When Shadows Fall

by Paul Reid

  “No meetings until tomorrow, thank goodness,” James told her. “We’ll book into our hotel right away. How about a stroll before lunchtime, if the weather holds? Just the thing to work up an appetite. I must confess I’m dying to show you London.”

  “Um, yes, Mr. Bryant.” Tara clasped her temples. “I think that coffee is making my headache worse. I shouldn’t have indulged in the wine last night.”

  “Ho, ho. Fresh air is what you need. Not long now.”

  When the train pulled into Victoria Station, she saw a black press of commuters crowding the platforms. “My goodness, it’s busy.”

  “It always is. Come on, let’s be off before the rest of them. I’ll commandeer a porter for our bags.”

  He rose and she went to follow him out of the compartment, but just then a troupe of stiff-backed men in army uniform passed in the corridor. James held back to allow them space.

  “Major Dirk Ripley of the Cameron Highlanders,” he whispered to Tara, indicating a lean figure with a spiked moustache and cold eyes. “A tough bugger if ever there was one. Best let him and his chums off first.”

  When the officers had passed, James nodded to her. “Let’s go, then. And welcome to my town!”

  At the corner of Belgrave Square, Adam gave a newspaper boy a penny for one of the morning editions. He scanned the front page:

  HOME OFFICE RECALLS ARMY AND INTELLIGENCE STAFF TO LONDON

  HIGH-LEVEL MEETINGS ARRANGED TO DISCUSS IRISH SITUATION

  The article speculated on whom was to attend the meetings and listed various recent atrocities in Ireland to boost the import of it all, with a particularly chilling portrait being painted of the IRA death squads who were “roaming the countryside with impunity.” Aside from that the page ran with an account of a meeting of the League of Nations in Switzerland, the arrest of several anarchists in Piccadilly, and the preparations of the England cricket team for their tour of Australia.

  Adam rolled up the paper and tossed it in a waste bin.

  It had begun to rain again. A rumble of thunder sounded in the sky. He stepped over a choked gutter and pulled his collar high round his neck, looking for Liam. The latter emerged from a tobacconist across the street.

  “Gloomy old morning.” Liam was rolling a cigarette.

  “Same to you,” Adam replied.

  “At least the train station is near.” They had walked the route the previous day, and Liam drew on his cigarette with an air of casualness that irritated Adam.

  “It’s near, but the train is due at ten. So I suggest you look sharp. If we miss him getting off, we’ll have lost him.” They had agreed to move there separately this morning so as to lessen any possible attention. “Remember our plan. If you’re closer, you shoot. If I’m closer, I shoot. Then we run. Understood?”

  “Yep,” Liam nodded. “You’re sure we’ll recognise him, though? It would be a mean thing to get the wrong fellow.”

  “We’ll recognise him all right. You couldn’t forget a face as ugly as that. Just shoot cleverly, though. I don’t want innocent people getting hurt.”

  “Sure. I’ll see you there.”

  “See you there. Let’s have the business over and done with.”

  They parted company and headed into the busy streets, making south for Victoria Station.

  Major Dirk Ripley’s aides carried his bags up the carriage towards the door. Ripley swirled the coffee in his cup and swallowed the dregs before thrusting it into the hands of a passing attendant.

  “Lively now, fellows. Fetch our lift out front before the damned hackneys clog up the place.”

  The train pulled to a stop on the platform.

  “Manning, don’t forget those,” he ordered. One of the aides had been preparing notes on a writing pad throughout the journey. “You’ll have to bring me up to speed again before the meetings. I don’t want those old goats in Whitehall ambushing me on anything.”

  The doors rolled open, and Ripley saw that it was raining beyond the station.

  Hopefully his day couldn’t get any worse.

  Adam stood in the shadows beneath a stairwell as the train’s brakes shrieked and the carriages came to a stop. Liam was leaning against a pillar, pretending to read from a newspaper. Their eyes met discreetly.

  Liam reached inside his coat.

  Since they couldn’t know in advance which carriage Ripley would alight from, the plan was that the nearest man to him would execute the killing while the second man covered any potential resistance from Ripley’s party.

  And it was Liam who was now closest.

  Dropping the newspaper, Liam shuffled between the commuters on the platform, cigarette clamped casually between his lips and his hand concealed inside his coat. Once the doors opened, Ripley’s stern, moustached face was at once recognisable as he issued gruff orders to his men.

  Adam moved from the stairwell, following Liam. His heartbeat quickened at the first physical sighting of the target. There were others inside the carriage, impatient to get off. They had to act now.

  Take him, Liam, Adam urged silently. Take him.

  Liam edged closer then pulled the pistol from his coat and took aim.

  Ripley glanced up.

  The pistol flashed.

  In the high-ceilinged station the noise of the shot was deafening. It echoed over the startled crowd and scattered roosting pigeons from the beams.

  Liam’s mouth dropped, evidently realising his haste.

  Focused on Ripley, he hadn’t allowed for the ever-heaving crowd. The bullet struck a passing man in the shoulder, spinning him round before he fell on his back. The woman with him screamed.

  “Assassins,” Ripley cried, reaching for his own sidearm, but before he could shoot he was bundled back inside the train by one of his men as the commuters outside shrieked and stampeded for cover. Two other aides shoved their way off the train, guns cocked.

  Adam saw the entire operation collapse in the space of seconds.

  Two more shots rang out, the first missing Liam but the second catching him deep in the chest. He reeled backwards and collapsed against a luggage trolley.

  Adam was in open ground now with the crowd breaking away, revolver in his hand. He loosed off two shots in quick succession, and both of the aides went down. He searched desperately for Ripley, but there was no longer any sign of him.

  Damn it, damn it.

  From inside the train a gun fired and Adam felt the wind of it whip past his ear. People were scrambling about in there, panicked and confused. Too many civilians. The moment was lost.

  The two aides he had wounded were on the ground, howling in trauma. He moved forward and kicked their pistols clear.

  “Liam. Liam! Get up, we have to run.”

  But the hole in Liam’s chest was big. He was unable to answer, unable to meet Adam’s eyes. Blood leaked over his lips and he gave a great heave for air before his chin sagged on his chest and his expression went vacant.

  Everything was falling apart too fast. Adam stood, staring at the carnage around him.

  A sudden sharp whistle broke his trance. He glanced up the platform and saw three policemen sprinting towards him.

  “Stop,” one of them shouted between furious blows, “in the name of the law!”

  Adam turned away from Liam. He made a charge for the nearest escape route, vaulting a metal barrier and disappearing up a set of steps to a covered walkway where pie sellers and coachmen turned in confusion.

  “There he goes, you lot!” a hackney driver yelled to the policemen.

  Adam looked behind and saw three following him. A younger, leaner one broke from their ranks. His eyes fixed on Adam now, and he shoved through the milling crowd with lithe legs and elbows.

  Adam ducked between the hackneys and ran for the nearest street, retracing the escape route that Collins had sketched on the map. It was more difficult now, with yelling coppers and chaos and a dead comrade in his wake.

  The lead policeman waited until there was clear spa
ce then dropped to his knee and fired a shot. It zipped past and missed Adam’s ankle, but the aim was decent at that range. Adam ran on for Hugh Street, frantically trying to match the place-names with the mental map in his head. Shoppers stopped and screamed and scattered. Another bullet whined over his head. The sound of pounding boots told him that the policeman was gaining ground.

  Past Eccleston Street and onto Warwick Street, and by now Adam’s lungs were heaving, his calves strained taut. He took another sharp turn down into an alley whose name he hadn’t a clue of. When he glanced back, there was no sign of his pursuer.

  There were farther alleys off Vauxhall Bridge Road and Adam ducked into one, catching his breath. The road was strewn with potato peelings and fish heads and other mouldering debris. A sign swinging above a shuttered window said Abercromby’s Seafood Restaurant. He grimaced at the stink.

  Creeping back to the street, he looked up and down and made ready for another desperate sprint to cover.

  But his antagonist had already closed in on the trail.

  The policeman appeared at the corner ten yards away. He was no longer rushing but moving stealthily between the buildings, oblivious to Adam’s presence, pistol aloft as he peered over the brick walls. He came within a few feet’s distance, and Adam still had bullets in the gun’s chamber. It would be so easy. One squeeze of the trigger, the target unmissable at that range. But it was an appalling thought.

  He’s young. He’s just doing his job.

  Instead Adam swung the pistol like a club, smashing it over the man’s temple and laying him flat across the paving. The stunned copper’s eyes bulged briefly before he lost consciousness. Not the worst of blows, but enough to keep him in nightmares for a while.

  Once Adam relieved him of his ammunition and stowed his body out of view, he dumped his own coat and hat and slipped furtively back into the streets, walking now to appear as normal as he could. He took several turns, passed the front of the Tate Gallery, made a shortcut through the grounds of a hospital—a military one, of all places—and managed to climb over a high wire fence where he found himself on an embankment fronting the Thames.

  No one challenged him. He let out an exhausted breath. There would be a search on now, and his pursuer would be back on his feet before long. At the waterfront, a barge had been moored to the wharf, seemingly abandoned, its wheelhouse half-rotten with age and its deck speckled with pigeon faeces. Adam hurried down to the wharf, climbed over the rail, and found the hatch that led below into the hold. The stench of bilge hit him like a punch in the gut, and rats could be heard scuttling along the beams. But at least here he was safe.

  He hoped.

  The screams and sudden surge of people drove Tara and James back through the carriage. Tara was pushed against a window; she could see a gunman, the drawn features of his face, and she gasped.

  “Tara, get away from the window,” James cried.

  More shots rang out and the panic intensified. Tara felt an elbow in her back as a big-bellied man tried to shove his way to safety. Pressed against the glass, she saw commuters fleeing in terror. Shots were being traded on the platform, and now, as she looked on, a second gunman appeared, a tall man with his collar pulled up beneath his hat. He crouched and fired twice. She watched in appalled awe.

  “Tara!” James pulled her back. “Christ, keep your head down.”

  It was a cacophony of shrieks and curses and bawled instructions. With Tara on the floor, James glanced back through the window. “A shootout, by heavens.”

  “Who? Who is it?” She struggled under his pinioning hand.

  “Assassins. Whole platform’s swarming with ’em.”

  She shrugged off his grip and rose in time to see the second attacker sprinting for the exit, long coat flapping around his knees. Then he disappeared.

  It was some moments before the police asserted control and the commotion subsided. Finally the shocked passengers were allowed to disembark, some on the point of fainting, others agog with excitement.

  It soon transpired that there had been only two attackers, one of whom was already dead. The other had fled the scene under pursuit, while the presumed target, Major Dirk Ripley, was perfectly alive and unharmed.

  James summoned a taxi. “You’ll find this sort of daft behaviour in London,” he told her as the car negotiated a route up Grosvenor Place. “Rebels or anarchists or some aggrieved subjects of the empire.” He rolled down the window and shook out his pipe. “But given that Ripley was the target, my money’s on Irish boys. They get bolder by the minute.”

  Tara peered through the window at the wall that enclosed the back of Buckingham Palace gardens. She thought of the lone gunman, fleeing the mob of policemen, whistles sharp in the air. How far could he have got? They must have run him to ground by now.

  And she was glad.

  The IRA brought their wickedness everywhere. Her parents lay beneath the freezing soil of Kilmainham cemetery. Her brother could have been married by now.

  I hope they hang him.

  Not for the first time she felt gratitude for the presence of James and his British compatriots in her country. They were, after all, the enforcers of law and order, the protectors of the innocent, the scourge of people like Larry Mulligan and that gunman.

  At Hyde Park Corner the driver swung left past St. George’s Hospital. To their right was the grassy expanse of Hyde Park itself and the arcing Serpentine River, an artificial sheet of water radiating a silver sheen in the crisp morning.

  “They allow bathing in that, you know,” James told her. “Summertimes, of course, though a few hardy enthusiasts take a morning dip all year round. Not me!”

  Farther on was the domain of the Royal Geographical Society, red bricked and austere, and the Royal Albert Hall. Many things in London had the name of “Albert” on them—roads, halls, museums, monuments. The perpetually-in-mourning Victoria had sought to preserve the memory of her beloved husband in the hearts of Londoners forever.

  The taxi stopped at a junction to allow pedestrians to cross. A tiny shop with a canopy cover was sandwiched between Fuller’s Dainty Tea Room and an insurance broker’s office. Its window was adorned with bolts of silk and bottles with waxed stoppers. There was a poster affixed to the glass, and Tara strained her eyes to read it:

  EASTERN FOAM VANISHING CREAM

  The Holiday Girl should never be without “Eastern Foam,” which completely protects the skin from the harmful effects of sun and wind. By its use all blemishes disappear, and the skin acquires a delightful delicacy.

  1s. 4d. Large pot.

  In the middle of the advert was a drawing, a beautiful, dark-haired woman reclining gracefully in sequined muslin and bangles, holding a jar of that magical balm in her hand, her gaze fixed upon some dreamy, foreign seascape.

  James saw the focus of her interest and tutted. “You wouldn’t have seen such things in dear old Victoria’s day. She never wore anything but black. Oh, look now, we’re almost here.”

  They had been booked to stay at the De Vere Gardens Hotel in Kensington. James held the door open for Tara and then paid the driver, while two porters scurried down the polished stone steps to fetch their luggage.

  “Thanks, chaps.” James nodded to them and put his arm out for Tara. “Shall we?”

  She was awed by the cosmopolitan briskness of it all, doormen in top hats, honking hackney drivers, a street of pristine white facades, and across the main road, in the distance, a huge, multistoried stately pile, nestling in the tranquillity of Hyde Park.

  “That’s Kensington Palace,” James told her. “A royal residence. Queen Victoria grew up there. She was only eighteen when they awoke her in the middle of the night and told her she’d become the new queen of England.”

  “The Great White Mother.” Tara smiled. “When I was in school, we learned that the African tribesmen used to call her that.”

  “Well, the friendly ones did.” James chuckled. “But enough history lessons. I’m impatient to see our
rooms. Come on.”

  Electric lamps lit the lobby. A length of cream carpet bisected a floor of burnished oak. James strode to the reception desk.

  “Should I not do this?” Tara asked. “I’m the secretary, after all.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “You’re in London for the first time. Let me sort the formalities. Tell you what, why don’t you go into the lounge and order us a pot of tea? You’ve had a bit of a shock this morning.”

  They drank Earl Grey laden with sugar, and it helped Tara to recover some of her composure. The sound of gunfire echoing around the station was still in her ears, the panicked cries of the passengers. But now, in the warmth of this splendid hotel, she was beginning to feel better.

  Her room was small but ornately furnished, complete with a pine wardrobe and an enamel washbasin. It overlooked the landscaped grounds of the park, and a leaflet on her dressing table told her that a two-penny ticket allowed her the use of a chair for the day in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, while boating could be enjoyed for one shilling six pence per hour (boathouse on north side, near the Humane Society’s receiving house).

  She sat, slightly self-conscious, on the thick eiderdown that poured off the bed onto the soft carpet. Such grandeur was intimidating. Her childhood bed, in Wicklow, had been stuffed with straw, the room itself constantly hounded by wicked draughts, mischievous offsprings of the gales that howled down from the mountains.

  Again she thought of him.

  Alone in the world, an Irish gunman, with London on his heels as he desperately sought shelter.

  Two images, and yet the same. The wild gunman, and her idyllic, simple upbringing amongst her family in Wicklow. Gunshots in both images. Chaos.

  I hope they hang him.

  James stripped off his shirt and trousers then carefully removed his wristwatch, laying it on the edge of the bed. The wrist-worn watch for men had become fashionable after the war, even though such “wristlets” had been used by women ever since the early part of the century. A watch on the wrist, instead of the pocket version on a fob, was considered too feminine until recent years. Certain gentlemen had declared that they would as soon wear a skirt as a wristwatch. And yet now, in 1920, any dapper fellow couldn’t be seen without one.