The Journeyman Tailor (19 page)

She hadn't talked about it in the car, just told him to drive to Dungannon, said what time they were expected, allowed him to get on with the job of reaching the barracks on her schedule.

They were planning a killing. That was their world and Cathy was a part of it. The world was Cathy and the calm light of her eyes, and it was four men wearing bulky black overalls and woollen caps that were folded up and could be pulled down for balaclavas.

No fuss and no hurry. Time to pour more coffee.

Bren knew they had been in the Colonel's office for hours because the room was fogged with cigarette smoke. On the floor, discarded amongst the big olive green back-packs, was the all-in anthology of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, open now at Act Two, Scene Two,
King Lear.

Bren saw that she was not interrupted. She was part of their territory, as if by right . . . Bren wondered if it were just because she was a woman, or how it was that she had earned the respect of those hard men. Hard? Of course they were bloody hard. They were going out killing with no more fuss than Bren managed when he was off down to Mr Manjrekar's corner store With his weekend shopping list. He wondered whether Mr Willkins had the least notion of what was planned that morning, and whether Hobbes sat beside a telephone and waited for news.

He just wanted to be a part of her world, and share the light and warmth as did these four men.

Cathy said, ‘’..He’s wearing the red coat, that's what we agreed. He’d bloody better well better he wearing it. He's a dozy slob, but i think he took it on board. So just don't spoil my day, there's good darlings, just don't forget that it's a red coat, and if, God help us, they turn up in Pink Panther suits, my man is heavy, he’s big, he’s late thirties,going bald at the back, and he limps. And we don’t shoot limping grouse, do we? not out of season,anyway, eh, David?’’

Nothing flamboyant, not theatrical, None of the leadership crap, and nothing that was an excuse for feminine softness. She was amongst her own.

Cathy said quietly, "Good luck."

The semi-detached and whitewashed houses climbed the hill to the west of the Killyman Road. The barracks on the far hill, across the road, across the rough ground, behind the steel perimeter fence, dominated the estate. Smoke from living-room fires pushed from the chimneys. A child played in the road in front of his house with a tricycle. A doctor hurried back to his car. A baby, tightly blanketed in its pram, bawled with healthy lungs. A woman put down her heavy shopping bag, reached for her house keys. A young man walked to the newsagents for cigarettes, went slowly because he had time to kill and no work to go to. The estate ignored the soldiers who looked down at them from the watch- towers of the barracks, didn't speak to the soldiers when they patrolled through the back streets.

Mrs Byrne hung out her washing and didn't think much of the chances of it drying.

It was the Donnelly woman at the door.

Siobhan forced the smile, and she took the eggs. She said that it was so kind of her to think of them for fresh eggs again, they tasted so much better, didn't they, than the eggs from the shops. She enquired, caringly, whether the house was repaired. She told her that her Mossie had been busy, so busy, that was why he hadn't been round to help her with the house repairs.

Siobhan didn't ask her inside. She took the eggs on the doorstep. She was alone in the house and it was the way she wanted it. Grandma was gone walking Mary in the pushchair. Too great a confusion for Siobhan Nugent to invite her neighbour in for a cup of tea and a gossip about whose daughter was pregnant, whose son had found work, whose father was taken sick, whose uncle had gone bankrupt . . .Too great a confusion because of her husband . . . She closed the door.

She went back inside Too great a confusion for her. Her Mossie a tout, and her Mossie was gone today without explanation. After she had come back from the school, Siobhan had listened to every news bulletin on the B.B.C. . . . coming close to one o'clock. One day it was going to be on the radio . . .

There were two in the ditch on the east side of the Killyman Road, where the brambles grew across the banks, hiding them. There were two in the car parked between two blocks of garages at the top of the estate.

All the men could see the front door of Mrs Byrne's house, in the first row of houses that faced the barracks.

No chat, no cigarettes.

They were readied, the guns were armed.

Mossie Nugent's mother's cousin lived in the second line of house's. It was the sort of estate that he thought Siobhan might have wanted to live on, if they had not been so far down the I lousing Executive list, if they had not had to live with his mother.

Vinny Devitt was driving . . . They had come the long way, down to Edendork, then back towards Dungannon on the country road that would bring them to Killyman Road about opposite the road into the estate. Jacko not able to stop talking, yapping louder and faster the closer they came to the estate. Malachy breathing harder, like he'd a blockage. Vinny missing two gear changes, as if he were first time on a driving test. Mossie shared the back seat with Jacko and the 50-calibre that was wrapped in the old bedspread, pink flowers on yellow . . .

Devitt, driving like the little arsehole he was, turning into the estate.

Pretty quiet 'cos it was lunchtime. Lunchtime in the officers' mess across the Killyinan Road and up the hill.

Mossie pulled the snub barrelled pistol from his pocket, held it against is chest. His hands sweated inside the thin rubber gloves.

‘’You right, Malachy? Vinny?"

Jacko quiet, Malachy heaving breath. Vinny Devitt pulling on the brake.

A dozen paces from the car to Mrs Byrne’s front door. Number 17.

Mossie felt his flesh shiver inside the quilting of the anorak. He climbed out. He walked, stiff-legged, from the car to the door of Mrs Byrne's. On the pavement, outside her door by the young cherry tree, he looked right and he looked left, and he saw no one. It was lunchtime. He held the pistol hidden inside the anorak. He looked behind him. Three white faces in the car staring back at him . . . Shit, and there was a car coming down the road, maybe 100 yards away, should be in and out of sight by the time it got level. Remembering what the bitch had said to him. Didn't know when, didn't know from where. Trying to remember each last word the bitch had said to him ...

He rang the bell. Christ, and he wantei d to piss. They had both doors part open behind him, ready to come running when he bullocked inside, and he could see Jacko's legs half out and the jutted tip of the old bedspread, pink flowers on yellow. Wait till the car is past, you daft buggers Taking her time, Mrs goddamn Byrne. He tucked the pistol further into his anorak and turned his back on the road. He’d bundle her back in. His job, to watch Mrs goddamn Byrne, while Devitt stayed in the car, while Jacko and Malachy put the 50 –calibre up in the front bedroom.

"Who's wanting me?"

He spun She was a tiny woman, nothing to her, at the side of the house, holding a big plastic basket of washing.

It was because he had turned, because he faced up the road and into the estate, that he saw two men jump from the car stopped on the rold.

The frozen moment . . .

Mossie looked up the road Two men spilling from a car, black overalls, black balaclavas, black short -barrel rifles. Jacko, his back to the men, bent under the weight of the old bedspread, and At Malachy halfway round the car to help him. Mis Byrne piping, What's you wanting , , ?"

He turned again, There were two more men, dark dressed, coming up the road,threatening, into the estate, armed.

The first shots.

Nugent wheeling, spinning

The windscreen in front of Devitt frosted, then holed, then disintergrated. Vinny Devitt’s head, gone.

He was holding the pistol out in front of his chest, and the tiny woman heaved the washing basket at him. There was a shirt snagged on his shoulders and a pair of knickers falling from the red material of his anorak. He threw the pistol at Mrs Byrne and ran.

Jacko was on his back, and writhing, and the bedspread that was half across him and the weight of the heavy machine gun pinioned him. He never saw Malachy.

A shot clattered into the masonry above him. He ran past the front of the next house. Another shot. He half tripped on low wire dividing two front gardens, stumbled, regained his balance. The whine of a ricochet going off the pavement and by him. He turned into the path between the houses. His ears were deafened. His eyes were misted. He charged through a dug vegetable garden, slithering. No more shots, not since he had found the cover of the houses. He launched himself at the garden's back fence, battered his way through it. There was open waste ground ahead of him.

Mossie ran as fast as his damaged hip allowed.

He ran for his life and the red anorak billowed from his body.

Bren saw it all from the watchtower.

He was back from the firing slit, behind the sentry. Cathy was beside him, reaching onto her toes for the height she needed and peering through binoculars.

Bren could hear the shots.

It was a tableau in front of him. It was a grandstand view. He felt as though he had been hammered with a fist into the pit of his stomach.

There was just the bile taste in his mouth.

He looked straight through the broken windscreen of the car and he could see the slumped head of the driver. He looked past the offside of the car and he could see the young fellow, jeans and denim jacket, lying still on his stomach. He looked past the near-side of the car and he could see the thrashing arms of the third man He looked past the car and he could see the two soldiers walking easily down the slope of the hill, their weapons at their shoulders No haste, no urgency. And there were two more soldiers jogging up the road to meet them, one circling, _

still jogging, backwards, to cover behind them. But there was no movement, it seemed, anywhere in the estate, not even a door slammed.

One of the soldiers bent over the man on the ground at the nearside of the car, then lifted the cloth beside the man, lifted it away from a heavy machine gun by the look of it. The soldier crouched once more over the man. Bren heard the shot.

The helicopter was already in the air, coming low over the watchtower, deafening the peace.

Bren yelled, "Are you satisfied . . . ?"

Cathy didn't raise her voice. "It was to protect the source."

"Is any source worth that, bloody tell me?"

She lowered the binoculars. She looked him square in the eyes. "The source is worth everything."

The helicopter perched in the grassy patch beside the Killyman Road.

The four soldiers loped towards its open door. The bodies they left behind them.

The fight had gone from him. He swayed on his feet. He felt her hand at his elbow. Cathy steadied him.

"How far will you go to protect the source?"

"As far as it takes," Cathy said.

9

Through the wall behind the bed head he heard his mother's coughing.

Her chest was worse this winter. At the foot of the bed he heard their little Mary shifting in her sleep.

He lay on his back. He stared up into the blackness. The best years of their lives, his and Siobhan's, had been before the bitch had her nails in him. They were good years in Birmingham. In the same bed, shipped back with all their furniture, he had told his Siobhan that it was necessary for them to return to Ireland. She had cried and submitted. He thought that she had come back with him because she had no other choice. She was hard against him, his arm slipped gently around her shoulder.

"You's alright . . . ?" He had thought she was asleep.

"Course I'm bloody alright."

"You's alive . . ."

He was alive because he was the bitch's toy thing. And Vinny Devitt, who wasn't, was in the mortuary of the South Tyrone (General) Hospital, with Jacko and Malachy.

"Why didn't they shoot you?"

"I'm precious, because I'm precious to the bitch."

"Did you's think they'd shoot you?"

"I was wearing the red coat."

"You weren't shot because they'd told you what to wear?"

"Why I had to have the red coat."

"You's important to them?"

"It's what the bitch says."

"Will you get more money?"

"I gets one hundred and twenty-five pounds a week. I gets five hundred pounds a month. I gets six thousand pounds a year. That’s what I get . . ,"

"How long does you get the money?"

"Till I'm no more use to the bitch, till the trap's closed."

"How long's that?"

"For feck's sake, I don't know . . ."

"You'll be waking Mary. Why was they killed today?"

His mother hacked her cough again. He could hear the fire dying in the sitting room, the last spit of damp wood.

"To protect me."

"Three men . . . ?"

"To keep me alive."

"Keep you alive?"

"So I survive, that's what three men died for, so I live to tout another day."

"Is you frightened, Mossie . . . ?"

Always the fear was with him. The fear crept with him to the bed. The fear stalked him when he pasted wallpaper and painted. The fear bit at him when he went to the meetings with his O.C., and when he went to meetings with his handlers. The fear was with him when he kicked the plastic football on the back grass patch for Francis, and when he dressed Doloures, and when he cuddled Patrick, and when he cut little Mary's food for her. He was never without the fear.

"I don't know how to leave it, the fear ..."

"Leave it behind you?"

"I don't know how to."

"Is you more frightened of your own people, or of them?"

"No difference, both bleeding me, and no going back."

"When could you have gone back?"

"Doesn't matter, too long ago . . ."

Yeah, great, Mossie Nugent could have told the redhead to go feck herself. . . Could have had his driving ban, and his mortgage- recalled and his bank loan revoked, could have been put on the ferry boat with his exclusion order. No vehicle and couldn't work, bank loan revoked and debt, mortgage called in and bankruptcy, exclusion order served and home to the north where every man knew that the names of those served with the Prevention of terrorism Act exclusion order were slipped to the Proddie murder squads. He'd thought of that scene, over and over. He had thought he was going to get a beating and he'd found himself thanking the bitch. Oh yeah, that was too long ago.