Field of Blood (29 page)

He was talking aloud but to himself.

Astley didn't care. Astley socked in hard. `Perhaps we all jumped too fast, perhaps we were running when we should have been walking.'

`What's that supposed to mean?

'Perhaps we should have charged him, stuffed him away to remand and come back to work on him later, in six months or a year ...'

`That's bloody hindsight. Hindsight's the biggest load of crap there is in this game.'

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`You asked, Mr Rennie.' Astley was now cowed.

Ì didn't ask for bloody hindsight.'

McDonough gripped Astley's arm, squeezed hard on it. It was an unspoken

instruction from the Detective Sergeant for the Detective Constable to close his

mouth.

`He's what we have,' McDonough said. `He's the best we've ever had. He might

be the best we're ever going to get. That's how it seems to me.'

Ànd the best's piss poor,' Rennie said.

`Then he's got to be stiffened, Mr Rennie.'

Astley shook off McDonough's hand. `Ship him out then. Lose him for a few months across the water.'

`Can't,' said Rennie. `They're talking about an early preliminary hearing at the Magistrate's, getting him into the box good and early. All bloody politics. It's the politicians' pound of flesh they're looking for in return for McAnally's immunity,

our boyo in the box filling the front pages with evidence . . .' Now he laughed.

`Don't anyone talk about justice, justice has fuck all to do with it. The politicians want success, and their success is McAnally going through his routine at

preliminary and then at trial. They want two bites at the bloody flesh. And I've Special Branch queuing for him, and I've got Intelligence waiting in line, and the

Army wouldn't mind seeing him ... So, he can't be lost for a few months over the

water ... a few days, that's all I can get him out for.'

Astley said, `Then you've a problem, Mr Rennie.'

McDonough said, Ìt's not worth considering, Mr Rennie, if McAnally were to fall

down on us.'

Ìt's not worth considering because it can't happen. I'll tell you why it can't happen. The Secretary of State told the Prime Minister that McAnally would be in

court. The Chief Constable told the Secretary of State that McAnally would be in

court, I told the Chief Constable that McAnally would be in court if I had to bloody carry him there.

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**Got it? Have you got why McAnally can't fall down on us? There are no confessions, from the crowd we've pulled in? There's none of them doing

McAnally's job for him?

'You're joking,' Astley snorted.

`They're none of them opening their mouths,' McDonough said. `Without

McAnally none of them'll go down, and the bastards'll all walk out.'

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Rennie stared through the window, and down onto McAnally's sunken head. He

saw the shaking in McAnally's shoulders.

Ì'm not going to wet nurse him. He's got to know what he's signed on for. He's to

confront McGilivarry and McCreevy this morning; and O'Brien this afternoon.'

Ànd if he's on the floor?' Astley asked. `Then we pick him up again.'

Ànd if he can't stand up?

'Then we find a different way to prop him,' Rennie said.

Rennie and McDonough went back into the Interrogation Room, both smiling

broadly. Astley went to arrange the transfer of Joey McGilivarry, Belfast Brigade

Intelligence Officer, from the cell block to the Interrogation Block.

The radio message was brief.

In fifteen minutes Ferris was to rendezvous with his foot patrol at the junction of

Whiterock and Glenalina Road for transport that would take him immediately to

Springfield Road barracks. Just that.

The junction of Whiterock and Glenalina wasn't a good place to be standing around if the transport was late. But the transport, a Pig, was waiting for them.

He'd jumped into the back and they had sped away. It was rare for transport to be

punctual. Presumably something of priority required him back at the barracks.

He need not have been on the foot patrol. The corporal who had now taken over

command could just as well have started the job, but foot patrol enabled Ferris to

be out of the barracks, beyond the wire and the fences and the high gates and the sentries.

The Intelligence Officer was waiting for the Pig in the vehicle park. `We had to search round for you.'

`Bravo knew where I was,' Ferris said tersely. `You're wanted again. Your friend's

crying for you.' `What's that supposed to mean?

'Your little Provo friend ... You don't listen, David, when you're given good advice.

That's a weight of a problem you have, not listening to good advice.'

`What advice?'

`Being told not to get involved with Provo shit.'

Ì've said it before: nobody asked me if I wanted to get involved.'

`Strikes most of us, David, most of us in the Mess, that you didn't try very hard to uninvolve yourself ...'

`Who wants me?' Ferris had walked to the Weapons Pit and the 1.0. had trailed

him there. He cleared his rifle.

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`That thug who's your second friend, the detective. Your game's getting boring

for the rest of us. Hobnobbing with scum and policemen. What's with you?

' I'll tell you what's with me ... What's with me is trying to get this bloody war behind us, not trying just to serve out a four months' tour but trying to tie at least one loose end.' If he couldn't put one on the Intelligence Officer's nose, at least

he could spit his words up the wretched man's nostrils. `What we're trying to do is

to put thirty bad men, evil men ‐ am I talking the language you understand ‐ off

the streets.'

`Personal conceit's no substitute in soldiering for professionalism.'

`Thirty is more than our Battalion, six hundred of us, is ever going to put away.'

Ì hope you don't fall on your face, David. I'd get a pain in the side laughing if you did.'

Ferris walked rapidly to the far side of the vehicle park. He had spotted Rennie's

car.

The Intelligence Officer called after him. `Let us know when you're murdering friend's had enough of you, so we can get you back to leading your platoon.'

Ferris stopped and turned. `Get the fuck off my back,' he shouted.

There were two squaddies working under the bonnet of a landrover and listening.

The Intelligence Officer smiled. `Didn't anyone tell you about my sister, about my

sister's fiance, about the week before they were to be married, about a bomb in

South Armagh under a Ferret, about a Hussar who lost his legs and his balls, about a cancelled wedding. Didn't anyone tell you why I'm not fond of people who get cuddly with the Provos?'

Ferris walked on towards Rennie's car.

In the car Rennie pointed to a rug on the back seat and gestured for Ferris to put

his rifle under it, to hide it. Ferris shrugged Rennie's overcoat over his military dress, and Rennie handed him his personal pistol to hold at his waist under the coat.

Rennie told him about the confrontations between Sean Pius McAnally and the

arrested men of P.I.R.A.'s Belfast Brigade. It had been bad with the Chief, but better with Intelligence, grim with Operations, and worst of all with the Quartermaster. The Quartermaster had shouted at McAnally in Gaelic and it had

been a shambles because Rennie and the detectives with him didn't understand a

word of the

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**language. Rennie said it was like a witch handing down a curse in a bad film.

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McAnally was in poor shape. Rennie said that Ferris was the only man he knew

who could breathe some bottle back into Sean Pius McAnally.

`We're all on the line, David,' Rennie said. Ùnderstand me, I have to use you.

Whether I like it, you like it, you're my only way to him.'

The mortar had been manufactured in a light engineering factory across the border and far away, on the edges of Waterford city. The mortar was precision tooled, and as good as could be obtained when the Organization was unable to

lay its hands on the regular military item. The mortar was modelled on the old two‐inch variety and could throw the bombs a good 250 yards.

Frankie Conroy had yelled himself hoarse to get his hands on the mortar.

Ìf the men who are in Castlereagh ever get out of there and get to hear that when a mortar was called for it wasn't made available, then you'll be needing plastic in your knees.'

The mortar was a jewel.

`Christ help you, Frankie Conroy, if you don't bring it back.'

In the city, the Organization had never been short of hand guns or rifles, never wanting for fertilizer mix in the big bombs, never had to search far for industrial

detonators, but the mortar was especially precious.

`Don't you go bloody leaving it where you're taking it. Four bombs you can have .

. .'

And a man to sight the mortar, and a man to drop the bombs in the tube.

The afternoon light was failing. He had the mortar, and the bombs, and he had

two kids out in Andy'town looking for a flat‐top lorry to drive away, and he had

the men to fire the mortar from the back floor of the lorry, and he had a man with

bottle who was touring the small Protestant housing estate beween Palace

Barracks and the Upper Sullivan School in Holywood who would find him the firing place, and he had three men out in the Falls who were hunting for cars ...

Christ, he needed a bloody army.

He went to the Falls Road offices of Provisional Sinn Fein. He was taken to a back

office. The man he talked to had once done time for possession of firearms, and

now reckoned there was a career ahead in community politics. Frankie snapped

out his requirements, like he was speaking to dirt.

Ì want a loudspeaker kit that won't come back. I want to know where

I can go and lift one, Public Address that'll be heard for at least two hundred yards clear.'

He was given the address of the firm that rented mobile P.A. systems to Provisional Sinn Fein.

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On the way over Rennie had stopped at an off‐licence.

They had arrived with three six‐packs of Tennants and a bottle of Rioja, and Rennie had said that if they put the Spanish stuff down the woman's throat at least it would shut her up.

Prentice had laid in the chops and some chips and some peas, and Prentice had

made a thing of how it was time for Roisin to have a night off the dishes and saucepans, and he'd cooked, and Goss had minded the kids and sat with Young

Gerard and Little Patty on the floor, and Rennie had kept Roisin's glass going.

The meal was finished. The kitchen was cleared except for McAnally and David Ferris. Rennie had contrived it well. One moment the kitchen had been full, like a

party time when no one was in the mood, now there were only the lieutenant and

the tout at the table, and the last six‐pack in front of them.

Ferris tore at the cardboard wrapping, slid a can across to McAnally.

Ìt's been a bastard, today?

'Too right.' There could be a softness in McAnally's voice, as if he lost a bit of hard Belfast when he was down in the caravan beside the canal. `Right bastard.'

Èvery time they curse you, every time they threaten you, think of your kids, Gingy ... It's all air they're talking. They can't touch you.'

`They said I was dead. Each one of them said I was dead.'

`That's all they can say. They're frightened and they're lying through their teeth.'

`Tom McCreevy said I'd be looking over my shoulder till I was dead, whether it was a month or a year or ten years.'

Ferris speaking earnestly, quietly. `They have to make believe the world begins and ends with them ... It's not true, the world's too big for them, for their bullying. You're going to go away to places where they can't touch you, can't reach you ... you're going to go to places where your kid's grow up with a better

future than time in the Kesh.'

'Ollie O'Brien spoke in Irish ‐ bloody Rennie went mad ‐ Ollie said I'd be called the biggest whore in Ireland.'

`Gingy, you may have been a right little shit when you were in Belfast, but you went out, you learned about a different way of living when you were down south.

You saw there was a different way of living than facing up the twenty‐five years

behind the wire.'

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`You know what they are, when they come after you? You think they'll just forget

about me?

'They won't know where to go looking.'

`They'll look till they bloody find me.'

`They won't know where to start ... You're going to be safe, Gingy, safe with Roisin, safe with the kids ... Listen, way back the Soviets slaughtered everyone who stood in their way, everyone who turned their back on them. I give you two

different men, both Soviets who went over, defected. One in Canada, one in Australia. If the Soviets had found them they were dead. They lived to be old men

... they lived long because they had new identities.'

The doubt flickered on McAnally's face. Ànd the Commies were looking for

them?

'Looking as hard as they bloody could, and not finding them.'