Last Out From Roaring Water Bay (44 page)

He proved he was a stubborn bastard for his size.

“They’ll not get me off Irish soil. I have me rights.”

I said, “Do you think the Japanese will be bothered about your rights. The Japanese submariners down there in that horrible damp cavern were slaughtered. They were gunned down without as much as a fair fight. I think I could quite easily convince a court of your involvement to first degree murder. Maybe they’ll find a trace of your DNA down there to prove your involvement. The scientists nowadays are very clever.”

Willie flustered, sweat sprouting over his top lip. “Yer can’t incriminate me. We worked together, that’s all! We repaired quays and jetties and run down ancient buildings. Yer can’t make me confess to anything else. Now leave me in peace!”

“You’re lying to me, Willie. You know everything.”

He shook his head vigorously in denial.

“I’m willing to make a deal.”

His ears pricked up. “What-what sort of deal? “He asked cautiously.

“It’ll be rewarding.”

“You’re willing to pay?”

“I was thinking more on the lines of non-implication to mass murder.”

He scowled. He wasn’t happy with his only option.

“Tell me everything I want to know about Jimmy McCracken. It’s that simple. And then I’ll walk out of here; this meeting forgotten; it never existed and you won’t be implicated in anything. I can’t be fairer than that.”

I could tell by his expression that he had his doubts.

Willie shuffled in his seat thinking it over.

I could see he was going to need more convincing. “Just the whole story concerning Jimmy McCracken and I promise you’ll not see or hear from me again.”

He frowned. “Why should I trust you, a stranger? Shop me to Garda the moment my backs turned, yer will!”

“Millie trusted me when she gave me your name. She thought you could help me.”

“Are yer in trouble?” he said slowly.

“Not just me. There are others who may depend on any scraps of information you pass on to me.”

“Yer won’t mention my name to anyone?”

“You have my silence.”

“God will strike yer down otherwise”

“You have my word.” I assured him.

“If yer do I’ll kill yer! I swear it.”

I stared him straight in the eyes and said solidly, “Willie, I could smash your throat with one punch, walk away and nobody will care a frigging toss; so less of your idle threats. I’m only interested in Jimmy McCracken and what happened on Cape Clear Island. Tell me what I want to know and you can sink back into your void of loneliness. We have a deal?”

He thought about it for three seconds, nodded and leaned even closer to me so no one could overhear even a whisper, which was pointless because there was no one near enough to even hear our conversation. When Willie began his story I was annoyed with myself for not bringing a hidden voice recorder.

“It was all Jimmy’s idea,” he began. “We were all together one drunken night: Jimmy, me and the other lads,” Willie’s eyes flicked about nervously as he talked. “Jimmy asked which of us fancied becoming rich men instead of being paupers for the rest of our lives. Who wouldn’t want money in their pockets? I mean…times were hard. We listened to what Jimmy had to say. He left us gasping for air.

“Jimmy was involved with the IRA. The lads knew that. He hated the Brits. Me! I wasn’t one bit concerned about Northern Ireland. Neither were the other lads. What we didn’t know was he’d offered his services to the Germans, shortly after the Dunkirk disaster. He was mixing it with German spies.

“Jimmy told us about a shipment of gold destined for German shores. We were flabbergasted when he said he intended to hijack the gold right from under the noses of the expectant Germans. And that we’d have to attack a Japanese submarine to get our hands on the loot. We thought it was some crackpot scheme Jimmy had made up to impress us; not that we told him that; yer didn’t tell Jimmy McCracken what you thought of him because he’d bash yer face to pulp with a iron bar, that he would.”

“Charming fellow playing a double role of deceitfulness,” I said sarcastically.

“The man was a killer that’s for sure. Stupidly we listened to everything Jimmy said. The thought of gold had us dribbling from the corner of our mouths. He relayed his intricate plan to us in detail. It seemed workable, but bloody dangerous. The dangerous part of it I didn’t fancy; the strong chance that we may be involved in a mini war ourselves. We’d to kill people if necessary. I withdrew my service right away. I didn’t want blood on me hands. I wasn’t a fighting man. I found the courage to tell him I wanted out. Wealth I’d try to achieve later, in a more civilised manner. But no! Jimmy wouldn’t accept my withdrawal. I’d made the mistake of listening instead of walking away when I had the chance. I always thought Jimmy was a friend. I was wrong. He was a bully, a dangerous bully. He said he couldn’t take the risk of me walking away with the information I now had. He said he would have to kill me to maintain my silence. Well…what could I do but to participate in his scheme?

“Aye, Jimmy was a right bastard alright; a right bastard with a brilliant mind. I could only admire his skills as a master stonemason and a fantastic engineer though his talent in engineering was nothing compared to his urge for violence. As it was, we set to work on Jimmy’s get-rich scheme. Three months of sweat and hard graft to construct everything inside the cavern. We had to transfer heavy equipment and materials from the mainland to Cape Clear, and then by hand-carts across to Dun an Oir. We had constructed a pulley system to transfer the gear across to the derelict fort. We’d no time to construct a bridge of sorts.”

“What about the locals on the island? They never questioned your activities?”

“The few locals there at the time thought we were construction men repairing the fort. Jimmy had already warned them in advance. As for the cavern, Jimmy had discovered the place by accident, when he was doing some renovation on the ruins to prevent further disrepair. He’d discovered a tunnel that spiralled down, like a helter-skelter, a phenomenon probably caused when the worlds volcanoes divided its lands. It wasn’t too steep either and wide enough to carry the heavy equipment down into the cavern.

“Jimmy reckoned the fort was used as a stronghold by the O’Driscoll’s to protect their wealth from invaders and the cavern was their escape route in case the fort was overrun. Dun an Oir was a giant piggy-bank; how ironic was that.”

I pushed on. “What happened once you were down inside the cavern?”

“We constructed a generator for lights and a high powered winching mechanism. We used boats to lay wire ropes on the seabed in advance. Billy-boy was our professional underwater worker. He dragged lighter lines into the cavern and we used the winch to drag the heavy wire rope through.

“Down inside the cavern Jimmy trained us to use weapons. We practiced and practiced until we were as good as any commando unit. When everything was finally in place the plan was executed with unbelievable expertise. I had to hand it to Jimmy, he was a smooth operator. I’d no doubt whatsoever that if Jimmy had managed to escape the fall-in, he would have continued his career in the IRA and would have made Commander-in-Chief.”

Willie was beginning to bore me with irrelevant glorified details. I urged him along. “Never mind how good he was in murder. What happened next?”

“What Jimmy had predicted would happen. This Jap submarine sat off Clear Island as dusk began to fall. I’ve no idea where it came from. It was just sat there, waiting to be hit. We moved in on the sub by inflatable crafts, attached limpet mines to the propellers and fins and blew a hole in her rear end and sank her to the bottom of the sea, crippled and helpless and filling with water. Billy-boy went down and secured the wire ropes to the submarines two diving fins and then the winch did the rest, dragging the submarine into the cavern slowly, inch by inch.”

“Did anyone spot what you were doing?” I asked with interest.

He thought for a minute. “Aye, there were an RAF Spitfire buzzing us at the time but it soon went; not that it would have made any difference because the sub began to sink at that point and disappeared off the face of the earth.

“Jimmy might have been a murderous, anti-Brit, fascists, but yer can’t fault the ingenious piece of engineering skills in the design and building of a diesel winch capable of dragging so much tonnage. Within twenty-four hours the sub was inside the cavern and its hull beached. You had to be there to believe what we were doing, but it worked. It worked! It was a magnificent sight, she was a real beauty and we’d captured her; eight working men and seven of us with no war experience whatsoever.”

“Well I can assure you, Willie, it’s nothing but a rusting graveyard now. Go on!”

“We had our submachine guns in readiness in case any of the crew tried to exit the sub. We burnt a hole into the side of the sub. We knew the Jap’s would be waiting for us to push our noses into their craft, but they didn’t stand a chance. Jimmy tossed in a handful of German grenades for good measure; lethal things they were; blew the Jap’s to pieces. And then the lads stormed inside shooting every bastard they found. I stayed outside to cover the conning tower and the deck hatches for any escapees. I listened to the raging battle inside the iron shell; heard more explosions from inside. It was a massacre. Submariners don’t make good ground troops. Not one Jap was left alive. There would be no captives, on Jimmy’s orders. He didn’t want witnesses to the crime. But momentarily our wickedness was forgotten when we found the gold boxes amongst crates of cargo.

“Jimmy allowed us to keep one box of gold apiece; that was our fee. The remaining boxes, and there were a lot, we took by handcarts to North harbour and loaded the gold onto our boat, plus fifty smaller crates that Jimmy wanted.”

“What was in those?”

Willie gave an uncommitted shrug. “Jimmy didn’t say and none of us was in the right frame of mind to ask a madman. Besides, we were exhausted, just glad the job was done. Jimmy sailed away alone.”

“Why take the gold alone?”

“He said the gold belonged to the coffers of the IRA to buy weapons to use against the British army once the war in Europe finished. He must have had a contact somewhere to take control of the gold. I suspected the gold was to be his elevation to the top of the IRA ladder.”

“In which direction did he sail?”

“Is it important?”

“In which direction did he go, Willie?”

“North, across Roaring Water Bay; to the other side probably. That doesn’t mean anything, as he could have changed course for all I know.”

“What did the rest of you do afterwards?”

“Not much I can tell you. We sat around bored shitless, eating crap food and drinking bottles of beer while we waited for Jimmy to return twenty hours later.”

“McCracken never told anyone where he’d taken the gold?”

“He never really got the chance did he? The secret died with him.”

I got the impression that Willie was glad he was ridding the burden of the past once and for all.

Willie’s mouth was flowing now. “It was after Jimmy returned when our real troubles began. Sean, he was always the obstinate one and with a bit of drink inside him, decided to confront Jimmy. In Sean’s opinion one box of gold wasn’t enough payment for the risk they had all taken. I thought he’d an arguable case. Jimmy didn’t. He killed Sean right in front of our eyes; gunned him down, right there in the cavern. I’ll always remember the sprinkling of gold bars dropping from the disintegrating box as the bullets ripped into Sean’s body. And then with a smirking smile on his face, Jimmy turned to the rest of us and callously said, ‘there yer are lads come and collect yer bonus.’ He then pumped the remainder of the magazine into Sean’s face so if he were to be found he wouldn’t be recognized.”

I remembered the skeleton laying in the sand when I had first landed inside the cavern. That must have been Sean’s bones I’d stood on. It also confirmed to me that Willie wasn’t lying to me and his memory of events that day he’d never forgotten.

I said, “Doubly charming character was our Jimmy McCracken.”

“I’d befriended a madman and I don’t mind telling yer I was petrified. What I couldn’t believe was the other lads seemed to accept what Jimmy had done to Sean; they filled their pockets with the extra gold. I didn’t. I was more worried what Jimmy would do next; wondering if he intended to kill the rest of us when our backs were turned. I had to get out of that place of death. I was first up the tunnel carrying me gold. Damned heavy it was. I thought the rest were following me. I knew Jimmy would have been last out because he’d have had to switch off the generator and cover it with the tarpaulin; always meticulous was Jimmy. I always suspected he had this insane vision of re-floating the submarine, hoist the IRA flag and use it against the Brits.

“Anyway, I was halfway up the tunnel when I heard the gargled scream echo chillingly through the tunnel. It had to have come from one of the submariners. I stopped, wondering if I should go back. I heard one of our lads shout, ‘watch out! There’s one on the conning tower!’ Then shots were fired, and then there was a terrific explosion at the bottom of the tunnel. The entire place shook like a gigantic jelly. The tremors under me feet nearly knocked me over. When I thought about it much later I assumed one of the submariners was still alive and had managed to fire a cannon shell in retaliation. I just stood there frozen to the spot waiting for something to happen. That was when I saw the bellowing cloud of dust hurtling towards me like a sand storm.”

“What did you do then?”

“I didn’t hang around that’s for sure. Not after the tunnel started shaking violently, as if struck by an earthquake and chunks of rock began cascading down. I was out of the there. I even threw down my box of gold because it impeded my ability to run fast. I ran. I ran for my life! When I got out I was covered in thick dust. I waited for the others, half expecting them to burst out behind me coughing and spluttering. When the dust had finally settled that’s when I saw the tunnel had collapsed fully.”

“What did you do next?”