When Shadows Fall (31 page)

No.

The prospect of it was suddenly horrific. He couldn’t bear that, of all things. Not Tara. Sweet Tara.

Her recent ingratitude was simply another symptom of her pain, he realised. It wasn’t her speaking, not Tara herself. It was a manifestation of her inner confusion and fear. So how could he turn his back now? And leave her to the wolves?

He’d never leave her.

Poor, innocent, misguided Tara. He would show her, teach her, protect her. And she would realise in time that he wanted nothing but her happiness. That he alone could bring her happiness. She would love him for that.

The warmth of the thought seemed to dispel the aches in his stomach.

I’m good, Tara. I’ve always been good. You’ll see that, one day.

The
Freya Angelica
was moored at a wharf near the West India import dock. It was a hell of a walk from Vauxhall Bridge, but Adam left his filthy quarters during the night and managed to slink as far as Charing Cross, where he used a fistful of pounds and the muzzle of his gun to cajole a hackney driver into bringing him all the way out to Shadwell Basin. From there he hurried down past Narrow Street and Ropemaker’s Fields before spotting the ugly smokestack of the
Freya Angelica
riding off Aberdeen Wharf.

Dawn had given the Thames a reluctant, ruddy gleam. The waters sloshed around the wooden piles as Captain Jackson paced his decks, muttering and cursing at the dark bank of cloud to the east. For all his grousing, however, he was a model of discretion when he needed to be, and he didn’t cast a second glance at Adam’s dishevelled state and sleep-starved eyes when he lifted himself gingerly over the rail. Nor did he question the absence of Adam’s erstwhile partner. Instead he bellowed at the crew to get the boilers lit and swung his boot at a cat that had crept on board to investigate the fishy fragrance. By nine they were chugging up Blackwall Reach, and two hours later they could see the mudflats and the great pierhead of Southend to their left as they exited the Thames estuary.

Once out to sea, Adam climbed below to the tiny galley and brewed some coffee. He sipped it out of a chipped mug, watched the rising green swell through a porthole, and hoped his stomach would behave itself. He thought of Liam’s body, bullet-punctured on the tiles of Victoria Station, the indignant whistles of the London coppers, the screams of womenfolk, the mad dash through Westminster’s backstreets.

The newspaper editors in London and Dublin would be fainting with moral outrage by now. Major Ripley would be chomping at the bit to get back to Ireland and teach its ingrates some manners. And Mick Collins would be swearing in Clonakiltish somewhere, bounding about a room, his fists clenched.

And all of them would be only too eager to get their hands on Adam, if they could find him.

It was a late afternoon when the voyage reached its end, and the
Freya Angelica
rounded Dalkey Island into the wind-whipped waters of Dublin Bay. Seagulls screeched and swooped over the fishing boats, wild for morsels of crab and herring, while a group of schoolgirls in hats and uniform sat around an iron fountain and watched an old dame fashion an oil painting of the harbour scene.

More ominously, there were also Crossley Tenders parked by the customs office and several units of soldiers patrolled the quayside. When Captain Jackson climbed ashore and presented his bill of lading to an official, one of the more curious soldiers sauntered across, a Lee-Enfield draped casually on his shoulder. He sniffed, glanced round at the boat and crew, and sniffed louder.

“Good catch out there, boys? Eh?”

Adam was by the rail, eager to disembark and disappear, but his jumpiness must have been evident, for now the soldier’s eyes fixed solely on him.

Have they got a likeness?
he wondered.
Have the newspapers printed my face?

The soldier wasn’t as young as Adam first thought. There were crude lines round his mouth and eyes, furrows etched by age, and the hand that touched the rifle butt was rough and gnarled. “Eh?” He lifted his upper lip a moment to display small, discoloured teeth. “Cat got your tongue, boy?”

Adam peered over the man’s shoulder to the teeming bustle of the dock. Myriad heads and faces mingled and greeted and argued. None was turned in his direction, however. He relaxed a little.

“Ah, sir, ’twasn’t fishing we were at, only deliverin’.” He laid on thick lashings of Irish brogue for effect. “Shippin’ the lot over to London we were, for to feed the poor wee childers in Wapping and the Ratcliffe Highway.”

“Christ, Paddy,” the soldier snapped, “I ain’t got a bloody clue what you just said, but you stink. Take a bath, eh?”

Adam knuckled his forehead. “Indeed, sir. With your lordship’s permission—”

“Oh, fuck off,” the man growled in disgust. “Go on, clear off.”

Once Adam was past the wharves and out onto the Queens Road, he ignored the warm lure of the taverns and instead went to find the train station. He wanted little else but to keep his head low until he was back inside his flat, where he would sleep for a month.

The roar of a motor engine distracted him.

Seemingly from nowhere, a motorcar lurched across his path, blocking him. The hood was up and the rear door was pushed open.

“You!” A brawny red-haired male clambered out and grabbed his arm. “Get in.”

Adam shook himself free. “What’s this? Hold on, boyo, who are you?”

The man took hold of his arm again, fiercely, and he hissed, “Get in.”

Glancing round, Adam could see there was no avenue of escape on the narrow street. “Who are you?”

“Best hurry up, lads.” The driver leaned his head over the door, an ancient fellow with a white, bald pate and pale eyes. “Your boat’s in early, Bowen. We could have missed you. And that would have been a crying shame.”

“I said, who are—” Adam began, but the brawny man grabbed his other arm and shoved him easily into the back of the car.

“And I said,
get in
!
”

They pulled away from Kingstown, the driver honking horse coaches out of his way. There was silence for a time, and only when they were as far as Waterloo Road did Adam risk a question.

“I’m taking it, at a guess, that you two aren’t Dublin Castle?”

“Hah!” the redhead snorted. “You wish.”

“Oh?”

“We’re not Castle,” said the driver.

“So may I ask—”

“The big fellow,” Red told him with a smug grin, “sent us to get you.”

Michael Collins. It made sense. Collins had his finger on the pulse of every single thing that moved in this city. Adam felt a cold touch along his back.

“Is he—I mean, am I in some sort of trouble? For London?” He chuckled emptily. “I’m not going to be killed, am I?”

Neither of his captors answered.

“Come on, chaps. What’s it going to be, then? Not a medal and a backslap and all the pints I can piss for the night?”

Red turned his eyes slowly towards him. He was not smiling.

“No, Bowen. It’s not.”

The building had a plaque on the facade that said
Towers Insurances
. Fictitious, Adam presumed. When the car stopped, Red nudged him in the shoulder. “We’ll take you upstairs. He’s waiting.”

It was a cold room of blue, peeling wallpaper and russet carpet. Michael Collins was poking the hearth. Sparks glowed and soared up the chimney. He grunted.

“Damned stubborn turf, this is. It’ll only burn with a lash of coal.” He glanced back as though only just hearing them now, though of course his ears would have pricked up the moment the car’s engine sounded on the street.

Collins, while running a guerrilla campaign, was simultaneously acting as Finance Minister for
Dáil Eireann
, in charge of fundraising and financial administration. Next to him was a desk groaning under a monstrous pile of paperwork, all of which had to be upended and shifted at a moment’s notice whenever a raid descended. And there had been many. Collins now preferred upstairs bedrooms in friendly terraced rows, where the separating walls were knocked and a straight run through each house was possible if needs be, lackeys carrying his files. Legs and arms and briefcases tumbling into backyards and bundled into motorcars while swarms of coppers kicked through alley gates in chase.

“What was it that Jonathan Swift said? Burn everything British but their coal.” His eyes twinkled, and for a moment there was a schoolboy impishness in that hard face. “Alas, I can’t write if my fingers are frozen solid, and burn the Cardiff coal I must. How are you, boys? You can leave me with Bowen now.”

Adam’s escorts nodded and went back downstairs. Collins laid the poker in a brass bucket and retook his chair.

“Sit down, Bowen.”

Adam glanced round the bare room. There was no other seat.

“How were your holidays across the water, Bowen?” Collins leaned his elbow on the table, sighed, and crossed one long leg over the other. “I worked in London once, you know. At the Post Office Savings Bank in West Kensington. Cold this time of year. Aren’t you going to sit?”

“There’s, er, there’s no other chair, Mick.”

“Jesus, you’re a sharp one.” Collins turned a murderous glare upon one of the paper piles by his elbow before swatting it away. “A bloody pig’s ear. That’s what you made of it.” The eyes were not twinkling now. “They won’t release Liam’s body back to his family. Because he’s an enemy of the Crown, there’ll be a high-level investigation, a month long at least, while he lies rotting on the slab. After that, once he’s been officially damned to the devil, they’ll allow him back home, no doubt with maggots colonising his eye sockets.”

Adam swallowed hard, thinking of Liam, nervous-mannered but trying to appear cocky on the streets of London. “I’m sorry. For Liam.”

“Are you?” Collins barked. “No, you be sorry for the villages that Ripley’s going to tear up once he gets back to Ireland. And I’ll be sorry for Liam’s mother—me, having sent him to his death in the first place. It’s Ripley who was supposed to end up on the slab, not . . . ” Collins lowered his head and his hands rose slowly to clasp his temples. “Christ, Bowen, there are many, many mothers in Ireland that I should be sorry for.”

The fire spat a few sparks, sullenly coming to life, the hairy lumps of turf breathing thick, silvery smoke. Collins turned his head away and gazed through the window. They were overlooking a bacon-curer’s yard, men with greasy arms hauling vats of pickle, bagging rind and bone.

“Tea?” When Collins looked back, he appeared once more the affable schoolboy.

“What?”

“I said, would you like some tea?”

Adam’s stomach was empty and unsettled. “Yes, I would, actually.”

“Grand. Make me one too while you’re at it.”

In the next room Adam found mugs of cheap china and a stove. He brought the tea back some minutes later, and Collins was bent over his desk, scanning notes.

“Tell me, what rank did you say you held in the army, Adam? Captain?”

“Lieutenant. Just below a captain.”

“You won’t get a crack at him again, you know. Ripley. You might as well have gone after Bismarck with a boxing glove. Didn’t I warn you to finish him? And a fortune it cost to send you boys over, Jackson’s boat, and the safehouse.”

Adam leaned his hand on the mantle of the hearth and blew on his tea. “I told you, I’m a soldier. But you sent me to do an assassin’s job. I’m not an assassin.”

“Toss another sod into the fire, will you?”

“Toss it yourself.”

“A lieutenant.”

“That’s right.”

“So you commanded in France, what, a company?”

“No. That’s a captain’s job. I commanded a platoon.”

“A platoon. Good lads?”

“The very finest.”

Collins rose up, lifted his arms, and stretched his back, releasing a groan. Then he sat again. “That tea’s poor. You owe me a debt, Bowen. A big debt. And I may have a job for you. A good, honest, soldiering job.”

Adam hesitated and sipped his tea, using the motion to gather his thoughts. He had no idea of what Collins was planning for him now. A
cold-hearted butcher
was how certain newspapers had described Collins. Other publications had said he was a brave defender of his people, a bright young talent, a light guiding the way towards the future.