The Blood Upon the Rose (26 page)

The woman with the perambulator continued slowly along Brendan Road towards Morehampton Road. She had, in fact, walked her baby all the way down Brendan Road already once this morning, and had been preparing to buy a few vegetables in the shops on Morehampton Road and then walk back again, if necessary. But this time, when she turned left into Morehampton Road, she speeded up her pace quite noticeably. After about twenty yards she turned left again, into Auburn Avenue. A few yards along this street two men sat in a parked car, reading newspapers.

As she passed them she said: ‘Number one. He’s in there now.’

Then she walked on, her pace gradually slowing. The baby began to grizzle, and she bent down and gave it a rattle.

‘It’s all right, sweetie,’ she said. ‘We’ll soon be in the park now. Mummy’s done her work for this morning.’

In the car, Radford folded his newspaper and nodded to his driver. The car turned left into Morehampton Road, and very quickly right, into Belmont Avenue. This road formed part of a crescent, the other end of which came out almost opposite Brendan Road. At the bottom of the crescent was Kee, waiting with eight detectives in two cars. Four of them were in the first car with Kee, three in another with Davis. Radford had kept them down here, so that there was no chance of the woman being seen talking to a large group of men who later turned out to be police. His driver pulled up beside Kee's car. Radford got out.

‘Right, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘This is a raid on number 1 Brendan Road. I want you all to get up there immediately I tell you. Davis, you drive straight down the road and block it off at the first junction. Kee, park your car at the top and walk down. Wait in the street, out of sight of the house, until you get orders from me. If someone leaves the premises, arrest them. When we go in, I don’t want a single person to get away. Understood?’

Kee said: ‘Yes, sir.’

Davis said: ‘Who is it we're after, Mr Radford, sir?’

‘Michael Collins, I hope!’ said Radford briskly. As he turned to get back into his own car, he thought Davis looked curiously shocked. Surely he wasn't going to start being nervous, too? Radford had had enough of that in this force. He got back into the car. ‘Press your damned throttle, man,’ he said to the driver.

It was only a few minutes since he had got the message, but he was haunted by the thought that Andrew might already have come out, with no one there to see him. But then, the man can’t have it both ways, he thought. He asked me to keep out of sight and that’s what I've done. None of these officers had a clue what was happening until I told them just now. This is one operation that hasn't been betrayed.

So let’s just hope it works.

Sean was overcome by a mixture of depression and rage. I did it, he thought, I broke with her as it was my duty to do. It could never have gone on anyway, it was foolishness from the beginning. Now I've put a stop to it. I'm free again to be a soldier for my country and not . . .

… not ever run my fingers down her thighs again
stop that! Don't even think that ever again, Sean Brennan.
Not ever again - Christ! He braked violently and swerved his bicycle on to the pavement to avoid a man staggering from the back of a dray with a load of tins. The man swore virulently as half the tins dropped out of his arms into the gutter. Sean had been looking at him for the last half minute as he pedalled up the road, but the sight had not registered with his brain as having any meaning. He was still reliving the scene earlier that morning, when they had met by accident in the street as she was on her way to the university. He had said he thought it was best that it was over between them for the time being, and she had said yes she was sure he wanted to get back to playing at little boy revolutionaries, and she was sorry she had distracted him.

As he pushed the bike back into the road, Sean saw the back of a young woman in a blue dress going into a haberdasher's and for a second he was sure - but no; the shape of the hips and the hands were quite, quite different from Catherine's. God - how coarse other women seemed in comparison with her! Like a grotesque parody of perfection, a sick joke almost.

Catherine is not perfection either, Sean boy, he told himself. She may look the part all right but she is riddled with lust and vanity and all the things that should never - that I should never …

Want.

He stopped the bike at a crossroads and squeezed the brakes so tight that his hands whitened and he thought the handlebars might snap off altogether. I wanted her and I wanted to do those things and it was wonderful, he thought, but it can't go on. We're not right for each other, the way she spoke to me this morning shows it. And it was taking my mind off the things I should be doing; the way I lost that German the other night shows it. And then Paddy Daly shouting at me and all the boys laughing; it made me look such a fool - she should understand that. And the priest was right too in his way, though sod all he knows about how it feels. But if we're not right for each other and never could be married then it is a sin, for all it feels so wonderful - and it was foul what she did to stop the child.

It was sensible but it was foul and sordid at the same time. Sean didn't understand his own attitude about this but it outraged him even to think of it. Of course we couldn't have cared for a child but you can't do those things, he told himself as he pedalled furiously out towards the south side of the city where he would meet Daly for the lunchtime briefing. When you start doing things like that it all becomes so sordid that it has to be wrong. There's no beauty or love left in it at all.

The girl has all the wrong emotions surely. She led me on in the first place and now, when we break up, she should have wept and there was nothing like that. Just anger and scorn as though it was me that was to blame. Sean thought if she had wept this morning things might have been different. He would have held her and dried her tears on his shoulder and explained how it was all for the good and he would visit her sometimes; but to show rage as she had done - that had unsettled him deeply. It only goes to show how right I was, he thought; we’re two different species entirely. Two different classes. Whatever her sympathy for the new Ireland, she doesn't understand the right way to behave at all. She’s grown up thinking the world belongs to people like her and it won't, soon. It doesn’t already.

She’s just got to learn.

None of these thoughts did anything except fill him with more rage and misery. He felt like whipping his back with thorns as he had read the Muslims did, but all he could do was pedal as hard as he possibly could so that he was out of breath and some of the anger dissipated that way.

He was coming along Morehampton Road when he saw three cars pull out suddenly in front of him, about a hundred yards ahead. Something about them caught his attention. They pulled out urgently, angrily almost.

Fools, he thought. They must have lost their women too. Then two of the cars stopped and six or seven men got out.

An alarm bell started to jangle in Sean's brain.

The cars had parked very quickly and the men were running towards Brendan Road. The third car drove straight down it.

It looks like a bank robbery, Sean thought. But there are no banks in Brendan Road, no shops even, nothing but quiet residential houses like the one I'm going to. Number 1. Where I’m going to meet Paddy Daly and Michael Collins comes too, most days about lunchtime.

Sean stopped his bicycle thirty yards away from the parked cars and hesitated, wondering what to do. He could see two of the men standing at the end of the street. They looked keyed up, tense. A middle-aged man started to walk down Brendan Road and they grabbed him and started to question him fiercely. The man looked shocked, and began to protest in a loud voice. A small crowd gathered.

Sean thought: It’s a police raid.

He wondered what to do. The anger he had felt against Catherine surged along new channels, fuelling his hatred of the police. These are the same devils who had arrested half of the best republicans over the past year, and locked them away in Mountjoy Gaol or sent them overseas to rot in England, all on the say-so of Lord bloody high and mighty French. And now here they are about to catch Paddy and Michael Collins.

They will, too, unless I do something.

What?

Sean had a pistol in his pocket but the police were surely armed too and there were six or seven of them at least. If I go up there and start shooting I may hit one or two but I'll never hit them all. If I stand and fight they'll kill me. But what else is there to do? At least the shots’ll warn anyone who's in the house. And it’s more important to warn Michael than to save my skin.

I’ll do it.

I’ll cycle right up to the one who's holding the old man, take out the pistol and shoot him in the chest. Then I’ll shoot the other one. After that I’ll ride straight down Brendan Road and shoot as many of the others as I can. At the very least it’ll make a terrible noise and put them off their raid. I can either cycle straight through, or, if I’ve killed these two and there are too many down there, I can turn round and ride back out this end.

And there won't be any more snide comments about little boy revolutionaries from Catherine, either. She’ll read about this in tomorrow's paper and know I’m in a real war all right.

He took the pistol out of his pocket and flipped the butt open to check the magazine was full. Then he snapped it shut, took the safety catch off, put the pistol back in his pocket, and glanced over his shoulder before he cycled away from the pavement.

A bread van came past. Behind the bread van, the road was clear. Except for a cyclist about seventy yards away.

There was something familiar about the cyclist. A big, burly man, bare-headed, pedalling energetically with his knees slightly turned out. Maybe a slight frown on his face, though it was hard to see at this distance.

It was Michael Collins.

With a whoop, Sean did a U-turn and belted back down the road towards him. As he came near he crossed to the wrong side of the road, yelling and waving his arms madly.

‘Hey, Mick! Hey! Stop!’

Collins saw him, waved, and braked.

‘Sean! What’s all the rush, boy?’

‘It’s the police! They're raiding Brendan Road! They're after you, I'm sure of it!’ Sean told him quickly what he had seen, pointing to the parked cars and the crowd that was still gathering round the end of the street. ‘Thank the Lord you’re here, Michael! I was sure you were in the house already - I was going to ride down the road and shoot at them, to give our lads a warning!’

Collins looked at him, a slight smile on his broad, cheery face. He put a hand on Sean's shoulder.

‘A brave thought, Sean, but don’t do it now. There’s too many people up there, someone might get hurt. Anyway, I can’t afford to lose you.’

Sean said: ‘I thought we might be about to lose you, which would have been much worse. Come on, we’d best get away.' He was anxious about the noise he had made already; one of the detectives might look down the road at any moment and see them. One of them might even have the photograph they stole from his room.

‘Ah, now, wait a moment. There’s no great rush now, is there?’ Collins was looking curiously up the road, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. ‘There’s a biggish crowd up there now, I see. Why don’t you and I cycle up quietly and join it? It'll be highly educational for a young lad like you to see what the British police get up to in this country of ours, now won’t it? Come to that, I’d like to find out myself.’

And to Sean's great surprise, Collins began to pedal sedately on up Morehampton Road, towards the crowd and the police. Sean pedalled nervously after him.

Kee was incensed by the sound of the scuffle that had broken out behind him, at the top of Brendan Road. He was already angry with Radford, for not telling him anything about this operation until a couple of minutes ago. After working together like brothers, almost, for so many years, it rankled to be ordered to bring a group of detectives to this part of the city to stand in a road for over an hour without the faintest hint of why they were there. It was the way he himself might treat a junior constable, perhaps; it was hardly the way for an Assistant Commissioner to treat a Detective Inspector, especially one who was an old friend.

Apart from that, it was unprofessional. If Radford had trusted him, he could have surveyed this road beforehand, and made up his mind exactly where to dispose his men to cover all exits. As it was, he didn't even know whether number 1 was on the right or the left, or what the bloody road looked like further down, or whether there was a back exit. Not to mention how many people had been seen entering and leaving the building, or who it belonged to, and what the neighbours were like. And where had Radford got the information about this place anyway?

The scuffle behind him seemed to have something to do with a man who wanted to come down the street. The man was making a lot of noise, and attracting a small crowd. Exactly what we don't want, Kee thought. What am I supposed to do now - stand around outside number 1 waiting for orders, while the crowd gets bigger by the second? Already half a dozen young boys had stepped past them, and were following his little group of detectives down the road at a safe distance. They'll start throwing stones soon.

‘Shall I go in straight away, sir?’ Kee asked. ‘It looks like the only way now, if you want it to be a surprise.’

Radford hesitated, and glanced at his watch. Could he wait outside this house for fifteen minutes, pretending to look inconspicuous, as though waiting for a nonexistent tram? He glanced up and down the street. Ahead of him, Davis had parked his car assertively in the middle of the road, and was standing with his arms folded beside it. Behind him, the second of his detectives was striding across the road towards the boys who were following Radford. As he did so, however, two men wheeled their bicycles into the street, and the detective strode towards them instead, anxiously waving his arms. Radford looked at number 1, and thought he saw a face disappear as a curtain was drawn back.