the Savage Day - Simon Vaughn 02 (v5)

by Jack Higgins

  'It's me, Mrs Kelly,' Binnie said. 'With a friend.'

  She reached for his face, cupped it in her hands for a moment, then smiled without a word, turned and led the way inside.

  When she opened the door at the end of the passage into the kitchen, Lucas and the bomb-thrower were standing shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the table, Lucas holding the Schmeisser at the ready, his friend clutching an old .45 Webley revolver that looked too big for him.

  'Well, would you look at this now?' Binnie said. 'Rats will find a hole, so they say.' He spat on the floor. 'You did a fine job on the women and children back there.'

  The youth with the Webley turned wildly. 'I told you,' he said and Lucas struck him across the mouth, his eyes never leaving Binnie.

  'Shut your mouth, Riley, and you just watch it, Binnie, or you might get some of the same. Who's your friend?'

  'None of your affair.'

  'And what if I decide to make it mine?'

  'Don't mind me,' I put in.

  For the first time Lucas lost some of that iron composure of his. He stared at me in astonishment. 'A bloody Englishman, is it?'

  'Or as much an Irishman as de Valera,' I said. 'It depends on your point of view.'

  'He's here on business for the Small Man,' Binnie said. 'For Cork himself, so keep your nose out of it.'

  They confronted each other for another tense moment, then the old lady slipped in between them without a word and placed a pot of tea in the centre of the table. Lucas turned away angrily and I sat down against the wall and lit a cigarette. I offered Binnie one, but he refused. The old lady brought us a cup of tea each then moved to the others.

  'She doesn't have much to say for herself,' I observed.

  'She wouldn't,' Binnie replied. 'Being dumb as well as blind.'

  He stared into space, something close to pain in his eyes, thinking of that child whose hand he had held, I suspect.

  I said, 'Remember what you were saying about my uncle coming out of the schoolhouse so the children wouldn't be harmed, to shoot it out with the Tans like a man?'

  He turned to me with a frown. 'So what?'

  I said gently, 'Times have changed, haven't they, Binnie?'

  He stood up, walked over to the other side of the room and sat down with his back to me.

  I suppose it must have been all of two hours before there was a knock at the door. They all had a gun out on the instant, including Binnie, and waited while the old lady went to the door. Norah Murphy came into the kitchen. She paused, her eyes narrowing as she recognized Lucas, then she placed her case on the table.

  'I'd love a cup of tea, Ma,' she said in Irish as Mrs Kelly followed her in.

  She was as crisp and incisive as she had been at our first meeting. It was as if nothing had happened in between at all and yet the skirts of her trenchcoat were stained with blood. I wondered if anything would ever really touch her.

  Binnie said, 'What happened?'

  'I helped out till the ambulances arrived.'

  'How many were killed?' Lucas demanded.

  'Five,' she said and turned to me. 'I'll have that cigarette now, Major.'

  'And soldiers?' Young Riley leaned on the table with both hands, his eyes wilder than ever. 'How many soldiers?'

  Norah Murphy turned from the match I held for her and blew out a long column of smoke.

  'And who might you be?' she enquired.

  'Dennis Riley, ma'am,' he said in a low voice.

  'Well then, Dennis Riley, you really will have to put in some practice before your next free show. The score this time was a mother and her two children and a couple of eighteen-year-olds who'd just got engaged. No soldiers, I'm afraid.'

  Riley collapsed into a chair and Binnie said quietly, 'The little girl - she died, then?'

  'I'm afraid so.'

  He turned to Lucas and Riley and the look on his face was the same look I had seen in the pub earlier when he had confronted the hooligans.

  'Women and kids now, is it?' He kicked the table over, the Browning was in his hand by a kind of magic. 'You bloody bastards, here's for the two of you.'

  Norah Murphy had his arm up as he fired, a bullet ploughing through the ceiling. She slapped him across the cheek. He turned, a strange, dazed look on his face, and she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him as one might shake a recalcitrant child.

  'What's done is done, Binnie. Quarrelling like this amongst ourselves won't help now.'

  Lucas stood with his back against the wall, the Schmeisser ready, no more than a hairs-breadth away from cutting loose with it. Riley scrabbled on the floor at his feet for the Webley which he had lost when the table went over.

  'Better to move on from here,' Norah Murphy said. 'All of us and the sooner the better. Someone might have heard that shot.' She turned to Mrs Kelly. 'I'm sorry, Ma.'

  The old woman smiled and touched her face. I said, 'How are we going to work it?'

  She shrugged. 'We'll have to split up, naturally. Better to take your chances on your own, Major. Did you notice a footbridge over the canal on your way here?'

  'I did.'

  'Cross over, take the towpath for a couple of hundred yards and a narrow passageway brings you into Delph Lane. Half a mile along that and you'll be in the centre of the city.'

  'Why in the hell should he go first?' Lucas demanded.

  She totally ignored him and said to Binnie. 'We ought to leave separately. It would be the sensible thing.'

  'And how would I explain the loss of his niece to Michael Cork if anything happened to you?'

  Which was an interesting disclosure. She actually smiled for him, then turned to me. 'Off you go, then, Major.'

  The old woman went out ahead of me. I turned in the doorway. 'Up the Republic,' I said. 'Right up!' Then I closed the door gently and moved along the passage.

  Mrs Kelly had the door open, and beyond in the yard rain fell in a silver curtain through the lamplight.

  I turned up my collar. 'Thanks for everything.'

  There was a strangely uncertain look to her, a slight frown on her face as if there was something here she did not understand. The milk-white eyes stared past me vacantly and her fingers reached to touch my cheeks, to trace the line of my mouth.

  And they found what they were searching for, those fingers, and fear blossomed on her face, the kind that a child might feel standing at the top of the stairs, aware of some nameless horror, some presence in the darkness below.

  I said gently in Irish, 'This is not on you, old woman. None of it.'

  She pushed me out into the rain and closed the door.

  I found a dark corner of shadows near the footbridge with some bushes reaching over the wall above to give me some sort of shelter. I couldn't smoke. The smell would have been too distinctive on the damp air, so I waited as I had waited in other places than this. Different lands, hotter climates, but always the same situation.

  There was the sound of cautious footsteps and a moment later, two figures emerged from the alley. Binnie and Norah. I saw them clearly in the light of the lamp as they went up the steps to the bridge. Their footsteps boomed hollowly for a moment, then faded as they passed along the other side.

  I returned to my waiting. Strange the tricks memory plays. The heavy rain, I suppose, reminding me of the monsoon. Borneo, Kota Baru, the ruins of the village, the stench of burning flesh, acrid smoke heavy on the rain, the dead schoolchildren. They, too, had been butchered for a cause, just like the little girl and her sister in the square tonight. The same story in so many places.

  A stone rattled in the alleyway and they emerged a moment later. Lucas was well out in front. He stood under the lamp, then went up the steps to the footbridge alone, probably to test the ground.

  Riley paused in the shadows and waited no more than a couple of yards from me. I took him from behind with the simplest of headlocks, snapping his neck so quickly that he had no chance to make even the slightest cry.

  I lowered him gently to th
e ground, found the Webley in his coat pocket, picked up his old trilby and pulled it on. Then I moved towards the bridge.

  Lucas was half-way across. 'Will you get your bloody finger out, Dennis,' he called softly.

  I went up the steps head down so that it was only at the last moment instinct told him something was wrong and he swung to face me.

  I said, 'You're a big man with women and kids, Lucas. How do you feel now?'

  He was trying to get the Schmeisser out from underneath his coat when I shot him in the right shoulder, the heavy bullet turning him round in a circle. The other two shots shattered his spine, driving him across the handrail of the bridge to hang, head-down.

  His raincoat started to smoulder, there was a tiny tongue of flame. I leaned down, got him by the ankles with one hand and tipped him over. Then I tossed the Webley and the trilby after him and continued across the bridge.

  5

  Storm Warning

  Most of Oban seemed to be enveloped in a damp, clinging mist when I went out on deck and there was rain on the wind, which was hardly surprising for it had been threatening ever since my arrival two days previously.

  Beyond Kerrera, the waters of the Firth of Lorne, when one could see them at all, seemed reasonably troubled and things generally looked as if they might get worse before they got better. Hardly the most comforting of thoughts with the prospect of the kind of passage by night I had in front of me.

  For the moment, I was snug enough, anchored fifty yards from the main jetty. I made a quick check to make certain that all my lines were secure and was just going to go below when a taxi pulled up on the jetty and Meyer got out.

  He didn't bother to wave. Simply descended a flight of stone steps to the water's edge and stood waiting, so I dropped over the side into the rubber dinghy, started the outboard motor and went to get him.

  He looked distinctly out of place in his black Homburg and old Burberry raincoat, a parcel under one arm, a briefcase in his other hand, and he obviously felt it.

  'Is it safe, this thing?' he demanded, peering anxiously through his spectacles at the dinghy.

  'As houses,' I said taking the briefcase he passed to me.

  He hung on to the parcel, stepped gingerly into the dinghy and sat down in the prow. As we moved towards the motor cruiser, he turned to have a look at her.

  'Are you satisfied?'

  'Couldn't be better.'

  'The Kathleen, isn't that what they call her? I must say she doesn't look much.'

  'Which is exactly why I chose her,' I said.

  We bumped against the hull, I went up the short ladder and over the rail with the line. As I turned to help Meyer a curtain of rain drifted across the harbour. He darted for the shelter of the companionway and I followed him down to the saloon.

  'What about some breakfast?' I said as he took off his coat and hat.

  'Breakfast?' He looked at me blankly. 'But it's almost noon.'

  'So I got up late.' I shrugged. 'All right, tea then.'

  I went into the galley and as I put on the kettle, Al Bowlly broke into It's all forgotten now. When I went back into the saloon, Meyer was sitting at the table lighting one of the fat Dutch cigars he favoured, the little cassette tape-recorder in front of him.

  'When are our friends due?'

  I glanced at my watch. 'About an hour. You're late. What kept you?'

  'The Brigadier came to see me before I left so I had to get a later plane.'

  'What did he want?'

  'A final briefing, that's all. He's flying to Northern Ireland himself this afternoon to be on hand in case he's needed.'

  The kettle started to whistle in the galley so I went in to make the tea. Meyer followed and leaned in the doorway, watching me.

  'Perhaps I'm tired or maybe it's just that I'm getting old and I didn't sleep so good last night and that's always a bad sign with me.'

  I poured milk and tea into two enamel mugs, topped them up with a largish measure of Jameson and handed him one. 'What are you trying to say, Meyer?'

  'I don't feel so good about this, Simon.'

  'Like you said, you're tired, that's all.'

  He shook his head violently. 'You know me. I get an instinct for these things and I'm never wrong. The first time I felt like this was when I was seventeen years of age back in 1938.'

  'I know,' I said. 'You've told me often enough. You got out of Munich half an hour before the Gestapo came to arrest you. Your uncle and aunt wouldn't listen and died in Dachau.'

  He made a violent gesture, tea slopping out of his mug. 'Don't mock me, Simon. What about that time in Casablanca? If you hadn't listened to me then and left on the next plane they'd have arrested both of us.'

  'All right, so you've got second sight.' I moved past him into the saloon. 'Have you tried telling the Brigadier you don't feel so good about things?'

  He shrugged helplessly and sat down at the table opposite me. 'How do we get into such situations, Simon? It's crazy.'

  'Because we didn't have any choice,' I said. 'It's as simple as that. Did you bring what I asked?'

  'In the parcel.' I started to unwrap it and he added, 'Where's the cargo?'

  'The Lahtis are in the aft cabin. You're sitting on the Uzis.'

  I removed the last of the brown paper and opened the flat cardboard box it contained. Inside there was several pounds of what looked like children's Plasticine, but was in fact a new and rather effective plastic explosive called ARI 7. There was a box of chemical fuses to go with it.

  There was also a cloth bundle tied with string, which when I opened it contained several clips of ammunition and a Mauser automatic pistol with a rather strange bulbous barrel.

  'That damn thing's almost a museum piece,' Meyer observed as I hefted it on one hand. 'You've no idea the trouble I had finding one.'

  'I know,' I said. 'But it's still the only really effective silenced handgun ever made.' I picked up the box and stood. 'Let's go up top. I want to show you something.'

  It was raining harder than ever when we went out on deck. I led the way into the wheelhouse, put the box down on the chart table, reached underneath and pressed a spring catch. A flap fell down which held a Mark IIS Sten. There were several other spring clips and a shelf behind.

  'A slight improvement,' I said. 'This is what kept me up so late last night.'

  I put the ARI 7 on the back shelf with the fuses and spare ammunition clips, loaded the Mauser and fitted it into place, then pushed the flap up out of sight.

  'Very neat,' Meyer observed.

  'Nothing like being prepared.'

  He glanced at his watch. 'I'll have to be away soon. I've got a hire car laid on by a local garage. They're going to run me down to Abbotsinch. I'll catch the evening plane to Belfast from there.'

  'Then what?'

  He shrugged. 'I'll get straight to the house I've rented and wait to hear from you.'

  'You'd better show me where it is.'

  I got out the right map for him and he found it soon enough. 'Here we are. About ten miles out of Stramore on this road. Randall Cottage. It's right at the end of a farm track beside a small wood. A bit tumble-down, but rather nice. The sort of place they rent to holidaymakers in the season. Here's the telephone number.'

  It was easy enough to remember. I rolled the slip of paper into a ball and flipped it out through the side window. 'What did you tell the agent?'

  'I said I was a writer. Belfast was beginning to get me down and I felt in urgent need of a little peace and quiet. I used the name Berger, by the way, just in case.'

  I nodded. 'It all sounds pretty neat to me.'

  He looked out across the Firth a trifle dubiously as rain drummed against the roof of the cabin with renewed vigour. 'Do you really think you'll get across tonight? It doesn't look too good.'

  'According to the Met forecast, things should ease up considerably during the early evening, and even if they don't, we'll still make it. This boat was built to stand most things.'

&nbs
p; There was a sudden hail across the water. 'Kathleen, ahoy!'

  Norah Murphy and Binnie Gallagher were standing on the jetty beside a taxi.

  Meyer said, 'Take me across with you and I'll be on my way. I don't want to talk to her any more than I can help.'

  He went below to get his hat and coat and when he returned he was stowing Al Bowlly away in his briefcase. I helped him over the rail, slipped the line and joined him.

  His face was very pale as I started the outboard. I said, 'Look, it's going to be all right. I promise you.'

  'Is that so?' he demanded. 'Then tell me why I feel like I'm lying in my grave listening to earth rattling against the lid of my coffin.'

  I couldn't think of a single thing to say that would have done any good. In any case, we were already coming in to the steps at the bottom of the jetty.

  I stayed to tie up the dinghy and Meyer went up ahead of me to where Norah Murphy and Binnie waited beside the taxi. The boy was dressed exactly as he had been on that rather memorable night in Belfast, but Norah Murphy herself was all togged up for Cowes week in a yellow oilskin. Underneath she wore a navy blue Guernsey sweater, slacks and rubber boots.

  Meyer turned to me as I arrived. 'I'm just making my excuses to Dr Murphy, Simon, but I really must get moving now or I'll miss my plane.'

  'I'll be seeing you soon,' I said and shook hands.

  He got into the taxi quickly. The driver passed out a suitcase to Binnie, then drove away.

  Norah Murphy said coolly, 'So here we are again, Major.'

  'So it would appear.'

  I led the way down the steps to the dinghy and Binnie followed with the case. He didn't look too happy, but he got in after a moment's hesitation and sat in the prow. Norah Murphy perched herself in the stern beside me.

  As we pulled away she said casually, 'It's going to be a dirty night. Is the boat up to it?'

  'Have you done much sailing?'

  'One of my aunts was married to a retired sea captain. They had a house near Cape Cod.'

  'Then you should have learned by now not to be taken in by top show. Take the Kathleen. Underneath that rather drab coat of grey paint there's a steel hull by Akerboon.'