‘How much would a bank clerk be paid, Eamonn?’ she asked into his ear as they stood gripping the chain and swinging it idly to and fro.
‘Four hundred and fifty pounds a year,’ he said promptly, without turning his head towards her. His face was turned down-river and his eyes were fixed on the burned-out remains of the city hall. ‘Or, at least that is what my mother tells me. When I said that I couldn’t go back to university yet, she wanted me to try to be a bank clerk. As if they’d have me!’ Eamonn gave a shout of laughter and turned his face back towards her. It was difficult for him, she knew. His well-to-do family was appalled at his decision to throw up his studies at the university and join the Republicans. At least my mother prays for the whole island of Ireland to be free, thought Eileen. She worries about me, but she has some understanding of what I am trying to achieve.
‘About nine pounds a week,’ repeated Eamonn. ‘My mother makes money a god.’
Nine pounds a week! Eileen thought about that sum. Very good money if your needs were not extravagant. A man could get married upon nine pounds a week, just as James O’Reilly had got married to Rose. But what if a man had expensive habits? Then in his ear, Eileen whispered, ‘How much does it cost to buy cocaine, Eamonn?’
‘Jesus, Eileen, don’t ask me things like that. I haven’t a clue,’ said Eamonn impatiently. ‘And don’t go talking about cocaine to me in front of your mother. She’ll have a fit.’
Eileen ignored this. She was thinking hard. Thinking about those expensive cars; the gorgeous clothes that Anne Morgan wore; the magnificent pearl choker necklace around Marjorie Gamble’s neck. And the words spoken by Jonathon Power to the bank clerk, James O’Reilly.
‘Perhaps they sell drugs,’ she said suddenly. ‘I always thought that it was weird that they opened the shop after the play was over. They talked about selling antiques to the playgoers, but it’s a funny time of the night to be selling that sort of stuff. Would it be easy to get hold of drugs in Cork, Eamonn?’
‘Pretty easy,’ he said guardedly.
‘How do you know?’
‘The lads at college used to talk about it; used to talk about buying them down the quays from sailors – probably all talk,’ he said impatiently. He seemed to be thinking hard. He released the chain and stared into the murky waters of the River Lee. ‘I was reading a book about the Hell Fire Club in Dublin,’ he said slowly after a minute of silence. ‘Perhaps these people have some sort of club like that, drink and drugs and devilish acts. They might even, and perhaps the Reverend Mother suspects that, they might even have killed a priest as a sort of demonic act.’
‘Let’s go and have a cup of tea and a sandwich and then we’ll come back and have a sneak around,’ suggested Eileen. ‘In any case, they might be keeping an eye on me. We’ll go on your bike. We can leave it somewhere on the South Mall when we come back and then walk across Morrison’s Island. No one would notice us. We could just peep in the back window of the shop to make sure that no one is around, then.’
They lingered over their tea and sandwich and by the time that they walked into Morrison’s Island there was no one around, no cars on the road and no people on the pavements. The church had been closed and the windows of the antique shop with their beige-coloured blinds were just pale outlines reflecting the watery moonlight. But the windows were open and there was a sound of voices, laughter and then the clink of a bottle against a glass. Within the car park beside the shop there were six cars still parked there: Peter’s Aston Martin, Tom Gamble’s Bentley, Marjorie Gamble’s Morris Austin, the O’Reillys’ Fiat, Jonathon’s Wolseley and Robert Beamish’s handsome Alfa Romeo.
Eileen touched Eamonn’s arm. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘They’re all still around. Let’s get into this doorway. They’ll go home soon.’
There was an old, derelict warehouse fronting on the car park used by the antiques shop and they huddled into the empty space where once there had been a door. From time to time, Eileen found herself glancing over her shoulder, almost as though she felt that someone’s eyes were upon her, but every time she turned around, there was nothing to be seen. She gazed up at the sky. The fog was lifting and the hazy rings around the moon were beginning to melt. There was something eerie about this place as it began to light up. The old rotten floorboards and the dangling pieces of plaster from the high walls were taking on a strange ghostly beauty. Eileen looked once more over her shoulder, saw something and then moved a little closer to Eamonn.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she whispered.
‘What’s the matter?’ He took her by the arm and then turned to stare over his shoulder. She almost said, ‘Don’t!’ But it was too late. She heard him suck in his breath. He dropped her arm and turned back, stepping over a large splintered hole in the floorboards. Reluctantly she turned, noticing that she was shivering. She had not been mistaken. Something was stretched on the floor at the back of the warehouse.
There was a body there. The body of a man, small, slight with one arm outstretched, the palm turned over, open to the sky, his eyes wide and staring, the moonlight making his face very white in contrast to the small black moustache.
‘It’s Peter Doyle from the antiques shop,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Is he dead, Eamonn?’
Eamonn bent down, touched the pulse in the man’s neck and nodded.
‘No pulse. But the body is warm, very warm.’ He did not immediately stand up, though. His head was bent over the man’s chest.
‘Look at this,’ he said after a moment. He stood up and she joined him reluctantly.
Pinned with a long, black hatpin to the dead man’s chest was a small card. On it was neatly printed: ‘Found guilty of the murder of Father Dominic and executed by order of the Irish Republican Army.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Eileen urgently.
‘What! And leave him lying there! We can’t do that.’ Eamonn was a very upright person; this was only what she might have expected from him. But Eileen found herself shaking with nerves.
‘We’ll be blamed for it!’
‘Why should anyone blame us? But they might if we walk away from this place and leave a dead man lying on the ground. If we do the right thing now, no one will suspect us.’
‘They know my face at the barracks. I was identified. They have a photograph of me now. I told you. Jonathon Power took it. And what about that lawyer, Maurice? And him visiting my mother’s house. Do you think that he did it? Just because of something that I said.’
Eileen, to her disgust, found her teeth began to chatter. Now, all that she could hear was that clashing of tooth enamel against enamel. But a second previously, she had thought that she heard a sound, a rustling sound, somewhere to the left of them. She turned and scanned the heaps of rubbish, the broken floorboards and the long shards of dangling plaster, eerie in the moonlight. There was a huge wooden container in a dark corner and she wished that she had the courage to go boldly over to it. As she stared, she thought that she saw a movement within it. A rat? Perhaps? A person, possibly?
‘Have you got a revolver?’ she whispered and he shook his head silently. ‘I left it behind,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Didn’t want to bring it into the play.’
‘I think there is someone hiding over there behind that container,’ she said in his ear. She tried to sound nonchalant but still she could hear that annoying click of her teeth.
She saw him looking towards the container, but then he shrugged and she knew that he had not seen what she had seen. And now, there was, oddly, a feeling within her that the two of them were quite alone. Whatever presence there had been, that had now disappeared.
‘A rat,’ he said and she wished that she could believe him.
‘Who killed him?’ she asked in a whisper.
He looked down at the body. There was a dark stain on the floorboard beside the man’s head. She saw him bend his head to examine it.
‘Has he been shot?’ she whispered, and then, with alarm, ‘don’t to
uch him, Eamonn. Don’t get blood on your hands.’
‘Let’s go.’ As always, Eamonn made the decision quickly. He grabbed her arm and walked at a steady pace towards the open doorway. ‘Don’t look back, and don’t try to run,’ he whispered and she understood the reason for that. Someone had shot Peter Doyle, but that did not mean that he would shoot two young people who just strayed into the warehouse. The murderer might not be even sure that they had even seen something. She tried to walk steadily. It was very hard not to look back. In a second, someone could spring on them and knock them to the ground. She admired Eamonn intensely at that moment. He was so calm, so relaxed.
When they got to the junction with the South Mall, he pushed her around the corner. They stood there in a doorway, entwined, almost as though they were lovers, thought Eileen, but there was a deadly feeing of apprehension in her mind.
‘Go across to the Imperial Hotel,’ he said in an urgent whisper. ‘Ask to use their telephone. Phone the guards.’
‘What’ll I say?’
‘Just tell them that you and I found a body. Don’t say anything about the card on it.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to keep an eye on that lot in the antiques shop. One of them could have murdered him. We’ve been suspecting that they are something to do with the Anti-Sinn Féin Organisation. They could have had a falling out. Someone murdered that man not long ago, five or ten minutes ago. The hand was still warm. The chances are that it was one of them. There’s nobody else around, is there?’
Eileen felt shudders pass down her body. She glanced over her shoulder.
‘Don’t go back there, Eamonn.’
‘I’ll be all right. I’m not letting them away with that. Did you see that notice on him? “Found guilty of the murder of Father Dominic and executed by order of the Irish Republican Army”. They are trying to blame it on our crowd. And it’s not true. There’s been another ceasefire agreed. Tom Hurley told us last night. He said no more guns to be used for the moment. I’m going back there to that shop. I’m going to see if they are all there. I should know them by now after seeing that show three times.’
‘Don’t let them see you.’ Eileen knew that she couldn’t argue him out of it. The quicker she got a Garda, the safer Eamonn would be. She ran across the broad empty road and burst into the Imperial Hotel.
‘There’s been a murder,’ she said to the uniformed porter in the hallway. ‘There’s a man lying dead over there on Morrison’s Island.’
‘I’ll get the police.’ He was very quick, she thought as she collapsed onto one of the padded chairs in the hallway. But, why not? Goodness knows; there had been enough murders on the streets of Cork during the last few years. A ceasefire. So that was why Eamonn didn’t have a gun on him, tonight. Had the Republicans given up, then? A few big jobs for people like Tom Hurley and for the rest, for people like Eamonn, who had given up a promising university career in medicine, Bernard who had been studying law, for these and for those like them, was it nothing but a few wasted years. She sat, staring at the glowing anthracite stove in the hallway, her mind distracted from the body, lying there on the ground of that deserted warehouse.
‘They’re on their way.’ The porter was by her side before she realized it. Those thick carpets deadened the sound of footsteps. She scuffed the pile with her rubber-soled shoe and wondered what to do.
‘They asked me to tell you to wait.’ He was looking at her keenly, in a fatherly way. ‘So you just sit there while I bring a pint of porter to a gentleman in number 22,’ he said with deliberate emphasis. He was giving her a chance to escape; she knew that and she thought that it was kind of him.
‘I’ll wait,’ she said. Eamonn, she knew, would not run away. He would see this out. He had strong principles. She would not desert him.
There was no way that this murder was going to be wrongly blamed on the Republicans if either of them could help it.
She was at the door of the Imperial Hotel when a young policeman came cycling down the South Mall. She went through the door and down the steps, rapidly.
‘Is there just you?’ she asked incredulously.
‘That’s right, miss.’
‘There might be a murderer hanging around, you know.’
He produced a truncheon and swung it with bravado. ‘Don’t you worry, miss. You stay here if you like.’
‘It’s not a joke, you know. We did find a body. My friend is over there, keeping … staying with the body,’ she finished lamely. She didn’t want to say that Eamonn was doing a spot of detection on his own account.
‘Is that a fact,’ he said and swung the truncheon once more.
‘Come on, then. Come and see for yourself.’
‘Just a moment,’ he said and dug a notebook out of his pocket. ‘I’ll just take down a few details about you, miss, if you don’t mind. Name, address, that sort of thing.’
‘My name is Eileen MacSweeney and I live at 103 Barrack Street,’ she said steadily. No point in giving a false name. Chances were that he might recognize her. His face was vaguely familiar. She had little faith in him, though, and was relieved when, by the time that he had finished writing, there was the sound of an engine and a police van came down the South Mall.
‘That was quick! They had to get the inspector out of his bed,’ said the young policeman. ‘Inspectors don’t do night duty like the rest of us.’
‘Inspector Cashman?’
‘That’s right. Know him, do you?’
‘He was leaving the convent school when I started,’ said Eileen. She wondered what the Reverend Mother would say when she heard of this latest killing. The Reverend Mother, she suddenly remembered, had asked lots of questions about the Merrymen group and about the antiques shop. And then she had gone on to talk about the burning down of some big house, Shanbally House, she remembered the name. What would she say when she heard of the latest death? Or would she have expected it?
ELEVEN
History of Civic Guards in Ireland
‘Throughout the winter of 1922/23 irregulars destroyed 485 police stations. Some 400 guards were physically beaten, stripped of their uniforms and had their personal possessions stolen. One was killed. Police morale deteriorated, but the Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins, and General Eoin O’Duffy, refused to arm the guards’.
Patrick recognized Eileen as soon as he arrived. Turned into a very pretty girl, he thought. It was a shame that she had become so wild. There were stories about her in the barracks. Still, at present, there was nothing against her, so he greeted her formally, thanked her for the information.
‘Will you show us where the body is, Miss MacSweeney?’ He began to walk rapidly across the South Mall as he spoke and then slowed down a little to stay beside her.
‘He’s in a warehouse, one of these derelict ones, just across the road from the antiques shop.’ He saw her look at him closely as she said the last two words and he wondered what she knew.
‘And your friend, who was with you?’ There was a solitary motorbike parked down outside the back of the church. There had been a story, he remembered, about Eileen MacSweeney on the back of a motorcycle during a jailbreak.
‘He’s keeping an eye on the people in the shop.’
‘Why?’
‘Someone murdered him. He was dead when we went into the warehouse, but he’s only just dead. Eamonn, my friend, used to be a medical student. He said that the corpse’s hands were still warm, so he was only just after being killed. There’s no one else around except them. So it must be one of them.’
Or you or your young man, thought Patrick, but he said nothing. He crossed the road over towards the church and put his hand on the motorcycle engine. Still warm. They could not have been there too long. It had taken about ten minutes for the police to arrive. Luckily, he had been still up when he was summoned from his room in the barracks.
‘The dead man is over there,’ pointed out Eileen and he allowed her to lead him back
across the road. He beckoned to the duty sergeant and the man joined him, shining a very powerful torch onto the dead man’s face.
‘Looks as though he’s just asleep, doesn’t he, but my friend said that he was dead. Felt his pulse. He used to be a medical student,’ said Eileen. ‘I thought that he was asleep for a minute. “Death-counterfeiting sleep.” That’s from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Did you study that at the Brothers?’
He could hear the defiant note in her voice. Probably scared, he thought.
‘Hmm,’ said Patrick. He bent down, touched the man’s neck, and then the hands. Cooling, but not yet cold. Eileen did not call his attention to the card on the man’s chest, but he saw her look at him as if to check whether he had noticed it. She had gone very silent. Perhaps she thought that he would be friendlier as they had been neighbours once.
‘Not been long dead.’ A young man had joined him.
‘No,’ said Patrick. Strange, that their arrival had not caused any interest in the crowd inside the antiques shop. There were snatches of melodies, laughs, and then a very English voice calling out, ‘Mind that vase, Anne!’
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on them. They all seem to be there. My name is Eamonn. Eileen and I found the body. Not long dead, when we found him. The hands were still hot. That’s why I thought that it must be someone nearby who killed him. There was no one else around, except the rest of the crowd in his shop.’
‘You know him, then.’
‘Eileen does. It’s Peter Doyle, the owner of the shop.’
‘How many doors to the shop?’
‘Just the one. There’s no back door. These old warehouses were all built back to back, I think.’ From a good family, that ‘th’ was very carefully pronounced. A fellow about my own age, thought Patrick. One of the ones who had everything, even a university education being paid for by parents, no doubt. One of the poor fools sucked in by the Republican movement. The sooner all that was finished, the better for the country. Aloud, he said, ‘Perhaps you would give me a statement and then you and Miss MacSweeney can be off home.’
Beyond Absolution Page 15