No Enemy but Time (17 page)

Billy Gorman cut himself a doorstep off the loaf and laid a slice of ham on top. He muttered to himself as he made a pot of tea and searched for mustard to spread on the ham. He wasn't really hungry, but habit made him get the food. Never miss a chance to eat, his old mother used to say. Who knows when the next meal's coming … He sat at the kitchen table, poured his tea and ladled the sugar into it. He felt miserable. He was frightened for Claire and frightened for himself. He cursed Frank Arbuthnot. Why had he to be different and bring so much sorrow on his family and danger to them all … Bad luck to him, Billy mumbled, wishing him dead for all the trouble he'd caused. How long would she be? Back before dark, she'd said as she left. He took a bite of bread and ham and felt it would choke him. And wouldn't that auld bitch Mrs Arbuthnot choose this very time to go off to her friends in Cork, and leave him to cope on his own? He had never liked her, he grumbled. Old Doyle had told him how she came to Riverstown and took over after the poor little Ryan girl died.

He didn't hear the door open. He felt them in the room behind him, and he put his cup down and very slowly turned. There was young Joe Burns in his Garda uniform and another man with him that Billy didn't know. He pushed back his chair; he was clumsy and the leg stuck in the join of the boards. The table jerked and his tea slopped over.

Joe Burns said, ‘Havin' yer dinner, Billy?'

Billy was on his feet, holding on to the chair back.

‘I am so,' he said, and his voice sounded thick, with the food still in his mouth. His eyes darted like ferrets from Joe Burns to the stranger. He hadn't heard them knock and his dogs hadn't given a warning.

Joe Burns came closer. ‘We knew ye weren't out, Billy,' he said, ‘because yer car's in the garage. What have ye done with the number plates?'

Billy gave a moan of fear. Joe Burns spoke gently. The other one had his back to the door.

‘We found the other plates,' he said. ‘The English ones. She's been here, Billy, and ye never let me know like ye promised.'

Billy started to say, ‘I was going to,' and then stopped.

Joe Burns turned to his companion. ‘He's a bad heart,' he said.

‘Let's see how bad it is,' the man replied.

The gates to Riverstown were locked. Major Harvey stopped the car and got out to make certain. They were padlocked. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hands over the match. He was able to glance from right to left and saw no sign of a car or anyone on foot. Locked from the inside. He knew the Irish custom well. When the family was away the main drive was always barred, the back drive was open. He got back into the car, threw the cigarette out of the window and set off down the twisty road running behind the wall to the rear of the property. Claire Fraser talked a lot about the old gardener, Gorman. She was very fond of him; at times she spoke as if he were some kind of grandfather by adoption. Michael knew how deep such a relationship could run. There'd been no Gorman in his own childhood but a maid at home who'd loved him and spoiled him as if he were her own. It was not unlikely that Claire Fraser, finding that padlocked gate, would have gone to Billy for help. He drove past the rear entrance and the little cottage, a plume of turf smoke curling out of the chimney, and parked in a bend of the road. He got out, and hesitated. He unlocked the boot of the car and slipped the automatic into his anorak, just in case. Then he walked back along the roadside, hands in his pockets, looking as much a part of his surroundings as the trees rooted alongside.

He turned into the little driveway. A garage with both doors shut. Kennels, but no dogs barking at his approach. The cottage front door closed. Gorman could be out. Gone to the pub in Clane for his dinner. Michael Harvey walked up to the kennels. A big sandy lurcher lay dead behind the wire run, the top of its head shot off. A smaller dog lay close by. He stood completely still for a few seconds. There was silence all around him. He recognized it. A very special silence, that was stronger than birds, or the breeze ruffling through the trees overhead. He leapt for the cottage door, his gun exposed in his right hand, and kicked once, sending it slamming open.

He stood in the kitchen. ‘Oh, shit!'

The old man had been shot through the head at close range. They had used a silencer on him, as with the dogs, because there were no burn marks. And he'd been badly beaten first. There was blood and a little vomit; the smell of death and pain. Harvey didn't touch him. He backed out, pulling the door shut behind him. The garage. He opened it and saw what had doomed the poor old devil. The car, the English number plates lying on the ground. Claire Fraser had gone to Billy Gorman for help and he'd helped all right. How much had they beaten out of him, Michael Harvey wondered, before they murdered him? He didn't waste any time. If Gorman knew and had given it away, the men who killed him would be on the road to Kells by now. Gorman had been dead for long enough to let the blood on the floor form a thin scum. Harvey broke into a run.

He tried to plan ahead as he drove. His brief was to get Claire Fraser out, but to avoid violence or any overt breach of Irish law – unless there was no other way of rescuing her. He drove fast, bouncing over two little hump-backed bridges on to the dual carriageway to Dublin, cutting through the lazy line of little cars that ambled along with all the time in the world. He jumped several red lights, assured that no police cars were in sight, his horn blasting a warning to anything coming the other way. He knew the route up through Navar and he knew the place; if he found a car hidden anywhere near, he'd abandon caution and go in with the automatic rifle. Just because they'd shot Gorman, it didn't prove he hadn't told them about Claire. The IRA didn't leave witnesses. The one chance was that he didn't know where she was going, and they murdered him in frustration. The only chance, considering the time lapse. But they had the changed number plates to go on and a bush telegraph that worked at extraordinary levels throughout the country. They would know soon enough, if that car was anywhere near a town.

The private housing estate at Santry was on the airport road. It was built when land values were rising and the banks eager to lend money. Twenty-five houses, with a square of garden back and front and a garage, architect designed it was claimed, although the fittings were cheap and much of the external woodwork had warped. Joe Burns and his companion were sitting with two men and a girl at a table in the back room of the fifth house on the right of the first quadrangle. A line of washing waved in the back garden; a child's bicycle was parked outside the front door.

The man who had gone to Billy's cottage with Joe Burns was talking. ‘He was havin' a fuckin' heart attack,' he said. He had a thick Dublin accent.

The younger of the two men sitting at the table looked at him. He had brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He looked like an artist. Joe Burns was more frightened by him than anyone he'd ever come across.

‘Then why did you hit him so hard?'

‘Ah, we didn't.' It was shrugged off. ‘I smacked him a couple of times; Joe gave him a bump or two. Just enough to knock a bit a shit outa him. Isn't that right, Joe?'

‘It is,' Joe confirmed. He looked at the three of them uneasily. He'd only seen the girl three times. He didn't like the look of her at all. ‘He said he didn't know where she'd gone,' he insisted. ‘We did get rough, but not so's to kill the auld bastard. I know my job, Sean. I knew he had a heart. I told ye so, before we went.'

‘I'd swear he didn't know,' the other man broke in. ‘Lookit, we hurt him bad enough to get it out of him an' he did!'

‘So you shot him,' the girl said. It was the first time she had spoken.

‘We had to,' Joe explained. ‘Sure he was taken bad, but there wasn't time to hang about till he died. We had to make sure. There's no trace of ourselves there. He won't be found till his woman comes back this evenin'.'

‘You made a mess of it, you pair of bloody fools!' She spat at them. ‘Gorman changed the number plates for her. Of course he knew where she was going. You beat him up and got nothing out of him!'

The young bearded man touched her arm. ‘Quiet yourself, Marie. We know the number of the car she's driving. We'll find her. Joe, you get back to the station. Wait at home, Willie. You may be needed later.'

When they had gone the older man spoke up. He had a thick Ulster accent and he was wanted for murders and bombings across the border. His name was Hugh Macbride, but that was an alias.

‘She's right,' he announced. ‘They fucked it. My lads'd have done a proper job.'

‘This is my operation,' the bearded man replied. ‘When I need your lads, I'll let you know.'

The two comrades-in-arms didn't like each other. Macbride was a hard man from the North, a seasoned, ruthless fighter who'd spent five years in the Maze prison the only time he'd been caught. He thought his southern counterparts were soft and he despised them. He particularly disliked the young man sitting at the table with him, the respected psychiatrist Doctor Sean Filey. He distrusted all comfortable middle-class revolutionaries. Most of all he resented having a woman like Marie Dempster sitting cheek by jowl with men and giving her opinions. The women of Ulster knew their place. They played their roles with heroism and devotion, but they were never admitted to the higher councils of their men.

He said, ‘I'd watch that Garda. He might just decide to save his own skin if things got bad.' He lit a cheap cigarette and inhaled deeply.

Sean Filey dismissed the idea. ‘He's a good man; he's true. And he's in too deep now. There's no going back on a murder.'

Macbride only grunted. Plenty of men he knew had grassed to the security forces and the RUC just because they
had
murdered and wanted to get off. But you couldn't convince a man like Filey. He was an intellectual, an educated man. A paper man, Macbride called him. A great one for plans and working out the details. But not efficient enough and strong enough to make them work. Two days ago they'd had Frank Arbuthnot tethered like a goat in this very house, the bait to catch an English Cabinet Minister's wife in a trap sprung by the Provisional IRA. The coup of the decade. Neil Fraser's wife held for ransom. Thinking of the publicity, the prestige the organization would have milked from the situation, made him sick with fury at the way it had been bungled. Demands, negotiations, world-wide attention. And then the contemptuous murder, or even the silence that was more terrifying than a corpse.

Now they had lost the bait, and he had been sent down from the North to pull the operation together before it failed completely. To get Claire Fraser, even if her half-brother had escaped. But he wasn't given the command. Filey was still in charge. The Provisionals in the South were touchy men, sensitive to their brothers in the North. Macbride was only second in command. Filey must not be alienated. Not yet. He stubbed out the cigarette on the floor and ground the end into the linoleum.

‘How's about a wee whiskey?' He addressed Marie, as he would have done any woman at home.

‘You know where it's kept,' she said. ‘Help yourself.'

He gave her a look of menace. It was not the time for confrontation. He had a report to make on her. When they considered it, the members of the Supreme Council would know what to do.

‘I'm for a pee first,' he said.

When he had closed the door, Marie Dempster got up. ‘He's a pig,' she said.

Filey glanced up at her. ‘He's a good man,' he said. ‘Not an English gentleman, but a good Irishman. He mayn't have the fancy manners you're used to, but he's fought and suffered for our cause since he was fifteen years old. Next time, Marie, you'll get him a drink if he asks you.'

She turned away from him. She was a dark-haired girl, with blue eyes and the fine complexion of a consumptive-prone race. One side of her very pretty face was swollen and bruised. ‘He suspects me,' she said. ‘And you know he does.'

‘I cleared you,' Sean Filey countered. ‘I was the first one here and he accepted what I told him.'

She shrugged. ‘He doesn't believe it. Or if he does, he doesn't care. Back home, he said, they'd shoot me.'

‘This isn't the North,' Sean argued. ‘You're safe enough, because
I
believe you. You wouldn't let Frank Arbuthnot escape. You want him dead and I know why. The same as you want us to capture his sister. You want them both dead, because your own jealousy is killing you.'

‘Leave me alone.' It was a cry of anguish. ‘Don't taunt me, God damn you.'

‘I'm protecting you,' he answered. ‘You chose him instead of me, but it doesn't matter. You've done great things for the cause, Marie. Your mistake was to love outside your own kind. We'll catch him, and we'll catch his sister. Then you'll be at peace. Now, why don't you occupy yourself by making the telephone calls? We'll have Mrs Fraser before the day's out.'

She pushed past Macbride as he came back into the kitchen. He got the whiskey bottle out of the cupboard, offered one to Sean and poured a half tumblerful for himself.

‘That's a right bitch,' he remarked. ‘Some man should take his belt to her.' He swallowed hugely. He despised Sean Filey because he only drank beer. He always made a point of trying to press whiskey on him. ‘Where's she gone?'

‘Down to the call box to make the contact calls,' Filey answered. ‘If Fraser's wife is within fifty miles of here, we'll know in the next three hours.'

She made eight calls, giving the number of the car they were looking for. She stressed the urgency, repeated the telephone number of the house for all reports and hurried back there herself. She saw Sean Filey in the hall. He had a coat and hat on, and was drawing on gloves.

‘I'm going to Fitzwilliam Square,' he told her. ‘You can contact me immediately you hear any news.'