Peeler (28 page)

O’Keefe left Burleigh with his bottle, his memories of a fine war and cap-tipping, devoted tenants. He was angry at the time he had wasted but couldn’t think of another angle to pursue until his request for exhumation was processed or he discovered who the ‘card sharpie’ was. He kick-started the Trusty and fitted on his helmet. The time would come, he thought, when pulling the shutters over and drinking himself senseless just wouldn’t do any more and Major Burleigh too would have to pack himself off to England. Labelled a spy, a traitor, an interloper in a land he had thought he owned. He was a man to be pitied, but not by O’Keefe.

A few hours later, O’Keefe stood in front of Masterson’s desk, his eyes drawn once again to the photograph of the DI and the Colonel in their hunting garb, fat pheasants hanging by the feet from their fists. Masterson, seated, held out a manila folder. ‘Give that a gander, Sergeant. And steel yourself to catch the bastard.’

O’Keefe took the file. ‘Sir?’

‘A certain Mr Connors’ particulars. “I” Division had it flown down today.
Flown
, O’Keefe. I think you’ll find it good reading of an evening.’

O’Keefe opened the file and looked at a photograph of Seamus Connors for the first time. It was an enlargement of a college photograph. The features were blurred. Dark hair, dark eyes. There was an intensity to the gaze, but otherwise nothing that would be out of character on the face of a moderately serious medical student. Neutrally, he said, ‘That was fast, sir. I’m surprised they had so much on him.’

He had imagined it would take a week at least for ‘I’ Division to locate a file on Connors and send it down.

‘Fast indeed,’ Masterson said, smiling. ‘And it was Keane’s wire that got them running in the first place. I had a dispatch rider go to Dublin with what we had yesterday, but we got a wire back saying they were already on it and were ready to ship it down. Remind me to make a note in young Keane’s jacket: initiative and all that. What an investigation like this needs.’

‘Yes, sir. Fair play to him.’

Masterson leaned back and clasped his hands over his belly. ‘This Connors is a bold boy, no mistake. Did you realise he is wanted on the Smyth murder in Cork? You get him for this and you’ll make a lot of people up in Dublin very happy, O’Keefe.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

‘I know you will. You’ve made a grand stab at it so far, not to put too fine a point on it.’ The DI chuckled at the pun.

‘The newspaper report today, sir. In the
Daily News.
’

‘I saw it. Can only help I imagine. Stir up a sense of general outrage, get the locals to help us catch this Connors.’

‘There was a fair bit of information that was privileged, sir, in the report. There were only a few of us who knew the cause of death.’

‘You went barracks to barracks on it, didn’t you, Sergeant?’

O’Keefe hadn’t thought of that. The number of people who knew the details of the murder was far wider than he had thought. It was a basic error: seeing conspiracy where there was none. Any one of the cons who had read the wire he’d sent could have spoken to the scribblers.

‘Yes sir, that’s true enough.’

‘No harm, Sergeant. Only good can come of it. I say tomorrow we go public with Connors as suspect number one. Flush him out. I’ve put into HQ about sanctioning a reward for his arrest. Should hear in the morning. Get the touts working again, if the money weighs right.’

‘It could have the opposite effect, sir. It could cause the IRA to close ranks around him, ship him out of the country. We might never get him then. Could we not wait a couple of days before releasing his name? There’s a few other things we should have in place, before we go to the papers.’

Annoyance showed on Masterson’s face. ‘What other things, O’Keefe?’

There was the small matter of evidence to consider, O’Keefe thought
.
Or maybe evidence didn’t matter so much any more
.
Connors was wanted for other things. O’Keefe wondered how much evidence there was, for example, to pin Connors for the Smyth shooting. He decided not to push it with Masterson. So much of policing the Troubles, he knew, involved hunting down men on a whiff of rumour. Rumour mattered. Hard evidence seemed to be reserved for crimes that happened in peacetime. O’Keefe didn’t like it, but he knew he would have to ride with it if he didn’t want to scupper his hunt for Deirdre Costelloe’s killer. Masterson might even be right about Connors and if he was, O’Keefe would break his arse to pinch him for it, even if it meant making people up in Dublin happy. ‘Nothing, sir. In fact, Connors looks as good as any for this.’

The DI appeared relieved.

Any doubt O’Keefe might have had that the man was incapable of killing Deirdre Costelloe vanished after reading the Connors file. If intelligence reports were to be believed – and that is what the file he had in front of him essentially was: an epitomised account of accrued information on the IRA volunteer Seamus Connors from police, army and secret service sources – he was a hard man, not afraid of killing. O’Keefe read:

The suspect answers to the name Seamus Connors and hails from the village of Crossbarry, in West Cork. He is known as Young Seamus in his local area, his father also being called Seamus. He was a medical student at University College Cork, his address listed as 23 Patrick Street, Cork. He has not been seen at this address since 11/2/1918.

The suspect is of average height and average to slim build, around 5’ 10” and 11 stone. He is pale complexioned with black hair and brown eyes which are said to be of a ‘piercing’ or ‘sinister’ mien. He is a known and ardent teetotaller and has been said to wear a Pioneer Pin on his lapel, indicating his avowed abstention from alcohol. Connors is a regular Mass attendee and is rumoured to seek confession for his acts of murder.

He is known to be armed and should be considered extremely dangerous. He is wanted for questioning in the murder and/or malicious wounding of eight serving members of the armed forces and police.

The rest of the file contained reports of various incidents in which Connors was said to have been involved. He appeared to have a particular talent for killing soldiers and police. O’Keefe wouldn’t be disappointed to see him pinched.

On the other hand, he still wasn’t certain he was the man he should be focusing on exclusively for Deirdre Costelloe’s murder. There was something about it that didn’t seem right. The tarring and feathering. The bizarre display on the hillside. The evidence of likely sexual assault. A violent man driven by frustration or jealous rage was capable of such acts. But there was something too careful about it all. Whoever had murdered Deirdre was proud of what he had done. O’Keefe couldn’t see Connors revelling in the brutal slaying or exhibition of the girl he had once loved.

He checked the battered Players tin on his desk and, finding it empty, got up and rummaged in Daly’s desk for tobacco. Under a half-read guide to raising greyhounds and a set of handcuffs, he found a packet of Woodbines, took one and lit it.

The confession angle was interesting: the idea that Connors sought absolution after he killed. But then again, there was the taint of myth around that one. O’Keefe was well aware of how little British intelligence-gatherers understood about the complex relationship most Irish people had with the Church. To them, the Irish Catholic Church was exotic, a repository of superstitions long dead in an enlightened, Anglican England. In some ways, they were right, O’Keefe felt. Yet mostly the spooks were blind to the mixture of love, contempt and pragmatism with which the Irish approached the Church. O’Keefe smiled to himself.
The gunman seeking penance.
The stuff of bad fiction, more like. Still, there were stranger things in this war and if it was true, O’Keefe thought, it might be a useful bit of information if they ever got to interview Connors.

There was a knock on the office door and he looked up. It was Reilly. ‘The coal lorry’s come, Sergeant. Bring you up a bucket?’

‘That would be grand, Reilly – balls off a brass monkey in here.’

The retired con came into the office. ‘That Connors’ file?’ he said, nodding to where it lay open on the desk.

O’Keefe’s face must have shown his surprise.

Reilly smiled. ‘Oh, everybody’s heard about it by now. Flown up. Imagine! Word is he’s the one who done it to that poor thing on the hillside.’

He appeared to be waiting for some confirmation from O’Keefe. No doubt so that he could enlighten the rest of the barracks, confirming O’Keefe’s notion that there were no greater purveyors of gossip in Ireland than the RIC. Worse than washerwomen, coppers were.

‘I could do with the coal, Reilly, thank you.’

The gleam of interest faded from the old man’s eyes. ‘I’ll be up with it shortly, Sergeant.’

O’Keefe sat smoking, thinking. If the likes of Reilly knew it, then it was only a matter of time before Connors’ name hit the papers. Looked like the DI wouldn’t have a say in the matter after all. It was probably Masterson himself who had blabbed about the thing being flown down in the first place, the eejit.

He went back to the file, flicking through the reports of shootings and sightings until he came to the last few pages, which contained an arrest report dating from 1917 – well before the current rebellion had started in earnest. He skimmed the report and stopped. He sat forward then and reread the arrest report carefully.

Jesus
, he thought, reading it again to be sure he wasn’t mistaken. Maybe the DI was right after all, about this Connors fella.

***

A constable on evening rounds caught the boy one night, on the wall of a house where three girls were living with their father and six brothers. The constable had a kind heart and thought it best if the young lad were dealt with on the hoof. He brought the boy, fifteen years old now, to the front of the house and asked the brothers and father what ought to be done with him.

Three of the brothers and the father beat the boy until he coughed blood and spat teeth while the constable watched. The constable made sure things didn’t get out of hand but wanted to be certain the boy would think about the beating next time the inclination took him to watch young girls undressing.

When the father and brothers were done, the constable hauled the boy to his feet and marched him home. A tough young lad, the constable thought. Not a whimper out of him during or after the pasting. A right little hard nut.

The house was empty and dark when they arrived. The constable wasn’t surprised. He knew of the house and the woman who lived there. A widow. Her husband never came back from fighting the Boers. He’d heard nearly all there was to hear about the woman and part of him felt sorry for the young fellow. Still, the constable gave the lad a final clout on the ear, a reminder of what happened to boys who toyed with themselves on garden walls.

Shaving – careful to leave a wide razor berth around his scar – O’Keefe noticed dark circles ringing his eyes, as if he’d been punched with fatigue. There were wry glances in the kitchen when he went down for breakfast and he realised he must have been shouting in his sleep again. He brought a pot of strong tea back up to the office.

‘No lie-in today, Sergeant?’ Daly said, from the room beside the office where he stood over a fresh basin of hot water.

‘Where were you last night?’

‘The hotel. Murphy kindly locked us in. Only back an hour ago.’

To O’Keefe’s eyes, Daly looked unnaturally fresh for a man who’d been drinking all night. ‘So what you’re saying is that I was on duty last night, without knowing it, as such.’

Daly razored the last bits of soap from his face. ‘Well, I suppose you were, now you mention it. Never thought of it that way. Anything of interest, at all, at all?’

O’Keefe sat at his desk and poured tea into his mug. ‘I was asleep. Who was at the hotel?’

‘No one of any interest. Scribbler from the
Examiner,
one from the
Star
… Told them everything I know about the case. Thought you’d understand. They were buying.’

‘Sure, you lose the power of speech after two bottles and a dram.’

Daly towelled his face. ‘Well, I don’t remember, but they got the story somewhere. Probably from the
News
.’ He pointed to his desk where there was a fresh copy of the
Southern Star
. It was a newspaper printed in Cork and generally thought to be sympathetic to the republicans. It at least strove for fairness, despite its slant, which was more than a man could say for some of the London rags.

O’Keefe picked it up and scanned the article about Deirdre Costelloe’s murder. It was accompanied by a photograph, one of a pretty girl, alive and in love with life. The journalist must have got it from her family or a friend – possibly Anne Duffy. O’Keefe realised he had never asked the girl if she had a photograph of Deirdre taken in happier times. An oversight. No doubt it wouldn’t be his last.

The only difference in the
Star’
s article from the one in the
Daily
News
was the fact that the
Star
article quoted republican sources as denying any Volunteer involvement in the murder of the young woman found outside Drumdoolin. No surprise there. It went on to identify Deirdre Costelloe by name and gave details of her funeral, which was being held that morning in Ballincollig.

He looked up from the paper. ‘How’d you like to go to a funeral, Jim?’

Daly continued buttoning his uniform tunic. ‘Sure, I’ve had my fill of free drink, man. Couldn’t stomach another drop.’

‘You won’t be drinking at this one.’

The big man thought about it for a minute, then turned and looked out the window. ‘Weather’s fair enough. How many men should I take?’

O’Keefe considered the question. ‘Bring two, in plain clothes. If you can, why don’t you take that Mathew-Pare fella and see what you make of him.’

O’Keefe claimed Keane when drill was finished. Heatherfield asked if he could come for the ride and O’Keefe told him to load his carbine and change into civvies. Finch he found in the day-room eating breakfast after a night patrol.

‘Come on, Finch. Shovel it in. You’re riding with me this morning.’

The Tan looked up, his mouth full of eggs and sausage.

O’Keefe said, ‘Chop, chop.’ He had decided to bring Finch along mainly because the man deserved to have his day ruined more than some of the other lads who had put in the same number of patrols, but it also wouldn’t hurt that Finch knew his way around a rifle. The road they would travel had seen a number of ambushes recently.

‘Ten minutes in the yard. In mufti, Finch. Wouldn’t want anyone to know we’re coppers where we’re going.’

Finch swallowed. ‘No chance of that, Sergeant.’

Fifteen minutes later, Finch emerged from the barracks. O’Keefe stood waiting on the cobbles, smoking by the armoured Ford with Keane and Heatherfield.

‘Fucking hell, Finch,’ Heatherfield said, ‘where’d you pinch the rags from, then?’

Finch looked pleased with himself and stopped, resting the stock of his carbine on the cobbles and opening his beautifully cut, tan cashmere overcoat to show off its silk lining. Under the coat he wore a suit of grey, worsted wool, tailored to perfection. A red silk handkerchief peeked out in a perfect triangular fold from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Gleaming black brogues under cuffed, razor-pleated trouser legs; his hat a stiff, black-banded trilby, worn with a rakish cock over his left eye.

‘My brother,’ Finch answered, as if the question had been a serious one. ‘Took ’em the day I set out for this kip. Got ’em diced and stitched in Dublin. I ’alf expect the bastard to show up ’ere one day and cut my fucking throat for nicking ’em.’

‘Right, lads,’ O’Keefe said. ‘Finch, you ride up front with me. I’ve my reputation to think of.’

Finch gave him a mock salute and held the rear door of the Ford Tourer open for Keane and Heatherfield in their decidedly less salubrious corduroy trousers, wool coats and soft flat caps. Heatherfield ignored him and went to the front of the Ford to crank the starter.

The road to Crossbarry was quiet, not much morning traffic after they passed through Bandon. They drove with the windows down, past high hedges and dry-stone walls, fields patched with gorse and grazing sheep, passing the occasional ass and cart on its way to market. The farmers kept their eyes on the road, no wave or nod of the head from even one of them, fear drowning out the natural affability of Corkmen.

‘You gonna tell us where we’re ’eaded, Sergeant?’

‘Poultry farm, outside of Crossbarry. Just a whim of mine.’

‘You expect trouble, Sergeant?’ Keane asked. ‘Is that why we’re along?’

O’Keefe wasn’t expecting trouble, but poultry farms, like piggeries and creameries, were known to be meeting places for – and to employ men friendly with – the Volunteers.

‘Not really. But it’s no harm being careful. Sure, what else would you be doing with yourself of a morning?’

‘Happy to come, Sergeant.’

O’Keefe heard Heatherfield make kissing noises to Keane in the back and he smiled to himself.

‘Were you in the war, Sergeant?’ Finch asked.

The Tan appeared relaxed in the seat next to O’Keefe – his carbine barrel resting on the open window frame – but his eyes never stopped scanning the roadside and hills on either side of the car, even as he was speaking.

O’Keefe told him that he was.

‘Gallipoli, right?’

Eyes on the road, O’Keefe nodded. ‘Close enough.’

‘I ’eard it was a right tumble.’

‘It was. Where were you yourself?’

‘All over the Western Front. The Somme, Pasch, the Racing. Fought in all of ’em.’

‘Never wounded?’ O’Keefe could have ended the conversation there but, oddly, he didn’t mind it with Finch, perhaps because he could understand how much of the war was still in Finch, as it was in himself: the restlessness and violence. The war was in Heatherfield as well, though the young Geordie seemed, of all the veterans in the barracks, to have been the least affected by it.

‘Few knicks and scrapes. Bits of shrap and the like. Hit twice in the helmet, once by a sniper round. Fritzie put an ’ole through the brim that time.’ He touched his trilby. ‘Always kept that tin lid. Lucky, it was. Got soaked when it rained, through that fucking ’ole, but I always kept it, I did. Got an MG round in the breadbasket once as well, but I was wearing armour.’

O’Keefe was surprised. Some men had worn body armour in the war. Grenadiers and machine-gunners who were exposed to enemy fire more than most. But Finch didn’t seem the type. ‘It stopped the bullet?’

Finch grinned. ‘I’m not sure it would ’ave if it hadn’t ’it one of my grenades first.’

Keane leaned forward over the seat, his mouth full of ju-jubes. He offered Finch and O’Keefe the crumpled paper bag. ‘And the grenade didn’t go off?’

‘Fucking didn’t, mate,’ Finch said, taking a sweet. ‘Bullet left a bloody great gouge in the thing but didn’t hit the fuse. Lucky bugger me. Blessed, I was. The old man upstairs ’aving plans for me, no doubt.’’

O’Keefe smiled and shook his head to the offer of sweets.

Heatherfield leaned forward over the seat. ‘My mum sent me a vest, she did. Got it out of a catalogue and posted it to me for Christmas. Never wore the thing though. Fellas might have thought I was windy, if I wore it.’

‘I never bothered what no cunt thought of me,’ Finch said. ‘My ’ide’s worth more than my pride, I always say.’

‘I got one in the thigh,’ Heatherfield added. ‘Wouldn’t have been much help anyway, the chesty vest.’

‘Bad?’ O’Keefe said.

‘Right through and through. Poured iodine in’t for a month and I was good as new. Sent right bloody back to the shit and ditches without so much as a by your leave or kiss your arse.’

Finch pointed to the scar on O’Keefe’s face. ‘Shrapnel?’

It was a moment before he replied. ‘Bayonet.’

‘You get the bastard?’

O’Keefe nodded, eyes on the road. ‘I did.’

***

Mulaney’s Poultry Farm was a mile off the Crossbarry road down a rutted track. At the end of a long drive that cut through grazing fields, the farm consisted of a whitewashed labourer’s cottage and three long sheds with roofs of corrugated tin. Beside the sheds was a field littered with rusting machinery and a pile of smouldering refuse. The wind had picked up, shoving low clouds across the sky to blur the hilltops that rose behind the farm. The air was cool and smelled of rain.

‘I’ll go inside myself,’ O’Keefe said. ‘Stay close to the car. Leave the carbines inside unless you need them. No use provoking anyone.’

Finch, Keane and Heatherfield followed O’Keefe out of the car and lit cigarettes, O’Keefe continuing on across the gravel yard to the cottage. As he walked, O’Keefe noticed that several of the labourers had gathered at the entrance to one of the sheds. They were burly country men, hard men by the looks of their heavily stubbled, weather-ruddied faces, their sleeves rolled over ham-hock forearms. One of them leaned on a pitchfork. They watched him. O’Keefe nodded at the men but got no response, and was suddenly glad he had brought reinforcements.

He knocked on the cottage door and let himself in. The interior was bright, the windows on the gable ends cut larger than normal and paned with glass. A wooden floor had been added and on it sat two desks, one facing the door and the other, perpendicular to it, closer to the fire. The walls were painted white and a calendar from a feed supply company hung on one wall. A slate board divided into a grid, showing the names of local businesses and the amounts of produce chalked in beside them – eggs, O’Keefe assumed, or possibly whole chickens – was fixed to the wall behind one of the desks.

A man in his thirties, dressed in heavy canvas trousers and a woollen pullover, came into the office from the back room of the cottage. He had a narrow, unlined face and intelligent blue eyes.

‘Winter’s on the way,’ O’Keefe said, by way of greeting.

‘Could be worse.’

O’Keefe removed his identification card and held it out. ‘I’m Acting Sergeant O’Keefe, Ballycarleton barracks. I was wondering if I could beg your help on something. I was told if anyone could help me it would be you. Mr Mulaney?’

‘Who told you that?’ Another man materialised from the back room before the first could answer. He was older than the first by a good twenty years but the two were clearly related. His fair hair was thin and greying, and there were weathered crags around his eyes.

‘I was telling this gentleman –’

‘I heard you. Now I’m telling you. We don’t help the police. If you’ve evidence of something, then take us in, but we’ll not aid the police any more than we would the army.’

‘Sir,’ O’Keefe said, ‘I’m investigating the murder of a young woman. It has nothing to do with politics. I was only hoping you could help me identify these feathers.’ Before he could object further, O’Keefe set his briefcase on the desk and produced the feathers from their paper envelope.

The elder Mulaney refused to look at them but O’Keefe could tell the younger was interested. The older man said, ‘I told you, Sergeant, we don’t help the police. Not now, not ever. Not me or my son. I don’t care a damn what case it is. We keep to our own here and run a business. We’ve no truck with the Crown and expect none from ye.’

‘I understand that, Mr Mulaney, but I’ve come because I’m told you have the best knowledge of poultry in the area. A young girl was murdered and these feathers were tarred to her body. They’re not feathers from your normal laying hens or chickens.’

The son spoke. ‘
These
feathers? These were … on herself?’

O’Keefe shifted his attention to him. ‘They were. She was tarred and feathered after she was killed. Have you any idea what kind of birds they might’ve come from?’

‘Don’t answer him, Stephen.’

The younger man ignored the order and examined the feathers. Hardened scraps of tar adhered to the quills. He looked up at O’Keefe and without preamble said, ‘Danny saw her. He told the other lads and they thought he was messing, dreaming things up the way he does.’

‘I told you to keep
whisht
, Stephen. Don’t make me say it again.’ He turned his anger on O’Keefe. ‘You know what’ll happen to my business if the boys in the hills find out we’ve spoken to ye? And how long do you think it will take for one of that shower outside to tell them? It’s bad enough we can’t sell to the army or the barracks because of the fucking boycott and now you coming …’

‘I’m sorry for your troubles, Mr Mulaney. I don’t mean to cause you any further ones.’ He turned back to the son. ‘Who is Danny?’

The son looked to his father and then back at O’Keefe. ‘He’s one of the workers here. Daniel Hooey. He doesn’t do much. Sweeps up mainly. Collects eggs. He’s not right in the head. Never has been. He has the job as a favour to his mother, God help her. A good woman and sister-in-law to my uncle.’

O’Keefe jotted the name into his investigation diary. ‘You say he saw the body? On the hillside?’