Gumboots, heavy woollen socks, long john’s, grey tweed trousers, a flannel shirt and a cable-stitch pullover completed her attire—gloves of course, a woollen scarf and a knitted toque. Inishtrahull would be no picnic, not in mid-November, not living in the rough. She would have to add a few things for Hamish, couldn’t have him getting wet and cold. And how was she to make the crossing once she got to the coast? Five and a half miles of open water lay between there and the island.
One would have to deal with that later. For now there was the problem of cutting O’Bannion and the others off. Hamish would be killed if she didn’t. Nothing else mattered. Somehow she had to get transport to Inishowen, and somehow she had to be within hiking distance of the coast near Malin Head by dawn.
The map went into a side pocket of the rucksack. Drawing in a breath, Mary took a last look around the kitchen, was suddenly filled with remorse as she reached for a few of the shortbreads in the tin Mrs. Haney always kept to hand.
The shortbreads were loosely laid on top of everything and the straps securely fastened. At 8.17 p.m. she had reached the clearing by the lake. Tucking the bike away behind some fir trees, she listened to the night, heard no sound at all at first and then … then the distant murmuring of voices that rose steadily from beyond the castle walls, becoming louder and louder until bursting into shouts and ragged cheering, all of which suddenly died away as at a football match.
Puzzled—deeply troubled—she strained to listen. The night sky above the castle glowed. Floodlights? she wondered as the hush settled around her. For perhaps ten or fifteen minutes there wasn’t a sound, but when a lorry reached the crest of Caitlyn Murphy’s Hill, it accelerated. Soon it roared past on the road behind her and the beam from its headlights cut through the trees at a bend to spill over the road again.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, another murmuring grew into that same ragged cheering, but this time the sound didn’t die away and was abruptly silenced by a burst of firing from a machine gun.
They were bringing the escapees back and each time a new group arrived, those within the castle welcomed them.
As the sentry paced back and forth in front of the barrier bar, floodlights, mounted high on poles, shone to the right and left of the guardhouse, revealing the coils of barbed wire that had been strung around the perimeter of the castle.
There were lights on in the guardhouse, and from where she was standing, hidden in a copse of alders, Mary could see the sergeant on duty inside the hut. A half-dozen others were with him, the guard that had been detailed to accompany the incoming prisoners. For some time now, though, there had been no new arrivals, and she wondered if the remaining ones had managed to get away.
On more than one occasion the stillness brought mention that Colonel Bannerman was in disgrace—he’d be ‘chequered out.’ The prime minister had even called. GHQ Belfast had been on the line near half the frigging night.
Some fifty yards of clearing separated her from the barricade. Beyond this clearing, floodlights lit up the road to the gatehouse for perhaps another one hundred yards. Then there was a patch of semidarkness, but beyond it another pool of light bathed the road as it ran in under the portcullis of the gatehouse.
Herded by rifle butts and sharp commands, each batch of escapees had refused to give the sergeant their names, ranks and serial numbers. As they were marched away, the murmuring had become a steady hum and, as always, this had risen to break into cheering. Her only hope lay in using one of these batches as a screen. Distracted by them, the sergeant and his men mustn’t see her. It was a chance she’d have to take. There was so little time. By dawn she must be far away from here, the car well hidden and no chance of its ever being found.
When another lorry arrived, there were perhaps twenty prisoners who jeered and laughed at the sergeant and his men. As they milled about the barricade, she ran for the back of the lorry to hug its shadows and wait for the barrier to be raised …
The sergeant was shouting orders, the men were being bunched up. Run … she’d have to run but mustn’t, must just walk in behind them and keep on going even when someone shouted, ‘Hey, you can’t go in there like that without first checking in with us.’
The anorak’s hood was up. They’d see this and the boots and rucksack, the height of her as well. Throwing up her hands, Mary kept on walking. ‘Well, at least that Kraut’s shown a bit of sense and come back of his own accord,’ shouted one of the sergeant’s men with a laugh. She couldn’t believe they’d let her continue, kept on walking, went in under the floodlights of the gatehouse unchallenged now, for there was no one here on guard.
Shaking in the darkness of the doorway, she heard still others approaching the barrier. Soon there’d be the cheering, perhaps another firing of a machine gun.
Opening the door, she went quickly up the stairs. No one yet. Not a soul. All too busy. Great comings and goings out in the bailey.
Bannerman was standing at the windows in the darkness of his office and alone—Mary was certain of this, and when the telephone on his desk rang, she stepped away from the door to stand with her back to the wall, watching him move about against the light from the bailey.
‘Bannerman, here. Yes, yes, I know it’s a proper balls-up, General. Look, man, for God’s sake be reasonable. We’re doing everything that’s humanly possible. Another lot have just arrived. Allanby’s out there having a parley with the Nazi High Command. They’ve had the infernal cheek to present us with a series of demands. Better food, coal for their bloody stoves instead of peat, more exercise. You can be damned certain we’ll tell them where to …
‘Huber? He’s not back yet. Kramer, neither. He and the rest of U-121’s officers are still unaccounted for. Bauer died in the explosion. Bastard must have placed the charges himself. They’ll have used the ventilation shaft to pass them to him.
‘Nolan? General, we’ll get them all. I can promise you …’
The general must have said something sharp, for the colonel set the receiver down without a word. Lost in thought, he reached for the whiskey bottle that was open on the desk but in his agitation knocked it over, he crying out, ‘Oh blast it! Damnation, why the …’
Jamming the muzzle of the revolver into his back, she said, ‘Easy, Colonel. It’s loaded and I’ll kill you if I have to.’
‘What in blazes do you think you’re doing?’ She was to his left, had come round the desk from that side.
‘Just put your hands on top of your head. Yes, that’s it. Now listen to me.’
‘Why the bloody hell should I? If it hadn’t been for you, none of this would have happened.’
‘Walk over to the windows. Please don’t try anything. They’ve taken Hamish with them, so I’ve come to make a deal with you.’
‘You’ve nothing to offer.’
Prodding him with the gun, Mary said, ‘I’ve this and the location of the rendezvous. Now do we talk, or don’t we?’
The prisoners had been herded into a barbed-wire compound in the centre of the bailey. Floodlights lit up everything. Machine guns faced the four corners; there were guards with dogs on the leash. Some of the prisoners sat on the ground, though most milled about and, as the latest group were let in, there were renewed shouts and cheers.
‘A game … They’re treating it as if it was some cheap game of theirs!’ said Bannerman.
‘I really do know where O’Bannion and the others plan to meet that submarine, Colonel. All I want in return is for Hamish to be unharmed.’
He jerked his head back. ‘Nothing else?’ he asked. ‘Not planning to join Kramer, are you?’
‘Not unless I have to.’
‘Where is it, then? You hold back information like that and I’ll …’
‘You’ll do nothing, Colonel, or I’ll kill you. Hamish means everything to me. Why not try to see it my way? You’ll get what you want out of it, and when it’s over, I’
ll willingly let you send me off to stand trial.’
The bitch had meant it too, but what she’d not realized was that Allanby was heading for the office. Seven minutes at most and then they’d take that weapon from her.
‘Put on your overcoat and cap, Colonel, and stand to one side of the door with me. Try to warn him and I really will shoot you both. I would have to, wouldn’t I? Nolan was always one step ahead of everyone and we’ll need to be if we’re to succeed with what I’ve in mind.’
The road was narrow and for a time it had passed through farmlands with apple orchards whose bare branches had been etched against the darkness of the night, but now it ran through peat land and Mary knew they must be somewhere just to the south of Lough Neagh and to the east of Dungannon.
Jimmy was driving; the colonel and she in the back—it was best this way, she to his far left so as to keep an eye on both, the gun in her lap and pointed halfway between.
‘Bloody road peters out, Colonel. We’ll have to double back.’
Her voice leapt. ‘Wait! It … it must continue. They’ve been working this bog for hundreds of years.’
‘Have they?’ snorted Bannerman. ‘Perhaps you’d best let the lady drive, Captain.’
It had all been so easy up to now, the getting into the castle, the drive out past the barrier—had they managed to signal to someone that they were in trouble? Jimmy had suggested the main roads, knowing they’d be watched, but must have known she would demand they take the back ones.
The car came to a stop. Ahead of them a kind of corduroy road passed through half-frozen ooze with walls of cut peat stacked on either side. ‘Drive on, Jimmy. I’m warning you. Don’t get stuck.’
‘Got your boots on, have you?’ scoffed Allanby. The rear wheels spun on the alder poles that lay across the roadbed. Though thrown about, Mary jammed the gun against the colonel’s neck.
‘Back up, Captain. Give it a bit of a run. She means it.’
Bannerman was surprised at how calm he felt, now that the chips were down. It was as if the years had been stripped away. It made him feel good, this taste of a past London had overlooked for far too long. ‘You’ve done us both a favour, Mrs. Fraser. Dead, I become a hero overnight, Captain Allanby as well.’
The clutch was let out, the handbrake released, the accelerator touched, but as the rear wheels began again to slip, Mary shouted, ‘Floor it, damn you!’
‘Not losing your nerve, are you?’ asked Allanby, laughing now as the car rocked from side to side and she was thrown about. ‘We’ll stall,’ he said.
‘Captain, just do as she says.’
Bannerman had always believed he knew what was best, thought Allanby. Seldom if ever, would this ‘Colonel’ of theirs ever listen, but one would have to try. ‘It’ll be dark out there in that bog, Mary. The headlamps won’t last because I’ll pull the ignition wires before I go to ground. Have you ever been lost in a bog with someone after you?’
Whipping the gun away from the colonel, she fired it at the front windscreen. At once there was panic, the sound of shattering glass, the stench of cordite, and suddenly a scream of terror that frightened.
‘Sod it you stupid cow,’ said Bannerman. ‘Captain … Captain, we’re not in France. Just do as she says. There’ll be another time.’
Jimmy sat up, but for a moment didn’t otherwise move. Shattered, the windscreen would give little protection from the weather and would have to be broken out completely.
‘Damned thoughtless of you, Mary,’ he managed, having got a grip on himself. ‘It would have been far better had you put a hole in the roof.’
Jamming the gearshift into neutral and yanking on the handbrake, he reached for his gloves and began to smash out the rest of the glass. ‘Couldn’t see a bloody thing for the cracks. Nolan’s going to kill us. You do know that, don’t you?’
Cold on the wind, the air rushed in and with it, the first fitful droplets of rain.
Near Stewartstown there was higher ground and Mary made him drive westward towards Omagh. Each time Jimmy speeded up, the wind stung her eyes; each time he slowed, she knew it was only a matter of time until he tried something else. He was terrified.
Bundled in his greatcoat, with collar up and scarf about the throat and ears, Bannerman feigned sleep and smiled inwardly at the tightness of her silence. Stripped of its location and with a change of sex and skin, the whole thing was not unlike that brief little dust-up in Afghanistan, the year 1919 and he still a captain at the ripe age of forty-four. Married long since. Dotty and the boys in Kabul with Nanny Price. Dear old Nanny. A kidnapping then, another one now; some bloody wog fanatic with a Mannlicher rifle and nerves at the breaking point. Feigned sleep then and now this slut of a doctor’s wife.
The wog had died with a shot from the Webley service revolver he’d had the audacity to purloin and hold in his frigging lap, but Mrs. Mary Fraser wouldn’t die that way—he’d see to that. And Jimmy … why Jimmy Allanby had a lot to learn about the bumbling old fart of a colonel who’d been washed up in Ireland at that infernal castle he hated so much.
She’d think he was asleep and when she least expected it, he’d take that weapon from her. Still as a mouse, she had eased her mind a good deal. Jimmy was the stud she had always feared and now must realize he had broken under prolonged fire, that the wounds had only been a part of the captain’s having been sent to Ireland, and that Jimmy knew it most of all himself.
But things wouldn’t go wrong. They’d get that gun and then would make her tell them everything. A deserted hut, a bit of ruins, a field in the middle of nowhere if necessary. ‘Petrol stations simply aren’t available in rural Ireland, Mrs. Fraser. Omagh might have one that is still open, though I very much doubt it.’
‘I didn’t think you were asleep, Colonel, but lest you worry too much, there’ll be jerry cans in the boot. Even I know the British Army always carries extra.’
Some three miles to the north of Omagh, she made Jimmy turn off the main road on to a secondary one. The map she clutched was soaking wet, the torch fast losing power each time it was switched on. ‘We’ll cut across country to Castlederg,’ she said.
The car began to climb into some hills. As before, as nearly always, there were glimpses of farmhouses, of hedgerows … never much for it was far too dark. Once a fox paused in its run to stand in the middle of the road and stare at their approach. Cows, sheep, horses … they caught glimpses of these now and then. There were more hills, bits of woods, hawthorns, gorse and brambles. Jimmy geared down. The road into the hills seemed to be taking forever. Had she been wrong to have come this way?
‘You’ll never do it,’ sighed Bannerman. ‘Sod it, woman, if Hamish is with them, the last thing you want is for us to run into them.’
‘Mary, if we come upon them, they’ll only think we’ve come in force.’
‘Tell us where that blessed meeting place is and we’ll agree to let bygones be bygones, won’t we, Captain? No one else need know you’ve told us, certainly not Nolan or the Darcy woman. Now what about it, eh? It’s a decent offer. You’re in no position to refuse.’
Far from good, the roads became quagmires in the valleys, rivulets of mud and stone on the hill slopes. They could see so little through the rain now, it was frightening. Permitted crossings would be no good anyway.
‘Turn off on to that track, Jimmy,’ she shouted.
‘Which one?’
‘Back there. You just passed it.’
‘That’s some farmer’s lane, for God’s sake!’ snorted Bannerman. They’d get her now. He’d have to hit her two or three times, but damn it, the car had stopped. Ahead of them the lights had found the rear of what looked to be a butcher’s van. It’s doors were wide open …
‘Colonel, we’re too exposed,’ managed Allanby.
‘Captain, control it.’
The van had skidded off into a bog, the bo
nnet down, the front wheels having sunk into the ooze. ‘Go on past it,’ said Mary.
‘I won’t!’ cried Allanby.
‘DO IT!’ she shrieked.
Bannerman told her not to yell, and for a few moments spoke softly to Allanby and then, ‘Mrs. Fraser, surely you must be able to see how things are. If there’s any shooting, do the sensible thing and hand me that revolver of your husband’s. You will be absolutely no match for any of them, and they will be certain to kill you.’
The car began to inch forward. Never good, the visibility became worse, and when they reached the van, Bannerman asked for the torch, and reluctantly Mary set it on the seat between them.
‘Tooley’s of Armagh,’ he snorted, shining the light over it. ‘They’ll have more than one vehicle. We’d best get out and walk.’
‘Colonel, just put my torch back where you found it.’
The road turned to the left and they followed the gully of a stream for perhaps a quarter of a mile until coming to a hastily built bridge of heavy timbers. This was not a forbidden crossing as such, for there were no concrete obstructions, no barbed wire or torn-up roadbed, the crossing having been judged impossible probably, the banks too high and steep.
With difficulty Jimmy took the car across. A muddy track paralleled the gully on this other side, leading them further away from the crossing.
When they reached a proper road, Mary told him to turn north and then to go west at the first chance. ‘Stay well away from Strabane. We’re in Donegal now. We’ve made it!’
The cottage lay among hills and fields whose hedgerows of bracken, gorse and stone stretched away until lost in the fog. The booming of the surf came from some place distant, though, from cliffs that were among the highest in Ireland. Sheep dotted the nearest of the fields; cattle grazed the next, while turf smoke struggled up from the loneliest of chimneys.
Mary knew she would have to do as they said, that it was senseless to continue. They were all but out of petrol. The thatched roof of the cottage was crossed by ropes that were tied to pegs in the walls just below the eaves. The half-door had been painted yellow years and years ago; the stucco and trim were white, or what was left of it.
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