The Sleepers of Erin (23 page)

‘Ah, ‘tis a foine day, Lovejoy, sure enough!’

‘You lazy bastard. Where the hell have you been?’

Gerald grinned up at me from his reclining position on an ex-army groundsheet. He even had that long thin canvas bag of fishing tackle with him.

‘Ah, here and there.’

I climbed down. ‘You promised you’d keep me safe. Do you know I was sent in there to . . . to . . . ?’ I looked again. The mouth of the tunnel had gone, only a paler smudge where the drier peat had been replaced. Newly cut peat slabs covered the tunnel’s position. Within hours the location would be practically untraceable. I felt ill. That’s the trouble with being a coward. Courage gives everybody else a head start on you.

Gerald was quite unabashed. ‘Did they let you go to see those auld castle stones, Lovejoy?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d better be off then, unless it’s those three riders over the hill you want chasing down to see what you’re up to.’

I’d seen nothing new, and I thought I’d been watching the skyline now like a hawk.

‘Christ.’ I thought a second. ‘Here, Gerald. Does one have a white car?’

‘No.’ The bum was settling down for a kip, shuffling his long, endlessly jointed limbs into a Chinese puzzle. ‘That’ll be auld Fenner the printer. Has a cousin in Connemara who plays a lovely fiddle. I remember one time—’

‘What do I do?’ I’d never felt so helpless. Everybody’s plan was working out except mine. The whole thing had got away from me, without a cheep on my part.

‘Ah, you go with them and tell your tale to the government people. Do as Heindrick says.’

‘Then what?’

‘Escape, o’course. Like a thief in the night. Or just walk out. Sinead will have a grand motor outside.’ He grinned drowsily. ‘Then we come back here, break into the grave – from the top like the honest men we are, and . . .’

Light dawned. ‘Nick the torcs. Everybody assumes its local layabouts. And we have torcs, complete with provenance?’

‘You’ve hit it, Lovejoy. A darlin’ idea. But we get the spoils of war. Ah,’ he said lyrically, ‘think of all the grand poetry I’ll be writing with all that wealth!’

‘With fifty per cent,’ I corrected.

Gerald opened one eye. ‘Ah, we all soldier on for poor takings, Lovejoy, for the whilst. Anyway, it’s the coroner’s office you’ll be talkin’ to soon.’

‘Here, Gerald. Seen Kurak?’

Both eyes open now, no smile. ‘Isn’t he back at the grand mansion?’

‘No sign of him there when we left.’ Anyway, no use worrying. It was one less rival, but I was no longer certain what the battle was about. If Lena’s offer was genuine – and it was beginning to look like it – I’d soon be in clover. Maybe Joe had got the sack?

‘I’ll keep an eye out for him, Lovejoy,’ said my trusty vigilante, his eyes closed in sleep. I shrugged and left him there.

The castle’s ruins were still interesting me when they shouted for me from the grave mound down by the lake. The officials were arriving with Heindrick, two black cars in the distance. I went to swear the truth over my pack of lies.

Passing the turf diggings to join the others, there was no sign of Gerald. He’d vanished into thin air. I wished I could do that.

Official events seemed a lot more direct in the city than they’d be in good old shambolic East Anglia. For a start, the officials knew everybody by name and their baldheaded stout boss – their coroner, but God knows what powers he actually possesses – had to keep prising his way into small groups of spectators who seemed to want to talk about everything else. Horses were big in everybody’s mind. The boring business of a zillion-year-old grave full of bones and trinkets was clearly a blot on the day. The official’s only hope was to get a good natter going, to sabotage the dull proceedings.

We gave evidence against a fast-running verbal tide of gossip. My own heap of falsehoods was interrupted every second breath. Place names, I discovered quite intrigued, would cause some shorthand lady to butt in (‘Oh, Kilmallock’s a lovely place! My cousin Sian’s there . . .’) which gave everybody else reason to say Croom was nicer still but sure wasn’t it Mallow took the biscuit even if it was nearer Cork than the good Lord intended . . . How the boss geezer kept his rag I’ll never know.

The Heindricks were in fine form, especially Lena. She killed all doubt about her status by casually mentioning that I’d been fetched over to decide which of her three Rembrandts were genuine. ‘I am currently persuading him to stay longer.’ She smiled, a thousand watts for each of us. ‘His gift will be invaluable with my other Old Masters.’ Everybody got the point. Heindrick was signed up as the actual finder, members of his posh house party excitedly taking turns to sign deposition forms saying exactly what they were doing when positively
tons
and tons of gold were actually
touched
by Kurt’s walking stick honestly
miles
deep in that old burial mound . . .

I went for a pee, the way all suspects escape from courts these days. The trouble was Jason, standing patiently in the corridor with one of Heindrick’s men.

‘Leave the door open, Lovejoy.’

‘Rude sod. Can’t I just go to the loo?’

‘The window’s barred,’ his assistant said. It was the turf-digging man, quiet and absolutely certain that Heindrick’s will would be obeyed in all things. Jason wasn’t having any and kept his eyes on me.

‘Lovejoy’s dangerous,’ he said. ‘You leave the door open or you wait.’

‘Good, good,’ Heindrick said from behind me in his sibilant voice. ‘Well done, Jason. We can’t be too careful, especially now.’ He paused and smilingly reassured us that he wouldn’t be much longer, for the sake of the girl clerk walking past carrying taped legal files. She shut the office door behind her. ‘Once the torcs are out we’ll need Lovejoy’s presence even more. You two get him back to the house. He won’t be needed here any more.’

‘Here,’ I began, but found myself propelled down the corridor and into the street. According to Gerald I was supposed to escape from here, leap into Shinny’s waiting car, and—

They didn’t quite put the elbow on me, seeing there were so many people about and the streets fairly active with traffic, but I was in the front passenger seat of Heindrick’s Daimler with ugly speed. The turf man sat behind as Jason took the wheel. His eyes never left me.

‘Mind that bus, Jason,’ I yelped nervously.

‘Mind your mouth, Lovejoy.’

The turf man pointed a finger at the windscreen, instructing me to look straight ahead.

‘Okay, okay. Just go careful, mate, that’s all.’

But I had seen what I wanted. Shinny’s pale face, in a modest grey Austin parked across the road.

We left Sarsfield Bridge and the River Shannon behind and lammed off along the Ennis Road. I tried talking but Jason closed his ears and the turf man merely reached over to lock my door and leaned closer in case.I checked my safety-belt a hundred times or so, pulling it so tight I could hardly breathe. I got one reply from Jason, though, and it was that which made me decide he simply had to go.

It was while we were on the old north road to Ennis that it dawned on me that Jason was driving.
Jason
was driving. Not Joe. Relatively new and unproven Jason. Jason, who required to be accompanied by the silent watchful turf man to ensure his undying loyalty to the Heindricks. Not the trusty obedient doglike phoney Slav Joe Bassington.
Jason
was driving. No longer Kurak, the Sleeper Man, organizer of a thousand sleeper scams. Jason had displaced Kurak, Jason the ex-military officer. Who could be relied upon to organize, distribute, run an organization, now that the sleeper scam had been pulled.

I thought, Sod it, and asked my question.

‘Here, Jase. Did Lena let on that she told me about Joe?’

He began his last minute on earth by saying nothing. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Well, Joe was useless.’ His last words.

Which made up my mind for me. Those words took it all out of my hands. ‘Past tense, eh, Jase?’ I said, and pressed the release of his safety-belt. He turned a puzzled expression on me as the belt’s metal insertion flew across him and the belt snicked off. He managed to say, ‘What—?’ but by then I’d grabbed the wheel and turned us, and the car was going over and over.

Seat-belts are supposed to be great things, comfortable and safe. The trouble is they nearly break your neck saving your life. If you make it through the crash, you come round being strangled by the bloody thing.

The only way I could get out of the sickening petrol stench and that ominous grinding sound was by sliding from under the shoulder strap. I made it, shakily crawling out through the shattered windscreen and across the ground until I guessed I’d got clear. Funny, but only then did I realize the motor-horn was blaring.

Twenty yards, maybe. Unsteadily I moved another few yards and sat to focus on today’s good deed. Jason was sounding the horn, his chest pressing forwards into the steering-wheel for all the world as if he was rummaging for something under the dashboard. Except his face was a smear of blood and he was so still. That’s the trouble with undying loyalty. It doesn’t last.

The car was a crumpled write-off. Car designers these days say it’s a good idea making them so they squash on impact, God knows why. Like saying sausages should have a standard dose of salmonella.

I felt nauseated so I turned to retch a bit and saw the turf man. He was the reason there’d been no wind-screen. A good thirty yards from where the car had slammed into the projecting rock, he lay awkwardly with hunched shoulders.

‘Lovejoy? Lovejoy? Oh my
God
!’

‘Aye, love.’ I peered up. Shinny was above us on the roadside. I couldn’t see her car but its thrumming engine was audible under that horrible constant horn. ‘There’s been an accident.’

She slithered down beside me. ‘Dear God. I’ve no equipment with me. Are you hurt? Tell me, tell me. That dreadful noise. Oh my God . . .’

‘See if you can help them, love,’ I said nobly, doing my sinking act. ‘I had my safety-belt on. Jason didn’t. My poor old mate . . .’

‘Stay absolutely still, darling. Oh my God!’

‘Be careful, Shinny, love,’ I called anxiously after her. ‘There’s petrol escaping. It might explode. The ignition, you see . . .’

I felt sore all over, but still made her car quite quickly. She gave a scream of alarm when she heard me pull away, but that’s women every time. Always thinking of themselves. It was me in difficulties, not her.

I drove like a maniac. For once I was ahead of the game. Everywhere you looked were advantages. One, Jason was out of the way – maybe only temporarily, because he might not have croaked, but for sure he’d not be chasing. Two, so was the turf man. Three, the Heindricks were still occupied with the lawyers and officials. Four, they didn’t know I was free. Five, I had a car, and they wouldn’t recognize it because it was Shinny’s. Six, time was getting on . . .

Playing crafty, I stayed on the N24 Tipperary road heading east, leaving the more direct T57. It doesn’t look far on a map but I was well in sight of the Galtee hills before I was able to cut back on the Hospital road, leaving the T36 Kilamilock fork on my left. All that took time, but it helped me to calm down and stop feeling ill from what I’d done. Like a fool, I explained aloud to the interior of Shinny’s car that it had been forced on me. If only other people didn’t drag me into their bloodsoaked wars I’d be able to stay holy and pure and unsullied as I normally was. Shinny’s car, a little grey Austin saloon, was scented by her. The sweet woman’s handbag lay on the passenger seat. She was a lovely creature. No binoculars or weapons in the glove compartment, though, which proved she was as thoughtless as ever.

I’d worked out that if I followed the road which ran a few miles to the west of the lough I could somehow reach the lane which curled round the west side of that low hill which overlooked the water and the clusters of archaeological sites. There would be the guards, of course. From there I could snake down . . .

There were two guards. One was the rider from the castle ruins, the other a stockier bloke with leather patches sewn to his jacket elbows. Two saddled horses were idling nearby the grave mound.

They were smoking, talking, occasionally looking around, but making the mistake of keeping an eye on the distant road rather than the terrain. That was just as well because I’d learned enough of these country blokes’ ways to realize they could spot a flea on a ferret without even looking. Nobody near the turf diggings, thank God, and the castle ruins partly screened that shoulder of the hill.

Keeping to the blind side, I ran as fast as possible, actually a slow clumsy plod, over the uneven tussocky ground. Horse tracks showed me the way to go. That castle rider had used this way more than once lately. It was surprisingly easy but a bit knackering, moving at a low crouch and watching in case another of Heindrick’s men showed up. Thick as always, I had never tried to discover how big Kurt’s team actually was. I’d always assumed I was too much of a coward to take them on – and I was right. Hide, or run like hell, yes. But no to a dust-up, every single time. I made the turf diggings unseen, and was fairly certain no other riders were lurking about the landscape.

There could be no mistake about where the tunnel’s mouth was, even though now turfs were stacked across it. The big question was, how far in they had arranged the roof fall, and whether they’d done it with explosives of some sort. Risking detection, I gave a long gaze from the edge of the dug recess towards the lough. Between me and the grave site where the horses and men waited a small area of roughening was visible, but I couldn’t remember if it had been there before. The site of a fallin? Or some unexcavated Bronze Age goings-on?

I pulled off my jacket and started lifting the peat turfs off. They were semi-dry. Clever move, that, showing they’d been dug up for quite a time and therefore unlikely to have been put there recently. It looks easy but isn’t. Hurrying didn’t help, and the tools which were stacked to one side proved too difficult to use. You had to have learned the knack. I even tried levering with one of the long straight steel poles which the diggers use for marking distances, but finished up swearing and cussing. My heart was thumping, not all from exertion. I went on, stacking the peat blocks slantwards on their narrow edges along other more weathered slabs. They were surprisingly lightweight, lighter even than wood.