The Journeyman Tailor (24 page)

"Patsy Riordan?"

"Who wants to know?"

D.C. McDonald flashed his card and there was the barrel ol the Sterling to reinforce it.

"It's R.U.C."

The fear glowing.

D.S. Browne saw it.

"So?"

"So get in," McDonald growled.

Joseph Mullins was a detective sergeant and on the force to show there was no discrimination against Catholics in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

"No problem, lad, just get in," he said quietly.

He heard the door close behind him. He pulled away.

He glanced up at his mirror . . .Down the lane, behind them, a car was stopped.

11

It was the story that the small boy loved best, the story that had no ending.

. . All the time they were moving more troops onto the mountain to hunt Shane Bearnagh. There were men brought from Charlemont with their families to the Altmore barracks, worse even than the dragoons, they were called the 34th Foot. There was no good Irishman that was safe from the English soldiers and the gallowglasses, those were the paid men that came with them. If a man helped Shane, fed him, gave shelter to his wife and his little one, then the roof was burned over that man's head, and his crops were ploughed in, and his cattle were taken.

But for all the suffering there was no resentment, not amongst the decent folk, for what Shane stood for. He embodied the freedom that his people yearned for. The poor people stayed loyal to Shane Bearnagh.

"More troops came, more cavalry. They did everything they could to terrorise the people into telling them where they could find the patriot.

Every day that passed made life more dangerous for Shane. Of course, he could have left. There were many Catholics who had gone abroad into exile and safety, but that was not the way of Shane Bearnagh.

"One day Shane was out walking with his wife, as pretty and fair as any woman on the mountain, and his boy who was a fine wee fellow, and the soldiers on their horses saw them. He told his wife and his son to hide and he ran off across open ground so that the soldiers would follow him. He saved his wife and his son and drew away the dragoons. In his ears he could hear the thunder of their horses' hooves and he could hear them yelling their excitement as if he were a fox they chased. He led them on, across moorland, through forests and all the time they were gaining on him. When they were close to him, when the breath was panting in his lungs, when the leading soldiers were little more than a sabre's cut from him, Shane reached a gorge. A hundred feet below him the mountain river tumbled on sharp rocks.

The sides of the gorge were too steep for him to scramble down. Shane jumped. Jesus was with him, and the Mother of Mary. He jumped the gorge, and the gorge was too wide for the horses of the dragoons to follow, but Shane Bearnagh had jumped it. He was gone into the trees leaving them to curse their anger. If you know where to look, if you go to the gorge, there is said to be the place where you can see, set in a stone, the footprint of Shane Bearnagh's boot, where he leaped from to clear the gorge ..."

"Did they ever catch him, Ma?"

It was the story without a finish.

"It's time you was asleep, Kevin."

Ronnie's voice was low, as if the suspicion of being overheard was always with him, even in the heart of a Special Branch section in the core of Lisnasharragh barracks. Bren sat against the back wall, listened. Cathy Parker was in front of Rennie's desk, straight backed on a hard chair, sometimes giving him her attention and sometimes staring vaguely out of the one window. Rennie was talking softly but urgently.

Palsy Riordan had been taken into police custody. First to Dungannon police barracks and then to an interview room at the regional holding centre in Gough barracks, Armagh. He would be held overnight, and interrogated.

Attached by a tangle of wires to Rennie’s desk telephone was a small tape recorder. Next to the desk was a black and white television set and a radio, both on a wheeled table beside which was a computer console. There were two filing cabinets, each with a padlocked bar running top to bottom that prevented their being opened.

The following morning he would be taken back to Dungannon, and released.

"That’s it . . ." Rennie reached into a desk drawer for his pipe.

" Thank you.'

"coffee?"

"No, thanks."

"Perhaps your colleague would like coffee?"

"He wouldn't, no."

The pipe was filled, lit. "Heh, come off your high horse, Cathy."

"We don't want coffee, thank you."

Rennie leaned further forward, waving away the pipe smoke. No longer the policeman of Special Branch, no longer trying to play the cold man who didn't know emotion. Trying now to play the friend.

"Cathy, you know what you're at? You know what you're into . . . ?"

"I don't need telling."

"You know what'll happen?"

"I'm not a fool."

Sharp, staccato. "Heh, Cathy, it's a big boys' game out there."

"Don't patronise me."

"That's speeches, Cathy, that's not you."

There was the flush on her face, Bren saw it. She seemed so small to him, and he could see that her eyes blazed back at the big detective, and her chin jutted defiance at him.

More matches, more tobacco smoke.

"I've done what I was asked."

"And I'm grateful."

"I'm not asking for bloody thanks. I want paying in kind."

"What's that mean?"

"I want Song Bird."

She snorted. "Go jump ..."

Rennie slammed his fist on the desk and said so softly Bren hardly heard him, "I want Song Bird's name and I want partial control."

She shoved her notepad into her handbag. The bag was formidable, heavy leather, she handled it like a weapon. She pushed herself up out of the chair.

"No way, no bloody way."

"You owe it me . . ."

Bren watched.

She turned to him, "Come on."

Rennie hissed, "You stay where you bloody are. Parker, you are the biggest pain up my arse. Don't play the arrogant English Miss with me

. . ."

She smiled. Bren saw the slow spread of the grin across her face, like she loved the hard-edged policeman. "And don't you go getting yourself a coronary, Howard." ‘"I want him."

"Well, get it into that thick Ulster skull that you shan't have him."

"I'll go to Hobbes ..."

"Wasting your time."

"I'll cut you off."

Her laugh was a tinkle. "Then I'll do without you."

Rennie was up out of his chair. He was pacing the room, his clenched right fist pounding the palm of his left hand for emphasis. "You can't go on as if you're the only person fighting this war . . . You have to share the pressure ... Go on like this, Cathy, playing the bloody queen and all of us dancing for you, and you won't have a friend left, not a bloody squaddie and not a copper, you'll be
alone . . .
we're not all dirt, Cathy, we're not every one of us idiots. And you don't have the God-given right to walk into our backyard and piss all over us. If you're alone, Cathy, then you're finished . . ."

She stood. "So be it."

Rennie came to her, put his hands on her shoulders. "Understand me, you
can't
do it alone."

"You’re shouting, Howard."

He shook her, as if to exorcise the exasperation. "Did you sleep last night?"

She moved his hands off her shoulders. "Why not?"

Damn you, because of the Riordan boy . . ."

She went to the door. She gestured for Bren to follow. "I'll he in touch Howard, and thanks for the help "

They had held him for twenty four hours. He had been brought to them three times for interrogation. To D.S. McDonald it was just routine. Most of the Provo names in the area were brought in at least once a year, sometimes twice. D.S. Browne would have said that Patsy Riordan, courier, look-out, errand boy, had done well. Doing well was buttoning the lip and looking at the ceiling and refusing to answer any questions beyond name and address. They were taught how to do it, and taught well. It was very rare that you would get a Provo to incriminate himself during questioning.

D.S. Browne and D.C. McDonald had been given no operational reason as to why the boy should have been singled out for questioning.

Twenty-four hours after they had picked him up they set him down in the Market Square of Dungannon. Joseph Browne liked his fishing.

He liked particularly to go after good-sized pike. When he had hooked them, played them, netted them and weighed them, then he slid them back carefully into the water. They seemed to take a moment to sense their surroundings, then dived for the cover of the reed beds. He thought of the pike when they let Patsy Riordan out of the car.

A moment's hesitation, then the kid was running for Irish Street, gone from sight.

At the end of the day she heard his key in the door.

Mrs Riordan asked her boy where he had been.

Patsy told his mother that he had been lifted.

She asked him why.

He told her that if she wanted to know why, then she should ask the bastard police.

Was he in trouble . . . ?

He could handle it . . .

She told him that men had called for him.

Who had called for him?

She felt the bad taste in her mouth. She disliked to talk of them. They were strangers to her. They had come twice to the door of the house as if they had the right to come. Even early in the morning.

"I didn't know who they were. They weren't from here. We was at tea when they came yesterday, and they came again this morning and woke us, and the man said they'd be back again for you's this evening.

Who was they?"

"I don't know who they was."

"Why's they want you?"

"You worries too much, Ma, you worries when there's nothing to worry for."

He walked out on her. He left his bag of tools in the hall. She watched him walk off to the garage. Later she heard the whining of the engine of his motorcycle.

She was in the kitchen and turning the sausages when there was the sound of a car braking. She was about to shake the chips in the fat when there was the noise of doors slamming. The table was laid. Her man was in the bathroom and washing off the dirt of the farm where he helped two afternoons a week, work-shy and thought it was full employment. She went into the hall. There was a car parked outside the front gate and its exhaust spewed fumes into the evening. She could see the shape of the driver's head but not his features. There was a man who walked away up the drive-way from the garage and her Patsy was following behind him, and there was a third man who walked behind Patsy and close to him. The light was falling. It was difficult for her to see the laces of the men. The man who walked behind Patsy, his hand was on her son's elbow. She wanted to shout out, yell the warning to him, and the shout and the yell were dead in her throat. She couldn’t see Patsy's face, just his hunched back. She didn't know whether he went smiling or went frightened.

He sat in the chair close to the fire.

The chair was as close to the fire as it could be without the legs scorching. The O.C. was hunched forward for the warmth. His wife watched the television and his kiddie played on the carpet with a toy.

He didn’t hear the television, he didn't see his kiddie, He looked at the jumping flames of the fire and felt the cold on his back and in his groin, He had been told that the Riordan boy had been seen getting into an unmarked police car, and that the Riordan boy had been gone for a full twenty lour hours and then turned up for work in Dungannon.

He no longer ruled on the mountain. Altmore was taken over by strangers.

A forty minute drive. No conversation in the car. Nothing spoken to Patsy and nothing said amongst them. The explanation had been curtailed in the garage beside his home, where they had found him crouched over the engine of the motorcycle. He was to be taken to a meeting. In the car he was not unduly alarmed. He had seen signposts lit by the headlights. The journey took them beyond Pomeroy and out towards Carrickmore. In a village, just before they stopped, he saw illuminated over the driver's shoulders a sign that was strung from a lamp post. The sign was the silhouette of a volunteer with his head hidden by a balaclava and with the outline of an Armalite rifle in his hands. The slogan on the sign was "Careless Talk Costs Lives". He was still thinking of the sign and the slogan when the car came to a stop. In Coalis-land or Cookstown or Dungannon, even in the villages of Altmore mountain, the army and police would have torn down the Provo poster. He was in the no-man's-land where the army and police chose not to patrol. The front passenger and the man who had sat silent beside him in the back of the car led him to the front door of a darkened house. They unlocked the door. Patsy walked inside, into the blackness.

The door closed behind him. There was the blow on the back of his head, and his feet were tripped from underneath him, and as he fell there was the hard kick into his rib cage.

Mossie drove towards home that lunchtime.

It was not usual for him to go home for lunch from work.

He went home because the third and fourth steps of his ladder had cracked, and he kept a spare ladder in the shed at the back. After his injury he was always fearful of a further fall that might completely disable him.

He was two miles from the village when he saw her.

A lonely woman walking against the wind.

He slowed so that he would not splash her from the road's rain puddles as he went by her. She had the collar of her coat turned up and a plastic rain hat was knotted tight under her chin. There was little of her face to see. It was only when he was on her that he recognised Mrs Riordan. It was a moment, fast gone, but time enough for her face to be clear to him.

The face was pain . . . and he was gone by.

She was a decent woman and her son had done him no harm.

There had been no tail on his car that morning.

He pulled into a farm gateway. The mountain, dark, stretched away above him. Distanced, small, he could see his own home. He could see the whitewashed walls where was Siobhan and his mother. He had switched off the engine. He was slumped in his seat. . . Who would be his friends? If he quit and ran, who would be his friends? If he stayed, who would be left to bury him . . . ? So many were buried. The day he had come back, on the Heysham to Belfast ferry, with Siobhan and the kids then born and the loaded car, the day the bitch had sent him back, that had been the day that Charlie Mcllmurray, taxi driver from Belfast, had been found shot dead on the border. The day he had first found work had been the day that Tommy Wilson had been killed. Maguire had followed, and McKiernan and McNamee. The day Siobhan had gone into hospital to give him little Mary had been the day that Joe Fenton had been put to rest, and his Francis' birthday had been the day of the abduction of John McNulty before the torturing and the killing and the dumping. He could remember the day, bitter cold and bitter frightening, that he had heard on the vine through which whispered information flowed that Paddv Flood, volunteer from Derry, had been taken from his home for questioning by the security team. Who would bury him, if he stayed? Siobhan was involved now and that was his weakness. She was a as trapped as himself. They had shot Gerry Mahon, tout, and they had shot Gerry Mahon's wife, accomplice.