The Journeyman Tailor (44 page)

He staggered under the weight of the bale. The cattle were shapes in the greyness ahead of him. He hoped that if his Da watched then that his Da was proud of him. He squelched across the field. He slid on fresh manure, fell to his knees, picked himself up, lifted the bale again.

Little Kevin crossed the field. The breath sobbed in his lungs. The wind stripped his face, tousled his hair. He slipped again on a smooth stone that he had not seen. He struggled forward. If his Da were watching from the mountain then his Da should not see him cry.

He reached them.

He cut the twine. He kicked and dragged the pressed hay from the shape of the bale. The bullocks ignored him. He pushed his way, all his strength and he had no fear of them, into the heart of the bullock mass.

He drove them apart. He saw where they had gathered.

The last of the light caught the brightness of the lens.

He was on his hands and knees and the wet of the grass was through his clothes and the mud smeared him that had churned from the bullocks' hooves. He crawled forward. He saw the lens glass set in the heart of the old moss-covered log that had always been in the hedgerow, long as he could remember. His finger moved to touch the glass, and in his ears there was the suppressed hum of power, like a bulb at home, like when his Ma said that a bulb was going down and needed changing. He crawled into the hedge and he scraped in the earth under the hedgerow of thorn and he found the cable that led into the furthest end of the log. All his strength, everything remaining to him, he tugged at the cable, two hands, he pulled the cable clear and the plug.

He ran for the bottom of the field, for the Mahoneys' lights. Ahead of him were the outline shapes of the farmhouse and the bungalow that had been watched by the hidden eye in the log in the hedgerow.

He ran as if for his life, and his Da's life. He ran as if the dragoons chased in pursuit, gasping, sobbing, running.

"Shit ..."

Jimmy hurried to her.

"... I only went for a pee. It's like it's cut off."

There was the snow storm on the screen in the centre of the rack of television pictures.

Jimmy said quietly, "That's awkward, leaves us rather blind."

She heard the fist beating at the door, and the boy's cry. She was doing the children's tea, and Mossie's plate was beside the stove and his food covered, waiting on his return.

"I'm coming, I'm coming . . ." She wiped her hands.

She went to the front door.

He was so small, Attracta's boy. He caught at her sleeve. He couldn't speak. He was soaked through and mud-streaked. His breath came in great pants. A proud little beggar he was most times. He was pitiful.

She took him into the hallway. Siobhan crouched down in front of him.

"Now what's the matter, Kevin?"

The boy babbled. She tried to catch the gist. She understood something, not everything.

". . . They've a camera . . . they's looking at us...I went to tell the Mahoneys, I shouted through the letter box to them, they bolted the door on me . . . there's a camera up there... the cattle found it me, they were round it, it's in a log, it's looking at us . . . I broke it, I broke the wire to it. The camera watches our house, looking for my Da. My Ma's gone to get food for my Da on the mountain . . . It's so they can come for him, it's so's the dragoons can hunt him down. The journeymen tailor’ll tell them where they saw him, and then the camera eye will find him, and the dragoons'll come for him . . . It's how they find all the patriots, with touts, journeymen tailors ..."

And her Mossie was late home for his tea, and Jon Jo Donnelly was on the mountain, and a camera was aimed at the farmhouse, and a small boy stammered the story of touts. Her kids were fighting behind her, and her Mossie was late home, and the talk of the small boy was of touts She banged on his mother's door. She shouted through the dooi that it was no time for resting, and she should see to the little ones'

tea.She pulled on her coat. His mother was at the door of her room, half dressed, her teeth out. Would she look to the kids?

Siobhan said soft to the boy, "I'll take you up home. I'll wait up home with you till your Ma's back."

Little Kevin said, spent, "The journeymen tailors'll tout on him, it's the touts'll get my Da . . ."

She took him out into the night. She held tight to his hand. The wind off the mountain blew against them. Guilt and shame battered her, as the wind hit her. It was for money. She led the boy back up the lane. It was only for money. When the boy stumbled in his exhaustion picked him up and carried him.

Bren had the car started.

Cathy was running, and the boys behind her.

Herbie into his car, and the engine sweetly pounding.

The guns on her lap and the rucksack. The camouflage cream on her face. The wild joy and excitement in her eyes.

The cardboard city man was at her window. "You're alright, Cathy?"

"Great."

"Just give us the word."

She squeezed his hand.

"No fucking about, Cathy."

The cardboard city man sprinting to join Herbie and Jocko.

He drove out of the barracks, swerved to avoid the sentries. Cathy had the earpiece in.

Cathy said, "This is what's new . . . We've had the triple signal four times now. They're clocking him. Took them time, silly arses, to get the fix right. They've got that sorted. They've got a good signal now.

First signals were bloody awful. He's gone up on the Donaghmore road, then on for Gortavoy Bridge, that's Corrycroar . . . they'll have to do something about seeing to the bloody signal, it's not good enough, not having the proper signal . . . He's taken the left at Corrycroar. He's not hurrying himself. Well, doubt I would in his shoes . . ."

"Where'll that take him?"

"Top of the mountain."

"How far?"

"Three miles, three and a half."

"Can we find him up there from the bleeper?"

"Hope so."

"You promised him."

"Had to ... He wouldn't have gone if I hadn't."

He turned to her, a fast glance. "It's not a game, you know ..."

Cathy said, "Everyone's scared the first time, Bren."

He swerved up through Donaghmore village. The close village lights were behind him, just the darkness ahead beyond his headlamps and the further pinpricks of the farmhouses and bungalows that spread across the slopes and above them the dark mass that was the wilderness and the killing ground. Cathy heaved the rucksack onto the seat behind. She had the map open across her knees, and on top of the map she was loading the magazines into the two rifles.

20

Mossie went along the back road behind the lip of the mountain. He drove down the lane that was rutted wilh winter weather, he splashed slowly over the pot-holes. He had come past the turning to Cornamaddy and past the back road to Inishyegny. It was where he had played as a boy, amongst the trees and the broken walls of what had once been a fortress for the English. The bleeper box cut into his groin.

Twice he was hooted from behind, and once he saw the driver, speeding past, turn to give him the finger for going so slow.

There were times when Mossie felt the excitement, the blood drive, when he performed for the bitch. For her he could walk on water.

There were times when he felt the exhilaration of the double twist of his world. He could push aside mountains. Now, the excitement and exhilaration were buried. He went by the falling lane that slipped steep on the slope to Crannogue, where the stream tumbled between the reservoir lakes. He had answered the call, as the bitch had known he would.

The foreman had come from the portacabin office behind the row of homes being renovated for the Housing Executive. He would have blasted any other worker for having a personal call come through to the site office, but he knew Mossie had been to prison, twice, and he knew what for. He would not know whether the stick was broken or the man was still involved, but he had seen the respect and the wariness of those of his workers who came from the same community as Mossie Nugent.

The foreman wasn't going to cross a man who might be senior in the Organization.

He said he'd meet you up by the Back Bridge, up Altmore Forest, some time past six, said you'd know who he was, wouldn't give me the name, cocky frigger. He said you was doing rabbits with lamps. He said to be sure you was there ..."

He had gone on with his painting. He had left at the normal time. He hadn't rung Siobhan and he hadn't rung the number that would go through to the bitch's people. He might have been watched, and he might not. The man had been more impatient than curious. Not a bad excuse. Fine good rabbits on Altmore, and money to be had for them in the village. It was only sensible to think that he might be watched, followed.

He had pressed the button, hard, three times, when he had left the work site, and again before he was past the Golf Club, again going through Donaghmore and again at Skea Bridge. Damn near pushed the button through the box when he had turned off the Pomeroy road at Corrycoar, and the rain coming. Il was as if he was shouting and could hear no answer. He could only trust that they heard.

Mossie saw, on more than one occasion, lights on the road behind him. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the lights kept the distance between them. He swore to himself because the back window was running mud and water, and the road wound and climbed. He couldn't be sure. He came to the crossroads. His wipers were going hard, bailing the water from his windscreen. The foreman would now be in front of his fire with the rain hitting his windows, and he'd be thinking it was a feckin' awful night to be out for gun sport.

He pressed the button at the crossroads, and turned left. It was the road past the deep reservoir, leading to the Back Bridge. He pressed the button again.

He had no one else to trust, only the bitch.

"Straight on." "You said he'd turned

left." "Do as 1 bloody tell you."

Bren went over the crossroads. Jimmy had said over the radio that the track on Song Bird's car showed it had gone left at the crossroads.

He looked once, but the tail-lights were lost.

"Round this corner, stop. Cut the lights. Turn here. Back like a rat up a sewer. Move it, Bren."

The adrenalin pumped in him. It would have been her litle game.

Lights off, hitting a stone behind as he turned, bouncing off it, scraping the tyres. He was hunched over the wheel and peering through the rain.

He understood. Anyone watching the approach of Song Bird's car would have seen the lights behind, and seen them go straight on, and lost them behind the outline of the hill they called the Sentry Box. He wound down his window and navigated by the right-hand verge, going as smoothly and as quietly as he could in third, praying that no one else would be using this road. They were back at the crossroads. He turned right.

Cathy was hunched forward, her hands clamped over her ears, she whispered, "He's stopped."

"How far?"

"They reckon less than a mile . . . Christ ..."

Bren threw the wheel over . . . Some lunatic with his dog . . . He didn't know how he had missed him. He'd bloody near put the man in the ditch. He registered the long overcoat, the woollen cap, the dog cringing back against the man's legs, and they were past him, as the man stumbled and swore, and Bren knew in an instant that it was the spycatcher from the Library in Dungannon.

"Well left, sunshine," Cathy said.

There was her light chuckle. He thought he would rather have vomited than laugh. She reached back and pulled the rucksack through the space between their seats. She laid one of the rifles across his lap.

She reached inside the rucksack and he heard the click of a switch. It would be the homing signal for the back-up. He heard her breathing, calm and controlled, as if that was the way she had been taught.

‘’Far enough,’’ Cathy said. She armed her rifle.

They were out of the cat She threw him the rucksack, didn't help him to sling it. She was on the move.

They were the men who waited.

Hobbes had the call from Jimmy, that they were going forward, that Song Bird was close to his rendezvous with Donnelly. He poured himself a second glass. What he called, at times like this, Headmaster’s whisky.

.

Rennie was still in his office. He said he would telephone Dungannon and put Scenes of Crime on stand-by as soon as he had finished cleaning the graveside mud off his shoes.

Colonel Johnny stamped away down his corridor to alert the Quick Reaction Platoon and to ask the two helicopter pilots assigned to him to begin at once the checks for take-off.

Ernest Wilkins had the call on the fifth floor of Curzon Street high above the evening traffic clog of the rush home and pushed aside the tray from which he had eaten the Stilton salad brought by Bill from the canteen, and felt an old and tired man.

It would be the next call that they waited for ... to tell Hobbes he had won or failed, to tell Rennie he had been right or wrong, to tell Colonel Johnny whether he should hug that sweet super girl or speak a quiet prayer for her, to tell Ernest Wilkins whether it was Downing Street in triumph or the Director General's office in failure.

Each man in his own place, quiet and waiting for a telephone to ring.

Mossie stopped the car and killed the lights. He climbed out of the car and he slammed the door shut. The rain in the wind spattered on his face. The cold bit into the cotton of his work overalls. He peered into the darkness. He strained his ears. He could see the parapet of the bridge and the trees all round. He could hear the wind and the sigh of his fast breathing and the tumble of the floodstream on the rocks under the bridge. He left his windcheater in the car. No way he was going to obscure his white overalls. He put both hands in his trouser pockets, one hand through the slit at the hip of the overalls and down into his trouser pocket with his handkerchief and his change, and his finger rested on the button of the bleeper box. He thought the elastoplast was loosening. Before he had left the site he had gone to the lavatory and tried to rearrange the elastoplast so that it held better. The roll of elastoplast was at home. He didn't know where she, the bitch, was. He didn't know whether the triple signals had been received. It was his instinct to stand away from the car. To be out of the car gave him . . .