The Journeyman Tailor (18 page)

No emotion, no drama. "I want a guarantee that my informer will not be put at risk, which is to say identified as such, tortured for all he knows, and shot. Any alternative you choose will do just that. Cost him his life and the security services a priceless asset."

His voice was a whisper He saw Rennie, the big policeman whom he thought to be an honest man, lean forward and cup his ear. He felt quite sick. "I never thought to have such hateful power. So be it."

Rennie carried the tray with the coffees that he had poured.

He passed the cup and saucer, and the sugar.

Hobbes said, "I thought that went rather well . . . Thank you, Howard

. . . Very well, in fact. Such a change when we're not at each other's throats."

Rennie said, smiling wickedly, "Don't delude yourself. You got a soft ride because the common enemy was in attendance. If the big man from Stormont hadn't been there I'd have had you on the floor squealing for mercy. There's no love on our side for your cowboy operations, Mr Hobbes. Best you remember it. It's just that an idiot like the Stormont fellow closes ranks . . . and Cathy .did well . . ."

"I told her she shouldn't come dressed as a navvy. Impertinent young woman."

"She's your jewel, perhaps the best reason we have for tolerating you

"What do you think is the prospect," Hobbes asked with studied politeness, "of your being able to raise, for example, a biscuit?
"

The Assistant Under Secretary reported back to his Secretary of State. The Secretary of State expected to be told when a major stake-out was in place.

She was quite extraordinary, really. Only a slip of a thing.

Verbatim, she picked me up, shook me, then put me gently back in my chair. I'll try to think of it as part of my learning process. When i was at Trade and Industry, if any young woman, any woman at all had spoken to me like that then she'd have been looking for a new career later that very same day. She talked me through a world of informers.

It has been in my mind all the way back here that some poor devil out there, in that cruel wilderness, is the pawn of that young woman.

His life must be
one long terror . . . She certainly terrified me and I'm on the same side, at least I think I was. I'm not proud of myself, but I acquiesced ..."

It was the third time that Jon Jo Donnelly had read the letter.

There was no signature, only the typewritten legend, the name of a man who had gone to the gallows in a British gaol more than fifty years before. The first time he had merely read it, hardly taking it in. The second time he had boiled with anger, checked himself with difficulty from tearing and burning the pages. The third time he felt only overwhelming loneliness. The people below, the young couple from Cork, were watching their television. It was out of the question that he should go downstairs and talk with them, look for their companionship.

He was alone. It was the new way, men operating alone, the control of risk.

They had no feckin' right, not from Dublin, to write that first page, that first part.

"... We have to demand that greater care is taken on all operations carried out in our name. Very large resources are allocated for the operations inside the British mainland, necessitating cutbacks in funds for the many commitments that burden us. The families of men imprisoned in the twenty-six counties and the six counties suffer considerable privations, and it is essential that those families believe that money allocated to the Organisation's overseas active service units is not wasted money.

"We regard the South London attack as a disaster. The deaths ot two small girls have caused us to face widespread criticism at home, and given our enemy a capital propaganda coup. Such errors cannot he condoned. We understand the difficulties of operating on the mainland but require much greater care in pressing home the attack on the nominated target.

"Sadly we have been given further occasion for complaint. The shooting of Beck was unsatisfactory. Each time that we fail to execute a member ol the Crown forces we provide the enemy with the opportunity to ridicule us. We expect greater resolution in the carrying out of attacks, The Crown forces oppressing our people in the six counties are ruthless in the murder of volunteers. We should be no less determined when we strike back at them ..."

The men in Dublin had no greater worry, Jon Jo thought, than whether or not they had lost a police tail. They risked nothing. They never carried firearms. They never had to scrub, fast, the explosives traces from their bodies. They had their women waiting for them. They had the bar on the corner. No man in Dublin was as alone as he was.

"... As to targets: every target must have a national profile. The execution of an army recruiting officer is forgotten by the British public within hours. The British are a complacent and apolitical race, if they are not shocked they are not interested.

"Brighton they will not forget. Downing Street will be remembered for years to come. Future targets will be selected on the basis of their capacity to damage the enemy's security system . , Railway stations, airports, and defence installations are to be given priority . . . We are investigating the further supply of mortars and of R.P.G.7s. Progress has been made in the use of lasers to detonate pre-placed explosives . . .

The graves of many martyrs cry etcetera, etcetera.’’

It was just cow shit. Some of the targets on the list were down- right suicidal. Did they want him dead? Is that what they wanted? Him in a box and the big crowd walking behind to the church on Altmore? More feckin' use to them dead, was he?

Did they want to write a song about him, was that it?

"The radio said

There was another shot dead

And he died with a gun in his hand,

But it didn't say why

Billy Reld had to die . . .

He died to free Ireland."

Billv Reid, volunteer was shot dead 15th May 1971, and there was a Billy Reid Commemoration each year, and a Billy Reid Memorial Band. There would be a Jon Jo Donnelly flute and pipe band, for Jon Jo Donnelly dead.

Just not possible, most of what the list called for. Secret Intelliigence Service, Century House. Security Service, Curzon Street. Ministry of Defence, main building. Just not possible for Jon Jo. Director General, G.C.H.Q., Cheltenham. Chief of the General Staff. Oh, yes, certainly.

Should be able to manage that. Shouldn't be more than a twenty-four-hour guard twelve deep for one of those. Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Head of the Civil Service. Possible for an arsehole sitting in Dublin and writing cow shit . . .

Alone in his room in the house in northeast London, the unlovely, uncomforting room. Attracta was in his mind, and his boy.

He stood up, turned out the light and opened the curtain. He saw her, and he thought she was white-faced and too proud to weep as the home they had made together was wrecked. He saw that she held little Kevin against her body. It was what he had brought upon her. The smashing of her home.

Jon Jo worked at the list, to find what was possible.

It was Bren's second day in the office. The office was an offshoot of the Department of the Environment. He had been allocated a room on the second floor at the back of a new building that was called Progress House. Room 2/63/B was protected by a Chubb lock in addition to a Yale lock. Hobbes had introduced him to a manager, explained that Mr Brennard was the new representative of Audit and Cash Flow Control from London. Any file he wished to see, it would be provided. The manager was plainly anxious to have nothing to do with him. He gave him one swift look, hostility and nervousness mingled, and closed the door on him. For the second day, Bren had studied the new Downpatrick sewage scheme and the proposed extension of the dual carriageway out of Strabane, and the proposed revision of the salary structure for clerical workers at the Department's main office.

His room was a model of Civil Service Spartan. His
table,
his chair , and two more chairs under the
Venetian blind
which was drawn down over the window. There
was a map
of Northern Ireland all over one wall, a calendar beside the door, above a hip high wall safe. On a shelf behind his chair were three telephones, one black, one green, and one white. Song Bird's line, the switchboard's line, and the third one, which was purring at him.

"Yes?"

"Me, out the main door, turn left, 150 yards or so, same side, a bus stop. I'll pick you up in twenty minutes, the Astra."

Bren took the Browning pistol from the safe and tucked it into the back of his waist. He took his anorak from the hook on the door.

He sat again in his chair. Every five minutes he checked his watch. It was what he wanted, more than anything he knew, to be with Cathy Parker.

Twenty minutes after her call, to the minute, she drew up at the bus stop. He smiled his surprise at her. She looked terrific.

He shouted, "Where's my red coat?" It had been on the hook beside the front door the night before, it was not there now.

His mother was close to him, getting the older children ready for school. She eyed him. Must have been needling her, sensing there was crisis between the two of them and not knowing the cause of it.

Siobhan called, "It's dirty."

"I wants it."

"It's for the wash."

"Shit, woman, I want my red coat."

He saw Francis, his satchel over his shoulders, back away from him, and Doloures watched him with a coldness because she was her mother's child and schooled to despise obscenity.

Siobhan came out of the kitchen. She carried a crumpled red anorak, and there were dirt stains on it and paint smears.

"There's your coat, if it's important to you to look like :tinker ..."

"It is."

It was past the time he was usually gone when he was going to work, so she would have known that he was ducking out, and he'd said that he wasn't taking the kids to school.. She threw him the coat to catch.

Siobhan flounced past him and threw on her own winter coat, and she picked up little Mary and pushed Francis and Doloures and Patrick out through the door, slammed it after her. His mother went into the kitchen. He leaned against the wall in the hallway and the emotion boiled in him. He heard Siobhan's car starting up, reluctantly, outside.

He didn't know whether he would see the kids again, and he hadn't said goodbye to them.

Fear and helplessness welled in him. He was trapped by the bitch. He could remember the first time . . .

They had been four years in England. Francis was born, and Doloures. Patrick was started. A good little business going, a fresh start, and more on the black than shown to the Revenue. A painter/decorator business in Acocks Green in Birmingham. Doing his own thing and also called in by the big builders, plenty of work and the past buried. Coming back late, drink taken, and waved down by the feckin' coppers. Blood test, urine test, three times over. He had a bank loan on the van and a mortgage on

their brick-built home, two bedrooms and a back garden and perfect.

He could work out what had happened. They'd a Paddy in the cells, and they'd pumped his name into the computer. Booked him on Drunk in Charge, then held him on the Prevention of terrorism. All spilled out by the computer. 1974, five years, possession of a Luger pistol and Thompson sub-machine gun, Belfast Crown Court. 1979, three years, conspiracy to cause . explosions, Dublin Special Criminal Court. Less than frank, they’d said with the building society. Less than honest, they'd told him with the bank. Big trouble . . . He was looking at a driving ban, the calling in of his mortgage, the winding up of his loan, plus an exclusion order. She'd come to the cell, the third day. Very quiet, just business, none of the swagger and bully of the detectives.

She’d worn a navy suit. She'd had a typed-up exclusion order and the drunk in charge paperwork in her hand. She had stood in front of him, torn them both up, and gone to the lavatory and flushed them away. He could remember it still, the way that he had feckin’ dribbled his thanks to her. He’d eat from the bitch’s hand , then, now. They had walked out of the police station and left behind the detectives and the desk sergeant, and she'd looked at the lot of them as if they were beneath her contempt. In a cafe down the road, over two cups of tea that she paid for, she had told him she would be in touch, said she'd see him. A small smile on her face, like she'd know where to find him.

Vinny drove.

Jacko from Pomeroy was in the passenger seat, and Malachy from Coalisland was in the back with Mossie.

Vinny thought it downright daft to wear a bright red coat, the sort that couldn't help but be noticed. But he was only Vinny Devitt, the driver, and Mossie Nugent was the big cat . . . Not for Vinny to ask why.

They went up the mountain first, to the derelict barn that was screened by a conifer plantation. No talking in the car, the talking would be when it was over, time then for the laughter and the cheering and the unzipped excitement.

At the barn they collected the gun from the O.C. and the Quartermaster. It was for Jacko, and Malachy would feed the belt. Easy enough for Vinny to see that Jacko and Malachy knew the weapon, bloody great heavy thing ... It was the first that Vinny knew of the plan, and Jacko and Malachy. They were talked through it by the O.C.

There was an old bedspread in the barn, pink flowers on yellow, and they wrapped the 50-calibre in it and carried it back to linear.

All of them quiet in the car when Vinny drove back onto the road that ran down the mountain from Altmore.

One of them had a beard that covered his throat. One of them had long greased hair onto his shoulders. One of them looked to be from the Pacific islands, perhaps Fijian. One of them was the cardboard city man. They all knew Cathy.

Bren watched from the colonel's office. It was her world and not his.

There was no tension in the room The colonel had gone because it was not his world either The plan was on the colonel’s desk with the coffee cups and the plate of biscuits and the ashtray that was already filled.