Was it brutal? Of course. That made it work. Would he have done the same things to Elizabeth? If she had not told him?
He realized the truth and shrugged it off. He had given Denisov the slip, rented a car, and left Belfast in the early afternoon. He had driven furiously down the unmarked roads and lanes of the South until he had come — exhausted — to the village where Lord Slough lived, Innisbally on the shore of the western sea.
So what he told the Dublin policeman was partly true and that was enough; he needed the policeman’s help to thwart the assassination and to get the further information that would finish the mission; information that Hanley could use to arrange an entrée to British Intelligence; information that would let him — Devereaux — go home at last to the hills around Front Royal where he could forget for a little while Elizabeth and R Section and the rest of it.
He needed the policeman as guide through the unchartered labyrinth of Irish politics and Irish crime and Irish terrorism.
Devereaux displayed each nugget of his information slowly, all the while measuring the policeman’s response. Was he bright enough? Was he going to be useful? That had been the gamble. But, after an hour, Devereaux decided that Cashel would do — that the ridiculous bowler hat and black coat and fierce mustache were merely clownish features masking a subtle mind.
They even had a drink on it, which is where MacDermott found them when he returned from Mass: Cashel with a third glass of mild beer and Devereaux with a glass filled with ice cubes and gin.
“You don’t have any vodka,” said Devereaux when the publican entered and shut the door.
“I do not. I’ll not have Communist drinks in here. And I might say, Mr. Cashel, it’s not opening time yet and I’d lose me trade if the garda saw this sight.”
“I’m the police,” said Cashel. “But you’re correct, Mr. MacDermott. We’ve no further need to intrude on your hospitality.” He rose. “Mr. Devereaux? Will you accompany me?”
And the two men went outside and stood for a moment on the road through the village. A dog loped across the way and urinated on the post-office wall.
“A fine comment,” said Cashel of the dog.
“What’s there to be done?” Devereaux looked up and down the empty road. He was conscious, vaguely, of a deadline; of a need for action.
“D’ya recall this fella I mentioned named Faolin?”
Devereaux waited.
“He was on a walkin’ trip he says from Derry down to Kerry.”
“That’s far.”
“Aye. But not unlikely, Mr. Devereaux. Some of these poor fellas walk hundreds of miles, for visits or for jobs. If you’ve driven this country, sir, you’ve seen few cars and few horses and wagons. We’re not so rich yet that we can afford to forget how to walk.”
“Which way is Kerry?”
“You mean to where he was going, sir? Well, I don’t think that’s important at all.” Devereaux waited while Cashel struck a match and stuffed the burning end into the bowl of the black pipe. “No. I was more thinking of going up the road back to Derry and see what there was t’be learned.”
Devereaux understood. “To see where he left the car, you mean? Because he didn’t walk from Derry if he’s our man?”
Cashel smiled. “Ah, I’m glad yer a bright fella.”
Devereaux frowned; he realized he had already made his judgment on Cashel’s worth but he was not aware that Cashel was judging him.
“There’s my car,” said Devereaux, pointing to the rental Fiat parked on the roadside. It was the only auto on the street.
They drove north slowly, along the winding, narrow highway that skirts the brown hills and roughly follows the shoreline of Galway Bay. There was no other car on the narrow roadway — even in high summer, when the country was full of American tourists, the roads all seemed strangely empty, as though the ancient past of the rural country swallowed up all traces of the present.
They drove by an old cemetery with Celtic crosses catching the pale light of the cold November sun. Beneath the crosses, flowers sat pretty and stiff and dead in the plastic wrappings.
“They buried her there,” said Cashel, pointing to the graveyard.
Devereaux did not speak as he watched the road unwind. The death of Deirdre Monahan scarcely moved him any more than the death of O’Neill.
“D’ya know about a Celtic cross?”
Devereaux did not answer; he looked right and left, for a clue to find the car to find the man who would kill Lord Slough. It was like a nursery rhyme without an end.
“They say when Paddy came here—”
“Paddy?”
“Saint Patrick. When Paddy came here t’convert the heathen, he found us worshippin’ the sun. Undoubtedly we worshipped it because we had never seen it.” Cashel chuckled. “Or we seen it as often as we seen God.”
Devereaux looked around at empty fields, fallow for winter.
“So Paddy let them worship their sun, but he put it on a cross, too, so that the circle of the sun formed to make the Celtic cross.”
Devereaux pretended to listen; he wondered why the policeman bothered with this tour-guide monologue. In politeness, he grunted as a period to the anecdote.
Cashel regarded him across the small front seat of the car. “You don’t care about that story,” he said.
“Not very much. He could have put his car anywhere along here.”
Cashel glanced around carelessly at the fields. “Oh? He could do that, but it’s very unlikely. These old Clare countrymen know their land and neighbors. Faolin should know that as well and know the farmers are over every inch of their land every day. Faolin should know it wouldn’t be very smart to leave the motorcar down in a field or a lane because the old countrymen’d be down in the village of an evening, askin’ after a fella who left his valuable automobile sitting by the side of the road. No, I think Faolin would have left the motorcar in the next village, up the road. Perhaps in a garage.”
Devereaux nodded. This was what he had gambled on when he heard the policeman was in the village; his instinct had been to avoid contact, but he had decided against it; the policeman could not be fooled, he would know Devereaux had been around. It was better if the policeman worked for him.
“This matter then. It isn’t much t’you, is it?” Cashel asked softly. For a moment, Devereaux thought he was talking about the Celtic crosses again; he did not know what the question meant. He said so.
Cashel, still softly, said, “This business with Lord Slough and the plot t’kill him, I mean. I suppose you’re interested because your country is interested in everything. But there’s no bloody sense of the matter being urgent, is there?”
Yes, thought Devereaux. There was urgency. But not for the reasons you would know about.
“Am I right, Mr. Devereaux? Yer don’t give a great bloody damn about it all, one way or the other.”
Devereaux watched the road. “It’s a job.”
“It’s that.”
They were silent for a moment. They could hear the noisy engine of the little car and the drum of the wheels on the cracked roadway.
“You don’t care if Lord Slough lives or dies then?”
“Sure we do,” said Devereaux. “As a professional matter, of interest to my government.”
“Interest. A curious word. It can mean so little. I can be interested in news of a ferry overturning in the river Ganges and the deaths of a thousand Indians.”
Devereaux could not understand the tone of voice.
Cashel continued, “Lord Slough is an Englishman who loves Eire. They are not so rare. If you would come even out here to Clare in the summer, you’d see them. They married Irish girls or they came here once on holiday and never got the feel of the country out of their bones. It does not matter the reason — they love Eire and the people.”