The violent enemy, p.7
The Violent Enemy, page 7
‘Another thing. He was talking about fifty thousand pound shares. I thought they were supposed to be getting five thousand each?’
‘It looks as though Morgan intends to cut the cake differently.’
‘You still don’t look worried.’
‘It’ll work out, you’ll see.’ He smiled warmly. ‘It’s nice to know someone’s on my side, anyway.’
She flushed perceptibly and he looked over the valley into the dark arch of the sky where a single star shone. For several minutes they sat there in silence and then she said softly, ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Kerry,’ he said. ‘I’ve a farm there, or rather my father has.’
‘And you’d like to go back?’
‘It’s quite a place. Sea and mountains, green grass, soft rain, fuchsia growing on the dusty hedges, glowing in the evening. Deorini Dei – the Tears of God, they call it.’ He laughed softly. ‘And the prettiest girls in the world. I was almost forgetting.’
He turned and found her looking at him, something that was very close to pain upon her face. Instinctively, he reached out and took her hand. ‘You’d fit into the scenery admirably.’
She gazed at him searchingly, the strange, orange light playing upon her face and then her smile seemed to deepen, to become luminous, and he pulled her to her feet and kissed her gently on the parted mouth.
Her lips were soft and fresh and quite suddenly, he was trembling slightly, his stomach hollow with excitement. It was as if she were the first, as if this had never happened before. She turned her face into his coat, holding him tightly and above them, a single cloud of red fire burned itself out, leaving them wordless in the night.
8
The morning was cold with no rain, and a trace of mist hung over the fields behind the house as Rogan leaned against the fence, smoking a cigarette, and looked up at Scardale Fell, shrouded by low cloud.
He had spent the night on a camp bed in the old harness room above the barn and had eaten breakfast with Hannah and young Brendan, the others being still abed. Now, feeling relaxed and strangely content, he waited for the girl to bring the car from the barn.
Behind him, the house door opened and Paddy Costello shouted angrily, ‘Get out of it, you useless lump. Up on the fellside with you and don’t come back without those sheep.’
Young Brendan dodged a kick and ran across the yard, his patched jacket flying behind him. As he passed Rogan, he looked at him quickly, the dark eyes in the thin face like those of some hunted animal and Rogan was aware of an instant sympathy.
The boy ran away along the road and Costello came towards Rogan. His eyes were tinged with yellow, the veins swollen with blood and the pouched and folded skin of his face looked somehow unclean.
‘He’ll be the death of me, that lad, Mr Rogan. The death of me.’ He pushed the tail of his shirt into his waistband. ‘The early start you’re getting.’
‘I’ve plenty to do,’ Rogan said. ‘Are Morgan and Fletcher still in bed?’
The old man nodded. ‘What else would you expect from a couple of low-lifes like them two, Mr Rogan.’
In the barn, an engine coughed into life and the shooting brake emerged, Hannah at the wheel. She stopped and Rogan opened the door and got into the passenger seat beside her. He wound down the window and looked out at her uncle.
‘If you’re thinking of taking a trip in the cattle truck or the Morris, forget it. I’ve taken the keys. Tell Morgan I’ll be back some time this afternoon.’
As the old man’s face slipped, Rogan wound up the window and nodded to Hannah who released the handbrake and took the brake out through the gateway and down the dirt road into the mist.
She was wearing slim-fitting navy-blue ski pants, a heavy sheepskin jacket and a silk scarf was bound around her head, and again, he was conscious of that same restless excitement he had known on the hillside the previous evening.
As if aware that he was watching her she coloured slightly, her eyes never leaving the road as she negotiated a dangerous bend around a shoulder of the mountain.
‘Your uncle chased the boy off up the fellside,’ he said. ‘Something about some sheep.’
She nodded. ‘He’s been selling them off in half dozen lots lately. He has a powerful thirst. ‘They spend most of their time up there on the slopes. Finding them can be difficult.’
‘Shouldn’t the boy have a sheepdog?’
‘He did. A collie named Thrasher, the joy of his life. He fell into one of the old mine shafts last month and broke his back. Some of them are a couple of hundred feet deep.’
Rogan sat there thinking about it. At breakfast, the boy hadn’t had a great deal to say for himself, and when he did speak it was obvious that he stammered badly. Probably only psychological and not surprising with a father like Paddy Costello.
‘You don’t like my uncle, do you?’ she said.
He laughed shortly. ‘The understatement of the age. I’ve met too many of his breed. A big man with the drink taken and words pouring out of him by the hundred. I can see him now in front of a police inspector with a face like whey, the cap twisting in his hands while he spills out his unclean guts. God knows how Colum O’More could have been taken in by him.’
‘But he wasn’t. My uncle contacted him through an old comrade in Liverpool and Colum simply turned up at the farm a month later. He didn’t like what he found. He squeezed my uncle dry with the help of a bottle of pot-distilled whisky that put him on his back in two hours, then turned his attention to me.’
‘Had you ever met before?’
‘Never, but he seemed to take to me. He said that he always liked to work from a distance through a go-between. He offered me the job.’
‘And you accepted.’
‘Remember what you said yesterday about wanting to crash out of something? Well, Colum O’More offered me the chance to do just that. Two thousand pounds and a passage to Ireland with him at the end and he promised to take Brendan with us.’
‘And that was important to you?’
She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t walk out and leave him. Uncle Paddy won’t last much longer, not at the rate he’s drinking and what would happen to Brendan then? An institution?’
‘So you’re the only one who knows where Colum’s staying? Your uncle wouldn’t like that.’
She chuckled. ‘He’s tried following me a time or two and so has Morgan, but it didn’t get them anywhere.’
‘You sound as if you’ve been enjoying yourself?’
‘I suppose I have.’ She frowned as if trying to explain it to herself and concentrated on the road. ‘In a strange way, I’ve been in a sort of limbo, drifting aimlessly ever since I was released from prison and came to Scardale to live. A year of days passing, the rain falling, snow on the mountains, and somewhere else a world that I had cut myself out of.’
‘Surgery is always painful,’ he said. ‘Some people never get over it.’
She smiled tightly. ‘Anyway, like I said yesterday, what else could I have done? There was nowhere else to go. I was in this thing up to my neck whether I liked it or not.’
From Ambleside, they followed the lake to Windermere, then took the road through Staveley to Kendal. There was very little traffic about and the mist, if anything, was a little heavier. In Kendal itself, it was raining heavily and they passed through a thin scattering of traffic and drove out of the town again.
She pointed out the site of the Roman fort of Alavna as solemnly as if he had been any ordinary tourist. ‘The Romans never landed in Ireland, did they?’
‘They knew better,’ Rogan said and a wide grin split across his face.
She glanced at him briefly, a sudden light in her eyes. ‘That’s the first time you’ve laughed properly since I’ve met you. I was beginning to think you didn’t know how.’
He smiled again. ‘Give me time, Hannah. That’s all I need.’
For a brief moment, the intimacy between them was almost physical and they were both aware of the fact. He groped for the right words, but before he could find them, they topped a small rise of the narrow country road and he saw Rigg Station in the hollow below.
She stopped the shooting brake on the edge of a small parking space covered with gravel and Rogan lit a cigarette and wound down the window. The small, single-storeyed building had a roof of red tiles and was constructed of large square blocks of granite. There was an arched entrance, a large clock above it and a scale map of the district was displayed in a glass case pinned to the wall. At the other end was the loading bay, double-doors giving access to the station.
‘Let’s take a closer look,’ Rogan said.
They got out of the brake and crossed the patch of gravel to the entrance. Inside, there was a narrow hall, a barrier and a ticket window which was closed by a wooden shutter. The door to the platform stood open and they could hear cheerful whistling. When Rogan peered cautiously round, he could see an oldish white-haired man sweeping the platform at the far end.
‘Keep him talking,’ Rogan said to Hannah. ‘Ask him if you can still catch the London train from here, anything you like, but keep him on the platform. I’ll take a look round.’
She nodded briefly and moved out through the door. The old man didn’t see her until she was almost upon him and he leaned on the broom and smiled. As the murmur of their voices started to echo through the quiet station, Rogan moved quickly to the door marked Stationmaster and opened it.
Inside he found the usual cluttered office. There was a desk, a couple of wooden filing cabinets and two or three yellowing calendars on the walls. There were two other doors. One gave access to a small washroom, the other to a narrow arched baggage hall which cut through the building from front to rear linking the platform with the loading bay. He moved out on to the concrete bay, jumped to the ground and went back to the car.
When Hannah returned five minutes later, he was smoking a cigarette, hands thrust deep into his pockets, a curiously withdrawn look on his face. She slid behind the wheel and closed the door.
‘I thought I was never going to get away. Did you see everything you wanted?’
He nodded. ‘What did the old man have to say?’
She smiled. ‘His name’s Briggs, and he retires next month. He’s got two daughters and six grandchildren and his wife died two years ago. He also told me I couldn’t get the London train from here, but that was only incidental.’
‘He didn’t leave much out.’
‘I could have been talking to him yet. I don’t suppose he has much to do in a place like this. It must get pretty boring. Apparently he isn’t here all the time. They just send anyone who’s available from Kendal.’
Rogan looked out at the station building again, a slight frown on his face. ‘Where were you last Friday when the van arrived?’
‘On the other side of the road under that tree,’ she said. ‘I brought Brendan with me. We had a picnic.’
‘Did you get a close look at the driver and the guard when they got out of the van?’
‘Close enough.’
‘What kind of uniform do they wear?’
‘That’s easy. I sat next to one of them in a transport café in Kendal last month. A double-breasted blue serge suit with black plastic buttons – the sort of thing Naval Petty Officers wear. The cap was the only elaborate thing about him. Shiny black peak edged with gold and a fancy badge.’
‘And the bags the money was in – you saw them, too?’
‘As they pulled them out on to the ramp. They were just the usual G.P.O. mailbags. Is it important?’
‘It could be.’
He took a large-scale map of the area from the glove compartment and unfolded it across his knees. After a while, he nodded. ‘Let’s get moving. Take the road back to Kendal then out towards Staveley. About forty miles an hour. No faster. I’ll tell you when to stop.’
She drove back into Kendal and took the Windermere road to Staveley. Just before the junction with the Bowness road and perhaps ten minutes after leaving Rigg Station, Rogan nodded and she slowed to a halt. A few yards away, a five-barred gate gave access to a track which disappeared into a plantation of fir trees. Rogan got out of the brake, walked across to the gate and fumbled with the rusty chain that fastened it to an old stone post. The gate swung open and he returned to the car and got in.
‘Follow the track and take it easy. According to the map there should be some flooded gravel pits a couple of hundred yards in.’
The track was soggy with rain and overgrown with grass from long disuse. Hannah stayed in a low gear and took the brake forward cautiously. The fir trees closed in on either side, dark and sombre, and then they went over a small rise and dropped down into a clearing.
There was an old barn constructed of heavy grey stone, its roof gaping to the sky and, beyond it, water gleamed through the undergrowth.
Hannah cut the engine and Rogan got out and walked across. He looked up at the crumbling walls for a moment, then continued across the clearing and paused at the far edge. A mass of undergrowth sprawled in a confusion of twisted branches to spill over the lip of a fifty-foot cliff that lifted from the dark waters of the gravel pit below.
Rogan stood there looking down, the slight frown still on his face. After a while he nodded his head as if in confirmation of some secret, hidden decision, turned and found Hannah standing a couple of yards away watching him.
‘Can it be done, Sean Rogan?’
He flicked his cigarette down into the water and smiled calmly. ‘I think it’s time I had another word with Colum O’More.’
He took her arm, and together they walked back to the brake.
9
Vanbrugh cursed as he sank into a patch of bog, cold water slopping over the tops of his rubber boots. The Sergeant and constable of the county constabulary who accompanied him pulled him back on to firm ground with impassive faces and they continued up the slope.
On the crest of the tor, cloud dashed cold rain in the face and mist hung in a damp grey curtain that reduced visibility to no more than fifty yards.
Vanbrugh turned to the Sergeant. ‘How long can a man last in conditions like this?’
‘You’d be surprised, sir. We’ve had them on the run for a week many a time. The classic case was the bloke who got out during the winter about five years back. He was on the loose for a fortnight.’
‘How did he manage that?’
‘Holed up in a holiday cottage no more than three miles from the prison. That’s one of the difficulties. There are lots of places like that all over the moor. They’re always empty at this time of the year and we can’t keep them all under constant surveillance. We haven’t got enough men.’
‘I know, Sergeant. I know.’
Vanbrugh turned and went back down the hill towards his car and police Land-Rover parked beside it. He was cold and tired and thinking about Sean Rogan somewhere out there in the mist, running like a hunted animal, didn’t make him feel any better.
As he neared the two vehicles, another Land-Rover appeared from the mist and pulled in at the side of the road. Sergeant Dwyer got out and moved to meet him.
‘Any luck at the other end?’ Vanbrugh said.
Dwyer shook his head. ‘Not a smell of him so far. The Chief Constable seems to think a house-to-house search should be the next step in case he’s holed up somewhere. Apparently there are lots of holiday bungalows and cottages scattered across the moor that are mostly empty out of season.’
‘No guarantee he wouldn’t pick on one that’s already been searched,’ Vanbrugh said. ‘Did you get that list from the prison?’
Dwyer took a typewritten sheet from his pocket and unfolded it. ‘Here you are, sir. They couldn’t list his close friends over the past few years because he hasn’t had any, but there are at least half a dozen men here who’ve shared cells with him since he came out of solitary confinement.’
Vanbrugh examined the list quickly. ‘Some real villains here. At least one of ’em’s back inside to my knowledge.’ He frowned and an expression of distaste appeared on his face. ‘So he shared a cell with Jack Pope?’
‘You know him, sir?’
‘I should do. He was a sergeant in the uniformed branch at West End Central. Got sent down for corruption ten or twelve years ago and he’s been back inside since for fraud.’ Vanbrugh shook his head and said grimly, ‘I can’t stand a crooked copper.’ He handed the list back to Dwyer. ‘Anything else?’
‘There was a message from the Yard about that lawyer you wanted them to contact, the one who visited Rogan. He doesn’t seem to exist.’
Vanbrugh swore softly. ‘Then Rogan didn’t just take off into the blue. The whole thing was arranged. Why else would a phoney lawyer visit him only a couple of weeks before the event?’
‘Which means that Soames must have known that Rogan had a way out, sir, and not many people did. It was kept pretty dark and Rogan doesn’t sound the sort of man who’d open his mouth if it didn’t suit him.’
‘It’s amazing what men find out about each other when they share a cell, Sergeant. As far as I’m concerned, any one of those men on that list of yours could have taken the information out with them when they were released.’
The rain suddenly increased in force and they climbed into the rear of the Land-Rover. Vanbrugh took a large vaccum flask from a basket under the seat and poured coffee into two plastic cups.
As he handed one to Dwyer, the Sergeant said, ‘If what you surmise is true, sir, Rogan could be almost anywhere by now, perhaps even across to Ireland.’
Vanbrugh shook his head. ‘We’d have been the first to know, believe me. He’s something of a legend in his own time, remember. His homecoming would hardly pass unnoticed.’
He started to fill his pipe. Dwyer hesitated and then said, ‘Do you think we’ll get him, sir?’
‘I hope not, Sergeant. I hope not.’ Vanbrugh looked up with a slight smile, the pipe jutting from the corner of his mouth. ‘That surprises you?’
‘It mightn’t if you explained why, sir.’
‘It’s really quite simple.’ Vanbrugh put a match to his pipe and puffed out blue smoke. ‘Sean Rogan’s no criminal. He’s a political offender. That doesn’t mean I think he’s right, but it doesn’t mean that I have to agree with a system which condemns him to the same treatment as a criminal. In any case, as the I.R.A. has now officially called off its underground campaign, I don’t see how any useful purpose can be served by compelling Rogan and men like him to work out their sentences to the bitter end.’
