Peeler (29 page)

The son nodded. ‘He was going on about it to the other lads. He’s always up in the hills, wandering and coming back with stories. They thought he was spoofing until some of the boys went up there. And then it was in the papers.’

‘Is Daniel Hooey working today?’

Again the young man looked to his father and his father turned away. There was disgust on the older man’s face but he didn’t intervene. Young Mulaney was a rare type of Irishman to defy his father so openly, O’Keefe thought. Maybe he was doing what the father knew was right but hadn’t the courage to do himself.

‘He is,’ he said, holding out the feathers. ‘This one. It comes from a mottled Javanese. At least, I think it does. And this could be from a Faverolles, the salmon-coloured feather here. It’s rare enough, but I couldn’t be sure of it. It’s only good for show anyway, the Faverolles. Sure, we’ve none here at all.’ He laughed at the thought of it. ‘But there was a time when we’d an offer to cross our Rhode Island Reds with the Javanese. Fierce laying hens in the cross, I’ve heard tell. Nothing came of it in the end.’

‘Who was it wanted to try this cross?’

He handed the feathers back to O’Keefe. ‘Mrs Burleigh. You know the big place, Burleigh House, near Upton like? You’ve heard of the Major, I’m sure.’

O’Keefe scratched the information down into his notebook. He knew the Major. A connection? He doubted it. ‘And when was this supposed to happen?’

‘Early summer. June maybe. Mrs Burleigh left shortly after. Went back to England, I heard. Sure, we could hardly do anything for the woman anyway, with the men here and the way they go on.’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘She was a decent woman. No bullshit from her. No airs at all.’

O’Keefe looked up from his diary at the younger Mulaney. ‘Can I talk to Mr Hooey? Would that be possible?’

The father answered him, resignation in his voice. ‘We’ll be burned to the ground.’

‘I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, Mr Mulaney. You have my word on that.’

He gave O’Keefe a hard look. ‘We’ve had enough of your word here today. Now off with you. My son’s said enough. Speak to the young
dah
yourself if ye can find him, but you’ve heard nothing from us.’

He turned away and went back through the door from which he’d come. Moments later he returned, pointing his finger at O’Keefe, shaking with rage, his voice a bellow as if he was shouting for the ears of all present on the property.

‘And stay away from us here! Stay away to fuck from this place! Between the gunmen in the hills and yourselves in the barracks, ye’ll have us all ruined, the decent people of Ireland.’ He turned away, his anger spent.

O’Keefe looked to the son. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right. You’d better be on your way. The old man’s under the whip with the business, but I don’t think anything will happen. Sure, gunmen need a day’s wage as much as the next fella.’

With his mind fixed on locating Daniel Hooey, O’Keefe stepped out of the Mulaney’s cottage and into a mêlée. Keane was taking wild swings at one of the labourers who’d been standing by the shed when he’d entered. O’Keefe paused halfway across the yard and watched. He had his Webley in its shoulder holster but left it there, thinking that perhaps a duffing might be the best way for their visit to resolve itself amongst the workers, particularly if their man gave Keane a going over. He spotted Finch and Heatherfield leaning against the car, looking on impassively. Finch was smoking. Heatherfield seemed interested in the outcome of the scrap, but not enough to intervene.

When Keane’s opponent began to try to work his fingers into Keane’s eyes, O’Keefe decided that the fun was over.

‘Enough, lads. Leave it out.’

Keane had forced the other man’s hands away from his face and was again throwing wild punches. Some of them were connecting and the other man was striving to grapple Keane to the ground. Their feet scraped, gouging wound-like rents in the gravel yard.

O’Keefe signalled to Heatherfield and Finch. ‘Pull him off.’

The two moved to break up the fight and one of the labourers stepped forward. ‘We’ll say when it’s over, Peeler.’

The man was big and there were four others with him, as well as the man fighting Keane. The odds were about even, O’Keefe reckoned.

‘It’s over,’ he said to the man. ‘Move your men off or we’ll have you up. Do you understand me, sir?’

‘I’m no
sir
, Peeler.’

Finch had managed to wrest Keane from the other man’s grip. He shoved the young constable roughly against the car. His opponent, bleeding from the nose, made a lunge for Keane and Finch. Heatherfield stepped in front of the man and kicked his legs out from under him.

‘There,’ O’Keefe said, ‘the show’s over. Good day to ye, lads.’

He decided to leave the questioning of Daniel Hooey for another time.

The big man spat on the ground. ‘And ye fuckin’ Crown stooges have it coming, so ye do. Sooner than ye think.’

O’Keefe watched him turn away. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

It wasn’t the first time O’Keefe had been threatened, but most threats were idle.

Keane was bleeding from a cut over his right eye and his lip had begun to swell before the car had made it down the long drive. He was smiling by the time the Ford turned out onto the Crossbarry road.

‘I had him, I did. Fucking had him.’ He pulled out his crushed bag of sweets and shoved a handful into his mouth.

Heatherfield clapped him on the shoulder and dug a hand into the sweet bag. ‘You did. Had him right where you wanted. Sooner or later he would have walked into one of those punches, lad.’

Finch and O’Keefe laughed.

‘How’d that start?’ O’Keefe asked.

‘A bit of lip from the boys,’ Finch said. ‘Me, I don’t take it personal. I never much liked coppers myself.’

‘’Til you became one,’ Heatherfield interjected, over the noise of the Ford’s four cylinder.

Finch laughed. ‘Bloody right. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Twelve shillings a day and all in? I’ll be any-fucking-body you like, mate.’

The sun had cut through a gap in the clouds and the surrounding hills shimmered like light on tin. Keane laughed as well, said the fighting had him starved.

‘Me too,’ Heatherfield said. ‘One thing about the RIC, I told my old dear in a letter, there’s good grub in it. Can’t beat the grub.’

‘Better than bully stew ’alf-cooked in a kerosene can,’ said Finch.

‘Famished, I am,’ Keane said. ‘Eat the bollocks off a cow through a hole in the hedge.’

‘Eat the hind leg off the lamb of God, I would,’ Heather-field added.

The sound was like a pebble striking the windscreen of the Ford. O’Keefe felt the warp of air as the bullet passed by his head. Heatherfield’s lower jaw disintegrated, blowing tongue and teeth and bone and blood onto Keane’s face.

O’Keefe realised what had happened when Keane started screaming. He accelerated and the Ford surged forward. Ahead, a horse cart had been set to block the narrow stone bridge. He had no choice but to stop the car, jamming down on the brake, throwing Heatherfield’s convulsing body forward, knocking into Finch.

Finch had his door open before the Ford had come to rest on its springs. He reached a hand over and dragged O’Keefe across the bench seat and out onto the road through his passenger door. He shoved him to the ground, the car serving as cover, as he went to the rear door and jerked it open, first wrenching Heatherfield’s body out and then Keane, screaming, wiping frantically at the gore on his face. O’Keefe reached back into the car and pulled out his briefcase.

‘Here,’ Finch said, handing him Heatherfield’s carbine. ‘The rocks there.’ He pointed to a set of boulders embedded in the hillside. ‘The shot came from there.’

Another shot rang out from the boulders and tore through the top of the Ford. O’Keefe raised the carbine and rested it on the bonnet, then let off three quick rounds. Finch took up a position at the back of the car and began firing. O’Keefe had never seen anyone work the bolt of an Enfield as fast. The Tan had fired six shots in the time it took O’Keefe to fire four. The boulders showed eruptions of dust and stone chips. Finch worked the bolt harder and threw down the gun when it emptied. O’Keefe continued firing while Finch reached into the car and came out with Keane’s carbine. He loosed three quick shots before O’Keefe realised they were no longer taking fire from the hill. O’Keefe signalled to cease firing.

The wind buffeted the car and the sound of his heartbeat pounded in his ears. He studied the boulders, waiting. It was the first time he’d had time to look at them closely, to notice their placement and distance from the road. They were about a hundred yards up the gradual incline of a gorse-covered hill. It was a good ambush spot, one that had been carefully selected.

‘There!’ Finch said. ‘They’re running.’

Finch raised his carbine and O’Keefe followed its barrel with his eyes as it tracked two figures sprinting for the crest of the hill. Finch fired and missed. O’Keefe raised his rifle and sighted on the second attacker. He fired and watched as the man collapsed, doubling over his gun. His comrade stopped and turned back to the body now sprawled in the gorse. Finch fired two rounds at him, jamming the bolt on the carbine back and slamming the next round into the chamber each time. The soil kicked up a few feet behind the attacker as he crested the hill and disappeared over it.

‘Come on,’ O’Keefe said, hopping the low stone wall bordering the road. Finch followed and they made their way up the hill. A few yards from the boulders, Finch stopped and signalled O’Keefe do the same. He cupped his ear in a pantomime of listening and O’Keefe followed his lead. The sound was faint, coming from behind the rocks. A keening, pleading whimper like an injured animal might make. O’Keefe thought at first that it was coming from the ambusher he had shot, but from where he stood he could see the man’s body lying motionless.

Finch apparently had the same idea. He raised his rifle and fired. The prone body jerked with the impact of the bullet and then returned to stillness. Not what I would have done, O’Keefe thought, but it was well within the unwritten laws of war. The man had carried the rifle. He had killed one of their own. If he was still alive, he might have used it again. Now there was no question of that. Still, the keening came from behind the boulders.

Finch signalled for O’Keefe to approach the rocks from the left side while he took the right. O’Keefe signalled back, counting off on his fingers,
1, 2, 3.
They circled behind the boulder in silence and leapt out simultaneously. The whimpering turned to a high-pitched screaming. A young man lay with his back against the rocks, his palms up, stark terror on his face. It was difficult to assess his age with his front teeth missing, several days of thick stubble on his wind-rusted face, his left eye drifting outward in a squint.

Finch roared at him. ‘Shut up, you cunt! Shut your fucking mouth or I’ll put a bullet in it.’ Keeping his rifle levelled at the man, Finch stepped forward and kicked him hard in the ribs.

‘Leave it,’ O’Keefe said. The man was unarmed and even if he was carrying, O’Keefe doubted he would possess the knowledge or will to fire on them. He crouched down, resting his carbine across his knees, and patted the man on the shoulder. The garbled words amidst the keening became clearer now.

‘Don’t leave me, lads. Don’t leave Daniel. Don’t leave Daniel.’

O’Keefe recalled the younger Mulaney’s words.
He’s not right in the head. Never has been.
Pleased to meet you, Daniel Hooey, he thought. He took one arm while Finch took the other, hauling the whimpering man to his feet.

He patted him on his back. ‘Nobody’s going to leave you now, Daniel. Don’t you worry your head.’

***

They called out an army patrol on the wireless from Bandon barracks, leaving Heatherfield’s body and Daniel Hooey there with Keane, making their way back to the ambush site with a second Ford car full of angry, heavily armed constables and Tans. There they waited for a company of King’s Liverpools to arrive. They would do a sweep of the hills, but O’Keefe knew they wouldn’t find a sniff of the third Volunteer who had made it over the crest of the hill.

He and Finch climbed the hill again and examined the dead gunman. He was young, most likely a farm labourer in rough, patched trousers and a canvas jacket, and had been armed with a British army model Enfield rifle, the longer version of the carbine carried by the RIC.

‘I don’t remember his face from Mulaney’s,’ O’Keefe said.

Finch shrugged and checked the dead man’s rifle.

‘They could’ve sent the soft lad to fetch them as soon as we arrived and staged the punch up with Keane to give themselves time to set up.’

He cleared the breach and detached the Enfield’s box magazine, finding it empty. Then he searched the ambusher’s pockets and found no further ammunition.

‘Imagine kicking off an ambush with six rounds in your rifle.’

They had found six brass .303 shell casings on the ground behind the boulders.

‘All it took was one,’ O’Keefe said.

The Tan nodded and sighted down the long rifle barrel at the road they had travelled on. ‘Bloody good shot, all the same. Moving target at over a ’undred yards with an old Smelly.’ Smelly was the nickname given to the Enfield by soldiers in the war, from its designation as a ‘short magazine Lee Enfield’.

‘Or lucky.’ O’Keefe lit a cigarette and handed Finch the packet. He thought the smoke might soothe his nerves, calm the cramping in his belly. Heatherfield dead. And he himself had killed a man, putting a bullet in his back from a hundred yards. O’Keefe had thought he was finished with killing when he’d left the army.

Finch nodded. ‘You’re right, Sergeant. His rate of fire was too slow. If he was as good as his first shot, he could have plugged all four of us.’

‘Here’s to piss poor musketry.’

Finch laughed bitterly. ‘Tell that to ’eatherfield.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Geordie bastard was a good skin. Kept ’imself to ’imself but he was a good boy, he was.’

The wind had gathered strength, humming off the round-ed surface of the boulders. The clouds were a dark, steel grey.