When Shadows Fall

by Paul Reid

Notwithstanding weeds and the elements, the headstone itself still glistened as new, its chiselled inscription as bold as though the engraver had only just finished. As though it were only yesterday.

  She blinked against the threat of tears.

  Here lies the body of William Reilly,

  born 3 February 1864, died 18 January 1919

  His wife Judith (née Kinsella)

  born 26 November 1870, died 18 January 1919

  Their son Denis Joseph

  born 15 May 1894, died 18 January 1919

  May the souls of the faithful departed

  through the mercy of God rest in peace

  Nine months of darkness. In many ways it had been a lifetime; in others the mere blink of an eye. Nothing was more vivid, however, than that day.

  A frost-touched morning, a blue sky. The stirring of her parents to the new day. Father first, lighting the stove. Mother would boil water, lay a table with her home-baked bread and butter, some eggs, salted fish. Prayers would already have been said, for they were a religious family. Tara worked part-time in the school while she awaited the results of her civil service application, and she was always rushing. Her brother Denis would rise last of all, a strappy six-footer, grumbling when he couldn’t find his shirt and boots. Denis was to inherit the farm, being the only son. He was sweet on a local girl in the village, but you couldn’t get any further information from him; you could only smile knowingly at his enthusiasm for the dance hall on Saturday nights, his newfound eagerness to make church on Sunday mornings.

  There had been a knock on the door on this particular morning, however. A Monday. Unusual, being so early. Her father went out. There were voices, words exchanged. Then shouting. Denis had bounded out after his father to investigate.

  Then gunfire.

  If Tara had been downstairs, she would have stopped her mother from following them. But she had been upstairs, mulling over outfits. Her mother ran outside too and screamed.

  Another gunshot.

  Tara shuddered at the memory.

  The hailstones had intensified, slipping beneath her scarf and collar and sliding in icy runnels down her back. Thunder rumbled in the Dublin mountains. It would be dark soon.

  She rose to her feet and shook off the wet pebbles that clung to her shoes. The cemetery was empty, a silent and desolate spot beneath the petulant sky. Peals from a nearby church made it six o’clock. The honest denizens of Dublin City would be returning from work back to warm homes and bowls of broth, or perhaps joining friends or lovers in theatres and lively taverns somewhere.

  Tara walked towards the cemetery gate and closed it behind her.

  Many found it odd that she wouldn’t allow her family to be buried locally in Wicklow, where they had spent their lives. But she couldn’t have tolerated it. The killer still dwelt in that place, in her childhood environs, he who had turned his gun upon her loved ones with the false accusation that they were informers reporting on his local paramilitary activities. Tara couldn’t imagine her family finding any peaceful repose there, and so the family home and farm had been sold. Instead she laid them to rest here, in Kilmainham, a quiet suburb of Dublin where she had since bought a house. Her place of employment at Dublin Castle was not far, closer towards the city centre.

  It was nightfall, and the hail softened to a dull drizzle by the time she reached the main road. A brightly lit tea shop beckoned her, and she was lured by the prospect of a half hour’s warmth. She went inside, took a table by the window, and waited for someone to take her order.

  The waitress was a stocky-shouldered woman in a stained linen apron. She took a pencil from behind her ear and gestured to the rain-slicked cobblestone outside. “Awful night, lovey. Just awful. And what will you be having?”

  “A cup of tea, please,” Tara said. “How much is a slice of the lemon pastry?”

  “Two and a ha’penny the lot, lovey.”

  “Thank you.”

  She put three spoons of sugar into her tea. Catholic guilt or no, she never denied her sweet tooth. The pastry was dry, flaky, but it soothed away the rumbling in her empty stomach.

  “Ah, but you’re drowned with the rain, lovey.” The waitress sidled back and topped up her tea. She laid down the pot and folded her arms across the wobbly mountain of her bosom. “Have you any sense but to be out in this weather? Pale as a ghost you are. Just coming from work, are you, lovey?”

  With the tea and pastry settling in her belly, Tara felt suddenly tired. “I finished early today. Just going home.”

  The woman glanced at Tara’s hand, her ringless finger. “Ah, bless. Lodging nearby, are you?”

  “Yes, I live nearby. But I’m not a lodger. I, um, I bought the house some time back.” She offered the information without meaning conceit, but it was taken otherwise.

  “Did you now?” The primly raised eyebrows betrayed the woman’s surprise—an unmarried girl, looking barely into her twenties, owning her own house? “Well, that’s lovely, dearie. So you’ll be wanting another slice of pastry?”

  “No, thank you.”

  With a humph the waitress returned to her duties.

  Tara made the second cup of tea last awhile. Having her own house didn’t necessarily make it a welcome place to retire to in the evenings. She had afforded it through the proceeds from the sale of the farm—nine hundred and forty pounds was the final bid—and thus the quiet, ten-acre grazing in Wicklow had become the three-bedroom, bricks-and-mortar terraced house in Dublin City. A million miles apart. Mother’s good-natured fussing, a big open fire, the smell of her father’s pipe, the fir tree at Christmas—all of it had been boxed away and then reborn as smoke and traffic and crowds and loneliness.

  The surface of the tea in her cup was disturbed, a barely discernible ripple before it became still again. She realised she was crying.

  No . . .

  All day long she had held them back. What was there in tears, only more tears? There had been far too much crying between that day and this, and nothing had been achieved, no new milestone reached, no progress made. She was still in the same cold place that she had been condemned to nine months before, and her family still lay in that rain-scoured graveyard in Kilmainham up the road.

  Unavenged.

  She put aside the tea. She stared for a long time through the window, seeing not the darkness, but a new light of resolve and completion.

  Courage braced her. For she knew what she must do.

  Mother, Father, dearest Denis, I swear on your very souls, I will cry no more, and I will wait no more. He who did this to you walks free and uncaring. You are in heaven, but I will send him to hell.

  When the ruddy-faced man in the woollen coat pushed in the door of Hogan’s Tavern, the customers immediately lowered their heads and their voices.

  Larry Mulligan paused to sweep the room with his eyes, then lumbered on. Though short in height he was built like a bull, and the two men supping Guinness at the bar quickly departed their stools to allow the bold Mulligan his space.

  “Aye now, Seamus.” Mulligan ran his fingers round his stubbled cheeks and waited for the owner to come out. Big, bearded Seamus Hogan appeared after a few seconds.

  “Ah, Larry. You’re well?”

  “A John Jameson, Seamus,” Mulligan said.

  “Right you are. Damp old night out there, isn’t it?” Hogan poured the glass of whiskey and put in a tablespoon of water, as was Mulligan’s preference.

  “Good man, Seamus.” Mulligan clasped the glass and rose up. “I’ll take it in the back room. Send the lads in to me when they arrive.”

  The main front of Hogan’s building served as a grocery store, with the tavern at the side, and beyond the bar was a door that led into a room that, though it once served as a kitchen, was now a storage space for sacks of potatoes, tea leaves, nails, coal, Bulls-Eyes candy, and various other items sold from the shop counter. A small stove warmed the room and a table had been set with bread, ham, a pot of tea, and a bottle of whiskey.

>   This room was also one of the safer meeting points for the North Wicklow Brigade of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. Mulligan sat and lit a Woodbine, and in the bar area the conversation had resumed at his departure. The reflected stove light in the window caught his image: a face like a slab of raw meat, with an uneven fringe of brown hair and muscled shoulders that seemed about to burst through his shirt. He smiled darkly at himself.

  A few minutes later two more men came in, roughly clearing their throats and pulling chairs to the table. They were much younger than Mulligan, about twenty-five, and they shook the rain from their sodden caps as they sat.

  “Larry.”

  “Larry.”

  “Joe, Thomas, how are ye, lads?” Mulligan gestured to the pot of tea and the whiskey. “Damp night out there.”

  “’Tis, Larry.” Both poured themselves tea.

  “Are you hungry, lads?”

  “We had supper in Thomas’s mother’s place,” Joe said. He was dark haired and slight of build. “I might chance a wee drop of the strong stuff in a while, though.”

  The other, Thomas, was taller, blond haired, with pearly white teeth that earned him the fawning of every girl in the parish. Both men had several days’ growth of beard.

  “Seamus!” Mulligan called out, and when Hogan stuck his head in the door, Mulligan said, “Keep that door shut, Seamus.”

  “I will, Larry.” Hogan dutifully disappeared.

  A few moments of tea slurping passed around the quiet table. Then Mulligan coughed, spat, and pulled a ball of paper from his trouser pocket.

  “Right, lads. I told you I’d only bring you here once we were good to go. And we are. This,” he unravelled the paper, “is a memo from Castleconway police barracks to Dublin Castle. I’ll summarise for ye, lads. The boys in Castleconway are complaining because they’ve been told to store arms for the county reserve, yet they’ve been allocated no extra funds for security. It seems Castleconway has become something of a treasure trove of guns and ammunitions, and what’s more,” he gave them a wink, “they’re mighty worried that the local IRA might learn of it.”

  They stared at him. Then they smiled. “How’d you get your hands on that, Larry?” Joe asked.

  “An informant in the Castle.”

  Thomas whistled. “So we’re on?”

  “Hanged if we’re not.” Mulligan buttered himself a hunk of bread. “But it will have to be soon, before the stuff is moved. Can we get a full column ready within the week? That barracks is packed full of peelers, and we’ll want to get the better of them.”

  That was a euphemism for “bloodbath.” They knew Mulligan too well.

  “They’re all ready,” Thomas enthused. “They knew you had something planned. And we’ll pick our best.”

  “Our own guns are safe, I hope,” Mulligan murmured.

  Joe and Thomas grinned. Mulligan was the brigade commandant and personally controlled every last pistol and bullet himself.

  “We need to score good here, boys. But listen now.” Mulligan leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a growl. “We need to send a message, too. All the way to London.”

  “We’re bound to, Larry.”

  “No. Stealing guns in the middle of the night is one thing. But we need to scare them. Scare the living fuck out of them. And that’s the message.”

  “You’re wanting scalps, Larry?”

  “Joe, my boy, I want to bury the lot of them in their own blood.” Mulligan drew his knife through the bread.

  Joe shifted. “All of them? Most are Wicklow boys, Larry. Maybe just one or two—”

  “All of them.” Mulligan licked his lips. “It’s the only thing London will understand. Bodies and bullet holes.”

  The IRA had been born out of the remnants of the defeated Irish Volunteers who had instigated a rebellion against Britain in 1916. Mulligan was determined that the IRA should succeed where the Volunteers and countless other rebel movements down through the centuries had failed.

  “Larry,” Thomas began uneasily, “Brian O’Hara is a constable in Castleconway. His mother lives next to my own parents. And isn’t Sergeant McSweeney’s brother the schoolmaster in Roundwood?”

  “So?”

  “So a rout like this won’t exactly win us friends, will it? We need our friends, Larry, especially amongst locals. It’s they who give us food and beds and shelter when the soldiers and coppers are on our heels.”

  Mulligan smiled. “Aye, all that is true. But who is it that the locals turn to when the Brits and coppers have been through their houses, smashing up their furniture, hanging up their sons off barnyard beams? It’s us, by Christ. Us.”

  Thomas exchanged a look with Joe but didn’t reply. Mulligan reached for the whiskey bottle and pulled the cork.

  “Grand, then. Resolution passed, and meeting adjourned. Friday week. That’s the fourteenth, isn’t it?”

  “’Tis, Larry.”

  “Do the logistics, then, and have the lads in place.” Mulligan swallowed from the neck of the bottle and replaced the cork. He pushed back his chair, rose up and patted each of their shoulders. “Thomas, my coat’s in the bar, if you don’t mind. Joe, be a good boy and fetch my bicycle, will you?”

  Many months ago, Tara had hidden the gun under the floorboards behind the teak dresser. The months of darkness had not dimmed its metallic lustre nor its sense of deadly portent. In her palm it felt heavy, reassuringly heavy, an instrument of the devil’s work that was to bring about godly justice. The marking down the barrel read, IVER JOHNSON’S ARMS & CYCLE WORKS FITCHBURG MASS USA.

  The .38 revolver had belonged to her father, given to him in lieu of cash by a bankrupt debtor, though he abhorred the thing and had never once turned it on man or animal. Instead he kept it tucked away with a box of Smith & Wesson cartridges in case it was ever needed on their remote Wicklow farm. He had schooled both herself and Denis in its use, yet despite their proficiency the gun ultimately remained redundant. Tragically, the one and only time when it could have served its purpose, no one had been able to reach it in time.

  She placed the gun into her handbag and turned off the lamps.

  It was Friday evening and beginning to drizzle outside. The motor omnibus for Wicklow would be stopping at the corner of her street in a few minutes, the last one today, and she didn’t want to miss it. What she had planned must wait no longer.

  The journey was slow, the bus draughty. They bounced along rutted roads as the rain beat against the windows and the countryside passed invisible in the night. There was only a handful of other passengers, city commuters returning home, a mother with her two children, and a big-bellied man asleep across the backseats, stinking of whiskey.

  After two hours of being jolted around their cramped seats, the last of the travellers got out at Ashton, a tiny village nestled in a vale beneath the Wicklow mountains. Here were a few houses in darkness, a store, and a tavern with lights showing in the windows.

  “End of the line, miss.” The driver looked at Tara. “I’ll be heading back to Dublin now.”

  It was still raining outside. She fluttered her eyelids hopefully. “It’s just another two miles. Would you mind so much? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  “Hmm.” He pursed his lips and then grinned. “All right then, miss. ’Tis a bad night for sure. I’ll drop you up there.”

  Ten minutes passed, and she almost missed the sign in the darkness:

  LAKEVIEW BED & BREAKFAST

  VACANCIES—ENQUIRE WITHIN

  “Thank you. Here’s just fine.”

  While the driver attempted to turn his bus on the narrow road, she trudged up a sunken driveway and muttered at the puddles that soaked her shoes. The thatched guesthouse, half swallowed by trees, was not the most welcoming sight in winter, but she needed a place to stay for as many nights as her task would take, and this was in an ideal location. It had new owners now, and they wouldn’t know her. That was for the best.

  An elderly man eventually responded aft
er she clanged the bell several times. He pushed back the spectacles on his nose and peered her up and down, baffled.

  “A room for the night?” Tara asked impatiently.

  “Mm?” He shook himself. “Oh, yes, yes. Come in, young lady, come in. I’m Mr. Kearney.” He showed her inside and led her to a small writing desk. “You must forgive me, we don’t get so many guests at this time of year. Nor this time of night, I might add. Are you alone?”

  “I am.”

  “A single room, then.” He opened a book and made a point of checking room numbers, though it was evident that the entire guesthouse was empty. “I have a nice one for you at the rear, grand views, lake on one side and mountains on the other. It’s one pound, five shillings a night. Would that be in order?”

  “That sounds fine.”

  “And how many nights?”

  Tara hesitated. “I’m not sure yet.” As long as it takes. “Perhaps I might have a better idea tomorrow.”

  “No problem at all, miss. Holidaying, are you?”

  “Not quite.” She didn’t elaborate, and he took the hint.

  “Let me show you to your room, miss.”

  When she reemerged ten minutes later and asked to borrow a bicycle, he stared at her as though genuinely concerned that she had lost her wits.

  “Miss Reilly, on a dirty night like this? It’s none of my business, but where on earth are you going? Might it not wait until the morning?”

  “I have someone to visit,” she said. “It’s not far, and it won’t take long.”

  He sighed, scratching his head. “Mrs. Kearney’s bicycle is in the shed. You may borrow it, of course, if you’re insistent on this.”

  “I’d be very grateful.”

  It was past nine o’clock when she set out, pedalling slowly, for the moon was hidden and the road pitted with holes. It was a short cycle, however. A short cycle to retribution.

  Please God.

  There was no way of knowing for sure that the killer would be there. It could prove a wasted journey, and tomorrow might be the same, and the night after. Yet this was certainly his stomping ground. She knew his movements from having grown up in the area—indeed everyone knew him, or knew of him. And if he didn’t show tonight, he nevertheless would at some stage.