THIRTY-SEVEN

It is early on a dank Saturday morning in Terenure, a village on the southern fringe of Dublin, too early for the trams that link it with the city to be running or for more than a handful of people to be about.

There are no signs of life at Doyle’s bar, hard by the crossroads in the centre of the village, nor would anyone expect there to be. Friday night is likely to have been a late one. The door of the general store and newsagent opposite is open, however. The proprietor is standing on the threshold, smoking a cigarette as he contemplates the day ahead.

An hour or so from now, he will take delivery of his stock of daily newspapers and shake his head with concern at the prominent reports of a murder at Seapoint railway station the previous evening. He will make no connection with the figure he barely notices making a sidelong exit from the residents’ door of Doyle’s bar and hurrying off along the street, a figure clad in a brown and gold pinstripe suit, fedora angled low over his eyes, a Gladstone bag clutched in his hand. No one will register or report the going of Eldritch Swan.

A night in Doyle’s one and only guest-room had come cheap, which was ironic, in view of the fact that Swan could have afforded to pay handsomely for accommodation. He had arrived in Terenure on foot after an anxious march of several miles from Seapoint along the lanes skirting Dublin to the south and had decided it was safer to put up there than to go any further. During the largely sleepless hours since, he had soberly assessed his situation and had concluded that he was a marked man. Linley had placed him in the path of an assassin. He was some kind of dupe, though in what, and for what, he could not fathom.

Flight was his obvious course of action and one to which he was instinctively drawn. But hard reasoning told him any attempt to board a ferry at Dun Laoghaire or a Dublin to Belfast train would merely be to invite arrest – or worse. He could hope to evade capture by heading west, perhaps, to Limerick or Galway or somewhere close to the Northern Irish border, but he suspected that would end badly. His major difficulty was that he did not know why he had been targeted or how far-reaching the conspiracy was in which he had become caught up. And turning himself into a fugitive would do nothing to assuage the rage he felt at what Linley had done to him.

In the end, he had decided that his best chance of survival lay in attack. Linley would expect him to run and to hide. Instead, he would attempt to find out exactly what game his treacherous old school friend was playing. He would head for the one place where the truth was surely to be found.

Where the road from Terenure crossed the Grand Canal, he turned east along the towpath. From Leeson Street Bridge he followed back lanes as far as possible, emerging on to Merrion Street just opposite the main gate of Government Buildings. All was quiet. It was still early – not yet eight o’clock – and a sleepy air prevailed. He walked smartly along to the door of number 28 and rang the bell.

Mrs Kilfeather looked surprised to see him, as well she might. ‘What can I do for you at this hour, Mr Swan?’

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’ He treated her to his most ingratiating smile. ‘The fact of the matter is that I’ve locked myself out. I haven’t been sleeping well and I decided to go for a walk before breakfast. Stupidly, I left my keys behind.’

‘Insomnia is a curse,’ said Mrs Kilfeather. ‘My late husband suffered from it. I believe it may have shortened his life, God rest his soul.’

‘It can certainly make one abominably forgetful. I wonder if I might impose upon you for the loan of your set of keys.’

‘By all means.’ She glanced frowningly at the Gladstone bag in Swan’s hand, perhaps wondering why he should have taken luggage on his pre-breakfast stroll. ‘I’ll just fetch them.’

Swan stepped inside the porch while she bustled off, casting a wary glance behind him. There was no one anywhere near by, except a policeman guarding the door into the ministerial wing of Government Buildings further up the street. The morning was still and grey and quiet.

‘Here you are, Mr Swan,’ Mrs Kilfeather announced, returning with the keys.

‘Thank you. I’m obliged. I’ll drop them back to you later.’

How much later that might be he had no idea. He had, in truth, very little idea of what awaited him in the top-floor flat at number 31. It was a mystery. But it would not remain so for long.

He slipped quietly into the house he had entered only once before and started up the stairs. The surveyor’s and chiropodist’s offices were still unstaffed. Silence ruled and he trod lightly, keeping to the edges of the steps to minimize creaks. On the half-landing between the second and third floors, he paused to open the Gladstone bag and take out the revolver. He had already checked that the remaining chambers were loaded.

As Swan reached the top of the stairs, the policeman on the other side of the street broke out of his reverie at the sight of a familiar vehicle approaching from the direction of St Stephen’s Green: a black, gleamingly polished limousine. He squared his shoulders, tugged down his uniform jacket and stepped towards the edge of the pavement.

Swan put the Gladstone bag down, tightened his grip on the revolver and slid the second key on the ring Mrs Kilfeather had given him into the Yale lock of the door serving the flat.

He entered at a lunge, hardly knowing what he might see. The hallway was empty, the doors to the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen standing open. But the sitting-room door was closed. He strode forward and flung it open.

‘Damnation!’

The voice had come from the window. A man who had been crouching by it looked round at Swan, his lean, hard, moustached face creased by a frown. He was dressed in dark trousers and a sweater. An armchair had been pulled close to the windowsill beneath the raised lower sash, its back partially blocking Swan’s view.

Swan pointed the gun at the man and motioned for him to stand up. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘Eldritch Swan,’ the man blithely replied, rising slowly to his feet.

‘I don’t think so. You see, I’m Eldritch Swan.’

‘Really?’ The false Swan glanced through the window down into the street. The sound of a car engine was growing steadily louder. ‘That tears it.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Swan moved to see round the chair and caught his breath. A rifle, with telescopic sight attached, was propped on the arm facing the window.

In his surprise he looked at it a second longer than he should have. Something hard and heavy struck the side of his head. He went down, hitting the floor with a thump that winded him. He saw the shards of a smashed vase lying beside him on the carpet and found himself gazing at them in puzzlement, unable for the moment to understand what had happened. Then his assailant stamped on his wrist, snatched the revolver from his fingers and threw it across the room. Swan heard it slide over the bare boards into the hallway.

The false Swan swung back towards the window. ‘Bloody hell,’ he cursed, throwing himself to his knees and clapping the rifle to his shoulder. Swan heard a car door slam down in the street, then another. The vehicle’s engine was idling, the note setting off an audible vibration in one of the windowpanes.

He rolled on to his elbow and pushed himself up. The false Swan was about to fire. There could be no doubt of it. His head was cocked to the telescopic sight of the rifle, his left hand bracing the barrel, his right curled around the trigger-guard. Swan lashed out with his foot, catching the other man behind the knee. He grunted and toppled to one side, squeezing the trigger before he was ready. There was a loud bang, and a splintering of wood where the misdirected bullet hit the window frame. He recovered himself and turned as Swan tried to scramble to his feet.

Swan saw the rifle butt descending towards him as he rose. And then he saw no more.

He was roused by shouts from outside the flat and a hammering at the door. There were raised voices down in the street as well. He propped himself up on his elbows, his brain seeming to follow the movement several seconds late, accompanied by a pulse of pain. When he raised his hand to the source of the pain, somewhere above his right eyebrow, he winced and saw blood on his fingers. He turned on all fours and dragged himself to his feet by the arm of the chair.

‘Open up! Garda Síochána!’ The shouts from the landing were accompanied by the thuds of what sounded like body charges at the door. The false Swan was nowhere to be seen, but his rifle still lay on the chair. Swan stared woozily at it, aware that he needed to act fast to save himself, but unable to translate his thoughts into motion.

He heard pounding feet on the stairs and a medley of thickly accented exchanges. Then something different struck the door, something sharper and harder that hewed the wood as if it was a log: an axe.

He staggered into the hallway. The false Swan was gone. Swan was alone in the flat, though he would not remain so for long. A vertical split opened in one of the door panels as the axe hit it again. The noise was deafening and disabling. He glanced desperately around. The revolver was also gone. But there was a wooden chair standing outside the bathroom where there had not been one before – and above it an open loft hatch. A prepared escape route? He could only hope so. Another blow of the axe brought its blade clean through the panel. Swan fled along the hall.

He heard a shout, ‘Got it!’, from behind him as he jumped on to the chair and thrust his arms through the hatch. He anchored himself by the elbows and levered himself up, feeling the chair topple beneath him as his trailing foot caught its back. He could see a square of light in the loft towards the rear of the roof. He lunged towards the nearest rafter.

But he never touched it. His ankles were grabbed and pulled with such force that he could not keep hold. He fell, hitting the toppled chair and several broad uniformed shoulders before he thumped to the floor.

A hand on the back of his head ground his face into the boards. Other hands grabbed his wrists and yanked his arms round behind him. ‘Cuff him,’ someone ordered. There was a clink of metal. He was pulled on to his side. There were thickly booted feet all around him. Then a face, red and angry, close to his own.

‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ the man rasped, spraying Swan with spittle.

‘No. I’m English. For God’s sake, I—’

‘English? Jesus fucking Christ.’ The face vanished. Then a boot struck Swan hard in the groin. He cried out. And another boot mashed into his lower back. ‘A fucking Englishman trying to kill our Chief.’

‘I haven’t tried to kill anyone,’ Swan gasped. ‘You’re letting the gunman get away. Listen to me .’

But no one was listening. They had their would-be assassin. And that was enough.