Field of Blood (21 page)

the Pig. There were two more following, laden down with surveillance equipment

and personal weapons.

Ferris stared into the Pig.

`What blew you?'

The last man out replied. He was Glasgow. Ì got leg cramp, swung my leg straight, kicked our shit bucket ... Get us out.'

He didn't expect politeness, not from the clandestine heroes. Ferris went to the

front of the Pig, gave the driver his instructions.

He watched the Pig drive away. He thought to himself that he was enjoying a soft

war in comparison with men who squatted in the damp cold roofing above Fiori's

chipper for days on end.

He heard the jeering of the crowd as he gave the order for the pull out.

`. .. The morning after I came back there were two men who called up at the house. They just came in, like it was public ...'

`Names, Gingy.'

`There was Phonsie McGurr and another fellow, Devitt, I don't know his first name, big fellow with a tricolour tattoo on his wrist. They didn't give their names, but I knew them before I went away. They seemed to reckon they just had to snap their fingers and Gingy McAnally was jumping. They said I was on a job in

the morning, I said I wasn't. They said there was a job in the Crumlin all set for 110

me, I said it was for someone else. They said that everyone had sweated to set it

up, and it was going to happen at early morning tomorrow, I said they could bloody think again ... I said I wasn't standing out in the middle of the Crumlin in

daylight firing an R.P.G. ... We'd gone up to the bedroom, we were sitting on Roisin's bed ... They said it was going to be the

108

109

**biggest belt in Belfast that year, they said it was going to have the Brits screaming all the way to London. They said it was a one‐off, that I'd go home after it, and that the next day I could be away down south again like nothing had

happened ... I said I wouldn't do it. Every time I said that I'd quit, they just kept talking like they weren't hearing me. They were right pigs, they just wouldn't hear me. They said there was no one else that could use the R.P.G. 'cept me.

They said it had been a hell of a business to get the R.P.G. into town and to get a

warhead for it . . . They said it had to be me. We were all shouting together ... I'd come back to see my wife and my small ones, and I'm ending up in the bedroom

shouting whether I'm going on a hit. They said that I'd see the Chief . . .'

Astley's eyes flickered up from his concentration on his notepad. McDonough bit

hard on the end of his pencil.

`The Chief ...?' McDonough was a good experienced detective. He had the

commendations from the Chief Constable, but there was a hoarseness in his echoing of the words.

McAnally smiled, cheeky now. `The Chief ... Belfast Brigade's big shot.'

Ànd you saw him?'

The grin was spreading on McAnally's face. `You said we were working from the

beginning, you said we wasn't to jump ... I didn't see the Chief till the morning.'

`Sorry . . .' McDonough tried to match McAnally's fun. `Fair cop, Gingy. My fault

... when we come to the morning we'll come to the Chief.'

For a moment McDonough's hand rested on McAnally's tight fist, on the table.

Astley watched them.

Astley felt a slight, fast chill of fear. If the Provos identified the detectives who had successfully twisted a man into the supergrass system, then they shot those

detectives. Done it in Londonderry, done it in Belfast. They slaughtered the detectives, if they could name them, who had converted a man to touting. And

the man sitting at the table with McDonough and Astley was the best 'grass, the

biggest tout, the most considerable informer yet to have been through

Castlereagh. If they ever identified the 'tecs who had turned McAnally, they'd put

111

them top of the list. He could have worked in a bank, he could have sold insurance, he could have gone across the water to England. Astley breathed deeply, concentrated again on the written page.

McDonough was still grinning. `Right, Gingy, so they said to you that you'd better

see the Chief ...?'

`What's with Gingy McAnally?'

The Chief and Frankie Conroy walked a wet evening pavement. The Chief liked Frankie. It was rare for the Chief to form friendships inside the Organization, few

friendships since he had muscled his way to commander of Belfast Brigade.

Frankie was loyal and subservient, and he did what he was told, didn't question

what he was told. Frankie had a good record, for the Organization ... and he had a

good record with the Director of Public Prosecutions.

They walked in Andersonstown. Coat collars up, flat hats on their heads, duffle bags on their shoulders. To a passing mobile patrol they would have seemed like

two workmen returning home in the dusk.

`You feel bad about Gingy?' There was a sibilant whistle in Frankie's voice. Way

back he had been shot in the throat by a Brit undercover man, and he'd done half

of a twelve stretch for attempted murder, possession and membership.

Each time the Chief saw the puckered hole in Frankie's throat, then he reckoned

the man was lucky to be alive.

Ì feel bad about any bugger that's lifted.'

`He was special, didn't want to be in, that's what I heard.'

`You met the joker who wants to get lifted, Frankie? What's the word on him?'

`The word is that he's playing stone statues in there.'

`Where did you get that?

'My cousin's boy, he's a scribbler on the News. He meets the big 'tec, Rennie, at a

club, a bloody rugby club. My cousin's boy's a good player or they wouldn't let him in the bloody place, it's a Prod's club. Rennie told him that Gingy hasn't opened his mouth since he's been there. He's like a fucking dumb man, that's what my cousin's boy said Rennie told him.'

`Have they enough on Gingy to charge him?

'They charge him tomorrow, or he's out. My cousin's boy didn't say about a charge.'

Frankie heard the wind breaking from the Chief, the scent was at his nostrils. He

was too long in the Chief's company to react.

`There's a nice one coming up, Frankie. The Brit battalion at Springfield use open

landrovers, always open. When they're at the lights on the Falls, when they're 112

stopped, there's a hell of a chance of getting some petrol out of a top window onto them ... like it, Frankie?

'Like it . . .' Frankie looked into the Chief's face. `That kiddie, Mattie Blaney's boy, the kiddie that was 'capped for informing on Gingy, that was right, was it?'

He saw the distant glint in the Chief's eyes. He was over the line. He was always

frightened of the Chief when he was over the line.

Ì was asking you, Frankie, how you'd like it, warming up some Brit squaddies in

an open landrover.'

110

111

**`Yeah, I'd like it,' Frankie said, and looked away from the Chief's face.

`So, who was in the room?

'The Chief ... and Brigade Q.M., and Intelligence, and Operations.' `Names, Gingy.'

`The Chief, that's Kevin Muldoon ... Q.M. is Ollie O'Brien ...

Intelligence is Joe McGilivarry ... Operations is Tom McCreevy ...

They were all in the room when the Chief told me his plan.' `No second thoughts,

Gingy.'

Ì told you I'd do it.'

`When the going gets rough, Gingy ...' Ì said I'd bloody do it.'

Ìt'll get really rough, Gingy.'

Sean Pius McAnally stabbed his ferret glance at McDonough. `But I'm getting immunity, aren't I? And you're going to keep me safe, me and the missus and the

kids, aren't you?'

It would be a frantic evening for Howard Rennie.

Into Central Belfast as the offices were closing for a session with the Director of

Public Prosecutions, to confirm the issuing of immunity to a self‐confessed killer,

and to drop off a seventy‐eight page statement of confession and implication.

Afterwards to Police Headquarters for the briefings on the lifts of twenty‐eight men and three women.

And later, very late, five minutes of the Chief Constable's time. `You'll get him into court, Rennie?

'If I have to carry him there, sir.'

9

He sat in the back of an armour‐reinforced police landrover.

Over the shoulders of the driver and the forward seat observer he could see the

nightlights of the deserted city.

113

Rennie was on one side of him. Hemming him in on the other side was a police

sergeant, uniformed and huge in his bullet‐proof vest.

It had been explained to Sean Pius McAnally that he was no longer

a prisoner, that he was no longer in custody. Rennie had told him that he was a

free agent, that he was in police care. If he had been in custody he would have been handcuffed as the convoy swept out of the gates of Castlereagh. Because

he was in care he was merely sandwiched between Rennie and the sergeant.

There was a difference between custody and care ...

And Sean Pius McAnally needed care because he had become a traitor to his own.

There was no talking in the back of the landrover. McAnally and Rennie and the

sergeant and two constables sat in deep silence. There were the flashes of their

matches and their lighters, and the glow of their cigarettes. When they dragged

on their cigarettes, McAnally could see the faces around him. They were the faces of the men who had been his enemies. There wasn't much thinking in him.

He had been up late, and woken early in his cell. They had come for him, at four.

They'd given him a mug of tea and a Penguin biscuit, and he'd felt the beard on

his face and the dirty cold in his crutch. They had taken him to Rennie and the car

park. Rennie had said, Ì've taken a chance with you, Gingy. I've taken one hell of

a risk. I've chanced that you've the bottle to see this through. I've chanced getting immunity for you. You're now a free man. You can turn your back on us and walk

out on us. But you won't do that, Gingy, because you know that after today you're dead if you do that. Don't get me wrong, Gingy, I'm not making threats.

What I'm saying is this: after your statements, after our lifts, you're dead without us looking after you. That's facts.' They had stood, Rennie and McAnally, in the

car park, out of earshot of the uniformed men. They had been wrapped in the cold in their own shadows. When Rennie had said his fill he had cuffed McAnally

hard on the shoulder, as if that were the end of the private talk for all time, and

McAnally had known the force of Rennie's fist, and they had gone to the landrover.

Too early in the city even for the Corporation's cleaning carts. Wide, wet streets.

A convoy of three landrovers. McAnally crammed between two men, and his

landrover between two others.

The landrovers swung past the roundabout at the bottom of the Grosvenor Road.

He was coming to his own territory, and coming in protective police care. He felt

against him the warmth of Rennie and the angles of the sergeant's armoured vest. He was coming back to collect his wife, and to gather up his kids. He was 114

shivering and not cold. He tried to remember what he would say to Roisin, and

his mind was vague, and the words were lost.

They passed the Royal Victoria Hospital. The soldier he had blinded long ago with

the R.P.G. had gone to the casualty at the R.V.H. The policeman he had injured

when he had killed another had been rushed to the same rear entrance of the old

hospital. No traffic on the Grosvenor, and the landrovers went over the junction

traffic lights on red.

112

113

**Not hanging about, were they, the landrovers traversing Provoland, not when

they were carrying a traitor? The convoy slowed on the approach to the

Springfield Road barracks. McAnally sensed the tension of the men around him.

Eyes on the upper windows, a pair of hands tight on the wheel, other hands on

cocked Stirlings. Christ ... and he had to find the words for Roisin.

They turned into the gates.

The barracks was a staging post. When the rear doors opened McAnally was gestured out, and he saw the scores of men and their vehicles in the barracks yard. Soldiers in combat gear, uniformed police, and Saracen armoured cars with

their engines whining and the fumes coughing out of their exhausts. He stayed close to Rennie. He was a dog in a strange street and he kept himself close to his

master. He couldn't help himself. He saw the eyes on him. The sharp eyes of the

young uniformed policemen, and the eyes of the soldiers set as bright jewels in

the camouflage cream on their faces. Every bugger in the yard knew he was on

duty at five in the morning because Gingy McAnally had gone supergrass. The eyes followed him, tracked him.

There was a hand on McAnally's sleeve. He spun. He saw Ferris, the officer. And

in the moment of recognition Rennie had abandoned him. Pass the bloody

parcel, Rennie off to talk to the big shots, and Gingy left with Ferris, the officer.

`Well done, Gingy ...' Ferris's quiet voice close to McAnally's ear, private.

`What's you mean?' The snapped question. McAnally searching for his answer and looking up at Ferris's blackened cheeks. `For doing the right thing.'