Jig (11 page)

Sir John had his cuffs to his liking now. ‘Ireland is a nightmare to me, Frank. I have times when I
think
I've penetrated its various complexities. But then it seems to slip away from me.' He stroked his enormous moustache. The satirical magazine
Private Eye
had christened him Furry Jake.

‘It does that,' Pagan agreed.

‘Why in the name of God are we still in Northern Ireland?'

Pagan smiled. He wondered if the Under-secretary really wanted an answer or whether he'd just asked another of those rhetorical questions in which, like all politicians, he specialised. Pagan decided he'd answer anyway. ‘Because it's what the Protestant majority wants, Sir John.'

‘We should just get the hell out of Ulster and say “There, chaps, go work out your own differences with the South.”'

Pagan laid a hand on the Under-secretary's huge desk. There wasn't a piece of paper anywhere. He glanced at the bookshelves. Several histories of Ireland were stacked there. They looked as if they hadn't been opened. ‘We can't let them settle their own differences so long as the Protestant majority in the North wants to remain a part of the United Kingdom,' he said. ‘If the day comes when the North wants to be a part of a unified Ireland, fine. Personally I don't see that happening. There's too much hatred between Catholic and Protestant.'

The Under-secretary leaned back in his padded leather chair.

‘And there are too many suspicions on both sides,' Pagan continued, wondering if it was easier for Furry Jake to get his history in small doses like this instead of having to crack open the tomes on the bookshelf. Sometimes Pagan encountered an almost wilful simple-mindedness in the higher reaches of power that appalled him. People like the Under-secretary, in defiance of the tenets of Darwinism, hadn't evolved since the days when the British Empire could put down a Zulu uprising with a handful of rifles and some good men.

Pagan said, ‘The Protestants in the North are scared shitless by the predominance of the Catholic Church in the South. They think that in a unified Ireland they'd be discriminated against because then
they'd
be in a minority. They don't like giving up their present status. Right now they're the lords of all they survey, but there's a tide rising against them.'

The Under-secretary didn't look very interested. He had the expression of an unwilling participant in a crammer course. There was also the fact that he wasn't absolutely sure of Frank Pagan's loyalties. Some said Pagan was just a little too
soft
on the South.

Pagan went on regardless. There was a certain wicked enjoyment in the idea of instructing the Under-secretary in his job and knowing that you were causing him a minor irritation. ‘The Catholics in the Republic don't trust the Protestants in the North because of their allegiance to England. And there's been too much English misbehaviour in the past.'
Misbehaviour
, he thought. There was a neat little euphemism. ‘People don't forget quickly. They can't forget how the English have treated Ireland over the centuries. They can't put aside the fact that the English have gone periodically into Ireland and filled the streets with Irish blood.'

‘That's ancient history, Frank.' Sir John made a small gesture of impatience.

‘To you, maybe. But England has a dirty name over there. It stands for Oliver Cromwell slaughtering the inhabitants of Wexford in 1649 and then as a gesture of
real
goodwill, committing atrocities on priests of the Roman Catholic Church. It's a potato famine and starvation, which was exploited by English landowners who didn't exactly shed tears when they saw Irishmen either starve to death or being packed into emigrant ships – coffin ships – because it meant they didn't have to rent their land to the bloody peasants. It's the fact that in six miserable years in the late 1840s, one million people died as a result of famine, while the English landlords didn't suffer a bit. Quite the opposite; the buggers prospered.'

The Under-secretary frowned. Pagan leaned against the bookshelves. Instant history, he thought.

‘And the Irish can't forget that in our own century the English crushed the Easter Rising of 1916 with more enthusiasm than the event merited. Somehow we managed to kill about five hundred men of the Irish Volunteers, a militant group of
really
dangerous men who were poorly armed and badly trained and were never any match for English field guns. And then we went on to execute the leaders of the Rising in front of firing squads. We did a wonderful job all round, didn't we?'

Sir John stood up. A joint cracked in his leg. He didn't say anything for a time. With his back to Pagan he looked down at the river. ‘You sound rather sympathetic to the Irish, Frank.'

‘I've tried to understand them, that's all. You might give it a shot yourself, Sir John. Open a book or two. Do yourself a favour.'

The Under-secretary stared at him curiously. He wasn't happy with Pagan's tone, but then he wasn't sure if Pagan was really the right man for the job anyway. His search for Jig, for example, hadn't exactly been a resounding success. ‘IRA gunmen wander the streets of Belfast,' he said after a while. ‘They shoot British soldiers. Protestants arm themselves in basements to fight against Catholics and the IRA. And we've got this lunatic fellow Jig doing all kinds of damage.' The Under-secretary fingered his moustache and quietly suppressed a belch, pulling his chin down into his neck. It was all very polite, Pagan thought.

The Under-secretary went on, ‘Damned troublesome island, Frank. Hardly worth the bother. It's not as if we actually
get
anything out of it save for a great deal of grief, is it? It's not as if they're one of the OPEC nations sitting on millions of barrels of oil or something like that. Sooner we're out of it, the better.'

Pagan said nothing. Furry Jake's ignorance and insensitivity were really quite impressive.

‘How do you propose to catch Jig, Frank?'

This question echoed inside Pagan like a minor chord struck on piano keys. ‘I wish I had the answer to that,' he said, a bleak little response to the problem that dogged him constantly.

The Under-secretary turned. ‘It has to be given top priority, Frank.'

‘It has,' Pagan replied.

‘I mean
top
, Frank.'

Pagan nodded. The Under-secretary annoyed him the way all his kind did. They issued their orders and then went out to lunch at their clubs. Fine old sherry and quail eggs and men dozing in leather armchairs behind copies of
The Daily Telegraph
. The death of the British Empire in microcosm in the fancy clubs of Pall Mall, where you needed a pedigree from Debrett's
Peerage
before you could actually breathe the air.

‘What about this business with the ship?' the Undersecretary asked.

Only that morning Foxie had brought him another telex on the matter, this time one sent from the FBI to Scotland Yard. Pagan had read the thing quickly.

‘Special Branch is handling that,' he said. ‘My whole section is busy with Jig. Exclusively.'

‘Mmmm,' the Under-secretary said. ‘Just the same, Frank, I wish you had paid it some attention yourself. It does come under your domain, after all.'

The little arsehole was scolding him. Pagan studied his fingernails a moment. ‘My latest information is that we've had a positive ID of the individual whose hand was severed at the wrist. One Sean Riordan, aka the Courier, a resident of Philadelphia. His function was the delivery of capital to his sources in Ireland from sources unknown in the United States. So it's fair to assume the
Connie
was carrying an amount of cash.'

‘Why do the Americans insist on sending money to those brutes?'

Pagan shrugged. He could have made an easy answer: historic ties. But it went deeper than that, down into the mists of darker emotions and old sentiments and an idealised conception of Ireland that was aroused in many Irish–Americans whenever they heard the first few bars of
Danny Boy
. This sedimentary yearning had a way of opening wallets.

The Under-secretary asked, ‘Do you have any opinion on who seized this money?'

‘No, I don't. But you can bet that the IRA will be more than unhappy about the whole thing. What I wonder is how they're going to react.'

Furry Jake smiled. The idea of the IRA suffering a setback pleased him hugely. ‘One other thing, Frank. I don't much care for the press we've been getting. I don't think you should say anything to reporters. Let the commissioner do any talking that has to be done. He likes to see his name in print.'

‘All I ever said was “no comment”.'

‘I know that, but some of our journalists take that as an admission of defeat. The commissioner has more … experience in handling the press than you, Frank.' The Under-secretary looked at his watch. ‘Well, Frank. Keep me posted, will you?'

‘I will, Sir John.'

‘And will you make sure Special Branch keeps its vigilance?'

‘I've already requested that security at your home be doubled,' Pagan said.

‘My wife worries,' said the Under-secretary, smiling thinly.

And you don't, of course. Pagan went to the door. He heard Sir John clear his throat.

‘Catch him, Frank. Catch Jig.'

Pagan stopped at the door.

The Under-secretary said, ‘No matter what it takes, you must catch this fellow.'

‘Exactly how do you want him?' Pagan asked. There was a faint hint of sarcasm in his voice, which the Under-secretary didn't notice.
Catch Jig
. Just like that. What the hell did the Under-secretary think Frank Pagan had been
trying
to do?

The Under-secretary looked a little puzzled. ‘What do you mean how do I want him?'

‘Dead or alive?' Pagan asked. Poached? Toasted? Pickled? Take your pick, Sir John.

‘Ah.' The Under-secretary was quiet a moment. ‘I don't think it matters one way or another with scum like that, do you?'

‘Quite,' Pagan said and stepped out into a carpeted corridor.
Catch Jig
.

The Under-secretary called out to him, ‘Been meaning to ask. Who's your tailor, Frank?'

Pagan stopped. He looked back into the office. ‘Nobody in particular. Sometimes Harry's Nostalgia Boutique on the Portobello Road. Sometimes Crolla on Dover Street. Why? You want the addresses?'

‘Not really,' said the Under-secretary.

Dublin

The man known as Jig did not leave the Republic of Ireland from Dublin Airport, although he went there initially. He was accustomed to creating a maze of his own movements. At the terminal he went inside the men's room and locked himself in a cubicle where he changed his clothes.

He did this as an ordinary, everyday precaution, something that had become second nature to him. He removed his suit and shoes, stuffed them inside his canvas bag, then put on an old pair of faded cord pants and a heavy sweater. He placed a cap firmly on his head and pulled it down over his brow. On his feet he wore the kind of sturdy boots a casual labourer might have worn. Anyone who saw him emerge from the men's room would have seen a man on his way to look for work somewhere – a man who shuffled a little, like somebody defeated by the prospects of ever finding employment. He wore a money belt concealed beneath his sweater. It contained ten thousand American dollars, one thousand pounds in sterling and five hundred Irish punts.

He walked out of the terminal and into the parking lot. The car he chose was a drab brown Hillman Minx. In the old days, a car might have been left there for him on purpose but now, with all Finn's mania for secrecy, cars were stolen, not supplied. A supplied car had the distinct disadvantage of being arranged in
advance
, which afforded one's enemies the chance and the time to find out about it. Stealing, Finn always reasoned, was less risky because it was random.

The Minx spluttered and hacked like an old man in a terminal ward. Jig drove it as far as the Connolly Station in Dublin, where he bought a train ticket for Belfast. Once there, he would fly to Glasgow and take a bus to Prestwick Airport on the Ayrshire coast, where he'd catch a flight to New York City.

It was a circuitous and time-consuming route, but it was one of Finn's maxims that you saved time by spending some, that when you were in a hurry you were always prone to that evil demon Carelessness. Survival, Finn always said, is a matter of attention to the mundane. A matter, boyo, of
detail
.

Jig opened a newspaper on the train and read an editorial that referred to Walter Whiteford's decapitation. It was funny, though. He couldn't make a mental picture of a headless man, couldn't see the head tearing away from the body and rolling down a cobblestoned street. He had a gift for abstraction. He didn't think in particulars when it came to violence. He always tried to make his acts of violence swift and clean and painless. Finn had drummed this into him. Even now Jig could hear the old man's melodic voice in his head.
You only need to kill. You don't need to make your victims suffer. In and out with precision, boy, never needless cruelty. This is a war, not a torture chamber
. Walter Whiteford wouldn't have had the time to feel anything. Gone. Like that. Like a candle blown out on an empty Mayfair street.
You don't kill the meek, and you don't kill the innocent. You only kill the harmful, and even then you do it with economy and speed and grace
.

Economy, speed, grace. Jig remembered how Finn, at the point of farewell, had foregone his usual firm handshake in favour of an embrace which had been tight and almost painful as if the old man were reluctant at the last to send Jig on such an unmapped errand. There had been none of the usual last-minute instructions, no quiet encouragement, just an odd imploring look in Finn's eyes which had put Jig in mind of a man facing the impossibilities of ever seeing his ambitions realised. It wasn't a look Jig liked to see. For a second it hadn't been Finn's face at all, it had lost buoyancy and strength and resilience, like a mask cast suddenly aside by its wearer. It was more than the loss of the money, Jig knew that. It was the loss of all the schemes and plans and uses that the money was good for.