TWO OFF MISTER BUNEAD.

 

At 4.50 p.m. on January 6th, 1972, O'Donnell and Tom Savage entered the Ulster Bank on the corner of Ranelagh and Beechwood Avenue. Bates stood guard on the door.

 

Savage, an expert sniper from Swords, County Dublin, had arrived in the Peacock some days earlier. He had travelled from Derry, penniless. His impecunious state elicited little sympathy from Marsh and he recommended that Savage contact Bates and O’Donnell.

 

They were, at the time, holed up on the Southside. Ranelagh, to be exact, where people spoke with a different accent to those who drank in the Peacock. When Savage arrived, the floor of the bedsit was littered with crumpled sheets of A4 paper as the pair were engaged in what could be described as a forensic theoretical investigation into the Two Nation Theory of the Irish Communist Organization and the Three Nation Theory put forward by Sean ‘Ructions’ Doyle.

 

“The pen is mightier....” Savage muttered as he observed the scattered rumpled sheets of abandoned paper.

 

“So Marsh sent you over!!” Bates mused.

 

“He said youse were in charge of the funds.”

 

O’Donnell grimaced, “Sometimes a fellow could take what Marsh says with a pinch of salt, sea salt.”

 

“He could be considered skating on thin ice when it comes to certain aspects of  theory, like he would hold that if proletarians were just handed out money they would cease to be proletarians,” added Bates.

 

“Did you ever hear of Durruti?” O’Donnell asked.

 

“The anarchist leader in Spain, what about him?”

 

“That’s the fella. Well he was in this tavern or whatever you call them,” O’Donnell continued, “and he was inveigled by this bloke moaning about having no money to feed his family. So after listening to him for a while Durruti took a gun from his waistband, planked it in front of the complainer and said, ‘There’s a bank across the road, fuck off over there and get some cash and get the fuck out of me ear,’”

 

Savage was taken aback. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“It means,” explained Bates that almost across the road there’s a branch of the Ulster Bank and as we’re all low in funds the three of us could toddle over and liberate some cash. Are you up for that?”

 

“Am I getting an invitation?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“When?”

 

“Say today about ten to five, just before it closes when it's beginning to get dark,” said O’Donnell.

 

“The sword is mightier....”

 

 O'Donnell felt his shoes slip on the tiled floor and cursed to himself for forgetting to put on his crepe-soled shoes. Acting in his usual role of bagman he was over the counter and had all the money he could find in a bag in thirty seconds. One customer, with a neatly trimmed beard which looked like it had been freshly laundered, stared at the second man. He was transfixed by the man's gun.

 

“I didn't come in here to lodge this,” said Savage, referring to his gun. “Now get yer fucking arse over against that wall, or I'll show you how it works.” He then followed O'Donnell out of the bank after warning the bank staff and the small number of customers not to follow.

 

The three crossed the busy road smartly and entered an unnamed lane off Chelmsford Lane. They then jumped over a back wall and within seconds were in a ground-floor bedsit, which was nearly opposite the bank. It was as easy and as simple a robbery as anyone could commit.

 

Bates took off a curly black wig, put on a hat and after giving his head a good scratch he headed out the front door. He crossed the street and mingled among the gathering crowd of gawkers as the gardai arrived. He was listening to what was being said so as to hear if anyone would inform the gardai that they had seen the robbers crossing the road and entering the lane. If the lane was pointed out (by a nosey parker in O'Donnell's vocabulary) Bates would return to the flat. Then the robbers would leave by the front door and just melt in with the crowds now returning from work in the darkening evening.

 

The customer with the neat beard was telling whoever would listen how one of the raiders had threatened to blow his head off and then shove the remains of it up his hole. A woman told a heavy-set sergeant that she thought that the man behind the counter with the bag was a busy teller.

 

“He had no mask. When he jumped out over the counter, I got such a fright that I nearly jumped out of my knickers.”

 

Bates was about to point out to the fat sergeant he was standing close to that he had seen three men get into a car and head up Beechwood Avenue when a green Morris Minor full of Branchmen bounced off the kerb and shuddered to a stop. He recognized two, Josh and Bulla, and headed back to the flat.

 

“Some oulwan was disgusted at your language,” he said to Savage.

 

“Fuck her,” said Savage. He was planning on heading back to Derry after the contribution from the Ranelagh branch of the Ulster Bank which would have left him a participant in the Civil Rights march that turned out to be Bloody Sunday.

 

O'Donnell went to the front door and looked across diagonally towards the bank. There was still a crowd around the entrance. From the front door, which was about eight feet above the road level, he could see a number of uniformed gardai in the brightly lit bank. He relaxed. It was time to go back, divide the loot and put on a cup of coffee.

 

“Those cops that are inside the bank now should be searched before they’re allowed to leave,” said O’Donnell.

 

Savage laughed. “Why?”

 

“Because every time we count the money after a bank job its always less than what is reported in the fucking news rags, isn’t that right Ernie?”

 

Savage shook his head. “Yeh mean someone else robs it after us?”

 

“Yeh. Either the staff or the cops. Maybe both engage in a bit of thievery!!”

 

Savage laughed. “And we were all taught in school that this was a land of saints and scholars!”

 

“Its called initiative,” said Bates.

 

“So when they put out crime statistics every bank job should be considered as two or maybe three crimes,” said O’Donnell.

 

“Maybe the cops deliberately put out false figures,” Savage theorised, “in the hope that some loose talker would bladder in a pub the real amount and next thing he’s in the Bridewell with the Slug telling him to be a man and to get it off his chest and name his accomplices as he boots him up the arse while Pah Wah holds the fella’s head between his legs and while he’s....”

 

“D’yah know,” O’Donnell interjected, “that Doc Quinn said that this fellow in the Benburb House or somewhere around there was claiming he carried out one of our jobs, bumming himself up like without a penny in his pockets, anyway next thing he finds himself sitting in a cell in the Bridewell with the Slug and Pah Wah grilling him.”

 

“An interloper! The fucking cheek,” laughed Savage. “I’m all for police brutality in that situation.”

 

“Exactly,” Bates agreed. “And he couldn’t even give any other names!”

 

“That’s right Ernie. And when he finally told Mister Festy Slug that he had made it up an’ they checked out his real alibi for that day and found it watertight, they came back an’ gave the fucker another kicking for wasting garda time.”

 

Within minutes of Bates leaving the street, one garda was told by an eyewitness that two people had crossed the street in a bit of a hurry and walked down Chelmsford Lane. The garda followed up on the clue and walked down the badly lit lane. He came across a mechanic working in a shed cum garage.

 

"Did anybody pass by here about ten minutes ago?"

 

"No."

 

The garda walked back up the lane. There was a small lane, almost a path, which was a cul-de-sac off the main lane. If the eyewitness was correct and if the mechanic had not seen anybody, whoever came down the lane must have turned into the dead-end track. He walked down using his flashlight for it was now dark. He came to a stone wall. After a slight hesitation, he climbed up on the wall and looked over the top. As he did he nearly gave a heart attack to some people who were waiting at a bus stop on Appian Way.

 

“Did anyone climb over in the last half hour?” he inquired.

 

“No one an' we're here bloody hours,” they muttered.

 

One elderly woman who took out her top false teeth to talk said that the sliced pan loaf had not been invented when she first arrived at the bus stop.

 

The garda hurried back with the information. If the information from the pedestrian was correct, it was possible that the men who entered the lane were the robbers. If that was the case, they had to be in one of the back gardens or one of the ten or so houses on that part of Ranelagh. As the three inside were enjoying their coffee and discussing the honesty or otherwise of bank staff and gardai, the real flesh and blood gardai were throwing a cordon around the area.

 

Savage heard a noise. The light was switched off. Through the window, they saw a uniformed garda move around the back garden of number 80 with a torch in his hand. Those inside were experienced enough to immediately realize what was going on. It was only a matter of minutes before the houses would be combed one by one.

 

“We'll just have to burst out the front door and go for it,” recommended Savage.

 

“Who d'yah think we are? Dan fucking Breen!”

 

O'Donnell went to the front door and opened it slightly. There were two uniformed gardai standing down at the gate. Others were standing in small groups at intervals along the street.

 

The three raiders came up with a quick plan. In the bank, O'Donnell wore a green jacket and black sweater. Now he pulled off the sweater and donned a white polo neck shirt of the type then made popular by Pat Quinn, the supermarket owner. The jacket was replaced by a black overcoat and the spectacles, which he had worn in the bank, were pocketed. He also stuffed a bundle of bank notes into a pocket.

 

The plan was that O'Donnell, now carrying a briefcase, would open the front door. The gardai at the gate would undoubtedly approach. O'Donnell would entice them into the darkened hall where they would be jumped on and tied up. Bates and O'Donnell would grab their tunics and hats, walk out the front door and shout a warning to the other gardai in the vicinity that the robbers were now in number 82. In the general dash for number 82 the pair of bogus gardai and their accomplice would make themselves scarce, they hoped.

 

“How about a roar of c'mon Gortnapisha,” Bates suggested as he laughed nervously, seconds before O'Donnell opened the front door.

 

“Scuse me Sir,” called out one of the gardai at the gate. He walked briskly up the granite steps. O'Donnell remained at the half-open front door.

 

“Do you live here?”

 

“I do. Yes.”

 

“What's your name?”

 

“Lambert Simnel.”

 

“Lambert what?”

 

“Simnel.”

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“To Trinity College, to a lecture on Thrasymachus,” he slightly lifted up the briefcase.

 

“Who?”

 

“Thrasymachus. I suppose you could say he was one of the sophists. You know the chaps who performed a valuable task in the field of education for theirs was a sort of a scepticism of despair. Do you know the intellectuals Colm O’Shea or Wladek Gaj?”

 

“Nope but are.....”

 

“That’s a pity because they would be able to mark your card on him and Protagoras as it was him who made that famous saying which was something like that each man’s opinion is true of him, and disagreements between men and, and nowadays we must include women as well, but anyway it goes that disagreements between men cannot be decided on the score of truth and therefore....”

 

“I haven’t a clue what yer talking about. Is there anyone else in the house?”

 

Bates was standing inside the door and listening to every word. He was beginning to think that he had gone mad assuming that he was not always mad!

 

“Eh, I couldn't say. Come on in guard an' I'll see.” he invited the guard inside.

 

O'Donnell took a step back into the hall. The youngish garda stared at the figure who was half swallowed in the semi-darkness. He did not move. He looked down the steps. The garda who had been standing with him at the gate had walked further up the street. He was alone.

 

“Come on in,” O’Donnell repeated while taking another step backwards. The guard stared at O’Donnell who was now standing still. The garda felt that something, he did not know what exactly, except that it boded ill for his promotion prospects and maybe even his wedding plans, so he stood his ground. Bates gave up on the plan. He came past O’Donnell and pulled the door fully open. He walked quickly out and past the flustered guard.

 

“Who's that?”

 

“Just a tenant from upstairs,” said O'Donnell, stepping out from the open door.

 

Bates walked down the steps and passed some gardai on the street. They must have assumed that the garda now in strained conversation with O'Donnell had authorized his departure. O'Donnell watched Bates stride, business-like, towards the Ranelagh triangle with two of the three handguns in his possession. He could not attempt to move until he knew that Bates was clear.

 

“I better go or I'll be late,” he announced.

 

“What's that?”

 

Some of the money O'Donnell had shoved in his coat pocket was slightly sticking out. At a glance, it was clearly money and more than the average Trinity student would be carrying to a lecture on Thrasymachus!

 

 The garda shouted and within seconds O'Donnell was surrounded by gardai. He was ushered down the steps to a patrol car. A sergeant made an attempt to punch him through the open window of the garda car. A garda pulled the sergeant away.

 

“Who are yeh?” he shouted.

 

“Simon O'Donnell.”

 

“Yer a fucking liar,” shouted the sergeant.

 

O'Donnell lifted the wig a little as if he was tipping his hat to a lady in a more chivalrous age and smiled from the back of the patrol car. The sergeant's eyes widened in his flushed face as he saw the fair hair beneath the dark brown wig.

 

“Be... be the fucking barney, it's the fucker all right!”

 

Savage headed back to the bedsit and listened to the Branchmen, who had now arrived, pounding on the door to the backroom flat.

 

 “We know your in there whoever the fuck yare, come out with your hands up or we’ll burst in.”

 

“First in gets his name on a plaque,” Savage replied.

 

After about thirty minutes and a heated exchange of course language Savage opened the door. He made a short speech from the steps about police harassing republican revolutionaries who were fighting the British Army and the B Specials in the North before being bundled into a garda patrol car.

 

The two were taken to the town hall-like building that was Donnybrook Garda Station. They were led into one of the main rooms which quickly filled with detectives and uniformed gardai. The wrozzers were in a buoyant mood and the room seemed to buzz. Everybody was in high spirits. Everybody that is, except O’Donnell and Savage, who did not appear to enjoy being the centre of attention.

 

O’Donnell sat on a chair beside a small desk while Savage remained standing more or less in the middle of the busy room. The special branch detectives were waiting for the arrival of Inspector Corristine who had taken charge of the investigation. In the meantime the two in custody were the subject of humorous banter.

 

“Oh the man from God knows where doesn’t know who he is, and the other fella sitting over there never stops talking about isms if yuh don’t mind,” said Josh a Cork Branchman.

 

“Oh yeah, all kinds of isms,” cut in Napper. “Socialism! If you don’t mind and us finding his pockets stuffed with bank notes for the poor and the Simon community I suppose,” he jocosely surmised, enormously pleased with his exposure of an ideological conundrum.

 

“And not a squeak out of him about bankrobberism or blagaurdism or bombs awayism,” added the lanky loquacious Pah Wah.”

 

“What about going around wiggism?” asked Nobber. He examined the dark brown haired wig and spectacles that had been placed on a large table. He lifted them up and approached O’Donnell. “Go on, put them on.”

 

“No.”

 

“Why not? The gardai in Ranelagh said they suited you very well. Said that you looked like a new man. And a lot, need I say, like a man who has been doing some counter jumping recently....”

 

“Maybe he’d givus a demonstration and jump over the table here...” laughed the Slug.

 

“Would you go on an identification parade with these on?” asked Pah Wah.

 

“No thanks very much all the same, but definitely no thanks,” O’Donnell replied.

 

He wondered if this was the first time a suspect for something was asked if he would go on an identification line-up in disguise. He further wondered that if someone was to agree to do this would they use their own name, use A.N.Other and if convicted in such circumstances how could they be imprisoned as somebody else. His speculative reverie ended when Corristine entered the room.

 

Inspector Corristine was a ruddy-faced man in his sixties. He was well built with a good head of silver-grey hair. He handed O’Donnell a warrant in relation to the Ballyfermot car chase saying “You never left a forwarding address Simon and had me climbing up every tree in Dublin looking for you.”

 

 Savage had been standing on his own watching a single ant making futile attempts to climb from the polished cement floor onto his shoe and while this was going on a line of Special Branchmen came in and looked at Savage and shook their heads in puzzlement. “Never saw the fucker before.” “Looks like he’s just out of nappies.”

 

Corristine half sat on one of the tables, his left leg touching the floor. He looked at Savage and then at the Slug.

 

“He refuses to tell us who he is or where he’s from,” the Slug said in an apologetic tone.

 

Corristine nodded and turning to Savage he asked in a soft voice, “What’s your name?”

 

“Who am I, you ask,” answered Savage, launching into the second version that is doing the rounds of his interrogation. “Who am I indeed? Who are any of us? Now that is a deep philosophical question. Deep, deep caverns of the mind. Dark tunnels.”

 

The Slug gave Savage a bewildered look. “Now tell the inspector who you are or I’ll give you such a root into the bollocks that....”

 

Corristine waved the Slug away. The Slug, plainly angry, stomped to the far side of the room.

 

“You perceive me as I am,” continued Savage. “To be as I am here is to be perceived. You all have visual perceptions of me that are not of external things but are simply ideas in your minds. My name is immaterial because I am matter and matter is simply some metaphysical vehicle of qualities which alone give rise to experiences that are mental contents before the dialectical process ramps up. As such, bare matter cannot be experienced and is therefore an otiose abstraction. It goes without saying that there is good matter and matter which is fucked up. Fucking degenerate matter.” Savage glanced across to where the Slug was standing.

 

As if on cue the Slug let a roar and rushed towards Savage. He was grabbed by Nobber and Josh as Corristine ordered him to be removed from the room.

 

“I’ll do for that fucker, I’ll do for him,” the Slug shouted as he was pushed to the front office.

 

“Mind this desk for the next hour,” said the station sergeant as he wanted to have a quick two pints across the road. He guessed that with all the comings and goings he could be in for a long night.

 

“You see, some people perceive me as a construct from a Bacon painting and other people, especially in Free Derry, perceive me as something totally different,” continued Savage, ignoring the brief shemozzle. “Everyone in this room can have a different perception of me while my name, whatever it is, or where I come from, wherever that might be, remains the same. In analysing all this it is important not to get bogged down in the dead end of being outrageously at odds with common sense. If one yields to the temptation of believing that all perceptions are ideas of sensation in the mind only and are cut off from each other so that all we can then say is that we then only have experiences of certain sensations or reflections when we do have them sometimes like now and we don’t have them at other times and end up with an unexperienced experience so that nothing is left over, and of nothing no experience can be had. It would be completely dishonest of me philosophically to tell you who I am or where I’m from because that merely gives you an abstract view in your mind and remember your mind’s existence is not only in being perceived but in perceiving! For instance if we take say Michael Collins.”

 

“It’s you we are interested in not Michael Collins who is probably matterless now,” said Corristine.

 

“But the perception of Michael Collins depends on...”

 

“The day Mickeen got bowled over was a sad day for Ireland,” shouted a Cork detective.

 

“Up Dev!!” a detective named McMahon from Clare shouted back.

 

“That day was a bad day for Collins but it was a good day for O’Higgins,” said Savage.

 

“Why?” inquired Nobber.

 

“Hazel.”

 

“Hazel who?”

 

“Hazel Lavery. The woman that’s on all yer bank notes. The woman whose knickers Collins was trying to get into but before his body was cold O’Higgins was rooting around in there.”

 

“Where’ed yeh hear that nonsence?” Pah Wah asked, an excruciating look on his face .

 

“It’s all over the Peacock. That and much more,” replied Savage.

 

“Jesus!” groaned Mooha, “Did I ever tell youse about the time I was doing undercover in that kip in the woman’s tights?”

 

“Leave it out Mooha, I’ve a weak stomach. What’s this about Lavery?” inquired Nobber.

 

“She was giving Collins an eyeful, you know, having his portrait done and that when him and some of the other negotiators were prancing around her pile in Cromwell Place or somewhere and she and Birkenhead, a fucker as evil as Churchill, telling the besotted Collins what should be in the Articles of Agreement....”

 

“He’s talking complete shite,” shouted Josh.

 

“That’s your perception of the outcome of what some people call the Treaty talks, while a lot of other people accuse Collins of going over to the British side, raising a mercenary army of reprobates and using British guns to turn on the people who continued on the War of Independence,”

 

“He’s right. It was a counter revolution by the Free State....” exclaimed the Clare McMahon.

 

“Led by the most reactionary, conservative bunch of murderers you could ever come across,” agreed Savage.

 

“Kevin O’Higgins was a good married Catholic with a wife and children, sure he was going to Mass the day he was viciously murdered, he was really a peaceful man,” pronounced Napper in a conciliatory tone. “There’s no way a man like that would be consorting with an English whoosey.”

 

“He was a good man with the pen alright. Used it to sign at least 77 death warrants, ‘It was done coldly, it was done deliberately’” snapped McMahon, quoting O’Higgins.

 

“All the same he told the sergeant from Blackrock who came across him to pray for his killers and he wanted no retaliation,” said Napper.

 

O’Donnell laughed.

 

“What’s funny?”

 

“You believe that?”

 

“I can guess what he said,” Savage announced.

 

“What?” asked Napper.

 

“Get after the mother fucking fuckers, sergeant and after you cut the bollocks out of them feed it to them up through their arses,” said Savage as shouts of disapproval rang out.

 

“Does anybody know what his last words were?” asked Pah Wah.

 

“Eoin Mac Neill came upon him and he said to Mac Neill ‘tell Hazel I love her,’ which is what Mac Neill told people though he later changed it to O’Higgin’s wife.”

 

Corristine grinned. “That Peacock pub seems to be a very interesting place.” He looked at Savage. “Have you discovered who you are?”

 

“That is a complicated. Very complicated...”

 

Corristine raised a hand to signal silence and got off the table. “Well I may not at this moment know your name or where you’re from but I do know where you’re going.”

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The gardai eventually learned that the second man they had in custody was Tom Savage from Swords. Savage was 22 years of age.

 

The night had fully edged in when Bates arrived at the second-storey flat in York Street.

 

“Jesus Ernie, you look like you've seen a ghost,” said a concerned Miss Reid as Bates entered the flat. He told her the story: then he took out the two handguns.

 

“Could you put those in the wardrobe or somewhere for the moment?”

 

“I'll put them in the hatbox on top of it.”

 

“Yeah nobodied ever think of looking up there,” Bates smirked. He had a quick cup of coffee and then left.

 

He arrived in the Peacock breathless.

 

“You're having us on,” said Marsh.

 

“I'm not. It was only a fluke that I managed to get away meself.”

 

“There's no way that we can blow them out with all the tightened security since the last caper,” shrugged Ructions.

 

“Not with one of his bombs,” Edwards laughed, pointing towards Marsh. He was now at the counter informing Clarke that he had just lost two customers for a period that would be determined by what side of the bed some judge tumbled out of in the next month or so.

 

“Jesus there'll be more of them in the 'Joy' than here if this keeps up,” said Clarke, throwing his sparkling eyes upwards.

 

“It's fucking unfair competition. You should get on to that crowd that investigates monopolies,” advised Long.

 

O'Donnell and Savage were charged in the garda station with the bank robbery at the Ulster Bank in Ranelagh.

 

“Definitely not guilty,” O’Donnell pleaded.

 

“Outrageous,” said Savage. “Amnesty International is going to hear about this.”

 

“Perhaps they got the money and gun from a fella in a bank,” the Slug laughed.

 

“Did you see the face on Josh when we pleaded not guilty?” said Savage.

 

“Yeah. I thought he was going to burst a spring.”

 

The two were remanded to Mountjoy Prison.

 

“Two off mister Bunead,” shouted Macker, the Chief Officer, as the pair entered the remand wing.

 

“Keep well back from his head,” O'Donnell advised Savage as they followed the wobbly warden to their cells.

 

Later O'Donnell, changing his plea to guilty, received a six-year sentence for the Ranelagh robbery when he appeared before Justice Andreas O'Keefe.

 

Prior to that case, a jury had found him not guilty of the bank robbery in Newbridge, County Kildare in 1968.

 

On May 10th, 1972, he stood before Justice Butler having pleaded guilty to possession of firearms with intent to endanger life. Butler adjourned the proceedings for thirty minutes to allow O'Donnell to give an undertaking to the court stating that he would no longer involve himself in political organizations. O'Donnell refused.

 

On the resumption, Butler said that any form of crime involving firearms deserved condign punishment. He sentenced O'Donnell to ten years imprisonment. However, he said that he would review the sentence when the six-year sentence that O'Donnell was already serving was completed. The review would be based on O'Donnell's behaviour in prison.

 

Tom Savage pleaded not guilty to the Ranelagh bank robbery. He was found guilty after what he described was a pusillanimous performance by his legal team and was sentenced by Justice Butler to seven years imprisonment. Again, Butler put a condition on the sentence. Savage would have his sentence reviewed after three years and would be released if his prison demeanour was exemplary.

 

O’Donnell and Savage were well aware that it was difficult for prisoners with such sentences to engage in any form of prison behaviour that might be considered an infringement on prison rules and thereby end up serving the full sentence. They would have to be model prisoners!