Irregulars (12 page)

18

S
hifting down, O’Keefe slows the Trusty to a halt. A Talbot Tourer motorcar is parked diagonally across the tram tracks in the middle of the road, with just enough space on either side for cars to squeeze past, some one hundred yards north of the gates to St Patrick’s Teacher Training College. Four men work the checkpoint, all of them in mufti-suits and trenchcoats despite the Indian summer morning’s warmth; sharp trilbys and polished black shoes. All are armed, O’Keefe knows, though he sees only one man holding a stubby rifle with a drum magazine. One of the new Thompson hand-held machine-guns, he realises, having read reports of the gun being shipped into Ireland by the IRA when he had still been in the RIC. One of the men, holding a clipboard with a sheaf of papers attached to it, shouts a question over his shoulder and O’Keefe turns and follows the man’s gaze to the reason for the checkpoint.

To O’Keefe’s left on the footpath, underneath one of the large oak trees that loom over this stretch of road, is a body. A dead man in canvas work trousers and scuffed brown boots is entangled in a bicycle, his legs asprawl through the frame as if the push-bike were a trap, head thrown back, eyes staring lifelessly up at the yellowing leaves, a thickening pool of blood on the footpath under the body. A flat cap lies some feet away. Blood on the white, collarless shirt. A fifth man, also in civilian clothes much like the ones worn by the dead man—rough woollen jacket, heavy boots and flat cap—is squatting and rummaging through the dead man’s pockets. O’Keefe watches as he stands, finding nothing, and wipes the blood from his hands on his trousers. He lights a cigarette, and even from fifteen feet away O’Keefe can see that his hands are shaking.

O’Keefe wonders if the cycling man was killed having tried to run the checkpoint, or if the checkpoint was mounted as a result of the killing. However it happened, he thinks, they should at least afford the dead man the dignity of covering his face, closing his eyes. No crowd gathers around the body, terrified no doubt by the men in the trilbys and trenchcoats. Instead, O’Keefe sees that people are crossing the road to pass on the far side.

He turns back to the checkpoint, idling the Trusty behind an ass cart driven by an elderly man. The men holding up traffic and questioning drivers are Free State men, O’Keefe reckons—army intelligence or special detectives from the new and much-feared Criminal Investigation Department recently established in Oriel House. They are too open about the killing and the checkpoint to be anything else. The Irregulars also man their own roadblocks, but rarely in Free State controlled areas, and even then rarely in daylight. And generally, Irregular checkpoints are set up with the intent to commandeer transport.

O’Keefe feels some comfort in knowing who is asking the questions. It allows him to formulate the correct answers.

The man with the Thompson gun waves a car through on the opposite side of the road now and points at O’Keefe to approach. He raises the machine-gun and brings it across his chest, finger resting on the trigger guard. It is not an aggressive move, but one of readiness, and O’Keefe recognises it for what it is. He has manned checkpoints in the past himself.

Despite this awareness, O’Keefe’s mouth is dry and his heartbeat begins to jog against his ribs. And with this, a dull sense of anger swells in his throat at these gunmen on the streets of his city. Yes, he thinks, he has always wanted an Ireland free from British rule—as long as no one had to die for it. And yes, these men are likely members of an army under the mandate of the new, democratically elected Free State government of Ireland. But still he cannot help but wonder what these very men had been up to a year ago. He wonders how many of his friends in the RIC these heavily armed and strutting peacocks had assassinated in the name of liberty.

O’Keefe knows that these men are fighting a war against their former comrades in the IRA—rebels, Irregulars—who oppose the Treaty guaranteeing Free State status to Ireland in exchange for the six counties in the north. The whole thing a mire of accusations, recriminations, as former comrades hurl lethal insult and increasingly heavy weaponry over the widening ideological divide.

The dead man on the footpath is most likely one of these staunch, violent Irregulars, though his face has taken on the innocent mien that death lends to every man. He could well be a bloody-minded gunman of the worst sort, O’Keefe thinks. But still there is something sad about the scene. Perhaps it’s the gormless, everyday tangle of limbs and push-bike.

Of the two sides—Free State army or Republican Irregular—O’Keefe supposes he sides with the Free Staters, with the government and its army, of which these men are members. Best of a bad lot, he supposes. The people of Ireland want freedom from Crown rule, but more than that, they want peace. They want to work, to raise their families, to raise a glass without the constant menace of gunmen at the door; without having to shield their children’s eyes from the bodies and blood on the streets of their towns. The Irish people, O’Keefe believes along with many others, had not so much voted in favour of the Treaty, a flawed and flaccid compromise, as much as they had voted for an end to violence. And these men at this checkpoint are charged with achieving that peace, even if it means gunning down men on bicycles on a sunny autumn morning.

So they are Free State soldiers or detectives, but that does not make them any less dangerous. These trenchcoated men appear calm enough to O’Keefe, none of the jumpy, paranoid shouting and high-pitched laughter, the waving of guns and desperately smoked cigarettes that often follow an action in wartime, a killing. But O’Keefe’s palms are sweating in his leather gloves because he knows what can happen at checkpoints manned by men
with guns, democratic mandate or no. The man with the clipboard approaches him under the watchful gaze of the Thompson gunner.

O’Keefe lifts his goggles onto his forehead and removes his leather helmet, showing he has nothing to hide from them, that he presents no threat.

‘Step off the bike,’ says the man from the footpath, approaching now from across the road.

O’Keefe turns back to look at him and does what he says, shutting down the Trusty and lifting it onto its stand. He raises his arms.

‘What are you doing?’ the man with the clipboard says.

‘Making it easier for you to search me,’ O’Keefe says, knowing this is coming. He has been searched before on the streets of Dublin and had, as a policeman, searched many men himself. ‘I can put them down if you like.’

‘You’re the kind to cut it clever, are you?’

The man with the flat cap approaches from behind and slaps O’Keefe roughly under the armpits with open palms before he can reply. He then pats down his back, sides, arms and between his legs, tugging O’Keefe’s balls and then running his hands down his legs to his boots. He digs his fingers into the boots before standing and searching the saddle-bags on the Trusty. Throughout this, O’Keefe says nothing.

‘Clean,’ the flat capped man says, before walking back to the footpath.

‘Can I drop my arms now?’

The man with the clipboard does not respond, but O’Keefe lowers his arms, considers lighting a cigarette and then decides against it.
Don’t provoke them or you won’t make Gormanston today. Or ever
, he thinks, his eyes darting over to the dead man on the footpath.

The man ruffles through the pages on his clipboard, the tell-tale bulge of a revolver grip visible beneath his tan trenchcoat. After a long moment, he says, ‘Name?’

Jesus
, O’Keefe thinks,
what cost a few manners?
The RIC had had its faults, O’Keefe is the first to admit, but lack of professional courtesy was not one of them. He says nothing until the man with the clipboard looks up and repeats his question.

O’Keefe does his best to keep the anger from his voice. ‘O’Keefe. Seán O’Keefe.’

The man with the clipboard holds his gaze on O’Keefe, who tries to keep his expression neutral.

‘Address?’ The man shuffles through the pages on his board.

O’Keefe tells him, wondering as he does if it is wise, and then decides there is no reason not to tell the truth. He has a flashing realisation that this must be exactly how innumerable men had felt when he’d questioned them during his time in the police. The instant, instinctive urge to lie, often for no reason, in the face of authority. Some latent guilt inside all men driving the lie.
I’ve nothing to hide.
But his memory sparks, ignites with images of Turks he had killed in the war, too many to remember all of them, but he recalls one he’d done with a bayonet and another—hardly older than Nicholas Dolan—with a trenching tool. Images of IRA men he had shot in Cork as a copper. Men like these men in front of him. He’d been the hunter and the hunted then. He swallows and regrets telling the man his correct address.

‘And what line of work are you in, O’Keefe, Seán?’

There is an edge to the question and O’Keefe’s disquiet tilts back to anger. He is suddenly pleased with himself for neglecting to vote in the May election.
Shower of bullies, thugs, the lot of them.

‘I’m unemployed at the moment.’

The man smiles over at his colleague with the Thompson gun and then turns back to O’Keefe. ‘Fine motorbike for an unemployed man. How did you come about it?’

‘I bought it.’

‘You bought it, did you? With what?’

‘With money I’d saved.’

‘So you were employed before you were unemployed then?’

O’Keefe breathes through clenched teeth. ‘I was.’

‘At what?’

O’Keefe cannot help himself. He could have been anything—a house painter, a teacher; a shop clerk or hod carrier.

‘I was a Peeler.’

The man’s eyes—watery blue under the brim of his hat—narrow and his smile widens. ‘Lads,’ he calls back to his colleagues, ‘we’ve a rusty copper here. Says he’s unemployed.’

The Thompson gunner laughs. ‘’Course he is. Sure, you’ve his job now, Charlie.’

The third man at the checkpoint does not laugh, O’Keefe notices. He stares for a moment at O’Keefe and then looks away, something furtive, fearful in his eyes, and O’Keefe wonders if maybe it is remorse or shame he is seeing. Had he been the one who had shot down the cycling man? Or had he perhaps murdered RIC men in the past and now, confronted by one still living, feels the weight of guilt for it? O’Keefe doubts it. Shoot a man down over a card game or a woman and you’re a criminal, he thinks. Shoot a man down over an idea and they make you a detective in the new Free State. He looks back to the man with the clipboard.

‘Can I go now?’

‘Twenty-three Leinster Road, Rathmines is your current address?’

‘I told you it was. Can I go?’

‘You in a hurry, are you? Surely an out-of-work Peeler’s got no place to be going quickly?’

O’Keefe says nothing but holds the man’s gaze until the sound of a tram’s clanging bell breaks the impasse. The man with the clipboard turns and tells the Thompson gunner to let O’Keefe through.

Keeping his rage in check, O’Keefe replaces his helmet and goggles, kick-starts the bike and eases his way around the Talbot. As he passes it, the third man at the checkpoint—holding his hand out to halt traffic in the opposite direction—looks at O’Keefe quickly and then looks away. The man in the flat cap is standing over the cycling man’s body again, but this time the dead man’s face is covered with his cap.

O’Keefe wonders was it a friend, a former comrade whom these men have shot dead on this sunny autumn morning.

19

T
here are five men in the Ford Tourer and four of them sweat because they are wearing heavy trenchcoats. It is unseasonably warm for an October day in Kildare. The fifth man’s sweat is born of terror.

‘Please don’t harm my child. I’ll do anything you say …’ begs the bank manager, a Mr Anthony Roche, captive on the rear bench seat between Finch and Raney.

In the end, only one man—Smyth, with his mustard-gas-abraded lungs—had been needed to mind the banker’s wife, housemaid and child.

‘What about the wife?’ Raney says, in his flat Ulster accent. ‘You don’t mind what happens to the auld doll?’

The banker shakes his head. ‘Of course. Jesus, what do you take me for?’ There is some of the high-handedness one expects of a bank manager in his tone, and Raney elbows the man harder than he has to in the ribs.

‘I’m only ragging you, Mr Moneybags. Our chum won’t lay a finger on her once you do what you’re told. Unless she wants him to, aye?’ Again the digging elbow in the ribs. A Winchester pump shotgun rests on the floor of the Ford beside Raney’s feet.

Jack Finch, seated on the other side of the banker, smiles.
Serves the stuffed cunt right, him with his airs and graces
. Finch decides he does not mind robbing this man’s bank and will be happy to leave him unsure about his wife’s safety. Smyth’s a pukka lad and won’t hurt a kid, and probably won’t try to get up on the wife. Not with the maid and kid watching anyway. Smyth can be prissy like that, but the wife is an all right bit of mutton—no lamb—and Finch would not have minded a poke at her himself. But such is life. He promises himself the nicest, fattest whore he can afford when the job’s done and they’re away to Dublin.
Now keep the mind on the job.
They turn onto Edward Street, coming to a halt behind a beer lorry that has stopped to allow a squad of uniformed Free State soldiers to cross in front of it.

‘Don’t get no ideas, chum,’ Finch says, jabbing one of his two Webleys into the soft flesh of the banker’s armpit. ‘Bunch of kids just learning the trade, them lot. More likely to shoot you or each other, them wet boys.’

‘He’s no fool,’ says Tally, from behind the wheel. ‘He knows what’s good for the missus and the kid, don’t you, mate?’ He turns to watch the banker nod, the haughtiness gone now, his face pale under his bowler, sweat beading on his cheeks. Tally turns back and watches as the Free State troops march to the opposite side of the road, passing the Ford less than ten feet away. He has a Colt .1911 held on his lap under the folds of his trenchcoat.

The beer lorry moves forward. The men in the car release a collective breath and Tally follows the lorry until he comes to the bank where Hanson and Bennett are waiting, parked at the curb in a hardtop Chevrolet Sedan Captain Hanson had won in Cobh in a game of cards.

‘Anything else you like to tell us, chum?’ Finch says.

The banker swallows. ‘No … I’ve told you about the two soldiers guarding the safe.’

‘You told us about them. Nothing else?’

The banker shakes his head.

Finch says, ‘You know it’s not
you
I’ll shoot if something goes sour. It’s your wife and kid who roll sevens if you’re fucking us about. Nothing funny?’

‘No, no …’

‘Good stuff. Let’s hop it, gents,’ Raney says, stepping out of the Ford and holding the door open for the banker and Finch to exit. He carries an empty leather holdall in one hand, the Winchester against his leg in the folds of his long coat in the other. Bennett gets out of the Chevy to join them.

Finch notices Captain Hanson behind the wheel of the Chevrolet, a newspaper opened to hide his face as the bank manager passes. No sense in their hostage learning it was the Captain—that fine man he’d met in the Hermitage golf club bar and shared more than several tumblers of Bushmills with over an afternoon—who had turned a banker’s drunken blather into a cushy payday. Hanson would be hard to catch even if there were any coppers in the country to try it, but there is no gain in taking chances.

They mount the steps, and Finch, also carrying an empty leather travel bag, says to the banker, ‘Right, you call them two guards into your office like it’s important business. You do things proper and no one gets ’urt—not them guards, not your customers, not your tellers, right?’ He rests his hand on the door and waits for the banker to nod.
Handy number, this
, Finch thinks as they enter the bank, leaving the bustle of the market town street for the hush of country commerce inside.
Be nice to do a job where, for once, there’s no shooting
.

Commandant O’Hanley’s man, young Stephen Gilhooley and his two older brothers ride in one car, smelling faintly of meat and blood, cuticles claret-stained after a morning’s work for their father at Gilhooley’s Butchers and Purveyors of Fine Meats. The four others—Stephen’s two inside men from the Free State army and two of O’Hanley’s young Irregular charges—ride in the second. They pull up to the bank at the corner of the Dublin Road and Edward Street. Raymond Gilhooley gets out of the car and walks to the corner, glancing both ways up Edward Street and then at the bank itself. He walks back to the cars and taps the bonnet.

‘Grand so. No troops or coppers I can see.’

‘There’s hardly a copper left in the whole of Ireland,’ Stephen says, smiling. ‘And good fuckin’ riddance.’

They get out of their battered, stolen Willys–Overland 90, each with an empty coal-sack bunched in his jacket pocket, throwing down half-smoked cigarettes. The others climb out of their Ford Tourer, which had been requisitioned for the job at a hastily drummed up checkpoint in the village of Tallaght. Webleys bulge in waistbands under the younger boys’ shirttails; sawn off shotguns beneath overcoats for the older Gilhooley brothers and, for Stephen Gilhooley, a Thompson sub-machine-gun dangles on a strap under his coat.

Finch stays close to the hostage as they cross the Bank of Ireland’s small atrium, and then nudges him with his Webley barrel. ‘Call them,’ he says.

Bennett is on the opposite side of the banker, a chopped-down Winchester pump gun nestled close to his leg, and Raney is behind them with his full-length Winchester. All three wear low-dipped trilbys and, as one witness would later remember, expensive brogues polished to army standard shine.

The banker clears his throat, removing his bowler to reveal thinning hair sweat-matted to his scalp. ‘Gentlemen,’ he calls to the two uniformed Free State guards at the locked walk-in safe to the right of the teller’s windows. ‘Come in to my office, please. I need an urgent word …’

The two guards look at each other, and the larger of the two says, ‘We’re not meant move til we’re relieved, sir.’ His words are authoritative, and Finch gives the man a long look as the banker stops. He does not like what he sees in the guard’s eyes, and swiftly decides there will be no fannying round with him. The shorter guard is younger and looks to the older for his lead.
No bother there
. Finch’s finger moves from the Webley’s trigger guard to its trigger. He scans the barred teller windows and counts three customers waiting—two older farmers and a young woman—as the single middle-aged male teller serves a woman wrapped in a black shawl. A second teller, a young man just out of his teens by the look of him, sits at a desk behind the cage filling in forms.

Finch says, without moving his lips, ‘The big lad.’

Raney, behind Finch, says, ‘Clocked him, aye.’

The banker’s skin is a shade of white that indicates only fear or illness. His voice is thinner than it had been in the car. ‘Gentlemen, these men have been sent on urgent business from Dublin, sent by …’ the banker stops, as if thinking of a name or title to suitably impress the guards, but more likely he cannot recall who is in charge of what department, ‘…
by Headquarters Staff in relation to matters pertaining to … your duties. I should not like to have them report you for insubordination or obstructing the orders of the Free State government …’

‘Move into your office,’ Finch mumbles. ‘They follow or I’ll shoot the both of them.’

‘Please, gentlemen, time is against us,’ the banker says, a crack in his voice that Finch hopes the guards don’t hear.

They move as a group of four to the banker’s office, situated to the left of the tellers’ cages, and enter.

‘Sit,’ Bennett says, pointing to the banker’s chair behind the desk. The banker sits and Bennett stands behind him with the cut-down shotgun to his temple.

Finch stands behind the door, and when the guard’s knock comes, Bennett says, ‘Come in.’

The door opens and the bigger guard walks his face into Raney’s shotgun barrel, his own Enfield rifle still slung on his shoulder.

‘Call your mate,’ Finch says, levelling his Webley at the man, ‘or I’ll put a bullet in your nog and then I’ll go out and put one in his. Call him.’

‘Fuck sake.’ The guard’s face darkens, he balls his fists. ‘For fuck sake.’

‘Try it,’ Raney says, shoving the gaping up-and-under Winchester barrels closer to the guard’s eyes. ‘I’ll paint that wall with you, big man.’

Finch watches the guard’s fists unclench. ‘Call him.’

‘Gareth,’ the big guard says, clearing his throat, and then louder out of the open office door. ‘Get over here now, boy.’ He does not look at the men, but fixes his gaze on the window behind the seated banker, and does not react when Raney slips the Enfield rifle from his shoulder, ejecting the round from its chamber and detaching the box magazine, pocketing both. Raney waves the shotgun barrel at the man and he follows it across the room. Finch decides not to wait for the younger guard and slams the butt of his Webley into the back of the guard’s skull as he passes, the guard collapsing forward with a grunt. Finch moves back to the door, then and as the second guard enters, he closes it. He steps from behind him and delivers an expert uppercut, his punch landing just below the young man’s ribs. Raney grabs the lad’s rifle before he falls and Finch takes two sets of handcuffs—souvenirs from his time in the constabulary—and cuffs the guards behind their backs.

‘Right, you,’ he says to the banker, ‘up and open the safe and we’ll be off.’ Bennett lifts the banker to standing, the man having seemingly lost the power to do so himself.

‘Don’t faint, Shylock,’ Bennett says. ‘You open that safe or I’ll kill every cunt in this bank and then your wife and kid, right?’

The banker nods. ‘Please … I’m all right.’

The men leave the office, passing behind the short queue for the teller, and Finch watches the young man filling forms look up, a question in his eyes. They reach the safe and the bank manager begins to spin the dial, his fingers sweating, stopping to wipe them on his trousers. Four numbers in, an audible click and the banker lifts the lever below the dial and begins to spin the wheel lock counter-clockwise. Twenty seconds later, the heavy door is swung open and the men walk in.

‘Take him back to the office and cuff him, mate,’ Finch says to Bennett, beginning to shove packets of pound notes into his leather bag, Raney working the opposite side of the safe.

‘Right-o, you, let’s go,’ Bennett says to the banker before smiling and winking at Finch. ‘Piece of piss, innit, mate?’

‘Here we go, lads,’ Stephen Gilhooley says, moving towards the street corner with the others in his wake, ‘try not to shoot the two guards …’ he stops and turns back to the six men, ‘… unless you have to.’

‘We won’t have to,’ Mullen, one of the moonlighting Free Staters says. ‘I know the one of them, and he’s as windy as a March day that fella. Just shout at him and he’ll shite himself.’ He scans the street and pulls a pair of motorcycle goggles down over his eyes, raises a neck scarf to cover his mouth while his Free State comrade does the same. A drover taps the hind of the last cow in his milking herd as it passes up Edward Street in front of the bank, studiously ignoring the masked men moving with purpose towards the bank’s stone steps.

Gilhooley tips his cap lower and his brothers quickly knot kerchiefs over their mouths as they walk, passing two parked cars in front of the bank, Gilhooley dismissing the man in the Chevy reading a paper. He is oblivious as the drover, it appears, to their passing.

They mount the short flight of stone steps, beginning to jog halfway up, one of O’Hanley’s young lads holding open the door as they pass one by one. The lad remains outside the bank, his face uncovered, to keep sketch.

From inside the bank comes the sound of bellowing voices and a woman’s scream.

‘Everyone, down on the floor,
now
!’ Stephen Gilhooley shouts, waving the Thompson at the three customers and the wide-mouthed teller and his partner behind the cage. ‘This is a stick up!’

The shawled woman, having completed her business, has turned and faces the masked men. She screams and drops her handbag, screams again before one of the Free State moonlighters crosses to her and forces her to the floor with the others.

‘The payroll!’ Stephen says, rushing the counter. ‘Where is it, the Army payroll?’

The terrified teller is unable to speak, but points to the open vault.

Gilhooley and his brothers take the coal-sacks from their pockets and turn to the safe.

Finch freezes when he hears the shouting. Raney begins to speak, and when he does so Finch signals for silence. He hears the words ‘payroll’ and ‘Army payroll’ and shoves a last packet of notes into his bag, hanging the bag’s straps on the crook of his arm. He takes a second Webley from the holster on his thigh, holding one in each hand. Raney does likewise with his bag and clutches the Winchester in both hands.

‘Would you fuckin’ believe it, mate? We’re being
robbed
.’ Finch smiles at Raney. He has known the man for these many months and has enjoyed his company. A good skin, Raney, if a touch on the mad side.

‘I’d believe anything, aye, after some of the things I seen in the war. Good luck, Jack,’ Raney says. ‘See you in Dublin if I don’t see you in hell first.’

‘I’ll see you in the Ford in thirty seconds time, chum. Don’t you facking fret about it.’