The Blood Upon the Rose (16 page)

Sean said: ‘Yes. I forget sometimes. You’re a fine lady and I’m just the gardener’s boy.’

‘Sean! Not exactly …’

‘I know.’ He stopped her mouth with a kiss, long and casual and masterful, so that she forgot the protest she might have made. Then  he stood back and said: ‘Home you go now, my lady. Daddy’s waiting with cocoa and the Union flag.’

It was not enough to quarrel about, but she resented it nonetheless. The words were like a pat on the rump, they demeaned her. But it was probably just because he hated to see her return to a home so utterly different from his own.

As she handed her dripping coat and umbrella to Keneally in the hall, she saw her father through the open door of the drawing rom. He was sitting by a blazing fire, reading the
Irish Times,
with a glass of whiskey on the table beside his armchair. He looked up as she walked in.

‘Out to your Irish classes again? I should scarcely have thought it was worth it, on a filthy night like this.’

She answered in Gaelic:
‘A little rain never scared a good Irishwoman yet.
’

Sir Jonathan scowled. If he understood he would not admit it. ‘Don't swear at me, girl. Why the devil don't you learn more Latin, if you want to do something useful? That's what all the medicos speak, isn't it?’

‘`That's only to confuse the patients.’ She didn't want to quarrel; she felt too relaxed and indolent for that. She stood in front of the fire, warming herself, and thought: Father looks tired and - shrunken in on himself, somehow. Why is that?  ‘Did you have a bad crossing?’

‘Foul.’ He sipped the whiskey, grimaced and said: ‘This is the only thing I've kept in my stomach all day.’

‘If you weren't so important, you wouldn't have to go.’

‘No.’ He stared at her, thinking it was a strangely unaggressive way for her to refer to his work. She looked radiant, somehow, her cheeks glowing, her wide dark eyes sparkling in the firelight. She sat on an embroidered stool in front of the fire and flicked her short dark hair from side to side, combing it with her fingers to dry it in front of the flames. He might be wrong, but she seemed unusually happy. He was glad of it; she was all he had left. Abruptly, he decided to confide in her.

‘I saw Sarah Maidment in Bournemouth.’

‘Oh?’ A slight shiver went through her. She thought: This is it, then. He has decided to disinherit me and leave Killrath to one of her sons. If he does that I shall be free to leave home and live with Sean. In love and squalor. She asked:  ‘How was she?’

‘Dying.’ Sir Jonathan looked away from his daughter, into the fire. ‘We said our goodbyes. I shan't see her again.’

‘As bad as that?’

‘Yes. You'll see plenty of death, if you persist with this career of yours. It's not pleasant.’ He drained his glass and held it in his hand, reflectively. ‘Anyway, you never liked her, I understand that. I suppose it shows loyalty, in a way.’ He paused, and looked up at her. ‘She was a good woman, though, whatever you think. If she'd been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, like you, she could have been as fine a duchess as any in the land.’

Catherine thought of the little dumpy woman she had met in this house during the war; a charlady taking over her mother's place. In principle she agreed with what her father said; but in practice …  it was a quarrel she did not want to repeat, not now.

She wondered if her father had ever thought he would take such a mistress when her mother was young and beautiful, the toast of Galway. If he had loved her and been faithful, so much would have been different. I might even have become the daughter he wanted.

There was a silence. The fire crackled and the flames cast long dancing shadows on the walls. Catherine said, slowly: ‘I suppose we're all born to a certain fate, and we can't escape it completely, however hard we try.’

‘Very philosophical of you, my dear.’ Her father sipped his whiskey again. ‘And your fate is to keep our agreement, and inherit this house and Killrath. I wish you much joy of it.’

Catherine sat on the edge of the comfortable armchair, holding out her hands to the blaze. She thought of Sean trudging back alone through the wind and sleet. ‘I don't know if I
can
keep the deal, Father. Anyway, my fate may be to change things.’

‘That's what you think now. But it's my fate and duty to pass on our heritage to you intact. Just as it's my duty as a father to lead you down the aisle and hand you over to a decent young man. I look forward to that day, you know.’

She looked across at him, smiling sadly. ‘You may have to wait a long time, Father, I'm afraid.’

Kee put down his pen gratefully as Radford came into his office. He hated writing reports. The point of the job was to be out on the streets, observing, talking to people, making arrests. Not pushing paper around.

Radford flung an envelope on the desk and said: ‘That's it, your copy of the postmortem on Savage's body. Nothing in it that you couldn't have deduced in the first two minutes. The body's being collected by relatives this afternoon and they've arranged a funeral for tomorrow.’

‘With a eulogy by the priest and a massive parade of Sinn Feiners, no doubt.’

‘Probably. It's in the Pro-Cathedral.' Radford hesitated. ‘There's been no request for police to marshal the funeral.’

‘There wouldn't be.’ Kee met his colleague's eyes, and saw that the same idea had struck them both. ‘No doubt young Brennan will be there.’

Radford nodded. ‘Not just him, either. Chances are they'll all want to pay their respects.’

‘And us without a hope in hell of getting anywhere near and coming out alive. Not without an army escort, of course.’

‘I've already canvassed that idea. The military view is that it would be impossible to make arrests without endangering the public. The Volunteers will be armed, and the soldiers wouldn't know who to shoot at and who to miss. There'd be a massacre.’

‘Hm.’ Kee rubbed the skin behind his ear. ‘That's why detectives wear plain clothes.’

‘We can't just join the crowd, Tom. It'd take more than you and me to make an arrest in a place like that, and the Shinners know all the other G men by sight.’

‘At least we can keep an eye on things, can't we? See who comes in and goes out? Follow young Brennan home, perhaps ?’

Radford nodded. ‘We can do that, Tom, at least. The funeral's at two-thirty tomorrow. I'll organize it.’

The river Blackwater swirled under the single arch of the stone bridge. The river was full, and the water had overflowed the bank in some places. The solitary fisherman had been there for most of the short winter afternoon.

He never went more than a few yards from the bridge, although there were much better stretches of the river upstream. There was nothing in his keepnet. But Andrew Butler didn't mind. For him, the excitement of the afternoon had nothing to do with fish.

During the four hours he had been there only three cars had passed him. One, as Mary Macardle had predicted, had been the black model T Ford. Andrew had recognized the two young men in the front seat, and there had been another in the back. He was almost certain they had not recognized him.

Behind him a wood came within ten yards of the riverbank, and there was a pile of cut logs waiting to be carried away. On the opposite side of the stream, the peat bog stretched endlessly. Little white heads of cotton grass nodded in the wind, and above them, dark-grey clouds swirled from the west, carrying the threat of rain.

Andrew could see any car approaching the bridge for miles, but there was less than an hour of daylight left. After that he would have to give up, or risk ambushing the wrong car.

He had moved two of the logs from the pile by the forest to the edge of the bridge. There were two shorter lengths of wood as well, quite thick, about three feet long.

All his guns had been lost in the fire, but he had a hunting knife on his belt, in the small of his back. It was very similar to the bayonet he had used in Germany. Surprise, he knew, would be his biggest advantage. That, and the lust for revenge.

He had tried to make something of Ardmore, he thought. He had bought the horses, cherished the shrine of his mother’s room, tried to settle down and ignore the devil in his mind. And now they had done this to him.

There was a movement far away, across the bog. A car, crawling towards him through the twists and winds of the road, like a little black beetle casting here and there. But there was only one way a car could go, in the end.

He focused his field glasses on it.

It was a model T Ford.

He dragged the two logs into position across the bridge. Each log was about fourteen inches in diameter. The first one was a couple of yards below the hump on the far side away from the car, the second a yard beyond that. The driver would not be able to see them until he had driven over the hump of the bridge. Each log had a large stone behind it at either end, to stop the car pushing it back. When the car came over the bridge it would hit the logs, and if the first log didn’t stop it, the second would. He hoped it would be going fast. That way the passengers would be stunned and probably injured by the accident. Then he would just have to finish them off. When they were dead, he could make it look as if the car had smashed into the low wall of the bridge, and tipped into the river.

When he had finished, the car was about three quarters of a mile away. Andrew picked up his fishing rod and stood quietly beside the bridge, watching.

It was getting darker, and when the car was about five hundred yards away rain began to fall. Great heavy drops at first, then hard lines of sleet, driven by a southwest wind.

Andrew picked up his field glasses again. He could see two men in the front, but rain blurred the lenses and he could not make out their faces.

Ten yards from the bridge, the car stopped. A man got out and fiddled with the windscreen wipers. He shouted something to the man inside but the wipers still didn’t seem to work. Then he lifted the bonnet.

A second man got out and strolled down to the water. It was the butcher’s assistant, Rafferty. Andrew turned his collar up, and pulled his cap down low over his eyes.

Rafferty called across the stream: ‘Have you caught much?’

Andrew shook his head, but didn’t answer. The sleet came down even harder. Rafferty hunched his shoulders against it.

‘You’re mad to stay out here!’ he yelled. ‘Touched, man! Will we give you a lift?’

Andrew shook his head again. Rafferty shrugged and plodded back to the car.

The first man stood up and closed the bonnet. He was much shorter than Rafferty. He took off his glasses to wipe them, and Andrew could see the broad nostrils of his short snub nose, almost like a pig’s snout.

The windscreen wipers were working. The two men got in, the car headlights came on, and the car drove up onto the bridge.

Andrew put down the fishing rod. The car drove over the hump of the bridge, hit the first log with a bang, and stopped.

Andrew picked up one of the three-foot lengths of wood, walked up onto the bridge, and smashed the windscreen with it. Then he swung it back again and thumped it as hard as he could into Rafferty’s face.

The little man with the snub nose, Slaney, screamed and got out of the car on the far side. Andrew swung at him with the club and hit him on the arm. Then he looked to his right and saw a third man getting out of the back seat. Hardly a man, really – just a boy with a white, shocked face. He had a revolver in his hand.

There was no room to swing the club in the narrow space between the car and the side of the bridge. Andrew pulled it back and jabbed it into the boy’s stomach. As he doubled forwards, Andrew raised his knee into the boy’s face. The revolver dropped from his fingers. Andrew pushed him backwards into the car door, bent down and picked the revolver up. He thought: Who the hell are you? And where's Davitt?

Slaney was screaming at him from the front of the car. Andrew turned and saw that he, too, had dragged a revolver out of his coat pocket. He was having trouble with it because his right arm wouldn't work and he had to hold it in his left. It was wavering, but pointing directly at Andrew.

Slaney shouted: 'Drop that now, or …'

Andrew shot him in the stomach.

It's too late now, he thought. I can't disguise this as an accident. Then he felt hands on his sleeve. The mountain of Rafferty was lurching out of the car, moaning, his face covered with blood from all the cuts of the broken windscreen. His great butcher's hands seized Andrew's right arm at the wrist and elbow, bending it back against the joint so that it would break.

Andrew screamed, dropped the revolver, and pushed against Rafferty, knocking him off balance, back into the car. As they fell, with Andrew on top, the butcher's grip loosened slightly. Andrew felt behind his back with his left hand, and pulled out the hunting knife. Pushing down with his imprisoned right hand, he arched his back and stabbed upwards with his left. The knife went up into Rafferty's throat.

Andrew jerked himself free as the fountain of arterial blood sprayed up everywhere. It spattered on the car roof, and pumped through the broken windscreen, on to the bonnet. Finish this now, he thought. The boy was struggling on his hands and knees beside the car. He looked up at Andrew and said: ‘No! Please don't!' Andrew picked up the club and hit him with it, hard, at the base of the skull. Then he went to the front of the car and did the same to Slaney.

The sleet was still pouring down. He noticed it for the first time. The car was a shambles. Rafferty was still twitching and writhing in the front seat as the last of his blood sprayed out of him.

Andrew leaned over the parapet of the bridge, breathing heavily. For a moment he thought he might be sick but he was not. He spat into the water and turned round.

He had to decide what to do. The bullet and the knife wound complicated things. If they had driven hard into the logs and he'd finished them off with the club alone, it might have looked like an accident, but not now. Nevertheless, he had to gain time, so that he was far away before the bodies were found.