O’Gilroy got his back to a wall, the knife back at Pat’s eye, and told Eamon: “Walk past me and as far as ye can go. Move yeself!”
The big man moved, slowly and perhaps uncertain of what he was actually going to do. O’Gilroy said nothing, just held the knife very steady.
As Eamon passed out of reach, his movements became more sure; he had decided to obey.
Then Pat went limp. Assuming it was a ruse, O’Gilroy shook him, but his head just flapped, spraying blood; he was out . . . dead? Not when he was still bleeding freely. Half choked, shocked and losing blood, he had fainted. Then Eamon looked back and saw Pat’s lolling head.
“I didn’t, he’s not dead!” O’Gilroy screamed. But Eamon was past hearing, was roaring with rage as he charged.
Oh Christ!
O’Gilroy threw the knife. It most likely wouldn’t have stuck in, but was still a knife and Eamon swerved. O’Gilroy heaved Pat up by his scruff, toppled him at Eamon’s feet, and ran, ran for the alley and street and his life. He didn’t waste time looking back. He’d know if Eamon caught him.
He came into the flat with one jacket pocket ripped loose and the sleeve soaked with blood. He had a bloody handkerchief around his right hand and the rest of him looked as if he’d been rolling in a filthy alleyway. He’d lost his hat and stick.
Ranklin gaped. “What the devil happened to you?”
“Coupla boyos from Cork, they found me. Like ye was worried about.” It was almost as much a relief to tell the truth as reach the sideboard decanters. O’Gilroy felt he had given a lying explanation for his condition at every step from Piccadilly.
Ranklin was about to ask for details, but then didn’t. He’d be told if O’Gilroy felt like it; more likely, he’d never know. But before he went to fetch the travelling medicine kit, he had to ask: “Did you kill them?”
Without turning from the drinks, O’Gilroy shook his head. And for once Ranklin was sorry about that. It left unfinished business.
9
The Guards battalions look it in turns to be billeted in the Tower of London, and only when a kilted soldier challenged the taxi did Ranklin know it was the turn of the Scots Guards to keep an eye on the Crown jewels and any fresh-caught traitors housed there. But thereafter, any sense of history had gone with the daytime sight-seers, leaving only black cutouts of battlements against the stars. At ground level there was just the mundane military domesticity of any barracks square. Lamps glowed through the plane trees, turning their leaves back to spring green, and half-lit the gossiping groups of soldiers and wives below. Children darted from group to group, and somebody still on fatigues staggered by stopping a filled bucket.
Ranklin paused at the foot of the officers’ mess steps, expecting to feel nostalgia for its comfortable comradeship, but instead felt quite alien. This really wasn’t his world any longer. However, his manner immediately convinced the mess corporal when he introduced himself and his mission. A minute or two later Dagner’s host, a Major Lawther, appeared.
“Were you asking for Major Dagner?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Ranklin, RA. I, er, work for Major Dagner.”
“Ah.” There was a knowingness about that ‘ah’. “With you chaps I imagine everything’s Most Urgent. I’m afraid he hasn’t got here, yet. Come in and have a spot.”
It was tempting but, again, no longer his world. “Very kind of you, sir, but I think it would be less disruptive if I got a quick word with him out here.”
“As you please . . . Did you know Dagner before . . . before he came home?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“We met in India, of course.” That surprised Ranklin; it was difficult enough to move a Guards battalion out of London, let alone Britain. Seeing his expression, Lawther smiled. “When I was attached to the Viceroy’s staff. And they brought him back from . . . whatever he was doing, when his wife fell ill. Sad business, that, he was very cut up when she went.”
“His wife died?”
“You didn’t know? – the usual typhoid, I believe.”
Ranklin nodded. “He hadn’t mentioned it. But we only met a few days ago.”
“Ah. This was, oh, must be seven years ago now. Ah, I think I hear a cab.”
It was really a motor-taxi, but Major Lawther belonged to a generation and class that would for ever hear them as cabs.
Dagner appeared in his Gurkha mess dress of rifle-green and glittering black wellingtons. “Good evening, Major. And Captain Ranklin – I suppose this as a little hiccup in our affairs?” means
“Evening, Dagner,” Major Lawther said hastily. “His Lordship ain’t here yet, so I’ll leave you to it. He went back inside.
“It’s O’Gilroy,” Ranklin said. “He ran into a couple of what he calls the ‘boyos’, the ones he knew in Ireland. I didn’t get the full story, but they tried to knife him and he fought them off, but didn’t kill them. So I’m afraid we have to assume the word, that O’Gilroy’s to be found in London, will get around. I thought you’d better know immediately. Oh – and I took it on myself to tip off Major Kell, since it touches on his field. He said he’d be along as soon as he could.” He paused, then added: “And when he comes, could we refer to O‘Gilroy as Gorman? – it’s his normal alias.”
“Quite. Thank you.” Dagner thought this over. “Then, also before he comes, d’you have any solution to suggest?”
“Only to send O’Gilroy and myself abroad. It’s where we belong. And Paris is a good half-day closer to most places.”
“Hm. But I don’t like letting you go until the training programme’s really under way.”
Ranklin had expected that. “Then I had one rather wild idea for O’Gilroy himself-” They had heard neither taxi nor cab, but there was Major Kell stomping up the cobbled slope, wearing plain evening clothes (as Ranklin was: he had changed, assuming that anything less would get him redirected to the Traitors’ Gate). Kell headed the counter-intelligence service and didn’t bother to call himself anything like “Chief”. That apart, he was a year or so older than Ranklin, with an oval face, smallish moustache, smoothed-down hair and a bland pop-eyed expression that suggested that he’d like to believe you, but . . .
They each knew other already and Ranklin’s by-hand-of-bearer-for-your-eyes-only message had given Kell the bones of the story, so Dagner opened by asking bluntly: “Do you regard these Irish thuggees as being in your province?”
“Not if I can bloody well help it,” Kell said quite as bluntly. “I try to leave them to Special Branch at the Yard – that’s what they were originally set up for – and keep my tiny band for dealing with real espionage. And, if I may say so, I never approved of your Chief mixing the two up. But-” he sighed dramatically; “-I suppose your Bureau’s requirements are different from mine. What’s the worst that can happen now?”
Ranklin said: “They try to kill him again.”
“That being the case,” Kell said, “is your chap ready to say who this pair was? Names, descriptions?”
“No,” Ranklin said quickly. “And I don’t think he can be persuaded.”
Kell said: “Assuming they didn’t come to London looking for your man, they came for some other purpose – such as planting a bomb that will kill a dozen people.”
“I doubt if they’ll be up to it; Gorman came back covered in blood that wasn’t his own. And if they think he’ll report them, they’ve probably left London already.”
Kell nodded without commitment. “Perhaps. But if there is what the press calls ‘a Fenian outrage’ we can hardly keep this from the Branch. And then they’d probably arrest your own man on some pretext and sweat the names out of him.”
Ranklin glanced at Dagner, but was left to answer himself, we try to select men who don’t babble just because a policeman gives them a nasty look. And having worked with Gorman in the field, I can say confidently that he doesn’t. All we could do is turn him into an enemy.”
They had instinctively begun to pace up and down in the pool of light by the steps, just as instinctively falling into step and about-turning when Dagner, the senior, did. The soldiers had given them one superior glance of those off duty for those still on, then ignored them.