Peeler (30 page)

Finch said, ‘Keane’ll take it hard.’

‘He will. And then he’ll get over it.’

The Tan looked at O’Keefe. ‘Like you did, Sergeant?’

‘You and me, Finch.’

***

The barracks was buzzing when they returned. A group of constables had gathered in the yard, some in uniform, some in shirtsleeves. Word of the ambush had reached Ballycarleton. The men parted as Finch and O’Keefe escorted Keane from the car across the yard, into the barracks – his face still smeared with Heatherfield’s blood. At the door O’Keefe pulled Reilly aside.

‘Fill a hot bath for him, Reilly. New soap and fresh towels.’

The old man nodded, following Finch and Keane inside.

‘What happened, Sergeant?’ It was Finch’s pal, Barrett.

‘Ambush. Sniped at from a hill. Obstacle in the roadside on the run up to a small stone bridge. Heatherfield caught one.’

‘Dead?’ This was Kenzie, a Glaswegian Tan.

O’Keefe told them he was. ‘It was quick. The army are on it now. We got one and lifted another of them.’

‘Alive?’ Barrett again.

‘He’s alive. Bandon has him at the moment.’

As if he’d summoned the man, the gates swung open and a Crossley filled with RIC and army pulled into the yard. The tailgate dropped and two Bandon constables helped a handcuffed prisoner down from the bed of the Tender. The Ballycarleton men moved as a group, closing on the back of the Crossley. One of them shouted, ‘Is that him?’

The first punch knocked Daniel Hooey to the ground and set off the high-pitched keening Finch and O’Keefe had heard on the hillside. He repeated one word this time, and O’Keefe understood it clearly. The word was ‘No.’

The kicking came next. Feet and fists raining down, the dull thud of leather and fist on flesh. The keening.
No. No.
Daniel Hooey attempted to crawl under the Tender and rough hands dragged him back.

‘Enough!’ O’Keefe roared.

One or two of the men stopped. A few kept at it and O’Keefe took the carbine he was carrying from the Ford and began to swing it by the barrel. He clipped one of the men on the shoulder and the man stood up and threw a punch. A young Irish con, nineteen, twenty maybe. Turner from Wicklow, his face red with rage, had trained up in Phoenix Park with Heatherfield. O’Keefe ducked the punch and jabbed Turner in the chest with the butt of the Enfield.

Bennett, O’Keefe noticed as he lifted Daniel Hooey to a standing position, had pulled one of the other Tans away, the man’s last kick missing wildly, sending him back off balance into Bennett’s arms. There were rough shouts and curses, as well as the odd word to leave off and the high-pitched pleading of the man in O’Keefe’s arms. Their anger spent, the men moved back, eyeing the prisoner. Sheepish, O’Keefe thought. They saw it now. It didn’t take a scholar to see that the prisoner wasn’t right in the head.

Leading Hooey to the barracks, O’Keefe heard laughter from across the yard: Mathew-Pare, Starkson, Eakins. They were lounging in the doorway to the cottage.

‘Need some help, Sergeant?’

‘I could use your lads, Detective, to take this man to the cells.’

The three walked over. Eakins tossed down his cigarette and took the prisoner by the arm. Starkson took a last drag on his and flicked it dangerously close to the group of men standing by the Crossley. He didn’t even look at them. He took Hooey’s other arm.

‘Keys are on the hooks,’ O’Keefe said. ‘Make sure he doesn’t come to any harm.’ He turned to the group of men by the Crossley. There was something in his eyes when he spoke that made one or two of the men look away. ‘I’m going to forget this happened, lads. And that’s the last time it does. Is that clear?’

He said it louder. ‘Is that clear?’

They mumbled, more or less as a unit. ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Good. Now clear out.’

‘You want my boys to mind the prisoners, then?’ Mathew-Pare was at O’Keefe’s elbow.

O’Keefe watched the Crossley pull out into the street, the gate swinging closed. He turned to Mathew-Pare.

‘I’d appreciate …’ He caught himself. ‘
Prisoners
?’

Mathew-Pare smiled. ‘You didn’t see Sergeant Daly yet?’

‘No.’

‘Connors, Sergeant. Lifted him at the funeral. Nothing to it.’

Jesus. The funeral. He’d completely forgotten. ‘You lifted him? Seamus Connors?’

‘Like a baby into a mother’s arms. Came easy, more’s the pity. Loaded parabellum stuffed down the back of his trousers. Boys would have had him full of holes before he got it out. I think he knew it.’

Excitement sparked in O’Keefe – Heatherfield, the ambush, forgotten for the moment. Keane. The man he’d shot, forgotten.
Jesus
.
That was easy.
The whole thing might be over.

‘He say anything yet?’

‘No,’ Mathew-Pare said, taking out another cigarette, cupping his hand to light it. ‘But he will. ’

O’Keefe went to change into his uniform. As he dressed, Daly entered the office.

‘Bit of rough stuff on the road, Seán?’

‘A bit. Heatherfield …’ O’Keefe swallowed, the dead constable’s name like an accusation in his throat, ‘young Heatherfield took one in the face.’

For once, Daly was serious. ‘If it’s for you, it won’t go past you,’ he said. ‘God rest him. How’s Keane taking it? They were pals, weren’t they?’

O’Keefe nodded, staring at himself in the mirror. His face was older than he remembered. When had he last looked at himself? That morning? He’d grown haggard, lines at the corners of his eyes. Dark circles under his eyes like ashes tipped on snow, his scar red and inflamed. He splashed water on his face and rubbed at the circles under his eyes as if he could wipe them away.

Daly changed tack. ‘I heard you put one of the fuckers in the ground yourself. A one-all draw, then.’

‘Won’t bring the young lad back.’

‘Well,’ Daly said, stuffing his pipe, lighting it. ‘We got Connors for you, if it’s any consolation.’

‘How is he?’ O’Keefe buttoned his tunic and ran a wet comb through his hair.

‘Either mad with grief or just plain mad.’

‘He came easy?’

‘Like he wanted us to have him. Got hardy looks from some lads in the lanes after we took him though. As if perhaps we weren’t the only ones looking for him.’

O’Keefe considered this. Maybe the IRA had decided that Connors had killed the girl and wanted to deal with him themselves. He remembered the letter from Childers to Collins: ‘… this woman was killed in contravention of orders by the IRA.’

And then the thought struck him. If Connors was guilty, Heatherfield had died for nothing. A wasted trip to the poultry farm. A whim. O’Keefe prayed – for the first time in years – that it wasn’t Connors who had killed the girl. The prayer rang hollow.

There were still the feathers to consider. If they didn’t get a confession from him, the feathers were evidence of a sort
.
If he could source them and connect Connors to their source …
Jesus, Seán, get a grip of yourself.
He had a feeling the case was over, whether he wanted it to be or not.

‘By the way,’ Daly said, speaking around his pipe stem. ‘The DI said he couldn’t wait. Off to town to be awarded the Victoria Cross or some such for catching the nefarious Seamus Connors. He said for you to have a run at the boy if you like, but not to break him up if he doesn’t talk. Doesn’t want the glass cracked before the Castle men take him off our hands.’

‘It’s not me he’d want to worrying about, the thick bastard.’

***

O’Keefe stopped by the day-room and found Keane. He was sitting at a table on his own, staring at a cold cup of tea, a cigarette burning down in the ashtray at his elbow. He was clean and back in uniform.

‘Keane?’

He didn’t look up. ‘Sergeant?’

‘You heard they got Connors?’

Keane nodded. ‘You’ll write his mam?’

‘I will, Keane. I’ll do it tonight. Heatherfield was a good man.’ O’Keefe couldn’t think of anything else to say. He hadn’t known him very well. Keane picked up the cigarette and stared at its slow curls of smoke.

‘A fella survives the whole bloody war and then gets killed here, on a road like the roads I’ve walked all my life. It doesn’t make any fucking sense, Sergeant.’

‘No, Keane, it doesn’t. Your number’s on the ticket and …’ It sounded harsh. He felt that he should say something about duty and honour and the higher purpose they served in the RIC. Protecting – no, striving to protect – the people of Ireland from men who thought they had the right to murder those who disagreed with their aims. That Heatherfield died trying to stop these men and that his contribution had made a difference. But O’Keefe couldn’t give voice to the lie. He tried to think of something else to say, but nothing came and he turned and headed for the cells.

‘Mind if I join you, Sergeant?’

Mathew-Pare had been waiting for O’Keefe in the kitchen, across the hall from the cells on the lower-ground floor.

‘No, Detective. Not at all, but could I ask you not to speak in the interview? Might put the mockers on if he hears an English accent this early in.’

‘Interrogation manual. Familiar faces, voices, local knowledge. Build a bond. Works better than physical influence, so the manual says.’ His smile was empty under the faded blue eyes, a cigarette in his yellowed fingers.

‘I just think it would be better for now.’

‘Of course, Sergeant.’

He set up in the interview room, a storage area off the kitchens just big enough for a small wooden table and three chairs. It was lit by one electric light on a wire hanging from the ceiling and, high in the wall, there was a half-window onto the yard above. From his briefcase, O’Keefe took Connors’ file and his investigation diary on the Costelloe murder. He had one of the young constables bring an ashtray and a fresh packet of Player cigarettes.

Starkson and Eakins escorted Connors in and sat him behind the table. Mathew-Pare nodded for his men to leave and took a chair against the wall. O’Keefe sat opposite Connors. Studying the file photograph, O’Keefe looked up and compared it to the man sitting across from him. There was a resemblance certainly, but the man had changed in the intervening years. He was leaner, his cheekbones chiselled. Dark hollows braced his brown-black eyes and his hair, so carefully oiled and combed in the photograph, hung lank over his sweat-stained collar. His strong, angled jaw was hedged with stubble. He wore a British army tunic, threadbare at the cuffs, a white shirt and black tie. His trousers were of rough corduroy and looked to have rested in many the barn or ditch. O’Keefe offered Connors a cigarette from the packet. ‘Are you well, Mr Connors? Have you been mistreated in any way?’

Connors glanced over at O’Keefe and held his gaze. He seemed then to come to some conclusion and brought his eyes up to a spot on the wall and held them there.

O’Keefe stared at him for a moment longer and began to leaf through his notes. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Connors was Deirdre Costelloe’s killer but the man had form. O’Keefe reckoned he’d give him a jolt by starting with something from his past. From before the Troubles had started in earnest.

He read aloud:
‘
March 14, 1917, complaint against one Seamus Connors for the harassing of one Judith Mackey. Also charged with breaking and entering Mackey family home, public intoxication and assault on a police constable.’ Pausing, O’Keefe looked to Connors for a response and got nothing. He quoted again from the charge sheet: ‘Found in possession of surgical scalpel, cleaving knife, bone saw, surgical spreader.’

No response.

O’Keefe raised his eyes from the file. ‘Were you going to cut the tits off Judith Mackey the way you did Deirdre Costelloe?’

Connors’ eyes flared. O’Keefe caught the flash and pushed harder.

‘Because Judith chucked you over? The same way Deirdre did?’

Connor’s eyes went back to the wall but he blinked twice. Bull’s-eye, O’Keefe thought.

‘Hard to believe a man could do the things you did to that girl. A girl you said you loved. Stick a blade, an ice pick in her head and then rape her. Cut off her breasts. Spend that much time with the body. What did you do with the breasts when you’d cut them off, Seamus?’

Seamus Connors still stared at the wall, but O’Keefe could see he was trembling. The silence in the room was punctuated by the rasp and click of Mathew-Pare’s cigarette lighter.

‘Did it feel good when you finally fucked her, Seamus? I’d wager you felt fierce good until it was all over. Then it hit you. What you did to the woman you loved. Stabbed her in the brain and then took what you’d wanted for so long. All those rolls in the fields after dances and she never letting you ’tween her legs. Never let you at it and then chucked you over for some swell with a cushy motor who bought her presents a gunman on the run like yourself could never have afforded, not in a thousand years.’

Still nothing. Eyes on the wall. O’Keefe noticed the tensing of the muscles of Connors’ jaw.

‘And so you butchered her and laid her on a hillside and labelled her the worst thing you could come up with.
Traitor
. Tarred and feathered the poor girl’s privates for the world to see. It wasn’t enough what you’d done to her, you had to punish her, even in death.’ He paused. ‘What do you see on the wall, Seamus? Do you see Deirdre’s face? The way it was when she laughed, when she smiled at you and said sweet things to you laying in the grass after a hike out to the Head of Kinsale? The way her face looked when you held her at the Palace Dance Hall, her cheeks flushed with the heat of the place, her lips red and her teeth lovely and white. I saw her teeth, Seamus. I saw every bit of her when the surgeon opened her up and took out her heart and her lungs and womb. I saw inside her skull, Seamus. Saw the path the sticker you used made in her brain.’ O’Keefe shifted his eyes to Mathew-Pare. The Englishman was leaning back, smoking, as if he were watching a play that only half-interested him.

‘Or perhaps you see Judith Mackey’s face up there, do you?
Do you?
’

Connors didn’t respond. O’Keefe tossed the file onto the table.

‘You never loved Deirdre. You hated her. Only hate could make a man do to someone what you did to Deirdre.’