by James R Benn
The path opened to a clearing and I parked on a flat rise, where long slabs of gray granite rose from the ground like giant steps. At the top sat Grady's cottage, the whitewashed stonework solid under the thatched roof. A single small window faced me, next to a door painted bright red. There was no sign of him or his pony, so I got out, stretching my legs in the warmth of the sun. The land sloped down behind his house, a rocky grade descending to a low, flat expanse of green and brown grasses, interspersed with standing water, soggy paths, deep trenches, and piles of sodden peat. A cart path led to a long shed, set just below the rear of the cottage. The sides were alternating slats of rough-cut wood, letting the wind through to dry the harvested peat, which was stacked higher than my head. It all smelled faintly of cut grass, rotting vegetables, and thick mud.
"If a man has water and peat on his land, 'tis all he needs for the hard times," Grady said. He'd come up so quietly, I hadn't noticed he was standing right behind me. "Let me unhitch Dora and then we'll sit."
We left Dora with fresh hay and an apple Grady produced from his pocket. He sat on a wooden bench by his front door and removed his rubber boots, thick with drying mud. He set them under the bench and sighed deeply, leaning back to rest against the rough stone, letting the early morning sun wash his brow.
"It's a hard job, the peat," he said. "But there's nothing like the death of a young man to make an old man glad of his pains."
"My father once told me the saddest sight he ever saw was the dawn the day after his brother was killed." I was surprised I had said that. It had come out without a thought, something my dad had mentioned once when we'd gotten up early to go fishing. I'd been fourteen, maybe fifteen. I still remembered that dawn, Cohasset Harbor at our backs and the red-streaked horizon to the east, my dad and Uncle Dan sharing a thermos of coffee with their pal Nuno Chagas. Nuno was a Portugee lobsterman who had smuggled rum and whiskey during Prohibition. He'd had some dealings with Dad and Uncle Dan that had resulted in cases of unmarked bottles down cellar and a more open friendship after repeal in 1933.
The light dawning over the far Atlantic horizon had turned from dark reds and blues to gold reflected off the chop. At my age then, the talk and actions of men like Nuno, Dad, and Uncle Dan were strange territory. Little was ever said but they all moved with certainty around each other, as if they knew each other's thoughts. I remember wishing I could be like them, confident in their silence and ready for whatever the day offered. I wanted strong arms like theirs too, and all those things that seemed to be forever beyond my body and mind.
Uncle Dan had taken a pint bottle from his coat and poured whiskey into their coffees. Nuno drank his, one hand on the wheel, eyes watching the water ahead. Dad and Uncle Dan touched their cups in a toast, nodded, and drank. Dad looked at me as if he'd forgotten I was there, and maybe he had.
"The night Frank was killed," he said, then stopped. I froze, waiting for him to speak again. I knew Uncle Frank, the oldest of the three brothers, had been killed in France during the war, but no one spoke about it. I can still hear the thrum of the motor, the sound of the bow hitting each wave, the thump, thump, thump as we moved through the water. If I breathe deep enough, I can smell the whiskey and coffee mingling with the salt air.
"The night Frank was killed," he said again, "it was raining. Hard. It was cold, and the clouds were so low the flares would get lost in them, and then burst into brightness when they came down. We brought him in from patrol and laid him out in a communications trench. We sat with him in the rain, the mud a foot thick all around us. Finally, the rain stopped and a breeze kicked up, sending those clouds back to Germany. When dawn came, it was beautiful, just like this. It was then I cried. What kind of joke was that, to follow death in the rain with golden sunlight?"
The next thing I knew, Uncle Dan had put a chipped mug in my hand, poured in a little coffee, followed by even less whiskey, and said, "To Frank." They clinked their mugs against mine, and I had the sense to drink and not make a face, being unused to both coffee and liquor. I hadn't understood what Dad was trying to say but that didn't matter. I was happy simply standing at their elbows, feeling the currents of emotion that ran beneath the surface, flowing along with them like a cod following its school, not understanding why, knowing it must.
"In the last war?" Grady asked, drawing me back to the present. It might have been the second time he said it.
"Yes. The last war for the English, as they'd say."
"The death of a brother is a terrible thing. I would not go against a word your father uttered. He had every right. But I tell you now, Billy Boyle, you look at that gorgeous sun drenching our green fields. That is for the living, it is. If each dawn were for the dead of the night before, it would be darkness forever. Now come inside and we'll have strong tea."
Grady's cottage was low ceilinged, the thick wooden beams dark with age. The floor was flat stones laid over dirt, and a peat fire burned low on an open hearth. A kettle hung over the fire, and other pots and a skillet stood to the side. Against the rear wall, a hand pump on a wooden counter was positioned over a bucket. Water to drink, peat to burn. Besides whiskey, what more does an Irishman need?
As Grady busied himself with the fire and the kettle, I sat in a worn but comfortable armchair near the hearth. The chair opposite looked like Grady's: It was leather, cracked and dry, with indentations in the seat and back that marked it as the owner's favorite. A wooden table, a bed at the far end of the room, some shelves, and a chest of drawers completed the interior.
Two pictures hung on the wall. One was religious, showing the way of the cross on the Via Dolorosa, where I had walked with Diana not too long ago. It looked like a print from a magazine, framed under glass, faded with time. Jesus with the crown of thorns, his head bloody, his body sagging under the weight of the cross. Next to it was a still life of a dead rabbit laid out alongside a copper pot, flecks of blood around its mouth under wide, dull eyes. I didn't know much about art but I knew these weren't to my taste.
"Here you go, just the thing, it is," Grady said as he pulled over a stool and set down a tray. I was surprised to see real china and a sugar bowl. "Ah, you expected a dirty mug, I can tell by the look in your eyes!"
"No, it's only-I didn't expect anything so nice-for me, I mean," I said, trying not to say anything stupid, and failing.
"Don't you worry now. These came from my mother, a wedding gift. I had sisters but they all died. Some before they were grown, the rest taken by the influenza. I never wed a wife myself, not that any offered themselves up," he said, pointedly not looking at his hands. "And I don't have much in the way of company, so it's a rare treat to use this. Take all the sugar you want, boy. It's rationed, sure, but the border isn't far, and enough makes its way here that we don't go without."
"Things always find a way, don't they?"
"What do you mean?"
"When we had Prohibition, people made their own beer, and plenty of liquor made it in from everywhere. You couldn't stop it."
"Ah, well, that was a silly thing to try, keeping folks from their drink, don't you think?"
"Well, as my dad said, we don't explain the laws, we just enforce them."
"Your father is a policeman too, like you?"
"Not like me. He's more cop than I'll ever be, a homicide detective. His brother, my uncle Dan, he's on the force too."
"All those Boyles on the police force in Boston? What a safe town it must be," he said, chuckling and blowing on his tea. "So tell me, what would your father or your uncle say about poor Pete being killed like that?"
"They always said when a murder seemed to make no sense, it had to be about love or money."
"Who loved Pete Brennan on this island, or in the whole world, for that matter?"
"He kept to himself," I said. "He didn't want to get close to anybody, he'd lost all his friends once. Pig was the closest thing he had to a friend."
"Aye. He rubbed that pig's belly 'til it shone, he did!" Grady laughed, then s
ighed, the small, sad sound you make as grief overwhelms a fond memory.
"So it was money. And I know who was getting ready to pay Pete off. Question is, who else knew?"
"Jenkins, you mean?" Grady said, a sly eye on me.
"How do you know?"
"Pete and I raised too many pints to have secrets. As you say, he made no friends of men he might have to watch die in battle. But he was friendly to me since I'm hard to kill, and no longer in the fight."
"Do you think Jenkins killed him?"
"Now, you know I don't have a high opinion of the man, even on his best days. But I won't say he isn't a smart fellow. Ignorant perhaps but smart, if you know what I mean. He's kept out of trouble, even though he runs the Red Hand, and that takes a bit of work up here," Grady said, tapping his head. "Would a smart man endanger all that by shooting an American soldier? That brings down a whole new set of troubles upon him, he who has everything worked out so well that the English and the IRA can't touch him. Why risk upsetting that applecart, I ask myself? Money? Maybe. I've never been cursed with it myself, so I can't say how it would make a man behave. More tea?"
"Sure," I said, holding out my cup. I stirred in some more contraband sugar and let the steam warm my face. What Grady said made sense. Would Jenkins endanger his position over a payoff? If he had, what did that mean?
"So what did that brute of an English sergeant want with you? Did he give you trouble?"
"No, he's just a chauffeur with a lousy attitude. I have to go up to Belfast tomorrow with him and another officer."
"Well, keep your wits about you, Billy Boyle. I did not like the looks of the man."
I nodded, drank my tea, and let the fire warm my feet. I looked at the pictures again, a dead rabbit and Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, and tried to remember what we had hanging on the walls of our house in South Boston. I was fairly certain there were no framed pictures of blood and death.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I'd arranged to meet Joe Patterson at the Lug o' the Tub at eleven o'clock. I parked my jeep next to his and knocked on the locked door. It was a few minutes before opening, but Tom let me in. Sergeant Patterson was at the bar, busy with a bowl of stew.
"Rabbit," Tom said. "You boys have had a hard day already. I can't serve drink yet, but you're welcome to a bowl. Short on rabbit, long on potatoes."
Based on how Jack was wolfing the stuff down, I accepted the offer. Jack handed me a picture of Pete Brennan, smiling into the camera, standing in front of a tent, his fore-and-aft cap set at a jaunty angle. Basic training, maybe. A lifetime ago.
Tom leaned against the bar and sighed. "How many lads have had that same photograph taken? I think I have one like it myself," he said.
"Yeah, me too," Jack said. "I took that from his personal effects. Give it back when you're done, OK?"
"Sure. Find anything else?"
"No," said Jack, scraping his spoon around the bowl to get the last of his stew. "Nothing from around here, nothing recent."
"Nothing that looked like receipts, invoices, shipping records?"
"Nope. Is this about the guns?"
"I'm pretty sure Pete didn't have anything to do with that but he did know about some shady deals between Jenkins and Thornton. Looks like he used that as leverage for a payoff and a ticket back to Italy."
"Not a smart move," Jack said.
"I think it was his only move. He lost everything at Salerno, which means he had nothing here. Maybe he was going back to the only place that meant anything to him. But he shouldn't have trusted Jenkins."
"Do you think Andrew Jenkins had a hand in this?" Tom asked. He had moved to the other end of the bar, setting out glasses, but he had a sharp ear.
"Nothing I can prove, just shoptalk. Keep it under your hat, OK?"
"Under my hat it is, Billy. Watch your step, though. Jenkins is not a man to sit idly by if an accusation of murder is made against him. He's been suspected often enough but always manages to shake loose of it."
"How? Do witnesses end up in ditches?"
"Some change their minds, to be sure. A visit from the Red Hand can be persuasive. Other times, the investigation just dries up. I knew a fellow down Dromara way who gave a statement that he saw Jenkins and two men walking toward Slieve Croob in the Mournes, and later saw only Jenkins and one man return. Two days later, the body of a Catholic was found in a small wood in that area."
"So what happened?" Jack asked.
"Nothing. The constable took his statement. Hugh Carrick was investigating, or so I heard, and then nothing."
"What happened to the witness?"
"Nothing. He told me no one ever made a threat or asked him to withdraw his statement. This was two, maybe three years ago."
"Is he still around?"
"No. Joined up, even though he had helped the IRA now and again. Last I heard, he'd been captured in Libya somewhere."
"It doesn't add up," Jack said.
"Doesn't it?" Tom asked. He set down two half pints of ale in front of us. "On the house, along with the stew. To fortify your investigation. Close enough to opening time."
"I'm not supposed to drink on duty," said Jack.
"A half pint? You call that drinking?" Tom said in amazement.
"He's got a point," I said, and raised my glass. The ale tasted cool and crisp after the hot stew. Actually, he had two good points. You couldn't call a half pint serious drinking, and it did add up. Someone was protecting Jenkins, giving him enough cover that he didn't have to bother with intimidating witnesses or worry about shooting a GI in order to save some dough. How high did you have to go to get that kind of protection? Maybe I'd find out tomorrow when Slaine O'Brien let me see the secret files at Stormont Castle. But maybe she held more secrets than her files did.
I took my time with the half pint, thinking about what my next move should be. I would drive to Armagh to ask around the Northern Bank if anyone had seen Brennan the day before. Then I thought I'd head toward the border to get the lay of the land around Omeath, where Jenkins's truck had been abandoned. I couldn't cross the border myself without risking internment but I could check out how easy a crossing might be. If the roads were jammed with traffic then maybe I could stop on the way back in Annalong and have a drink in the pub where Thornton said he had seen Eddie Mahoney arguing with an unknown man. It sounded like a lot of driving so I savored the half pint and leafed through a local weekly newspaper, the Newcastle Times. Rugby scores, war news, local weddings. One story about U.S. Army maneuvers ruining fields as tanks chewed up farmland and trucks clogged the roads. Next to it was a picture of a convoy making its way through Clough, with Constable Adrian Simms standing in the road, holding up local traffic, Sam Burnham in full snowdrop regalia next to him. The line of trucks stretched into the distance. It was going to be a long wait, which probably hadn't made the villagers very happy.
"That happened last week," Tom said. "Big row all around. Farmers on about their crops being ruined, traffic backed up everywhere, although I'm not complaining. Some folks waited it out in here, so it was good for business."
"Lot of damage done?"
"Not so much. It's more that folks don't appreciate being told they have to put up with it, like it or not. Human nature," he said, shrugging.
I finished up a few minutes later and waved goodbye to Tom. Outside the sun was bright and promised a clear day. From in back of the pub came the hoarse sound of a motorcycle revving up and taking off. As I got into the jeep, I thought about how much fun it would be to make this trip on two wheels, as long as it didn't rain. A piece of paper on the passenger-side floor, held down by a stone, caught my eye. I looked around to see who might have placed it there and heard the distant sound of a motorcycle fading away, maybe the same one I'd glimpsed at Brownlow House. I unfolded the paper. In large block letters, the
message read WATCH OUT FOR SIMMS. It was signed YOUR YANK FRIEND.
My Yank friend warning me about Adrian Simms. The guy with the fedora. Why? Why
should I worry about Simms, and why should this guy bother warning me? Whose side was he on, and how come no one seemed to know who he was? Well, a warning was a warning, no sense ignoring it. I went back into the pub, and took the page from the paper with Adrian's picture on it. Now I had pictures of Pete Brennan, Eddie Mahoney, and Adrian Simms. Plus, I could give a good description of Red Jack Taggart and Andrew Jenkins. I needed to find someone who'd seen one or more of them in the wrong place at the wrong time, someone who wasn't with the IRA or the Red Hand. But I could have used someone to watch my back, not to mention my flanks.
I missed Diana as a partner. She had a different way of viewing information, and when we talked about a case she would often ask a question or make a comment that made me think about things in a new light. I felt lonely without her, and without Kaz as well. Lieutenant-not to mention Baron-Piotr Augustus Kazimierz was assigned to Eisenhower's HQ by the Polish Army in Exile. Kaz had lost his entire family when the Nazis invaded while he was studying languages in England. I'd showed up, and then he'd lost Daphne, Diana's sister, the only person left in the world he loved. Since then, he'd worked with me, and for a short, rail-thin, bespectacled intellectual, he'd proved damned handy with a gun as well as with his razor-sharp mind. Kaz might have stood out a tad in Northern Ireland but he knew how to keep to the shadows. This mystery Yank wouldn't have been a mystery for long if I'd had Kaz on the prowl.
But I was alone so I headed down the Banbridge Road and thought about the note. The writing bothered me. The clumsy block letters might have been an attempt to disguise the handwriting of the person who wrote it, which meant I might have a chance of comparing it to some sample I had. But in Northern Ireland whose handwriting might I recognize? Kaz was good with codes and ciphers, and he might have been able to pick up on disguised handwriting.