Read Online A Winter of Spies by Gerard Whelan - Free Book Online

know.’
    â€˜But this is against the British.’
    â€˜There’s plenty of British people just like us, Sal. They read about the Tans in their newspapers and they’re disgusted . Their government thinks as little of ordinary British people as it does of us.’
    Somewhere close ahead of them there was a sudden disturbance in the crowd. There were two flat cracks that they recognised as pistol shots. A woman’s voice screamed. Jimmy clutched at Sarah’s arm, but she was already pushing through the crowd.
    â€˜Sarah!’ Jimmy said. ‘Come back!’
    But Sarah paid no heed, and he lost sight of her. He pushed after her. As he did he had a sudden, unwanted memory of a younger, smaller version of himself pushing through a crowd in Mount Street. He’d reached the front of that long-ago crowd only to find himself watching a bloodbath: the army charge on Mount Street Bridge. He hadn’t realised till then that bullets could actually blow lumps out of people, or that blood really could flow like water – if enough of it was spilled. It was a scene Jimmy tried never to think about, and part of the reason he looked for distraction in books. Da wasn’t the only one with things to forget.
    He saw Sarah’s straw hat in front of him, and grabbed hold of her arm. She’d stopped moving. They were bothpart of a circle now that surrounded a man lying in the street. He was a middle-aged, respectable-looking man with grey whiskers. His hat had fallen off his balding head and was lying upside down in the gutter. His feet were beating a pattern on the cobblestones, and at first it looked as though he’d had some kind of fit.
    A spray of liquid was coming from the man’s neck. Sarah frowned in puzzlement. The spray reached several feet into the air, and came in pulsing bursts. She’d never seen anything like it. The liquid looked black in the light of the streetlights; but then a drop fell on her hand, and when she held her hand up to look she saw that it was red. Suddenly Sarah realised that the liquid was blood. Looking again at the man, she felt her gorge rise. Now she could see a dark wet stain spreading on his cream-coloured waistcoat too. The spray of blood hit a woman’s skirt and she shrieked and pulled back.
    â€˜The poor devil,’ Jimmy said quietly behind Sarah. ‘He’s shot in an artery. He’s a dead man.’
    The dying man was making weak movements to pull something from under his overcoat. When the hand came out it was holding a long-barrelled revolver, but it flopped uselessly down on the street. A little murmur ran through the crowd at the sight of the gun.
    The man groaned. A pool of blood was spreading round him where he lay. Nobody went near him; nobodywanted to get bloody. Then several Tans came bursting through the crowd, pushing people roughly out of the way with loud curses in their foreign accents. One man objected to the way a Tan pushed his wife, and the Tan turned around and punched him in the face. The man’s wife led him away, staggering.
    Two huge constables from the Dublin Metropolitan Police arrived. One of them bent to the dying man, but he was pulled off by another man in a topcoat and wide hat who’d followed the Tans. The other DMP man pulled off his helmet and ran his hand back through his grey hair.
    â€˜Ah, lads,’ he said in a thick country accent. ‘It’s Detective Reed.’
    The man in the wide hat stood up and said something to one of the Tans. He pointed at the shot man with the cane he was carrying. When Sarah saw his face she shrank back against Jimmy. Jimmy held her protectively; he thought she’d just been shocked by the scene. When Sarah turned and walked away he was at her heels. But once they were outside the circle of silent watchers Sarah turned and grabbed his coat.
    â€˜Jimmy,’ she said, ‘did you see that man? The one with the stick?’
    â€˜A detective or