Pray for Us Sinners (16 page)

“I heard.”

“Sergeant Dunlop was running him.”

“He lives in Dunmurry. Eleven Grange Park.”

“Eleven?”

“Aye.”

Brendan made a mental note of the address. “Dunlop's getting to be a nuisance.”

“There's another nuisance. The Brits have put a fellow called Mike Roberts in New Lodge. He's to get to know the Provos. Maybe try to join.”

“Roberts? He's to try to infiltrate us.”

“Aye. He's been out about two weeks.”

“Two weeks?”

The squat man stamped. “Jesus, my feet are foundered.”

“Never mind your feet. What's this shite after?”

“The usual. Names, ammo dumps. Low-grade stuff.”

“He's been out two weeks and you didn't let me know?”

“Brendan, he's not worth worrying about. He's some kind of independent. Works for a Major Smith. They're a couple of amateurs.”

“You let me be the judge of that. You finger him for me, and this Roberts is going to have a motor accident.”

“Not yet. Let him alone for a while.”

“Why, for Christ's sake?”

“Why not wait until we could maybe use him?”

“How?”

The squat man shrugged. “Turn him. Make him a double agent. Waste him when we can set his death up to embarrass the Brits. I don't know, but we've more important things to worry about just now than some overgrown Boy Scout.”

“You don't think he's a threat?”

“Not alive. If he disappears or ends up dead in the next week or two, the fucking security people'll be all over the Falls looking for him or who killed him.”

Brendan realized that his companion had a point. “Tell you what. I'll have a word with the IO of Second Battalion. Have him put out the word for volunteers to keep away from strangers in New Lodge. I'll tell the IO to report to me if this Roberts does start to get close.”

“Then what?”

“Give Roberts the word we want to meet him but keep him hanging about until it suits us, then him and me'll maybe have a wee chat. With a bit of luck, he'll keep until after we've got that bastard Wilson.”

Down on the track, six more dogs were manhandled into their starting cages, each impatient to pursue the quarry that would soon appear.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

SATURDAY, MARCH 23

Davy huddled inside his raincoat. The night was as bitter and dark as half a yard up a chimney. What did he expect at the back end of March, a fucking heat wave? He folded his arms and tucked his chin into his collar. If the target didn't come soon, he reckoned, he was going to freeze to death. His fingers were numb and his nose, still full of the cold, dripped. He rubbed the ache in his thigh.

Jimmy's right, Davy thought. I am getting too old for this. Three o'clock in the morning is past my bedtime. I should be in my warm bed instead of lying in a ditch behind a blackthorn hedge beside a back lane in the Antrim Hills.

He wondered how Sean had found out that an army patrol would be using this road and would be coming in two Land Rovers. Intelligence must be getting better. Not that it mattered. Knowing was Sean Conlon's job; acting was Davy's. He hunched his shoulders against the March wind. A snatch of a song came unbidden.
The tans in their great Crossley tenders were rolling along to their doom.
Tonight was like the old days. Rebels lying in wait for the British 
… With their hand grenades primed on the spot.
His two companions had grenades—old Mills bombs, relics of the First World War—to finish the job the mine would start, and their ArmaLites at short range would be lethal weapons. He preferred his Heckler and Koch MP5 K SMG. It might not have the light armour-piercing capability of the ArmaLites' .223 bullets, but it had a better rate of fire. He would soon be firing at British soldiers with the kind of weapon that was standard issue to their military police.

Davy looked over to the men with him. He didn't know their names, nor they his. The younger of the two was a right doubting Thomas, him and his, “How do you know that the wheel of the Rover'll go over the trigger plates?” “Because,” the older one had been quick to point out, “there's nowhere else for the tyres to go but in the ruts of the lane.” He'd said that with a bit of respect in his voice, and added, with a sideways look of raised eyes to Davy. “It's your man's first time out.”

Everyone has to have a first time, Davy thought, but it's not going to be much of an initiation if the bloody troops fail to appear. How the hell could the CO have been so sure they would come this way, and that there would be two armoured Land Rovers?

He heard a new sound above the howling of the wind in the leafless blackthorns. One of the others had heard it, too. Davy saw the man duck as a glow appeared over the top of the hill to his right. Headlights reflecting from the low clouds. Two sets. Just like Sean had said.

He hunched into the ditch, closing his eyes to protect his night vision. He heard the whine as one driver changed down to negotiate the incline. The second vehicle followed suit. Would his companions remember what to do? He'd deal with any survivors of the first Rover. The other men were to take out the second one—and its occupants.

Any minute now. He covered his ears. The sound of engines neared, he could smell the exhaust fumes, but the noises passed and faded into the distance. For Christ's sake. He opened his eyes to see taillights vanishing to his left.

The younger of the two men swore. “Fuck. The fuckers drove over the verge. They never used the ruts. Now what the hell are we going to do?”

Shit. He'd have to dig up the mine, head for the car, and get the hell out of here. Tomorrow he'd have to face Sean. “You two wait.” He hauled himself upright, limped toward a gap in the hedgerow, and stepped through onto the lane, casting back and forth to make sure the coast was clear.

“Hey,” one of the men called. “Hey, do you hear another one?”

Lights flashed over the far hillcrest. Was there a third Rover, a second chance? Davy turned back into the ditch, motioning with one hand. Down. He scuttled away and saw his companions crouch as he threw himself into cover and folded his arms over his head. There was something different about the engine note.

He was blinded by the glare as the mine smashed the night. The thunder of the detonation echoed from the surrounding hills. He'd got the British bastards. Davy jumped up and waved his two companions forward. “Come on.”

It would take the first two Rovers ten minutes to get back here, so there'd be time to finish the one they had hit and get out. He ran from the ditch, ahead of the others, through the gap and into the lane.

He heard the staccato ripping as one of the men behind tore off a fully automatic burst. Davy slammed to a halt. Christ! It wasn't an army vehicle. A car lay on its side, one wheel spinning. A second burst tore past him, spanging sparks from the rear axle.

“For fuck's sake, stop firing!” He saw flames licking out from under the chassis. The blast had set the grass of the lane afire, red tongues casting an eerie light. A man lay beside the vehicle, howling on and on. How the hell had he got out? Davy glanced at the car. The driver's door was gone. The blast must have hurled the man clear.

Davy ran on, careless of the pain in his leg, careless of the hand trying to restrain him. He reached the man, knelt, and dropped the SMG. He smelled scorched flesh, sweet like roast pork. By the light of the flames he saw the blisters on the man's face. His trousers were shorn at the thighs, where his legs should have been. Dark stains spread slowly through his coat, dark as the earth beneath his stumps.

The man turned wide eyes on Davy. “Help me. Oh, Jesus. Help me.” Over and over.

One word was torn from the vehicle, high-pitched, terrified. “Pleeease.” A child's voice.

Davy stared up, closed his ears to the begging that had turned to racking sobs, and ran to the car. No matter how hard he strained, the rear door handle wouldn't budge.

“Pleease…”

He saw a face upturned, eyes reflecting the flames, mouth wide, a girl's face. A little girl's face. He saw her scrabbling at the glass, tearing her fingernails, tearing his heart. He tried again. Someone was pulling him. “Get the fuck away.” He struggled but was thrown to the ground. The blast as the petrol tank blew scorched over him. Someone had him by the arm, was hauling him to his feet. “Here's your gun.” He grabbed it. His companion tugged at Davy's sleeve. “Come on to hell out of it. They're coming back.”

Davy saw the twin beams in the distance, knew the Rovers had turned. He stared at the inferno, heard the roaring of the flames, and smelled his own hair charring.

He stumbled after his two companions, but the throbbing in his leg was only an ache. The pain was inside his head, where he still heard, above the flames, above the rasping of his laboured breathing, one shrill word. “Please.”

 

TWENTY-FIVE

SATURDAY, MARCH 23

It bothered Marcus, the picture of the bleeding heart of Jesus—face of perpetual sorrow—hanging over the iron-framed bed. The damn icon was there when he retired, there when he rose. He grasped the cheap frame, twisted the dusty cord, and faced the picture to the wall. The lime-green paint beneath stood out against the olive drab of the rest of his room. Years of dirt and neglect.

He ambled over and sprawled in a poorly sprung armchair. The fabric was faded—green with the shadows of what must once have been scarlet tea roses. The weave was frayed at the ends of the arms.

Two weeks gone now and nothing, absolutely nothing to show. As for friendly Ulster folk? The blokes who rented the other two rooms barely bade him good morning. He'd had a brilliant debate when one seemed to think that Marcus had been in the bathroom long enough.

“Would you get the fuck out of there?”

“Fuck off.”

A positively riveting conversation. What was it about the inhabitants of New Lodge? They went about their cramped little streets, living cramped little lives, talking to cramped little people like themselves, folks they had known forever. They ignored newcomers. The only contacts he had made were Eamon Laverty and Liam the liverish landlord. He knew the name and the face of Jimmy Ferguson.

It irritated Marcus that he had not recognized the man immediately from a photograph the major had produced weeks ago. Once he had made the connection, he'd hoped that he might be onto something, but then he remembered that the major had dismissed Ferguson as an old has-been. All Eamon had said was that Jimmy knew more Yeats poetry than any Irishman alive. Marcus didn't doubt it. The trouble was he'd been sent out to find Provos, not music hall acts.

He was bored silly and there was no telly in his room, just an elderly wireless. He looked at his watch. Quarter past two. Damn it. He had been looking forward to a broadcast on Radio 4 and now he'd missed the overture and part of the first act. He leaned over and fiddled with the dial, found the station, and waited for the music to paint its pictures. Spain, Seville, cigarette girls, army corporals, toreadors, and the witch herself, Carmen. He still remembered the liner notes on one of his dad's records—the one with Risë Stevens singing the title role. The notes' author had stolen a biblical phrase to describe the tzigane. “She was a woman to make men run out of their wits.” From what he'd seen coming through the gates of Gallagher's cigarette factory, no Carmens worked there.

Marcus had little time for the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd, but opera, and particularly the works of Mozart and Verdi, struck something inside between his heart and his stomach. A something that seemed to lead directly to his tear glands. He could never listen to
Il nozze de Figaro
or
Nabucco
in their entirety without having to use his hanky.

He'd grown up hearing the old vinyl records that both Mum and Dad had loved, and the taste had rubbed off. He'd long ago given up trying to understand why these works affected him. He accepted it, reveled in them as a cat rolls in catnip—and kept his preferences to himself. A lieutenant couldn't afford to have his men think of him as some sort of highbrow sissy.

The music swelled and filled his room.
“Près des remparts de Séville, chez mon ami Lillas Pastia…”

The soprano was a young New Zealander, Kiri te Kanawa. She had the voice of an angel. He closed his eyes and coasted on the rise and fall of the music, lost in its swells, at peace with himself and far from the cruddy bed-sit in New Lodge.

*   *   *

Five o'clock. Marcus was in a foul mood. He'd not been able to finish listening to
Carmen
. Halfway into the third act one of the other residents had started pounding on the wall and yelling, “Turn off that fucking row.” He'd turned it down, but the banging on the wall had become more insistent. Eventually, he had given up and shut off the wireless.

Now the smell of burnt lard coming from the kitchen made him gag. It was Saturday night. He might as well go out for a bite. There was a Chinese place a couple of streets away, run by the son of Hong Kong immigrants. Yellow skin, slanted eyes, and a Belfast accent thick as champ. The restaurant served Cantonese food—and chips. The natives thought they were being starved if they couldn't have their chips.

Marcus went to the walnut-veneered wardrobe and pulled out the Calgary Stampeders windcheater. Maybe the flash of colour would provoke some interest in the boozer when he dropped in after he had eaten. Maybe.

*   *   *

Marcus stood at the bar, his stomach acid and heavy. The chips had left a scum of grease on his palate.

“Pint, Mike?”

Wonderful. First-name terms with lugubrious Liam. “Aye, please. Eamon not in the night?”

“He'll be in later.” Liam built the pint slowly, letting the Guinness settle between pours. “Here.”