Cry of the Hunter

Fallon laughed lightly. ‘You used your head,’ he said. ‘And that’s the only thing that keeps men like us out of the hands of the police.’

Murphy flushed with pleasure. ‘Will you have a look at that stuff I was telling you about, Mr Fallon?’

Fallon nodded and the boy took the car away from the kerb in a sudden burst of speed. ‘Steady on!’ Fallon told him. ‘No sense in being picked up for dangerous driving.’

Murphy slowed down a little and they proceeded along the main street through light traffic at a steady pace. Fallon leaned back in his seat and tipped his hat down over his eyes. Until this moment he had given the problem of how he was to get Rogan off the train no immediate thought. He considered the business soberly. At first sight it was impossible. There would be at least four detectives with Rogan. They would be well armed and in a reserved compartment. Possibly even in a reserved coach. He shook his head. It looked bad and it was one of those tricky jobs which depended on circumstances and couldn’t be properly planned beforehand. The car braked to a halt and Murphy switched off the engine. ‘We’re here. Mr Fallon,’ he said.

They were parked in a back street beside a high stone wall, and beyond the wall the tower of a church lifted into the sky. Fallon looked out in puzzlement. ‘Are you sure this is it?’ he said.

The boy grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Fallon. We’re at the right place. The safest place in the world.’ He produced a bunch of keys from his pocket and got out of the car. There was a solid-looking door set in the face of the stone wall. He opened it with one of the keys and motioned Fallon through.

Fallon found himself standing at the back of a graveyard. A forest of monuments and gravestones reared out of the ground on all sides and the church stood at the far side, firmly rooted into the ground. Murphy led the way towards the church, picking his route through the graves with care. He halted at a small wooden door that was half sunk into the ground at the base of the church walls so that three small steps led down to it. Murphy took out the bunch of keys again and selecting one of them, tried the door. It failed to open. He cursed and tried again. At the fourth attempt the door opened and he disappeared inside. Fallon followed him cautiously.

He found himself in the half-darkness of a stone vault. Great arching ribs of stone supported the ceiling and the only light seeped through an iron grill that looked out on to the graveyard. There was a click and Murphy switched on the light. ‘It’s got everything this place, Mr Fallon,’ he said. ‘Electric light and running water.’ He pointed to the steady trickle of rain that was seeping through the iron grill and down the wall, and laughed.

‘Where are we?’ Fallon demanded.

‘Church of St Nicholas,’ Murphy told him. ‘In the vaults. No one ever comes in here. We’re quite safe.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Fallon said.

‘Look for yourself,’ Murphy pointed to a truckle bed and several boxes which stood in the far corner. ‘That stuff’s been there for over a year now. No one ever comes down here.’

Fallon raised a hand. ‘All right, don’t get worked up. I believe you.’ He looked around the quiet vault and sighed. ‘It seems a dirty trick to use a place like this.’

Murphy’s face sobered immediately. ‘I used to think that,’ he said, ‘but it was Rogan’s idea. He said the end justified the means.’

Fallon laughed grimly. ‘It always does. You know, the more I hear about Mr Patrick Rogan the less I like him.’ He unbuttoned his coat and moved across to the boxes. ‘All right, let’s have a look at this stuff you’ve got here.’

In the boxes he found a formidable collection of explosives. In the first box were hand-grenades and clips of ammunition. The second contained belts of plastic explosive. It was the third box that Fallon found interesting. ‘Where did they get this one?’ he said.

Murphy came and had a look. ‘Oh, that was a job they did one night when there were troops camped just outside the town. They broke into the ammunition store. Rogan was furious. He said they’d taken the wrong box. Why, what’s in there?’

Fallon laughed. ‘Smoke bombs. I can see what he meant. Not a great deal of use in our kind of work.’ He started to close the box again and then hesitated. ‘I wonder,’ he said, and there was a faraway look in his eyes.

‘What good would them things be, Mr Fallon?’ Murphy said.

Fallon smiled softly and took one of the smoke bombs out and hefted it in his hand. ‘This might just be the solution.’ He sat on the edge of the bed and explained. ‘The things are automatic. You break this fuse at the end and a chemical action starts instantly. I’ve seen them work. Within a matter of seconds they give off thick clouds of black smoke. What sort of effect would it have, do you think, if I let one of these things go to work on that train?’

‘Jesus help us!’ Murphy said. ‘There’d be a panic. People would think the train was on fire.’

‘Exactly!’ Fallon murmured. ‘Everybody would panic, the women would be near hysterical. The corridors crammed with people. Just the right conditions in which to rescue a man.’

‘It can’t fail,’ Murphy said in awe. ‘God help us, you’re a genius, Mr Fallon.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Fallon said. ‘Have you got a map of the district?’ Murphy produced one from his inside pocket and Fallon spread it out on the bed and examined it. After a few minutes he said, ‘Now listen carefully. About ten miles out of Castlemore on the east side of the railway track is a wood. Do you know it?’ Murphy examined the map and nodded and Fallon went on, ‘I want you to be there with the car from nine-fifteen onwards. No earlier because I don’t want you hanging about looking conspicuous.’

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit close to town?’ Murphy asked.

Fallon shook his head. ‘Absolute surprise is the one thing that will bring this off. Even if they do expect trouble I don’t think they’ll be looking for it so soon. They’d be thinking in terms of someone trying to board the train at one of the smaller stations along the line.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, that’s it. You never can tell what’s going to happen in this game, but at least this scheme has a chance.’

‘What happens afterwards – if it does come off,’ Murphy said. ‘Do we make a run for the border?’

Fallon shook his head. ‘That’s what they all do,’ he said, ‘and that’s why they get caught. We’ll come straight back here and lie low for at least three days.’

Murphy took out a battered wallet and extracted a railway ticket. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘A single to Dunveg. That’s three stops up the line.’

‘Good lad!’ As he put the ticket away Fallon said, ‘What do you do for a living, Johnny? Today, for instance?’

The boy laughed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m lucky there. My parents are dead. My father left us a grocery shop in one of the back streets. Kathleen – that’s my sister – she runs it. I’m supposed to help her, but I told her I was busy today. Besides, business will be slack. Always is on a wet day.’

Fallon nodded and stood up. ‘We’ll take a run out to the scene of the crime,’ he said. ‘If you know a good pub on the way where we can get a bite to eat, stop at it. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

They found a quiet place just off the main road outside Castlemore and they parked the car and had a meal. Afterwards they followed the main road, parallel to the railway track, until they came to the place Fallon had picked out on the map. There was a track into the wood running between two ancient stone gateposts. The gates had long since disappeared and Murphy turned the car in between them and ran a little way along the track before cutting the motor. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ he said. ‘I can park up here tonight away from the main road.’

‘Wait for me here,’ Fallon said. He got out of the car and trudged along the narrowing path that led in amongst the trees. Within a couple of minutes he passed through the wood and came out on to the side of the track. For several minutes he stood in the cold rain looking at the track in an abstracted fashion. He felt completely deflated and drained of all emotion. My God, he thought, I’m not even excited. He sighed and a half-smile came to his lips. ‘Must be getting old,’ he said softly, and turned and went down through the trees back towards the car.

It was about four-thirty when they reached the church again. Murphy turned off the engine and Fallon said, ‘Give me the keys to the doors.’ The boy took the two necessary keys off the ring and handed them across and Fallon went on, ‘I want you to park the car somewhere and go home now. I don’t want your sister to start worrying about where you might be.’

‘She doesn’t know I’m working for the Organization,’ Murphy told him.

‘Then keep it that way,’ Fallon said. ‘Go home, have your tea and read a book or something. Leave the house eight-fifteen. Drive straight to the rendezvous.’

‘What about you?’ the boy said. ‘Don’t you want me to pick you up?’

Fallon shook his head and got out of the car. He closed the door and leaned in at the window. ‘I’m going to hole up here until train time. I’ll go to the station on my own.’

Murphy reversed the car and Fallon moved towards the door in the wall. As he stopped to insert the key the boy’s clear young voice said softly, ‘Good luck, Mr Fallon. Up the Republic!’

Fallon turned and half-raised one hand. ‘Good luck, lad. If that train doesn’t stop, go home and forget you ever heard of me.’

‘No fear of that,’ Murphy said with a reckless, confident smile and the car roared away in a shower of mud.

The vault was cold and dreary. Fallon lay on the truckle bed and stared at the ceiling and smoked a cigarette. The grey October evening drew to a close and the light dimmed as it filtered through the iron grill. Faintly, from somewhere in the depths of the church, came the sound of an organ, and a little later the brittle sweetness of boys’ voices raised in song. He felt no particular dread at the prospect of action to come. He felt curiously detached from the whole thing as if he wasn’t there at all but somewhere outside, looking in on all this.

He began to think of Anne Murray and of what she had said. She was right, of course, but he found that he wasn’t thinking so much of her words as of the girl herself. He remembered how she had looked when she opened the door, with the fair hair tumbled over her brow and the sleep heavy in her eyes. He smiled softly in the darkness. She had the kind heart. She had found him sleeping on her bed and had taken off his shoes without waking him. But why had she got so angry with him? He couldn’t understand that at all. There had been no need for hot words. For a brief moment her green eyes seemed to challenge him out of the darkness, and when he turned his head on the pillow it was as though he was back on her bed, surrounded by that elusive fragrance that was peculiarly her own.

He was sitting between two men in a railway compartment. The train was travelling at a nightmare speed, rocking and lurching from side to side. Suddenly through the window he could see the wood, but the train didn’t stop. The men in the carriage began to laugh and he looked down and saw the handcuffs on his wrists and he turned to the man on his left and cried, ‘It’s a mistake! It’s Rogan you want – not me. It’s a mistake.’ The man continued to laugh and as he laughed he changed into a judge in black cap and Fallon cried out and said, ‘It’s a mistake I tell you. It’s Patrick Rogan you want – not me.’ And then everybody began to laugh at him, heads thrown back, and the laughter mounted into the skies and he screamed as he felt the rope touch his neck.

He awakened, bathed in perspiration, and lay, panting and gasping for breath, for several moments. He had been dreaming. It had been only a dream. A sob issued from his mouth and he swung his legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, head resting in his hands. It was completely still and quiet, and suddenly he jumped to his feet and looked at his watch. The luminous hands pointed to eight-fifteen. He sighed with relief and stumbled through the darkness to the switch in the corner. There was a piece of blanketing lying on the floor by the grill, and when he picked it up he saw that it fitted on two hooks to make a primitive curtain. He got ready quickly. He found a canvas grip behind the boxes and packed half-a-dozen smoke bombs into it. He checked the action of his Luger, reloaded it carefully, and then put on his hat and coat and let himself out into the graveyard.

It was still raining heavily as he walked through the town towards the station. There was very little traffic about and few people on the streets. The station restaurant was full of people driven in by the rain, and Fallon smiled to himself. That was a break, anyway. He got a cup of tea at the counter and squeezed his way through the crowd until he was standing by a window that looked out on to the platform and the ticket barrier.

The train was standing at the platform, a wisp of steam drifting up between its wheels. He glanced at his watch. It was only twenty-to-nine. He sipped his tea slowly and waited. At five-to-nine his patience was rewarded. A large dark car drove into the station entrance and stopped a few yards from the ticket barrier. The police were large men, in shabby raincoats and trilby hats, but the man that walked handcuffed between two of them was small and broad, with dark hair swept back from a white face. He was wearing an open-necked shirt, the collar spread out over a tweed jacket.

Fallon pushed his way out of the restaurant and hurried across to the barrier. As the detectives passed through with their prisoner, he offered his ticket to the collector and smiled pleasantly at the uniformed constable who was leaning against the barrier. ‘Excuse me, but this is the Belfast train, isn’t it?’ he said in his finest English accent. The constable nodded and winked broadly at the ticket collector. As Fallon moved away they both laughed.

Rogan and his escort got into the coach next to the guard’s van, and Fallon walked quickly along the platform, glancing eagerly into the windows as if looking for an empty compartment. As he reached the last coach he sighed with relief. Rogan and the detectives were settling down in a reserved compartment, but the rest of the coach was occupied by ordinary passengers. Porters were running along the platform slamming doors shut, and Fallon boarded the train quickly and passed along the corridor. Rogan and his escort were in the end compartment and Fallon took a seat in the next one to it. The only other occupant was a large, fat gentleman who looked like a commercial traveller. He was already sleeping peacefully in a corner seat.