England's Janissary

  ‘Corporal!’ Flynn shouted and Purton looked up, a bemused expression plastered across his tired, harassed, thin face. ‘Stay where you are!’ he ordered, before ducking back in the window, grabbing his cap and making a dash for the stair.

  ‘What now?’ Purton muttered, rolling his eyes as Flynn burst dramatically out of the mess front door and strode towards him.

  ‘What is going on here, Corporal?’ Flynn demanded sternly, in his best brusque senior NCO tone. Flynn knew that it was the best way to handle soldiers: take charge, don’t give them time to think and baffle them with bullshit! Purton and the others instinctively braced up in response to the barked command and as the badly bruised policeman approached he noticed the medal ribbons and realized that he had met the man before.

  Like him, Purton also noticed the policeman had been promoted recently and said, ‘Good morning, Sar’nt, I thought you were based over in Drumlish?’

  Flynn looked him up and down as impassively as possible. ‘Never mind where I’m supposed to be, Corporal. Would you mind telling me what on earth is going on here? This man …’ He pointed at Maguire. ‘Why is he in handcuffs? Why is he a prisoner?’

  Purton gave Flynn a puzzled look, like he’d been asked an obviously ridiculous no-brainer of a question. The chief clerk had once told him that everything that they say about the Irish was true and he almost made a comment about how thick Irish policemen were but the look in the sergeant’s eyes made him stop and think better of it. ‘Cos he’s under arrest, Sar’nt,’ Purton eventually said, with a shrug and a sigh. He reminded Maquire of someone patiently trying to explain something to a dim-witted small child. It was Flynn’s turn to roll his eyes.

  ‘I can see that, Corporal, but why is he under arrest?’

  He was beginning to see why, despite obviously surviving the war it had taken Purton so long to make lance corporal, when he’d made sergeant in a matter of months. Maguire shrugged and gave Flynn a sympathetic look. Flynn shot Purton an impatient stare.

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ Purton began, ‘there is a bit of a big show going on over at some place called Bal … er … Ballya … er …’

  ‘Ballinalee, Corporal,’ one of the Tommies chipped in.

  ‘Aye, that’s it, Ballinalee. Most of the battalion are involved anyway and our company was sent to cordon off one of the roads into the place when an almighty scrap broke out, sodding bullets everywhere. By the sound of it we must have trapped half the bloody Shinners in the county in the place. Anyroad, it was like being back at bloody Wipers! I’m glad to be away from it, to be honest.’

  The other Tommies nodded in enthusiastic agreement but then Purton noticed the dangerous glint in Flynn’s grey eyes and quickly resumed telling his story. ‘The OC, Major Calvert, proper gent is Major Calvert, well, he sent us to clear some houses outside the town to use as a command post and clearing station for any casualties. That’s where we found this little bastard …’ He pointed at Maguire. ‘His mate took a pot shot at me and then scarpered. I dropped the little bugger with a few rounds and then we found him hiding in the shithouse. Your mucker tried to leave you in the lurch, didn’t he, Paddy?’

  ‘In the shit, more like,’ one of the soldiers quipped and the others laughed. Maguire rolled his eyes. ‘Didn’t get far, though? Did he?’

  ‘And?’ Flynn asked. There was a brittle edge to the policeman’s voice.

  ‘Major Calvert kept him for questioning overnight—’ Flynn noticed Maguire’s black eye ‘—and decided to send him back here and lock him up until the lads from intelligence can have a wee chat with him, didn’t he, Paddy? No offence, Sar’nt,’ he added hastily, as he nudged Maguire in the ribs with his rifle butt. ‘Mind you, he’s a necky bastard this one, Sar’nt. Real cheeky. Keeps saying he’s a British agent, that the Shinners were holding him prisoner. As if! He’s got IRA written all the way through him like a stick of bloody Blackpool rock!’ Purton said, smiling proudly at his own astuteness.

  ‘That, Corporal, is because he is one of our bloody agents!’ Flynn barked. ‘This man saved my life!’

  Purton’s face froze as the penny dropped.

  ‘Oh!’ he said slowly.

  Maguire held up his hands in front of himself and smiled meekly. ‘Now, Corporal, me auld fella, would you mind unlocking these?’ he said with a grin, in his thickest culchie accent, as Purton rummaged in his pockets, producing a small bunch of keys. After fumbling with the handcuffs, they fell to the floor with a quiet clink. Maguire massaged his sore, reddened wrists, rubbing them vigorously as Purton and his men stood like guilty schoolboys, shifting their weight awkwardly as they lapsed self-consciously into silence. Maguire held out his hand to Flynn and announced with an infectious grin, ‘We meet again, Sergeant. Joe Maguire, currently in the employ of His Majesty, late commandant of the Irish Republican Army.’

  ‘Sergeant Kevin Flynn, Royal Irish Constabulary. I didn’t expect to see you again in a hurry,’ Flynn replied, shaking his hand firmly.

  Maguire looked around. ‘A bit bloody quiet round here, isn’t it?’ he sniffed before turning to Purton and saying, ‘Be a good fella, Corporal, and ask that chap over there—’ He waved vaguely at the sentry ‘—and find out where everybody’s gone.’

  Purton looked at Flynn. ‘Just do it, Corporal!’ he snapped and the harassed NCO doubled over to the gate.

  ‘They’re all over at Ballinalee,’ Purton shouted from the gate.

  ‘Bugger!’ Maguire muttered.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Flynn asked Maguire, who bit his lower lip thoughtfully.

  ‘Is there a telephone nearby?’ Maguire finally asked.

  Flynn nodded. ‘There’s one in the guardroom I think or over in the orderly office. Why?’

  ‘I need to make a couple of calls,’ was all Maguire said before running off towards the guardroom, where he exchanged a few words with the sentry then disappeared inside. He emerged five minutes later and ran back to Flynn. ‘I’ve just had a word with my boss. When this is all over you and me are going on a trip to Dublin, but first—’ Maguire said.

  ‘When what is all over?’ Flynn interrupted.

  ‘But first you, me and this lot,’ he persisted, gesturing at Purton and his men, ‘need to get over to the barracks in Drumlish.’

  Flynn was still puzzled and asked, ‘Why do we need to go to Drumlish?’

  ‘Because I’ve just tried calling Sergeant Willson and the telephone line is dead and, if I’m right, the reason why I was hiding in a bloody shithouse will be there and unless we do something about the bastard, people are going to die! The gobshite knew that I’d helped you escape.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. I haven’t even had a chance to write a report yet,’ Flynn said.

  ‘Really, is that so? Well, you bloody well told this bastard!’ Maguire snapped.

  ‘Look, I’ve only talked about what happened since I escaped and they are both coppers. You can’t be seriously suggesting that Sergeant Willson is an IRA spy?’

  Maguire shook his head. ‘No, I’m not suggesting that Willson’s an IRA spy at all but that two-faced bastard O’Neill is!’

  ‘Bollocks he is! O’Neill was in the Irish Guards, he’s an Ulster Prod through and through …’ But then some of O’Neill’s comments to Mullan began to make sense. ‘You’re bloody serious, aren’t you?’ Flynn said, as he stared at Maguire in horror. ‘Please tell me you’re joking,’ he blurted in disbelief.

  ‘Do I look like I’m bloody laughing? Do I look like a flaming comedian?’ Maguire snapped. ‘There are plenty of ex-soldiers in the IRA; some are even Protestants like O’Neill.’ Flynn looked at the glint in his eyes and knew that he was serious, deathly serious.

  ‘Shit!’ Flynn hissed, as he pulled himself into the lorry. ‘Let’s go.’

  When they finally reached Drumlish and burst into the barracks, Willson nearly spilt his tea in surprise. ‘What the … I wasn’t expecting to see you back so soon!’ Willson declared.

  ‘I didn’t e
xpect to be here either,’ Flynn replied. ‘Is Gary here?’

  Willson shook his head. ‘It’s funny you should ask but I haven’t seen him since before you left yesterday …’ He looked at the gun in Flynn’s hand and the soldiers behind him. ‘Is there a problem? I’m beginning to worry about him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother if I was you. He’s well enough for now at least,’ Maguire interjected.

  Willson looked Maguire up and down with an air of professional disdain.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Willson sniffed. He didn’t like the look of the scruffy man in the grubby civilian clothes. Some sort of corner-boy by the looks of him.

  ‘This is Mr Joseph Maguire. He’s the man I told you about, the one who saved my skin the other day. He’s one of our agents.’ He leant towards Willson. ‘He works for Special Branch, all very hush-hush, I’m sure,’ Flynn added, tapping the side of his nose with his index finger.

  Willson’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Is he now? And why is he interested in our Gary then or aren’t I allowed to ask?’

  So Flynn told him.

  CHAPTER 33

  Drumlish, County Longford

  IT WAS A crisp, brittle morning and the damp seeped into every fibre of O’Neill’s being as he wheezed his way down off the hills. You’ve gone soft, Gary, me boy – too much bloody tea and paperwork, he thought, lamenting his lack of fitness since leaving the Guards. His feet were killing him and from the pains shooting up his legs he knew that once he peeled off his sodden socks his feet would be a mess of torn blisters.

  ‘If only I had a car, I’d’ve been back ages ago,’ he muttered but he knew that if he had, he would almost certainly have been stopped at an army checkpoint. In the circumstances it was safer, albeit infinitely slower, to walk. Unfortunately, he had only got a few hundred yards or so from the croft when he was forced to take cover in a slimy waterlogged ditch to avoid the British and, huddled there, it was easy for him to imagine that he was back in the trenches, whilst the ripple of gunfire from the direction of Ballinalee only added to the illusion.

  He decided that his best hope was to wait until sunset before he struck out for Drumlish and hunkered down to kill the remaining hours before dark closed in. More gunshots echoed across the fields from where he’d come from, whilst more lorries passed in both directions, along the track. He didn’t have a clue what was going on but from the sheer volume of gunfire all around him he concluded that the British had launched a major operation and that MacEoin had one hell of a fight on his hands.

  By the time it was dark and he felt that it was safe to get going he was soaked through, cramped and cold and he could barely feel his fingertips. He rubbed his hands vigorously to get the blood flowing. ‘You really are too old for this shit,’ he muttered as he peered fruitlessly at his wristwatch. It wasn’t luminous and the thick clouds made it impossible for him to see a thing. When he looked up there were neither moon nor stars to be seen, only the darkness, and it didn’t really take him long to get hopelessly lost as he stumbled amongst the gorse and moon-grass. It didn’t help that the gunfire had faded away with the sunlight and although sporadic shots did slice through the silence he couldn’t tell which direction they came from. It was like trying to get back across no man’s land after a raid.

  Fear and darkness had a terrible knack for disorientating and he wandered in circles for what felt like a couple of hours before he got his bearings. The sun was creeping over the eastern horizon before he recognized Drumlish nestling down in the glen. ‘Christ knows what I’ll tell Willson,’ he muttered, trying to think how he could excuse his overnight absence when he’d only gone out to take a turn around the village. He knew he was lucky to have escaped Kilshrewley at all; the place was crawling with soldiers and, from the noise of gunfire, it sounded like the entire British army had swept through the area.

  The sun was well up in the morning sky by the time he reached Cairn Hill and beyond it the familiar shape of St Mary’s Church and Drumlish’s main crossroads; he could make out the barracks and the Longford road in the distance. As he caught his breath he saw the black shape of an army truck approaching the village. He expected to see it pass below him on the way to Ballinalee but it did not. He shrugged and began his descent into the village, no longer caring whether the soldiers saw him or not. He would feed Willson some cock and bull story about being kidnapped and escaping.

  As O’Neill got closer to St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, he could see the parish priest, Father John Keville, and the sexton, engrossed in conversation as they stood by the churchyard’s lichgate. The sexton nudged Father Keville and pointed at O’Neill as he limped past in the direction of the barracks. Both men stopped talking and stared. ‘Good morning, Constable O’Neill,’ Father Keville called out but O’Neill barely spared him a glance as he grunted and carried on his way.

  ‘Bloody ignorant Protestant bastard,’ the sexton muttered quietly as he leant on his shovel.

  ‘Now, now, my son,’ Keville reproved and the two men resumed their conversation, strolling off in the direction of the parochial house.

  The village was quiet and O’Neill assumed that the fighting over in Ballinalee had kept most people safely indoors, especially as it was now into its second day. No doubt wild rumours were flying across the county, terrifying people into believing that between them, the Brits and the IRA were turning their quiet county into bandit country like Cork and the rest of the wild south-west.

  As O’Neill drew level with the post office, its front door swung open and the postmaster, Peter O’Brien, stepped out and took a few deep breaths of morning air, his thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets. He watched O’Neill approach, fully aware that the policeman knew his secret – he was one of MacEoin’s men too. Few people, especially the British, had a clue how completely infiltrated the Irish postal service was by republican sympathizers. Consequently, nothing passed through the mails to or from Drumlish RIC barracks or any other barracks, for that matter, without the IRA knowing about it, thanks to O’Brien and men like him all over the country.

  O’Brien beckoned the bedraggled O’Neill over with a few rapid sweeps of his arm and, after a furtive look up and down the street, the Ulsterman rapidly joined him in the doorway. ‘Did you get to see Sean?’ O’Brien asked, as he polished his glasses on a piece of rag. O’Neill nodded, without taking his eyes off the barracks down the street.

  ‘Aye, I did that,’ he replied.

  An army truck with a shattered windscreen was parked outside the barracks and a lone soldier stood in front of the cab stamping his feet to fend off the cold. The postmaster pushed his glasses back up his nose. ‘Jesus, Gary, you look like you slept in a flaming hedge. What the hell is going on yonder? There have been soldiers passing through all the time.’

  O’Neill kept his eyes on the lorry. ‘Ballinalee is crawling with the enemy, Auxies, soldiers, the flaming lot. It’s overrun with them. Last time I saw Sean he was trying to get as many of the boys together as he could. Sure, there’s one hell of an almighty scrap broken out. Do you know what they are up to?’ he asked, nodding towards the truck.

  ‘I know as much as you do, Gary. Probably passing through, if what you say is right,’ O’Brien replied. ‘Marching to the sound of the guns, eh?’ O’Neill couldn’t make up his mind whether to carry on down to the barracks or to stay put and watch what was going on. Something told him to stay put, so he did. Behind him, O’Brien loitered, looking over O’Neill’s shoulder at the truck.

  ‘Did Sean send any orders?’ O’Brien asked.

  ‘I think that he’s got his hands full at the moment, don’t you? It was all I could do to get away as it was,’ O’Neill said. O’Brien had been genuinely shocked and surprised when he had discovered that O’Neill was one of MacEoin’s contacts but since then he had regularly passed information between the policeman and the blacksmith. He also knew that he would be expected to help O’Neill disappear if there was an emergency but O’Brien was wary of the Ulsterman, unsure w
hether to trust him or not. After all, he had betrayed his own kind but then who would suspect a Belfast Protestant of being a Fenian!

  A flurry of activity in the barracks caused O’Neill to duck back into the doorway, dragging O’Brien with him. As he watched, a group of about half a dozen Tommies trooped out of the front door and mounted the waiting lorry. He stared in morbid fascination as its engine spluttered into life, briefly drowning out the pounding of the blood in his ears. Hopefully, they would soon be on their way. Three more figures emerged from the barracks and walked towards the parked vehicle. O’Neill could see that one was Sergeant Willson but it took a second or two for it to sink in that the others were Flynn and Maguire.

  ‘Damn!’ he hissed.

  ‘Gary! Is that you?’ he heard from behind him and as O’Neill swung around he saw two policemen on bicycles pedalling slowly down the street, rifles strapped across their backs, returning from an early-morning patrol. The words rolled down the quiet, empty street like a tsunami, catching the attention of the trio, Willson, Flynn and Maguire, who stood like three startled meerkats, staring towards the source of the shouting. Suddenly, everything stopped; time seemed to stand still until Willson shattered the silence.

  ‘Look! It’s O’Neill!’ the sergeant cried and pointed up the street towards the post office.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ O’Neill blurted. ‘Peter, get me out of here!’

  The Ulsterman snatched out his revolver and hastily snapped off a couple of unaimed shots in Willson’s direction, scattering the soldiers and policemen as they dived for cover. ‘Shit!’ O’Brien cried. He was an intelligence agent, not a soldier, and he was unused to gunfire. The close proximity of the shots stabbed at his eardrums, causing him to flinch, but he only hesitated for a split second before he grabbed O’Neil’s sleeve. ‘Come with me, quick!’ He dragged O’Neill by the arm into the post office, shouting, ‘For God’s sake, Constable O’Neill, what on earth are you doing!’ loudly enough for half the village to hear. Still shouting, ‘Help! He’s got a gun!’, he pulled O’Neill into the kitchen behind the post office and shoved open a cupboard. ‘In there,’ he ordered.