the Savage Day - Simon Vaughn 02 (v5) (5 page)

Meyer sighed, waved his arms about helplessly, then took her hand. 'You're a very determined young woman. You will not forget, however, that you owe me four thousand pounds.'

'How could I?' She turned to me. 'When you're ready, Major.'

Binnie opened the door for us and I followed her out and as we went down the corridor Al Bowlly launched into
Goodnight but not goodbye.

4
In Harm's Way

As we went down the steps to the street, a Land-Rover swept out of the fog followed by another, very close behind. They had been stripped to the bare essentials so that the driver and the three soldiers who crouched in the rear of each vehicle behind him were completely exposed. They were paratroopers, efficient, tough-looking young men, in red berets and flak jackets, their sub-machine-guns held ready for instant action.

They disappeared into the fog and Binnie spat into the gutter in disgust. 'Would you look at that now, just asking to be chopped down, the dumb bastards. What wouldn't I give for a Thompson gun and one crack at them.'

'It would be your last,' I said. 'They know exactly what they're doing, believe me. They perfected that open display technique in Aden. The crew of each vehicle looks after the other and without armour plating to get in their way, they can return fire instantly if attacked.'

'Bloody SS,' he said.

I shook my head. 'No, they're not, Binnie. Most of them are lads around your own age, trying to do a dirty job the best way they know how.'

He frowned, and for some reason my remark seemed to shut him up. Norah Murphy didn't say a word, but led the way briskly, turning from one street into another without hesitation.

Within a few minutes we came to a main road. There was a church on the other side, the Sacred Heart according to the board, a Victorian monstrosity in yellow brick which squatted in the rain behind a fringe of iron railings. There were lights in the windows, the sound of an organ, and people emerged from the open door in ones and twos to pause for a moment before plunging into the heavy rain.

As we crossed the road, a priest came out of the porch and stood on the top step trying to open his umbrella. He was a tall, rather frail-looking man in a cassock and black raincoat and wore a broad-brimmed shovel hat that made it difficult to see his face.

He got the umbrella up, started down the steps and paused suddenly. 'Dr Murphy,' he called. 'Is that you?'

Norah Murphy turned quickly. 'Hello, Father Mac,' she said, and then added in a low voice, 'I'll only be a moment. The woman I saw earlier is one of his parishioners.'

Binnie and I moved into the shelter of a doorway and she went under the shelter of the priest's umbrella. He glanced towards us once and nodded, a gentle, kindly man of sixty or so. Norah Murphy held his umbrella and talked to him while he took off his hornrimmed spectacles and wiped rain from them with a handkerchief.

Finally he replaced the spectacles and nodded. 'Fine, my dear, just fine,' he said and took a package from his raincoat pocket. 'Give her that when you next see her and tell her I'll be along in the morning.'

He touched his hat and walked away into the fog. Norah Murphy watched him go then turned and tossed the package to me so unexpectedly that I barely caught it. 'Four thousand pounds, Major Vaughan.'

I weighed the package in my two hands. 'I didn't think the Church was taking sides these days.'

'It isn't.'

'Then who in the hell was that?'

Binnie laughed out loud and Norah Murphy smiled. 'Why, that was Michael Cork, Major Vaughan,' she said sweetly and walked away.

Which was certainly one for the book.
The package was too bulky to fit in any pocket so I pushed it inside the front of my trenchcoat and buttoned the flap as I followed her, Binnie keeping pace with me.

She waited for us on the corner of a reasonably busy intersection, four roads meeting to form a small square. There were lots of people about, most of them emerging from a large supermarket on our left which was ablaze with light to catch the evening trade, soft music, of the kind which is reputed to induce the right mood to buy, drifting out through the entrance.

There was a certain amount of traffic about, private cars mostly, nosing out of the fog, pausing at the pedestrian crossing, then passing on.

It was a typical street scene of the kind you'd expect to find in any large industrial city, except for one thing. There was a police station on the other side of the square, a modern building in concrete and glass and the entrance was protected by a sandbagged machine-gun post manned by Highlanders in Glengarry bonnets and flak jackets.

Norah Murphy leaned against the railings, clutching her case in both hands. 'Occupied Belfast, Major. How do you like it?'

'I've seen worse,' I said.

Two men came round the corner in a hurry, one of them bumping into Binnie, who fended him off angrily. 'Would you look where you're going, now?' he demanded, holding the man by the arm.

He was not much older than Binnie, with a thin, narrow-jawed face and wild eyes, and he wore an old trilby hat. He carried an attache case in his right hand and tried to pull away. His companion was a different proposition altogether, a tall, heavily built man in a raincoat and cloth cap. He was at least forty and had a craggy, pugnacious face.

'Leave him be,' he snarled, pulling Binnie round by the shoulder and then his mouth gaped. 'Jesus, Binnie, you couldn't have picked a worse spot. Get the hell out of it.'

He pulled at his companion, they turned and hurried across the square through the traffic.

'Trouble?' Norah Murphy demanded.

Binnie grabbed her by the arm and nodded. 'The big fella's Gerry Lucas. I don't know the other. They're Bradys.'

Which being the Belfast nickname for members of the Provisional branch of the IRA was enough to make anyone move fast. We were already too late. A couple of cars had halted at the pedestrian crossing and a woman in a headscarf was half-way across pushing a pram in front of her, a little girl of five or six trotting beside her. A young couple shared an umbrella behind.

Lucas and his friend reached the opposite pavement and paused behind a parked car, where Lucas produced a Schmeisser machine pistol from beneath his raincoat and sprayed the machine-gun post.

In the same moment, his friend ran out into the open and tossed the attache case in an arc through the rain and muffed things disastrously, for instead of dropping inside the machine-gun post, the case bounced from the sandbags to the gutter.

The two of them ran like hell for the shelter of the nearest side street and made it, the Highlanders being unable to open up with their machine-gun for the simple reason that the square seemed to be suddenly filled with panic-stricken people running everywhere.

The case exploded a split second later, taking out half of the front of the machine-gun post, dissolving every window in the square in a snowstorm of flying glass.

People were running, screaming, some on their hands and knees, faces streaming with blood, cut by the flying glass. One of the cars at the pedestrian crossing had been blown on to its side, the crossing itself had been swept clean.

Norah Murphy ran out into the square in what I believe was a purely reflex action and Binnie and I followed her towards the car which had turned over. A man was trying to climb out through the shattered side window, his face streaked with blood. I hauled him through and he slipped to the ground and rolled over on his back.

The woman who had been pushing the pram on the pedestrian crossing, was sprawled across the bonnet of the second car, half the clothes torn off her. From the condition of the rest of her she couldn't be anything else but dead. The young couple who had been behind her were in the gutter on the far side of the road, people clustering round.

The pram was miraculously intact, lying against the wall, but when I righted it, the condition of the baby still strapped inside, was beyond description. The only good thing one could say was that death must have been instantaneous.

Norah Murphy was on her knees in the gutter beside the little girl who only a few moments before had gaily trotted beside her sister's pram. She was badly injured, smeared with blood and dust, but still alive.

Norah opened her case and took out a hypodermic. As troops emerged cautiously from the police station she gave the child an injection and said calmly, 'Get out of it, Binnie, before they cordon off the whole area. Get to Kelly's if you can. Take the Major with you. He's too valuable to lose now. I'll see you there later.'

Binnie gazed down at the child, those dark eyes blazing, and then he did a strange thing. He reached for one of the limp hands and held it tightly for a moment.

'The bastards,' he said softly.

A Saracen swept into the square on the far side and braked to a halt, effectively blocking the street.

'Will you get out of it, Binnie,' she said.

I jerked him to his feet. He stood looking down for a moment, not at her, but at the child, then turned and moved across the square away from the Saracen without a word. I went after him quickly and he turned into a narrow alley and started to run. I followed at his heels and we twisted and turned through a dark rabbit warren of mean streets, the sounds from the square growing fainter although never actually fading away altogether.

We finally came to the banks of a narrow canal of some description, moved along the towpath past an old iron footbridge and turned into an entry. There was a high wooden gate at the end with a lamp bracketed to the wall above it. A faded sign read
Kelly's for Scrap.
Binnie opened the judas and I followed him through.

There was a small yard inside, another lamp high on the wall of the house giving plenty of illumination, which made sense for all sorts of reasons if this was a place of refuge, as I suspected.

Binnie knocked on the back door. After a while, steps approached and he said in a low voice, 'It's me, Binnie.'

A bolt was withdrawn, the door opened. An old woman stood revealed, very old, with milk-white blind eyes and a shawl across her shoulders.

'It's me, Mrs Kelly,' Binnie said. 'With a friend.'

She reached for his face, cupped it in her hands for a moment, then smiled without a word, turned and led the way inside.

When she opened the door at the end of the passage into the kitchen, Lucas and the bomb-thrower were standing shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the table, Lucas holding the Schmeisser at the ready, his friend clutching an old .45 Webley revolver that looked too big for him.

'Well, would you look at this now?' Binnie said. 'Rats will find a hole, so they say.' He spat on the floor. 'You did a fine job on the women and children back there.'

The youth with the Webley turned wildly. 'I told you,' he said and Lucas struck him across the mouth, his eyes never leaving Binnie.

'Shut your mouth, Riley, and you just watch it, Binnie, or you might get some of the same. Who's your friend?'

'None of your affair.'

'And what if I decide to make it mine?'

'Don't mind me,' I put in.

For the first time Lucas lost some of that iron composure of his. He stared at me in astonishment. 'A bloody Englishman, is it?'

'Or as much an Irishman as de Valera,' I said. 'It depends on your point of view.'

'He's here on business for the Small Man,' Binnie said. 'For Cork himself, so keep your nose out of it.'

They confronted each other for another tense moment, then the old lady slipped in between them without a word and placed a pot of tea in the centre of the table. Lucas turned away angrily and I sat down against the wall and lit a cigarette. I offered Binnie one, but he refused. The old lady brought us a cup of tea each then moved to the others.

'She doesn't have much to say for herself,' I observed.

'She wouldn't,' Binnie replied. 'Being dumb as well as blind.'

He stared into space, something close to pain in his eyes, thinking of that child whose hand he had held, I suspect.

I said, 'Remember what you were saying about my uncle coming out of the schoolhouse so the children wouldn't be harmed, to shoot it out with the Tans like a man?'

He turned to me with a frown. 'So what?'

I said gently, 'Times have changed, haven't they, Binnie?'

He stood up, walked over to the other side of the room and sat down with his back to me.

I suppose it must have been all of two hours before there was a knock at the door. They all had a gun out on the instant, including Binnie, and waited while the old lady went to the door. Norah Murphy came into the kitchen. She paused, her eyes narrowing as she recognized Lucas, then she placed her case on the table.

'I'd love a cup of tea, Ma,' she said in Irish as Mrs Kelly followed her in.

She was as crisp and incisive as she had been at our first meeting. It was as if nothing had happened in between at all and yet the skirts of her trenchcoat were stained with blood. I wondered if anything would ever really touch her.

Binnie said, 'What happened?'

'I helped out till the ambulances arrived.'

'How many were killed?' Lucas demanded.

'Five,' she said and turned to me. 'I'll have that cigarette now, Major.'

'And soldiers?' Young Riley leaned on the table with both hands, his eyes wilder than ever. 'How many soldiers?'

Norah Murphy turned from the match I held for her and blew out a long column of smoke.