He saw the rest of that afternoon in snapshot pictures, snatches of disconnected conversation, jarring sensations; the way people who haven’t slept for a long time remember an event, unable to force their thoughts to coalesce into a coherent whole. ‘Who sent you?’ He remembered her asking. He didn’t know if he had murmured the truth or only thought it. His lips had moved and he had been unable to resist her interrogation. His hands had wanted to move too, but thankfully, he had been able to stop them, controlling them by tightly gripping his walking-cane. She had asked him about people he did not know. She believed he knew a lot more than he really did. He had tried to reassure her.
‘I know nothing about who it is you are running from, that I swear,’ he said.
‘But if you did know something, you wouldn’t tell.’
‘I promise you with my life.’
He remembered her leaning back against the door and removing a leather-bound file from her coat. She clutched it to her chest.
He had wanted to tell her more, but was worried how she might react. He had been afraid to move or stir in any way. The carriage felt as though it was gaining in speed. Was the driver picking up the pace because they were being chased through the streets?
‘I’ve spent too long carrying these secrets,’ she’d said. ‘Do you know why I stole the file?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then you must hold onto it for me.’
These were the last words, the final image he could recall of her. He forced himself to remember more. He ransacked his mind but failed to summon anything further. His eyes were wide open in the cab and the file was in his hands, but she was no longer there.
He leaned back on his bed and closed his eyes. He was tired. His breath tightened and he felt the return of the familiar chest pain. He would have welcomed the dark immersion of sleep but his mind was too active, the ache in his chest too stubborn. He rose from his bed. Using a chair, he opened a trapdoor in the ceiling and slid from the darkness Merrin’s leather bound file. The damp air of the attic had swollen its size. He untied the cover and carefully lifted out the pages. He laid them on his bed and studied the rows of numbers and dates. He tried to work out what Dublin Castle had found interesting about them, and why Mick Collins was so eager to have them back. He was able to track some of the figures, sums of money paid to an Italian furniture maker, a further amount for shipping the goods, payments to harbour men that might have been bribes, the entire operation looking very like a gun-smuggling operation.
Money and war, he thought. The rebels and the banks shaping a new Ireland. Trade and power, a world far removed from the hushed hansom cab and the harried woman who had given him the file in the first place. Where was she now? He fervently hoped that she had not become another victim of this country’s painful history.
SIX
The pine forest lay before the horseman and his companion, impenetrably dark against the whiteness. It had just stopped snowing and the laden trees were brimming with an icy stillness. The horse, a grey mare, swung too close to the branches, setting off ripple-effect cascades of falling snow, which the man walking had to skip sideways to avoid. The rider steered the horse deeper into the trees, making his companion curse. It was getting darker and the only habitation for miles was the nearby mansion Park House, from which they could hear the frenzied baying of hounds.
‘Why meet here?’ complained Thornton, who was on foot. ‘You’re not planning a picnic in the snow?’
‘I enjoy the twilight,’ replied Isham. ‘The way the light lingers through the winter trees. It almost makes me sentimental.’ He ducked his head to avoid the overhanging branches.
‘Those bloody hounds. They’re giving me the creeps.’
‘I’ve ordered the groom not to feed them at the weekend. Keeps their appetites sharp for the hunt.’
Thornton trudged unhappily alongside the corporal, slipping deeper and deeper in the fresh snow.
‘I need new boots,’ he complained. ‘This is a terrible winter. I need something with a lining to keep out the cold.’
Isham knew Thornton’s type well. A veteran of the Great War but at heart a rough-and-tumble street thug, an opportunist always looking for a hand-out. After being demobbed in 1918, Thornton might have easily joined the shadowy swarms of pickpockets and petty swindlers on the streets of London, but like hundreds of others, had boarded the first boat to Dublin. There was a hierarchy in spying, as in everything, and Thornton belonged to the lowest levels. Isham could see it in his constant uneasiness, the mix of fear and dependency that ran through all his relationships, even with the enemy.
They followed the path through the forest with its twists and turns, skirting the heavier branches, which constantly threatened to inundate Thornton with fresh snow.
‘What progress have you made searching for Collins?’ asked Isham. ‘You’ve been dropping hints that you have good news for me.’
Thornton’s eyes shone in the dim light.
‘Progress, yes. I’ve discovered he’s operating under the alias of a business man called Jack McAleer.’
‘What sort of business man?’
‘One with numerous bank accounts and offices dotted about the city. His headquarters are on Leeson Street. A secret office that can only be accessed through a hidden door in the Dublin Life Assurance building.’
‘Forgive me for being sceptical.’
‘About the existence of McAleer?’
‘I’m highly sceptical about McAleer,’ said Isham dryly, ‘but at this stage I’m even more sceptical about the existence of Collins.’
Thornton’s voice grew insistent. ‘I broke into the Dublin Life building last night. I’ve checked out all the rooms. There was a secret passageway leading to the office.’
‘You’re sure it’s Collins’ lair?’
‘I’m convinced. I’ve watched his bodyguards come and go during the day. And women carrying parcels.’
‘Who are the women?’
‘I don’t know. They could be anything. His spies, his secretaries, his lovers.’
‘What did you find in the office? Any guns or ammunition?’
‘Just paper. Reams and reams of it. That’s all he keeps there. Files of pages detailing the IRA’s funds, the buying of weapons, payments to volunteers and their families, investments, travel and living expenses, even details of their secret bank accounts, all signed in his name.’
‘What about his current whereabouts?’
Thornton grinned. ‘We’re in luck. I found a diary, detailing his meetings and appointments. He’s due to visit the office tomorrow evening at 5 o’clock.’
Isham moved his horse on in silence, thinking carefully.
‘Have you passed these details to anyone else?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good man, Thornton. You will be rewarded for your discretion.’
In the distance, Isham heard the baying of the hounds grow louder. The groom was under strict instructions to keep them on a tight leash until he gave the signal. His throat grew dry with that special kind of anticipation that preceded a hunt. It was the expectation of a pleasure like no other.
‘Stay close to me,’ he murmured to Thornton.
He turned his mare back to Park House, and nudged the animal into a brisk walk. Thornton had to hurry to keep up. The increasing cold and darkness made the spy garrulous. He began talking at random about the freezing weather, Collins’ fondness for wearing business suits, his girlfriend’s illness and that distant time when he fought in the bloodiest trenches at Passchendaele.
‘If war broke out again, I’d like to go back to the trenches, sir,’ he confided.
‘What about the danger and the squalor?’ Isham pulled up his horse. ‘Don’t you remember the agony of death? Why would one want to go back?’
‘For the glory, sir.’ There was a hungry, agitat
ed look in the spy’s eyes.
A flicker of annoyance ran through Isham. What did men like Thornton know about glory, apart from their selfish pursuit of ambition and notoriety? Glory was about military grandeur and that concept had been tarnished forever.
The spy gripped Isham’s riding boot. His teeth were chattering. ‘Tomorrow evening when we raid the Dublin Life building, I want your permission to shoot Collins.’
Isham urged his horse on, but Thornton held tight. The corporal felt something inside him recoil violently, as though the spy’s hands were a dirty set of claws raking his innards.
‘I’d like to be the man who rids England of her greatest enemy.’ Thornton’s voice was thick with spittle. ‘I don’t care about the bounty. All I want is a taste of the glory.’
‘You know I can’t grant you that.’
‘Then I must act alone. This is my information, and I want the glory for it myself.’
Isham saw that he no longer had any choice in the matter. He stared at the spy’s pinkish raw face, the Cockney eyes shining with a determined, dangerous light, the mouth that was almost drooling over his words. Isham lifted his whip in the air. The cold, rigid feeling in his body needed some form of expression.
‘I’m sorry, Thornton, but I can’t allow you to add your ugly little flourish to history.’ He drove the whip across the spy’s face. It was a practised, precise blow, lacerating Thornton’s dark little eyes. The spy gave a surprised gulp as blood spattered over his face. The next strike dislodged his right eyeball, and left it dangling like a useless string of flesh. Isham kept raining down the blows upon Thornton’s eyes, his expression blank, his breathing free and calm, as though he were well used to enacting such pitiless spasms of violence.
‘The Great War is over, Thornton, but you’re still stuck in the trenches. It’s where men like you belong. Down there in the bottomless darkness with the rest of the cannon fodder.’
The blinded spy backed away, fingers groping over the red rags of his face, the heels of his hands pushing against the bloody mess. He tried to say something but all that came out was an animal-like howl. In panic, he veered into the trees. An aimless flight into deeper darkness.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ shouted Isham scornfully. He was no longer bored or cold inside. He raised a bugle to his lips and summoned the pack of hounds. The chase was about to begin.
A displacement of shadows at the top of the path announced the pack’s arrival. They bounded in a long curve towards Isham, filling the forest air with their unruly baying. The corporal felt a stir of excitement in his loins as his horse reared up and faced the snarling, jumping hounds. His feet almost foundered in the stirrups, but he kept his balance, and drove his horse on, leading the pack towards their quarry. He caught glimpses of Thornton, his arms flailing as if he were swimming in the undergrowth, giving the hunt a delicious flavour of abandonment, like a Sunday jaunt at the beach. He wove his horse through the trees, fighting against the low branches, eager to keep up with the pack. He wanted to steep himself in the spy’s terror, to ride deep into his blinkered panic. Thornton had spent most of his life peering suspiciously into the dark, now Isham was taking him beyond the limits of his normal vision, into his worst fears imaginable.
Even as the hounds leapt onto Thornton’s torso, his hands were still clutching and scrabbling for survival, tearing themselves against thorn branches and the dogs’ sharp teeth, fighting against the blindness that outraged his will to live. He fell into a thicket of elder, his face and heart and stomach opening to the seething hounds.
Isham waited awhile, circling his horse around the bloody scene. The sound of the rooks roosting helped drown out the spy’s final screams. He felt no sense of wrong in organising Thornton’s death in such a brutal way. That had been the spy’s function. To accommodate whatever purpose his superiors required. And there was no purer purpose than sacrificing one’s life for the schemes of one’s betters.
SEVEN
The Dublin Life Assurance offices were situated in a nondescript building on Leeson Street, its solid façade of sooty brownstone fortified by stacked bags of sand and earth, an admission that sound financial planning was no proof against exploding bombs and trigger-happy troops.
Shortly before nine o’clock, Kant introduced himself at reception and was led by a secretary through a maze of filing cabinets to the account manager’s office, a plate-glassed room occupied by a middle-aged man wearing rimless glasses called Dermot O’Shea.
‘I came here early so as not to disturb your work, Mr O’Shea,’ said Kant. ‘I have an inquiry about one of your ex-employees. A woman called Lily Merrin.’
O’Shea looked up quickly from behind a stack of yellowing paper. ‘What kind of inquiry?’
‘I think you might be able to help me find out what happened to her.’
‘Who sent you here? Dublin Castle?’ His voice took on a weary tone. ‘Is there no end to their snooping?’
Kant removed the reports of the missing women from his coat pocket and placed the sheaf in front of O’Shea. The manager read a few of the pages. A look of apprehension darkened his features.
‘Why do you think an insurance firm might be able to help you?’ he asked.
‘Some men from this office visited Merrin’s boarding house room a few days ago. I don’t believe they were there by accident.’
O’Shea sighed and leaned back in his seat, letting the sheaf fall onto his untidy desk. ‘This is a sensitive case, Mr Kant. We run a business here, but that doesn’t stop us from using our own investigative services to protect our clients’ interests. The woman you are looking for worked for the company a while back. She was in charge of some important financial documents, which have since gone missing. Understandably our clients have been breathing heavily on our necks, demanding their return.’
‘Then you’re not the only one anxious to find her.’
O’Shea’s features grew lively with interest; his nostrils flared slightly. ‘Do you know her whereabouts?’ He glanced at the sheaf on his desk. ‘We thought she might have ended up in hospital or prison.’
‘She went missing a week ago. There’s been no sign of her at work or at her boarding house. Dublin Castle suspects she was abducted.’
‘What are they suggesting?’
‘The file on your desk contains information on a number of missing women. In the past month, two of them have turned up dead in forests, their bodies naked and badly mutilated. I believe that Dublin Castle is trying to suppress the fact there’s a lust murderer on the loose.’
O’Shea got up from his desk and stood at the window. He glanced back at Kant.
‘None of us would know anything about violent death, Mr Kant, if it happened only once during our lifetimes.’ His shoulders drooped slightly and his eyes looked tired. ‘In my capacity as manager of this life assurance firm, I think I have seen more brutal deaths than the general population of this city. Therefore, I must congratulate you, an outsider, for finding me here. You have come to the centre of things, the point where this city’s inhumanity is at its darkest.’ He waved a hand towards the distant view of Dublin’s smoky terraces and slum tenements. ‘I don’t know if you can sense the fear and loathing out there. The ordinary citizens of Dublin don’t know how the British soldiers will act from one moment to the next, and this puts them on constant edge.’ His voice lowered to almost a murmur. ‘It is the arbitrary nature of the violence that is most damaging. Checkpoints, reprisals, the scattershot rage that has soldiers burning entire terraces of housing. Then there is the violence against women. It appears to be the fetish of the hour. The physical assaults, the rapes, the drunken attacks with batons and whips.’
It was true, thought Kant. He had read the heavily censored reports about the behaviour of British soldiers. Sexual crime was undergoing a renaissance in Dublin city.
O’Shea stared at the file a
nd looked thoughtful. ‘This story about abducted women will carry weight. It will have an impact on the decent people of England if published in your paper. Are you determined to bring it to their attention, in spite of the danger?’
‘Of course. That is my job. To report on what is there.’
‘Ireland will have need of sympathetic journalists in the days to come.’ O’Shea paused. He glanced at Kant anxiously. ‘Perhaps I have talked more than I should.’
To Kant’s ears, however, something more important was being withheld.
‘My loyalty is to the company and our clients,’ said O’Shea, returning to his desk. He reassumed his professional air. ‘Their details should not be compromised. However, I feel that I can trust you, and our company owes some small debt to you for bringing this information. At the very least, we should tell you what we know about Lily Merrin. That responsibility lies with my boss, Mr McAleer. He will see you here at 5 o’clock this evening. He has some meetings to attend but he will have time to see you first.’
He shook hands with Kant.
‘Be sure you come punctually,’ he said, as the reporter left the room. ‘Mr McAleer thinks it a sign of terrible manners to be late.’
Afterwards, Kant caught a tram back to the city centre. He walked up and down the streets, stared at posters advertising the latest plays in the local theatres, walked by the gates to Dublin Castle several times, but could not bring himself to enter its gloomy entrance tunnel. He waited for a long time on a bridge overlooking the Liffey. The river was rust-coloured and full of menacing potential, not like water, but something slower-moving, like blood, welling up thick with silted mud. He dragged himself away from the bridge and caught the stream of workers leaving their offices. He kept seeing Lily Merrin’s stricken face dissolving into the unending stream of passers-by, into the shadows thrown up by packed trams rattling along the cobbled streets, into the mysterious light cast by boarding house rooms onto wintry streets.
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