Field of Blood (20 page)

been left with him and not collected. The lads always used to say that the Jap digitals would put him out of business. I never heard his name, but he was somewhere behind the market in Monaghan city. So, I didn't do sniping and I didn't do bombs. I was R.P.G. and they'd no warheads. And the lads were being

lifted, every bloody day ... So, I went south. Roisin didn't fight me. She didn't say I was yellow, nothing like that. She didn't say I shouldn't. She's wonderful, my Roisin. She never gave out, just packed my bag. I went down south ... Shit, I didn't know life could be so bloody perfect as it was down south.'

`We have to know everything. Every single thing.'

`There was a Post Office. There was two cars I hijacked. There was a punishment

shooting, I didn't actually shoot him ...'

Òne at a time, in order, and the names.'

Àm I doing alright?

'You're alright so far. We'll start with the Post Office ...'

Ìt is indeed a lovely thought, Mrs McAnally. It's a beautiful thought but it just doesn't work that way. In theory I can drive down to

Castlereagh and announce at the gate that you have instructed me to take your

husband's case and that therefore I have come to seek a visit to him. And if they

let me in, and they gave me access to your husband then that would indeed be

lovely and beautiful. As I say, it doesn't work that way.'

Mr Pronsias Reilly's desk was deep with briefs. He had the briefs on his desk of four men who had been up before the Magistrates in the morning, and more briefs for two more who would be up the following morning. He had the briefs of

six more clients who had been on all day in the Lord Chief Justice's court room on

the Crumlin Road, and that was a counsel trial with a chance of acquittals. He had

his preparation reading to do that night before the morning sitting.

Ìf I had all the hours of the day to devote to your husband, Mrs McAnally, then I

just might get into Castlereagh, and they might just have to produce him. They

know my work schedule, they know what time I have available, so they'll keep me

kicking my heels while the clock goes round. That's the way it works.'

He thought she was quite a good‐looking girl. He thought that if she wasn't running a house in Turf Lodge on Social Security then she could have made herself into a really good‐looking girl. Bony round the hips, and a little slack on

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the chest, but a smashing face on her. Hell of a sight better than half of the slags that came and parked in his office looking for help in keeping the husband out of

the Kesh.

`With your husband's, er, antecedents, he'll know to keep his mouth quite shut for seven days ... after that he's home, or he's in court and charged. If he's charged I'll be in court to take his brief ... It's Mr Justice Simpson, isn't it? I hear, round the corner information, that his clothes didn't do too well at Forensic.

Believe me, Mrs McAnally, even if I were to camp at Castlereagh and finally get

access, I don't think that I could keep him out of court.'

He saw her chin quiver, and her lips were thin and pale and tight, and her fingers

clasped a small handkerchief. She was a tough one, she'd screw like a steam engine ... He smiled, held out his hand to be shaken, and to indicate that the interview was terminated. He often thought that if the P.I.R.A. men were as tough as the women they left behind then the war would have been won many

years before.

`Thank you for dropping by, Mrs McAnally. You should look on the best side of

things ... I'm sure Mr McAnally is much too sensible to incriminate himself.'

Dropping by. He knew the poor wretch would now have a fight on her hands in

the black taxi queue, and then the trudge from the Glen Road back into the depths of Turf Lodge.

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**`. . . I used to come up from the South every three, four months, but only for a

few days, and to see Roisin and the kids. You get a bit hungry for the woman, you

know it's like that. You have to have a woman, if you're not a bloody monk, and

you have to see the children. The boys left me alone when I came up ... They must have known that I was up, you don't bloody cough in Turf Lodge without the boys knowing, so they'd have known that I was up and with Roisin, but they

let me be. I reckoned they left me alone because they hadn't a launcher, or if they

had a launcher they hadn't any warheads for it. I'd go down the bar sometimes

when I was with Roisin, and I might see someone that I knew, and I'd wave, and

they'd wave, but they left me to myself. I guess it was kind of understood ...'

The confidence of Sean Pius McAnally was full grown. And in front of him McDonough was nodding earnest encouragement, and behind him Astley was

writing furiously. The fifth day was slipping by, and McAnally was now a favoured

creature, part of another man's army. He told himself that what he did was for Roisin, and for Young Gerard and Little Patty and Baby Sean.

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`.. Then these two came to the caravan.' `Names, Gingy.'

`Never had any names, and I'd never seen them before. They didn't give me their

names. They brought me back. They didn't ask me to come, they just brought me

back, like I'd bloody deserted. They didn't have the right to treat me like I was some sort of filth.'

`We'll work you through the snapshot book.'

`They'd no call to treat me like I was rotten. They brought me back, they seemed

to think I'd just cut and run when I went to the Free State ... Bastards.'

`When you've finished with them, Gingy, they'll wish they hadn't treated you like

filth.'

Ì was a good man, I was one of the best men in the Organization.

When I was with them I never let any bugger down. I did what was

bloody asked of me, I did it good and well ...'

`We got the message, Gingy. They'll get the message.' `Too bloody right they will.'

Each evening the typists took dictation from Astley, and the statement file of Sean Pius McAnally grew fatter. And the statement file bred other files, and the

cross‐indexing and the computer searches splayed outwards. There was a cross‐

index and a new file for every name mentioned by the new tout. And each night,

after the typists had finished, the new files and read‐outs from the P.‐Band computer ended on Rennie's desk.

It was brilliant, magic.

He knew it was just for starters. Turning them was one thing, keeping them turned was the devil's own work. Howard Rennie was a

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methodical man. By the fifth evening he had started to plan the lifts and swoops

that would follow the seventh day of McAnally's incarceration at Castlereagh, and he let it be known that he would require the entire cell block to be cleared and waiting empty for a new intake. And a message had come down from on high, from the Castle at Stormont. The message said that he, Howard Rennie, was responsible, that his career depended on McAnally's statement.

The platoon had been on Ìmmediate', so they were scrambled first from

Springfield Road.

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Two landrovers and two Pigs, and bursting out of the barracks with the

headlights on and the horns blasting and the traffic scattering, and bellowing off

down the Falls.

The report that had tumbled the platoon out of the quiet of Springfield Road was

as vague as all of the initial call‐outs. The reports said there was a crowd on Divis, gathered outside a chipper, that shots had been fired. There would be nothing clearer until Ferris and his platoon were on location, and back on the radio. Not

much talk in the landrover. All tensed because they were off and riding into the

unknown. Tensed and hushed because no man in the platoon could wipe from his

mind the thought of a come‐on, the ruse to lure the Security Forces into the field

of a sniper's fire, or within range of a hidden mine.

They came across the junction of Falls and Springfield.

Ferris saw the crowd, half way down Divis, spilling from the pavement onto the

street. He heard the baying of angered voices.

There were three single shots, and for a fraction the crowd was silent and scurried back, and then surged forward again, as if the shots were insufficient to

frighten it. Behind Ferris there was the metal scrape of the escorts arming their

rifles. If there was any slight reassurance it was in the heavy engine whine of the

Pigs behind Ferris. Nearer to the crowd now and the voices were sharper and belting out hostility.

The platoon had a drill for such an occasion. Nothing for Ferris to say, the drill would be automatic. His landrover and the rear landrover came right to the edge

of the crowd before scratching to a stop. The first Pig swerved past them and then slewed across the road fifty yards ahead to block the oncoming traffic. The

second Pig would do the same behind them. The cordon was immediate.

Hate filled the faces wherever Ferris looked. The women were at the back of the

half‐moon crowd, their voices braying at the upper windows of the brick building,

screaming and finger pointing at the twin windows above Fiori's chipper. It was a

silly thought, but Ferris briefly entertained it ... World's worst urban guerrilla battlefield, and the place was chosen by Signor Fiori to open a chipper and flog

hamburgers and

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**sausages and rock salmon ... Christ, it must have been bad in Naples to get Signor Fiori to try his luck in the Falls of Belfast . . . A bloody daft thought ... The women were at the back, and in front of them were their menfolk. Ferris saw what they called in the Mess the aggro yobs who threw themselves against the

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closed street door like there was no tomorrow. It was the door at the side of the

chipper that was their target. The door would lead to a staircase and a self-contained flat above the chipper. Ferris could see the upper windows were broken, and were curtainless . . . a derelict flat.

The voices were a cacophony around him as Ferris and his escort and Fusilier Jones came out of the landrover. The noise was ringing in his ears, but in those

first moments he seemed to hear no single and distinguishable voice, only a reeking babble of alien accents. The soldiers prised their way through the crowd

and to the front of Fiori's chipper, and used their rifle butts to chop the crowd back from the door. When Ferris looked up he fancied that he saw a shadow pass

close to the window. His nose puckered at a sharp, acrid, smarting smell.

`Rear's secure, Mr Ferris ...' The shout of Ferris's platoon sergeant. `But there's no back exit.'

Ferris was close to the side door. There was deep grey smoke filtering from underneath the door and through the old post slit. He felt the irritation at his eyes. Bloody gas ... C.S. gas . . . The faces of the crowd were close to him, twisted in their anger as if a prize was escaping them. At last he understood the venom of

the words.

`Fucking S.A.S. bastards . . .' `Come to keep your fucking spies safe, have you? . .

.' `Bloody killer squads . . .' `Found out, you bastards, because you're not as fucking clever as you think you are ...'

Ferris understood.

The derelict flat was a covert observation post occupied by the Special Air Service, and not covert any longer. And the mob had gathered for them, and the

S.A.S. troopers had fired warning shots and tipped C.S. grenades down the stairs

to hold the crowd back. Not bloody laughing gas, but Ferris was grinning. He'd heard once, down in the country on his first tour, of a shop owner who'd reckoned he'd rats in the rafters, and who'd called in the Pest man, and that fellow had crawled through a ceiling hole with his tin of poison paste and confronted a long‐stay surveillance squad . . . some rats. The S.A.S. getting themselves rumbled was enough to bring a grin to any soldier, especially to Ferris, passed over by that Regiment.

`Back the Pig up, right up to the door ... Don't take all bloody day.' A whining Brummie accent squeaking through the post slit.

Ferris gave his orders. His Fusiliers patiently worked the crowd back, but the fury

was gone because the chance of success was lost. The Pig

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was driven close to the door, and its back doors opened to make a shield, to separate the crowd from the doorway.

The gas had now caught at Ferris's eyes. You weren't supposed to wipe your eyes

with your sleeve, you weren't supposed to blink and try and squeeze the irritation

out. He did both.

He bent to the post slit.

Ferris shouted. `You can come out now, it's safe ...'

Ferris felt himself reeling. And his balance was frayed at the hands of the men from the Regiment that had turned him down. He could hear voices raised in laughter against him as he struggled to stand straight.

The door was wrenched open.

`Took your time, cocko . . .' The Brummie came out through the door. He was short, squat, like a well fed spider. He wore a navy boiler suit, and a week of beard growth and a wool stretch hat. He carried a rifle, a pair of bulbous night‐sight binoculars and a rucksack. He came through the door fast and jumped easily into