried, I can tell you.’

  ‘What does Commissioner Wood say?’

  King snorted again. ‘He’s a policeman, Tommy. If he had his way Their Highnesses would make the tour in bulletproof boiler suits, or even better, not make the tour at all.’

  Lascelles grimaced slightly at the prime minister’s use of his first name but didn’t make an issue of it. He lit another cigarette instead. ‘Well, we all know there’ll be no boiler suits, bulletproof or not, and the king and queen will be continuing the tour so the whole thing is moot, don’t you think?’

  ‘No,’ King answered. ‘What I think is we should put some pressure on the Americans to find Russell and have him thrown in jail before he can do any harm.’

  ‘On what charge? The man can’t be arrested on the basis of a rumour.’

  ‘Who cares what charge? I’m sure the FBI can find something. To hell with due process, Tommy, we’re talking about the safety of the King and Queen of England.’

  ‘It’s not quite that simple, Prime Minister. The large security contingent travelling with Their Highnesses has already been noted in the press and not in flattering terms. They can’t be surrounded by a wall of policemen. It tends to put a damper on things.’

  ‘We can’t just sit around twiddling our thumbs,’ said King. He looked down at his hands and realised he was doing exactly that. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, flushing angrily. ‘We have to do something.’

  ‘I think what we’ll have to do,’ soothed Lascelles, ‘is assume that whatever security measures are seen to be sufficient for President Roosevelt’s safety will be sufficient for Their Majesties.’

  The Canadian prime minister nodded gloomily. ‘Let’s hope you’re right, Tommy. God help us if you’re not.’

  * * *

  The king-emperor of the British Empire sat in his private drawing room and stared out the window as the car swayed back and forth, carrying them around endless curves through an infinity of bright small lakes, spiny outcrops of rust-stained stone and trees enough, it seemed, to build a house for everyone on the planet.

  He’d been watching for the better part of an hour, ever since the prairie had so abruptly given way to these rocks and trees, and so far he’d seen no sign of civilisation anywhere except the lines of telegraph poles on this side of the track, some leaning drunkenly, dark with pitch, others green and true and straight, freshly planted into the hard gravel of the trackbed, spaced, by his rough measure, approximately a hundred feet apart.

  He was glad for a moment to be away from Buffy and all the rest, supposedly to spend time on the journal he so often referred to but wasn’t really writing at all, if truth be known. He lit a Players and dragged the smoke deep into his lungs, expelling it with a grateful sigh. The trip was almost half over now and each of the telegraph poles whizzing by outside meant they were a hundred feet closer to home, but every passing mile seemed to add to Buffy’s irritation. No matter how he tried to give her solace he invariably failed.

  Publicly and even to her friends, Buffy often said that being queen was a terrible burden and responsibility she’d never expected to have put upon her but the king knew that secretly she revelled in it, even if his own position dimmed slightly beside her energy and radiance. He was more than happy to have her take the lion’s share of the limelight, if truth be told, but she was clearly tiring under the constant strain of it.

  Although he’d never tell her so, the king knew that what she was feeling was fear, an emotion she purportedly did not know the meaning of. It wasn’t a lack of courage that failed her now, it was the fear, much like his own, that now, with the American part of the tour coming closer, she’d make a cock-up of it all.

  On their visit to France she’d charmed the French premier and the French people in general with her smiles and those thinning frocks designed for her by Hartnell, but would the Americans take to her the same way they’d taken to David when he was Prince of Wales or would they see her for what she always saw herself as – the plump little commoner from the north who had no business being a queen of any kind at all?

  The king inhaled again and sighed again. It was fine for him to depend on her compassion for his faults and frailties but there was no way on earth she would accept his commiseration in return. He finished his cigarette and lit another.

  At least she wouldn’t have to give any speeches while they were in America. By his count he’d be giving more than a dozen, and from all reports, giving them in hideously hot weather, beginning coincidentally in Niagara Falls, where years before his brother had dedicated the bridge they’d use to cross from Canada into the United States.

  He stared out the window, a king surveying a small part of his kingdom, wishing more than anything else to be at home with his two little daughters, playing the fool for them, knowing that to them he was as good as any other man, and even better because to them he was simply ‘Father Dearest’ and not ‘His Royal Highness.’ He let his eyes go out of focus and concentrated on the regular rhythm of the wheels as they chattered over the rails, matching first his breathing to the sound, and then his words:

  Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

  Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…

  Chapter Nineteen

  Monday, June 5, 1939

  Detroit, Michigan

  Acting on Sean Russell’s orders, Barry and Sheila Connelly gave the IRA leader a two-minute lead as they left their small hotel on Congress Street, separating themselves by half a block or so but never letting the tall, striking figure out of their sight. According to Connelly this was standard IRA procedure, the watcher behind able to see if the figure in front was under police surveillance of any kind.

  At some point along the way Russell would stop to look in a shop window, light a cigarette or stoop to tie his shoelace, giving Barry and Connelly a chance to pass him. If there was anyone following, Barry would walk on the inside, away from the curb, with Connelly on the outside. If it had been Connelly alone doing the job, she would have switched her handbag, or a folded newspaper, from one hand to the other.

  For the next hundred yards it would be Russell looking for a tail and then, if distance warranted, they would switch again. So far Barry hadn’t noticed anything, either anyone following on the sidewalk or in a vehicle. Either Foxworth’s FBI agents were very good at keeping themselves hidden or Russell had managed to give them the slip somewhere along the way.

  Ahead of them, the IRA chief seemed entirely unconcerned, walking slowly, smoking a cigarette as he went, a hearty, powerful-looking man out for a stroll, enjoying the sun-filled afternoon. They’d left Chicago at midnight the night before, taking a slow-rolling overnight train to Detroit on the Wabash Line, arriving at the Union Depot on Third Avenue shortly after 1 p.m. All the berths on the train had been sold and they were forced to travel by coach.

  Barry was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and desperate for a bath but somehow Russell looked fresh and alert, without a care in the world, even though he’d nipped steadily at the pint bottle he kept in his jacket pocket throughout the trip. He’d even stopped to replenish his supply on their way from the train station to their hotel.

  Barry watched as Russell reached into his pocket yet again and took a quick drink from his bottle. ‘He’s a drunk.’

  ‘He’s Irish,’ answered Sheila Connelly, poking her arm through the crook of his elbow and pressing herself lightly against him.

  ‘I’m Irish and I don’t drink like that.’

  She laughed lightly. ‘You
seem to have come over all terribly moral, Mr Barry, considering our situation together since we were in Chicago.’

  The policeman flushed brightly but he made no move to pull away from the touch of her arm in his. ‘What I meant was, he seems to be drinking a great deal for a man who’s about to go slinging bombs about at the King and Queen of England.’

  ‘Now that’s true enough.’

  They continued to follow the big, red-haired man, Barry’s fluxing thoughts giving him a case of mental vertigo that was almost enough to make him physically nauseous. What mad fate was it that had carried him across the seas to find himself falling into what he thought could well be love with a woman who was as much his prisoner as his lover? How was it that he was in this alien city, following a drunkard assassin down God only knew what terrible path?

  He expressed none of this to the woman beside him.

  ‘He seems to know his way around well enough,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not the first time he’s been to America.’

  They turned down Brush Street, walking towards the rail yards and the river. In the distance, on the Canadian side, Barry could see freight cars being loaded onto huge flat-bottomed ferries for the short trip across to the United States. Reaching the rail depot at the foot of Brush Street they followed Russell onto one of the cream-coloured electric trolley trains, seating themselves in the rear car, with Russell in the car ahead.

  They rattled northward, weaving their way through a dozen or more clattering switchpoints as they manoeuvered through the Grand Trunk Rail Yard, eventually gaining speed as they cleared the yards and headed north along the river on a single, one-way track. Five minutes later they passed the sprawling Marine Hospital and turned west, slowing as they pulled into Beaufait Station.

  They stopped for a moment, the drone of the electric motors fading to a hum, waiting to take on passengers. The motorman in the front car blew his whistle, and just as the doors began to close, Barry saw Russell jump up and push through the doors. He and Connelly barely had time to do the same before the little train surged off again.

  Russell walked up half a block to the corner of Bellevue and climbed in beside the driver of a humpback dark green Dodge sedan that stood by the curb, its engine idling. ‘Now what?’ said Barry.

  ‘We get in as well, I suppose.’

  ‘The tram ride was just another way of making sure he wasn’t followed?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She smiled. He’d spent three years in the trenches of France and Belgium, always frightened, waiting for that last, sick moment to come when the hammer was about to fall. She’d been living with that same terror for more years than that. That was the horror of it – she was used to this.

  Reaching the motor car, Barry pulled open the rear door and let Sheila in first, then climbed in beside her, sitting directly behind the driver. The car smelled of cigarettes, Russell’s whiskey breath and the sweet lavender scent of the driver’s glistening pomade. The man was young, no more than twenty-two or twenty-three. He was dressed in an off-the-rack blue suit and there was a great deal of dandruff on the fabric at the shoulders.

  Russell turned and looked back over the seat, smiling broadly. ‘This is Michael,’ he said, indicating the driver. ‘He’ll be our guide and chauffeur for today.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Never you mind for the moment, Tom Sullivan. You’ll know soon enough.’ He turned to the driver. ‘Off we go then, Michael, m’dear.’

  They headed north-west, Barry trying to remember the streets they turned onto and failing, Russell smoking cigarettes and drinking steadily from his new pint of Bushmills.

  ‘They call this a Mickey bottle here in America – did you know that? But at home if you ask for a Mickey of Bushmills or, God help you, Jameson, they look at you terrible strange. Isn’t that the oddest?’ He let out a long harsh laugh.

  Michael, the driver, said nothing at all, but every few seconds Barry saw him glance into his rear-view mirror, eyeing his passengers. ‘Tell your friend Michael that it’s not polite to stare,’ said Barry. ‘He’s offending the lady.’

  Russell smiled. ‘He means nothing by it.’ The big man looked towards the driver. ‘Do you, Michael?’ The young man continued to drive and to say nothing. Russell kept on talking. ‘Now did you know, Michael, that Mr Sullivan here is a New York City policeman?’ He took out his package of Old Golds and lit a fresh one from the butt of the one before it. ‘Fancy that, to have a policeman of my own, just like His Majesty.’ Russell dragged deeply on the cigarette, letting the smoke spurt out from his nose in two strong streams.

  ‘Did you know that, Mr Policeman Sullivan from New York City? That the king has his own policeman and the queen as well?’

  ‘You learn something new every day,’ said Barry, trying to stay calm.

  Russell picked a fleck of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, examining it closely before he turned and flicked it out the open vent window. For some reason Barry found the gesture particularly obscene and turned away, staring out the window rather than continuing to look at the man’s face. Tall, broad-shouldered and charismatic though Russell was, the policeman suddenly realised that the other man was somehow very small.

  As they moved towards the city limits Barry saw that they were moving in a zigzag pattern through broad, tree-lined streets. The houses, mostly brick or stone, were large and set well back from the pavement. The neighbourhood was an affluent one. ‘Where are we?’ he asked without turning away from the window.

  ‘Some people’d like to think it was Grosse Point but it ain’t,’ said Michael, speaking for the first time. His voice was flat and plain with no trace of an Irish lilt. ‘Good side of Hamtramck maybe, or Harper Woods – I’d give it that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mean a thing to these dear folk,’ Russell said. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing to me as a matter of fact.’

  ‘We’re where the rich people live,’ Michael said. ‘Doctors and dentists and the like.’

  They turned to the right and Barry saw the street sign: FOREST. The street was like a half dozen he’d already seen on the ride – wide, with more than enough room to park on both sides, the trees in front of the houses large and mature. The numbers on the doors went up rather than down as they continued along. Eventually Michael pulled in to the curb and parked but left the engine running.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ said Russell. He turned the handle on the car door and opened it. Barry looked out.

  The house they’d parked in front of was a large, two-storeyed affair of brick and stone, much like the others around it. There were a pair of white Georgian columns flanking a black door with a large brass knocker and the number 1142 in brass along the broad lintel. There was a small brass plaque on the left-hand column but Barry was too far away to read it. He closed his eyes briefly, memorising the address, 1142 Forest Street.

  Russell turned to Michael again. ‘Back here in an hour,’ he commanded. Michael nodded. He stepped out of the car and pulled open the rear door. ‘Come along you two.’ Sheila exited first, followed by Barry. Russell slapped the roof of the car and it moved away. Russell headed up the shrub-lined walkway leading to the front door of the house.

  Climbing up the low steps to the front door, Barry read the brass plaque – Dr David Doyle, Physician. The Scotland Yard policeman watched as Russell rapped lightly on the knocker, two short, short long short, short long. The letters IRA in Morse Code. Barry pretended not to notice, his eyes on a flicker of movement behind the curtains of a narrow window on his left.

  Without waiting for anyone to answer the knock, Russell thumbed the door handle and went inside the house, Sheila and Barry close behind. They were in a small vestibule, stairs turning sharply upward to the left, open pocket doors leading to a wood-beamed dining room on the right. The door shut behind them. Turning, Barry saw a young man in a pair of flannels, a white shirt and a sleeveless knit vest, one hand on the door handle and the other holding the pistol grip of a drum
magazine Thompson sub-machine gun, just like the ones Barry had seen in half a dozen gangster pictures.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ he asked.

  Russell smiled. ‘Oh, well, you never know who’s going to be coming through the door. Better to be safe than sorry.’

  ‘This Dr Doyle. A friend, presumably?’

  ‘Indeed so. On a long vacation he is. Around the world with his wife, something of a second honeymoon, you might say. Allowed us the use of his house while he was gone.’ Allowed it or had it demanded of him as a true Son of Erin?

  ‘Kind of him.’

  ‘The Cause touches many of us.’ Russell put a pious hand to his chest, lifted his eyes to heaven briefly then laughed again. He turned up the stairway to the second floor. As they climbed Barry picked up several strong odours that seemed to be coming from below them. Vinegar, cleaning bleach, mothballs and something that might have been corn syrup.

  At the head of the stairs Barry found himself in another, wider hall. Directly in front of him there was an open door. If the wallpaper on the room within was any indicator he was looking into a nursery. To his left another pair of open pocket doors looked into what appeared to be a living room laid out with couches, comfortable chairs and several tall cases filled with books.

  The walls were pale yellow and the dominant colour of the furniture was green. As they entered the living room a tall, brown-suited man stood up. His dark hair was thinning into a widow’s peak and small thin lips were overshadowed by the man’s formidable nose. He had eyes as dark as the hair and small.

  ‘Joseph!’ Russell boomed heartily. ‘Our friends Mr Thomas Sullivan of the New York City Police Department and a young lady from the old sod, Miss Sheila Connelly. According to Mr Sullivan the Clan is thinking that I need protection while I’m here so they’ve sent him along and Miss Connelly brought much-needed intelligence from home.’ Russell then introduced the dark-haired man as Mr Joseph McGarrity of Philadelphia. ‘Mr McGarrity is a great good friend of mine from years past.’