The Blood Upon the Rose (51 page)

‘You're good at paperwork. I'll say that for you.’ But there was something distinctly odd about the way he said it. Davis looked up, and an alarm bell began to ring in his mind. Why wasn’t Kee talking about Brennan's escape?

Kee took a paper from his pocket. ‘Seen that before, Dick?’

Davis took it. It was the order for the release of Sean Brennan. His stomach fluttered. He passed it back. ‘No.’

‘You won’t have seen this either.’ Kee passed over a typewritten sheet, the transcript of the recorded conversations between Brennan and O’Rourke.

Davis read it slowly. When he got to the remarks about
one of his own bloody detectives
his hand began to shake. He put the paper down carefully on the typewriter.

‘Brennan said this?’

‘He did.’

‘That’s dreadful.’ Davis decided to play it out to the end. Perhaps he was misinterpreting that look on Kee’s face. There were a dozen detectives in G Division.
How could they possibly know it was him?
He said: ‘It would explain why so many things go wrong.’

‘You’re right there, you bastard.’ Kee stood up, his big hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. ‘It would explain why so many detectives have died. Including Bill Radford.’

That was when Davis got up. He stood up quickly, and in the same movement turned for the door, drawing his arm back to punch Foster in the stomach. But the big young man was ready for him. He seized Davis’s arm at the wrist, and forced the arm downwards and back so that it nearly cracked at the elbow. In a brief struggle, Davis’s head got cracked against the doorpost, and Kee and Foster managed to pin his arms behind him in handcuffs. Kee shoved him roughly back into his chair. He glared at Davis, panting.

‘If I had a rope, I’d hang you right now.’

‘But why, for God’s sake? You’re mad, both of you!’

‘Are we?’ Kee waved the order form in Davis's face. ‘You know what this is, don't you? I’ve just come from Captain Smythe, and he told me exactly how you got him out of his office and confirmed that the form came from his notepad. So you can forget about sitting there all sweet-faced with your typing. That’s why you came to me this morning with all those details, wasn’t it? To keep me busy while your friends got the bastard out!’

A sudden impulse seized him. ‘I’ll bet you send copies of this to your murderous friends, too, don't you?’ He ripped the report out of the typewriter, and riffled through the sheets. One carbon copy, two, three,
four.
Davis groaned. In a few minutes they would search him, too. And in his jacket pocket there were three neatly folded carbons of the other reports he had typed that afternoon. There was no escaping them, now.

He looked past Kee, out of the window. It was the last one without bars which he was likely to see for a very long time.

There were no windows at all in the cellar. Just a metal grille high in the wall which, presumably, provided some ventilation. But there was not much air. There was an unpleasant, musty, stuffy smell, and Catherine began to think that the oil lamp might be using up as much oxygen as she was.

After Andrew had left she had tried hard to remove the chain from her ankle. It was not so very tight; there was no restriction on her circulation. With her boot off the chain hung down like an ugly anklet. She pointed her toe and forced the chain down, a millimetre at a time, until it was almost, almost over her heel.

Almost, but not quite. The harder she pushed it, the more the links pressed into her skin. The pain became intense. And there was still a point beyond which it simply would not go.

Infuriated, she pulled it back to where it hung loose again, massaged her aching ankle, and turned her attention to the pipe that ran along the wall. It was fastened to the wall by metal bolts every two or three feet. Perhaps they could be loosened. Certainly they were old and rusty, and looked as though they had been there for some time. But after ten minutes of ferociously pulling, tugging, and jerking the chain on it this way and that, Catherine gave up. The pipe was rock solid. It hadn't moved a fraction of an inch in any direction. She was stuck.

She sat back on the dusty, ancient sofa, and for the first time allowed herself to think of what had happened. She had been kidnapped, clearly, but why? Last night she had made love to the man, tonight he had locked her in a filthy cellar. The logic of it eluded her. She knew he was a British spy. So what? She hadn't known where his house was, until he had shown her himself. She didn't know what his plans were. She didn't even have a photograph of him to give the Volunteers so that they could identify him.

And in any case, she had not seriously intended to betray him. There had been enough killing, she wanted nothing more to do with it. Only last night she had taken him to her bed, and if he had behaved like a brute there, he had given her pleasure too. Did Andrew think she was such an unfeeling monster that she could make love to him one night, and then hand him over to be shot the next? The man must be mad to think that.

Perhaps he
was
mad.

She remembered his eyes, in that moment of appalling, earsplitting echoes after he had fired the gun. The eyes had been hard, cold, with an expression of delight in them too, of pleasure

in what he had done. That was why she had obeyed him. Because in that moment she had truly believed he would shoot her next.

She began to shiver, and wondered if she would freeze to death, starve, or suffocate from lack of air. If Andrew was really mad, perhaps he would leave her here for ever.

Then he came in with a tray of food. It was not very appetizing: fried egg, bacon burnt at the edges, a slice of bread, a cup of tea. He set it on the sofa beside her.

‘I’m no great cook, I’m afraid. But it’s what I could find.’

‘Andrew. When are you going to set me free?’

He considered the question, standing a yard or so in front of her, out of reach. ‘Maybe tomorrow evening, if all goes well.’

‘You mean you’re going to leave me here all night? But why, for heaven's sake?’

She thought he smiled, though his face was dark, shadowy. ‘I thought you liked the unexpected.’

‘I think you’re mad.’ It was a statement, not a challenge.

‘No. Just determined. I have a job to do, and you know enough to spoil it. As soon as it’s over you’ll be free, I promise.’

‘What are you talking about? What do I know?’

Instead of answering, he glanced round the room and shivered. ‘It’s cold in here. You should eat your food while it’s hot. I’ll bring you down some blankets and pillows, and a bucket.’

Then he was gone. She ignored the food. He returned a few minutes later with a pile of blankets and pillows which he dumped on the floor. He put a metal bucket there too, with a newspaper in it. All the time he stayed at a distance, just out of her reach.

She asked: ‘What the hell do I need a bucket for?’

‘That’s not a very ladylike question. I’ll bring you a bowl of water in the morning, if you want to wash.’

He really does mean it, she thought. Shivering, she sipped the tea. She realized he would go again in a minute and she didn’t want that. She tried to make her voice calmer, more friendly.

‘Andrew, I don't understand anything at all about this. Can’t you at least have the decency to explain?’

He sat down on one of the old trunks. To her anger, he seemed more amused than anything else; certainly not embarrassed.

‘It’s a bit of change from Killrath, isn’t it? My apologies, Catherine. I’d rather keep you in a bedroom upstairs, if I could. But then you’d scream, or throw something out of the window, and people would come. So this is the only place. No one knows you’re here, no one can hear you, and you can’t get out. Just resign yourself to it. I’ll bring you anything you need, within reason.’

‘What I need is to get out of here and go to see Sean Brennan. That’s what I came to Dublin for - you know that!’

He stood up. ‘Yes. Even after last night all you can think of is Sean Brennan. Well, I’m sorry, Miss O’Connell-Gort, but that is exactly the reason why you have to stay here. At least you can share part of the little murderer’s fate, if not his presence.’ He picked up the oil lamp, and put it down within her reach, with a box of matches. ‘I should blow this thing out at night; it doesn't feel full.’ Then he walked to the door and went out.

‘Andrew!’ But she heard the sound of the bolts being rammed home, and his feet climbing the stairs. ‘Come back, you pig,’ she whispered to herself.

But he didn’t. Gloomily, she picked up the plate of rapidly cooling food, and began to eat.

He’s right. This is what it is like for Sean, she thought.

Sean dreamed about the hangman. He himself was standing on a trapdoor, his hands bound behind him, with a noose around his neck. There was a priest beside him, muttering prayers, who held out a crucifix for him to kiss. But Sean's eyes were on the hangman who had a black hood over his head, with two slits in it for his eyes. The hangman stepped back, pulled a lever, and Sean fell through the trap. There was a sudden, terrible pain, then darkness, and then
he was still in the room!
His body was hanging there but he, Sean, was somewhere above, looking down at the little group of people who busied themselves around it.

The hangman cut his body down, laid it in a coffin, and walked away, out of the prison, still wearing the black hood over his head. Sean followed him, watching. The hangman rode a bicycle at first, but no one took any special notice of him. He bought some fruit in a greengrocer's and put it in the basket on the handlebars of his bike. He went into a pub and drank a pint of porter at the bar. Sean went up close to try to see his face, but all he could see was two grey cold eyes through the slits, and a line of froth where the mouth was, as if he somehow strained the porter through the cloth. It was very important for Sean to see the face but each time he came close the hangman waved his arm and Sean felt himself brushed away, like a troublesome, invisible fly.

Then the hangman went out and this time he didn’t take his bike, he took a cab. The cab went along the North Circular Road and turned left and Sean became very agitated. He knew he was tossing and turning in his bed but he couldn't wake up. The cab stopped outside the house in Nelson Street and the hangman got out, his black mask still over his face, the brown paper bag of fruit in his hand. Sean moaned and said: ‘No! No! Please no!’ but no one could hear him because he had no body or voice to shout with. The hangman knocked at the door and Catherine opened it. She was slim and naked and she smiled seductively at the hangman. He held out the bag of fruit and she took a red apple, and while she was biting it he bent forward and kissed her neck through his mask. Sean saw the hangman's hairy hands slide down her back and stroke her thighs, and the other apples spilled out of the bag and bounced wildly down the steps. Then Sean woke up, sweating.

There was a grey dawn light seeping through the window. There were white net curtains and a crucifix on the wall opposite with the body of Christ visible faintly against the dark wood. In the bed next to him Seamus Kelly was snoring gently. He could hear the rattle of a tram through the window, and the murmur of women's voices somewhere downstairs.

Sean realized he was free. He could get up if he liked and walk out of the room and no one would stop him. He could have a wash in a clean basin and walk down the garden to the privy on his own and read the newspaper and help the landlady wash the dishes if he chose. He could watch the hurling on Saturday or ride out to the country with Seamus to try to snare rabbits. Maybe Collins would send him to join a country unit and attack an RIC barracks.

Before he did any of that he had to see Catherine.

He tried to clear the dream out of his mind but bits of it began to come back. There was something about the hangman, the way he had walked, that was familiar. In his dream he had had the impression that if only he could get the hood off he would see a face he would recognize.

But that was all nonsense. The truth was that he had seen Catherine visiting a house in Nelson Street. It was far too dangerous for Sean to try to contact her at the house in Merrion Square or even at the university, but if he kept an eye on the house in Nelson Street he might see her. He might even find out who the man was. He could ask the neighbours who owned the house.

What he would say if he met her he had no idea. But whatever plans Collins or Daly might have for him, this was something he had to do first.

He lay quietly for a while, watching the dawn light grow in the windows, and then he drifted off to sleep.

25

ANDREW SPENT THE night in a bedroom upstairs in Nelson Street. It was cold there too, and the sheets were damp. He remembered the heat of their bodies last night at Killrath, and wished he could think of some way of bringing Catherine upstairs to bed with him. But she would fight him every inch of the way, and probably try to escape or even kill him the moment he fell asleep. He could not risk that. Nor did he want it.

In the past two weeks at Killrath he had felt his anger, his hatred for the Fenians, slipping away. He had thought almost entirely about Catherine, and scarcely about Collins at all. He remembered that moment last night after they had made love - a minute, an hour perhaps, he had no idea - in which he had just lain there, stroking her tousled hair, watching her sleeping face in the firelight and imagining her at Ardmore. He wanted to control her, but could not conceive of seriously hurting her. And when he had woken alone this morning he had wondered for a while who he was. His hatred of the Fenians had seemed to him distant, unimportant, beside the one marvellous thing that had happened.

But in a few short minutes this morning she had told him that she loved Sean Brennan, and that she despised him for being a British spy. And Andrew's anger had returned.

Catherine had caused the anger but he did not direct it against her. He was convinced that she could be made to love him when her mind was cleared of this madness. He would have gone out and shot Sean Brennan himself had the government not arranged to have him hanged. And when Brennan was dead Catherine would forget. In the meantime, Andrew focused his rage upon Collins, the head of the IRB, the most important Fenian of them all. Collins's men had burned Ardmore and taken Catherine from him. Andrew rejoiced in his anger and tamped it down inside him, nursing it so that it would last and flare when he needed it. Tomorrow or the next day he would meet Collins and then the man would just be a lump of clothes and meat on the floor.