Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  II

  Hiring a car proved to be easy—the British licence was good enough. A hired car is not notoriously speedy but I managed to get a Cortina 1500 which would be enough to get me out of trouble—or into it—reasonably quickly.

  I arrived at the St George Hotel early and parked on the other side of the road and about a hundred yards along. Several taxis drew up but no Mrs Smith appeared but finally she arrived and only fifteen minuses late. She stood on the pavement when the taxi departed with two suitcases at her side and the hall porter from the hotel dashed out to succour her. I saw her shake her head and he went back into the hotel, a disappointed man, while she looked uncertainly about her. I let her stew for a while because I was more than curious to see if anyone was taking an undue interest in her.

  After ten minutes I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t pick her up then someone else would because she looked too damned fetching in stretch pants, open-neck shirt and short jacket, so I entered the traffic stream and swung around to pull up in front of the hotel. I wound down the nearside window, and said, ‘Give you a lift, ma’am?’

  She leaned down to look into the car, and her green eyes were snapping. ‘Where have you been?’ she said curtly. ‘I’ve been standing here like a fool. I’ve already slapped down three passes.’

  ‘It’s the Irish,’ I said. ‘They can’t resist a pretty girl. Get in; I’ll put the bags into the boot.’

  ‘Three minutes later we were rolling on our way out of Limerick and towards Cratloe. I said, ‘You made good time. You must have just caught the plane at the right moment.’

  She stared ahead through the windscreen. ‘I flew in my own plane.’

  ‘Well, well!’ I said. ‘The intrepid aviatrix. That might prove useful—but for what, I don’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t like something you said on the telephone,’ she said.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You were talking about cutting losses. I didn’t like that at all.’

  ‘I don’t like it much,’ I said. ‘But there are precious few leads to follow and I have no great hopes.’

  ‘Why did you let Slade get away?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘He was taken.’

  ‘There must have been something you could have done.’

  I glanced sideways at her. ‘Would you have relished cutting his throat while he slept?’

  She gave me a startled glance. ‘Why, I…’ She fell into silence.

  I said, ‘It’s easy criticizing from the sidelines. These Scarperers are efficient—more efficient than any of us realized. Slade thought they might be a Russian outfit—Russian subsidized, anyway; possibly Russian trained. One thing is certain; they’re no gang of ordinary criminals.’

  ‘You’d better tell me about it,’ she said. ‘But first tell me where we’re going now.’

  ‘I want to have a look at the house in which we were incarcerated. We may be able to pick up something, but I doubt it; the last I heard the boss man was shouting about abandoning the place. Anyway, this is the way it went.’

  One thing about Irish roads is that they’re traffic free and we made good time, so much so that I was only halfway through my tale of woe by the time I saw the first fire engine. ‘This is it,’ I said, and pulled off the road well away from the scene of action.

  It was a shambles. Mrs Smith took one look at the smoking shell of the house, and said, ‘I don’t know about the boss abandoning the house, it looks as though it abandoned him. Why should he burn it down?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ I said immodestly. ‘I did.’ I stuck my head out of the window and hailed a passing cyclist coming from the scene of the crime. ‘What’s happened here?’

  The cyclist, a gnarled old man, wobbled across the road and lurched to a halt. ‘A wee bit of a fire,’ he said, and gave me a gap-toothed grin. ‘Reminds me of the Troubles, it does.’

  ‘Anyone hurt?’

  ‘Indeed there was. They found a poor gentleman in the middle of it all—burnt to a crisp.’

  ‘That’s dreadful,’ I said.

  The old man leaned forward and peered at me. ‘A friend of yours, could he be?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘I was just passing and saw the fire engines.’

  ‘A natural curiosity,’ he agreed. ‘But there’s a mystery going on, there is. There were other men in that house and they’ve all run away. The garda are wondering why.’

  ‘The garda?‘

  ‘The natural enemies of good men,’ said the ancient. ‘The men in blue.’ He pointed up the road. ‘In England you call them the police.’

  About a hundred yards away was a police car—they’re unmistakable—with a policeman walking towards it. I glanced at Mrs Smith. ‘Should we be on our way, darling? We have to be in Roscommon tonight.’

  ‘Roscommon, is it?’ said the old man. ‘But it’s on the wrong road you are.’

  ‘We’re calling in to see friends in Ennis,’ I said. The man was as sharp as a tack.

  ‘Ah, then it’s straight ahead.’ He took his hand from the side of the car. ‘May you have luck in Ireland—you and your beautiful lady.’

  I smiled at him and let out the clutch and we drove slowly past the police car. I looked at the mirror and checked that it showed no inclination to follow before I said, ‘If they do a thorough autopsy of that corpse they’re likely to find a bullet.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’ asked Mrs Smith. Her voice was as cool and level as though she had asked if I had slept well.

  ‘Not me. It was an accident, more-or-less; he shot himself in a scuffle.’ I checked the mirror again. ‘He was right, you know.’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘The old man. You are beautiful.’ I gave her no time to worry about it but went straight on. ‘How’s Mackintosh?’

  ‘I telephoned the hospital just before I left London,’ she said. ‘There was no change.’ She turned to me. ‘You don’t think it was an accident?’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘He was crossing a street in the City late at night. A man found him by the side of the road. Whoever hit him didn’t stop.’

  ‘The man Jones knew I wasn’t Rearden about the same time,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it was an accident’

  ‘But how did they know?’

  ‘I didn’t tell them so it must have been either you or Mackintosh,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said quickly. ‘And why should it have been him?’ I shrugged and she was silent for a while before she said slowly, ‘He’s always been a good judge of men but…’ She stopped.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But there was £40,000 in that Swiss numbered account and you had the number.’

  I glanced at her. She was staring straight ahead, her body held rigid, and a pink spot glowed on her cheek. ‘That’s all we need,’ I said. ‘So you think I sold out to the Scarperers, is that it?’

  ‘Can you think of any other explanation?’

  ‘Not many,’ I admitted. ‘Talking about money—how much did you bring?’

  ‘You’re taking this too damned coolly.’ Her voice had an edge to it.

  I sighed and drew the car to a halt by the roadside. I put my hand beneath my jacket and brought out the gun I had taken from Jones—butt first. I offered it to her on the palm of my hand. ‘If you’re so certain I sold out then we may as well get it over with quickly,’ I said. ‘So take this and let me have it.’

  Her face whitened when she first saw the pistol, but now she flushed pink and lowered her eyelids to avoid my gaze. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘It’s just as well you did,’ I said. ‘Or you might be still thinking it. There are only the two of us, and if we can’t trust each other we’ll get nowhere. Now, you’re sure you couldn’t have let fall even a hint of the operation?’

  ‘I’m positive,’ she said.

  I put away the gun. ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘So that leaves Mackintosh.’

>   ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘Who did he see just before this so-called accident?’

  She thought about it. ‘He saw the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. They were both worried about the lack of news of Slade. There’s an election coming up and the PM thought the Leader of the Opposition should be informed of developments.’

  ‘Or the lack of them,’ I said. ‘I suppose he might do that—it’s not a party issue. Anyone else?’

  ‘Yes; Lord Taggart and Charles Wheeler. Wheeler is a Member of Parliament.’

  ‘I know of Taggart,’ I said. ‘He was Slade’s boss at one time.’ The name, Wheeler, rang a faint bell. ‘What did he talk to Wheeler about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘If Mackintosh were to tell anyone of the operation would you expect him to inform you?’

  ‘He never kept anything from me that I know of.’ She paused, then said, ‘But he had the accident before he could get to me.’

  I mulled it over and got nowhere. I sighed, and said, ‘I’m damned if I’m going to keep calling you Mrs Smith and neither am I going to call you Lucy. What is your name?’

  ‘All right,’ she said resignedly. ‘You may call me Alison.’

  ‘What do we do now, Alison?’

  She said decisively, ‘We check on the Irish addresses you found in Jones’s notebook. First, at Clonglass, and then at Belfast if necessary.’

  ‘That might not be too easy. The Clonglass reference wasn’t as much an address as a mention—just a scribbled memorandum; “Send Taafe to the House at Clonglass”.’

  ‘We’ll try it anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s not far.’

  III

  We booked in for the night at a hotel in Galway, but pushed on immediately to Clonglass which was about 25 miles further west along the coast. From the bare look of the map there didn’t seem to be any likelihood of finding an hotel west of Galway, especially late at night, so we played safe.

  Clonglass proved to be a wide place in the road overlooking a small inlet from the main bay. The houses were scattered, each with its thatched roof tied down against the advent of the western gales, and each with its peat stack handy to the door. It didn’t look too promising.

  I drew the car to a halt. ‘What do we do now? I wouldn’t know where to start in a place like this.’

  She smiled. ‘I do,’ she said, and got out of the car. An old woman was toiling up the road, swathed in black from head to foot and with a face like a frost-bitten crab apple. Alison hailed her and damned if she didn’t proceed to jabber away in a strange language.

  As always when one eavesdrops on a conversation in a foreign language it seemed as though they were discussing everything from the current price of potatoes to the state of the war in Vietnam and it seemed to go on interminably, but presently Alison stepped back and the old woman resumed her trudge up the road.

  I said, ‘I didn’t know you could speak Irish.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I have the Gaelic,’ she said casually. ‘Come on.’

  I fell into step. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the place where the gossip is,’ she said. ‘The local shop.’

  The shop was instantly familiar. I had seen many like it in the back-blocks of Australia and the more remote parts of the African veld. It was what I used to call as a child an ‘anything shop’ selling anything and everything in minute quantities to a small population. This shop had an added attraction; it had a bar.

  Alison went into her Irish routine again and the words washed around my ears without penetrating, and then she turned to me, and asked, ‘Do you drink whiskey?’

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  I watched with fascination as the bartender did his best to empty the bottle into a glass. In Ireland a glass of whiskey is a tenth of a bottle and the men are noble drinkers. Alison said, ‘One of them is for him—his name is Sean O’Donovan. You talk to him and I’ll join the ladies at the other end of the shop. Men can talk to each other better over a drink.’

  ‘Talk to him!’ I said. ‘That’s easy, but what do I do when he talks back?’

  ‘Oh, Sean O’Donovan speaks English,’ she said, and drifted away.

  ‘Yes,’ said O’Donovan in a soft voice. ‘I have the English. I was in the British army during the war.’ He put the glasses on the counter. ‘You’ll be here for a bit of a holiday?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Having a look around—a travelling holiday. You have a beautiful country, Mr O’Donovan.’

  He cracked a grin. ‘You English have always shown a fancy, for it,’ he said sardonically. He lifted his glass and said something in Irish which I didn’t catch but the action was obvious so I returned the toast in English.

  We talked for a while about the things a man talks about to a bartender in bars, and finally I got down to the meat of it. ‘All over Ireland I’ve been crossing the tracks of a friend of mine,’ I said casually. ‘But I haven’t caught up with him. I was wondering if he’s been here. His name is Jones.’ That sounded silly, but I said it all the same.

  ‘Would he be a Welshman?’ asked O’Donovan.

  I smiled. ‘I doubt it. He’s English.’

  O’Donovan shook his head. ‘I have not heard of the man. He may be at the Big House, but they keep to themselves entirely.’ He shook his head. ‘They buy their provisions in Dublin and not a thought do they give to the local trader. My father, now, who had this place before me, supplied the Big House all his days.’

  That sounded promising. I said sympathetically, ‘Standoffish, are they?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not that Himself is here often. He comes only once or twice a year—from the Other Island, you know.’

  It took me a good twenty seconds to realize that O’Donovan meant England. ‘So the owner is English?’

  O’Donovan gave me a sidelong glance. ‘It would seem he is another Englishman who has taken a fancy to a piece of Ireland.’ I looked at O’Donovan’s tough face and wondered if he was an active member of the IRA; he appeared to like Englishmen only in so far as they stayed in England, although he chatted pleasantly enough to me.

  He held up his hand. ‘I said “seems” and that is what I meant, for I was reading in the paper only the other day that the man is not English at all.’

  ‘So he gets his name into the newspapers?’

  ‘And why wouldn’t he? He speaks in the Parliament of the Other Island. Now isn’t that a strange thing, and him not an Englishman.’

  ‘It is, indeed,’ I said. My acquaintanceship with members of the British Parliament was limited, to say the least of it, and I didn’t know the rules of entry. ‘So what is he if he isn’t English?’

  ‘Ah, now; that I forget entirely. Some small place far away in Europe he comes from. But it’s a rich man he is. He has all the money in the world that the American Kennedys haven’t laid their fists on already. He comes here in his big yacht which is now anchored in the bay and it’s as big as the British royal yacht, if not bigger. Such a pleasure boat has never been seen in these waters before.’

  A wealthy and foreign Member of Parliament! It wasn’t as promising as I had thought, although it had its curiosity value.

  O’Donovan shook his head. ‘Maybe Mr Wheeler is richer than the Kennedys, after all.’

  Wheeler!

  Every nerve cell in my cerebrum sprang to attention simultaneously. That was the name of the MP Mackintosh had seen the day before being hit by the car. I put down my glass slowly. ‘I think we’ll have another, Mr O’Donovan.’

  ‘And that’s a kindly thought,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking you’ll be from the newspapers yourself.’ I opened my mouth to speak, and he winked at me. ‘Hush, now; you’ve no need to fear I’ll give you away. We’ve had other London reporters here—ay, and one American—all trying to find out things about the Wheeler man to publish in their papers but not one of them had the wit that you have—to bring an Irish girl with you to do a bit of talking in the Gaelic.’


  ‘I thought it might smooth the way,’ I said prevaricatingly.

  He leaned over the counter and looked into the shop where Alison was talking animatedly to a group of black-shawled women. ‘Ah, but she did not learn her tongue in the West; in Waterford, maybe.’

  ‘I believe she mentioned that she lived there,’ I said guardedly. ‘But she lives in Dublin now.’

  O’Donovan nodded in satisfaction, pleased to have been proved right. He picked up the glasses, and then paused, looking over my shoulder. ‘Look, now; here comes Seamas Lynch from the Big House. I’ll not tell him what you are.’

  I turned and looked at the man who was walking up to the bar. He was a black Irishman, dark as a Spaniard, and tall, lean and muscular. O’Donovan put our whiskey on the counter, and said, ‘And what will you have, Seamas?’

  ‘I’ll have a half,’ said Lynch.

  O’Donovan picked up a glass and turned to fill it, throwing a question over his shoulder. ‘Seamas, when is Himself leaving in his big boat?’

  Lynch shrugged. ‘When he takes it into his head to do so, Sean O’Donovan.’

  O’Donovan put the glass in front of Lynch. I observed that half an Irish single whiskey was about as big as an English double. ‘Ah, it’s nice to be rich,’ he said. ‘And have all the time in the world.’

  I said, ‘Maybe the House of Commons isn’t sitting.’

  ‘Then he should be talking to his constituents—and he has none here,’ said O’Donovan. He turned to Lynch. ‘This gentleman is having a fine time seeing Ireland.’

  Lynch looked at me. ‘So you think Ireland is a fine place, do you?’

  It wasn’t what he said but the way he said it that made my hackles rise; his tone of voice held a thinly veiled contempt. I said, ‘Yes; I think it’s a very nice country.’

  ‘And where are you going next?’ asked O’Donovan.

  I had an inspiration and told a true story. ‘I believe my grandfather on my mother’s side was harbour master at Sligo many years ago. I’m going up there to see if I can trace the family.’

  ‘Ach,’ said Lynch. ‘Every Englishman I meet tells me of his Irish ancestry.’ His contempt was now open. ‘And they all claim to be proud of it. You’d think from the way of it that the British Parliament ought to be in Dublin.’