Field of Blood (51 page)

for disguise. He laid the Luger pistol on the pillion seat of the motorcycle and placed the crash helmet carefully over it, and lifted the tinted visor so that when

he looked through the space he could see the weapon. There was a single, short

length of fishing line hanging from the helmet. Irritably, because he was frightened, he waved the boy back from him, not for the boy's safety, but because he needed the light to complete the arming of the booby trap. He fingered the line down to the iron bar underneath the padded pillion seat, and gently inserted it round the bar, and tightened it so that it was taut. He was breathing heavily. He had seen the six‐inch steel nails that were held round the

gelignite with binding tape, as he knotted the line.

If the helmet was moved, lifted, picked up, then the line would be tugged, then

the power circuit would be opened.

He wiped the sleeve of his jacket across his forehead. The boy watched him, detached and unexcited. The boy watched him as if Frankie were a craftsman mechanic. He was angry that the boy had to see him when he was sweating.

He told the boy that Mattie Blaney, in the Kesh, would be proud of his son. He repeated his instructions to the boy, stabbing with his finger for emphasis.

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When Frankie had gone, the boy lowered himself down onto the pavement and

sat beside the rear wheel of the motorcycle. There were

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**no scratches on the vivid blue paintwork and on the chrome finish to the engine parts, and he could see his own face reflected and distorted on the curve

of the crash helmet. And when he looked through the opening of the helmet he

could see the Luger. The idea wasn't new, but it might work on the Brits.

The motorcycle stood outside Number 46. After Frankie had gone, the woman came out from 46 and asked the boy what he was at, and the boy told her shrilly

not to ask, and that she'd be better in the back, in her kitchen. She went into her

house to fetch her man. The man came close to the motorcycle and the boy waved him away with his steel stick, and the man went back into his house and

drew the curtains of the living room and of the upstairs front bedrooms so that he

would see nothing.

Two women, with their push chairs and their older kids around their skirts, came

towards the boy, and the kids ran ahead and wanted to touch the motorcycle because it was new, expensive, shining. The boy flailed at them with his crutch,

and the mothers saw the cold determination on his face, and gripped the hands

of their kids and dragged them on down the pavement.

All those who looked from their windows, or who paused to stare out from their

front doors, or who walked past the motorcycle, saw Mattie Blaney's boy

guarding it and taking care of the crash helmet on the pillion seat, and they knew

what was planned. There were telephones in some of the houses, but none of those who knew even considered ringing the confidential number at Police

Headquarters. Hadn't a wee boy been shot dead by the peelers in Short Strand

the week after Christmas, and him taking sugar to his Gran, and him claimed by

the peelers as a gunman, and him not fifteen? The man in Number 46

systematically removed the family china from the mantelpiece above the fire in

his living room and stacked it on the kitchen table.

Half an hour after Frankie had left Mattie Blaney's boy there were no children playing on the pavements of the Drive. A silence had crawled over the street, a

silence of waiting.

Within minutes of their meeting Ferris had been told that the Scots Guard lieutenant liked to be known as 'Roddy', being an abbreviation for Roderick. He

was a veteran of the hike to Port Stanley. He was hating the prospect of four months in Belfast because he gathered that he wouldn't get to a decent party all

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the time he was there. He was disappointed to hear that they would be going on

foot.

Ferris didn't say much.

Ferris said less when they were out on the Springfield, when they were clear of

the covering fire of the barracks' perimeter.

Roddy ambled beside Ferris. He seemed unimpressed with the sudden charging

runs of the squaddies, and didn't take part in the frequent dives for cover behind

the base of lamp posts and the privet hedges and in the doorways. They were at

the top of the Springfield, hemmed in by the estates. In front of Ferris a squaddie

sprinted, bent low, across the road, causing a black taxi to swerve to miss him.

Ferris was crouched down on his haunches, his rifle at his shoulder rotating over

the roofs and upper windows. Roddy stood beside him. He had been issued with

a Browning automatic pistol, and the strap of the holster was still fastened down.

Ferris's face and the faces of all of his section were blacked with camouflage cream, Roddy's cheeks were pinkly fresh.

`Do you always behave like this?

'What do you mean?

'All this scampering about ... I'm not a bloody general, you don't have to impress

me. If it's for my benefit ...'

Ìt's not for your benefit,' Ferris muttered. From the corner of his eye he saw the

flash of a movement at a chimney stack ... and a seagull flapped itself airborne.

`Well, you're hardly impressing the natives. If I lived here ‐ what do say this place is? Bally what? Whatever the place is called ‐ if I lived here then I'd say the British army is half scared to death. You're like rabbits bolting out of a cornfield. When

we were in the Falklands ...'

`Shut up,' Ferris said quietly, too faintly.

`. .. In the Falklands we dominated the Argies. Didn't have manpower superiority

or logistics superiority, but we dominated them, enough for them to crumble.'

`Belt up,' Ferris snarled.

`Did I hear you right . . . ? Please yourself. If one can't make an observation . . . '

`When you're in charge you can walk up here in fucking red coats. For as long as

you're with me, for Christ sake, shut up.'

Ferris ran across the street, and Roddy loped after him. Ferris saw the surprise beetling the Guards officer's brow. Jones came after them, grinning hugely.

`Wipe that off your face, Jones, and concentrate,' Ferris said.

Roddy said, `Where are we?

'Coming out of Ballymurphy, going into Turf Lodge.'

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`What's Turf Lodge?

'Turf Lodge is the enemy ‐ just like Longdon and Tumbledown were the enemy,

only you won't see any bloody white flags because we don't have any Argie conscripts here.'

Ferris could have kicked himself. The Guards officer would go back to his depot

and report that the Fusiliers had the wind up.

`Listen, I'm sorry for shouting ... every doorway, alleyway, derelict house, is danger. You get used to that and that way you stay alive.'

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**His apology was acknowledged. Roddy ignored him as he would have ignored

a bore at Sunday morning drinks.

Over his radio Ferris reported his position to Ops, and then he waved the section

forward, into Turf Lodge.

McAnally stumbled down the steps of the Hercules. Prentice hung to the collar of

his jacket.

Rennie was by the cars. He nodded with approval to Prentice as the minders brought McAnally to the transport.

Prentice said softly to Rennie, Ì wouldn't bet on him, sorry.'

Rennie seemed not to hear. A big jovial smile for McAnally.

`Welcome back, Gingy . . . They've not been force‐feeding alcohol down your throat, I hope. You'll need to have left a corner, we've a bit of a thrash tonight.

I'm dropping you off, then I'm going for David.'

The doors snapped shut on them. Rennie and his driver in the front, McAnally sandwiched between Prentice and Goss in the back. Behind them was a back‐up.

They swept away for the forty‐minute drive to the seaside hotel on Belfast Lough.

Roisin was on her knees in the kitchen. It was the third time she had scrubbed the

kitchen floor since they had moved back. When she was close to the linoleum, when her nose was near to it, she could smell what the mob had done on the floor of her kitchen.

`Ma, have you been out the front?' Young Gerard was in the kitchen doorway, excited and bubbling.

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'How've I been in the front when I'm on my knees out here? 'They're going to do a

fucking Brit, out in our road.' It was her son that spoke, her child. Roisin shuddered.

`Honest, Ma, they're going to do a Brit, the Provies are.'

Young Gerard didn't speak of his father any more, not after he'd put the phone

down on him. She had tried, twice, three times, haltingly, to make an excuse to

the child for what his father had done, and Young Gerard had walked away from

her.

She wiped her hands on her apron.

Young Gerard ran in front of her to the front door. As his hand was on the latch

she caught him, swung him behind her. She opened the door, she looked out.

She looked right and the Drive was deserted. She looked left and she saw the bright blue of the motorcycle and Mattie Blaney's boy standing beside it.

`Look, Ma ... the bike, Ma ... that's for the Brits.'

She remembered the hunting keen glare on Frankie's face when she

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had called him to the window, pointed down to the street for him to

see the officer who was Gingy's friend.

She swore at Young Gerard that she'd half bloody murder him if he

followed her out.

She slammed the door shut after her. She was wearing her slippers

and her apron and she had her hair tied up in a scarf.

She walked to the motorcycle and Mattie Blaney's boy. The boy

watched her coming and his eyes were alive with suspicion, dislike. `What's happening here?

'It's nothing to you, what's happening.' `Don't give me lip.' `You'd be best in your house, Missus.' `What's special about the bike?'

`Wouldn't be telling you, wouldn't be telling a supergrass woman.' `What's the bike there for?' She was shouting at the boy.

Mattie Blaney's boy was coldly calm. `You wouldn't need to know.' She took a step nearer to the motorcycle, and the boy raised his stick,

and its tip pointed at her stomach. She walked round the motorcycle,

out of the range of the stick if the boy lunged for her stomach. Through

the visor space of the crash helmet she saw the barrel of the pistol. The light was

beginning to slide. The afternoon was falling fast away.

The patrols always came in the grey half‐light. Usually she saw the

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officer in the dusk patrols.

`They'll stiff you if you tout, Missus,' Mattie Blaney's boy said. Ànd

they'll burn the roof off over the head of your brats.'

She turned, very slowly, and walked back to her house.

She took Young Gerard and Little Patty and Baby Sean into the

kitchen, and she locked the door on the inside and put the key in the

pocket of her apron, and worked with the brush and the bucket at

the linoleum flooring.

Frankie sighed the air deep into his lungs.

He kicked down the support leg of the motorcycle, left it gleaming blue and chrome with the engine ticking. The crash helmet was a tight fit on his head, awkward, hard for his face to twist behind the tinted mask. He took the Luger from his pocket, cocked it, and ran towards the doorway of the Post Office.

He cannoned through the door. His voice reverberated inside the helmet as he screamed for money. It was dark in the Post Office, and he saw women cringe away from him, indistinct shadowed figures. He fired twice into the ceiling, and

the pistol shots were muffled. The Post Office on the Glen Road was hit regularly,

five times the last year. The Post Master was protected by a bullet‐proof glass from counter to

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**ceiling. Frankie waved his Luger at a woman and fired into the wall, over her

head as she knelt on the floor. The woman was weeping. The woman was Mrs Deasy, and he'd been to school with her twins. The Post Master thrust a bundle of

notes into the sliding tray under the counter glass. Frankie grabbed for the money, dropped some, pocketed some, and ran for the door.

The Suzuki roared to life. Every man and woman and child walking in the Glen Road on the southern edge of Turf Lodge saw the motorcycle and its black-helmeted rider career away towards the roundabout and the junction with

Kennedy Way and the Monagh by‐pass.

He cornered on the roundabout, and the grin split his face pressing his cheeks against the glass. He saw the grey toad shape of a police landrover coming circumspectly down the Monagh by‐pass. Fucking good ... It was more than a hundred yards from him. Still turning on the roundabout, he fired twice at the landrover's windscreen. Fucking liven up the pigs. He accelerated back down the

Glen Road, the siren in his ears, piercing the helmet. Now the air waves would be

jumping.

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Twice he turned to check that the landrover was in sight, in touch with him, then

he turned off, skidding and fast, into the Crescent of Turf Lodge.

`BRAVO 41 ... BRAVO 41 ... COME IN . . . URGENT YOU COME IN BRAVO