Free Peeler by Kevin McCarthy Page B

said up to ten, soldiers and policemen. He had been a member of the 1st Cork City Brigade’s heavy boys. People said that he had just returned from Dublin, that he’d been working for the Big Fella himself and that Collins had wanted him as member of his Squad, but that Barry had convinced him there’d be more fighting done in West Cork. Farrell had also heard that Connors had fired the shots in the Cork City and County Club which killed Lieutenant Colonel Bryce Ferguson Smyth, Munster RIC Divisional Commissioner.
    But though they knew each other, Farrell and Connors had had no contact within the camp that week. Connors socialised little, being silent and sullen by nature.
    ‘Seamus.’
    Connors gazed unblinking at Farrell. It was a habit he had and Farrell wasn’t the only man in the Brigade unnerved by those eyes. Then Connors asked bluntly, ‘What do you know of the girl they found on the hillside?’
    For a second, Farrell was taken off guard. He hadn’t really thought much about the girl in the past few hours. And then two things struck him. The first was: how had Seamus Connors come to hear of the matter? Farrell knew that his demotion – or promotion, depending on one’s perspective – was common knowledge within the camp, but at no time had he mentioned the girl on the hillside to anyone. He had taken it as a given that her existence and his orders to investigate her murder were not fodder for camp gossip. Brennan himself had impressed upon Farrell the importance of dis-covering if a fellow IRA man had been responsible for her
death.
    The second thing that struck Farrell about the question impressed him as the more sinister by far: why did Connors want to know? Unconsciously, he answered Connors’ question with one of his own.
    ‘And what have you heard, Seamus? Have you heard anything yourself, man?’
    Connors’ eyes narrowed. Instinct dictated that Farrell hold his gaze, keeping on his face an expression that strove to appear neutral, unchallenging.
    ‘You were promoted, so you were. Lieutenant Farrell is it now?’
    Farrell nodded. ‘For all it means, I was, Seamus,’ he said, realising that, although he was younger than Connors and despite the man’s lethal reputation, he was now Connors’ equal in rank and thus not obliged to share operational details with him unless ordered to by someone of higher rank.
    ‘Intelligence?’ Connors said, as if reading Farrell’s thoughts.
    ‘The Spooks and Question Men, Seamus.’ Farrell smiled, as if he were making a joke of it, all the time aware that as a Corkman himself, Connors understood innately that there is nothing so serious as a joke. He returned Farrell’s smile, his angular features unmoved by the effort.
    ‘You’re good ones for the questions, you law boys, so you are. You know I heard you speak one time, back at college? For the Law Society. A debate on physical force republicanism. You remember it, Farrell?’
    Farrell did remember it, but not what side he took or how he had performed. ‘I think I do, Seamus, but –’
    ‘You were good at the auld questions then, Farrell. Tore strips off the other fella. Had even me thinking there was no use for force in the cause of freedom. That to use it was to lower ourselves to the … how did you put it? Something about how we’d be drowning with the Crown in the same pool of blood? And that our hands would be stained red, much the same as our oppressors. You remember that speech, Farrell?’
    He didn’t remember what Connors had quoted but, embarrassingly, they sounded like his words. His face reddened. But then, that had been years ago, before all hopes of Home Rule had been so thoroughly abandoned. Before he’d been searched and beaten by foreign soldiers, lads younger than himself, on the streets of his own county town. Never mind that he’d been assigned his position in the debate on the House’s motion through the toss of a coin. He could have, Farrell reminded himself, not without