Jack Higgins - Drink With The Devil

AS THE I RISH R OSE moved down the Thames, Tully stood at the wheel, his head disembodied in the light of the binnacle. His right ear was covered by a taped bandage. The door of the wheelhouse opened and Dolan entered with a mug in one hand. He put it down by the wheel.

“Tea,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tully told him.

“So what about that little bastard?”

“Oh, when the right time comes I’m going to cut his balls off.” Tully reached for the mug and drank some tea. “There’s an old Sinn Fein saying, ‘Our day will come.’ Well, mine certainly will where Keogh’s concerned.”

He swung the wheel and increased power.

THE GLASGOW EXPRESS wasn’t particularly busy. Keogh sat opposite Kathleen at a corner table. Ryan took the one opposite. Almost immediately he opened his briefcase and took out a file. He started to work his way through it, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.

The girl took the copy of The Midnight Court from her carrying bag and an Irish dictionary, which she put on one side. A strange one, Keogh thought, a strange one, indeed. He sat there gazing out of the window, wondering what she would say, what her reaction would be if she knew he was everything she hated – a Roman Catholic and an IRA enforcer. God, but the fat would be in the fire the day that got out.

About an hour out of London an attendant appeared pushing a trolley with tea, coffee, sandwiches, and newspapers. Ryan stopped working and took a coffee. The girl asked for tea and so did Keogh. He also bought the Times and the Daily Mail and spent the next hour catching up on the news.

There wasn’t much on the Irish situation. A bomb in Derry had taken out six shops in one street – a tit-for-tat killing of two Catholics on the Falls Road in retaliation for the shooting of a Protestant in the Shankill. An Army Air Corps helicopter flying in to the command post at Crossmaglen had come under machine gun fire as well. Just another day, they’d say in Ulster.

And then, halfway through the Times , he came to an article entitled “How long, oh Lord, how long?” It was written by a retired Member of Parliament, once a Minister at the Northern Ireland Office, who not unreasonably felt that sixteen years of bloody war in Ireland was enough. His preferred solution was an independent Ulster as a member of the British Commonwealth. Incredible how naive on the subject even politicians could be.

Keogh closed the paper, lit a cigarette, and sat back, watching the girl. To his amusement, he saw that she frequently consulted the dictionary. She glanced up and saw him smile.

She frowned. “What’s so funny?”

“Not much. You just seem to be having some difficulty with that.”

“It’s not easy. I only started learning three months ago. There’s a phrase here that’s damned difficult to work out.”

Keogh, a fluent Irish speaker, could have helped, but to disclose the fact would have been a serious error. People who spoke Irish were Catholics and Nationalists, it was as simple as that.

Ryan had finished the file, put it back in his briefcase, and leaned back in the corner, closing his eyes.

“He seems tired,” Keogh observed.

“He does too much, almost burns himself out. He’s a believer, you see. Our cause is everything to him. Meat and drink.”

“You too, I think.”

“You have to have something to believe in in this life.”

“In your case, the death of your family gave you that?”

“The murder of my family, Martin, the murder.”

There was no answer to that, could never be. Her face was white and intense, eyes filled with rage.

Keogh said, “Peace, girl dear, peace. Go on, read your book,” and he picked up the Daily Mail and started on that.

ANOTHER HALF HOUR and the attendant returned. They had more tea and ham sandwiches. Ryan was still asleep.

“We’ll leave him be,” the girl said.

They ate in companionable silence. When they were finished, Keogh lit another cigarette. “Sixteen, Kate, and the whole of life ahead of you. And what would you like to do with it if peace ever comes to Ireland?”

“Oh, I know that well enough. I always wanted to be a nurse, ever since my time in the hospital after the bomb. I was at the Royal Victoria for three months. The nurses were great.”

“Nursing, is it? Well, for that you need to pass your exams and you not even at school.”

She laughed that distinctive harsh laugh of hers. “You couldn’t be more wrong, mister. Most people do their ordinary level exams at sixteen. I did mine at fourteen. Most people do the advanced levels at eighteen. I did mine four months ago in English Literature, French, and Spanish. I have a thing for languages, you see.” There was a kind of bravado in her voice. “I’m qualified to go to University if I’m so minded and I’m only sixteen.”

“And are you?”

She shrugged. “I’ve more important things to do. For the moment, our struggle is all that matters. Now shut up, Martin, and let me get on with my book,” and she returned to The Midnight Court .

THEY GOT OFF the train at Carnforth. It was desolate enough, hardly anyone about, rain drifting across the platform.

Ryan checked his watch. “There’s a local train to Barrow-in-Furness leaving in forty minutes. We’ll get a cup of tea. I need to talk to you both.”

The cafe was deserted, only an aging woman serving behind the bar. Kathleen Ryan went and got the tea and brought it back on a tray.

“I mind the time when this station was open for business twenty-four hours,” Ryan said. “Steam engines thundering through one after another.” He shook his head. “Everything changes.”

“You know the area well?” Keogh asked.

“Oh, yes, I’ve visited the Lake District a number of times over the years. I was up this way only four weeks ago.”

His niece said in genuine surprise, “I didn’t know that, Uncle Michael.”

“You thought I’d gone to Dublin,” Ryan said. “Well, I didn’t. I was up here arranging things, and there’s a lot more you don’t know and now is the time for the telling.”

“Go on,” Keogh told him.

Ryan produced the Ordnance Survey map of the area, which they had consulted in London, and unfolded it.

“There’s Ravenglass on the coast. A bit of a winding road from Barrow to get there. Maybe twenty-five miles. Marsh End is about five miles south of Ravenglass.”

“So?” Keogh said.

“See here, to one side of Ravenglass, the valley running up into the mountains? Eskdale it’s called. I’ve got what you might call friends there.”

“But you never told me that,” Kathleen said in astonishment.

“I’m telling you now, am I not? Now, this is the way of it. My own cousin, Colin Power, had an English wife named Mary, a farmer’s daughter from Eskdale. Colin was a tenant farmer in County Down, but when her parents died, the farm in Eskdale was left to her.”

“So they moved over?”

“Exactly. This was twenty years ago. They brought with them a young boy, Colin’s nephew, Benny. He had brain damage from birth. His parents wanted to put him in a home, but Mary, having no child of her own, took him on and raised him.”

“And they’re up there now in Eskdale?” Kathleen demanded.

“Right at the head of the valley. A remote, desolate place. Folly’s End it’s called, and that’s an apt name for it. Too much rain, too much wind. The sheep don’t thrive.” Ryan shrugged. “It was too much for Colin. He died of a heart attack five years ago. Only Mary and Benny to run the place.”

“A lot of work for two people, I would have thought,” Keogh said.