The Journeyman Tailor (22 page)

There was a young man behind her and when she turned away then he went to her car and opened the door for her, like a gentleman. The faces of her children were pressed against the back window.

"Super children, Siobhan, you must be very proud of them. No worries now, I'll see you're safe, that's a promise . . ."

10

Bren watched.

Hobbes blanched.

Cathy explained.

"It's what has to be done. There isn't another alternative . . ."

They were in Hobbes' house, they had driven to that privileged community on the north County Down coast. They were in the kitchen at the back of the house and through the picture window were the small lights of coastal freighters in the Belfast Lough. The sink was piled high with the plates and cooking dishes that would stay there until the

'daily' came in the next morning. The table was littered with used glasses from the dinner table and finished bottles and emptied ice boxes. The smell in the kitchen was that of vindaloo sauce. Hobbes'

guests were still in the dining room, and Bren could hear their laughter.

Bren thought that Cathy cared not a damn that she had disturbed Hobbes' dinner party.

"It'll take the flak off him. It'll give him a breathing space. He was thinking on his feet, really well. If he hadn't been sharp then he was in for the hood and the bullet. It's just that he's too good to lose . . ."

It was where they all lived, the best and the brightest of the British administration seconded to Northern Ireland, in the big houses in the little lanes that led down to the beaches and rock shores of the Lough.

It was the area of the cruising R.U.C. cars and the security cameras and the multiple alarm systems. It was the territory of the Assistant Under-Secretaries and the Senior Principal Executive Officers, and it was reckoned to be beyond the reach of the arm of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Where there were good golf courses and good squash complexes mid good restaurants, and good expenses to pick up the tabs. The drink was in them, the first and the finest, and their chatter and joking bayed from the dining room into the kitchen that was harsh lit by the neon strip.

"I think he's stronger now that Siobhan's alongside. If we can steer him through these next few days, if we can deflect them, then we've saved him. It's that important. I want to let it run, Mr Hobbes."

Bren watched.

Hobbes cleared the dregs at the bottom of each bottle on the kitchen table, poured them into a used glass, drank fast and the red wine dribbled from the side of his mouth.

Cathy stood solidly in the centre of the kitchen, arms folded across her chest, stared at him, dared him to refuse her.

He was rocking on his heels. Bren thought him in shock. It was Hobbes' decision. Bren thought he had the right to be in shock. The decision wouldn't wait on a carefully drafted paper, nor a committee, nor could the decision hang in the air for a week's reflection. There was none of the arrogance he had seen in Hobbes before. Hobbes was pale, breathing too fast, drinking too quickly. He thought Cathy had been brilliant, and he thanked God, which for him was not often, that he was just the bystander. He thought Cathy had been brilliant because she had simply, clearly, laid out the facts and then driven them home, a hammer on a nail head. There had been no panic, less emotion. The facts were so simple. It was Mossie Nugent's life, Song Bird's life ... it was Patsy Riordan's death, a nothing kid's death. There was no escape for Hobbes.

She played for life and she played for death. Bren did not know where she found the strength.

Hobbes said, "You give me no choice."

Cathy said, "Thank you."

Hobbes said, "I feel like I want to throw up."

Cathy said, "Please yourself, Mr Hobbes."

Hobbes said, "It's just a fucking awful job."

Cathy said, "And hand wringing won't make it a better job."

Hobbes swayed as he led them into the hall. Once he grasped the bottom of the banister rail. They passed the open dining-room door.

The laughter and the conversation cut. Bren saw the eyes peering at them through the doorway. The men wore suits, the women were dressed well. He thought that some of them round the dinner table would have known, in general terms, what was Hobbes' work, and they would have been curious. They would have allowed their imagination to let rip at the reason for the young man and the young woman, casual and scruffed, who had taken their host from the table and into the kitchen. It was a real war, that sort of crap, that intruded into a private dinner party, Bren thought it was that sort of shit. Hobbes let them stand in the hall, and he went into the living room that was well furnished by government procurement standards, and he pushed a small chest aside, near the fireplace, and exposed the wall safe. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the safe and took out a thin envelope, passed it to Cathy. He relocked the safe and heaved the chest back,

flush to the wall again.

He had no more to say.

Hobbes showed them to the door.

They walked off down the drive under the brightness of the security lights.

Cathy chuckled, "He's going to be a ball of fire the rest of the evening, the life and soul of the party."

Bren stopped at the car. It had welled in him. "What you do, don't you care?"

"Christ's sake, it's not a big decision. It's not strategic. It doesn't have to go to Curzon Street or up to Cabinet. It's just day in day . . listen, young man, you are just a little cog, so am I. East Tyrone, Song Bird, just one operation running here, and over each hill there's another.

What we do doesn't
win
the war, maybe it stops us losing it a little.

Learn, young man, that you're not the centre of the universe . . . That curry he'd done, smelt revolting.’’

There was just the wind in the roof and the singing at the telephone wire and the beat of the rain on the windows.

Her head was in the crook of his arm.

She whispered in his ear.

He lay rigid on his back and it was as if there was a coldness over his body.

"She was just wonderful. She was great. There's no side to her. She said that I wasn't to be worrying, that I was to leave everything to her.

Funny word she used, she said that 1 wasn't to 'fret'. 'I'll take care of everything,' that's what she said. She said that I was to trust her. She's a lovely way with words, that one. She said the children looked so good

..."

"What's she going to do?"

"Just said that you'd be safe, that was her promise."

"Did you give out to her?"

"I did not." Siobhan whispered, "I trust her."

She heard the bitter wheeze of his voice. "She hooked you, like she hooked me, the bitch."

To Rennie it was a madness. Anyone else, anyone who was not Cathy Parker, would have had short shrift from his tongue. He was on his doorstep and the wind blew leaves into the hallway behind him, and the rain spattered the legs of his pyjamas below his dressing gown. The bell had woken his wife, disturbed his daughters, and he had taken his pistol down the staircase with him and held it ready to shoot before he had identified her through his spyhole. She looked half drowned. The young fellow was behind her but with his shoulders turned away as if he guarded her back. It was a madness to come banging on doors when the clock in his hall showed past midnight. No one else, only Cathy . . .

He'd have had the skin off the back of any of his own men who had come and kept a finger on the bell until his whole family was shaken from sleep. He didn't argue. He wanted them gone. He agreed. A long time ago, before her nerve had gone, his wife had bred dogs for showing. Such a long time ago, before the present phase of the war had started, before he had gone into Special Branch, before it had become unsafe for him to walk alone in the fields and woodlands close to where they lived with their labradors. It would have been insane now, just as it had been for twenty years. It was the price he paid, that the dogs were gone. It was the price his wife had paid, ever since their home had been invaded by a scumbag with an automatic rifle. There was a phrase from those days, such a long time ago, when he walked the labradors and his wife took them to shows. The jet-black bitch, dead now, had been called by a vet their
alpha female.
The top bitch who could quieten a flood of puppies with a growl ... He thought Cathy was the
alpha
female.
He listened to her, and he saw the way that the young fellow watched her back, the one with the idiot name. She was top bitch and the way he looked at her, it was obvious that the silly bastard was soft on her.

Rennie said, "I will make the calls, I will go back to bed, I will try to get to sleep, and I will see you tomorrow. Now, please, piss off . . ."

If he had been the young fellow's age then he might have been soft himself on the
alpha female
, bloody nuisance woman.

He was still up when the message was received on the secure teleprinter line.

He was often up, prowling the barracks far into the morning's small hours.

When he had first come to the province, two decades earlier, as a young lieutenant, then it had been the day of military rule. Now, in his eighth tour of duty, the accent had shifted. It was the time now of police primacy. The message on the battalion teleprinter was not a request but a requirement that he provide back-up for an operation the following morning. His third and fourth tours had seen the change of emphasis and he could remember the resentment that all soldiers had felt then. By now, it was accepted.

Colonel Johnny spent much of the night drifting between his Operations Room and his office and the Mess where there was coffee on tap. So much of his operational work was carried out under the cover of darkness. More patrols, more roadblocks, more surveillance teams at night than during the day. He lived in a twilight world of dozed sleep and catnapped rest. Because the tasking for the morning was a requirement and not a request, he immediately set about the orders. He noted the name of the suspect and where he was to be arrested. He studied the police plan. He was to provide protection. Even in daylight there was the need for great vigilance. Colonel Johnny had learned that of Altmore, always to take every possible care. Two sections to be in position before dawn. The first section that would be to the north of the pick-up block would have the heavy machine gun, the second section on the lower ground to the south would have the 66

mm anti-tank missile launcher. He had the Night Duty Officer bring him the photographs of the crossroads where the arrest would be made.

He was always thorough. Colonel Johnny could not tolerate the military funerals that were the mark of commanders who were not thorough.

When the two sections had gone, tramped out of the barracks into the darkness laden with their weaponry and their signals equipment, he could wonder why an operation was to be mounted at such short notice to lift a kid who hardly figured on his Intelligence Officer's files. But within ten minutes of his two sections disappearing from the barracks'

lights he was asleep in his office, splayed out on the sofa dreaming of deer to be stalked, grouse to be driven, peace.

"I'm dead," she said.

Bren thought that he ought to have offered to drive. There was little traffic on the road, but he turned to look at her face when the next car approached them. She was pale as marble in the lights of the oncoming car.

"Where are we?"

"Near to my place ..."

"I'll get a taxi."

She stifled her yawn. "Taxis take for ever this time of night."

"Then I'll . . ."

"Bed down at mine," Cathy said.

The next car rushing towards them, and he looked at her again. She was expressionless, impassive. And the light was gone fast from her face. He shifted in his seat, awkward. She drove fast. There were no police roadblocks, no military checkpoints. He wondered if it had been like this for his predecessor, the man who had been compromised and withdrawn. She had the heating on in the car and the all-night radio station was playing quietly. It was Jim Reeves on the radio and that was about right for Ulster in its time warp. Wondering all the time that she drove, wondering whether she was just lonely, wondering whether he would just be a fix or a different hypodermic. She turned off a side road. She headed through the opened gates and pulled up outside a two-storey block of modern flats. She leaned across him and her elbow brushed his knee and she took her personal radio from the glove compartment and tucked the pistol from under her thighs into her jeans.

Bren fumbled the door handle before he could get the lever in his fingers. He hurried round the back of the car and opened her door for her. When she was out of the car and locking her door then it was so obvious that she was vulnerable. So small, so huddled in the vastness of her anorak. He walked into the building a pace behind her. The gold of her hair was in front of him. He thought she was so precious and he was afraid to touch her. It was a smart block, well decorated. Up a flight of stairs. Her door had a spyhole that was too low for him, right for her height. He didn't know when he should touch her. Two locks, two keys.

The lights flooded on in front of her after she opened the heavy door.

She walked inside and Bren followed her.

"It's not bad . . ."

She pointed to the wide, three-seat sofa.

". . . I'll get you a pillow and a blanket."

Cathy was away across the room and a door closed behind her. He sat on the sofa. He could have laughed and he could have wept. She wasn't lonely, didn't need a fix from him. She was just too tired to drive all the way down the bloody Malone Road and drop him off. His head was in his hands. He might have kissed the back of her head while she was opening the door ... He might have slipped his arms round her in the moment before she had switched on the lights. What would she have done, if he had touched her? Probably she'd have kicked his kneecaps off.

Bren sat on the sofa and took off his shoes, and he slipped off his anorak and dragged off his sweater.