The Violent Enemy

Drake moved down the slope. Bronzed and fit, his body toughened by hard labour, Sean Rogan looked a thoroughly dangerous man and the ugly puckered scars of the old bullet wounds in the left breast seemed strangely in keeping.

Drake paused a yard or two away and Rogan glanced up. The skin was stretched tightly over high Celtic cheekbones, a stubble of beard covering the hollow cheeks and strong pointed chin. The eyes were grey like water over a stone or smoke through trees on an autumn day, calm and expressionless, holding their own secrets. It was the face of a soldier, a scholar perhaps. Certainly this was no criminal.

‘Sean Rogan?’ Drake said.

The big man nodded. ‘That’s me. What do you want?’

There was no hint of subservience in the soft Irish voice and Drake, for some unaccountable reason, felt like a young recruit being interviewed by a senior officer.

‘The Governor wants a word with you.’

Rogan picked up his shirt from a nearby boulder, pulled it over his head and followed Drake up the slope, the sledgehammer swinging easily in one hand. He dropped it beside the Duty Officer. ‘A present for you.’

Mulvaney grinned, took a battered silver case from his breast pocket and offered him a cigarette. ‘Is it likely at all, Sean Rogan, that I might be seeing the back of you?’

Rogan’s face was illuminated briefly by a smile of great natural charm. ‘All things are possible, even in this worst of all possible worlds. You should know that, Patrick.’

Mulvaney touched him briefly on the shoulder. ‘Go with God, Sean,’ he said softly in Irish.

Rogan turned and walked quickly towards the Land-Rover and Drake found himself trailing a step or two behind. As they passed the group of convicts loading the truck, someone shouted, ‘Good luck, Irish!’ Rogan raised a hand in reply and climbed into the passenger seat.

Drake got behind the wheel and drove away rapidly, feeling uncertain and ill-at-ease. It was as if Rogan had taken charge, as if at any moment he might order him to take the next turning on the right instead of keeping straight on to the prison.

The Irishman smoked his cigarette slowly from long habit, gazing out over the moor. Drake glanced sideways at him a couple of times and tried to make conversation.

‘They tell me you’re hoping to get out soon?’

‘One can always hope.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Seven years.’

The shock of it was like a blow in the face and Drake winced, thinking of the long years, the wind across the moor blowing rain, grey mornings, a brief summer passing quickly into autumn and the iron hand of winter.

He forced a smile. ‘I’ve only been here a couple of days myself.’

‘Your first posting?’

‘No, I was at Wakefield for a while. Came out of the Guards last year. Didn’t fancy another hitch and then I saw this advert for prison officers. It looked a good number so I thought I’d try it.’

‘Is that a fact now?’

For some unaccountable reason Drake felt himself flushing. ‘Somebody has to do it,’ he said defensively. ‘The pay could be worse and quarters and a pension at the end of it. You can’t grumble at that, can you?’

‘I’d rather be the devil,’ Sean Rogan said with deep conviction. He half-turned, folding his arms deliberately, and stared out across the moor, cutting off all further attempts at conversation.

‘It’s certainly one hell of a record,’ the Governor said, looking down at the file on his desk, ‘but then I don’t need to tell you that, Superintendent. I was hoping we’d see the back of him this time.’

‘So was I, sir,’ Vanbrugh said.

‘There are days when I distinctly welcome the fact that I retire in another ten months.’ The Governor pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. In the meantime, I’ve one or two things to do. You make yourselves comfortable in here and I’ll have them send you in some tea.’

The door closed behind him and Dwyer moved from the window to the desk. ‘I don’t know a great deal about Rogan, sir. A bit before my time. Wasn’t he a big man in the I.R.A.?’

‘That’s right. Sentenced to twelve years in ’56 for organizing escapes from several prisons in England and Ulster. Remember the famous invasion of Peterhead in ’55? They went over the wall under cover of darkness like blasted commandos and brought out three men. Got clean away.’

‘He was behind that?’

‘He led them in.’ Vanbrugh opened the file. ‘It’s all here. He spent most of his early life in France and Germany. His father was in the Irish political service. He was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, when he was wounded and caught during a weekend raid over the Ulster border. That would be just before the war.’

‘What did he get?’

‘Seven years. He was released in 1941 at the request of the Special Operations Executive because of his fluency in French and German. That’s when I first came across him. I was working for them myself at the time. He was given the usual training and dropped into France to organize the Maquis in the Vosges Mountains. He did damned well, saw the war out, told them what to do with their medals and demobbed himself the moment it was over.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘Got up to his old tricks. Five years at Belfast in 1947. They let him off lightly because of his war record. Not that it made any difference. He escaped within a year.’ Vanbrugh grinned wryly. ‘He made a habit of that. Parkhurst in ’56, but never got off the island. Peterhead the following year. Three days on foot across the moor, then the dogs ran him down.’

‘Which explains why he was finally sent here?’

‘That’s it. Maximum security. No possibility of escape.’ Vanbrugh started to fill his pipe again. ‘If you examine the file you’ll find a confidential entry at the back. It refers to an incident the Commissioners prefer to keep quiet about. In July 1960 Sean Rogan was picked up in the early hours of the morning crossing the field at the rear of the officers’ quarters.’

Dwyer frowned. ‘Isn’t that outside the wall?’

Vanbrugh nodded. ‘The principal officer had been playing cards late at another house. He had his Alsatian with him and on the way home, it picked up Rogan’s scent.’

‘But how did he get out?’

‘He wouldn’t say. The Commissioners wanted it kept out of the press so the enquiry was very hush-hush. It was finally decided that he must have hidden himself in a car or truck on its way out.’

‘At that time in the morning?’

‘Don’t worry. No one really accepted that one. They had him on maximum security for a couple of years after that. When the Governor finally made things a little easier for him, Rogan told him that it didn’t matter because he wasn’t going to try again. He said that getting out was easy. It was getting anywhere without help once you were out that was difficult. I think he decided to sweat out his sentence and hope for remission.’

‘Which is what he’s just applied for?’

Vanbrugh nodded. ‘When the I.R.A. called off its border campaign in Ulster recently it just about went into liquidation. Most of its members serving sentences in English gaols have since been released. In fact the Home Office has been under considerable pressure to release them all.’

‘And what’s the answer on Rogan?’

‘They’re still frightened to death of him. Now I’ve got to tell him he’s still got five years to serve.’

‘Why you, sir?’

Vanbrugh shrugged. ‘We worked together during the war. Since then, I’ve arrested him on three separate occasions. You might say I’m the Yard’s Rogan expert.’

He walked to the window and stood looking out into the courtyard. ‘England’s the only country in the civilized world that doesn’t make special provision for political offenders, did you know that, Sergeant?’