1922
“Slap your eyes on that one. What d’you think of that?”
“f**k-ing hell.”
“What’s this? Dirty pictures is it?”
Jem Fortune had a supply of them, God alone knew where from. He wasn’t telling. When not amusing himself with them, he liked to give himself a secondhand thrill from passing them around. And the freedom fighters of Mucknamore IRA, bored out of their brains sitting in an outhouse full of nothing but the smell of old straw, were even more than usually willing to give such matters their attention.
Seven of the column were there, in a rickety shed that once sheltered animals, had been there for over a week now, ever since Parle and Delaney escaped from the gaol. Seven brave soldiers of the Irish Republic enduring a miserable, wet afternoon that was turning into a dark, drawn-
