Peeler (27 page)

‘But you found me, not them.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve come to take me in.’

‘I’ve been asked … ordered … to have you follow me to Inchigeela. To O’Sullivan’s.’

Connors gave a short laugh.

‘It’s orders, Connors. From the bossman himself like.’ Farrell heard himself using Halloran’s word –
bossman
. As if some of the man’s courage might accompany its utterance. ‘He and Brennan want a chat is all … I think.’ He tried his best to sound reasonable, persuasive.

‘You
think
, do you? What do you think of this war then? After all your fine words in the lecture halls and pubs. What do you think of it now, Farrell, from inside its belly?’

Farrell searched the cobwebbed corners of the cottage as if he would find an answer scored onto the wall. ‘I hate the killing, Seamus,’ he said, finally. ‘But I hate the English more for making it necessary.’

Connors nodded. There was a long silence before he spoke again. ‘I thought that once, but you don’t have to hate a man to kill him. It helps. But it’s not important after a while. It gets …’ he shrugged and drank again from the bottle, ‘easy.’

‘It’s a soldier’s work, Seamus. You’re a soldier, a bloody fine soldier.’ Farrell was thinking, talking, seeking safety in words. ‘We all knew it would take bloodshed to liberate Ireland. Sure, you most of all. How much blood was shed in its suppression? How many died in the Great Hunger? We’re fighting for them, Seamus. For every one of those Irish dead with their hungry mouths stained green from eating grass while grain was shipped from Kingstown to Liverpool. We owe it to every man cut down in 1798 and 1867; to every man evicted from the land he’d farmed all his life because he couldn’t feed his children and make the rents demanded by his leeching landlords. We owe it to our own children, to all those who come after us, to leave them a nation free, independent, sovereign …’

Clapping cut him short. Connors was leaning back on the hearth edge, giving Farrell a slow, steady applause, the shadow of a smile on his lips. ‘Lovely speech, Farrell. You should be up on the stump with de Valera with all your honey-sweet words, boy. You could always talk.’ His face clouded over. ‘But it’s not about talking any more. There’s things you can only feel and do, not say, Farrell. You’ll never know them. Never feel or do them. All this,’ and he threw his arm out, taking in the cottage, the fields, the hills, ‘all of this means fuck all. Not when the people in it … not when they …’

He coughed into a soiled handkerchief, a wet, ill-sounding hack that rattled his chest. When he had finished coughing, he opened the handkerchief and examined its contents. He shot his dead smile again. ‘I don’t hate you Farrell, but I could kill you, just like that and not lose a moment’s sleep. That’s how it gets. Easy.’

Farrell shoved his hands in his pockets, hoping that Connors hadn’t noticed that they were shaking. Connors took another swig from the bottle. Setting it down, he said, ‘You ever loved a girl, Farrell?’

Anticipation rose in Farrell’s chest and he cleared his throat. ‘No, I haven’t really,’ he said. ‘Not so you could say. What about you, Seamus? Have you?’

‘They think I killed Deirdre, don’t they?’

Too quickly, Farrell said, ‘No, no, Seamus. They only want to ask you some questions is all.’

‘I loved her, Farrell. So much, I could have killed her.’

‘And did you?’ The words came before he could stop them and Farrell’s brow flashed hot in the cool dereliction of the cottage.

‘I loved her, Farrell. But she’d stopped loving me.’

‘
Did
you kill her?’

Connors stood up suddenly. ‘You tell the
bossmen
that if they want to plug me, they’d do well to send men who’re up to the job.’

Then he was gone from the cottage, leaving Farrell alone in the waning light.

***

It took O’Keefe the best part of half an hour to ride the eight or so miles from Katherine Sheehan’s cottage to Burleigh House. Late afternoon light was fading as he made his way up the long, tree-lined drive. The house was typical of the Anglo-Irish estates that dotted the Irish countryside. It stood alone, a grey stone fortress, the angular walls and peaked roof shaded by ancient trees. A wide staircase fanned out from the entrance down to a circular drive of pebbled stone.

O’Keefe looked at his watch. Three forty-five. It would be dark by five. He checked the sky and for a moment watched leaden, winter clouds crowd the sun. It wasn’t only the local IRA units he was worried about. The Auxiliaries would be on the warpath now, after Kilmichael. It was one thing losing a man to local rebel sections – that was to be expected. To lose fifteen, twenty men to a group of fighters you considered rank amateurs? Outrage, as the papers put it. And there had been further rumours that the dead had been mutilated. One could do better than to believe barrack room scuttlebutt, but that wouldn’t stop the Auxies shooting first and asking questions later. He resolved to make his visit quick and be off the roads before the night was claimed by gunmen from both sides.

Briefcase in hand, O’Keefe mounted the stone steps to the front door. A minute or more passed before the housekeeper let him in; a white-haired, dignified old woman who led O’Keefe down the central hallway.

‘I’m sorry about the wait, Sergeant. I was in the back. I promised Mrs Burleigh I’d look after the house and the Major, but it’s not easy on my own, sure.’

‘The other staff driven off by the boys, Mrs …?’ They reached the library.

The woman turned and smiled up at him, avoiding his question. ‘Gannon, Sergeant. You can wait here while I call the Major for you. He’ll be grateful for the company. He used to ride every afternoon but now …’ She shook her head sadly.

Now the man was probably too terrified to set foot out of doors, O’Keefe thought, reaching to open the library door. As he did, his briefcase opened and, for the second time that day, spilled its contents onto the floor. A headshot of Deirdre Costelloe – taken before the undertaker had done his work – came to rest on the top of the pile of papers and the old woman bent down and retrieved it.

‘Oh dear.’ She blessed herself as she studied the image.

‘I’m sorry you had to see that, Mrs Gannon.’

‘She’s dead, the poor thing, isn’t she?’ She handed over the photograph.

O’Keefe nodded, shoving the papers and photographs back into the briefcase in the best order he could manage, cursing the case’s temperamental clasps.

The woman regarded him silently for a moment. ‘It’s fierce hard work ye do, Sergeant. Don’t mind what any man says.’ She touched his arm as she spoke, in the way of the old women of the country, then left to inform the Major of his presence.

O’Keefe paced in the library while he waited, marvelling at the collection of books lining the shelves, straining his eyes to read their titles in bars of light that entered through the slats of the closed shutters. Volumes of military history. The complete works of William Shakespeare. Leather-bound sets of works of fiction. A full set of Gibbons’
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
. Everything in the room was covered in a fine patina of dust. Behind a massive, mahogany desk hung a red and white regimental banner, its crest depicting a knight battling a lion and underscribed with a Latin motto stitched into the centre of the red and white. Mounted underneath it, was a ceremonial cutlass. The motto read:
Sub Deus quod Flos, nos pugna una, nos intereo una
. His schoolboy Latin again:
Under God and Crown, we fight together, we die together
.

The West Kent Royals was one of the oldest and most renowned regiments in the British army. Its men had seen action in most fronts of the Great War, though O’Keefe didn’t remember hearing of them in the Dardanelles.

‘There you are!’ A booming voice from behind him.

O’Keefe turned to see a large man in his fifties enter the room. Muscle turning to fat. He was wearing a waistcoat over a dingy white shirt and riding breeches. Fading red hair combed back, greying mutton chops, a wide, thick-lipped mouth, no moustache.

‘Major, I – ’

‘Good God, man,’ the Major bellowed over O’Keefe’s introduction, marauding across a threadbare Turkish carpet, ‘Bridie should have opened up the shutters, let in some light. Like a bloody tomb in here, eh?’ He swept past O’Keefe, unfastened the shutters, slamming them back into their casements.

In the weak afternoon light the room looked shabby. There were full ashtrays on side tables and sallow stuffing bleeding from upholstered armchairs. A bottle of whisky – O’Keefe couldn’t read the label – was open on the desk, surrounded by plates of half-eaten food studded with stubbed out cigar ends, dusty paperweights made from brass shell casings and various books splayed open, loose papers and a cigar box with the lid up.

The Major bounded back across the room, his enthusiasm unnerving in the musty confines of the library. His handshake was hale and hearty.

‘Kind of you to see me unannounced, Major. I’m Acting-Sergeant Seán O’Keefe out of Ballycarleton RIC barracks.’

‘You’re welcome, Sergeant.’ The man’s breath carried the scent of strong liquor. ‘Major Wallace Burleigh, First Royal West Kent Regiment, retired.’ He continued pumping O’Keefe’s hand, indicating the banner and cutlass on the wall, ‘As you might have guessed.’

‘You’re very kind …’

‘Damn bit of bother fitting the uniform on now, eh Sergeant?’ The Major patted his belly. ‘Not like yourself, fine specimen of a man you are. Could have used lads like you in the regiment. Fit lads, big. Irishmen like ourselves. Best fighters God put on earth, the Irish. If only they’d point their guns in the right direction!’

O’Keefe smiled and ignored the Major’s heavy slap and then grapple of his upper arm, feeling something like a beef cow must at market. ‘Would that they would, Major. I was wondering if you could lend me your expertise?’

‘I won’t until we share a glass, Sergeant. One fighting man to another in these hard times. It’s why I keep the shutters closed. Why give the Shinner bastards a proper target, I say. Like I always told my men. “Don’t make it easy for the enemy. Heads down, eyes wide, rifles ready”.’ He took the whisky bottle from the desk along with two glasses and poured out two generous measures. O’Keefe saw that it was Macallan’s. The Major handed a whisky to O’Keefe and raised his own glass.

‘Officer’s Oil, we called it, in the show.’

His eyes took on a misty, nostalgic glaze for a moment and O’Keefe felt certain that this was not the Major’s first glass of the day. Nor would it be his last he suspected. O’Keefe had met men like the Major before – men who spoke of the war as if it were a fine place to which they wished to return. In O’Keefe’s experience, these men tended to be those who had been furthest from the fighting. O’Keefe forced himself to smile and raised his glass. ‘
Sláinte
, Major.’

Burleigh clinked O’Keefe’s glass and drank deeply.

‘I’m here, Major, because I’m told you keep a fine collection of rare fowl on your estate. I’m investigating the death of a young woman. She was found not too far from here, on a hillside just north of Drumdoolin. You may have seen it in the papers?’

‘Haven’t read the papers in days, Sergeant. Too busy; too busy for my own good. Thought retirement might mean fishing and fowling. History intervenes. History intervenes.’ He looked away and drank more whisky.

Too busy getting pissed, O’Keefe thought. He took out the envelope containing the feathers and handed several to the Major. ‘I was hoping you might be able to identify the type of bird these feathers came from.’

‘Where did you find these, Sergeant? What bearing do they have on your investigation?’

The Major had trouble with the word ‘investigation’. O’Keefe looked through one of the tall windows at the draining daylight. This had been a wasted trip. A diversion for a lonely, drunken landlord holed up in his castle against the people he once believed had loved him and his kind. ‘They were found with the girl’s body, sir. The girl was tarred and feathered before she was murdered.’

‘Murdered. Indeed.’ Burleigh looked up. ‘Bloody Shinners. Killing a young woman, you say?’ He thrust the feathers back at O’Keefe.

‘We don’t know who killed the girl. We’re still in-vestigating.’

‘Who bloody else could have, Sergeant?’ His eyes flashed angrily at O’Keefe and then he sought solace in the dregs of his whisky.

‘That’s what we’re trying to discover, sir,’ O’Keefe said, sliding the feathers back into their envelope and into the case. ‘Thank you for your …’

The Major’s face reddened and his eyes went to the window this time. ‘This whole bloody country’s gone mad, you know. Bloody Sinn Féin and their bloody assassins. Put them up against a proper regiment of fighting men and they’d get their what’s-coming, I tell you Sergeant. Bloody ill, this country is, the things happening. It’s infected, the whole order of the place poisoned. Nothing’s like it should be any more.’ Burleigh swallowed the remains of his whisky, a sheen of tears in his eyes.

O’Keefe didn’t ask him if it was possible that the order of the place – under a foreign government, under landlords like himself – might have been infected from the beginning; that what was happening now was nothing more than a form of cure. Bullet surgery, he thought. Sometimes the cure could be as bad as the disease.

‘You’ve no idea then, sir, about the feathers?’

The Major reached for the bottle. ‘Ah, the feathers. No idea, Sergeant. The birds. They were my wife’s hobby. I indulged her, hoping she might stay here in Cork with me for more than a week or two at a time. A lot of bloody good it did. Won’t leave England now for love nor money nor exotic fowl. Not that I’d blame her. Half our friends have joined her on the mainland, bloody cowards. Flown the coop, as it were.’ He laughed bitterly.

‘Was there someone who helped her with them? Someone who worked the estate for you, who might know fowl? A gamekeeper possibly?’

‘All gone. Every one of them run off by the blasted Volunteers, threatened by the bullyboys with their pitchforks and cork-blackened faces. Only Bridie Gannon left. She’s devoted to the Burleighs. Like her father and mother before her.’