Peeler (36 page)

‘Exactly.’

‘Exactly my arse, Seán. Did Barton admit to knowing either of the girls?’

‘No, but …’

‘Exactly. He didn’t. So, what you have is the word of a doxie against the word of a gentleman whose father employs half of Cork.’

‘I believe the girl in Grace’s.’

‘Did you pay her?’

O’Keefe shrugged and looked away.

‘You don’t know how this girl died, Seán. And you’re on dangerous ground speculating against a man like Barton.’

‘Dangerous? You don’t know dangerous, Jim. Sure, did I mention who the guests at the card parties were?’

‘Tell us,’ Muireann said.

‘I think Bella’s words were something like “a fat shower of Tommy officers and brass caps. Can spot an officer a mile off I can.” ’ He did his best Bella impersonation.

Daly laughed. ‘You’re done, man; you know that, don’t you? You may as well pack your kit and get used to the wind because you’ll be stuck in some outpost barracks so far out in the country, you won’t even know it’s Ireland until the first Shinner bullet hits you.’

‘Masterson will have to let me bring him in.’

‘And what, you’d have Connors cut loose?’

O’Keefe shot Daly a hard look.

Daly knew the look. ‘Go on, say it. Tell me to fuck off with myself. She’s heard worse.’

‘There’ll be no hard talk in this house, boys.’

‘Don’t mind her. You should hear her when she gets going, Seán. Make a sailor blush, she would.’

‘They don’t make sailors like they used to,’ Muireann said and O’Keefe smiled. The fire was warm and he took off his coat. She came over and took it from him, handing him the bottle he’d brought and three glasses. ‘Here, get that into you while you’re waiting on your tea. And fill my glass. I’ve earned it, putting up with that yoke there by the fire.’

She put a plate of bacon sandwiches on a low stool between the two men and returned to her chair. O’Keefe took a sandwich. It was wonderful. A hearty smear of butter and thick salty rasher of bacon. Soft, warm white bread. The whiskey chased it down like a whippet after a hare.

Daly said, ‘You’re going to want to be clever about it, Seán. This whole thing. You get transferred to some two-man outpost and you’ll be no good to anyone. You got Connors. He might not have killed the girl, but he’s killed others.’

O’Keefe swallowed and said, ‘This is not about Connors, Jim. He didn’t kill Deirdre Costelloe. Or Janey Plunkett.’

‘Not that you’ve any idea how Janey Plunkett was killed or who killed her.’

‘Nor did he kill the poor McKenna chap who got his last night. Look, Connors is a bold boy. And he’s locked up where he belongs. I’m not investigating this to clear Connors. He’s getting what he had coming. Not that the Turks couldn’t have done me for the same thing.’

‘That was different, Seán,’ Muireann said. ‘You were fighting a war.’

‘What are the likes of Connors and his lads fighting then? And at least they see some good coming out of all the killing.’

‘You’d make a fine, grand writer of editorials for the
Irish Bulletin
, Seán. Ideas like that. You’re not thinking of changing sides?’

O’Keefe’s eyes felt heavy. He knew he needed to move but, for the moment, the Daly kitchen was too warm, too homely, the conversation too kind and tricked with banter. He decided to wait another few minutes. The road home would be cold and maybe deadly. Dark. A few more minutes of this. This, he thought, just before his eyes closed and sleep took him, is what men need: kind company, a warm hearth, good food and whiskey. And somewhere behind this was the image of Katherine Sheehan, and bracing the image was the dull ache of knowing that he could never have this with her.

O’Keefe heard Daly say, ‘I’ll shift the kids into our bed.’

And Muireann then: ‘Leave him where is for now. He’s smiling with his eyes closed, sure.’

‘He won’t be smiling once tomorrow comes.’

At the edge of sleep, O’Keefe sensed that, for once, Jim Daly wasn’t joking.

***

When he was posted to the Western Front there was a lull in the fighting. The bated calm only sporadically broken by the crack of distant sniper fire. The stench of death was everywhere, awakening his senses, making him giddy, light-headed.

His first meal in the trenches, his section spooned bully beef stew from the steaming dixie. A full tin dish of it. It never occurred to him not to like it. They fed you in the army. Three times a day. Sometimes more.

One of the older soldiers in his section, a corporal from Maidstone, called him over, during that first hot meal in the trenches. Told him to go ask the supply sergeant for the ration of beer for the men and be bloody quick about it. He went, setting his steaming tin bowl of stew on an ammunition box. The supply sergeant in a support trench was almost amused by the request. ‘What you think this is, eh? The bloody King’s Arms? They’re having you on, mate.’

When he returned to his section, his bowl was empty, the older corporal smirking at some of the other men, one a lad he had considered a friend from the abattoir, joining him. He asked the corporal first. ‘Where’s my grub gone, then?’

The older man answered, ‘Where’s my beer, then?’ Some of the others laughed openly, their spoons scraping the sides of their tin mess kits.

The man who would soon become known as Birdy was hungry. As he had been all his life. No emotion showed on his face. None had since he was a boy. His boot connected with the corporal’s face as he took a bite of stew. Birdy’s stew. Like the spiked hammer at the abattoir, his kick was easy, guiltless and bludgeoning. It took three men to pull him off the corporal before he had the chance to stick his bayonet in the man.

When all was done and dusted, the platoon sergeant let the matter drop, despite the corporal’s blackened eyes and shattered teeth, despite Birdy’s drawing of his bayonet from its scabbard. There was a big push coming and they needed the bodies. Besides, it wasn’t on, taking a man’s grub like that. And Corporal Dutton had always been a rum bastard, just asking for the kind of sorting the young lad had given him.

Corporal Dutton was killed some weeks later on a night patrol. Stabbed in the back of the head and left in a shell hole. No one had heard or seen it happen, but his body was found some days later when the trench line advanced.

It was nearly nine the next morning when O’Keefe and Daly made it back to barracks on the Trusty.

‘Where’s the DI? Is he in?’

A young constable looked up from his newspaper at the day-room table. ‘His office, Sergeant. He was asking after you.’ The constable tried to bury his smile but couldn’t. O’Keefe read in the smile what he needed to know.

Daly also saw the constable’s smile and clapped O’Keefe on the back. ‘Been lovely working with you, Seán. Be sure to write.’

***

‘Sir?’

Masterson’s door was half-open and he was sitting at his desk. He looked up and said, ‘Close the door behind you, O’Keefe.’ His batman, Senior, sat on the couch, his legs crossed, looking over his eyeglasses at O’Keefe as if he were a specimen from a museum or zoo.

O’Keefe stood at parade rest in front of the desk, as a dark wellspring of anger flooded the DI’s face.

‘Sir.’ O’Keefe started, directing his eyes to the picture on the wall behind the desk, Masterson and Colonel … what was his name?
Prentice
. Best pals, hunting. ‘I’ve had a development in the Costelloe case. You told me to keep you informed of anything that might arise in the –’

‘The Costelloe case is closed, O’Keefe. Closed.’

‘Sir, I have information –’

‘
Closed
. And if I hear of you harassing the good citizens of Cork again … people under daily threat of assassination, good, loyal people –’

‘People like Richard Barton?’

‘I’ll have you up for disobeying a direct order. And quitting your post.’

‘I was on leave, sir. Signed out and given leave by yourself.’

‘Don’t you be fucking smart, O’Keefe. Do you understand me? Connors is the killer.’

‘Connors is
a
killer, sir, but he didn’t kill Deirdre Costelloe. I am this close to finding out who did. Two killers off the streets, sir. One stone.’

At this point, Senior spoke up from his place on the couch. ‘Have you heard any more from your sister, O’Keefe? Will you be attending the wedding?’

O’Keefe looked hard at him. He let his eyes rest on the man’s face until Senior could bear it no longer and looked away. O’Keefe turned back to the DI. ‘Two birds with one stone, sir.’

‘You’ll be breaking stones, O’Keefe, if you continue.’

‘Continue doing my job, sir? Continue trying to find a killer of young women? A butcher with an ice pick, who rapes and kills women, who murders travelling salesmen?’

The DI’s eyes flickered and O’Keefe realised that he hadn’t heard about the most recent killing. Masterson was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘As of now you are suspended from duty and confined to barracks. You are hereby relieved of the post of acting sergeant.’

He lifted a sheet of paper from his desktop. The bastard, O’Keefe thought, seeing that Masterson had had the orders for his suspension drafted in advance of his arrival back in barracks.

‘
Any further involvement of innocent civilians in unauthorised investigations will be punishable by court-martial, under which penalties are as follows: Expulsion from the constabulary. Or, immediate reposting and fine upon the salary of an amount as yet undecided.
’ He looked up. ‘Any questions, O’Keefe?’

‘Just one, sir. Do you even care who killed the girl?’

‘Yes, O’Keefe, I bloody do. And he’s bloody downstairs in our bloody cells.’

‘He’s not the killer, sir.’ Welts of anger rose on O’Keefe’s cheeks, his scar beginning to spasm. ‘Richard Barton knows who the killer is.’

‘You’re correct, O’Keefe. He does. Anyone who’s read yesterday’s paper knows who killed that girl.’

‘Connors isn’t Deirdre Costelloe’s killer, sir.’ If he repeated it enough times, maybe it would stick.

Masterson took a cigarette from a teak box on his desk and lit it, a smile dancing at the edges of his mouth. ‘If Connors isn’t the killer, why did he confess to it last night?’

It was O’Keefe’s turn to stop. He confessed? Memory flashed. What was it Mathew-Pare had said?
Make the devil himself tell you what you wanted to hear.

‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘Your sidearm, Constable O’Keefe. And your identity card.’

O’Keefe unholstered his Webley and set it and his RIC identity card on Masterson’s desk. His dress sword was hanging in the press in his office. Senior’s eyes tracked him as he left.

On the landing outside the DI’s office, O’Keefe passed Reilly.

‘Trouble with the bossman, Sergeant?’ A smile like the young constable downstairs. Nothing like some sap with his backside on the grindstone. Grain for the cons’ gossip mill. O’Keefe found it hard to be angry with the man. He’d been the same himself once.

‘Sure, you know yourself Reilly.’

‘That I do, Sergeant. That I do.’

O’Keefe made to pass him but Reilly grabbed his arm. ‘I’ll be heading up to Dublin. See a sister of mine.’

‘That’s grand,’ O’Keefe replied, distracted.

‘You should go away yourself. Take some leave.’

‘I’m confined.’

‘Ah, go way out of that. Boss’d be happy to be shot of you for a few days.’

‘I’ll give it some thought, Reilly.’

‘You do that, Sergeant. Don’t take too long, mind. Things happen quick these days. Sometimes it’s better to be out of the way when they do.’

Back in his office, O’Keefe unlocked his desk drawer and removed the pistol he had taken from Keane, a 1911 .45 Colt automatic. He checked the load and holstered it.

Daly looked on, feet on his desk. He spoke around the pipe tucked in the side of his mouth. ‘You’ll drop into us, now and again, Seán? Let us know how you’re getting on. Post us a letter from Boston?’

‘And you’ll water the flowers on my grave, Jim?’ He took a box of .45 cartridges from another drawer and emptied them into his suit jacket pocket, then pulled on his trenchcoat.

Daly said, ‘There you go again, trying to make more work for a fella.’

***

O’Keefe didn’t knock.

Mathew-Pare was jabbing out an intelligence report on an old typewriter in the converted stable cottage. Starkson and Eakins were with him, Starkson on the bed, boots on, reading a copy of the racing pages. Eakins was seated by the fire, eating beef stew from a tin for his breakfast. A large bottle of Beamish stout stood on the floor beside his chair.

Seeing O’Keefe, Mathew-Pare folded the page he was typing down out of view. He turned in his chair.

‘Sergeant. This is an unexpected surprise.’ The bland smile. A hint of mockery behind it.

O’Keefe said, ‘You lads have had a couple of late nights of it.’

‘What ever do you mean, Sergeant?’

Eakins looked up from his stew. Starkson rested the newspaper on his chest, still supine, but his legs now uncrossed. Disapproval brewed on Eakins’ face, as if unable to believe someone would dare interrupt his breakfast. O’Keefe felt that he would be happy to machine-gun the three of them and then go off and get his own breakfast in comfort.

‘How badly did you hurt Connors before he told you what you wanted to hear?’

Mathew-Pare lit a cigarette, the smile never leaving his face. ‘Not as badly as we could have. Did we, Starksy?’

‘Relatively soft, sir. Needed a bit of prompting is all.’

O’Keefe said, ‘Just in from the neck down,
Detective
. Isn’t that what you said? Just lending a hand where needed?’

‘I was
asked
to question Connors, Sergeant. Your DI was rather insistent, in fact. Wanted credit for the confession so the scary mob in Dublin couldn’t claim it, I dare say.’

‘
Question
him. Is that what you’re calling it these days?’

The Englishman shrugged and smiled. O’Keefe’s fists clenched involuntarily and Starkson noticed. He folded his paper neatly, creasing it back for future reading.

‘And did he insist you make the pimp Noonan disappear? Question Barton without telling me?’

Mathew-Pare shook his head. ‘Sergeant O’Keefe, it’s been a pleasure working with you. You’re to be commended, you know. For netting Connors. Promoted. Posted out of this war zone. You’ve done well. I only hope I’ve helped.’

‘What did Barton tell you?’

Starkson sat up on the bed. O’Keefe took a step closer to the table where Mathew-Pare was sitting. Mathew-Pare indicated to Starkson to stay where he was. He held out the packet of Gold Flakes to O’Keefe. ‘Smoke, Sergeant?’

O’Keefe ignored the offer. ‘I’m bringing him in. I’ll find out what he knows …’

‘One way or another?’ Mathew-Pare smiled. ‘That’s where men like ourselves are necessary, Sergeant.’ He gestured at Starkson and Eakins with his cigarette. ‘When men like Connors – men like this Barton in your immediate case – when they don’t give you what you want one way, we are the other. Let us know if you need our help.’

‘You’ve been helping someone. I just haven’t worked out who it is yet.’

Mathew-Pare cast out his palms, open to the sky. ‘We’re fighting the same war, Sergeant.’

‘I’m investigating a crime, not fighting a war.’

‘Same thing, different means, Sergeant. One day you’ll understand that.’

Mathew-Pare took a satisfied drag on his cigarette before continuing. ‘It’s in your interest to let this go, O’Keefe. You know that, don’t you? No one will reward any further examination of the subject. As far as the mandarins are concerned, Connors is your man. He confessed himself. Remember that. Signed his name to the charge.’

‘I’m looking for the truth. I couldn’t give two fucks what you squeezed out of Connors.’

‘
Looking for the truth
…’ Mathew-Pare repeated the words as if it was the first time he had considered the concept. He smiled and exhaled a thin stream of smoke. ‘I’d do less of that Sergeant, if I were you.’

‘Is that a threat?’

Mathew-Pare shrugged. ‘Call it friendly advice from one who knows better.’

Their eyes locked for a long moment. O’Keefe could feel Eakins and Starkson, poised, ready. The small fire in the grate smouldered in the silence. O’Keefe felt the weight of Keane’s gun in his holster.

‘Anything else, Sergeant?’ Mathew-Pare asked.

***

As O’Keefe crossed the yard, he watched the DI leave the barracks and get into his Daimler. Senior cranked the starter and sat in behind the wheel. The DI noticed O’Keefe and watched in turn as he crossed the yard, making for the barracks.

Officially confined
.

If O’Keefe was going to do anything, he would have to do it now, before word of his status had done its rounds on the rumour mill, if it hadn’t already. And he needed help. Daly was out of the question. He would come. He was that thick – family and home be damned – and that good a friend that O’Keefe would never ask him. The man he needed was drinking coffee with a sergeant and corporal from the Liverpool’s regiment in the day-room, just in from patrol. O’Keefe beckoned him out into the hallway.

‘Fancy a jaunt into town, Finch?’

Finch smiled. ‘I ’eard the DI ’ad your balls for breakfast, Sergeant.’

The jungle drums had beat even louder and faster than he thought. ‘It’s
Constable
now Finch. Demotion as well as castration. Are you coming or not?’

‘You gonna get me shot at again?’

‘I’ll try my best.’

‘Mufti, is it?’

O’Keefe nodded.

‘Gimme five minutes to get my glad rags on.’

O’Keefe turned to go. ‘Oh, and Finch? Grab two shovels from the shed, would you, please?’

Finch stopped. ‘
Shovels
? And I thought I’d done my bit digging trenches.’

***

As the war slugged on, the men in his section came to treat Birdy with distant respect. New men came in to replace the dead and invalided and learned who the killers in the company were. The loonies. And Birdy was top of the pile. They called him the name openly and he didn’t mind. Birdy. They tolerated the fact that he spent his free time in the pigeon croft and with the laying hens; that he kept a pigeon in his dug-out with him, warm against his chest inside his greatcoat. He was half-cracked Birdy was, they said amongst themselves when he was out of earshot. But so were most of the lads in some way or another.

And they had seen Birdy work. He volunteered for every trench raid or night patrol going. One of the lads he’d joined up with from the abattoir – the spiked hammer and boning knives a distant memory now – told the others that Birdy had always been good with a blade.

It wasn’t long before the young intelligence officer assigned to ‘C’ company took notice. An Irish chap, the young lieutenant. Not hard on the men, most thought, but a bit windy. On the lookout for someone to watch his back. Most of the men agreed that a chap like the Lieutenant would have done better to have never joined a fighting regiment such as the Royal West Kents.

***

Saint Finbar’s cemetery, south-west of the city, was typical of its kind – headstones, Celtic crosses, wilting flowers, the crumbling remnants of a medieval chapel. To O’Keefe’s surprise, Janey Plunkett’s grave wasn’t unmarked. It had a simple headstone that read:
Jane Mary Plunkett. 1903–1920.
Requiescat in pace.

It was Finch who asked the question. ‘Who paid for the ’eadstone?’

Lorcan Connolly, dressed in his usual dandified style, smiled, sad and ironical at the same time. ‘A sentimental gesture, sure. I indulge myself now and again. I’d known the girl since she was a snapper. And she was a fine bloody tout.’

‘Never took you for the soft-hearted kind, Connolly,’ O’Keefe said.

‘All the best coppers are, Seán. It’s what makes us different from our friends across the water – no offence, Constable Finch. The Irish are unafraid to sentimentalise the hopeless cases, the lost causes, the young dead whores of the world. The English save their tears for the King. And their dogs.’

Finch looked at Connolly and tried to decide if he was mocking him personally. He decided he wasn’t. ‘None taken.’

‘You’re a gentleman, Finch. Yet another difference. The English don’t take offence with half the alacrity of us Irish. The Irishman resorts to violence at the slightest provocation. Betimes no provocation is needed at all. Someone said that once.’