The Journeyman Tailor (41 page)

He had complained yesterday to House Services about the lack of hot water. It was lukewarm again. He shaved carefully, They ought to be safely back in Dungannon by now.

She swung hard into the gateway of the Mahon Road

Barracks. Bren had his I.D. card up for the sentry to see, but Cathy just waved and the soldier smiled his greeting and the barrier was lifted. He followed her to the Five building, up the stairs.The room was alive already, men and women at the computers and the radio operators craned towards their dials. The man, Jimmy, was coming across the area with a tray of coffee mugs and he grinned at Cathy and offered his cheek for a fierce, short kiss. Bren saw it, her belonging. Jimmy carried the coffee on towards the corner, and Bren saw that the back-up had beaten them home, Jocko and Herbie in their sleeping bags on the floor. The cardboard city man, as usual, was tilted in his chair with his huge stockinged feet on the table. He watched the wild cheerfulness of their greeting for Cathy. The cardboard city man was up on his feet, crashing away the chair, hugging her as if she was back from the other side of God knows where. Herbie was crawling out of his bag, sagging boxer shorts and white legs and gripping her hand.

Jocko was pushing himself to his feet, his bag still hanging to his waist, and Cathy giggling and unzipping him. Everyone was laughing. Bren stood back. She was amongst her own. He had been something to her when she was frightened half to death. Now she had no need of him.

Bren said that he would get the coffee and she didn't seem to hear him.

He went out into the corridor, to the cupboard at the top of the stairs where the fridge and the kettle were. More laughter from behind the swing doors. Jimmy stood beside him.

"You'll be wanting the tray, herself and you and me and a couple more on the radios. Did you have a good night?"

"Who are they, for God's sake? We saw bugger all."

"Your back-up? Didn't they tell you? No, they're not the best with the social graces."

Bren said evenly, "I don't seem to get told much . . ."

"It'll come, don't push it . . . The tramp is Sir David Wain- wright, Baronet, Grenadier Guards, had the Military Cross for some do on the road to Nasirayah in the Gulf, rich as Croesus, soldiering's just a hobby

. . . Herbie's on his sixth tour here, five kids at home, they're all Northern Ireland babies, there'll be another when he's posted back, super gardener, takes all the prizes round here with his onions. Jocko's the Military Medal from Oman on his first tour abroad. He's a great talent with his water colours, only drawback is that they're all of the Brecons. I've a couple at home."

The kettle was boiling. "And who are you?"

Bren said, "Oh, I'm nothing. I just trail around after Miss Parker."

"It's meant kindly."

Bren spooned the coffee into the mugs "And who's she?"

"I doubt any of us know that ..."

He poured the boiling water.

". . . and I doubt any of us'll give up trying to find out . . ."

He picked up the tray.

". . . You're a lucky man to work with her."

Bren carried the tray back into the work area. The cardboard city man was hunched forward in his chair. Herbie still wore just his boxer shorts and Jocko was back in his sleeping bag, on his knees, and they looked at the map spread out on the low table. Cathy was between them, sitting cross legged, and Jocko had his arm on her shoulder. The map had red pencil squares, and each square a letter on it. He passed her a mug of coffee.

She was talking and the smile beamed on her. "... he'll have the bleep on him and that'll come through to here. Jimmy'11 look after that, but that's only in case we've lost him. We hope to be closer in than you. If all goes well we'll have Song Bird and Donnelly in sight . . . Thanks, Bren ... If it's possible we'll whistle you in. If not ..."

She didn't have to finish it. Bren stood cupping his coffee in both hands. If it was not possible to whistle up the firepower then it would be down to the two of them. He could see it on all of their faces. They didn't rate him.

"Shouldn't be a problem," Bren said.

Cathy said she was going for a shower, and he was asleep in a borrowed sleeping bag before their three-hand card game had begun.

It was the way he had worked from the beginning.He alone knew where it was. The cache had been well made. The inside of the dustbin was bone dry. Stowed in the dustbin were plastic farm bags, tied at the neck. Inside the bags were a

Kalashnikov rifle, heavily greased, cartons of ammunition and magazines, two hand-guns, a drogue grenade, a black balaclava, camouflage denims, a pair of boots which he had oiled before they went into the sack and which were soft to the touch now, and a thermal sleeping bag. They were all dry, all as he had left them in the dustbin that he had sealed with masking tape. Jon Jo changed swiftly into the camouflage denims and pulled on his old, familiar boots, and then taking what he needed, repacking the rest, he resealed the bin and rebuilt the cover over the pit. Working fast, summoning up the urgency, because that was the way to suppress the wrenching disappointment of his homecoming.

First, he told himself, identify the tout. Second, he told himself, kill the bastard, kill the killer of old Mrs Riordan's boy, of Vinny Devitt. He would take pleasure in killing the tout. And then, then they would sit up off their arses in Dublin. The sky above Altmore would be, by Christ, on fire.

Old Hegarty, sitting motionless in the gorse with his dog, saw Donnelly fill in the pit, replace the stones over the dustbin, saw the rifle in his hand, saw him slip for cover.

He'd had his breakfast, he had sat on the toilet, he had been given his lunch box. His mother was still in her bedroom, and the children were all over her and squabbling. Siobhan opened the bedroom door. He was on his knees, half into the wardrobe. Must have been the sounds of the children, fighting, that were magnified through the suddenly opened door. She saw the bald patch on the crown of his head, his white paint-stained overalls; then the fright on his face as he swung round.

"What's you doing, Mossie?"

He held it up, the bleeper box, for explanation.

"But you don't take it."

She saw him tremble as his teeth bit at his lower lip.

"You reckon he's back?"

She watched him force down, fumbling, the wardrobe floor.

"You'll lead them to him?"

He had the buttons of his overalls unfastened, and he was working at his belt and his zipper, and he had the elastoplast beside him.

". . . God, if he knew . . ."

He strapped the bleeper box high under his crutch.

"He'd kill you. He'd kill the both of us, if he knew."

She followed him out of the bedroom, and down the hall. She watched him go to the car with the lunch box in his hand. It was for money they could not spend. He had not said goodbye to his children.

He had said not a word to her. He drove away without a sign.

She was in the bathroom and washing the baby. The O.C. told her he was going out. She never asked why and she never asked where he was going to. He told her that he didn't know when he'd be back. He might have told her, but he didn't, that he had business with a man in Coalisland. He closed the door behind him and locked it with the mortise. He'd had the new locks put on all the doors since the summer, since the Protestants had been to the village bar with their guns, and he now kept his car always in the garage, and there was a new lock on the garage door. They weren't much, the precautions he by himself could take against the Protestant gunmen. One precaution was already taken, the message passed by a Nationalist councillor to a Protestant councillor, giving the cast-iron guarantee to the U.V.F. that every last one of them in their command structure would be singled out, shot down, their homes burned over the heads of their slags and their brats if one hair on the head of any of the Brigade officers of East Tyrone was harmed.

And his own private treaty was that for as long as he commanded East Tyrone, no U.V.F. officer of a comparable rank would be a target.

He unlocked the swing-back door of the garage, heaved it over. He switched on the light.

"Get it off."

He froze.

"Shut it off."

He saw Jon Jo Donnelly in the camouflage gear and a woollen cap rolled up onto his forehead. It was an order, and he obeyed it. He snapped the light off. "Pull the door down."

The door screeched on the runners as he dragged it down. The O.C.

stood his ground. There was the flash of a match in the darkness and the glow of a cigarette and the smell of the tobacco.

He said it nervously, "Great to have you back, Jon Jo.’’

"Good to be back."

"You going well, Jon Jo?"

"I'm going alright."

"Anything you be needing . . . ?"

"I heard there was a tout on Altmore "The voice was ice-cold and the cigarette burned and wavered in front of the O.C.

"I did what I was supposed, I brought the security, I handed it to them."

"Didn't hear me criticise you, did you? Just saying that I was told there was a tout on Altmore.’’

"The security pulled the Riordan boy in, they did him.’’

"What did he confess to?" "Don't know."

"You didn't see what he confessed to?’’

"I wasn't shown anything, nor heard a tape?’’

"Did you think it was the Riordan boy?"

"I don't know."

He saw the cigarette flake to the floor. He heard the scrape of the boot on concrete floor of the garage.

"When you pulled the security in, did you tell them you thought Patsy Riordan was a tout?"

The drip of the voice. No emotion, no surprise, no regret. He had only once been on an operation with the man, and he hadn't known he would be there until the last minute, and he'd been on the 50-calibre, feckin' incredible, not a bloody soldier bastard daring to show his face over the wall on the Altaglushan Bridge.

‘’ I didn't ...it was after the Devitt boy was shot by the S.A.S, and Jacko from Pomeroy and Malachy from Coalisland. Only Mossie Nugent got clear ... It had to be a tout."

"When you called the security in, who did you think was the tout?"

"It was Patsy was done."

"What did you think?"

He blurted, "I thought it was Mossie."

"Who named Patsy to the security?"

The O.C. said, quiet, "Mossie did . . . but I'm telling you that, Mossie's no tout. We did a policeman yesterday, a Branch man. I told Mossie the evening before and we did him the next morning, late. He hadn't been warned.

Couldn't have been Mossie . . . but when the Devitt boy and Jacko and Malachy were shot I didn't see how's

Mossie could have run clear from the guns, him with a bad leg ..."

He heard the voice in the darkness ahead of him.

"Important man, a tout on Altmore. They'd play big stakes for an important man."

"What'll you be wanting of me?"

"That you hold your tongue."

There was the light tread of the boots. There was the swing of the back door of the garage. He waited until there were no more sounds, only the wind on the garage roof.

He saw that the back door had been jemmied open. He had been in the house and he had heard nothing.

It had been taken from him, the command of the East

Tyrone Brigade. Mossie had told him that he would still be O.C. after Jon Jo returned, but the command had been lifted from him. There had never been any arguing with Jon Jo Donnelly. He pushed the broken door closed.

While they did a check-list Jimmy fussed around them, and the cardboard city man and Jocko and Herbie were

kitting up. Thermal underwear, lightweight boots,

camouflage denims, balaclavas, mittens. They had swilled out their mouths and there would be no more cigarettes, and there had been no soap used. Their faces were

smeared in the camouflage cream that broke the outlines and blunted the skin colour.

Bren felt the pressure growing on him, Plastic bottle and the silver tinfoil and cling-wrapped sandwiches.

The short-barrelled rapid-fire Heckler and Koch rifles, with the long-range sights and image intensifiers; the heavyweight Browning 9 mms and shoulder holsters; the radio that would fit into the rucksack; the cellular telephone; the ammunition magazines, four loaded for each of the rifles, and three loaded for each of the Brownings; binoculars; medical kits which she had not allocated to them before. He thought of his mother and father, feet in front of a winter fire, television on and her knitting and him reading the evening paper, and their not knowing what their son did, and how they would cope with a visit from Mr Wilkins if it didn't work out. His jeans were dank from the previous night's soaking and mud bath, not yet fully dried out even after a day's break on the radiators, his shirt was grimed, his sweater smelt.

Bren looked up. Across the far side of the area was the bank of television sets. Second from the right, third rack from the bottom, the view of a farmhouse and a bungalow. The back-up was ready to leave.

The man, Jimmy, said, "Good luck, all, don't worry on it and just know that we're here through the night. And if it's tonight then give the bad boy one from us . . ."

The Quartermaster swore, told his woman he'd drink taken, couldn't drive. His woman told him it had never made a fig of difference before, that he was to go and collect the girl from her friend's, that any decent father would think more of picking up his daughter on such a night than filling his gut with drink.

He lived on the edge of the village. His garage was filled with the new linoleum he was to lay in his kitchen and the new units. His car was out in the road because he hadn't bothered himself when he had come home to get out and open the gates and bring it onto the driveway. It was dark out on the road because the soldiers saw to it that the street lights were kept off, and bloody dangerous it made the road for women and kids and the elderly . . . A faint light only, from the gap in the curtains of the front room.

The figure came fast from the shadow of the hedge opposite. He saw the bulk of the man's body and the dark of his face and of his clothes.