Field of Blood (38 page)

children and her baggage, and when she was on the street, he slammed the door

behind her and drove fast away.

She walked up the front path and rang the bell of Number 12.

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`You'll not have had breakfast ‐ I'm taking you where you'll get a decent breakfast,' Rennie said.

Ferris sat numb beside him. Bloody cold, and he had a headache from the night

before.

Rennie eased off the speed once he had crossed the Peace Line, once they were

clear of Provo territory and back in the land of the Protestant Ascendancy.

It was unfamiliar ground for Ferris. His knowledge of Belfast was confined to the

Housing Executive estates on the west side of the city. They came off the main

road into Dunmurry, and the shabby streets gave way to wide tree‐lined avenues

and modern bungalows and substantial detached houses, and the headlights

threw up tended gardens that were stocked from the Garden Centres.

Rennie read him. `Not all Belfast is Whiterock, Turf Lodge, Ballymurphy. There's

another life. People round here don't know there's a war going on. They drive into town, they do their work, they come back here. If they come back in the evening and want a meal out, then they head for the country. People round here

have never driven through Andersonstown. There's 25,000 buggers in the

Security Forces protecting the people round here, and they don't want to know

what we're at or why.'

They turned into a cul‐de‐sac. It was brightly lit, and the pavement sides were swept clean of leaves, and there were names on the gates. It might have been where his mother and father lived. There was a house at the end of the roadway,

front door facing them, and Ferris

saw the lights burning above the garage door, and above the front door, and on

the front corner of the house, and down the side of the house. Rennie had brought him home.

`Because I live here, every bugger in the road looks under his car in the morning

to see if it's wired, to see if they've cocked up the address .., but in my house you'll get a decent bloody breakfast.'

`How do you live with it, not knowing when, but knowing they'll come one day?'

Ferris asked.

An old mirthless smile on Rennie's face. He had brought the car to a stop outside

the house. He pointed through his window, down to the black plastic rubbish sacks that were by his gate, and Rennie saw the open cardboard box and the glint

from the bottles thrown up by the lights.

`But not before breakfast ...' Rennie said.

Rennie let himself into the house.

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Ferris chuckled, embarrassed, because Rennie had to wait in the open door for him while he cleared his rifle, barrel pointing into the rose bushes, and took off

the magazine.

It was a careful, tidy home. There were photographs on the walls of the hall, framed, of police presentations, there were potted plants, and he wiped his feet

hard on the mat so that his boots wouldn't carry dirt onto the clean, patterned carpet.

`My wife, Gloria ... David Ferris, dear.'

Ferris shook hands with the woman who waited for them at the entrance of the

kitchen. She wore a housecoat, and no cosmetics and her face was lined and he

thought that he had found her before the mascara and the foundation could hide

the anxiety of a detective's wife.

There was a rich scent of bacon and sausages and coffee. Breakfast was laid.

`Can McAnally survive if his woman doesn't support him?'

`That's sharp for this time in the morning.' Rennie led Ferris to the kitchen table.

Ferris wolfed the food off his plate.

`He's hooked,' Rennie spoke through his mouthfuls. `Because he's hooked we didn't make a big deal out of her going. We didn't reckon on going into the counselling business. She was a bloody dead loss. She's a mind of her own, that's

why she was no bloody good to us. He wants to get laid, right, we'll get him laid.

He doesn't need a woman now, he needs a friend ... and he needs someone he

can trust, and he thinks that's you. David, I'd not be doing my job if I didn't bloody milk you.'

Ferris stared down at his plate. `What's to stop him walking out on you?

'Without our help? He hasn't a chance ... David, because you're talking to Gingy

you should know why he hasn't a chance. I've never

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**threatened him on what'll happen if he reneges on me, but you should know.'

`What'll happen?' Ferris looked up and into Rennie's eyes. They were grey, dark,

pitiless.

À couple of weeks back there was a fire across the border in Monaghan. A man

died in his workshop. He was a watch mender. He did watch mending when he

wasn't making P.I.R.A. bombs. It was a bad fire, spread fast, and it trapped the watch mender in his basement. Before we had Gingy we didn't know about the

watch mender. The watch mender's down to Gingy McAnally. Believe me, David,

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if Gingy quits on me then I'd be astonished if some bloody fool 'tec didn't let slip how the watch mender got fried.'

`That's foul, that's . . .'

`Grow up, soldier.'

`That's bloody murder.'

`You're not a boy scout.'

`Why tell meet

'So you'll be better at telling Gingy that he shouldn't quit ... You'll have some more coffee?'

And Rennie was on his feet, and away for the pot, and two teenage girls were in

the kitchen and gathering lunch boxes and scattering text books, and Rennie was

a father and wanting to know about last night's homework. The faces were a blur

and Ferris sagged in his chair. One of the girls had snapped on the radio, and the

kitchen was filled with music, and Ferris shook his head, to try to smash down a

bad dream.

`What are you doing today?

'Double biology, English Lit, Maths. There's a hockey match this afternoon.'

`We've got netball ... What are you doing, Daddy?

'A day in the countryside,' Rennie said affably. Ì'm taking Mr Ferris

and a friend of his for a drive in the country.'

A car horn hooted out in the roadway. The girls fled, leaving their

music behind them.

`What are we going to the country for?

'A scenic drive, where you'll be able to persuade Gingy that he shouldn't quit on

me.'

Ferris retrieved his rifle from the floor. Rennie slipped on his raincoat, and shouted his goodbyes up the staircase.

There was no rain, only the low howl of the winter wind as they drove out of the

cul‐de‐sac and away towards Lisburn.

The tout's family was back in the Drive.

Word spread through Turf Lodge. The supergrass's woman was back, with the supergrass's brats.

The children gathered outside Number 12, because that was where the woman of

the traitor and the kids of the traitor were sheltering.

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Not a policeman, not a soldier, was seen in the Drive, as the screaming insults flew to the front windows of the semi‐detached house.

`Bastard touts . . . they'll stiff your Da, they'll stiff your man ... How much is they paying your bloody man for his lies? ... Fucking yellow, that's your man, Mrs McAnally ...'

Amongst the crowd were relatives of Phonsie McGurr and Brennie Toibin and Fatsy Rawe, and their presence encouraged the crowd, and bricks beat on the front door, and took the glass from the front room windows.

Father Francis came, young and blushing with inexperience.

`Go home, you shouldn't be blaming a good woman. Go home, Roisin's come

back to us because she's walked out on the paid perjurer. Roisin has come back to

us and turned herself away from the Show Trials . . .'

He cuffed and swiped at a boy who ran forward to get a better aim with a fractured piece of paving stone.

When he came into the house, admitted by Mrs O'Rourke, he found Roisin and her children sheltering on the kitchen floor. She was trembling and red‐eyed.

`You took your bloody time,' Roisin spat at the priest.

Ì came when I heard.'

Ì didn't know it would be like that.'

`They'll be used to you soon and they won't harm you or the children. And now

that you are back, there's a man will come to see you and see that all is well.'

`Who will bloody come?

'He'll be here tonight.'

Father Francis left her, and he went outside and sat down on the front doorstep

with his back against the closed door, and the jeering tailed away, and shortly the

crowd drifted down the street and dispersed. There were a few of the youngsters

who threw stones at the windows of Number 63, only a few because the windows

were already broken, and the door was already hanging open, and the inside of

Roisin's McAnally's home was already wrecked.

`How long will this go on?

'Till your man retracts,' her mother said.

Ì'll go bloody mad.'

Ìt'll kill your Da.'

Roisin clung to her children. She couldn't gain the strength to crawl up from the

floor. Her mother put the kettle on the rings.

`When the man comes tonight you have to tell him what he needs to know.'

`Why

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**`To show that they haven't spoiled you, to show you're still ours.' She put her

hand onto the table, she pulled herself up to her knees. Ì'll help you clear the mess, Ma.'

Rennie was at the wheel, with Gingy beside him and Ferris in the back seat. Goss

drove behind them, always on their tail, with Prentice. Across Prentice's knee, and hidden by his anorak, was a Stirling sub‐machine gun.

Rennie's scenic drive took them up over the hills from Lisburn and out past the airport, and through Antrim, and past the waters of Lough Neagh, and through

Randalstown and Castledawson, and away onto the long open road to the

Sperrins, the high rolling moorland mountains. What had been rain in Belfast was

sleet out here, with short showers of hail. Ferris had seen that Gingy rarely smoked, but he snatched a cigarette each time that Rennie offered it. Rennie took them off the main road and into the wilderness beyond Lisnamuck and Moneyneany, took them onto the side road that was wide enough for a tractor and a hay load under the summit of Mullaghmore.

It was beautiful, lonely countryside. There were small hill farm buildings of whitewashed stone, and there were barns of rust ochre, set for shelter in the valleys, and on the bare expanses of the hillsides there were the scattered grazing sheep. Between the showers, where there were gaps in the cloud, the sun

beamed down with torch pools of light on the fields and moorland.

They stopped in a picnic site lay‐by. There were rough‐cut tables and benches.

Christ, Ferris thought, so bloody artificial ...

Rennie climbed out of the car. He looked pleased with himself. He slapped his hands together against the cold. McAnally was a city man. He followed Rennie out reluctantly. Ferris looked up at the looming brow of Mullaghmore, and then

at McAnally's feet, and he saw the Adidas trainers. Shit, and he had his army boots ... Shit, it was unreal to think of McAnally climbing in winter to nineteen hundred feet in bloody Adidas trainers.

`Get a bit of air in your lungs, Gingy, that's what you need,' Rennie boomed. À

good bloody hike's what you want.'

If he stayed with them then there would always be someone to tell McAnally what he needed, what he wanted, Ferris thought.

There was a cluster of sheep watching them. `Come on you young buggers ...'

and Rennie waved towards the summit. 'Goss'll look after your weapon, David.'

They set off on a springy sheep track.

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All so bloody predictable. Prentice shouting from his car that he had trouble with

his indicator lights, and Rennie saying he'd have to help

because Prentice couldn't change his knickers without help and he'd

catch them, and Rennie dropping back, and Ferris and McAnally alone

on the hillside and trudging away from the parked cars.

In the dips in the ground there were hidden weaknesses in the peat

floor, and sometimes McAnally's feet sunk down and were lost in the

black mud, and his feet squelched.

Bloody ridiculous, ridiculous even to a moron supergrass. ,You like walking, Mr Ferris? 'Not a lot.'

Ì hate bloody walking.'

Ì was at school in the North of England, we used to go for walks,

hikes, up in the Lake District, at weekends.'

`You had school at weekends? 'Yes.'

Ànd you had to go, bloody walking?'

Ì suppose we had to, nobody ever said they wouldn't go.'

Ì walked to school, and I walked home, that's all the walking I ever

did.

'Got you out of the house at weekends. Perhaps that's why we didn't mind.'

McAnally grinned. `We had the aggro to get us out of our houses. Internment aggro when we put the barricades up, when the Turf Lodge was no go to the Brits. We had the Motorman aggro when they came and pulled them down. Up

half the fucking night throwing rocks, half fucking asleep at school. What were you doing when we were doing aggro?'

Ferris thought. "71, '72 ... I was about ten, I was trying to get to the Grammar School, after I'd finished proper school I used to go to a retired teacher two evenings and Saturday mornings for extra lessons.'