Beyond Absolution by Cora Harrison

Author:Cora Harrison [Cora Harrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2017-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

History of Civic Guards in Ireland

‘Throughout the winter of 1922/23 irregulars destroyed 485 police stations. Some 400 guards were physically beaten, stripped of their uniforms and had their personal possessions stolen. One was killed. Police morale deteriorated, but the Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins, and General Eoin O’Duffy, refused to arm the guards’.

Patrick recognized Eileen as soon as he arrived. Turned into a very pretty girl, he thought. It was a shame that she had become so wild. There were stories about her in the barracks. Still, at present, there was nothing against her, so he greeted her formally, thanked her for the information.

‘Will you show us where the body is, Miss MacSweeney?’ He began to walk rapidly across the South Mall as he spoke and then slowed down a little to stay beside her.

‘He’s in a warehouse, one of these derelict ones, just across the road from the antiques shop.’ He saw her look at him closely as she said the last two words and he wondered what she knew.

‘And your friend, who was with you?’ There was a solitary motorbike parked down outside the back of the church. There had been a story, he remembered, about Eileen MacSweeney on the back of a motorcycle during a jailbreak.

‘He’s keeping an eye on the people in the shop.’

‘Why?’

‘Someone murdered him. He was dead when we went into the warehouse, but he’s only just dead. Eamonn, my friend, used to be a medical student. He said that the corpse’s hands were still warm, so he was only just after being killed. There’s no one else around except them. So it must be one of them.’

Or you or your young man, thought Patrick, but he said nothing. He crossed the road over towards the church and put his hand on the motorcycle engine. Still warm. They could not have been there too long. It had taken about ten minutes for the police to arrive. Luckily, he had been still up when he was summoned from his room in the barracks.

‘The dead man is over there,’ pointed out Eileen and he allowed her to lead him back across the road. He beckoned to the duty sergeant and the man joined him, shining a very powerful torch onto the dead man’s face.

‘Looks as though he’s just asleep, doesn’t he, but my friend said that he was dead. Felt his pulse. He used to be a medical student,’ said Eileen. ‘I thought that he was asleep for a minute. “Death-counterfeiting sleep.” That’s from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Did you study that at the Brothers?’

He could hear the defiant note in her voice. Probably scared, he thought.

‘Hmm,’ said Patrick. He bent down, touched the man’s neck, and then the hands. Cooling, but not yet cold. Eileen did not call his attention to the card on the man’s chest, but he saw her look at him as if to check whether he had noticed it. She had gone very silent. Perhaps she thought that he would be friendlier as they had been neighbours once.

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