When Shadows Fall (16 page)

Every inner hope came crashing to the ground. She closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Tara.” He moved towards her. “I’ve been gathering more details all morning. It seems everything was going perfectly well until Mulligan killed the commanding officer and made good his escape. But we’re searching for him still. He’ll be rooted out, you have my word.”

“Sure,” she said bitterly. “But what in the meantime? He’s going to come after me. I know it. And that’s just for shooting him. What if he hears that I gave you the information about the barracks raid as well?”

“He couldn’t know that. But it doesn’t matter. This was a setback, nothing more, and I stand by my promise. Larry Mulligan will be stopped. By my own hand, if needs be.”

She so desperately wanted to believe him, but his words didn’t instil any new confidence. “Larry Mulligan has escaped justice many times before. Perhaps he’ll never be caught.”

“Justice will prevail. Justice always prevails.”

“Oh, God.” Dark thoughts entered her mind. “I’m too afraid to even walk home tonight.”

“Tara, goodness, you should have said. If you’re that worried I can arrange—”

“No. I’m not going to hide from him. But I just wish,” her voice caught, “I just wish you’d got him. I wanted you to get him.”

“I will, Tara. I’ll get him. I swear that to you.”

When he went to leave, he almost collided with Colleen in the doorway.

“Detective,” Colleen said coldly, “perhaps I might return to my work now.”

“Ah, you’re back.” He beamed and held the door open for her to pass. “And your name is?”

Her eyes flashed. “I am Tara’s section superior.”

“Splendid. Well, I bid you ladies a good morning.”

When he was gone, Tara made an effort to return her attention to the paperwork in front of her, but it was difficult. Her mind swam with a hundred different worries, a hundred frightening scenarios. Mulligan was on the loose, and her name must be foremost on his tongue. In her distraction she almost forgot about Colleen and hoped now that Colleen hadn’t noticed her distress.

It was then she noticed it, just as she glanced across the room. A faint and yet somewhat sly smile touched the corners of Colleen’s mouth. It disappeared just as fast. Colleen continued her work, and they didn’t exchange a word for the rest of that morning.

My imagination
, Tara told herself finally.
Just my imagination
.

The grey light of an overcast afternoon crept round the frayed edges of the curtains and fell upon mildewed rugs on the floor. Cobwebs hung thickly in the upper corners of the bedroom, quivering in the draughts that came in through the beams and the mouldering wooden walls. There was a gentle but persistent patter of rain, pooling on the roof and running down a battered drainpipe by the window.

Larry Mulligan awoke to the sound of the gurgling rainwater. He lay for a while in his bedstead, eyelids at half-mast in the soporific gloom, before he eventually tossed aside the mound of woollen blankets and attempted to sit up. Pain assaulted every nerve edge of his wracked body. Nearly a week hiding out in the Wicklow Mountains had left him with a wheezing chest and a throat like sandpaper before he finally reached a safe house deep in a wooded glen. He was getting too old for all this running, he realised. In three weeks he would be forty-four.

The house was a tumbledown affair next to a river, home to a half-deaf crone with a few goats and hens, and well out of the way of soldiers and prying eyes. Gretta Mulligan was Larry’s widowed aunt-in-law, in the far side of her seventies, and she’d recognised her nephew the moment he came staggering out of the mountains, slack-jawed with fatigue, clothes filthy and soaked.

Without saying a word she knew he must have been out with “the boys” and so she marched him inside, piled up the fire, fed him, stripped off his soiled rags, and put him to bed.

That was four days ago.

The fatigue had abated but the aches remained. Worse still, the wound in his neck had started to pain him again, even though the stitches had fully healed. It was enough to foul his temper even more.

Ten men. He’d lost ten men. How the hell had those Brits known?

He was impatient to be away from this hovel, Gretta Mulligan’s bowls of hot chicken soup notwithstanding. There was work to be done, and it would begin with rooting out whichever devious toerag had shopped them to the Castle. Informers in the struggle were as old as the struggle itself, and Mulligan vowed to make a bloody example of this one.

He lifted his feet onto the freezing floor. The scrabbling underneath the boards he swore must be rats, and he grimaced as he pulled on the shirt and trousers that Gretta had scrubbed clean by the river. He put on his socks and laced up his boots, and then the door creaked open.

Gretta’s skin was as ancient and crinkled as parchment paper. A lifetime exposed to the harsh mountain elements had taken its dues. She was stick thin and lank haired with a face like a shrunken cabbage, but her quick movements belied her age, and she frowned reprovingly at Mulligan.

“You,
mo buachaill,
where might you be a-wandering to?”

“I’m away, Auntie Gretta.”

“You’re what?”

“I said I’m away! Enough of this laying about.”

“Away, are you? And the state of you, fit for the wooden coat. Back in that bed at once.”

Mulligan sighed in exasperation. “I’m fine, and I’m away. I need some fresh air. Enough fuss, woman, I’m stepping outside.”

He brushed past out to the long stoop as she hopped and clucked around him. The day was softened by a mist that hung from the mountainsides, and he breathed in deeply, letting it coax some vitality back into his abused limbs.

Then he noticed they were not alone.

He started at the appearance of a woman sitting in a wicker chair on the porch. Gretta hobbled after him.

“I was trying to tell you, you ignoramus. You have a visitor.”

The woman stood up, smiling nervously. She was middle-aged, plump and dowdy in appearance, with brown hair drawn into a bun. Mulligan finally recognised her.

“Rosín?”

“Hello, Larry. How are you feeling?”

“All the better for seeing my dear cousin. Is this social or business?” Rosín served as a messenger for the IRA.

“A bit of both, Larry.”

Mulligan nodded at Gretta. “Tea, then.”

“You what?”

“We’ll have tea!”

“Will you now?” Gretta huffed but went in to the stove all the same. Mulligan eased his hulking frame into a chair and gestured for his visitor to resume hers.

“Well now, Rosín. It’s been a couple of months. How’d you find me?”

She placed her hat on her lap and squeezed it anxiously in her hands. “Gretta met my father in the village, and he put word to me in Dublin. I heard what happened to you.”

“The ambush? Ah well, it’s little matter,” Mulligan grumbled, though there was a colouring in his cheeks.

“Not just that. I heard also,” she hesitated, “about you getting shot.”

Mulligan stiffened. “Who told you that?”

“Let us say, I overheard.”

“From whom?” he demanded.

Rosín took a deep breath. “As you know, Larry, the IRA has informants working in Dublin Castle.”

“Of course. Their information has been invaluable to us these past years.”

“Well, there is a certain woman, Colleen Murphy, who has passed some particularly interesting information to us. About a young lady who works in her charge.”

Mulligan felt a sudden stab of clarity, a moment of deep insight, when he heard the words
young lady
. He realised, before Rosín spoke another word, who that young lady must be.

“Tara Reilly is her name. Of
the
Reillys, in Ashton, with whom you have, oh, a little history.”

“Go on.”

“It seems she has inveigled her way into the confidence of a detective by the name of Bryant. Colleen listened to them talking one morning. Not only do we now know that Tara Reilly was the one who shot you, but it was also Tara Reilly who alerted the police about your planned raid on Castleconway barracks.”

Mulligan felt his blood boil. “Tara Reilly. Tara
fucking
Reilly.”

“She sounds like a brazen one,” Rosín tutted. “Colleen says there’s a saucy glint in her eye that shrieks of trouble. Saucy, and dangerous.”

Mulligan’s hands gripped the wicker armrests so violently that they began to snap. “She’s a traitor. A traitor! The most despicable kind of traitor, the one who sells out their own country. I lost ten men to the Brits. Ten! And their blood is entirely on that bitch’s hands.”

“So what will you do, Larry?”

He breathed. “I had already meant to deal with her before now. But this? She’s a dead woman, before the month is out. By God I promise it.”

Rosín swallowed. “You’re going to kill her?”

“What else do you suggest for a traitor and an informer?”

“Yes, I know, Larry. When do you plan to—”

“Soon,” he said darkly. “Soon. One of these fine days I will be paying Miss Reilly a little visit.”

The release of slumber evaded Tara for a succession of long, uncaring nights. Each morning she rose unsure whether she had even slept or not. By Thursday she was so wan and sickly looking that even Colleen enquired as to her health, much to Tara’s surprise.

“I’m fine, Miss Murphy. But thank you for asking.”

“You certainly don’t look fine, Tara. You look positively ill.” Colleen narrowed her eyes. “Anything troubling you?”

“Honestly, I’m fine. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have much to work to do.”

“Indeed,” Colleen replied. “I know how busy you are, Tara.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

Colleen was behaving peculiarly, but Tara had other distractions on her mind. She was red-eyed with fatigue by the time evening came, and she stood for a moment by the staff door of the Castle, tired, cold, and afraid, not relishing for a moment the walk home through the sullen dampness of Dublin. Tonight she would justify the price of a hackney ride.

There was only one vacant car on Dame Street, and even as she made for it, a young couple beat her by a yard, folded up their brollies, and clambered into the back. It was starting to rain again. Rather than lingering, she walked in the direction of St. Stephen’s Green, hoping to encounter another cab along the way. The traffic moved briskly as the city’s workers sought homes, and a rumble of thunder sounded above the black clouds. Tara hurried her pace. The drizzle became more mood driven, and by the time she reached York Street, it was building to a downpour. She searched desperately for another hackney. They were all occupied from what she could see.

It was deserted on York Street. Tiny eddies of trash swirled in the rising wind and rainwater filled the gutters. She became aware of a vehicle moving slowly along the kerbside, a few feet behind. She glanced back, hoping to see a cab driver looking for fares, but it was an ordinary motorcar, its lights dazzling her for a moment.

Then it stopped. The engine was still running. Tara ignored it and continued on, but the car started moving again.

Is he following me?

She quickened her pace. The car remained a few yards back, neither slowing nor accelerating. She was afraid to look back now, and she swallowed hard. A thousand wicked imaginings ran through her head, and she took a deep breath to calm herself.

It’s nothing. It’s nobody.

The car kept up its progress, and when Tara abruptly crossed to the other side of the road, it sped after her. She broke into a run. The street was narrow and dimly lit, the safety of St. Stephen’s Green seeming miles ahead. The car’s wheels splashed through the puddles as it pulled abreast.

Blind terror made her heartbeat scream in her ears. It was too dark to see the driver. She yelled for help and sprinted down the street, her hat flying clear, and just when she thought she could escape him, her ankle gave way on the broken cobbles.

She landed heavily on the road, scraping her hands, and a hot jab shot up her leg. She cried out in pain. The car stopped alongside her.

“Please,” she gasped, “what do you want? Who are you?”