Free Blind Arrows by Anthony Quinn Page A

spy’s face. It was a practised, precise blow, lacerating Thornton’s dark little eyes. The spy gave a surprised gulp as blood spattered over his face. The next strike dislodged his right eyeball, and left it dangling like a useless string of flesh. Isham kept raining down the blows upon Thornton’s eyes , his expression blank, his breathing free and calm, as though he were well used to enacting such pitiless spasms of violence.
    â€˜The Great War is over, Thornton, but you’re still stuck in the trenches. It’s where men like you belong. Down there in the bottomless darkness with the rest of the cannon fodder.’
    The blinded spy backed away, fingers groping over the red rags of his face, the heels of his hands pushing against the bloody mess. He tried to say somet hing but all that came out was an animal-like howl. In panic, he veered into the trees. An aimless flight into deeper darkness.
    â€˜Where do you think you’re going?’ shouted Isham scornfully. He was no longer bored or cold inside. He raised a bugle to his lips and summoned the pack of hounds. The chase was about to begin.
    A displacement of shadows at the top of the path announced the pack’s arrival. They bounded in a long curve towards Isham, filling the forest air with their unruly baying. The corporal felt a stir of excitement in his loins as his horse reared up and faced the snarling, jumping hounds. His feet almost foundered in the stirrups, but he kept his balance, and drove his horse on, leading the pack towards their quarry. He caught glimpses of Thornton, his arms flailing as if he were swimming in the undergrowth, giving the hunt a delicious flavour of abandonment, like a Sunday jaunt at the beach. He wove his horse through the trees, fighting against the low branches, eager to keep up with the pack. He wanted to steep himself in the spy’s terror, to ride deep into his blinkered panic. Thornton had spent most of his life peering suspiciously into the dark, now Isham was taking him beyond the limits of his normal vision, into his worst fears imaginable.
    Even as the hounds leapt onto Thornton’s torso, his hands were still clutching and scrabbling for survival, tearing themselves against thorn branches and the dogs’ sharp teeth, fighting against the blindness that outraged his will to live. He fell into a thicket of elder, his face and heart and stomach opening to the seething hounds.
    Isham waited awhile, circling his horse around the bloody scene. The sound of the rooks roosting helped drown out the spy’s final screams. He felt no sense of wrong in organising Thornton’s death in such a brutal way. That had been the spy’s function. To accommodate whatever purpose his superiors required. And there was no purer purpose than sacrificing one’s life for the schemes of one’s betters.

SEVEN
    The Dublin Life Assurance offices were situated in a nondescript building on Leeson Street, its solid façade of sooty brownstone fortified by stacked bags of sand and earth, an admission that sound financial planning was no proof against exploding bombs and trigger-happy troops.
    Shortly before nine o’clock, Kant introduced himself at reception and was led by a secretary through a maze of filing cabinets to the account manager’s office, a plate-glassed room occupied by a middle-aged man wearing rimless glasses called Dermot O’Shea.
    â€˜I came here early so as not to disturb your work, Mr O’Shea,’ said Kant. ‘I have an inquiry about one of your ex-employees. A woman called Lily Merrin.’
    O’Shea looked up quickly from behind a stack of yellowing paper. ‘What kind of inquiry?’
    â€˜I think you might be able to help me find out what happened to her.’
    â€˜Who sent you here? Dublin Castle?’ His voice took on a weary tone. ‘ Is there no end to their snooping?’
    Kant removed the reports of the missing women from his coat