Gunner Kelly

“Evenin‘, sir,” Blackie acknowledged him with an air of armed neutrality, his shot-gun safely broken open under his arm, while the bearded young man studied him in silence, frankly curious, as dummy1

he squeezed past up the narrow stair.

Duntisbury Chase was going on the alert between the two of them, guessed Benedikt: old and new skills, they had . . . but would that alliance be enough against Aloysius Kelly, whose own experience went back to General Franco’s war?

“Ahhh—Mr David’s German gentleman—Captain!” Kelly chose his Irish voice with which to greet him. But then he peered past him, towards the empty landing. “An‘ the Great Man himself—?”

“Dr Audley is at home. His wife summoned him.” The thin excuse again.

“Did she now?” Polite—but absolute—disbelief. “An‘ him a good family man? Well!”

“Miss Rebecca is telephoning him at his home now.” With Kelly that somehow only stretched the lie even more thinly.

“Is she so?” Kelly cocked an eyebrow at him. “An‘ not checkin’ up on me, then?”

“Checking up on you?”

“Uh-huh,” agreed Kelly equably. “After exchangin‘ notes with you, Captain.” Then he grinned. “I should have shot you last night, I’m thinkin’, an‘ said ’sorry‘ afterwards.”

Benedikt decided to be very German. “Please?”

“Ah now—don’t be givin‘ me that!” Kelly brushed his incomprehension aside. “You know what I mean very well. For I’ve fought you fellas—six long years . . . An’ if it was one thing dummy1

you never were, it was foolish. ‘Twas only when that little man—

him with the Charlie Chaplin moustache—’twas only when he interfered that you made mistakes . . . You never let us down otherwise, the Squire always said. So don’t be disappointin‘ me, eh? Checkin’ on me, he’ll be.”

Better to say nothing at all, Benedikt corrected himself.

“Or maybe he doesn’t need to check now?” Kelly stared at him for a moment, and then stood up suddenly and turned towards the window behind him for another moment, and tljen swung back just as quickly. “The hell with that! There was a fella I knew once, that’s dead and gone, but you lot can never rest easy because of him

—that’s why you’re here. Because there’s no other reason worth a damn—deny that if you can!”

There was no point in arguing. “And if I do not choose to deny it, Mr Kelly?”

“Faith—then you’ve wasted your time! For he told me nothing—

nothing—would you believe that?” He paused for only half a second. “But of course you would not! It’s the one thing that none of you will believe—because you can’t afford to believe it!

Because the thing that he had—whatever it was ... it was too big for you—is that a fact, now?”

Nothing?

“But I tell a lie! It was not nothing he told me—” Kelly leaned towards him “—he did tell me one thing. And you know what that was?”

Nothing? Or one thing?

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“He said to me: ‘I think I’m safe home at last, Michael— me that hates ’em all, for the black bastards they are, both sides of ‘em, that’ll never let a man rest . . . But if anything happens to me, then you start runnin’, Michael, an‘ don’t look over your shoulder, an’

don’t ever stop, because it’ll be you they’ll be after then, in case I’ve given it to you!‘ ” Gunner Kelly wiped his hand across his mouth. “An’ it did happen to him—so I ran. That’s all.”

“He gave you nothing?”

“Captain—don’t you think that if he’d given me anything I’d not have given it up by now? Mary, Mother of God! But how can you prove that you don’t know what you don’t know? You can only run

—that’s all you can do!”

Suddenly his face changed. “But then there was the Old General—

the Squire . . . that was the best man that God ever made out of clay ... I asked him for a bed for the night, an‘ I told him why I was running. And he gave me four years and his own life in exchange, is what he did.”

The man wasn’t lying. Aloysius Kelly was dead and it was the KGB who were coming to Duntisbury Chase— Benedikt had never been more certain of anything in his life.

“So this time—just for this time—I’m not running.” Kelly shook his head quickly. “Oh—I know we’ll not get them as have given the orders ... I know we’ll never get them—they’ll die in their beds most likely, one way—another way . . . But we’ll get the bastards who did their dirty work—it’ll be the same fellas, I’ll be bound . . .

An‘ we’ll make a great scandal, an’ get the headlines in all the papers—an‘ that’ll be big trouble for them, back home, that they’ll dummy1

not be forgiven for. An’ that’ll be something that’s better than nothing. They’ll not forget us, by God!”

In his own way he was saying what Miss Becky had said, thought Benedikt. And even if it wasn’t true Gunner Kelly believed it to be true.

And more, also: this would be a killing, not a capturing, if Gunner Kelly could make it so. Of that he was also certain.