On the morning of April 11th 1968, Marsh, Frank Davis, Ructions and Edwards drove into Dundrum Village in a grey Ford Zyphyr V4.

 

“We're too fucken early,” said Marsh who was sitting in the front passenger seat.

 

“Go down to the Milltown bridge and come back again,” suggested Davis. He was about five feet nine inches and of athletic build with a swarthy complexion. He always seemed to have a puzzled expression on his face. This gave the impression that he was permanently on the point of solving some intractable philosophical problem as he fingered his dark wavy hair. At demonstrations he often wore a large badge on his coat which proclaimed, ‘I am an enemy of the state,’ while, at the same time declaring, that he did not believe in swallowing aspros for other peoples’ headaches.

 

The men were well aware that it was important to keep the car moving: four men in a moving car could arouse suspicions, but not as much as four men in a stationary vehicle.

 

The car turned at the bridge and moved slowly back up the village.

 

“The bus-stop,” shouted Marsh, “it's the fucken Slug.”

 

“Are you sure?” asked Davis, who sometimes used the name Brendan Walsh.

 

Indeed Davis was not the only one to endorse this kind of trickery for Marsh had become a serial offender often using the names of Des Keane, Noel Redican and Simon O’Donnell while Edwards, forever complicated, had arrived at his nom de plume by a circuitous route.

 

 A year or so before Edwards had read quite a bit about Erasmus the humanist of Rotterdam and how after been sent to the monastic Augustinian school at Steyn after the death of his parents he had engendered a revulsion against the dire unimaginative scholasticism pursued there. It was this spirit of Erasmus to take on the Thomist and Occamist factions who were now making common cause against the humanists which inspired Davis to embrace Erasmus as a kind of anti-establishment, medieval Che Guvara. Because of this and after reading an account of his book ‘The Praise of Folly’ he informed Ernie Bates, confidentially, in the Peacock one night that he was thinking of calling himself Erasmus.

 

Bates grimaced and shook his head. He agreed that while Erasmus agreed with the Protestant view that theology was superfluous as man is deemed to stand in direct relation with God Erasmus had funked out of being drawn into any religious controversies which arose as a result of the reformation. “His mettle has rust Joe!”

 

Bates pointed out that despite Erasmus being on the correct side in pointing out on the failings of mankind when it came to the crunch Erasmus declared for Catholicism. Bates claimed that as far as he was concerned the most important influence Erasmus left was on education and on his ambition to strengthen the importance of Latin.

 

“Tommy Byrne from Hardwicke Street flats told me that when Erasmus was secretary to the bishop of Cambrai the bishop warned that he wasn’t to be let within a mile of a nun’s cunt. Of course, that could have been slander from the Occamists,” said Bates.

 

“Ah sure in those days,” replied Edwards, “I heard that nunneries were more like maternity hospitals than convents.”

 

“Thomas More would be your man.”

 

“More the English Chancellor?”

 

“That was a man with principles, that was. He actually met Erasmus when Erasmus came to England.”

 

“Looking for it?”

 

“Maybe. Actually, it was in More’s house that he wrote ‘The Praise of Folly’ and apparently the Greek title is a pun on More’s name!”

 

“Fuck!”

 

“Yeap. Well, More did his stint of religious rigour courtesy of the Carthusians. Then he ended up in Parliament and like a lot of principled people in those days he eventually found his way to the tower on a treason charge.”

 

“Off with his head!”

 

“Exactly after he declared that Parliament could not make the King head of the church. But before that, he wrote ‘Utopia’. A fucking great piece of speculative political theory supposed to be inspired by Plato’s ‘Republic’.”

 

“Heard of it, that’s all.”

 

“Ah! A fantastic bit of literature. Could have been on some middle ages LSD when he wrote it. Fucking great. Done in the form of a report of a shipwrecked sailor who ends up in this island community where all property is communal because the heads who hang out there, obviously cleverer than the fucks who run our society, have copped on to the fact that once you have private property people are driven apart and divided as they begin to differ in their riches.”

 

“Exactly what is encouraged in our society.”

 

Bates looked at Edwards with a frown. “What?”

 

“Encouraged to be rich and compete and....”

 

“Oh right. In Utopia, it is given as a basic fact and taken for granted that everyone is equal. Everybody is free from bigotry and war is a no, no unless in self-defence.”

 

“I’d certainly go along with that.”

 

Bates chuckled. “There is a tiny little problem for the likes of us.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Well, while atheists are allowed to hold their views, a fucking amazing idea in the sixteenth century when people were getting burned at the stake for having an ingrown toenail I’d say but atheists could not hold the status of citizens or belong to the government which operates as a sort of representative democracy.”

 

Edwards mulled over the problem as he shared a cigarette with Bates. “Well, I mean with everything hunky dory and everyone having exactly the same as everyone else a question about a prime mover would be sort of not worth arguing about. Sure being in government would be bleeden boring anyway. Like you couldn’t knock on someone’s door and promise them an extra jacks to be one up on the big fucking mouth next door.”

 

“And they all standing there in the same clothes looking at you. Maybe a bit on the drab side.”

 

“Jaysus Ernie, two years ago I was into those brocade waistcoats that the Kinks wore. I left a suitcase of them and other stuff with Dick Timmons once, he left them in Ned Munroe’s in Mable Street and when I had to go on the run the fucker burned them in case he was raided and Spratt or Pah Wah came across them.”

 

“Well, there you fucking are.”

 

“There I am what?”

 

“If you were in this government in Utopia you could canvass for everyone to have a brocade waistcoat!” Bates said with a snigger. “Thomas is the name, Joe.”

 

Edwards thought about it for a few seconds and quickly dispelled the idea as extremely dangerous when he saw Marsh at the counter in conspiratorial conversation with Davis. It was while he was looking at them and wondering what plot they may have been hatching that the solution came to him.

 

“Joe Edwards,” he thought. “In reverse that could be Edward or Eddie Jones. And sure wasn’t there a republican socialist revolutionary of the very same name living in Cork Street? And a man of action like himself.” He was so pleased that he called a round, out of turn, for himself and Bates.

 

It was this kind of bollocksology that gave Festy Spratt a right pain in the arsehole of his Kerry bollocks. It also gave the Hungry Brigade a pain in their collective bollockses. It gave the government a pain in its upstanding, privatised hole. Indeed when the Taoiseach Jack Lynch thought it would be a good idea to intern their Army Council he asked his justice minister Michael O’Morain who was on it. “Who is on the focking thing?!” O’Morain laughed, “sure if they don’t know themselves how the fock am I supposed to know?” So with multiple identities how could anyone be sure who was in that car in Dundrum or for that matter any car?

 

For the Slug it was taxing enough to make sure his statements of pristine evidence had all the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed, the designed narrative without suspicion of back seat conspiratorial concoction, the language precise, crisp and to the point, a lack of alliteration to minimise a fumbling delivery, redaction free, all this and much more and then to find the defendant, jumping up and down in the dock shouting, “Your Honour, I’m not Eddie Jones, I’m Joe Edwards.”

 

That is the multiple identity carry-on but there is also the identity shy. fellow. The minimalist! O’Donnell’s sidekick, for example, the Sword’s crack shot Tom Savage fitted that bill. And one story of his arrest, there’s reference to another, later on, begins when he is brought into Donnybrook Garda Station.

 

He was a wonder of attention as he stood in the crowded day room, his immediate attention captured by an ant which was examining his right shoe. The Branchmen, some of whom thought he was staring at the floor in shame, had never seen him before. The Slug and other detectives walked around chain-smoking while speaking in low voices to one another as they peered at Savage. Who in fuck’s hell was he they wondered but they couldn’t find out until the chief, Inspector Corristine, arrived. Corristine, then near retirement age was as fine, upstanding and as decent a guard as ever slithered around that bogtrotter’s camp in Templemore, down Tipperary way.

 

It was said of the same Inspector that as a young guard in Ballygillhooley or wherever it was the young ladies and some not so young cycled with no bicycle lights just so that they would be stopped and ticked off by young Corristine. And the grannies of these same women would allow their asses to graze on the long acre in the hope that Corristine would be obliged to call and inform them that it was an offence to be the owner of a wandering ass.

 

A hushed silence descended on the smoke-filled room when the Inspector entered. He was a well-preserved man with a fine head of grey hair and a sensible moustache. Savage thought that he looked affable if it was possible to look so. Without saying anything Corristine pulled out a chair and invited Savage to be seated. Savage shook his head and remained standing. Corristine nodded and half sat on a large table. His right leg touching the floor. He threw a glance at the Slug who on cue stepped forward and approached Savage. “Now,” he said tersely, while the others in the room looked on in silence, “tell the Inspector who you are and where you come from.”

 

Savage shrugged. “I’m not really into philosophical speculation but I have read snippets of and about Melissus of Samos and Zeno of Elea who said about something that whatever it is must have some magnitude and if it lacks magnitude it would not exist, in a word, infinite divisibility. And the same bold Zeno in a sort of direct defence of Parmenides, who like Zeno had met Socrates in Athens said that any argument which one can derive two contradictory conclusions means that the set of conclusions are not only up shit creek but impossible....”

 

While those in the room stared at one another in bewildered silence the Slug was furiously flicking through his book of names. “Inspector,” he cried out, almost overwhelmed by his frustration, “these names are not in my book.”

 

“No,” the Inspector replied, “they’re all dead.”

 

“Murdered?”

 

“Perhaps some.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Probably Greece or one of the islands.”

 

“When?”

 

“Over two thousand years ago.”

 

The Slug stared at his book of names and muttered to himself.

 

“So we are left with this impossibility which leads us to the dialectic argument,” Savage continued. “Since the days of Socrates and Plato, the dialectic has ever since stalked and haunted philosophy. Without the dialectic who am I or where have, I come from is meaningless. I am here and I am taking up space which begs the question, What the fuck is space? Is it something that consists of angular momentum, hidden variables and inherent randomness which left Einstein scratching his bollocks or am I just something in space and is that space contained in more space and when I am not here you have to ask yourselves is my nothingness filled with what some may conclude was empty space which in itself is filled with more space! Bright space! Dark space! And more importantly, is this space in motion?”

 

Corristine jumped from the table and confronted the Slug as he made a threatening lounge at Savage. “There’ll be no violence in my space detective Spratt,” he said emphatically before ordering Branchmen Pah Wah and Napper to escort the angry Spratt from the room.

 

“I’ll do for the shitless shit, I’ll do for him,” Spratt warned as he left.

 

“I can see,” said Savage in an apologetic tone, “how philosophical speculation can have a profoundly disturbing effect on some people who have a conservative disposition about society in general.” While thinking to himself that if one could delve down into the deep depths of pre-history it could be discovered that the Slug was descended from the original pain in the hole! “The fucker! As if my day wasn’t bad enough. Maybe he’s retarded and thinks through his hole! Must have embraced dark space which is washing over him now,” he thought.

 

“ People who are not philosophically minded,” he continued, “ and who believe that philosophers are threatening their long-held and cherished beliefs, and truths in their minds, must be respected. Philosophers must take into consideration that members of the great unwashed who consider philosophers to be subversives and non-conformists do so out of fear that the philosopher is a threat to their long-established practice and custom. And one notices that in times of turmoil and threat like now the philosopher is no longer regarded as some kind of harmless fool who moseys about with his head in the clouds asking silly questions and who should be allowed a generous dollop of benevolent condescension. Such a figure, however, in times when society is facing crisis can become the subject of hostility and hatred when he questions those habits and views that appear to be good enough for everybody else. Why are you not giving unconditional support to what our fathers believed in they ask! It is clear to me that there are philosophers in this room, hence the question that may seem silly to the man on the street who is enthralled by the shape of the arse of the woman walking in front of him: Who are you is a tendentious question.”

 

Nipper, the Branchman, who was standing at the back of the room, sniggered.

 

“It is also a frivolous question in the broad scheme of things,” Savage continued, “when I might be as inconsequential as a single speck of dust dancing in a sunbeam in an empty room. How can I be sure of who I am when I can’t ascertain to my complete satisfaction that I exist. That anything exists and if what exists really does exist? For all I know I may be a dream, the whole world may be a dream and you want to know who I am and where I come from!!”

 

Corristine stood up, “Well I don’t know yet who you are or where you come from but the one thing I am certain of is where you are going.”

 

The lads in the car in Dundrum, whoever they really were, had known for certain where they were going until the uninvited intruder at the bus stop turned up.

 

“Is it definitely the Slug?” Ructions asked.

 

“Sure! There's nobody this side of the moon with a mush as baleful as that.”

 

 The Slug lived on the North side of Dublin. Why was he standing at a bus stop in Dundrum at that time of the morning reading a newspaper?

 

“Must be doing reading lessons in the Castle,” Ructions muttered.

 

“Maybe he has a mot,” suggested Edwards.

 

“Him,” Marsh scoffed, “only a pig in a slaughterhouse would have sex with him.”

 

“It's a set-up. Get out of here,” hissed Davis.

 

“If there’s an informer!!!” Marsh swore.

 

“We’re the only ones who know,” Ructions reassured.

 

The bank had not yet opened. It was indeed a set-up. Inside the bank, armed Special Branchmen had taken up positions. At the back entrance to the bank, some soldiers were waiting to enter, if necessary. Across the road, in what was then a field, more soldiers lay behind a ditch. They had been positioned there in the darkness of early morning as they had been every day for a week, for it was just over a week since Davis was seen by an off-duty Branchman standing near the bank reading a newspaper. As Davis was from Drumcondra on the far side of the city, it was assumed that it was the bank and not the newspaper which was the object of his perusal.

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The news of Davis's vigil had excited those in Dublin Castle and especially, the Slug, who was a religious fanatic, and who was aware that Davis had long since opted out of Sunday Mass going. Also, he suspected Davis of pushing a poster reading ‘The Pope is a jockey's ponce,’ under his hall door one night.

 

“We'll let them in the door an' blow the bollocks out of them before they have a chance to get into a state of grace,” he promised and warned, “if that shower get to Heaven by some miracle they'll fucking steal the Pearly Gates.”

 

While the raiders were unaware of the Slug's plans, they left Dundrum heading for Ballinteer with puzzled expressions on their faces. How could there have been a leak? they wondered. They had been extremely careful: was it possible that an informer had managed to infiltrate the small group?

 

“If someone gave them a tip-off, he's going to look fucken stupid before the day is out,” said Marsh.

 

“Stupid in what way?” inquired Ructions.

 

“Stupid when the alarm in the bank in Tallaght goes off.”

 

“Yeh have me head in mental pandemonium,” announced Edwards.

 

“We can do the bank in Tallaght and give the Slug a woeful pain in the hole,” explained Marsh.

 

“Are you off your trolley, there could be twenty Branchmen in Dundrum?”

 

“Exactly, if there's a moxy load of harriers in Dundrum, well, they're not in Tallaght, are they?”

 

As the car entered Tallaght, Marsh put the double barrel 4 gauge shotgun on the floor. It contained two cartridges filled with candle wax to hold the shot together. This was an invention by Marsh; the result of experimenting with microcrystalline wax, renaissance wax, green casting wax, scopa modelling wax, white beeswax and various forms of paraffin wax, but the wax he found most suitable came from the candles he stole from the shrine to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in the side altar of the Church of Saint Francis Xavier in Gardiner Street.

 

“He's always had a soft spot for the Jesuits. Only the best,” Ructions reasoned.

 

“One of these boyos into the radiator of a cop car and she'll steam up quicker than Christine Keeler,” Marsh assured the others.

 

Now he pulled on a rubber mask he had bought in a trick shop in London. This had a small wisp of white hair sticking out of the top while the ragged, wrinkled face belonged to a man of about three hundred years of age. Ructions had his long hair tied back and hidden inside his collar. He had cellotaped his beard under his chin and wore a pair of thick horn-rimmed spectacles without lenses so that he looked like an intellectual werewolf.

 

“Pull up here,” ordered Marsh.

 

“Here!” complained Ructions, “the fucking bank is thirty yards down the road. Do you think we should get a little exercise to clear our heads before taking the stage?”

 

“Mens sana in corpore sano,” Edwards sympathized.

 

“Tactics,” snapped Marsh. “You see, if the cops arrive they always pull up right outside the bank, the lazy bastards, and undiscerning, ‘cause the first thing they'll do is haul out some poor oul farmer who's just pulled in to lodge the creamery check an' before he can say agricola, agricolorom, he has a baton shoved up his fucken arse.”

 

There was nobody on the street as the men left the car.

 

“Jesus Tommy, for a man of your advanced obsolescence you are very spry, very spry indeed,” laughed Davis.

 

The three raiders entered the Munster and Leinster Bank soon after opening time. Marsh jumped up on top of the counter but jumped down again when he realized that he could be seen by passers-by in the street.

 

A manager and his assistant were the only staff in the small bank and there were no customers. The raiders knew that nobody had seen them entering the bank and they also knew that there was no possibility of an alarm going off since they had immobilized the two officials before they had time to say "Cathy Barry." As a result, they were not in any great hurry.

 

The men left the bank after taking all the cash they could find. They drove off at a normal speed out of Tallaght.

 

"If I had known youse were going to be that long, I would have got the Irish Times and gone for a cup of coffee," joked Edwards before putting the boot down once the car reached the Kilakee Road.

 

This was the group's second bank robbery since the raid on the Royal Bank of Ireland in Drumcondra on a wet and windy Monday on February the 27th 1967. That particular robbery had received a lot of publicity as it was the first bank robbery in the Republic since the forties.

 

Minutes later, news of the raid reached the Royal Bank in Dundrum. It was crowded with armed Special Branchmen posing as staff and customers. For a moment they stared at each other in amazement and then there was pandemonium. The cursing figures jostled each other in a frantic rush for the door and almost trampled on two elderly women customers who were about to enter the bank on legitimate business. Soon the street was filled with grim figures, some armed with Uzi sub-machine guns.

 

The soldiers behind the ditch had not heard the surprising news and they were now standing up and shouting at the fleeing Branchmen, one of whom turned and, waving his hands wildly, shouted: “Wrong fucking bank.”

 

“That beats the fucking barney, that does,” mused a philosophical soldier.

 

The Slug was jumping up and down on the main street. "I'll stigmata the fuckers with bullets when I get them," he promised as he forced himself inside a green Morris Minor which was a private car owned by one of the ambushing Branchmen. Now a procession of garda patrol and privately owned cars, some dangerously overloaded with armed Branchmen, headed towards Rockbrook as a delicate sun glanced through the parting clouds.

 

Minutes later the 999 line became jammed with calls from Dundrum residents. These, upright citizens, having witnessed the fearful sight of yelling men brandishing firearms and galloping all around the village main street, believed that they had witnessed a bank robbery. Some shouted at the soldiers who were now standing on top of the ditch: “They went that way, about twenty of them.”

 

“Fucking do-gooders everywhere,” muttered a fat army sergeant.

 

Meanwhile, the raider's car had reached the Featherbeds without incident and was racing towards Glencree. Halfway across the Featherbeds, the car turned left onto one of the bog roads; it lurched and bounced along for about a mile and then swung to the left and seemed to disappear into the bog face.

 

Davis jumped out of the car and picked up a length of rope which was lying on the ground. He handed it to the others and then got back into the car.

 

The car was in a dugout section of the bog face. Over it was a timber roof which was covered by earth and heather. It was no higher than five feet and its main support was a perpendicular plank which had a rope attached to it. The three men in the car pulled desperately at the rope but nothing happened.

 

“Reverse the car back,” shouted Davis.

 

“That's a double negative,” said Ructions.

 

“What?”

 

“Reverse the car back.”

 

“Yeah, that's what I said.”

 

“Sure yah can't reverse a car forward.”

 

“I said reverse the car back, not fucking forward.”

 

“A car can only be reversed back.”

 

“Could we cut out the fucken bladder on linguistics and cover the car,” demanded Marsh.

 

The car was backed halfway out of the dugout; the windows on the left side lowered and the rope tied around the door frame. The car lurched forward and there was a crash as the roof of earth and wood buried everything beneath it.

 

While the raiders were burying themselves the first news of the 999 calls from the distraught Dundrum residents reached the garda patrol car radios. The motorcade was now on Mutton Lane. There was a screech of brakes: the green Morris Minor jammed on and there was a crunch as a following car smashed the tail lights of the Morris. Its Branchman owner jumped out and began to inspect the damage.

 

“Who's going to pay for this?” he asked the other garda driver. “Who fucken cares?” said the Slug

 

“I fucking care,” said the Branchman.

 

“If we're going to riddle these fucking turds we've got to get to Tallaght now,” the Slug pleaded.

 

“It's Dundrum,” other guards were shouting.

 

“It's fucking Tallaght,” some contradicted, “we've just come from Dundrum.”

 

“Maybe Tallaght was a false alarm to get us out of Dundrum,” more speculated.

 

“Maybe we should all go back to Dundrum and lock ourselves up in the fucking asylum,” hissed another.

 

Three nights later when Marsh and the others were ensconced in the Peacock pub, the newspapers were still reporting police sightings of a man in a blue anorak driving up and down the Naas Road.

 

“Isn't your mother on the pension?” Marsh asked Davis.

 

“Yeah. Why?”

 

“Does she get by alright on it?”

 

“Sure that wouldn't keep feathers on a seagull,” Davis scoffed.

 

"It says in the papers here that half the Tallaght money was pension money, old age dosh, waiting to be taken to the Post Office."

 

“Half of that would have paid for loads of pensions. There couldn't be that many old people in Tallaght.”

 

“Sure isn't it the wonders of modern medicine that so many oul codgers are still poking around and most of them fucking chain-smoking woodbines,” said Edwards.

 

The Tallaght bank robbery sent alarm bells ringing in Dublin Castle and seriously disturbed the Slug's sleep.

 

“You know I read in an FBI manual once that John Dillinger said that robbing banks was better than fucking. We have to riddle these cunts before they become addicted.”

 

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Pah Wah, the very tall, pale-faced driver.

 

The two Branchmen were sitting in a green Morris Minor. The car was parked near the home of Frank Davis in Drumcondra. It was a fine Saturday morning with a hint of summer in the air. At around 11 a.m. Davis emerged from his house and stood in the small front garden. After rummaging in his brown cord jacket he produced a packet of cigarettes. He took one out; tapped it on the packet, lit it and blew a thin column of pale blue smoke into the sky as if he was testing the direction of the faint breeze. He waved and exchanged pleasantries of some sort with a young woman walking on the opposite side of the road. The Slug and the driver watched every move.

 

“Would you just look at the jizz of the sweet-talking fucker,” said the Slug euphorically, enjoying the element of intrigue. “Would yeh ever think that it was him and that knacker Edwards who beat the shit out of those two poor poppy sellers outside the G.P.O. last November?”

 

“A holy terror to be sure and they just trying to honour their brave dead, and it was those two?”

 

“No fucking doubt about it. Of course, they denied it and the poppy sellers couldn't identify anyone because they had double and triple vision out of their black eyes.”

 

“Judas priest.”

 

The Slug and Pah Wah lit up cigarettes and blew smoke in unison with Davis.

 

“And then he proceeded to give me a lecture on the history of the poppy, if yeh don't mind.”

 

“Christ!”

 

“Oh yeh! The poppy, Pops, said he, is provided by the Royal British Legion which is sworn to support all British soldiers who served in all conflicts around the world.”

 

“Fuck. What about the Irish soldiers?”

 

“That's exactly what I said to the fucker. Pops, he sneered, there was no Irish soldier in any of the wars.”

 

Pah Wah, shook his head. “Sure every eejet knows that thousands of Irishmen died in the Great War....fucking thousands.”

 

“Exactly. Don't think, yeh cunt, I said, that you are the only fucker who has studied history. Wasn't a relation of mine killed at the Somme? He was a British soldier Pops, said he, as cheeky as fuck. He was from Kerry, yeh gobshite, I said.”

 

“That was telling the thick cunt.”

 

“Nah, he said. He was Irish alright, but as he was in a British uniform and took an oath of loyalty to the British cunt of a King, his primary allegiance was to Britain, not Ireland. He was a British Tommy who was born in Ireland Pops, like thousands of other cunts.”

 

“Jesus! Talk about twisted logic and to call the King a cunt. T'is a pity Dinny Blackwell wasn't around to give him a taste of the rubber hose. That would straighten...”

 

“Oh, the fucker went further than that.”

 

“Did he?”

 

“Did he fuck. The wearing of the poppy, Pops, he said, honours all the British soldiers who committed atrocities all over the world, everywhere. Those fuckers who got beaten up outside the G.P.O. were honouring British Imperialism, the Black and fucking Tans, the Auxies and all the murders and executions of 1916 and the War of Independence. And those who deserted from the Irish Army during the Emergency and joined the British Army for more money were traitors and pervs and should have had their balls squeezed in a vice when they snuck back here after the second world war.”

 

“Oh be the Jaysus, that was some law and order speech.”

 

“T'was. But I brought it to a quick halt.”

 

“Good man.”

 

“Imperialism, I said. Now that's a very big word for a whipper-snapper of a galoot like you to be using.”

 

“I'd say that stumped the thick cunt.”

 

“Stumped him. Don't be talking. He looked at me as if a sow's arse was after peeping out of the top of me hat. Sure there'd be no point in giving that gom a proper history of the poppy, t'would only fucking congest his thickness.”

 

“A proper history of the poppy!!!”

 

“Of course. Sure the history of the poppy goes back to the Tain Bo Cuailghne and beyond, to the Tuatha de Danann.”

 

“Bejaysus!!”

 

“Ah yep. Wasn't Queen Medb not far on the road from Tord's castle when she came across the beautiful Fedelma, the bean Sidhe, who could turn herself into a cackling hag and see the future,” explained the Slug.

 

“Well, I never.”

 

“What of my army, Fedelma bean Sidhe?” Medb inquired three times and three times Fedelma replied: ‘I see it red: it is crimson, your army,’ and then she threw off her gown an what d'yuh think covered the nipples of her diddies?”

 

“Eh.”

 

“Two crimson poppies. Of course, read any of the histories by the Republican literati and you'll find that bit missing. Historical revisionism it's called,” the Slug scoffed.

 

“Could you be up to the fuckers?” Pah Wah examined his fingernails.

 

“And when the battle goddess Morrigu and her sisters came in the form of scald-crows and sat on the shoulders of the dead Cuchulainn what d'yuh think they carried in their beaks?”

 

“Poppies.”

 

“Exactly. Course that has fucking disappeared from the texts too not to mention Brian Boru.”

 

“What about him?”

 

“Wasn't poppies found in his sporran when some cunt did for him.”

 

“Was anyone ever got for that?”

 

“Nope. Cold case review, still checking forensics!!” They both laugh heartedly. The Slug flicked cigarette ash off his trousers.

 

“But sure in more modern times wasn't the Irish in the British Army dying in the Khyber Pass for the poppy,” the Slug continued.

 

“Up me arse,” muttered Pah Wah. “Fighting for the poppy!?”

 

“The big Afghan poppy,” confirmed the Slug.

 

“Be the hokey.” Pah Wah was incredulous. “If they had that bigun in their buttonholes they'd be all out of their fucking heads at the Cenotaph. They'd be singing the Bold Fenian Men instead of God Save the Queen. Someone might even pinch her majesty's bum.”

 

“Oh that wouldn't do at all but you're close to the mark.” agreed the Slug. “It wasn't to put them in their button holes, it was to put them in the button holes of the Chinese commies.”

 

“But sure the Khyber Pass up me arse was in the 1840s, the Chinese commies..”

 

“Ah hah, I thought you'd say that, but these men at the top think for the far distant future, not like you or me for today or yesterday, know what I mean?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, why d'yuh think at the moment these Red Guards in China are running around the country out of their fucking heads putting dunces' caps on the heads of their professors and bringing chaos all over the kip. See the picture.....”

 

“My granny couldn't stand them,” Pah Wah announced suddenly.

 

“Your granny!!?”

 

“She fucking hated them.”

 

“Chinkie commies?”

 

“No! Poppies! When I was a kid on me summer holidays in Tullabeg, she'd race into the kitchen, sometimes, and grab the brush and make a dive at the grandfather,” Pah Wah laughed. “’ Get out of the ashes you waster,’” continued Pah Wah imitating the voice of an old woman. “Get out there an get them blasted poppies out of me potato drills, an if I find one later on I'll measure you with this.’”

 

They both laughed. “ Bejaysus she was a violent woman to be sure,” said the Slug.

 

“A holy terror when she caught sight of a poppy, man dear she'd watch him from the back window and she'd say to me, old Nick was busy last night planting his red hoors all over me potato drills, in the black dark with his effin red hoors an me paying good money to the jigger Blackall to have those drills set because himself is too busy burying his arse in the ashes and bladdering about the terrors of the world and oul Nick cavorting around me garden with his red hoors in the dead of night. His red hoors peeping out from me Lumpers like brazen sluts at a brothel window, red hoors, begor.” They both laughed.

 

“Be the hokey Pah Wah you sure can do a good woman's voice.”

 

They both laughed again.

 

“Course your granny wouldn't have been well up on history, like, yuh know the Fomorians or those other fuckers, the eh..Milesians and so on.”

 

“No. She wouldn't have been ofay with such knowledge.”

 

And then the Slug, in a deep melodious tone, sang to the air of the Tumbril Driver's song from Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss:

 

Adorn your buttonhole as you make your way,
With a poppy, while you sing about Gallipoli Bay,
Sign up, sign up, and march along with me,
There's no Easter Lily today.

 

“Bejaysus, I never took you for another Joe Locke,” Pah Wah applauded.

 

Davis shouted to someone inside the house. Then he closed the garden gate behind him and after flicking the remains of the cigarette onto the roadway, he got into a black Hillman Imp car. The car, which was owned by his father, moved off in the direction of the Whitworth Road.

 

“Will we follow him?” asked Pah Wah.

 

“Follow him! Bejaysus we'll follow him to the gates of hell if necessary,” the Slug swore through gritted teeth.

 

They tailed the Hillman to Phibsborough, up the North Circular Road and into the Phoenix Park. The Slug slapped Pah Wah on the knee.

 

“It's here,” he shouted.

 

“What?”

 

“The fucking Tallaght money. I bet he has a shovel in the boot.”

 

Davis drove past the Wellington Monument, down the hill near the Magazine and out the gate onto Chapelizod Road. The Slug groaned. Davis continued on to Chapelizod village and to the surprise of the tailing sleuths he pulled the car up outside Chapelizod Garda Station.

 

“What the fuck!” said Pah Wah as he watched Davis walk smartly up to the front door of the homely garda station and enter. A well-built sergeant was sitting adjacent to the front counter behind a typewriter. His greying hair was rumpled as if he had been playacting with his child, or, perhaps, his grandchild, before leaving for work. He sat back in the chair and gave Davis the slightest hint of a smile.

 

“Can I help yuh?”

 

“I have a bit of a problem, I was driving.”

 

“Petrol. There's a garage.”

 

“Eh no, it's not that. It's a bit delicate if...”

 

“Petrol an' no money, now that is delicate. Actually, it's downright fucking irresponsible.”

 

“No. It's just that I'm after driving out from town. I'm on my way to the west and I think I'm been followed.”

 

“By who?”

 

“Two fellas in a green Morris Minor. Ever since I left Drumcondra. I think...” he paused.

 

“Think what,” demanded the sergeant impatiently.

 

“Eh, I think they might be, you know, nancy boys, sergeant.”

 

The sergeant got up out of the chair briskly. He stared at Davis as if a penis had suddenly grown out of his forehead. With the index finger of his right hand, he made circles of eight on his lips. Davis stared back into the quizzical grimace and thought that he detected a malevolence creeping over the sergeant's face like a shadow crossing a sunlit room. For a moment he thought of running out of the building.

 

“PJ, c'mere,” the sergeant suddenly rasped out.

 

A tall athletic looking guard entered the front office slamming the door behind him.

 

“Did yuh hear that?”

 

“Hear what?”

 

“This young lad here has been followed out from the city by two bumboys.”

 

The guard took a deep drag on his cigarette.

 

“Jesus,” he exhaled along with a small cloud of smoke.

 

“They're right outside,” the sergeant laughed.

 

“Outside,” agreed the incredulous guard. He whipped off his tunic and threw it onto the counter.

 

As Davis drove out of Chapelizod he could see, in the car mirror, the burly sergeant and the Slug pushing each other about the footpath.