Thrale had started a course in law at Dublin University, joined Sinn Fein in his second year, abandoned his course shortly afterwards, travelled extensively in Europe and America, and returned to Ireland in 1979. It was believed he had fallen out with his immediate political masters who were keen for him to complete his studies and serve the cause with the respectable face of professional expertise. But Thrale had opted for direct action. He had no convictions but the list of suspected complicities ran through several lines over more than ten years, building from simple bombings and hit-and-run killings to big mainland ops. It was couched in the distancing abbreviations of the intelligence gatherer’s trade, and with Dog’s eyes drawn to the later headline-making stuff, he almost missed it.
Then it burned out of the page at him.
10.1.80. sit Bluebell Inn cp Bel. c bm ft off whl trig. 1 civ d 1 sec w rec
One civilian dead. One member of the security forces wounded, but recovered.
Recovered! As one part of his mind tasted the bitter irony of the word, another part was racing back into the past, the near past, the distant but ever-present past; Jane Maguire’s mention of Thrale, Tench’s unconvincing denial, his own sense of significant echo but so far away, so deep buried … then he was there … the crowded bar, the need for another drink, the barman setting a Guinness and chaser before him, ‘with compliments’, but not just anyone’s compliments. He had said, ‘With Mr Thrale’s compliments.’
And once again he saw across the smoke-filled room the narrow face shaded under the old tweed hat, the raised glass, the sardonic smile.
Strangely, he had never felt individual hatred till this moment, never thought of the blast as the work of an individual man, but of a monstrous machine. Perhaps it had been necessary for his survival that his mind should generalize the vileness which had wrecked his life. How could anything so cosmic be put down to one man?
But God, who loves a revenge tragedy above all things, had finally tired of this dilatoriness which made Hamlet look like Indiana Jones, and He had shoved Thrale onto stage with a thunder roll of winks and nudges.
Great players don’t think of money lost, only money loaned. They know they’ll get even.
God and Uncle Endo both.
Time to get back to the cards.
He turned to the Bridgid Heighway print-out. Born in Cork in 1957, she had come to Dublin in 1973 and worked as a waitress for two years before getting taken on as an ASM at the Abbey Theatre. It was believed her acquaintance with Thrale began during this period. There had been walk-on parts, small speaking roles, understudy work, and during the period Thrale was on his travels, her career had looked as if it might be about to take off. Shortly after his return she had been given her first leading role in a new play. Two months later, the day before opening, she vanished. By the time she returned, the play had gone on with an understudy and folded. She offered no explanation, but there had been a botched border ambush the day she took off, shots had been exchanged and the Army were sure they’d hit one of the attackers. Word was that it had been Thrale, and that Heighway had rushed off to be with him. Whatever the truth, she was thrown out of the Abbey for it, worked intermittently with other companies, resting as much as she worked, till gradually she dropped out of the acting scene altogether. Meanwhile Thrale was evolving from gunman to undercover operative and frequently using a woman as his principal aide. Heighway had no convictions either. There were plenty of pictures from her Abbey days, but as she looked completely different in each of them, they weren’t much help.
One thing was certain. If Heighway had been involved in half the ops Thrale was suspected of masterminding, then she was just as dangerous as he was.
Another woman willing to kill, maim, extort, abduct, all for the sake of a cause. Or for the sake of a man.
And for the sake of her child, what might a woman be willing to do?
He stared unhappily at the print-outs. There was nothing but grief for him here. Past grief certainly, and future grief too if he came back to life only to recreate the sorrows of the past.
With luck it might all pass by. There was nothing he could do, there were no more leads to follow. This too could be buried. Tench would mistake impotence for obedience. He could let a few more months slide by, quietly fold, leave the table, go and sit in the sun somewhere. Show Uncle Endo he’d been wrong about him all these years.
The door bell rang, a long desperate peal.
He knew who it was without recourse to the peephole. He flung open the door and stared at her silently, his face showing neither the welcome nor the resentment he felt. She stared back at him, her eyes huge in a race so pale, her hair seemed to burn around it like fire in the snow.
She said, ‘There was nowhere else …’
Then she swayed forward and he caught her in his arms.
6
It was when he was five and convalescing from his near-fatal illness that Dog Cicero really started learning cards. Endo sat by his bed hour after hour, dealing cards onto the counterpane and talking nonstop. And because he talked about poker as if it were the most important thing in the world, that’s how it came across to the young listener.
Once when Dog had had a run of luck, Endo said, ‘Looks like you got your poor old uncle by the short hairs this time, boy.’ He spoke so piteously that Dog had pushed half of his matchstick winnings across the sheet towards him but, instead of the thanks he expected, Endo had looked at him grimly and said, ‘Nice thought, Dog, but let it stay a thought. Kindness and cards don’t sit easy together. What a man does with his winnings is his own affair. But they ain’t winnings till the game’s over. While you’re still playing, you see someone in trouble, that’s the time to hit hard!’
Jane Maguire was in trouble. Dog felt the pressure on him to persuade her that her friend’s death was not her fault. He kept quiet, fed her whisky and water, listened to her low musical voice playing its fugue of guilt and grief, and finally crashed in discordantly: ‘Who killed her doesn’t matter. So she’s dead and you’re sorry. She’ll still be dead and you’ll not be so sorry next week, next month, next year. Why she was killed, that matters. Did she know anything?’
He’d cut through the shock, at least temporarily. She looked at him with loathing but she answered, ‘No, nothing, I’d told her nothing, that’s why we quarrelled. I would have told her everything when I went back last night, but he was there …’
‘Billy, the one who raped you?’
He was beginning to make sense of it now. They’d wanted to find what she knew about Beck, about the money. They’d tracked her down through her mother, through Maddy. And they’d decided the way to do things quietly and get her fullest cooperation was to get hold of the boy first. Which they’d done, though he wasn’t yet quite sure how. Part two of the plan was for Billy to pick her up as she left the Health Centre on her way to the Vestey Kindergarten. Only she’d got the sack and left early. By the time he realized something was wrong, she’d reached the school and their quiet operation had gone public. Back to the drawing board. Maguire had given them a second chance by walking out of the hospital. She’d either been spotted, or they’d guessed she would head for the college. And Billy had been waiting once more.
‘Where did he take you?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know. I got in a car. He gave me a pair of dark glasses and said if I took them off, he’d poke one of Noll’s eyes out. I believed him. The glasses were absolutely black and fitted tight like goggles so I couldn’t see a thing. I don’t know how far we drove, then we went into a building, up some stairs. Then someone pulled the glasses off. There were two more of them …’
‘You saw them plain?’
‘I saw the woman. They called her Bridie. She looked different but I’m sure she was the same woman who took Noll …’
‘Miss Gosling, you mean?’ he said. ‘The one you met that morning? The one you’d seen in the school the previous Friday?’
He wanted her to deny it, to pro
duce some other explanation.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said.
There was no hesitation in her voice, no sign she was lying. Worse, there was no reason for her to be lying. But in that case … His mind was racing through a maze to a centre he didn’t really want to discover. He forced himself back to what she was saying.
‘… The other one, Thrale, I never got a really good look at. Sort of a thin face, not someone you’d pay much attention to, except for his eyes … I think I saw him in town earlier, watching me when I was on my way to the bus station.’
… a narrow face, a faint smile, a raised glass …
‘What happened then?’ he asked.
‘The woman took me into a bedroom to see Noll. I was so happy I could have kissed her. She warned me not to say anything to upset him. I was to call her Auntie Bridie and to say I wanted Noll to stay with her a few days while I went to see Santa Claus about his Christmas present. She sounded kind, I wanted to believe she was kind. But the man Thrale said, “You can make it easy for him or hard for him. It doesn’t matter to us,” and his voice was like ice. Then Bridie took me in. He was in bed, very sleepy, I think they must have given him something. He was so pleased to see me but he didn’t seem unhappy … he talked about Auntie Bridie and how funny she was and I told him that I had to go away to see Santa Claus to get this bike he’d been wanting and his eyes lit up and then he was so tired he fell asleep …’
He was losing her to grief again.
He said, ‘What happened then? Come on, Jane. Stop being so bloody self-centred! Stop thinking just of yourself. Think about your son!’
The so obviously unjust accusation hit her like cold water.
She cried, ‘What the hell do you think …’ but he cut across with ‘What did they want from you, Jane? They wanted to know about Beck, was that it? About the money? Is he alive, Jane? Come on, tell me. Is he alive?’
She took a long pull at her whisky and water, then she said dully, ‘Of course he’s bloody well alive.’
There it was at last. It had been inevitable, there was no other explanation. But he realized he hadn’t really wanted to hear it. For there was a body in Beck’s grave, and this woman had identified it, and that made her an accessory to a lot more than the theft of Noraid funds …
He said, ‘Tell me about it.’
Something of his disappointment, perhaps his distaste, must have come through for she began to talk rapidly, self-justifyingly.
‘I didn’t know about Oliver, not until … All right, I’m not such a fool I didn’t guess he was the kind of businessman who shaved corners, so I wasn’t too surprised when he came along and told me he was in trouble with the IRS. The Inland Revenue Service. He said he’d been juggling his taxes for years and now they were catching up with him. He said they could strip him clean, and probably put him away for five to ten as well. He said everyone was at it, he’d just been unlucky. I believed him. Why not? It’s in the papers all the time, and you never think it’s all that bad, cheating on taxes, do you?’
She spoke defiantly, not challenging his possible disapproval so much as her own sense of poor judgement.
‘So he decided to fake his own death,’ he prompted.
‘That’s right. He said he couldn’t take being locked up, especially not when he knew me and Noll would be left destitute. So he came up with this plan, and I went along. He was Noll’s father. And I loved him. What was I supposed to do? There didn’t seem to be basically anything wrong with it, a few lies, nothing that a couple of “Hail Marys” wouldn’t put right even if I hadn’t stopped going for all that junk!’
The thought of the body she’d identified hit Dog again, but it still wasn’t the time to turn over that stone.
He said, ‘When did you find out the truth?’
‘The whole truth you mean? He wasn’t lying, you see, just being a bit selective. The IRS came first. I was ready for them. I wasn’t ready when his wife showed though. She was supposed to be living abroad. It turned out she was shacked up with a lawyer in New York and she’d come ready to fight me through the courts to get her hands on Oliver’s estate. That cheered me up a lot. I just introduced her to the IRS men and told her to get on with it. But then the FBI showed up too and began asking all kinds of incomprehensible questions, till finally I caught on.’
‘You’d no idea he worked for Noraid?’ said Dog incredulously.
‘None! Hard to believe? Listen, we’d talked about Ireland when we first met, naturally. He wanted to know all about my background and I knew he had Irish blood in him. But it must have come across quite clear what I thought of the bastards who kill and maim innocent people, whatever cause they claim they’re fighting for. My dad died in the middle of it. So British soldiers, Irish bombers, they’re all the same to me. Scum.’
She spoke with burning passion. Dog’s hand touched the side of his face. He said, ‘So what did you feel when you found out the truth?’
‘Sick. Sick because of what he was. Sick because he hadn’t felt able to confide in me. Sick because I saw my life, and Noll’s life, in tatters.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I got more and more desperate. I felt I was being watched all the time. I don’t think they suspected Oliver wasn’t really dead but they certainly suspected I knew where a lot of money was stashed.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell them what had happened?’ he asked.
She looked at him scornfully.
‘You don’t just betray someone you’ve loved,’ she said. ‘Not even when you fear they’ve betrayed you.’
He nodded and said, ‘So you did what?’
‘I ran. I ran home to mother.’
‘Using what for money?’
‘Oliver had dumped a suitcase full of mixed bills in a locker at the bus station,’ she said.
‘You didn’t object to using this money, knowing where it came from?’
‘Yes, it crossed my mind to object, but I needed to get away. And I needed money to keep me going till I could take care of us both by working. If I’d been by myself, who knows what I’d have done? But there was Noll. And when we came down here, I had to have a decent home for him, and I needed to get him into a nursery school so I could work, and I went private because I didn’t want to answer a lot of questions and leave a trail … So yes, I’ve used the money, but not for myself. For your child you don’t ask the same questions, that’s all.’
It was a moving declaration.
He said, ‘Well, that sounds reasonably honest of you. Would it surprise you to know there are theft warrants out for you in Massachusetts?’
It obviously would. At least she contrived to look dumbfounded.
He said, ‘When you vanished, everything of any value in your husband’s house vanished with you.’
Suddenly she smiled, a glimmer of sun on a frost-bound field, showing him what she could be like if summer ever returned.
‘Babs,’ she said. ‘His wife. We didn’t get on, but when I told her she could stop worrying about me as I was heading for home, she helped all she could. No wonder! The house was full of lovely things but the IRS had them all inventoried and valued. Me taking off gave Babs the chance to fill her boots, with a ready-made culprit laid on!’
It was plausible. It was also unimportant.
He said, ‘There must have been plans for you to get together again?’
‘Of course. I was to wait six months then head back to England.’
‘So you’ve carried out phase one,’ he accused.
‘No!’ she said fiercely. ‘I didn’t wait six months. I ran. And I came back here because it was the only place I had to run to. And I’ve been trying to cover my tracks ever since.’
‘Who from? FBI? IRS? IRA?’
‘All those, obviously. But above all, from Oliver,’ she said.
‘Of course. I was forgetting your moral indignation. So you were to come back to England. What next?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know.
He would get in touch.’
‘How? Via a medium? Come on, you can do better!’ he said, disbelieving.
‘That’s the way he was,’ she cried. ‘He kept things to himself. And he said, the less I knew, the easier I’d find it to carry things off.’
‘OK. So he’s the macho type. But you must have thought about it.’
‘I suppose so. I guess I just assumed he’d make contact through my mother. He had her address.’
‘And that was the first place you headed in this great flight from evil,’ he mocked.
‘Where the hell else should I go?’ she demanded angrily. ‘It was my home, for God’s sake. I needed a base. But I didn’t stay, not long. Six months, he said. I was out of the States in three, out of my mother’s house in another. I came down here to hide. I didn’t even give my mother my new address.’
‘But you gave her Maddy’s telephone number.’
‘Yes. I gave her …’ Her voice choked as she thought of her dead friend. Dog watched stonily as she took a series of deep sobbing breaths. Her voice was steady again as she resumed. ‘I had to let Mam have some way of getting in touch. I owed her that. I made her promise not to tell anyone else. When I found out she’d given the number to this Mary Harper I’d never heard of, I panicked. I was sure it must have something to do with Oliver. I went down to Maddy’s that night to find out if anything had happened, but things went wrong between us. It was my fault … I’d taken advantage …’
Her voice faltered again. Dog said impatiently, ‘Yes, I know. What happened after you left?’
‘I drove back to the flat. It was very late. No one saw me. And I stayed in all Sunday …’
‘Where did you park?’
‘Round the corner in the next street. I couldn’t get in my usual spot. On Monday I thought, this is stupid. I can’t stay indoors forever. And Noll was getting fractious. So I set off for school as normal. And the rest is like I told you. When I realized Noll had gone, I thought I’d go mad. But when I woke up in hospital, I started thinking logically, at least I thought I did, and I worked out it must be Oliver who’d got him … I suppose I wanted to believe it was Oliver, that way at least he’d be safe … I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how best to answer your questions, so when the chance came, I took off from hospital, and that’s it. You know the rest.’
The Only Game Page 14