The Journeyman Tailor (28 page)

"I had time to kill. I've always been interested in history."

"You won't mind me, course you won't, what's your business?"

Bren tripped it out. "Department of the Environment."

"Ah . . ." As if so much was explained.

"Just learning about this community . . ."

They were clear and pale blue, the eyes were on Bren's. Bren thought that it was like play at the surface of the eyes, and only mirthless cold behind. To leave now would be to draw attention to himself. It was harmless enough. The eyes followed Bren as he shifted his head.

"Have you's found a fine welcome here?"

"Only just starting."

"You'll find a grand welcome. We're friendly people."

"Yes."

"Even friendly to an Englishman from the Department of the Environment."

"Good to know."

"You'd not get a welcome, but you'd be knowing that, if it was thought you were of the Crown Forces."

"The Department of the Environment has nothing to do . . ." Bren said.

"Crown Forces aren't welcome, nor their spies."

I wouldn't know," Bren said.

"There's a way round here of showing people they're not welcome, if they're spies."

His page was blurred in front of him. "They're difficult times."

" They don't last, young man, the spies."

Bren looked up and saw that four girls at the next table, trim in their school uniforms, seemed to hear nothing.

‘’Ther’s a nose for spies in this town, on that mountain out there.

Spies smell.’’

"If you'll excuse me , ,’’

The sudden smile splintered the weather-beaten face. "Talking too much again, always Hegarty's problem, talking too much. You'll be wanting to be back to your reading."

Bren stood up. He gathered the books from the table. The old man had hunched himself over the day's newspaper. Bren returned the books to the pretty girl downstairs. He thought he might be sick. He walked out through the wide glass doors of the Library and into the end of the afternoon. The wind caught at him and the sweat ran chilled on the back of his spine. A stupid old fart, just a prattling old windbag ... So they wouldn't last, the spies. He thought of Cathy, tired and sweet and lovely Cathy. Cathy who would be there tomorrow, and the next month, and the next year, in the town and on the mountain. He had time still to lose, so he walked briskly away from the Library, forcing himself not to look back at the first-floor windows, and he believed that every eye in Market Square was on him.

On the site, two heavy packets of nails and screws and bolts and inns had been delivered. Nothing out of the ordinary. A van driver unknown to Mossie had called at the foreman's portacabin for a signature. A trainee chippy had been sent back to the van to fetch the delivery.

Nothing there to disturb Mossie as he got on with Innslini)', the undercoat onto the fresh plasterwork. But he had 'seen the sullen expression of the apprentice. Next time he passed, he called the boy quietly, not drawing attention to himself, and asked him why so cross, laddie. The boy had spat it out. The driver had been the lippy one at a vehicle check point three nights back when the boy had been tipped out of his old car, and his girl, searched down to his bollocks, given the chat that was always roughest when the U.D.R. part-timers were flaunting their bullet-proof flak jackets and their high-velocity rifles.

The boy had recognised the driver as the soldier who had humiliated him in front of his girl. And Mossie had noted the smart new logo on the side of the van.

He had left work early. He had no problem getting away early because he was on piecework and he had already achieved the account for the day for which he was paid,

He sat in his car. He was down the road from the gates to the builders' merchant's. He saw the van come back, checked the number plate against his memory. He wrote nothing down. His memory served him well. He recognised the driver. It was his task, that of the Intelligence Officer of the East Tyrone Brigade, to identify targets for the Active Service Units. He was way off safe territory, he was up past Stewartstown, and that was danger, particularly for a man who was Charlie One, Stop and Search. He watched the man, changed out of his overalls, drive from the yard in a dark blue saloon car. He followed cautiously. Most often he would have left this work to a young volunteer, a kid, even a girl, who was on the edge of the Organisation's operations, who was being tested. Not always. Mossie thought that it was only sometimes possible to involve the kids, but the time always came when it was necessary for him to take the risk himself. On the far side of Stewartstown he saw the car pull up outside a small and clean-painted bungalow. That was when he held back. A part-time soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment would have been briefed, had it pounded into his skull, that he was most in danger from ambush when he left his home and when he returned to his home. When the man was inside, through his front door, Mossie drove past the bungalow. He could do that once, only once. He saw an elderly woman, the hem of an apron peeping from under her raincoat, sweeping leaves from the front path, he saw the glower look that the mother of a U.D.R. part-timer would reserve for any car going slowly past her home.

It was a nugget of information. It was a beginning. There was no race to kill a man who was a part-timer with the U.D.R. the critical moment was already past, the linking of the chain, the identifying of the bastard.

He drove away. He looked for the proximity of the part-timer's neighbours, and for the cover that the winter hedgerows would offer, and the fall of the trees back across the first field on the far side of the road. It might take weeks, months even, to learn the habits of the soldier, whether he always left home and returned home on his own, whether he was sometimes collected by a work colleague or a soldier colleague. He would learn at what pub he drank, where he worshipped, his shift pattern at the barracks. He would learn whether his mother always made it her business to be in the garden when he left and returned, and whether he drove away fast, and whether the car was securely locked into the garage at night. He would find the name of the soldier and the history of the soldier. And he would never speak of him to the apprentice boy at work.

A man was marked.

Only when he was quite satisfied would he present his plan to the O.C. That Cathy might then throw away the plan, because he would report all of that business faithfully to his handler, that was of no importance to him. It had grown to be the miracle of Mossie Nugent, that he could live with a life divided.

He was the stranger and he tramped the pavements of the town.

Two great religious buildings, and their matching magnificence to emphasise a community's separation, St Anne's for the Protestants and St Patrick's for the Roman Catholics. Two great school complexes to hammer home a community's division, the Royal for the Protestants and the Academy for the Roman Catholics. Two main shopping streets to bring home the opposition of the .cultures, Scotch Street for the Protestants and Irish Street for the Roman Catholics. Two spreading sports complexes where the people of the town were split, the rugby club to the east for the Protestants and the gaelic pitches to the west for the Roman Catholics.

Bren walked through the town community that was separated, divided.

He was the stranger.

He was the spy . . .

An old man had frightened him.

He walked because he had been frightened by the queer crack of an old man. God, and he wouldn't be telling Cathy Parker that he had run, tail between his legs, from an old man in a library. They were gathered on each corner of Market Square, the men who watched him.

He would have sworn that every eye was upon him. Old men and young men, cupping then hands across their faces to light their cigarettes, lounged against walls on the corners where Irish Street and Scotch Street and Church Street ran up into the Square. Eyes piercing him and stripping him.

He was trained to move on a street without attracting attention to himself.

It was just idiotic that he should feel fear.

He thought the training was nothing, the reality was the peering eyes from each corner of Market Square.

It was the separated and divided town. There were no high barriers of corrugated iron to divide off each community's ghettos. He learned, as he walked, the unspoken boundaries. The soldiers patrolled the streets that were set aside for Roman Catholic homes, laden with backpacks and radio sets and machine guns, marked the territory of the Roman Catholics. Young men, whipping orders in the
patois
of the north of England, questioning and frisking kids in a tongue that was foreign and hostile to the town. The police ruled the Protestants' roads and avenues. Crisply turned out, bulged by their bullet-proof vests, powerful with their carbine rifles and sub-machine guns, ties knotted neatly under their laundered collars . . . Each pace he took, so he felt the growing of the fear.

A community divided by history, tacked together by firepower, separated by suspicion. He thought he could have read for a year in London himself in an hour. A town that was no place for strangers.

"... They don't last, young man, the spies . . . There's no safety for spies . . ."

When did it happen?"

"It was two days back, they was here four hours."

It was still daylight outside. The light was filtered through the coloured glass of the old door and magnified the pattern on Jon Jo’s back. He thought the man must have been watching as his car arrived because the door had been opened even before he reached the porch.

He had been hurried inside and the door had been pushed shut immediately.

" There was nothing to find."‘

’But they came....I don't know how long they'd the house watched, and I don't know whether they still have us watched. I was talking last night to friends, they're the other end of Guildford, they're the only other Irish I know in the town, they were turned over two days back as well."

"It won't be for long."

Jon Jo saw the shake of the man's head. "Oh, no . . . no, no . . . don't get me wrong, it's been my family's cause more than a century; I stand by it; but, my friend, you don't come back . . . Perhaps it's just that they're searching everywhere, how do I know? You don't come back to a house that's just been searched. It's not right for you, it's less than right for me. It wasn't just uniformed men that came, it was detectives .

. . Whose was the empty room? For any of the family from over the water . . . Was anyone expected? Not just right now . . . Why was there fresh bed-linen if no one was expected? Always clean bed-linen ... If no one's expected, why is the room kept free, don't I need the money?

Any time, any of the family might decide to come over . . . When was there last someone from the family over? Difficult to remember . . .

They searched hard. I don't know, maybe it was just routine, they were four hours going over the place. Jon Jo, hear me, I'm not Having them reason to come back." I have to have a place."

"You have to sort it yourself, and Jon Jo . . ."

"Do you feel no shame?"

"listen, damn it, they showed your photograph . . . they showed it to the English that lodge . . ."

He swayed against the wallpaper in the hallway.

I saw the photograph, what they were showing. It was you.

Didn’t put a name to it, but it was your photograph . . ."

He felt the shock and the sickness that followed. "I'm sorry, Jon Jo."

He didn’t help the man. He didn't say that he understood. There was the tightness all across him, like a noose at his neck, like handcuffs on his wrists.

‘’Jon Jo, my advice, get yourself out of here, get yourself home, Get yourself where you’re from...’’

’’ I might, I might, just...’’

He was wanted out and he went. Only on the mountain would he know friends.

They took Patsy Riordan, after it was dark, they turned the lights out and carried him out of the front door and they tipped him into the boot of the car that had been backed up close. They had dressed him upstairs. Vest, shirt, sweater, underpants, trousers, socks, anorak. His trainer shoes were carried to the car by a man who wore plastic gloves.

It was the old Irish custom from the dark past. A man with his shoes taken from him is a man disgraced.

His wrists were bound at his back. He was blindfolded. There was a gag at his mouth. The blindfold had been tightened and knotted again.

He was a young man who was going to his death and there was no love around him and no comfort.

The boot lid shut above him. He kicked and writhed and tried to scream. There was no one who would hear him. He was thrown against the spare tyre and bounced as the car hit the pavement edge as it turned out of the drive and made for the open country lanes.

I He struggled to free himself, to draw attention to himself, until he was too weak to move again. He prayed, mumbled words that were muffled by the gag, for the sound of the English soldiers' voices, for the knowledge that the car had run against a roadblock. He knew they went on winding and potholed roads. The Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army had been everything that he admired, everything that he had sought to be a part of. He heard no talk in the car,only the music from the Downtown station. He had lost all sense of direction. He began to lose the sense of time. The blindfold on his eyes was wet from his tears. He had done nothing, he was without guilt . . he was to be killed as a tout.

Patsy Riordan was already dead, his mind blown away by terror, when the car stopped.

He was dragged from the boot.

A bin liner was forced over his head and he lay on the wet, cold grass of the lane's verge as hands reached under the bag to remove the gag and blindfold.

He heard a voice. "Get it done."

He heard the splatter of the rain on the plastic of the bin liner bag that was over his head. He heard the arming of the pistol.

The darkness was all around him. There was the weight of a boot in the small of his back, as if to hold him steady.