The Blood Upon the Rose (25 page)

‘Listen, Foster. You know who this young woman is? Her father's on the General Staff in Dublin Castle. He owns a house in Merrion Square, and half of west Galway as well. The man’s a bosom friend of Lord French himself. You know that, don't you?’

‘I knew most of it, sir, yes.’

‘And you mean to tell me that his one and only daughter spent part of last night somewhere in a godforsaken rat-infested tenement in one of the worst slums in this city? With someone who might have been a Sinn Feiner?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Foster stood rigidly to attention, staring into the air somewhere over Kee’s head. Kee looked at him, sensing his hostility. Then he sat down behind his desk and waved his arm at a chair. ‘Sit down, for God’s sake, and relax. Let’s go through it again, shall we? You followed her from Merrion Square, you say. And you’re quite sure it was Miss Catherine? Not a maid, for instance, taking money to her relatives?’

Foster looked pained. ‘I’ve been watching her for a week now, sir. I know what she looks like.’

So do I, Kee thought. It's a memorable face, too. Those clear, innocent-looking eyes; a general air of fragile delicacy as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, she’s been out three times alone in the past couple of weeks. I’ve already reported that, sir.’

‘Yes. To the Gaelic League in Parnell Square. To learn bog Irish, as far as we can make out.’

‘Sir. And I’ve seen her with the same young man there. I think he fits the photo you gave me, but it’s hard to be sure.’

Kee nodded. Sean Brennan. It made sense. ‘So. Tell me about last night. She came out of the house on her own, did she?’

‘She did that, sir. At first I thought she was off to Parnell Square again but when she got over the river she turned right, up Amiens Street towards the North Circular.’

‘I know it.’ Kee nodded. It was not so far from North Strand, where the dead boy Savage had had his rooms.

‘Well, I kept her in sight, sir, all the way, and she met the young fellow at the junction with Portland Row. They had a brief discussion, then they went to a pub for a drink. I thought I’d lost them, there, because it wasn’t the sort of place I could be in myself alone for long without exciting comment. So I hung about outside, going up and down the street every five minutes and hoping for the best. But I was lucky. They were only in there for about twenty minutes. Then I followed them to the tenement.’

‘Stop there a second, now. You're sure it was the same couple who came out?’

‘No doubt at all, sir. For one thing, she had a blue coat with a fur collar, like a stole - you don’t see many of those around that area. And anyway, they were walking towards me. I had to go straight past them, near as I am to you now. I saw her as they came past - she looked right at me.’

‘If you were that close, you must have seen the boy’s face, too. Was it Brennan or was it not?’

Foster looked embarrassed. ‘Well, like I say, I think it was, sir. But it was the girl I was following, not him; and with her looking me in the face like that, I was petrified she’d recognize me, too. I hadn’t time to think of him.’

Kee sighed. ‘It may have escaped your notice, Detective Foster, but the reason you were following this young woman is not because I'm interested in her behaviour, scandalous though it is; it’s because I hope she's going to lead us to Brennan.’

‘Yes, sir. Well, if it is him, I’ve found out where he lives. They were in that tenement for over two hours, sir, and I hung about in the shadows for all that time without being seen, I think. When they came out they seemed to be having some sort of quarrel. I followed them back to Merrion Square, and then I followed him for a short while, but he kept looking round, so I fell back, and then I lost him, sir.’

‘It doesn't matter. You’ve done well, lad, very well indeed.’ Kee drummed his fingers on the table. ‘We’ll raid this place tonight, when we can be sure he’s at home. Now hop off and write your report, there’s a good lad. I’ve got some thinking to do.’

About what the devil I tell Radford about this girl. If anything, Kee thought. He had set up this surveillance without Radford's permission, and now it had borne fruit. In fact it was a hot political potato. Her daddy's not going to be pleased about this. Not one little bit.

As Foster stood up to go, Kee said: ‘Oh, about your report. This is a hush-hush one. Don’t give it to the girls to type. Davis will do it for you, if you can't manage the machine yourself.’

‘I’ll have a go myself, sir,’ said Foster conscientiously. ‘I’ve always thought I’d master it, if I kept up the practice.’

14

ANDREW SAT IN the lounge of the Lambert Hotel, smoking and reading the Irish Independent. There was a tale of atrocities in Bolshevik Russia: two Irish nurses had spent four days in a cellar crammed with counts and countesses waiting to be shot in the courtyard behind. The Red Army had started to invade Poland. In the United States 2,700 suspected communists had been arrested, and there was discussion of amending the constitution to ban the sale of alcohol. Bernard Shaw's
Heartbreak House
was still running in London.
Salome
was the hot favourite for the 500 Guineas in Phoenix Park.

He sat by the window with a clear view of the street and the entrance hall. Outside, part of the road was blocked by a lorry delivering vegetables. Cyclists swirled past, ringing their bells derisively, and swerving to avoid the dung left by a horse-drawn cab. The proprietor of the hotel was persuading the doorman to cast aside his dignity and sweep it up. A group of boys in shabby, outsize clothes hung around the back of the vegetable lorry, just out of reach of the delivery men, hoping to pick up dropped fruit.

One of the oldest couples in the Lambert Hotel came down the main staircase in their pre-war finery: the man in top hat, frock coat, and trousers caught with elastic under his boots; his wife in a mauve silk dress that came down to the ground, and a feathered hat the size of a cartwheel. Some special occasion, no doubt, but the clothes looked quite absurd today. The street urchins stared, began to nudge each other, and wolf-whistle; the hotel proprietor scurried about, trying to bow, smile, chastise the boys, and order a cab all at once; and Patrick Daly strode into the lounge.

Andrew stood up to greet him. He bowed, clicked his heels, and indicated a chair opposite him. ‘Will you take coffee?’

‘No thanks.’ Daly frowned at him, then grinned. ‘Come on. You’re in luck. He wants to see you.’

‘Mr Collins?’

‘Hush.’

Andrew picked up his brown leather bag and followed Daly past the pantomime in the hall. Daly took his arm briefly to show which way to go. ‘It’s in Donnybrook. We’ll take the tram.’

They caught the tram at the end of the street and sat side by side on the top deck. Andrew sat slightly stiffly. He hoped Daly would think that was the way German officers always sat; but in fact it was because he had his hunting knife strapped to his belt, in the small of his back. He probably wouldn't need it, with two loaded automatic pistols to take out of his bag and show Collins; but he had put it on as a last resort anyway.

Daly seemed in sunny mood, pointing out the city sights.

‘That's the GPO on your right, where they hoisted the flag in ‘16. Patrick Pearse stood on those very steps here and read out the proclamation. Have you been to Dublin before, Mr Hessel?’

‘No. It is my first visit. Thank you.’ Andrew smiled and nodded, but within him the tension was wound tight. He recognized the symptoms of excitement: slightly brighter colours, heightened sensitivity to small sounds, a great awareness of everything relevant to his survival, and a distancing, almost obliteration, of everything else. Time had not begun to slow down yet, but he knew that would come, when the moment for action came closer.

As they left the centre and trundled along Leeson Street and Morehampton Road towards Donnybrook, Daly fell silent. Andrew scanned the streets anxiously for signs of the police or army. A Tin Lizzie snorted past, its armoured turret and machine gun looking menacing and out of place in the city streets, but it was going in the opposite direction, and there were no others.

‘We get off here,’ Daly said.

Andrew followed him down the winding stairs at the back of the tram, and stood in the street expectantly. Daly looked up and down, considering each passer-by in turn. Apparently satisfied, he crossed the road and turned to his right, with Andrew following.

Brendan Road itself would be the hardest, Andrew knew. Radford or one of his officers had to be somewhere here, watching. It turned out to be a quiet, residential street, perhaps a little over a hundred yards long, the hardest kind to loiter casually in. The houses were two-storey red-brick semidetached villas with gardens front and rear, and coloured glass in the doorways. There was a window-cleaner halfway down, he noticed, some children playing football with a bundle of rags, a young woman pushing a perambulator. No one else at all.

Thank God for that.

Daly relaxed slightly, and quickened his pace.

‘A nice quiet place, you see, Mr Hessel,’ he said. ‘You’ll not be having anyone bother you in your negotiations here.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

Just before they reached the young woman with the perambulator, Daly opened a small garden gate, walked down the path, and knocked on the front door. It was the first house in the street, Andrew noticed, but quite a way down because of the unusually large back garden of the house on the corner of Morehampton Road. He glanced up and down the street again. About thirty-five yards further on a small road came in from the left, and fifty yards beyond that, Brendan Road itself turned left too. In the other direction, the way they had come, a cyclist had just turned into the road, wobbling unsteadily with a large load of groceries in the basket over his front wheel. But he couldn't be a policeman, surely? For one thing, he was far too young.

Wherever he was, Radford had managed to show far more discretion than Andrew had expected.

The door opened, and they stepped into a narrow hall, cluttered with two bicycles. Daly led him through to a room with a table, six chairs, a sideboard, a large wooden chest in the corner and a spinning wheel. The table was covered with papers and a typewriter. Two young men looked up from it as he came in.

‘This is the German officer, come to see Mick,’ said Daly. ‘Two of my men, Mr Hessel.’

Andrew clicked his heels and bowed.

‘Mr Collins’s office is upstairs, Mr Hessel,’ Daly explained. ‘I’ll take you there in a moment. But first, Seamus and Frank here would like to see the pistols you’ve brought.’

Andrew thought furiously. Yesterday, the two pistols had been empty; today, they were fully loaded. He didn't want Daly to see that. Nor did he want to lose the man’s trust by seeming awkward. Or by hesitating.

‘A pleasure,’ he said. He put the leather bag on the table, opened it, and lifted out the long Parabellum. As he did so, a telephone began to ring in another room. Daly looked flustered.

‘Is anyone in the office?’ he asked.

One of the young men shook his head. ‘I’ll go, then,’ Daly said. ‘I’ve had the demonstration already.’ He went out and closed the door behind him. So he can’t suspect anything, Andrew thought.

The two men looked at the gun in his hands, impressed. ‘That's a big weapon,’ Frank murmured. ‘What does it fire?’

‘Nine-millimetre cartridges, like the smaller Parabellum,’ Andrew said. He showed them how the helical snail magazine worked, and where the safety catch was. Then he put the gun back in his bag. He took out the Mauser and unwrapped that in turn. ‘This uses 9-mm too.’ Keep talking, he thought; then perhaps they won’t ask to touch this one either. ‘Both guns were very effective at the front,’ he continued. ‘It was possible to hit targets twenty or thirty metres away, even for ordinary young officers. You could do the same in the streets here.’ He began to put the second gun back in his bag. ‘I hope very much Mr Collins will like them. I want to show him all the details first. Where is he, please?’

The young men looked disappointed, but the guns were safely back in the bag. Andrew kept his hand inside it on the butt of the Mauser. This is the crucial moment, he thought. Either they protest, and take the guns away from me, or they show me through into Collins’ room with two loaded automatics in my bag. Either way, someone’s going to die in the next few minutes.

One young man picked up a piece of paper, and the other turned back to his typewriter. ‘Paddy’ll show you,’ he said, indifferently, as Daly came back into the room.

Daly smiled, and held the door open to the corridor. ‘Certainly I will. Follow me, Mr Hessel, and I’ll show you where you can meet the Minister of Finance.’

Andrew followed him upstairs. Time was moving very slowly now. In a few moments, he thought, I'll be sitting right in front of the man. After a few minutes’ talk I’ll show him the photograph of the Maxim gun, and then, when he’s absorbed in that, I’ll take a pistol out of the bag and shoot him. If Daly stays I'll shoot him too. Easy.

And then?

At the top of the stairs they turned and went back along a little landing to a bedroom at the front of the house. Andrew thought: That makes it easier. Radford's bound to hear the shots from there, and if he doesn’t, I’ll smash the window and jump out.

Daly opened the door and showed him inside. The room was light and spacious, overlooking the road. There was a double bed in a corner, and a table and two chairs near the wall. There were some shelves and a couple of boxes of papers. There was no carpet on the floorboards. And there was no one in the room at all.

Shocked, Andrew spun round and stared at Daly.

‘But - where is he?’ he asked.

There was a wicked grin on the Irishman’s face. ‘Sure and he’ll be along in a moment or two, Mr Hessel. You can never tell with our Michael from one minute to the next. Just sit down there and wait a while, would you now.’

He closed the door, and Andrew heard his footsteps clattering away down the stairs.