When Shadows Fall (37 page)

“No, they’re dead,” she replied, brushing some food crumbs off the table. “Football, yes, why not? I’ll have to get dressed.”

“It’s not for hours yet.” Adam watched her warily. “Tara, are you all right? Did I say something wrong?”

She didn’t answer but went to the wall mirror and pulled a face at the state of her hair. Then she turned back to him. “Hmm, something wrong? No, don’t be silly. Why would there be?”

“I was only being curious, asking about your parents.”

“I don’t want to talk about my parents.”

“Fair enough.” For an unsettled moment, Adam wondered if the beautiful Tara harboured more secrets than she let on. “Why don’t you get some breakfast on? We should eat before we leave.”

“I normally go to Mass on Sundays.”

“Let’s be sinful—skip the church and see some football.”

Finally she smiled. “All right. I’ll wash and make myself presentable.
You
can make the breakfast.”

“That’s more like it.” He relaxed. “You know what, I think today could turn out to be a whole lot of fun.”

At 28 Pembroke Street, Lieutenant-Colonel Woodcock had heard Dowling’s shouts. Woodcock’s wife screamed in their bedroom. She was at the window, gesticulating wildly outside to where men were clambering over the back wall into the garden.

“Dowling, stay put,” Woodcock yelled. Then he heard a pistol crack and a crash against the landing furniture.

“Goddamn it, assassins upon us.” He pulled his terrified wife back from the window. “Get down, darling, we’ll be all right. I said get down!”

Shaking, she lay behind the bed. Woodcock loaded a revolver and slowly opened the bedroom door.

There were bodies moving below, loud boots on the flooring. Woodcock saw the bloodied and lifeless Dowling lying nearby.

“Do you know,” he demanded, “that there are women in this house? You hounds!”

“We know it,” a voice answered calmly.

Before Woodcock could muster another indignation, several of them appeared on the stairs. They climbed it rapidly and the leader jabbed his gun at Woodcock.

“Drop it.”

Woodcock knew the desperation of his plight. He obeyed, released his weapon, and raised his hands. “You won’t hurt my wife. I forbid you. I’ll kill you if—”

“That’s quite enough,” the man answered. “Your wife won’t be harmed. We’ll have to inspect the other rooms now.”

More men shoved past him. Doors were kicked open, wardrobes opened, beds overturned. Then gunfire. A barrage of bullets thumped into flesh.

“Murderers,” Woodcock howled in fury. “Keenlyside and Montgomery were unarmed!”

“So are you,” answered the man guarding him. He aimed and shot Woodcock through the head, waited for the body to fall, and then tucked the pistol inside his coat. “Out, now. Everybody, lads, out now.”

As they thundered back down the stairs, a bedroom door opened. On unsteady legs, one of the other wives followed the attackers below, down the garden path and all the way out to the street. She cried out in sheer anguish. “I was just buttoning my
blouse!
Oh, please God, I was distracting him. You’ve killed my husband, and I was just buttoning my blouse!” She collapsed on the pavement, clasping her head. “Oh, I was just . . . you’ve killed him . . . please, God, no . . . ”

The squad of gunmen stopped briefly to look back at her. They blessed themselves, reloaded their guns, and hurried on towards the next block.

At the Shelbourne Hotel, James awoke for the second time. He yawned, stretched, and heaved himself up. Last night’s dinner was still on a tray on the floor, remnants of pan-fried monkfish and cabbage. He nudged it with his toe towards the door and opened the window to release the whiff of stale food and sweat.

The hotel was quiet, being a Sunday morning. He decided he needed fresh air, so he put on a pair of jogging shorts, a vest, and a light cotton jumper. He’d do a few circuits of St. Stephen’s Green and work up an appetite for breakfast. He went out to the hallway and left the tray on the carpet for the maids to pick up.

Then there was another noise.

Heavy footfalls on the fire escape stairwell. Somebody evidently in a hurry. It was a crude noise in the erstwhile Sunday peace of the hotel, and James turned to cast a haughty look at the culprit.

But he saw more than one. Two men in trench coats emerged from a door. They stopped when they spotted James.

A cold smile slid across the face of the first man. There was recognition in his eyes. James scowled in annoyance.

“Really, fellows. Where’s the fire? Is there a need for such bluster at this hour of the—”

He froze.

Both men pulled guns from their pockets.

James was dulled by sleep, caught off guard, and slow to react. He backed against his bedroom door, but it had self-locked and wouldn’t open. They strode towards him, and one of them asked, “Are you District Inspector James Bryant?”

A woman shrieked down the corridor. The maid had rounded the corner, and now encountering the unexpected sight of two big intruders with guns, she slipped to her knees and proceeded to scream her lungs dry. Both men glanced at her.

The interruption was enough to distract the moment.

James sprang at the nearest man, grabbed his pistol hand, and locked his free arm round his neck. The man jerked his head back violently and cracked James in the nose, sending a hot spear of pain through his skull.

The effect was tremendous; it gave him a surge of angry adrenaline, like a jolt of electricity. James forced the revolver up, squeezed the man’s trigger finger, and the shot was perfectly aimed to hit the second attacker in the chest. He staggered away, dropping his weapon. The first now struggled wildly to regain control of his gun and tried again to break James’s nose with the back of his head. James dodged the blow. The maid was hoarse with terror as both men grunted and wrestled and crashed against sideboards and oil paintings.

Amidst the battle, the gun discharged and fell on the floor.

James lost balance and stumbled backwards. His opponent doubled over and clasped his stomach with a bellow of agony. He tried to make for the stairwell, blood leaking through his fingers. The gun was still on the carpet. James snatched it up and roared at the maid to stay down. He fired the remaining rounds in the breech in quick succession, at both men, the noise a violent calamity inside the narrow hallway.

In the deafening after-silence, a stench of burnt cordite filled the air. James checked the bodies and then looked at the maid, putting a finger to his lips.

“Stop bleating, my dear. Go and fetch the manager. I’ve got a complaint to make about the clientele.”

CUMANN NA GCLEAS
LÚIT NGAEDHEALACH
(
GAELIC ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION
)
GREAT CHALLENGE MATCH
(
FOOTBALL
)
TIPPERARY V. DUBLIN
AT CROKE PARK
ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER
21
MATCH AT
2.45
P.M.

Adam and Tara had spent the morning strolling around the lush acres of Phoenix Park. They took a cab back to the city centre at lunchtime, to where the match crowd was thickening fast. They had sandwiches and tea in a café in Smithfield, the air loud with country tongues and pregame excitement.

But there were soldiers and policemen in the streets, too. Far more than what was normal for a Sunday afternoon, Adam thought. They moved with unsettling urgency, trucks roaring past, and random pedestrians were being stopped and searched. He watched them warily. Was the crowd making them nervous? Was there a problem?

After lunch they walked in the direction of the football grounds at Croke Park. A huckster in a moth-eaten shawl called to Tara, trying to tempt her to some late autumn offerings. Tipperary’s supporters were congregating in groups, boisterous with their first experience of the capital. The loudest voice, however, came from an aging policeman who was thundering at a poplin seller.

“Fourteen slain,” he spat, “and that’s only the last count. The IRA death squads had a bloody rampage.”

Adam stopped, listened, and edged closer to the conversation.

“Didn’t I just say it to the wife, that there was something wrong this morning?” The trader shook his head with incredulity. “Fourteen?”

“British intelligence men and detectives, I’ve heard,” the policeman answered. “The very cream of the crop, and the IRA have wiped them all out. There’ll be hell to pay over this.”

“Adam?”

Tara had moved on in the crowd, but now she turned back to see where he was gone.

“Coming,” he said.

They rejoined the throng and Tara looked at him. “Are you all right? You seem a little bewildered.”

Fourteen. The very cream of the crop. It had the paw prints of Michael Collins all over it.

“What? Yes. I’m all right, thank you. Come on, I want to get a good spot for the football.” He glanced back once at the policeman, and then continued on towards Croke Park.

News soon spread of the early morning killings. There was unease in the crowd. Heads leaned towards each other and voices were taut with tension.

Nonetheless, there was a football match to be played.

“Something happened this morning, didn’t it?” Tara asked Adam, as they squeezed their way towards the canal end of Croke Park.

“It’s nothing,” he told her. “Just enjoy the game.”

“Adam, I can hear everybody talking about it.”

“All right,” he sighed. “There were some shootings. That’s all I know. But let’s forget about it.”

She closed her eyes for a second. “It’s the IRA. They’ve been killing people, I’ll bet.”

“I’m sure they had their reasons. Here, this way, I want a spot higher up.”

“Butchers. Will they ever stop?”

But Adam hadn’t heard those words. He tried to manoeuvre them a better vantage point as spots were rapidly occupied.

Behind schedule, at quarter past three the teams jogged out onto the grass. Both captains were summoned to the centre by the referee while the other players took up their positions. The referee gave a few gruff warnings about conduct, the captains shook hands, the whistle blew, and the ball was in the air.