Field of Blood (47 page)

wrong, not Brennie Toibin, because I've quit ...'

`How do you rehearse the statement?

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'I have to be able to speak the statement without looking at it. They start shouting at you, trying to interfere with what you're saying, and they tell you you're a liar, that you're making it all up.'

`Like it would be in court?'

`That's what they say it would be like in court ‐ only I'm not finding out what it's like in court, I'm quitting.'

`That's what you said, Gingy.'

Ànd meant it.'

`What'll you do?'

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**`When I've quit ...? I'll lie up for a bit, then I'll put the word out, that I'm looking to go back ...'

`Go back?'

`Go back home.'

`You'll be dead before you get a mile off the boat.'

Gingy seemed not to hear him. Ìf the word's right I'll go back home.' `What's home?

'Home is Roisin, home is the kids.'

Ferris breathed the cold air deep into his lungs. `She'd not have you back.'

`Don't mess me,' Gingy snarled.

`You know a big man . . .'

Ì know a hundred big men.'

`Do you know a big man with a bullet scar in his throat?'

Gingy hesitated, he was trying to read Ferris and could not. `What if I do?

'Do you know him?

'I know Frankie Conroy, so what if I do? 'Does he know Roisin?

'She might know him.'

`Does she know him very well?

'She's no reason to.'

`Does she know him well enough for him to be calling with the presents and the

tree for Christmas and the lights, does she know him that very bloody well?'

Gingy's head dropped into his hands. His shoulders were shaking, his face was hidden from Ferris. His voice was muffled through his fingers. `Do you know what

the fear is? Does a Brit soldier know that?

'Yes.'

`You'd not have the chance of knowing.'

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`We had a sniper, when I was out on patrol last week, we were hit by a sniper, that was pretty scary.'

Òne of your squaddies got hit, you wondered how you didn't?

'I was the target,' Ferris said. Ì just stopped, I can't remember why, I must have

broken his aim as he was on the trigger. His bullet glanced off the mag on my rifle, the impact put me down on the deck, which is why my nose isn't healthy, wasn't Sam. Knowing the rifle had been on you, the aim on you, that was pretty

scary. Knowing that you'd been chosen, out of eight and he'd chosen you. I suppose it was because I was the officer . . .'

Gingy shook his head, he looked up from his hand. There was pity

for Ferris in his eyes. `You know fuck all of nothing.'

`He'd taken a derelict house, on the corner of the Drive and the

Crescent in Turf Lodge, he had food there and a sleeping bag.' `Don't go back,'

Gingy said hoarsely.

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Ferris smiled, sadly. `Have to go back, and lightning never strikes twice.'

`How many snipes in your platoon area, the last month?

'No snipes, not in the last month.'

`Not in your Battalion?'

`Not one, we had a petrol attack ...'

Ànd it's the first snipe, and it's you that's the target ... and Roisin's gone home, and Frankie Conroy's sniffing at her fucking door ... You think you were bloody random?'

Ferris gazed at Gingy, opened‐mouthed. `Roisin would have ...?T

'They've got you down as the way to me. Don't go back . . . 'Course Roisin would

have, you're her fucking enemy, you're the enemy of every bastard in Turf Lodge.

You're the friend of the supergrass ... If you go back you know fuck all of nothing.

You tell me if I go home I'm dead. I'm telling you that if you go back you're sniped.'

Ì have to go back. Because I said I'd stand beside you, and I will.'

`You're bloody mad.'

Ì'm going to go back, and you're going to give evidence, Gingy.'

`What's you going back going to get you?

'Gingy, believe me, me going back is going to get you into the witness box.'

`You're all crap, Ferris.'

`We're going back, you and me, Gingy ...'

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`You'll be in the bloody gutter.'

`So you can put the bastards away.'

`You'll be in the gutter and the kids'll be jumping round you, fucking clapping.'

`Not you, not me, neither of us are running scared from the bastards.'

Ferris stood up, and Gingy McAnally followed. The light from the street lamp beamed onto their faces. Ferris managed a sharp smile, and Gingy grinned and then shook his head. Their hands were clasped for a moment.

`What'll have happened to your girl?'

Ferris walked away.

He passed Prentice, who nodded curtly, and further down the street he saw Goss

who was lolling head back and asleep in a parked car.

He thought of a man waiting in the upper room of a derelict house with his food

and his sleeping bag and his Armalite rifle, and the face of David Ferris in his mind. He thought of a gutter in Turf Lodge, and he thought of the children's feet

jumping before his fading sight, and he thought of their shouts in his dying ears.

He thought of his father who was embarrassed to speak of thèdifficulties'. He thought of Sergeant Tunney who wanted a few left for him and who would never

again wear a uniform over his re‐grafted skin. He thought of the Chief of the Belfast Brigade, pulled from a hiding place under a bed. He thought

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**of the faces of Turf Lodge, all anonymous, all without names, all joined in their

loathing of David Ferris, friend of Gingy McAnally.

The door of the Midnite Club was padlocked. The windows were darkened. He looked both ways on the street, and didn't find her.

He went to the car park, where she had left her car. The car park was empty.

He walked the eight miles from Aldershot to Farnham, and revellers who were returning to their homes hooted at him and swept past.

He walked into the estate of new Wates houses. He walked up the cul‐de‐sac to

the accountant's home. He saw Sam's car, parked with the near front wheel among the pruned roses.

He walked round the side of the house, and looked up at the back room where the double bed was, and shouted Sam's name.

When the kitchen door opened, when she stood in her nightdress in the doorway,

he saw that Sam who had laughed in the Midnite Club had wept in her friend's bedroom. She clung to him, he clung to her. Big, bold Sam, crying like a baby.

Ì so wanted you to come back here ...'

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`You're going to be mine, Sam, I'm going to be yours. Soon as I'm out of that dreadful place.'

`Promise.'

She was smiling and she was crying. A rainbow in the night, crying and loving.

Ì promise.'

`Thank God you came back ... That creature, is he really your friend?

'I have to be his friend. If I'm not his friend then he's had it.' `You promise you'll come back to me.'

`Promise, Sam.'

She kissed him all the way up the stairs, all the way to the back bedroom.

19

The landrover was waiting for David Ferris in the car park outside the Customs hall. It had been a rough night on the boat, force eight, he had hardly slept in the hard seat in the passenger lounge. Since they had sighted land, a blur in the dawn

light, he had been on deck, leaning on the rail, watching the coast line. He was

chilled from the sea's climbing spray.

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The faithful Jones, with two squaddies to ride shotgun, had brought the

landrover to meet him.

Ferris was unshaven. He wore the same shirt and socks as in the Midnite Club. His

suit trousers were holed from the collision with the dustbin, the skin on his right

knuckle was bruised.

Fusilier Jones arched his eyebrows. À good leave, sir?

'Excellent,' Ferris said.

`How is Sergeant Tunney?

'In good shape, Jones, looking forward to getting back so he can bawl your arse

off you.'

`You gave him our love, sir?

'I told him you were all wetting your beds because he wasn't there to tuck you up

each night ...'

They drove through the city that was awakening from the Christmas and New Year holiday. They queued in the traffic lines, and saw the files that were waiting

for the Sales doors to open on Royal Avenue and in Donegal Square. All the greasepaint normality of Belfast was on show for his homecoming, all the fraud

that pretended this was just another community in the United Kingdom lurching

back to life. In the cars around their landrover were the civil servants and the 262

representatives and the bank clerks and the insurance men, and on the

pavements beside the landrover were the housewives and the secretaries and the

shop girls who were late and running, and none of them would care a shit for Ferris's war and the supergrass's war.

And then they were on the Falls. He had Jones's rifle across his knee, and he had

cocked it. He saw the bomb sites and the graffiti, and the end of terrace wall that

had long ago been painted white so that a passing patrol would show up for a marksman's aim, and he saw the bar that was caged in wire against petrol bombs, and the Housing Executive office that was protected by concrete

dragon's teeth against a closequarters car bomb, and he saw a cruising R.U.C.

mobile, and a foot patrol of Charley company. His eyes were on the roof‐tops, and were searching for the missing slates, and for the darkened holes in brickedup doorways. He was watching the gable walls that would give a sniper cover until the moment he was prepared to fire. He watched the dustbins that could be the hiding place for a pack of explosives linked to a command wire. He

watched the Falls as he had never watched it before.

He remembered Gingy McAnally's warning and the clasp of McAnally's fingers on

his, and in that moment he thought he might throw up because he was so bloody

scared to be back in the Falls.

The landrover swung through the gates at Springfield.

Jones cut the engine. Ì'd get yourself changed, sir,' he said confidentially, ànd get your face scraped ... I'd do it soonest, sir.'

Back in uniform, with his face burning from a new razor blade, he

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**went to the Armoury and drew out his rifle and signed his name for two magazines of 7.62 mm ammunition.

On his way to Bravo's Ops he met the Intelligence Officer. `Have a good leave?

'Fine,' Ferris said.

The Company Commander greeted him like a malingerer. `How was your leave?

'Fine.'

He passed the Chaplain in a corridor.

`Nice to see you back, David. A good leave I hope.' `Very good, thank you.'

He went to the Commanding Officer's room. `What shape's Tunney in?' Sunray asked. `First‐class, sir, raring to be back.'

`Damn good. You had a good leave?

'Very good, sir.'

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There was what they wanted to hear, and there was what they didn't want to hear.

The Battalion area, Ferris learned, had been as quiet as a cemetery during his absence. The locals were still sleeping off their New Year's liquor intake. He had

missed nothing, so he was told.

They met in the city centre and went together into Boots on Royal Avenue.

Mr Pronsias Reilly had set up the meeting with Frankie Conroy, scrambled it into

his lunch break from the Crown Court. He preferred to meet among the crowds

of the Belfast shopping area, rather than risk himself against the hidden electronic surveillance systems that operated on the Falls and throughout

Nationalist West Belfast. He would have preferred Frankie to have used his bloody loaf, to have dressed with a little more care, not to have appeared as if straight off an Assistance queue. They made a rare pair ‐ Mr Pronsias Reilly, suit

and black overcoat and blue shirt and white collar, and Frankie Conroy, mud-scarred Docs and jeans and donkey jacket and a wool cap ‐ working their way past the cosmetics counters and the garden tools and the hardware electricals.

`They're galloping, they're rushing into court,' Reilly said quietly. `What does that mean?

'They're going for an early Preliminary hearing in front of the Magistrate. They've

delivered the prosecution statements, they're going ahead in a week or so . . .'

`Normally it's bloody months.'

`They're going to get McAnally into court, get the boys committed

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for trial, then they'll put him out to clover for a year, then we'll have the main show.'

`Why're they rushing?'

`Perhaps because he's going to be better sooner rather than later ... there's fuck

all the defence can do about it, whatever the reason.'

Ì've lost him,' Frankie said simply.

`Lost who?

'Lost his friend, lost the Brit officer who holds his hand.'

Since St Stephen's Day, the day after Christmas, Frankie Conroy had trudged the

streets of Turf Lodge, looking for the officer whose face was drawn in his mind.

He had seen the mobiles and the foot patrols, and the V.C.P.s and the P.‐checks.

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He had been out early in the morning, and in the late afternoon, when the patrols

came. He had wondered whether the television and the papers had lied. They had said the officer wasn't hurt, that the magazine of his rifle had deflected an aimed shot. He had wondered whether that was a bloody lie. He had recognized