The Blood Upon the Rose (53 page)

He let go of Davis’s ear and sat back on the table, looking at him. Davis stared straight ahead.

‘I said, do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes
what’
' Foster bawled.

‘Yes
sir
, I understand, sir.’

‘Right.’ Kee spoke softly. ‘I'’ve got two charge sheets here. One charges you with being an accomplice in the murder of a senior police officer. The other charges you with passing information to criminals, but it doesn’t mention murder at all. You’re going before a court with one of these today. Which will it be?’

No answer. Kee spread the papers out on the desk, so that Davis could see. He took out a pen, and looked up. There was a faint sheen of sweat on Davis’s forehead. Kee said: ‘Don’t worry about your friends. They won’t ever know what you said. They won’t need to. Who was the other man?’

Silence. Kee waited. ‘Think of the drop, Dick. That little shed at the back of Kilmainham. You’ve seen it. Early morning, a few weeks from now, you walk out there all alone, they put a hood over your head, a noose tightens round your throat. And you didn’t even do it, you didn’t pull the trigger.’ He paused. There was sweat on Davis’s forehead, he could see it. Little beads of sweat that grew on the pale skin. One grew too big and trickled down towards his eyebrows, gathering others as it went.

Kee said: ‘They don't care about you, Dick, you know. Nobody really cares about a traitor. A traitor has to care about himself. They’ll still be snoring in their beds, and you’ll be alone on that trapdoor. And you didn’t even pull the trigger.
Who did it?’

Daviss lips moved. A word came out, a whisper. ‘Daly.’

‘Daly? First name?’

Another whisper. ‘Patrick.’

‘Patrick Daly. He was the other man who killed Bill Radford?’

Davis stopped staring past Kee at the wall, and his eyes looked at him for the first time. Kee saw how wide the eyes were, haunted. Davis gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod.

Kee forced himself to smile. It was vital to engage the man’s sympathy at this point, make him feel valued, not scorned. ‘There. That wasn’t so hard, to save your life, was it? He won't know, no one’ll ever know who told me. Now, where can I find them?’

‘I can’t tell you that. They move around all the time. I don’t know where they sleep.’

‘All right. Let’s try it another way. Have a look at this.’ He took a notebook out of his pocket. Davis recognized it as his own. ‘There are some telephone numbers in here. I can check them through the exchange but that’ll take time. What are they?’

Davis looked at them. He didn’t speak.

‘Come on now, Dick.’ Kee held up the notebook so that he could see it clearly. ‘I’m a man of my word, you know that. But I can only keep a promise for the whole bargain, not half of it. It’s lonely on that dawn walk.’ He pointed to the number at the top of the list. ‘Let’s take that one first.’

Davis licked his lips. His mouth felt dry, parched. There was an empty, aching feeling in his stomach. He thought of the man he had seen hung, standing straight to attention like this, his hands bound behind him, the black hood over his head. He remembered the obscenely stretched neck, the empty bowels afterwards.

He looked at the telephone number again, and began to talk.

Catherine had never been good at sitting still. Even as a student, when she was reading, she would twist a strand of hair around her finger, chew her pencil, or tap it on the table. Often she would get up and walk around with the book in her hands, trying to remember what she had read. She was a born fidget.

Now she had no books and nowhere to go. She moved around on the sofa, trying to find a more comfortable position, but with the chain on her ankle only a limited number were possible. She had read the newspaper but it was a month old, it told her nothing about Sean. She had used the bucket and it stank, so she had moved it as far as she could from where she sat. Her dirty plate was on the floor too, together with a bottle of water and a cup.

Apart from that there was nothing useful except some matches and the oil lamp, which he had topped up and relit. The lamp was both a curse and a blessing. It stood on the floor in front of her, spluttering and muttering sometimes as its flame threatened to go out. It gave out a yellowish light and a faint hint of warmth. But it also smoked, used up air, and gave her a headache.

Halfway through the morning she blew it out. At first the darkness was a relief. She wrapped herself in her coat and the blankets and lay there, waiting for her eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. There was just a faint suggestion, a hint of grey light which seeped through the grille on the opposite wall. It must provide some ventilation, then, she thought, some link with the outside world. She listened very hard and she could hear tiny, distant noises, like those of small people far away. She tried to identify them: feet on the pavement, a cart maybe, pulled by a horse, then another, then what might have been a car. And then, for long periods, nothing at all.

Then there was a much bigger sound. A scrabbling, scratching sound, from the wall behind her. The sound was enormous. There's someone in here, she thought, a man, a dog, a cat -what the hell is it? She had the box of matches in her hand; quickly she struck one, fumbled with the oil lamp, lit it, held it up.

A rat stared back at her.

It was quite a big rat, about a foot long, with a scaly tail twice that length behind it. Its eyes reflected the yellow flame of the lamp and its whiskers twitched. It sniffed at her nervously and bared its teeth. Then it resumed its exploration of her lavatory bucket.

‘Oh, my God,’ Catherine groaned. She put the lamp down on the sofa, picked up one of her boots, and flung it at the creature. The boot struck the rat’s back, and sailed away into the corner. The rat, startled, ran behind the sofa and disappeared. Catherine peered over the back of the sofa and saw the tip of its tail vanishing down a hole in the wall.

She groaned again. No rat. No boot either.

This won’t do, she told herself. I’ve got to get out of here, I can’t stand it. She tugged angrily at the chain, aggravating the sore places it had made on her ankle. I’m lucky the bloody rat didn’t come in and eat my toes in the night. Anyway I’ve got to get out to go and see Sean before he dies.

‘Sean!’ she yelled
. ‘Sean! SEAAAN!’

The scream echoed back at her in the cellar, making her headache worse. As the echoes died away, she listened, wondering if it had reached the ears of the distant people pattering on the pavement beyond the grille. At first she could not hear the footsteps at all, the sounds were so tiny in comparison. Then she heard them. There was no change, no evidence of interest in what was going on below the street. Why should there be? If their sounds were almost inaudible to her, they would never hear her, with the busy noise of the city street all around them. Andrew had fired a gun in here, confident that no one would hear it.

She looked at the chain again. If only he had fastened the padlock one link further down, she could have managed it. If she tried very hard she could almost slip it over her heel, but not quite. Neither the chain nor her bones would give; the only thing that could be pressured was her skin and flesh, and after four efforts that was bruised and swollen now. It couldn't be done.

The only thing was to cut the chain, or undo the lock.

She couldn't cut the chain. But she might pick the lock.

That was what burglars did, wasn’t it? They were experts at it - there was a magician called Houdini who could pick any lock in a few seconds. As soon as the idea came to her she cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner. She could have done it last night; she could have lain in wait for Andrew when he came down and smashed him over the head with something.

Never mind that. How was it done?

She examined the padlock and saw a slot with two indentations in, to fit the key. Inside there must be more ridges and grooves and - what were they called? Tumblers, was it? Wheels? Anyway, things that moved. The key must push them back somehow, like the bars that stuck out of a lock in a door, and then the hasp of the padlock could be pulled out smoothly and she would be free.

Since she had no key she had to slide something into that slot and jiggle it about. What? She looked around and saw the knife and fork on the floor from her breakfast. She picked them up and tried. The knife blade was too wide; the tines of the fork might just go in if there weren't four of them. She bent one of the tines back by pressing it on the floor and tried. It went in, for about an eighth of an inch, and then … stuck.

That was no good. She tugged it out and threw it away. What else? A wire, a pin. She ran her hands through her hair but it was smooth and clear. No hairpins. No hatpin either, she hadn’t worn a hat. She searched her coat pockets: handkerchief, train ticket, purse - nothing useful in the purse. There must be something.

She remembered the brooch on the front of her dress.

She unfastened it. It was a big, heavy brooch of an Irish queen, Maeve, riding horseback. Her mother had given it to her long ago. There was a pin in the back about two inches long.

She drew her ankle up to her knee, and bent to work.

After half an hour she had got nowhere. Nothing had moved inside the lock. Her back and legs ached, and her head throbbed when she moved it. She sat back for a rest, exhausted.

But there was nothing else to do. After a minute or two she moved the oil lamp closer, lifted her ankle, and began again.

‘Yesterday morning?’ Sir Jonathan said.

Over the telephone, David Ferguson's distant voice answered: ‘Yes, sir. By the morning train. I drove them to the station.’

‘Good Lord. I knew Major Butler was coming back, but I thought Catherine would stay on. It’s very strange.’

‘Yes, sir. It seemed a rather sudden decision. But I expect she’ll explain it when she sees you. Weren’t you home last night?’

‘Well, I . . . no, of course I wasn’t. Bit of a flap on here with escaped Sinn Feiners, I’m afraid. We’ll catch the beggars, though, don’t worry.’

‘Glad to hear it, sir.’

‘Yes. I say, David. Just one thing.’

‘Yes, sir?’

Sir Jonathan cleared his throat. ‘Well, when Miss Catherine was down there, did you happen to get any impression whether she was, well, fond of Major Butler at all? I mean, you know, did they spend a lot of time together, that sort of thing?’

The distant voice sounded hesitant. ‘It’s hard for me to say, sir, really. They certainly rode out together most days and talked. It’s hard to say with Miss Catherine. She’s very forceful, you know, sir. And I wasn’t with them a great deal myself.’

‘All right. Thanks, David. I’ll be in touch.’

Sir Jonathan put the phone down. He shouldn’t have asked, really: it would show everyone what he was thinking. It didn’t sound very hopeful, but it was a good sign that they had spent some time with each other. And they must have been on fairly good terms, to take the train back together.

But where on earth was Catherine now?

He had covered up quickly to David, but in fact Sir Jonathan had been in Merrion Square last night. He had come home late, true, but he had seen his butler last night and this morning. It was inconceivable that the man would not have said something about Catherine’s surprise arrival, if she had been there. So she had come back to Dublin with Andrew, but she hadn’t come home.

Sir Jonathan thought he ought to be appalled by this, but in fact he was not. By God, I ought to be grateful, Sir Jonathan thought. He’s probably taken her to a hotel, or to that house of his, wherever it is. Good luck to you, young man. Maybe you can tame her when I could not.

The only thing that puzzled him was that Andrew should do this at the very moment when he was planning his attack on Collins. It was a hell of a risk, surely, to involve oneself in a love affair right in the middle of an operation like that. Andrew must have realized by now that the girl had sympathies with Sinn Fein. Or had he managed to cure her of that, too? he wondered.

If he has, he's a son-in-law after my own heart, he thought. He picked up the pile of intelligence reports from last night, and began to work his way through them, whistling tunelessly through his teeth. He felt more optimistic than he had done for months.

Sean woke again because there was water trickling down his face. At first it came into his dreams - he was walking in the country when it began to rain, and then a waterfall poured over his head. But a moment later he woke up, and saw Michael Collins standing above him, squeezing drops of water out of a flannel.

‘Ah, it’s alive you are, is it? I was beginning to wonder, after all that high living at the King’s expense. As was the good widow Casey downstairs. Will you take a look at that clock, now?’

Sean glanced at the clock on his bedside, and saw it was half past nine. ‘Oh,’ he grunted. It didn’t seem to matter to him.

‘Oh, is it?’ Collins flung the wet flannel in his face and laughed. ‘The wicked among us have had our breakfast and put in an hour’s work already. Not that I want you to do that, Sean, but you could at least eat what the good widow’s prepared before it rots.’

‘Yes, right.’ Sean had never been overfond of the big man’s practical jokes. But he was hardly in a position to complain. He swung his legs out of bed. ‘What are the orders for today?’

‘For you, just keep your face out of sight. The army have been waking up half the city looking for you in the night. Don't go out at all if you don’t need to. Paddy says his nerves won’t stand two rescues in the same week.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Sean pulled off his shirt, poured some water from a ewer into a bowl, and began to wash. Then he turned round and said: ‘And thanks, Mr Collins. I should have said that last night. I didn’t think I’d ever see daylight again.’

Collins ruffled his hair and punched him playfully on the chin. ‘Did you think we’d forget you? This country won’t have any more lonely martyrs, if I can help it.’

Then he was gone. Sean dressed, went down to breakfast, and began to think of Catherine.