The Second Assassin Read online

  ‘They have their little spies everywhere,’ Holland said as he grinned. ‘I should think this all started when we arrived at the Irish Sea Airlines office this morning.’

  Barry agreed. The uniformed ticket clerk had taken his information for the passenger manifest from their passports and could easily have placed a call to Dublin. The strawberry-faced driver of the Swift would stick to them like glue for the duration of their visit.

  ‘What do we do about him?’

  ‘Follow me,’ said Holland. He marched down to the far end of the counter, walked through the opening and smiled politely at the frowning young man who rose up from behind his desk. He was wearing a dark suit with the trousers too short and a white shirt with a very frayed collar. He had sandy hair and freckles across his nose. He looked no more than twenty.

  ‘Help you, sir?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Holland said, his voice clipped and imperious. ‘Meeting with Mr Louth about my accounts.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the young man. ‘I’ll fetch him, shall I?’

  ‘No need, no need,’ said Holland, brushing past him. ‘Know the way. Use your facilities first, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, sir. Of course not, sir,’ the young man said, calling after them. ‘It’s—’

  ‘Know the way there too, lad,’ Holland said with a wave.

  They threaded their way between the desks until they reached the rear of the hall then went through a pair of glass-windowed doors onto a rear landing. A narrow flight of stairs led up, another, shorter flight led down. Holland went down. Reaching the foot of the stairs he turned to the right and they walked past doors marked WC-GENTS and WC-LADIES. Continuing on down the passage they reached another short flight of steps, went up, turned right and then went down yet another, even narrower hallway. Barry was thoroughly lost but Holland seemed to know exactly where he was going.

  At the end of the hall Holland pushed through a swinging door with a tarnished brass palm plate and Barry suddenly found himself in what was obviously the bank’s luncheon room. There were a half dozen plain wood tables and chairs, a coffee urn and a doorway leading into the small kitchen beyond. Barry could smell sausages and chip grease. There were several people at the tables, all dressed in dark suits like the young clerk upstairs. Two of them were drinking tea and reading their newspapers while the third, an older man, was fast asleep, his head tilted back in the chair, his mouth open.

  There was a heavy-looking wooden door at the far end of the room and someone had jammed an old shoe into the crack to keep it open, letting in fresh air. The two men reading their papers never even looked up as Holland and Barry crossed the room and went through the door. As he passed by, Barry noticed that the door was fitted with a large brass lock and several bolts and that there was no handle on the outside at all. He smiled to himself as he stepped out onto a narrow cobbled lane at the rear of the bank. The door had been designed to keep unsavoury characters from getting in, not out.

  ‘This way,’ Holland instructed, turning to the left, heading out towards Dame Street.

  ‘You’ve done that before,’ said Barry, smiling.

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Chancy.’

  ‘Not really. I do have an account at the bank, as a matter of fact, and I’ve dealt with Mr Louth before. If he remembers me at all it’s as the English fellow who goes off to pee and never comes back.’

  They reached the head of the cobbled lane and stepped out onto the pavement of Dame Street, four lanes divided by a narrow stone median. The traffic was as heavy as a broad street in London, filled with bicycles, taxis, buses, trucks and trolley cars ebbing and flowing in both directions.

  ‘Where to?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Not far now,’ Holland answered. ‘But let’s put some distance between us and our friend the curious cabby.’

  Holland turned right and together he and Barry made their way briskly down Dame Street, past Crow Street and Temple Lane, finally crossing Dame Street at the point where Great George Street curved down to meet it, moving south. By now they were well away from the taxi driver waiting beside the curb in Foster Place but Holland was taking no chances. They continued up Great George Street until they reached the entrance to the old covered market, then turned in, moving quickly between the rich-smelling stalls of meats and cheeses, fish and produce, finally exiting onto Drury Street.

  They paused there long enough to smoke a cigarette, waiting to see if anyone was following them. Satisfied that they were on their own, Holland nodded to Barry and they turned left this time, moving north again, walking in single file down the narrow crumbling pavement through what passed for Dublin’s garment district – an assortment of ground-floor wardrobe shops and milliners topped by narrow-windowed factories on the floors above. Eventually they reached Exchequer Street, turned right, then left again onto St Andrew’s Street, finally ending up in front of St Andrew’s Church itself, a squat and unattractive seventeenth-century pile of soot-stained granite.

  ‘We’re going to mass?’ Barry asked as they stopped in front of the entrance to the church. A woman as squat as the church scuttled in through the doors, pulling a black shawl over her head as she disappeared into the gloom within.

  ‘We’re going for a pint, just like you told the man in the Customs hall,’ said Holland, pointing to an elegant Victorian structure of polychrome brick and timbered windows directly across the street. The ground floor was a public house, with O’Neill’s inscribed in gold on the green wooden name board above the long, curtained windows. They crossed the street and went inside.

  The interior was noisy, dark and hazed with smoke. It was also crowded with the remnants of the lunchtime trade, mostly barristers and bankers from the well- dressed looks of them. The pub was made up of a long bar on the left and a series of stall-like niches on the right running the length of the room, with benches and several tables in each stall.

  They found a table halfway down the room and sat down. ‘You fetch the drinks,’ said Holland. ‘I’d only attract attention.’

  ‘What’ll you have?’ asked Barry, standing.

  ‘Guinness.’

  Barry edged his way between the patrons chatting at the rail and ordered Holland’s Guinness and a black and tan for himself. He carried the tall glasses back to the table and sat down again.

  Holland took a small sip and licked the foam from his lips. ‘They say if you drink enough of this you don’t mind the smell of the city so much.’

  ‘Drink enough of that and you don’t mind the smell of anything,’ Barry answered. He took a pull at his own ale-and-stout mixture and tried to recall the last time he’d taken drink in a Dublin pub. Too long ago to remember. He lit a cigarette and glanced at Holland. ‘You said we were coming here to get answers,’ the policeman said, pitching his voice low enough not to carry far.

  ‘In time,’ said Holland.

  Barry sighed; he’d had enough of secret meetings and cryptic phrases. ‘Are we waiting for someone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holland. He took another sip of the Guinness, looking over Barry’s shoulder towards the door.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A young lad. His name is Brendan. A cutout.’

  ‘Cutout?’

  ‘A go-between,’ Holland explained. ‘Nothing more than an errand boy, really.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I’ve used him before.’ Holland paused, looking over Barry’s shoulder again. ‘There he is.’ He lifted his hand and waved. ‘Behan!’ A few moments later a young man appeared and slid onto the bench beside Holland. He was no more than sixteen, short, square-shouldered and fat-cheeked with hard-brushed mouse-brown hair that seemed to stand straight up on his large head. He had the soulful eyes of a basset, a large nose and a small, almost girlish mouth. He glanced down at the glass of Guinness.

  ‘Finished with that, are you?’ he asked.

  Holland smiled and pushed the pint in front of the boy. He picked it up and drank deeply, almost emptyi
ng the glass. He set down what was left and gave a little sigh of contentment.

  ‘Thirsty?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Always.’ The boy glanced across the table at Barry then turned to Holland. ‘Who’s this then?’

  ‘A friend, Brendan.’

  The eyes narrowed. ‘Not of mine.’

  ‘A countryman,’ Holland soothed.

  The boy stared, then lifted the Guinness and drained it away, his eyes never leaving Barry’s face. He put the glass down, belched lightly and then began to sing to the tune of ‘The Rising of the Moon.’

  They told me, Francis Hinsley,

  they told me you were hung…

  He left it hanging in querying invitation.

  Barry grinned, took a pull on his black and tan and finished the verse.

  With red protruding eyeballs

  and black protruding tongue.

  Behan laughed and continued the test. ‘Up a long ladder…’

  ‘And down a short rope…’

  ‘To hell with King Billy…’

  ‘And God bless the Pope.’

  ‘And if he don’t like it…’

  ‘We’ll tear him in two…’

  ‘And send him to hell with his red, white and blue.’ Behan nudged Holland in the ribs. ‘No offence to the flag meant, yer honour.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Holland.

  Behan pointed to Barry’s black and tan. ‘Done with that?’

  ‘I suppose I am,’ said the policeman, repeating the ritual of pushing the glass in the young man’s direction.

  ‘It’s laid on then?’ Holland asked as Behan finished the drink.

  The round-faced boy nodded and put down the glass. ‘I’ll go out first and then you follow. I’ll be ahead on my bike, a hundred feet or so. If there’s trouble I’ll get off and give you a signal.’

  ‘What kind of signal?’ Holland asked.

  ‘How about if I scratch me arse?’ said Behan. ‘Will that be clear enough to ya?’

  ‘Abundantly.’

  ‘You see me doing that, clear out of it, quick. Either it’s the Boys or it’s the Garda, which means tomorrow they find me bolg anairde in the Liffey, or having my horrible cobble in the Joy, neither of which would please me or my sainted mother very much, thanks but no thanks.’ He stood up and slipped out from behind the table. ‘Give me a minute to get clear.’ And then he was gone.

  ‘A bogman in the making,’ said Barry. ‘Or trying to be.’ At sixteen the boy was already familiar with the broken bodies of informants floating belly-up in the river and the quality of the food in Mountjoy Prison.

  ‘Fancies himself a writer,’ Holland commented. ‘Joined the Fianna Eireann when he was twelve and started publishing articles in their magazine.’ Barry nodded. Fianna Eireann was the Republican version of the Boy Scouts and bore a disturbing similarity to Germany’s Hitler Youth. Like that organisation, Fianna Eireann was also a way of breeding recruits for the more serious activities of its adult counterpart.

  ‘Do you know where he’s taking us?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Haven’t the faintest,’ Holland said.

  As it turned out, the young boy on his bike led the two men, on foot, back across the river to O’Connell Street, then down Talbot Street past the bookstalls and haberdashers to Amiens Station. At no time did young Behan climb down from his bicycle and scratch his arse so they assumed they were safe, at least for the moment. The two men followed him into the plain brick railway terminal, sat down on a bench and watched as the boy leaned his bike against a wall. He went to one of the ticket windows, spoke to the agent briefly then turned away, purchasing an orange from a vending cart. He brought the fruit over to where they were sitting and peeled the orange in one long strip of rind, standing in front of the rubbish bin beside the bench.

  ‘There’s a train to Wicklow Town in five minutes, track five. You’ll be met.’ The pie-faced young man finished peeling the orange, split it and popped a section into his mouth. ‘For the scurvy.’ He grinned and popped another section into his mouth, then walked away. Holland and Barry did as they were told, purchasing their tickets and climbing aboard just as the train began to move.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday, April 17, 1939

  County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland

  The train went from Dublin to Rosslare along the coast, stopping at almost every small town along the way. The passengers were mostly country folk, women and children returning home after shopping or a visit to relations in the city. They sat in the straight-backed wooden seats and laughed and drank and ate and smoked and talked, sometimes buying tea from the trolley as it rattled past.

  Barry sat closest to the window and stared out towards the iron-tinted sea. They went through the ferry port of Dun Laoghaire, past the beaches at Dalkey then came to Bray, where they followed a narrow stone-hewn path along the flinty cliffs and through half a dozen short tunnels.

  The weather had cleared slightly, giving the air a little brightness, and under other circumstances Barry might have enjoyed the trip. As it was he was finding himself feeling more and more impotent in the face of events, no more than a student or companion of Holland’s, that truth made all the more irritating by the fact that this was his birthplace and should have been hostile territory for the man sitting beside him. The man who was presently looking calm as oiled water, spectacles perched on his bald forehead as he leafed through an abandoned copy of the morning Independent.

  The train reached Wicklow Town an hour after leaving Dublin. They stepped out onto the platform with a score of others as half a dozen new passengers clambered on. A moment later, after a warning toot of its whistle, the train puffed laboriously past the small whitewashed station and disappeared around a corner, hidden in the deep cut it followed around the turn.

  By then the platform and the station itself were empty, the other passengers having quickly streamed out through an opening in the high stone wall that stood a few feet away. They were alone except for the trainman in his raised signal box high above the track. The Irish name for Wicklow, Cill Mantain, was picked out in whitewashed stones on the sloping bank on the other side of the track and flanked by two red pots of dark earth that might hold pansies later in the season.

  ‘I thought we were being met,’ said Barry, looking around.

  ‘Someone will show up,’ Holland answered. He’d kept the newspaper and now had it tucked under his arm. He looks British enough to make your teeth ache, Barry thought. A perfect target.

  ‘What if this is all some sort of elaborate trap?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘Doubtful,’ said Holland. ‘If they’d wanted to do us harm they’d have done it in Dublin, not in the countryside.’

  ‘Tell that to Michael Collins,’ Barry said with a snort. Collins, one-time head of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and eventually commander in chief of the Irish National Army, had been assassinated in the narrow valley of Beal Na Blath in County Cork, not far from his birthplace in Clonakilty. Barry was fully aware and so was Holland that the IRA was capable of killing them anywhere.

  ‘You’re no Michael Collins and neither am I,’ scoffed Holland, lighting a cigarette. ‘They’d have nothing to gain by killing us.’

  ‘They have nothing to gain from blowing up lavatories in London and Manchester either,’ said Barry. ‘But that doesn’t stop them from doing it.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re not talking about logic, Colonel. You’re talking about fanaticism and zealotry.’

  ‘Well said. But I still don’t think we have anything to worry about.’ Holland puffed on his cigarette and smiled. ‘Young Brendan would have scratched his arse, remember?’

  Barry sighed. ‘Brendan’s scratched arse aside, and just so I won’t be taken entirely by surprise, I would like to know who we’re meeting, if that’s not divulging vital state secrets.’

  ‘You haven’t actually signed the Official Secrets Act yet, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it probably is divu
lging vital state secrets if I tell you but I don’t see what harm it can do at this point, since you’ll know soon enough anyway.’ He paused. On the other side of the wall they could hear the sound of tyres crunching on gravel as a car pulled up into the small lot beside the station. Holland dropped his cigarette end onto the platform and crushed it out with his shoe. ‘We’re meeting with Stephen Hayes.’

  Barry stared. ‘Sweet shitting Jesus! Stephen Hayes is Russell’s second in command!’

  ‘Quite right,’ Holland said. ‘He also happens to be a Special Branch informant.’

  Both men turned at the sound of a voice behind them. ‘Colonel Holland?’ The man speaking was grey-haired and in his sixties, wearing the plain black suit and white collar of a Catholic priest. The older man stepped forward and extended his hand. The thick fingers were yellowed with nicotine and the voice was whiskey-burred and tired. ‘I’m Father O’Hara. There’s a car waiting.’ The motor car in question turned out to be a flatulent black Austin 10-4 almost as old as the taxi they’d used in Dublin. Barry and Holland sat crammed together in the rear seat while Father O’Hara sat alone in the front, bolt upright behind the wheel, clutching it stiffly in both hands except when he ground the gears as he drove along the rising unpaved track that led away from the station.

  A half mile away at the main road a steep hill rose, covered in gorse and gnarled trees. There were lower hills and hedgerow-broken fields both left and right, planted in clover for the grazing sheep. It was the breeding season and the rams had broad patches of beetroot dye on their bellies, which would rub off on the backs of the ewes to show that they’d been mounted.

  Barry was still stunned by the announcement that they were about to meet with Stephen Hayes and, more than that, bewildered by Holland’s blandly couched revelation that Hayes, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Irish Republican Army, was an informer for Special Branch. Barry was no specialist in IRA affairs but he knew that Hayes was a lifelong Republican and well known to be wedded to the cause.