The Chinaman (31 page)

‘It'll be dangerous,' he warned, and she knew then that she'd won the argument about whether or not she had the ability.

‘Dad, which of us is the best shot?'

‘I can't fault your marksmanship Kerry, but I'm not having you trekking around the Irish countryside with a hunting rifle. It's practically a war zone.'

‘All right then, I won't take my gun. But it's Uncle Liam this man is after, not me,' she pressed. ‘He'll be focused on him, not me.' She waved her hand at the books lining the wall to her left. ‘I've read every book on trapping and tracking on those shelves, and I read most of them before I even went to school.'

It was true, Geraghty acknowledged. Even as a child she'd had a fascination for the books, and she'd taught herself to make snares and simple traps and learnt to recognise spoors and tracks from the diagrams they contained. There were other books, too, manuals on warfare and booby traps and explosives, some that he'd bought out of curiosity and others that he'd acquired in connection with his work for the IRA, and she'd read them just as avidly. But unlike Geraghty, almost all her knowledge of booby traps was theoretical and not practical.

Kerry could see that her father was wavering so she decided to raise the stakes.

‘It's not just a question of helping Uncle Liam,' she said. ‘I want to do something to help the Cause. I didn't stop you when you said you wanted to leave Ireland after Mum died, but you know that deep down I wanted to stay in Belfast and help in any way I could. I feel as strongly as you do about getting the British out of Ireland. You know that.' Geraghty could feel the intensity of her conviction burning across the desk, and he remembered how, years before, he had felt the same desire to see a united Ireland. ‘Let me do this, for the Cause if not for Uncle Liam. This is something I can do, something that's a hell of a lot more constructive than throwing petrol bombs at troops or harassing the RUC.'

Geraghty closed his eyes and rubbed them with the backs of his hands. He sighed deeply and Kerry knew that she'd almost won. One more push and he'd agree. It was time to play her trump card. She sat back down in the chair, pulled it closer to the desk, and leant her elbows on it so that her head was on a level with her father's. ‘And,' she said thoughtfully, ‘it would get me away from here for a while.' She paused, for emphasis. ‘From him,' she added, just in case he didn't get the message.

‘You're not still seeing him, are you?' Geraghty asked.

‘I'm trying not to,' she answered. For almost a year she'd been having an on-off affair with a British Telecom engineer who lived nearby. He was married but couldn't make his mind up whether to leave his wife or stop seeing Kerry. He'd sworn that he hadn't touched his wife in years, but midway through the affair he'd confessed that she was pregnant and that he couldn't abandon her. ‘I suppose it'll be a fucking virgin birth,' she'd screamed, and thrown an ashtray at his head, but the following week she'd phoned him and their lovemaking had been better than ever.

Geraghty had made his disapproval plain, but had also refused to interfere, knowing that his daughter was old enough to make her own mistakes. He figured that she'd realise what a hopeless situation she'd gotten herself into and that she'd come to her senses. He was right. It had been almost two months since she had seen him, though she was still at the stage where she had to keep fighting the urge to call him and jumped whenever the phone rang. She knew that if she saw him again she'd end up in bed with him. Geraghty sensed the pressure she was under and thought that perhaps she was right, a spell in Ireland might be just what she needed to get the man out of her system once and for all.

‘If you go, you're going to have to be careful,' he said.

‘I will be,' she said earnestly.

‘I mean very careful,' he said. ‘It's not a game there, you know. It's not too far from the border. It's a war zone. You don't carry a gun, under any circumstances. You track him, and that's all. You don't take any risks, understand?'

She nodded furiously. ‘I promise. Can I go?'

Geraghty smiled, but it was an uncertain smile. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘You can go.'

She whooped, and grinned, and reached over the desk to hug him and kiss him on the cheek.

‘Go and get Morrison for me,' he told her. ‘I want a word with him.'

Geraghty watched her rush down the corridor. He wasn't surprised at her keenness to return to Ireland, or to help the Provos. She'd put up a hell of a fight when he'd first decided to leave Ireland, and she'd come close to staying behind. Kerry had a stubborn streak, and he guessed that she'd got it from him. She had a hard side, too, a tendency to viciousness which went beyond simple devotion to the Cause. There had been times in Belfast when he'd felt she was actually enjoying taking on the army and the RUC, that she was getting some sort of kick out of the Troubles. Despite his apparent change of heart he was still reluctant to allow her to go back to Belfast and its violent influences, but he owed Liam Hennessy. He owed him a great deal. Besides, he knew that if she really set her mind on going back, he wouldn't be able to stop her. He knew his daughter, and he knew that she wasn't above telephoning Hennessy herself and offering her services. And if things were as bad as they sounded, he doubted if Hennessy would turn her down. And if Hennessy asked him if it was OK for Kerry to go back, could he refuse? Could he refuse any request of the man who held his life in his hands? No, he could not. And she knew that, his darling daughter. She knew that full well.

Kerry found Morrison still watching television. ‘Dad wants to talk to you,' she said. ‘He says I can come with you.'

‘You?' said Morrison, surprised.

‘To help you track down the man who's trying to hurt Uncle Liam.'

A bemused Morrison followed her back down the corridor and into Geraghty's study.

‘Leave us alone, Kerry, and shut the door this time,' Geraghty told her. He waited until she'd gone before speaking. ‘She wants to help you, Sean,' he said.

‘Can she do it?' asked Morrison.

‘Oh yes, she's a first-class tracker, I've taught her everything I know. She often comes with me out on to the moors after deer. She's a good shot, too. That's what I want to talk to you about. I don't want her carrying a gun out there. Under any circumstances. I don't want her put in any danger.'

‘I'll take care of her. I promise.'

‘There's something else.' Geraghty scratched his chin and scrutinised Morrison. ‘I'm not sure how to put this, Sean. Kerry can be a bit, er, overenthusiastic sometimes. Do you know what I mean?'

Morrison shook his head, mystified.

‘She's always idolised Liam, and me, and ever since she was a kid she was on the fringes of the Organisation, running errands, taking messages, the sort of stuff we all went through, you know? Throwing stones at the troops, giving the RUC a hard time. But I never wanted her to get drawn into the real rough stuff, the sort of things I was involved in. I mean, she has a pretty good idea of what I did, and I think she wishes she could be more like me.'

Morrison laughed. ‘Jesus, Micky, it's hardly a secret, is it? There's barely a pub in Derry where they don't sing songs about you on a Saturday night when the beer's flowing.'

‘Aye, Sean, that's right enough. And I'm not ashamed of what I did, far from it. We're at war with the fucking British and I'd do it all over again, the killing and everything. But my family has given enough. I don't want Kerry to get any more involved. I didn't then and I don't now. I promised my wife, God rest her soul, I promised her before she died that I'd take Kerry away from Belfast before she got in too deep. I don't want her to go back.'

‘You're going to stop her?' said Morrison, frowning.

‘No. No, I can't stop her. But you must make sure she realises that this is a one-off. Don't romanticise it for her, don't pull her back. Just use her this one time, then send her back to me.'

‘I understand,' said Morrison.

‘Then good luck, and God bless. And take care of her. She's all the family I've got left.' He swung his plaster cast off the desk and it thudded on to the floor. ‘It's late. You should stay here tonight and make an early start tomorrow. I'll get Kerry to cook us a meal. You might want to telephone Liam and let him know what's happening, if Kerry hasn't done so already.' He reached for a set of metal crutches leaning against the wall and used them to clump out of the room.

Maggie linked her arm through Woody's as they stepped out of the cinema.

‘Good film,' she said. ‘Bit violent, but fun.'

‘Yeah, I've always liked a bit of mindless violence,' laughed Woody. ‘You hungry?'

‘Mmmm. Sure.'

‘Italian?'

‘Italian would be great.'

Woody suggested a place in Covent Garden and they walked together out of Leicester Square and down Long Acre. Maggie asked him how he was getting on at work and he told her about the stories he was working on. She was always interested in what he was doing at the paper and seemed to hang on every word. He told her about the phone call from Pat Quigley and the mysterious Chinaman. She raised her eyebrows when she heard about the money in the carrier bag.

‘What do you think's going on?' she asked.

Woody shrugged. ‘I was thinking that maybe this Chinaman had paid someone to go after Liam Hennessy, some sort of hit-man.'

‘Wow!' she said.

‘Yeah, wow is right. It'd be one hell of a story, if only I can nail it down.'

They stood at the roadside and waited for a gap in the traffic before crossing.

‘So what's the problem?' she asked.

‘He's gone. Vanished. I went round to where he lives and he'd moved. No forwarding address. I don't even have his full name.'

‘You don't think that perhaps he's gone to Ireland himself?'

‘Seems unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, a Chinaman in Belfast on the trail of an IRA leader. It's a bit unbelievable, even for our paper.'

‘I suppose so.'

They walked in silence through the evening crowds, and then stopped to watch a man in a clown's suit juggling five flaming torches.

‘Do you get to write much about the IRA?' she asked.

‘Depends,' said Woody. ‘I covered the Knightsbridge bombing, remember? The night I met you. Depends when it happens, you know.'

‘The
Sunday World
usually takes the Government line, doesn't it?' she said.

Woody nodded. ‘Slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, we are.'

‘What about you? What do you think?'

‘Hell, Maggie, I don't know. I'm a reporter, not a politician.' The juggler put down three of his torches to scattered applause and then began fire-eating. ‘I guess I take the view that we should just pull the troops out and let the Irish sort it out themselves. You know the troops went to Northern Ireland in the first place to look after the Catholics. To protect them from the Protestants. And now it's the IRA who want them out. It doesn't make sense. It isn't something the British Government can sort out, that much I'm sure. It's an Irish problem. What about you?'

‘I suppose you're right. At the end of the day whatever the MPs in Westminster say isn't going to make the slightest difference. Maybe your paper should say that.'

Woody laughed. ‘I don't think many MPs would take any notice of what appears in the
Sunday World. The Times
maybe, or the
Telegraph
.' Something tingled at the back of Woody's mind. Something to do with an MP. He watched the clown blow flaming liquid up into the night sky, a glistening bluish stream which flared into orange and yellow. Of course, thought Woody. S. J. Brownlow, the name in the notebook. Sir John Brownlow. The Chinaman's MP. He'd said he'd written to his Member of Parliament and been to see him. With any luck he'd have The Chinaman's letter on file.

‘What are you smiling at?' Maggie asked.

‘Nothing,' he said. ‘Come on, let's go eat. I'm starving.'

As the darkness crept through the forest, Nguyen opened one of the containers of chicken and ate it slowly, along with a container of boiled rice. When he'd finished he scraped leaves away from the forest floor and buried the remains in the soil. He drank from one of his canteens and put it in the rucksack alongside the components of his firebomb detonator and the stolen gun. The can of petrol was too bulky to fit into the rucksack so he was forced to carry it. He waited until the sun had gone down before moving through the forest. The can slowed him, not because it was heavy but because it was awkward and forever catching in the undergrowth, but once he left the trees and was out in open fields he picked up speed.

He varied his route slightly this time, cutting through different fields and crossing the B8 further north than he'd crossed the previous night. Once he almost stumbled into an army patrol, half a dozen teenage soldiers walking along a narrow country lane, their faces blackened and their rubber-soled boots making almost no noise. They were strung out over fifty feet, walking in two lines. Nguyen was heading in the opposite direction, on the other side of a hedgerow looking for a gap so that he could cut across the track, when he heard one of the men sniff. Nguyen froze and as he did the petrol slapped against the side of the can. The field he was in had recently been ploughed and offered little in the way of cover but there was nowhere else for him to go so he dropped and rolled into a deep furrow and flattened himself down. He was invisible. He heard them go by, and heard the man sniff again. He stayed where he was for a full thirty minutes just in case they retraced their steps.