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‘I suppose I expected a man.’
‘Your sort would,’ she said with a trace of bitterness.
‘Ah, the arrogant Englishman, you mean? The toe of his boot for a dog and a whip for a woman. Isn’t that the saying? I would have thought it had possibilities.’
She surprised me by laughing although I suspect it was in spite of herself. ‘Give the man his whiskey, Binnie, and make sure it’s a Jameson. The Major always drinks Jameson.’
He moved to the bar. I said, ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘His name is Gallagher, Major Vaughan. Binnie Gallagher.’
‘Young for his trade.’
‘But old for his age.’
He put the bottle and single glass on the table and leaned against the partition at one side, arms folded. I poured a drink and said, ‘Well, now, Miss Murphy, you seem to know all about me.’
‘Simon Vaughan, born 1931, Delhi. Father a colonel in the Indian Army. Mother, Irish.’
‘More shame to her,’ I put in.
She ignored the remark and carried on. ‘Winchester, Sandhurst. Military Cross with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in Korea, 1953. They must have been proud of you at the Academy. Officer, gentleman, murderer.’
The American accent was more noticeable now along with the anger in her voice. There was a rather obvious pause as they both waited for some sort of reaction. When I moved, it was only to reach for the whiskey bottle, but it was enough for Binnie whose hand was inside his coat on the instant.
‘Watch yourself,’ he said.
‘I can handle this one,’ she replied.
I couldn’t be certain that the whole thing wasn’t some prearranged ploy intended simply to test me, but the fact that they’d spoken in Irish was interesting and it occurred to me that if the Murphy girl knew as much about me as she seemed to she would be well aware that I spoke the language rather well myself, thanks to my mother.
I poured another drink and said to Binnie in Irish, ‘How old are you, boy?’
He answered in a kind of reflex, ‘Nineteen.’
‘If you’re faced with a search, you can always dump a gun fast, but a shoulder holster …’ I shook my head. ‘Get rid of it or you won’t see twenty.’
There was something in his eyes again, but it was the girl who answered for him, in English this time. ‘You should listen to the Major, Binnie. He’s had a lot of practice at that kind of thing.’
‘You said something about my being a murderer?’ I said.
‘Borneo, 1963. A place called Selengar. You had fourteen guerrillas executed whose only crime was fighting for the freedom of their country.’
‘A debatable point considering the fact that they were all Communist Chinese,’ I said.
She ignored me completely. ‘Then there was a Mr Hui Li whom you had tortured and beaten for several hours. Shot while trying to escape. The newspapers called you the Beast of Selengar, but the War Office didn’t want a stink so they put the lid on tight.’
I actually managed a smile. ‘Poor Simon Vaughan. Never did really recover from the eighteen months he spent in that Chinese prison camp in Korea.’
‘So they didn’t actually cashier you. They eased you out.’
‘Only the mud stuck.’
‘And now you sell guns.’
‘To people like you.’ I raised my glass and said gaily, ‘Up the Republic.’
‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘Then what are we complaining about?’ I took the rest of my whiskey down carefully. ‘Mr Meyer is waiting to see you not far from here. He simply wanted me to meet you first as a – a precautionary measure.’
‘We know exactly where Mr Meyer is staying. In a hotel in Lurgan Street. You have room fifty-three at the Grand Central.’
‘Only the best,’ I said. ‘It’s that public school education, you see. Now poor old Meyer, on the other hand, can never forget getting out of Germany in what he stood up in back in ’38 so he saves his money.’
Behind us the outside door burst open and a group of young men entered the bar.
There were four of them, all dressed exactly alike in leather boots, jeans and donkey jackets. Some sort of uniform, I suppose, a sign that you belonged. That it was everyone else who was the outsider. The faces and the manner of them as they swaggered in told all. Vicious young animals of a type to be found in any large city in the world from Belfast to Delhi and back again.
They were trouble and the barman knew it, his face sagging as they paused inside the door to look round, then started towards the bar, a red-haired lad of seventeen or eighteen leading the way, a smile on his face of entirely the wrong sort.
‘Quiet tonight,’ he said cheerfully when he got close.
The barman nodded nervously. ‘What can I get you?’
The red-haired boy stood, hands on the bar, his friends ranged behind him. ‘We’re collecting for the new church hall at St Michael’s. Everyone else in the district’s chipping in and we knew you wouldn’t like to be left out.’ He glanced around the bar again. ‘We were going to ask for fifty, but I can see things aren’t so good so we’ll make it twenty-five quid and leave it at that.’
One of his friends reached over the bar, helped himself to a pint pot and pumped out a beer.
The barman said slowly. ‘They aren’t building any church hall at St Mick’s.’
The red-haired boy glanced at his friends enquiringly, then nodded gravely. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘The truth, then. We’re from the IRA. We’re collecting for the Organization. More guns to fight the bloody British Army with. We need every penny we can get.’
‘God save us,’ the barman said. ‘But there isn’t three quid in the till. I’ve never known trade as bad.’
The red-haired boy slapped him solidly across the face, sending him back against the shelves, three or four glasses bouncing to the floor.
‘Twenty-five quid,’ he said. ‘Or we smash the place up. Take your choice.’
Binnie Gallagher brushed past me like a wraith. He moved in behind them without a word. He stood there waiting, shoulders hunched, the hands thrust deep into the pockets of the dark overcoat.
The red-haired boy saw him first and turned slowly. ‘And who the hell might you be, little man?’
Binnie looked up and I saw him clearly in the mirror, dark eyes burning in that white face. The four of them eased round a little, ready to move in on him and I reached for the bottle of Jameson.
Norah Murphy put a hand on my arm. ‘He doesn’t need you,’ she said quietly.
‘My dear girl, I only wanted a drink,’ I murmured and poured myself another.
‘The IRA, is it?’ Binnie said.
The red-haired boy glanced at his friends, for the first time slightly uncertain. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m a lieutenant in the North Tyrone Brigade myself,’ Binnie said. ‘Who are you lads?’
One of them made a break for the door on the instant and incredibly, a gun was in Binnie’s left hand, a 9 mm Browning automatic that looked like British Army issue to me. With that gun in his hand, he became another person entirely. A man to frighten the devil himself. A natural born killer if ever I’d seen one.
The four of them cowered against the bar, utterly terrified. Binnie said coldly, ‘Lads are out in the streets tonight spilling their blood for Ireland and bastards like you spit on their good name.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ the red-haired boy said. ‘We didn’t mean no harm.’
Binnie kicked him in the crutch, the boy sagged at the knees, turned and clutched at the bar with one hand to stop himself from falling. Binnie reversed his grip on the Browning, the butt rose and fell like a hammer on the back of that outstretched hand and I heard the bones crack. The boy gave a terrible groan and slipped to the floor, half-fainting, at the feet of his horrified companions.
Binnie’s right foot swung back as if to finish him off with a kick in the side of the head and Norah Murphy called sharply, ‘That’s enough.’
He stepped back instantly like a well-trained dog and stood watching, the Browning flat against his left thigh. Norah Murphy moved past me and went to join them and I noticed that she was carrying in her right hand a square, flat case which she placed on the bar.
‘Pick him up,’ she said.
The injured boy’s companions did as they were told, holding him between them while she examined the hand. I poured myself another Jameson and joined the group as she opened the case. The most interesting item on display was a stethoscope and she rummaged around and finally produced a large triangular sling which she tied about the boy’s neck to support the injured hand.
‘Take him into Casualty at the Infirmary,’ she said. ‘He’ll need a plaster cast.’
‘And keep your mouth shut,’ Binnie put in.
They went out on the run, the injured boy’s feet dragging between them. The door closed and there was only the silence.
As Norah Murphy reached for the case I said, ‘Is that just a front or the real thing?’
‘Would Harvard Medical School be good enough for you?’ she demanded.
‘Fascinating,’ I said. ‘Our friend here breaks them up and you put them together again. That’s what I call teamwork.’
She didn’t like that for she turned very pale and snapped the fastener of her case together angrily, but I think she had determined not to lose her temper.
‘All right, Major Vaughan,’ she said. ‘I don’t like you either. Shall we go?’
She moved towards the door. I turned and placed my glass on the counter in front of the barman, who was standing there waiting for God knows what axe to fall.
Binnie said, ‘You’ve seen nothing, heard nothing. All right?’
There was no need to threaten and the poor wretch nodded dumbly, his lip trembling. And then, quite suddenly, he collapsed across the bar and started to cry.
Binnie surprised me then by patting him on the shoulder and saying with astonishing gentleness, ‘Better times coming, Da. Just you see.’
But if the barman believed that, then I was the only sane man in a world gone mad.
It had started to rain and fog rolled in across the docks as we moved along the waterfront, Norah Murphy at my side, Binnie bringing up the rear rather obviously.
Neither of them said a word until we were perhaps half way to our destination when Norah Murphy paused at the end of a mean street of terrace houses and turned to Binnie. ‘I’ve a patient I must see here. I promised to drop a prescription in this evening. Five minutes.’
She ignored me and walked away down the street, pausing at the third or fourth door to knock briskly. She was admitted almost at once and Binnie and I moved into the shelter of an arched passageway between two houses. I offered him a cigarette which he refused. I lit one myself and leaned against the wall.
After a while he said, ‘Your mother – what was her maiden name?’
‘Fitzgerald,’ I told him. ‘Nuala Fitzgerald.’
He turned, his face a pale shadow in the darkness. ‘There was a man of the same name schoolmaster at Stradballa during the Troubles.’
‘Her elder brother,’ I said.
He leaned closer as if trying to see my face. ‘You, a bloody Englishman, are the nephew of Michael Fitzgerald, the Schoolmaster of Stradballa?’
‘I suppose I must be. Why should that be so hard to take?’
‘But he was a great hero,’ Binnie said. ‘He commanded the Stradballa flying column. When the Tans came to take him, he was teaching at the school. Because of the children he went outside and shot it out in the open, one against fifteen, and got clean away.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘A real hero of the revolution. All for the Cause only he never wanted it to end, Binnie, that was his trouble. Executed during the Civil War by the Free State Government. I always found that part of the story rather ironic myself, or had you forgotten that after they’d got rid of the English, the Irish set about knocking each other off with even greater enthusiasm?’
I could not see the expression on his face, yet the tension in him was something tangible between us.
I said, ‘Don’t try it, boy. As the Americans would say, you’re out of your league. Compared to me, you’re just a bloody amateur.’
‘Is that a fact now, Major?’ he said softly.
‘Another thing,’ I said. ‘Dr Murphy wouldn’t like it and we can’t have that now, can we?’
She settled the matter for us by reappearing at that precise moment. She sensed that something was wrong at once and paused.
‘What is it?’
‘A slight difference of opinion, that’s all,’ I told her. ‘Binnie’s just discovered I’m related to a piece of grand old Irish history and it sticks in his throat – or didn’t you know?’
‘I knew,’ she said coldly.
‘I thought you would,’ I said. ‘The interesting thing is, why didn’t you tell him?’
I didn’t give her a chance to reply and cut the whole business short by moving off into the fog briskly in the general direction of Lurgan Street.
The hotel didn’t have a great deal to commend it, but then neither did Lurgan Street. A row of decaying terrace houses, a shop or two and a couple of pubs making as unattractive a sight as I have ever seen.
The hotel itself was little more than a lodging-house of a type to be found near the docks of any large port, catering mainly for sailors or prostitutes in need of a room for an hour or two. It had been constructed by simply joining three terrace houses together and sticking a sign above the door of one of them.
A merchant navy officer came out as we approached and clutched at the railings for support. A girl of eighteen or so in a black plastic mac emerged behind him, straightened his cap and got a hand under his elbow to help him down the steps.
She looked us over without the slightest sense of shame and I smiled and nodded. ‘Good night, a colleen. God save the good work.’
The laughter bubbled out of her. ‘God save you kindly.’
