‘I can’t read,’ said Jimmy. ‘Not at all, not even a word.’ His face frowned as he looked down into the murky depths of the River Lee. A smell rose up from it. It always did, but Patrick noticed it even more strongly today as he fumbled for words. What did one say to a child? Commiserate? Reassure?
‘Not – a – single – word,’ said Jimmy with emphasis. He opened the bag of sweets, again, popped a second humbug into his mouth and sucked noisily.
‘You’re just the man for me, then,’ said Patrick with a sudden inspiration. ‘You’ll be a man with good eyesight.’ He hoped sincerely that he was not undermining some teacher’s hard work, but the assertion had popped into his head.
‘Reading ruins your eyes,’ said Jimmy, moving the sweets to his cheek and getting words out with difficulty. And then, after a minute of sucking, ‘Wot you after?’
Patrick thought about this for a moment. The whole matter seemed far too complex for explanation. Then a memory of a film that he had seen recently came to his rescue.
‘Spies,’ he said and Jimmy nodded an agreement.
‘I’d be good at finding spies. I do a lot of work for the Shinners.’
‘No more talking,’ said Patrick, unsure of his ability to elaborate on that terse utterance and Jimmy nodded again. Once they had crossed Parliament Bridge and had turned down into Morrison’s Island, he led the way, walking quickly and confidently along the rain-smeared pavements until he stopped in front of a derelict building.
‘Don’t make a noise,’ he said with a severe glance at Patrick’s heavy boots. And then, stepping across broken floorboards, he led the way towards the back of the warehouse. The smell of burned wood still hung around in the damp air.
Downright dangerous, this place, thought Patrick, making an inward note to have it roped off with a ‘Danger’ notice placed at the entrance. It wouldn’t stop children going in there, of course. Mentally he drafted a letter to the town council. Waste of time, even if he managed to get the superintendent to sign it. There would be no money available; that would be the answer.
‘This is the place,’ said Jimmy in a low gruff voice.
Patrick opened his attaché case and took from it a torch. It was a gloomy day and there was very little light. The powerful beam of the torch made a golden pathway and lit up the underground passageway. Without hesitation, Jimmy jumped down. Patrick, hampered by the case and half-wishing that he was not wearing his new uniform, lowered himself carefully to the level.
‘Want to see the treasure?’ asked Jimmy and without waiting for an answer, he led the way confidently, going in the Parliament Street direction, Patrick reckoned. He tried to keep his bearings as Jimmy led them in and out, between piles of broken concrete walls and heaped-up slabs of stone, roughly cemented.
‘That’s the church up there,’ whispered Jimmy. ‘I could show you a way of getting into it. If you climb up the side, there, you can get into the cupboard where they keep the cleaning things. You wouldn’t have to pay a penny and you needn’t go to the Shawlies’ place, neither. You could sit with all the toffs and no one would know that you hadn’t put your sixpence in the plate.’
Patrick winced. His own mother, despite his pleas, still wore a shawl and still went to the same side chapel in St Finbar’s Church where no collection was taken. The Shawlies’ Place, as it was known. No wonder the Republicans were angry with the Catholic Church who were very keen on people knowing their place. Priests like Father Dominic were the exception. But that was not important now. So that was one way in getting into the Holy Trinity Church without being seen.
Jimmy, however, did not seem to find that so interesting. He had turned direction. Now he would be going towards the South Mall, thought Patrick. A rat peered out at them and then disappeared. There was a scamper of dozens of tiny feet. A wooden floor over their heads. Another warehouse. He shone the beam of the torch over their heads and saw the boards. And heard more frenzied scampering.
Rat poison, he thought, that’s interesting.
And it was. Jimmy and his cousins were unlikely to have put that there. There was an empty cardboard box on the ground and Patrick turned the light upon it. ‘Rough on Rats’ it said and there was a picture on it of a rat lying on its back with its paws in the air.
‘Don’t touch it; that stuff would kill you as well as a rat,’ he hissed as Jimmy, pausing to put another sweet into his mouth, bent to pick it up.
‘I’m tough; I don’t kill easily,’ said Jimmy. ‘I just thought that there might be some left. My aunt wants rat poison, but she says it’s awful dear in the shops. She’s asked us to try and get some for her. Look, inspector. See that turn up there. We’re coming to the treasure now.’
Patrick followed the direction of the finger. More rat poison, he noticed as they rounded the corner. Some people, other than Jimmy and his cousins, were in on the secret of these underground passageways of Morrison’s Island. And they didn’t like rats.
And then he saw why when they rounded another substantial pier.
A floor of broad planks had been laid above the rough concrete. Tarpaulins hung from the boards over their heads, forming walls, and a ceiling and creating a room of about twenty square feet. It was Jimmy’s treasure house. Some cheap trestle tables had been set up and they were loaded with gold watches, silver candlesticks, silver tea and coffee sets, teaspoons, silver boxes of all sizes and shapes, trays, women’s jewellery, gold tiepins, and two small owls with amber eyes. Against one stone pier leaned a stack of oil paintings, half covered with a rough woollen blanket. There was more rat poison here and Patrick kept a sharp eye on Jimmy. He had seen enough, though. The list of valuables that the Reverend Mother had given him was in his mind. He inspected the items on the tables. The silver and cobalt potato rings, were, he thought, quite distinctive and she had described that blue very well.
Jimmy nudged him and pointed. One stone pier bore the signs of being recently plastered with a coat of well-laid, rather professional-looking cement. Bolted to it was a sturdy iron ladder, its wide steps and a handrail ensuring that there would be no falls for people carrying valuable goods down to this hidden storeroom. More of a staircase, than a ladder. And above it was a square hatch cut into the wooden ceiling. As they stood there just below it, he could hear Jonathon’s voice calling some command.
‘Let’s go,’ whispered Patrick. This was not the moment to burst dramatically upon those overhead. He would come back with a police van and a few Civic Guards, armed with truncheons. Now that he knew of the existence of this place, it should be easy to find the entrance to it. And easy to find how Peter Doyle and his assailant had left the antiques shop that night and ended up in a warehouse across the road. Patrick bent down until he was level with Jimmy’s face.
‘What’s the quickest way out?’ he asked and Jimmy nodded. Unhesitant and silent, he went towards one of the tarpaulins and slipped through it. Just as silently, Patrick followed him, squeezing past another rough pier, and emerged into a passageway. The air was better here. Jimmy was going quite fast across the rough ground strewn with stones and broken lumps of concrete. They were, Patrick thought, going slightly downhill. They rounded another corner. And then stopped before a massive pier oblong in shape, made from stone slabs, covered with concrete, but showing the stone by the squared-off shape and the actual stone in one place, near the ground where the outside layer had crumbled from damp. Again, there were signs of new work, good workmanship; the pier was covered in a smooth cement, well finished off at the corners.
And, once again, it had an iron staircase with a handrail bolted to it, and a strongly made wooden hatch above it.
Jimmy looked at Patrick with a smile that showed a missing front tooth. Without saying anything, he sprinted up the steps. The hatch was only a foot above the top step. An adult would be able to lift it from the security of the second or third highest step and then could proceed easily and safely.
Patrick followed Jimmy. It was a very neat garden shed. A fork,
a shovel and an English spade were hanging from one wall. There was a trestle table with a row of pots and some small gardening tools. It had been placed so that it would screen the hatch, without blocking it in anyway. A scythe leaned against one corner and a smart, new-looking lawnmower was in another. Patrick carefully replaced the hatch and took Jimmy by the hand. Patrick went cautiously to the door, opened it, just a crack, and put his eye to the space.
There was a well-kept small garden, a lawn in the centre, fruit trees and rose bushes on either side.
And a back view of a three-storey-high Georgian house.
Jimmy let go of the hand holding him back, pushed past Patrick and slipped behind an enormous bush. Patrick gently closed the door before following him. By the time he saw him again, Jimmy had opened a garden gate leading to a narrow lane, lined with dustbins. No one said anything until they reached the South Mall and then Jimmy was the first to speak.
‘That’s Judge Gamble’s house, sir,’ he said.
Patrick turned and looked up at the house. For a moment he thought that he saw a figure at the window. He hesitated for a moment. After all, what would be the harm in asking the judge to explain why there was a staircase leading from an underground store beneath the antiques shop and right up into his own garden shed? But then there was no law against constructing an underground passageway. Patrick thought back to something that the Reverend Mother had said about Morrison’s Island. Once the entire island had been owned by the Gambles, big traders in their time. Perhaps the passageway was constructed originally more than a hundred years ago, perhaps kept in repair for the convenience of the people in the antiques shop. There would be no law, either against Tom Gamble, his father, or even his sister, holding shares in that profitable business, or even perhaps financing it. He decided to do nothing for the moment.
‘Come on, Garda Jimmy. Let’s get you back to the Reverend Mother,’ he said. He said no more. Jimmy, unless addressed with a question, would be a silent companion and for now Patrick just wanted to think. He had two murders on his hands. He was fairly certain that Peter Doyle had murdered Father Dominic, but who murdered Peter Doyle? One of the gang – and by now he had the evidence that the antiques shop owners and their friends were criminals, involved in the lucrative business of stealing antiques from burning houses. It would, he thought as he stood back to allow a Beamish horse-pulled dray to get ahead of them, be easy enough to get the cook to identify the men involved in the raids. After all, she had seen them twice and, according to the Reverend Mother, had identified the raiders of Abernethy House as the same men who had burned down the Wood’s house last year.
SEVENTEEN
1917-18 session of the Cork Municipal School of Commerce, Lecture on the “General Principles of Housing and Town Planning”, delivered by the Principal, D.J. Coakley.
‘Some (houses) are so old and dilapidated, and so structurally bad, that repairing them is out of the question. As a consequence, 38 to 40 houses were closed some years previously as being unfit for human habitation. There were several instances of where the father and mother, and sons and daughters over 20 years of age, all slept in the same apartment. Of 12,850 houses in Cork, 1,300 were unprovided with back yards, nearly half of which were situated in the city centre. Coakley noted that if the Corporation of Cork were to demolish all the houses in the city which are absolutely unfit for human habitation and those on the border line, it would mean dispossessing 16,000 people, or one fifth of the population.
The rain had stopped, but the fog was so thick that the streets were dark as night. Here and there gas lamps were lit but they made little impact on the dense fog. People stumbled over each other and cars slowed to walking pace.
Only the horses were undisturbed by the lack of vision. The Beamish beer dray was making a terrible rumbling sound as they followed it down Parliament Street. There were no pavements here and Patrick was glad to feel Jimmy’s hand firmly clasping on to the flap of his pocket. Each one of these wheels was about three foot high and was capable of cutting through a man’s body.
Normally the drays went down the South Mall, but this one, perhaps because of the fog, had turned into the short narrow length of Parliament Street. It could cross over Parliament Bridge and go down the quays until it reached where the ferry waited to depart in the morning for Wales. In a week’s time, London Irish, homesick for their native country, could be drinking the ‘Black Cork’.
And then, suddenly, the rumbling from the iron wheels, rolling over the cobbles seemed suddenly to grow to deafening proportions with a dull booming noise. It sounded as though the street was hollow and Patrick recalled the words of the Reverend Mother when she was telling his class how the city of Cork had been built over river channels – perhaps there was a culvert under the short, narrow length of Parliament Street.
Then there was a roaring sound, almost the sound of thunder. The team of horses tossed their heads and one of the leader horses gave a high-pitched squeal – quickly picked up by others. Patrick hesitated, clasped Jimmy’s wrist firmly, ready to drag him aside if a panic-stricken horse broke his trace and stampeded through the crowd that was streaming along Parliament Street, avoiding the floods in South Mall. There was a rumbling sound, a deafeningly loud crack, a confused sound of shouting voices, a woman’s scream, echoed and drowned by the high pitch of the horses’ squeals. Car drivers revved up their engines and began to reverse. The rumbling grew louder; Patrick pulled Jimmy back and clamped the frail body to his side. Terrifying screams and roars of a crowd mad with panic, a sudden smell of strong beer, a thud of running feet from behind them. The roaring of a car engine from behind them. The lights on the back of the dray moved and tilted, the press of people in front of Patrick parted and flowed back on either side of his square, resolute body.
And then he could see what had happened. Jimmy gave a terrified scream and buried his face in the wool of Patrick’s overcoat. It was like a scene from hell. In front of them, a huge hole had opened up in the road. The team of four horses were on the other side and so were the first two sets of the wheels of the dray, but the end two wheels still dangled precariously over the edge of the enormous jagged hole that had opened up in the road. Cars were backing away, on both sides, reversing rapidly in case they too fell into the hole.
All the layers of tarmac laid on the road during recent years had broken up and the stones beneath it had slipped into the river. And now for the first time in his life Patrick could see what lay beneath. There had been a culvert, enclosing and containing a stream and it had been arched over by blocks of the rose-red sandstone of the area. It was, he knew well, a hard stone, far, far harder than brick or even the local limestone. But the constant wearing by the force of the floodwaters had found the weak spots in the joins and now the arched roof that had imprisoned the water had broken away. And the rushing waves of the incoming tide could be seen thundering along, just as though a portal had been opened into a watery hell.
‘Hold the horses’ heads!’ A great roar went up from the crowd. Patrick was jostled and knocked as a crowd of men squeezed past him and edged their way along the narrow pathway by the side of the small houses and shops that fringed Parliament Street. Patrick stayed where he was. He had little Jimmy to keep safe. He longed to shout out to the draymen to cut the traces – let the barrels and the wagon fall into the hole, but keep the living horses and men safe, but he knew that was a decision that was theirs to make. He could not be responsible for them losing their jobs from the brewery.
The noise was deafening. Men shouting, horses screaming, but the next sound made everyone spring back.
From beneath their feet came another rumbling sound, the sound of the water-loosened stones churning against the archway under where they stood. The tide was turning, sucking back instead of leaping forward.
And then there was a great cheer. By a tremendous effort, the mighty horses managed to pull the last set of wheels free of the broken mass of tarmac and stone. A few more barrels rolled
off and bobbed below in the water, but that would not matter. The owners of Beamish’s Brewery would be thankful that the dray and the horses were safe. The men would be rewarded and there would be plenty of onlookers rushing off to the quaysides to try to secure an unbroken barrel of the porter. Patrick smiled to himself at the thought of the excitement as the predications of the eventual landing places flew from one to another. Probably, he thought, some of those casks now bobbing in the dark waters below them had been made by his grandfather who had been a cooper. The old man had worked for most of the breweries in the city from time to time. He bent over the hole and peered down into it. There was the sound of cars revving their engines, reversing out of danger. Jimmy grabbed his arm tightly and said something in an alarmed voice.
And at that very moment Patrick felt a blow in the middle of his back as though he had been struck by a sledgehammer. He pitched forward, seeing with absolute clarity as he fell downwards, the whole scene below lit up by the lanterns that were angled down. For a moment he felt a weight on his left arm but then it was free and a small shape was ahead of him falling, head first, while the boy frantically flailed his arms in circles.
‘Jimmy!’ he screamed but knew that his voice was lost in the roar of the water and the rumble of the stones.
And then he hit the water. The shock was stunning; the cold was paralysing. For a moment his wits deserted him, but then he began to kick feebly with his legs, to claw at the water with his hands. Even at that moment he was conscious of the stench from the river.
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