Evil for Evil (33 page)
I WOKE IN an ambulance, Uncle Dan by my side, supporting me. We were perched on a fold-down bench seat. Opposite us I made out Sláine on a stretcher, being attended to by a nurse. Her face was white. Her shirt had been cut away, and there was a compress bandage pressed to her chest, far enough to the right that it looked like the bullet had missed her heart. Maybe. The nurse had an IV working and held the stretcher steady as the ambulance rumbled over an uneven road. My coat and shirt had disappeared. I looked at my arm, saw the bandage. It started to hurt. The pain cut through the hazy veil of shock and fatigue.
“How is she?” I asked, surprised that my voice came out in a tight croak. Uncle Dan put a canteen in my good hand and I drank.
“She’s alive but I can’t tell how bad the damage is. Still, alive is good, and we should be at the base hospital in a minute.”
“Which base?”
“Ballykinler. It’s the closest hospital.”
Ballykinler. Where it all started. The theft of the BARs, Pete Brennan, Thornton, Andrew Jenkins, Carrick, Taggart, Sam Burnham, all the names involved in this mess had passed through Ballykinler at some point. But the list seemed incomplete. I was missing somebody, something, and I tried to fix a face in my mind, but all I saw was Uncle Dan, leaning close, his hand on mine.
“You did good, Billy. Your father’ll be proud when I tell him, he will.”
His words felt like water, cleansing me, washing over me and carrying me home. I rested my head on his shoulder and wondered if Sláine felt her father’s distant pride. If she lived, I could ask her. And if I could remember who the missing face was, everything might be OK. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open and fell asleep in my uncle’s arms, as I had so long ago, chugging back into Cohasset Harbor, into the setting sun, the silence of men sweet in my dreams.
“WHAT . . . where am I?” My eyelids were heavy with deep sleep and I blinked, trying to pry them apart and figure out what this place was. I was in bed on a nice soft mattress and under white sheets. I was wearing pajamas, and after the last day and night I was ready to stop fighting and lie back. Enjoy it, a small voice told me. But then a more insistent sound clamored inside my head, asking who I was missing. Who was the missing link? Just to shut the voice up so I could sleep, I gathered enough energy to open both eyes and look around, hoisting myself up on my good arm.
I was in a hospital room. Bandaged arm, I remembered that. Everything else seemed OK. I rubbed my hand on my neck where Taggart had pressed the barrel of his pistol. It was bruised and sore. I swung my feet off the bed and let them hang there as I stared at the other bed in the room, occupied by Uncle Dan, shoes off, tie loose, softly snoring. I looked around for a clock, then saw my wristwatch on the table. It was after one o’clock. Five or six hours, maybe, since the fight at the bridge.
The fight. That was one of the things bothering me. How did Taggart’s men know to be there? When had he summoned them? No one else knew we were going after him. For that matter, how did Carrick find us? Sláine hadn’t told anyone where we were going. I wanted to know how she was doing too, but business came first.
“Uncle Dan,” I said. He snored even louder. I sat on the edge of his bed, to shake him awake.
“What? Billy, how are you feeling? How’s the arm?”
“It hurts like the devil. Never mind that now. How did you know where to look for us? At the bridge.”
“Hugh brought me along when we got the call about Simms. When I couldn’t find you, I asked him to call the base over in Newcastle, and the officer there said you’d gone up the mountain with a squad of men. When we got to the jeeps, they opened fire. They must have been waiting for you.”
“But they couldn’t have been. Except for the executive officer, no one else knew where we were headed, and even he didn’t know why we were going or who we were after.”
He sat up, crossing his arms behind his head. It was his usual position for conjecture. “Perhaps Taggart’s men thought he was going to double-cross them, so they sent a security detail. They were expecting gold, weren’t they?”
“Maybe. But it’s more likely that only Taggart and Simms knew about the gold.”
“Now what exactly was their plan, Billy boy? I understand Taggart was out for revenge and all—”
“I think Taggart and Simms were close, closer than half brothers divided by religion might be expected to be. They both lost their mother to sectarian violence, and both lived on, damaged. Simms never fit in up north, and Taggart lost his ideals in Spain, then his whole family here. He’d given everything for the cause, and all he got out of it, at the end, was pain and grief. By now, most of the Irish are content with things the way they are. Exhausted, if content isn’t the right word. Either way, they’ve settled into neutrality in the south and accommodation in the north.”
“I see what you mean. It would be a powerful disillusionment for a man who’d given everything to the cause. So they set up a scheme to steal from all sides—the army, the IRA, the Germans, whoever they could—and leave Ireland behind them.”
“Yeah. Simms planned to take his wife along, and that was his big mistake. No beach in Rio for her. But Taggart wanted something more. He wanted the money but with him, I think, there was a desire to strike at the people who failed him.”
“The Irish people.”
“I think so. It’s exactly what I was sent here to investigate. A plan that involved the IRA and the Germans, an uprising in the north that might draw the Republic into the war. That’s what the fifty BARs were for.”
“At least it’s down to forty-four now. We recovered six at the bridge. Three lads dropped them and skedaddled, two died with their boots on, and one was shot through the lungs. He was alive an hour ago but barely.”
“How’s Sláine?”
“Still in surgery. The head doc said he’d stop by once they were done. Said she had a chance, a fair one. Can’t say I think much of an Irish lass working for the Brits like that but still, that’s quite a woman. If anyone can survive, she will. Are you two, ah . . .” He waved his hand back and forth, a motion that meant anything from holding hands to a romp in the hay.
“Strictly business, and none of it yours.”
“Whoa, Billy, can’t you tell your old uncle what you’re up to?”
“You’d never believe it. Tell me, did Carrick know any of the IRA men?”
“No,” he said, serious again. “He said they didn’t seem to be from around here. No identification, not even a wallet or a watch. Probably brought in from cells in other counties.”
“Did you hear about the Germans?”
“Aye, the Germans and the gold. They sent a party up to recover the bodies. Hugh and I searched them thoroughly, the Germans and the IRA boys. No evidence. Nothing except this.” He drew a gold coin from his coat pocket. One of the Kaiser Bills.
“Jesus! Does Carrick know you took that?”
“Now, Billy, it’s not like I stole it. That dead German had it in his pocket. Maybe he wanted a little insurance or maybe it was his own souvenir, I don’t know. But since it had become his personal property, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be mine. Booty of war, it is. It’ll make a nice present for your mother. She doesn’t always look kindly upon me, to tell you the truth.”
They said philosophers split hairs. “OK, OK. Keep it out of sight. And when did DI Carrick become Hugh? Are you guys pals now?”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Billy. He’s not a bad sort for a Scots-Irishman. Not that they’re my favorite bunch but he’s a fair cop, I’ll give him that.”
“Is he around?”
“No, he left about an hour ago. Said he had to get into his fancy dress for some lodge meeting tonight. He’s got roadblocks set up everywhere, and they’re checking IDs at train stations, buses, that sort of thing, still looking for those other two Germans who came ashore.”
“And forty-four IRA men carrying BARs.”
“Them too, but with Taggart dead they’ve no leader. And they’ll be hard to miss, especially if any of them stop off in a pub. I’ve had a close association with that group, you might say, and they’re not the most close-lipped bunch. I’ll bet you we’ll hear something soon.”
“Odd we haven’t, isn’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, obviously MI-5 and the RUC have informers.”
“All cops have informants. So?”
“But no one has reported a thing about the BARs. And you haven’t heard either, even with your connections.”
“Right,” Uncle Dan said.
“And Taggart himself was the flamboyant type, not the type to plan something quietly, keeping it under his hat. Remember, he already had openly used a BAR.”
“You think maybe there’s someone else? The quiet brains behind the operation?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“In a crazy sort of way, I get your point. But what is the operation? And how do we find out who’s really behind it?”
“You sure there was nothing on the bodies that might give us a clue? Or anything that happened during the fight? Could you tell if they had a leader?”
“All I knew was that they were shooting at me. Taggart sounded off a few times but as you said, he was half mad. No one else stood out.”
The door opened and a doctor in an operating gown came in, faint sprays of blood across his chest. “Lieutenant Boyle? We just finished with Miss O’Brien. She’s come through the worst. She’s lost a lot of blood but if she remains stable for the next twenty-four hours, she should fully recover.”
“Should?”
“There was a lot of damage, a good deal of internal bleeding. The next day or two will tell.”
“Can I see her?”
“Later. Right now she needs to rest. She wouldn’t know you were in the room anyway.”
The doctor left. I was glad I didn’t have to see her right away. I’d visited enough wounded cops half dead in hospital beds already, and I preferred to see her semi-upright and talking.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Where are my clothes?”
“Oh, I almost forgot. Bob Masters, that lieutenant you took up the mountain, he came by earlier with some things for you. Everything you had was muddy and bloodstained so he brought what you’d need. I took your lieutenant’s bars off your old clothes and put them on the new duds. And I got your boots and automatic when they brought you in. Didn’t want some orderly walking off with your armament.”
“Thanks. Is Masters still around?”
“No. He went back up Slieve Donard with a Graves Registration detail. To bring the bodies down.”
“Too many dead bodies around here, before these guys even reach the shooting war,” I said as I pulled on my shirt, wincing as I lifted my arm.
“There are places where the ground calls out for death, Billy, and this is one of them,” Uncle Dan said, helping me with my web belt as he might help a child to dress. “And they’ll be more if we don’t finish this thing. Oh, I almost forgot it. There was this little wooden pig in your pocket too. What the hell is that?”
“A good luck charm that lost its power,” I said as he handed Pig to me. I put him in my shirt pocket, and it felt like he belonged there. No harm in keeping him, I thought, as long as I don’t start talking to him.
“Where to next?”
“The bodies,” I said. “Are they here?”
“Yeah. In the morgue. You can always count on an army hospital to make room for the dead.”
It might have been the few hours of sleep or the clean clothes but it was most likely walking out of a hospital room under my own power that gave me a thrill, that survivor’s joy at having lungs, legs, and eyes that worked and moved as they should. I owed most of that to Taggart for not killing me. He had needed me mobile but subdued, and a through-and-through flesh wound was the quick and smart way to do it. I was lucky, I knew it. I also knew not to say it out loud, since Uncle Dan was famous for his thinking on the subject of luck. If you were really lucky, I could hear him say, you would have shot him dead first and been done with it.
They’d stripped the bodies. I looked at each man, naked and laid out on cold stainless-steel tables in the morgue. Washed down, their bodies looked pale, the whiteness punctuated by gaping bullet wounds. Each was small and wiry, the descendants of the famine generation, their frames a testament to rule by Britannia. Two had healed wounds, bullet holes in a leg and shoulder.
“They have the look, don’t they?” Uncle Dan said in a quiet voice. It was tinged with admiration, even though they’d tried to take his life the night before.
“Yeah. Their hands are rough but not callused like farmworkers.”
I sorted through their clothes, laid out on a table opposite the bodies. Typical wool pants, collarless shirts, caps, and shoes that you’d see on any man on the street, in a pub, or at work. Not their Sunday best. The pants were spattered with mud—no surprise there, since they’d been out in the wet weather.
“Not a single piece of identification but that’s standard practice. Even the labels were cut out,” Uncle Dan said, showing me the inside of a shirt.
“I don’t think Red Jack Taggart would have thought of that. Why isn’t he here?”
“Hugh—DI Carrick to you—moved the body to Belfast. Proof that he’d been taken.”
“Did you get a look at his clothes?”
“Yes, we went through everything. Now that you mention it, his tags were not cut out.”
“I’d say that means someone else was in charge of the IRA men. You checked everything?” I knew it was a dumb question, and I avoided Uncle Dan’s eyes as I felt along seams for anything hidden.
“Of course, what am I, a rookie? Jesus, Billy, you take nothing for granted, do you? I taught you well.” He gave me a playful push on my arm, and I winced. “Sorry, lad, I forgot about the arm. Well, here’s one small thing I did notice. These boys must have been doing some sort of farmwork before they came hunting you. Look.”
He turned out the cuffs on several pants. A fine, gritty line of dark brown powder and fibrous material fell from each. I rubbed it together between my fingers and smelt it.
“Is it fertilizer?” Uncle Dan asked.
“You’re no farmer, that’s for sure. But you are an Irishman. Don’t you know the smell of dried peat?”