Women of Courage (112 page)

But he didn’t. Because Kee believed he himself was right and the boy was evil. And he had just enough self-control and intelligence left to realize that once he did those things, he would be playing the game the Sinn Feiners wanted. Reinforcing the stereotype of brutal police tyranny which made these young men seem noble, heroic. Making another martyr to add to the long list the Fenians probably muttered to over their rosary beads.

His only hope was to bring the lad to court, unmarked, and with such evidence of his guilt that no jury could fail to convict him. Which was where the manila folder came in.

The manila folder contained a forensic report on Brennan’s gun. It was a German Parabellum automatic, firing 9-mm ammunition; Kee knew that already. The pistol had been carefully cleaned, so it was not possible to say when it had last been fired. Four of the bullets in the magazine clip were copper-cased, round-nosed ones; the other four were flat-nosed with a nickel casing. When these bullets had been fired in the laboratory, they had developed six grooves on the outside. These grooves corresponded with the grooves in the barrel, which was rifled.

So far, so good. The flat-nosed bullets, it appeared, had been manufactured like that; the scientist did not think they had been interfered with since. Nonetheless, a flat-nosed bullet would cause immensely greater damage inside a body than the others. They were, Kee thought, outlawed in war. He had read that most of the original ammunition supplied to the Volunteers at the Howth gun-running in 1912 had been of this dum-dum type, and the leaders of those days had refused to issue it. So much had things changed.

The scientist had also examined a bullet which had been retrieved from Harcourt Street where Radford had died. Two shots had been fired, but only one bullet had been recovered. This bullet, also, was of 9-mm calibre. It was misshapen by its impact with Radford’s body and the wall of the shop, but it was nonetheless possible to observe four or five grooves along its sides, which were exactly the same distance apart as those on the bullets fired in the laboratory.

Thus it was possible to conclude that the bullets had been fired from precisely the same type of pistol. The scientist regretted, however, that his science had not yet advanced to the state where it was possible to say whether the bullets had come from the same individual weapon.

Kee pondered this. It was good evidence, but not conclusive. If he had had one witness who had seen Brennan in the area, it would have been almost conclusive. But the witnesses were useless.

The only other possible evidence was a confession. And that could be got out of the boy only by torture. There was simply no other way.

Or was there?

Kee slipped the folder into a drawer, locked it, stood up, and put on his coat. It was not far, and it was a fairly fine day.

He would walk to Mountjoy Prison.

Sean was surprised and annoyed to be moved to a different cell. His meditations, his careful self-control, had made him familiar with every detail of the cell he had been in for the last three days. He knew every knothole in the hard wooden bed, the different lumps on the whitewashed stone wall, the graffiti which he had found and added to. He had even begun to take an interest in a spider which inhabited the window recess.

All these things brought him comfort. Now he had been moved, for no reason, and would have to begin again.

The cell he was moved to was slightly larger. But it had two beds, one above the other. And there was a man on the bottom bunk.

The man jerked upright as he came in. ‘What the hell’s this? What’s he doing in here?’ he yelled at the warder. But the door slammed behind Sean without an answer.

Sean looked at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘They didn’t ask me either. He said something about a new set of arrests and needing the room, that’s all.’

The man on the bunk was small, with thin pointed ears and straggly hair that stuck up in a peak at the back. He said: ‘It’s not your fault, boy. They brought me here an hour ago. I thought it was the de luxe treatment until you came in.’

‘Thanks,’ Sean said. ‘Will I take the top bunk?’

‘Unless you’re one of the hard men who lie on the floor. Not that there’s much difference, with beds like these.’

Sean climbed up on the bunk. But there was nothing much to see there - just a grey blanket and a space of a couple of feet between it and the stone ceiling. He shuddered, came down again, and perched on one of the two stools.

The two men looked at each other. ‘What are you in for?’ the man with straggly hair asked.

‘I’m in the IRA. They caught me with a pistol in my pocket.’

The little man stuck out his hand. ‘Daniel O’Rourke, F Company, Dublin Volunteers,’ he said. ‘They dragged me out of bed two weeks ago, in the big sweep after the attack on Lord French.’

Sean gripped his hand firmly. ‘Sean Brennan. I was in D Company but now I’m in the Squad. I was at Ashtown myself.’

The sense of companionship, after such a long time alone, was overwhelming. The two men clasped hands and did not let go for nearly a minute. Then, eagerly, impulsively, they began to talk.

For Kee, it worked like a dream. He sat in the cell on the floor above, with the technician who had set it all up. In front of him, on the table, the reels of magnetized piano-wire steel turned slowly. The technician had assured him that the modified Poulsen telegraphone would record everything that was said. Whether it did or not, Kee could hear the words of the two men through the loudspeaker in front of it. They were blurred and crackly, but it was still possible to make out what was said. Kee made notes swiftly. The microphone was in the small ventilation grille a few feet above the men’s heads. They were unlikely to see it; the cell was poorly lit at the best of times, and at night they had only a small candle.

But long before dusk, Sean had admitted to shooting Radford. O’Rourke was delighted: he was proud to be sharing a cell with such a man, he said. In return he detailed all his own most daring exploits. They were not as grand as Sean’s, but they were a lot more interesting than the things he had told his interrogators.

Kee had only recently discovered these machines, and had not used them before. But he was an instant convert. He would have them installed in every police station in Belfast, he thought. The only slight problem was, would a judge accept it as evidence?

Davis sat in the upstairs room at Clancy’s Joiners and Decorators. There was no sign in here of any interest in carpentry or wallpaper. Instead, there were three desks, a telephone, and files and books neatly ordered in shelves along a wall. Davis imagined that policemen more inquisitive than he was would have found their contents very interesting. And he knew that Kee would have found his own presence here more interesting still.

In front of him, Michael Collins paced the narrow floor space between the desks. Every few minutes, his left hand pushed back the lock of black hair which fell forward over his forehead. His right hand was alternately thrust deep into his trousers pocket, and taken out to bang frenziedly against the edge of a desk.

‘We’ve got to get him out, Paddy!’ he was saying. ‘The country needs no more martyrs, especially young lads like him. The boy’s put his life on the line for us - we owe it to him to try!’

‘The country doesn’t need any more corpses either, Mick,’ said Paddy cautiously. ‘If we do mount a rescue attempt, it’s got to have a ninety per cent chance of working.’

‘Of course. And it will. Who do you think you’re preaching to now, Patrick? Wasn’t it me that sprang twenty men over the wall at Mountjoy a year ago? And we lifted de Valera out of Lincoln Gaol. It’s the details that make it all work. Every single detail has to be right. Then all you need is the daring to carry it through.’

He swung himself impulsively on to a desk, and sat there glaring at them.

‘Sure and I agree with you about all that,’ said Daly calmly. ‘We’ve had the armoured car under observation for three days now. It never varies. But what I’m not happy about is these papers.’

‘That’s why Dick’s here now.’ Collins looked at Davis. ‘Who would have the authority to call the boy out of his cell?’

Davis thought carefully. ‘The prison governor himself. Or Kee, who’s running the investigation. And Military Intelligence, possibly, though Kee would be wild about it if they did.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Unless we had an order signed by Lord French, for instance. But there’s no reason for that – they’d be so surprised they might ring up to check.’

‘Could you sign for him yourself?’

This was the question Davis had been dreading. ‘I suppose I could, yes, and they’d almost certainly accept it. But then, how would I account for it? Kee’s conducting the whole investigation himself. He knows I have no reason for removing the boy.’

‘So then your cover would be blown and they’d know you were working for us.’ Collins looked at him thoughtfully. Davis wondered what he was thinking. Was it shameful to fear imprisonment, to worry about his pension, to hope desperately that there was some safer way of getting the boy out? Or was Collins thinking that one active soldier like Brennan was worth a dozen undercover police agents? If so, he was wrong - he must be wrong! What I do, Davis thought, has to be worth ten times the contribution of a boy who just throws bombs and pulls the trigger.

Collins nodded slowly. ‘No, we couldn’t have that, Dick. But can’t you get papers signed by Military Intelligence, perhaps? That would seem to be our best bet.’

Davis relaxed, relieved. ‘We’ve got copies of that sort of thing, certainly. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the form itself. I can find out who’s the right officer to sign it, too, and copy the signature; but I can’t get you the original. Can you get your printers to mock one up?’

Collins’ voice was very quiet, gentle, as it always was when asking someone to do something harder than usual. ‘The original is what we need, Dick. Plus a sight of the man’s signature so that we can forge it. Remember, every little detail counts. Surely you can do that for us, now?’

Davis sighed. There were times when he felt like a piece of grain, ground between two massive granite wheels. The further on he went, the harder were the things he was asked to do. I hope the Republic recognizes the danger I’ve run, he thought. When it’s all over, there should be a special pension and a medal for me alone.

‘I’ll try, Mick,’ he said. ‘I have a few contacts in MI. I can’t promise anything but I’ll give it a try.’

Davis was relieved to find that his contact, Captain Smythe, appeared pleased to see him. He sat at a desk in an office on the second floor overlooking the courtyard of Dublin Castle, his desk a mass of papers from reports of raids in the city last night. He was a thin, intense man in spectacles, with sparse, mousy-coloured hair. He wore a neatly tailored uniform which was stained with ash from a large briar pipe which he was puffing energetically.

‘Good to see you, Dick. What can I do for you, old chap? You sounded pretty cagey on the phone.’

‘We have to be, now. For all I know there’s a Shinner working on the exchange in Brunswick Street.’

‘God forbid. It’s high time you fellows moved in here. After the death of your assistant commissioner I’d have thought they’d put that at the top of the priority list.’

‘I hope they do,’ said Davis. He took off his overcoat and hung it with his hat on the stand by the door. There was an agreeable fug in the room from the fumes of Smythe’s pipe and the blaze of a little coal fire in the grate. ‘It’s getting far too dangerous in the city.’

‘Quite. I take my hat off to you fellows for sticking it out.’ Smythe leaned back in his chair and puffed more energetically at his pipe than ever. ‘Now, how can I help you?’

‘Well, two things really.’ Davis had worked this out very carefully in his mind before he came here, but it still seemed to him unlikely that he would succeed. He could see the pad of order forms on Smythe’s desk, half hidden by a spreading pile of papers, with the vital rubber stamp beside it. He and Daly had consulted the printer of
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with a similar order form that Davis had borrowed from police files. The printer had told them that the memo pad could be forged easily enough - Davis had a blank sheet of the same type of paper in his pocket - but that the official Dublin Castle stamp, with the complicated swirling lines of its imperial heraldic crest, would take days to get right. An approximation could be mocked up more quickly, but men who were used to seeing the real thing could easily spot it. If there was any doubt, the prison governor would probably have two or three documents franked by the genuine stamp lying around on his desk, to compare it with. As Collins said, details were vital.

So Davis had to get hold of that stamp. And to do that, he had to distract Smythe. Get him out of his own office.

He said: ‘The first thing is, Kee thinks he’s arrested one of Radford’s killers.’

‘Get away! So soon! Damn good show, what!’

‘Surely. Name of Brennan - Sean Brennan. But we want to pin as much on him as we can, obviously. So I was wondering if I could check through your files and see if you’ve got anything under that name, or if he figures in connection with any of the other members of Collins’s squad.’ Davis nodded hopefully at the two large filing cabinets at the back of the room.

Smythe puffed thoughtfully. ‘Hm. I suppose there’s no harm. Forgive me for being cautious, training I suppose. Still, you’ve helped me in the past. Yes, go ahead - so long as I’m here and you don’t take anything away. What’s the other thing?’

‘The other thing is this.’ Davis reached inside his jacket pocket and passed over an envelope. Inside were a number of documents in Michael Collins’s own handwriting. There was a letter to the commandant of the Kilkenny Brigade of the Volunteers, complaining about the lack of recent reports and action; there was a list of possible people in the Kilkenny district who should be approached for contributions to the Loan; and there was a copy of orders apparently sent to the commandant of the adjoining brigade, authorizing him to attack a particular police barracks on the border of the two districts during the coming week, alone if necessary, or with the cooperation of the Kilkenny Brigade if it could be obtained. The date for the attack was not mentioned, but suggested routes for approach and escape were discussed.