Read Online Blind Arrows by Anthony Quinn - Free Book Online

back to a floor covered with clothing and her personal belongings. There was only one thought going through Kant’s head: Dublin Castle and I are not the only ones on her trail.
    â€˜Who else has visited the room ?’ he asked, trying to keep the tension from showing in his face and voice.
    â€˜Some men from the Dublin Life Assurance Company called a few days ago. They said she had worked for them and still had files in her keep.’
    â€˜Did they take anything with them ?’
    â€˜I didn’t search them, if that’s what you mean.’
    â€˜But later, after they had left, did you notice anything missing?’
    She stared at him in suspicious silence. ‘How would I know what was missing or not? What sort of landlady do you take me for?’
    â€˜I meant no offence. Under the circumstance, it would have been quite normal, if you though t Mrs Merrin wasn’t going to return…’
    She shrugged. ‘They left empty-handed. As far as I could tell. Anything they didn’t remove went up in smoke.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜They burned a pile of papers in the grate. Left a shes everywhere. On the carpet. Even under the bed. It’s a miracle they didn’t set light to the chimney and turn us all to cinders.’
    He bent over the fireplace and sifted through the remnants of the fire with his cane. Loose layers of scorched paper disintegrated at his touch. He picked out a few scrawled letters and numbers written in a precise, light hand. He leaned closer, feeling on the brink of a revelation, trying to trace the pattern of this slender thread of ink but unfortunately, he could make out nothing intelligible. The cold ash rose in his face, another veil hiding Merrin and her secrets. He remembered her hungry kiss and caress, the lure that had brought him to this rummaged through room . He tried to fix them in his memory, worried that they too might slip away, but his thoughts were as clumsy as his touch. He felt conscious only of her absence.
    â€˜Did she ever mention her son? An eight-year-old boy called Isa ac.’
    â€˜She had a child? Now there’s a surprise. I never even knew she was married. But then she didn’t speak about her private life. Was told nothing so I know nothing.’
    When the landlady left, he sat very quietly in the seat by the dressing table and tried to let Lily speak through the disarrayed objects of her room, the upended drawers, the smell of lavender soap mingled with soot , the nest of blankets, the glint of a blackened jewellery box full of paste necklaces, and in the wardrobe enough personal belongings to pack in a single suitcase. No evidence at all of family life, or that she had been someone’s mother. It was like staring into a badly cracked mirror. All he saw were fragments, jarring insights into the life of a woman he knew only by her lips and blind fingers , and the messy handwriting of her son. He became aware of a clock in the landing ticking.
    At least, he knew why General Stapleton was so interested in her disappearance. It had seemed a trifling matter searching for a missing secretary when the rest of Dublin Castle was chasing a rebel leader and his squad of murderers. Looking around the anonymous room, he had the feeling that its contents were decoys, and that Lily Merrin had been her own secret. Any clues to her family life had disappeared along with her.
    Kant knew that some of the IRA’s boldest operations were carried out by women like Lily who went to work every morning dressed in their ordinary work clothes. Spies who did not need cover stories, women in secret roles not even the leaders of the Republican movement were fully aware of, at least not their real names and the positions they held.
    He stepped down the dark stairs, hearing the shuffle of the landlady’s feet approaching from a room below.
    At the front door, she shouted after him.
    â€˜Any chance of her coming back? Rent’s