Irregulars (24 page)

35

T
he morning streets are crowded with delivery lorries and dray horses hauling beer kegs and coal. Trams full, men hanging on to railings on conductors’ platforms in suits and hats reading folded newspapers, swinging gently with the curve and jolt of the tracks. People making their way from the southern suburbs of Ballsbridge and Donnybrook by horse and trap, motor car, foot. Perfect cover, Stephen Gilhooley thinks, his Morris Cowley butcher’s van full of meat and money.

He turns onto Dartmouth Walk and comes to a stop in stalled traffic at Leeson Street bridge, the canal water below brown and still as glass. Waiting, he thinks of the fourteen thousand pounds in the bag in the back of the van and what a man could do with it. Start a new life, he thinks idly, revelling in the sheer fantasy of it. Head out for California, US of A, and buy a house with its own swimming baths and a soft, fat blond girleen to swim with; tall whiskey cocktails and gin and vermouth, drinks with all manner of fruits in them, jaysus, the sweet taste of one of them and the big round-arsed doll in her bathing costume ….

There is a rapping on the passenger side window. Gilhooley starts, and his hand goes into his white butcher’s coat. Too late, he thinks, as the revolver snags on his shirt and tangles in the folds of the coat coming out.

‘Stephen!’ A smiling face at the window, the door opening.

Gilhooley’s hand releases the grip of the revolver, relief washing through him. ‘Jaysus fuck, Nicky Dolan. Here’s me, thinking I was dead.’

‘I’m alive and well, I am,’ the boy says, misunderstanding Gilhooley’s words. ‘Starving, but. I’ve hardly eaten a crumb since Monday evening.

There is a damp, musty smell to the boy that Gilhooley catches now, his face smeared with what appears to be soot or ashes. He wears no coat, and his long trousers are torn. But he is smiling, his teeth white.
A big lark, the whole war is to these lads
, Gilhooley thinks. And why not? Sure, half the reason he’s in it himself. Keeps him away from the slow death of arguing with auld ones over cuts of offal for the rest of his days. In it for the craic as much as the cause. A lorry sounds its claxon behind, and Stephen pulls the van forward and turns left over the bridge onto Leeson Street.

‘What happened at the hotel, so?’

‘Fuck it if I know, I’m tellin’ yeh. We came out and were jumped by two gougers first. And then—you wouldn’t believe it—weren’t we jumped by Free Staters with a Talbot motor. One of the gougers stuck one of the Free Staters with a knife and didn’t I take off running …’

‘And Robert? What happened young Robbo?’

‘No idea. He was behind me and then he wasn’t. But he knew nothing about the message, only that it was for Murphy and he doesn’t know where the gaff is. Does he?’ The words rush from Nicholas Dolan in a boyish flow, as if he is recounting some schoolboy’s prank.

‘No, Robbo doesn’t know the way any more than you do.’

‘Then he’ll be grand so. Maybe he got lifted, but even so …’

The boy looks eagerly at Gilhooley as he drives.

‘So where’d you hide yourself these past two days, then?’ Gilhooley asks. ‘Back to mammy’s with you, wha’?’ He smiles to mask the true meaning of the question.

‘To fuck I went back there. Anyone could be on the house. I slept in a burnt-out cowshed in James’ Street, by the brewery, the first night, I was trying to find McKinney’s safe house, but fuck if I could. Last night I kipped in an alley off Pembroke Street. I went to the meet up spot about twenty times yesterday, and then just now was on me way there again. That’s when I saw you in the van here.’

Stephen smiles. Not a fool for fifteen, fourteen, whatever age the fella is. Taking precautions, not heading home at the first hint of trouble, returning to the set rendezvous point confident that someone would show for him eventually. Even more, the boy had not come back to the butcher shop.

‘Will I get in the back of the van, so, Lieutenant?’

Gilhooley smiles again. Only the young lads addressed the other men by rank. ‘Call me Stephen for Jaysus’ sake. And no, stay up here with me. We’re not going back to the house yet. We’ve a job on first.’

‘What is it?’

‘Going back to Burton’s Hotel to drop the gun monger the money we scored in Newbridge. You can mind the van for me while I’m inside. Throw on that coat there …’ The gunman nods to the white butcher’s coat folded and set on the bench seat between them. ‘Nothing more natural than a butcher’s van in the lane behind a hotel of a Wednesday morning.’

Nicholas smiles. He’s a handsome lad, Gilhooley thinks, and no doubt the boss is sweet on him.

‘Jaysus I could eat the meat in back raw, I could.’

‘You mind the van and I’ll fry you a chop or two when we’re done, right?’

The young boy, beaming. ‘Grand, so.’ Then closing down his smile as if it is not something serious soldiers do.

Nora is at her post in reception when the call comes in.

‘Front desk, how may I help you?’ She assumes, at first, it is the usual request for drinks or sandwiches. Inquiries about laundry or suits to be pressed or messages received. She is thinking, as she picks up the phone—as she has been all morning—about her evening with O’Keefe. She has resolved that it will be her last with him. She will tell Carty that she can get nothing from the man and that he is not worth wasting a shadow on. She can do that much for Seán O’Keefe at least.

‘Yes …’ the accent of the voice on the line is English, and at first Nora does not recognise it. ‘… Murphy here in room thirty-four. I’d like to order up some drinks, if I could. Brandy and a bottle of ginger ale, please. Yes,’ the order is repeated clearly, ‘brandy and ginger ale.’

Nora’s heart leaps to a gallop as she recognises the code.
Brandy and ginger ale.
O’Hanley—or his men—are in the room with Murphy. Part of her mind, as she turns to the switchboard to place a call to the Flowing Tide and her colleagues waiting there, wonders if the code is too obvious.
Who orders up brandy and ginger ale at half ten in the morning?

The line to the pub is engaged, and she unplugs the cable and jams the socket in its hole to try again. Nothing. She drops the earpiece and runs now, first for the lift and then, pausing in front of it, for the stairs, passing Michael the porter to throw open the door, mounting the stairs two at a time until she hears a door, a flight above her, slam closed. She stops, breathing hard, and listens to footsteps descending.
Move up or down, girl
, she thinks.
Do either but do it now
. She decides on up and begins to mount the stairway at a more regular pace, matching the footfalls above, trying to control her breathing and thinking of her bag beneath the counter at reception. Thinking of the Webley revolver she has left inside it. The footfalls halt above her.

Nora has a sudden urge to stop as well, but wills herself on, knowing that to do so will invoke suspicion in whoever it is descending. She continues to climb, takes the turning of the stairs and looks up. Waiting by the door that opens onto the second-floor hallway is a young man—eighteen, nineteen—in a white coat and hat. A butcher, she thinks, relieved for a second—there is a regular flow of butchers and bakers making daily deliveries to the hotel—and then thinks how out of place a butcher’s delivery boy is on the second-floor stairway.

The young man appears to relax as Nora comes into his view, and his hand comes out of his coat. He smiles and tips his hat, waiting for her to pass, and Nora smiles back at him, her face hot and flushed pink. She continues on up the stairwell to the third floor, sweat prickling under her arms and on her forehead, knowing she should have said something to the man. A proper employee would have castigated or questioned him for being where he should not be. She resists the urge to look back at him, and sighs in relief when she hears footsteps below her, quicker than before, descending.

Without thinking she opens the door to the third floor and runs down the carpeted hallway to room thirty-four. She should have brought the brandy and ginger ale at least, as a pretence. She decides, if it comes to it, that she will tell him that they have run out, and would he care for something different. Not great as cover but it will do.

The door opens a crack, and one of Murphy’s thugs peers out and, seeing her, opens the door wide to let her inside.

‘You’ve missed him, love,’ the bodyguard says, smiling.

‘Mr Murphy said …’

‘He was here, and now he’s gone. Mr Murphy?’ the guard calls into his boss.

‘Was he wearing a butcher’s coat? A young man?’ Nora says, her heart pounding.

Murphy enters the room from the adjoining bedroom suite. ‘He was.’

‘He …’

‘… Butcher’s coat and a butcher’s van, look,’ the second bodyguard says, standing at the room’s window. He points down to the lane behind the hotel. Nora joins him at the window and looks down to see the white-coated man open the driver’s door to a black lorry, three stories below, with incomprehensible writing on its side.

‘He was only requesting another meet. Wanted me to go to the zoological gardens in the Phoenix Park this time.’

But Nora is gone, sprinting down the hallway and back down the stairs. Again, she passes Michael as she runs through lobby.

‘Mind the desk, Michael. I’ll be back when I can!’ she shouts over her shoulder as she bursts through the hotel doors and out onto the morning street, temporarily blinded by the sunlight. She runs to the corner of the hotel and peers down the lane. The butcher’s van is gone. Her head swivels as she scans the busy street in front of the hotel.
There!
Turning onto O’Connell Street. Left, towards the river. She makes out ‘… oy’s Fine Meats’ but nothing more.

A tram clangs its bell and she leaps across its path, trusting only God that there is no tram passing in the other direction. A car brakes hard and she is onto the footpath on the opposite side of the street, aware that her hair has loosed itself and become a red banner in her frantic wake. She has not run like this since school, and is breathless when she reaches the pub. Throwing open the door, she shouts into the dark interior.

‘Dillon, they’ve been at the hotel … a van … a butcher’s van …’

Her eyes adjusting to the dim light, she does not see Dillon until he is at her side.

‘Are they still there?’

‘No,’ she gathers her breath, ‘the van’s turned onto O’Connell Street, towards the quays.’

He grabs her arm and drags her to a Ford Tourer parked halfway up on the path. A man is asleep at the wheel, and the stench of stale alcohol assails Nora as she bundles into the back seat, Dillon, cranking the hand starter and sliding in up front, shouting the driver awake.

‘Left onto O’Connell Street and put the boot down, Jimmy, for fuck sake. O’Hanley’s boys are in a butcher’s van.’

‘Something “Fine Meats”, on the side. A dark van,’ Nora says, leaning over the front seat.

O’Connell Street is jammed with horse, motorcar and tram traffic and Jimmy the driver takes the Ford up onto the footpath, weaving off it and onto the bridge. Nora and Dillon rake the street and quays for the lorry and eye any number that could be it.
Navan Finest Furniture. Johnston Mooney & O’Brien Baked Goods. Oxo Meat Extract.

‘There it is!’ Nora shouts.

Turning up D’Olier Street is the van they seek, just visible in the lee shadow of the Irish Times building. Nora is certain of it. Gilhooley’s Butchers and Purveyors of Fine Meats. It halts behind a slow-moving tram, and Jimmy weaves through the sluggish traffic on the bridge, settling in three cars and a horse cart behind the van. In an instant their pursuit has slowed to a crawl in the Dublin traffic, and Jimmy coughs and covers his mouth and retches loudly, cranking down the window glass to spew a stringy jet of bile into the road. He gags again and wipes his brow with his hand, his hat tipping back on his head, the boozy miasma dissipating through the open window. Nora has not met the man before but this is not unusual, the short-staffed CID adding men by the day, some sent away to outlying areas of the country, others taking up desks in Oriel House. And all of them drinking too much, rarely sleeping, hunting and hunted and nerves hardened, then shattered by waiting and war.

Nora winds her hair into its French knot and sets it with pins. Dillon takes out his Luger automatic and ejects the clip before slotting it home again in the grips of the gun. He snaps back the toggle-lock of the pistol, chambering a round, and slips the gun back into the holster under his jacket.

‘I’m not armed,’ Nora says, watching as the butcher’s van begins to move forward, picking up speed.

‘There’s a tommy-gun and a Winchester in the boot,’ Dillon says, his eyes on the van. ‘Jimmy can take the Thompson and you take the shotgun. You’ve fired one before, haven’t you? In training at least?’

‘Are we planning on shooting them or following them or what, Charlie? Or taking them in? I’m not planning on blasting anyone with the Winchester.’

Dillon smiles at this but does not turn around. ‘I don’t imagine you’ll be blasting anyone at all, Nora. We’ll pinch them when they stop. There’s only the two in the van that you know?’

‘Two? I only saw the one get in.’

‘There’s a young lad in the passenger seat anyway,’ the driver Jimmy says. ‘Look.’ His voice is weak and crackles with phlegm.

And Nora sees a flash of a young man, a boy really, on the passenger side of the van as it turns onto College Green. Jimmy cuts off a Chevrolet taxi to the angry squawking of its claxon.

‘We’ll take the two of them then. We’re bound to get something out of them if we sit them down for a chat.’

Nora has never seen one of Dillon’s “chats”, but she has heard of them. They are held in the outbuildings, the former officers’ quarters, at Wellington Barracks. But she has heard the pained braying from the basement cells of Oriel House when her fellow CID men staged their own. Chats. She pushes the thought of what awaits the two men—boys—in the lorry from her mind.

‘Would it not be better to wait and follow them? Put men on them and see. I mean, can’t we just follow them and see if they lead us to O’Hanley?’ Nora is nervous suddenly. This is an end of the job that she has not seen. She is a watcher, and these men are takers. She knows what Dillon will say before he says it.