The Journeyman Tailor (46 page)

It was cardboard city who had gone to Song Bird. He shouted at Bren.

"Make safe your weapon."

They were the professionals, and they had not been there . . .

He wanted no more part of it. Cathy had the radio across her lace.

The body of Jon Jo Donnelly was at the far side of the clearing and in the beam from the helicopter Bren saw the hole at the shoulder of the tunic. The cardboard city man dragged Song Bird to the edge of the clearing. Herbie and Jocko were crouched over the target figure, and the rotors whipped their camouflage smocks as the first helicopter landed.

There were troops ducking from the helicopter, running under the low rotor thrash. He disengaged the magazine. He cleared the breech.

He pocketed the live round. He saw Cathy stride over to Song Bird and the cardboard city man. She had to shout against Mossie's head. Bren could just hear her.

"Well done, Mossie. Sorry we left it so late."

Bren saw the pleading on his face, just as had been when he pleaded for his life.

"You're not hurt? That's good. Get moving Don’t go straight home Stop and get yourself a couple of pints. Make it natural. I can get you a long slow search if you need an alibi for the last half-hour. Let me know if need be, but for heaven’s sake keep your head down for the next two or three days Safe home, Mossie " She thumped his shoulder Bren watched. Mossie walked away Each stride and the strength grew back in his legs. Cathy wasn’t looking over her shoulder at him.

Cathy was hard in talk with the cardboard city man and Colonel Johnny, and the colonel put his arm on her

shoulder and she removed it briskly and pointed to Bren. Bloody good, credit where it was due, He saw Mossie go out from the range of the lights, trudging away towards his car. It was what they taught the recruits on the Source Unit seminar, that there should never be emotion between a player and a handler, didn't matter how valuable was the players’ talk. All by the bloody book, all the emotion stifled, strangled, chucked out of the bloody window.

Jocko was beside him "Good effort. A perfectly adequat shot, in the circumstances.’

He took the rifle from Bren, and Bren gave him the magazine and the last live round

". . . You did well, but it has to be down to us. You don't exist, you see."

Jocko had one of Bren's arms, and Cathy had the other and they ran him to the open door of the helicopter.

Bren felt the shudder as it lifted off, swooped up out of the forest.

He would have told her that morning.

Bren would have told Cathy what he had decided.

It was a crisp start to the day, fiercely cold. The roads from Belfast to Dungannon had been gritted, but the lanes onto the mountain would be treacherous, and he was slow coming the last few miles. He had never driven through the village before and up towards the farmhouse and the bungalow. He didn't need the map because the helicopters ploughing the low cloud overhead guided him. He felt no tiredness although he had not slept. He had been sitting in the small living room of the flat, where he had been all through the night and still dressed, when she had telephoned. He had left in darkness. He arrived in the first pale gleam of sunlight.

He was numbed by the anger he felt.

At the roadblock 200 yards short of the bungalow Bren showed his I.D. and was waved through. He gazed into the camouflage- creamed faces of the soldiers and the smooth-shaven faces of the policemen as if from them he might read an explanation for Cathy’s summons, which had told him nothing, and the blanked- off expressions gave him no clue. He drove on until he was just short of the bungalow's garden and there he was waved down and signalled to park against the hedgerow.

He climbed out. He could feel the ache where his shoulder was bruised from the recoil of the automatic rifle.

In front of the bungalow was the old Cortina estate. It was slewed across the road in front of the low iron gates and the driver's door was wide open. The dust sheet was where it always was, hiding the tools of Mossie's trade. He looked into the car, through the open front door, and he saw the keys in the ignition and the frosted dew on the seat. He understood. Bren could make the picture in his mind. The car pulling up at the gate, engine on, leaving the door open as he went to pull back the gates. Coming back from the pints in Dungannon that he had been told to take, coming back after the destruction of Jon Jo Donnelly, and the men waiting for him and seizing him

A policeman stepped aside.

Cathy was standing in the porch He felt the filth on his body. She would have gone back to her home, after it was over, and she would have showered and slept, and .she was in clean jeans and he could see the collar of a pretty blouse over her sweater and she had a leather jacket to her hips that he had not seen before, and her hair was mostly hidden by a scarf. Her car wasn't in the lane and he assumed that she had come from the barracks by helicopter. Her calm refuelled his anger.

"Roads slippy, were they.-'"

Did he care how the roads were'

So matter of fact, and then in the same low, even voice, she said:

"When Mossie got home, they were waiting for him. They must have rumbled him already, wouldn’t have been enough

time to have mourned it in response to what happened last night."

"Is Siobhan alright?"

". . . T'here's footsteps all round in the mud on the verge and there's two sets of tyre marks from when they were parked up and waiting ..."

"How's Siobhan?"

Cathy looked into his face. He couldn't read her. She said nothing.

She led him through the hall and towards the kitchen. He stepped over children's toys, a plastic machine gun and a half- clothed doll. He went by a framed photograph of John Paul the Second. His shoulder brushed a line of coats hanging from hooks and there was a red anorak that was paint-stained and gone at the elbow. It was turning in his mind, what he would say to Siobhan, how he would face her, whether he would abide by the creed of the handler that there should be no emotional attachment to players ... He went into the kitchen after Cathy.

They were round the table, the children and their grandmother.

The children were in their night clothes and their grandmother was dressed. The washing-up from last night's supper had not been done.

Cathy said, "Mrs Nugent, this is a colleague of mine. Would you tell him, please, about Siobhan."

He felt the cold settle on him, run in his body.

The children's grandmother looked up from the table. She lit a cigarette. The ashtray was half-filled in front of her. The smoke wafted into the face of the baby child that sat on her lap. "God's truth, I had her as a loveless woman who made a misery of him. I'm not proud of it, but I'd no time for her, but she fought for him . . . She'd been all jumpy, all restless. She said there had been shooting on the mountain. She'd been to the Donnelly woman's house. The Donnelly woman's brat had been here, blethering some gibberish about cameras and journeymen tailors and touts. Siobhan had taken him home, and she stayed up to talk with the Donnelly woman and then there was shooting high on Altmore.

She'd been waiting for Mossie to be home, as if she knew there was danger. She was in the kitchen when we saw Mossie's car lights. She'd gone to the front door. What I saw was first from the kitchen. She had the door open. I could see past her. There was men around my Mossie.

He was out of the car and they was trying to carry him off. I never liked her, and I've shame for it. She shouted, "You take him and you take me

. . ." That's what she shouted first. They had a gun turned at her and she went off down the path. I saw her kick the leg of the man with the gun.

I saw my Mossie's face. I've never seen such fear in my son. She kicked that one man with the gun and she tried to hit another of them, and Mossie was struggling like it was for his life. She shouted at them,

"You're not having him ..." She fought for my Mossie. She kicked them and punched them all the time until they'd beaten the fight from her.

Mossie, there was a moment he had a hand free of them, he tried to push her away . . . They took the both of them . . ."

Cathy's hand dropped, only for a moment, onto the shoulder ol the grandmother of the children. "Thank you, Mrs Nugent," she said.

Bren tried to capture, indelibly, the remnant of this family. He nodded his thanks to the old lady, he gazed, through tears welling in his eyes, at the three silent children, staring hollow-eyed at him. He blundered out into the hall. His hands found the steep rail of the steps to the loft. He held it for support. The roar of a helicopter gathered over the house.

He went to the front doorway. There were ropes and a chain snaking, swinging, down from the helicopter and the policemen and soldiers were running the chain and the ropes under the chassis of the old Cortina estate. They wanted the evidence out quickly. They wanted to be gone, the soldiers and the policemen. The slopes of Altmore mountain were that sort of place. The one car had been allowed forward. Bren watched. It was parked close to where the uncut hedge bent under the downdraft of the rotors. He saw the priest, a big man and walking well, and never bothering to look up at the hovering helicopter, never sparing a glance at the men with the ropes and the chain. The priest came up the front path and to the door. He stood in front of bren and challenged him to move aside. There was contempt for him in the priest's eyes, and blame. He stepped aside. He wondered what the priest would say to the mother of a tout and to the children of a tout.

Mossie's car swayed beneath the helicopter. The helicopter banked away.

Below it, the opened door of the Cortina estate, Mossie's door, flapped.

Cathy shouted, "There's two bodies down on the border. They're not identified yet, but it's a man's and a woman's."

He wanted to be away from her.

Bren walked halfway down the front path. There were weeds in the flower beds and the winter debris on the grass. He turned, "Cathy . . ."

She came to him, she stood in front of him. She looked into his eyes.

The scarf on her head had slipped from the beauty of the red gold of her hair.

Bren said, "We should never have let him . . ."

"It was his best chance."

"I suppose you'd say that getting Donnelly made it worthwhile."

"Nothing makes losing Song Bird worthwhile.’’

"I'm going home."

It had grown in him through the night hours, alone in his flat. He had steeled himself to the dicision. Perhaps he hoped that she might fight him . . .

Cathy shrugged, "I'm sorry, I mean that...You had what it takes."

"I had nothing, and I am going because there is nothing for me to to contribute. You don't think you'll be staying...?’’

"I'm not going anywhere."

He flared. "Switch on, Cathy , I'm here because a tout was lost and a lost tout talks. Our guy compromised. I was sent as the the fast solution stop-gap. Mossie’s lost, Mossie'll have talked or they wouldn't have killed him They'll have bled him dry before they murdered him. Don’t you understand it, compromised . .?’’

"Give my regards to Mr Wilkins,"

"They know your face, your work, and they know your style.

Nowhere's safe for you. Vulnerable, do you hear any thing?"

"Not your worry . . . Thanks for the concern. I'll cope."

He wondered if he fooled himself, if she would talk round Hobbes, batter Wilkins into submission, if she would be staying. He wondered if she deluded herself, if he would meet her in a corridor in Curzon Street within the month, if she would nod at him and smile and share the coffee machine, if she would ignore him. He looked into her face.

He gazed down at the red-gold peep of hair jutting from under the scarf. Of course she was compromised, of course she should go home.

He thought she was beyond the reach of his love.

He would never forget . . .

Cathy said, "We were going well, in time we'd have made a good team."

Bren mouthed it quietly, "I'm going home before I'm destroyed ..."

"... There won't be much for you, Bren, not with you walking out of here, but then you'll have thought that through . . ."

Bren said, "I'm going home before I am destroyed, before I know for certain that there is no light, no hope, no future. I wouldn't want to know that, not for certain.’’

He reached to shake her hand. She kissed his cheek.

Bren walked away to his car. He could see up the lane. In the yard behind the farmhouse a young boy was carrying a bale of hay from the barn. The bright sunlight was on the mountain slope, catching the dead bracken.

He turned. He looked back for her. She had stood her ground beside the gate. She waved to him.

He would drive back to the flat, and pack and go to the airport. He would be in London by the end of the day. He unlocked the door of his car. He was not strong enough for life without light and hope and a future. It was her world, Cathy Parker’s world, in front of him, behind him, around him

He sat in his seat, and he leaned forward against the steering wheel.

He watched a hawk circling high. He didn't understand why the hawk had no fear of the hovering Lynx helicopter above it.

He knew where she would be, later that day She was in the eye of his mind. She would be hemmed around by her men, her people. There would be the cardboard city man, and Herbie and Jocko. There would be the guns that they carried to protect her. Near to her, but warned back from coming too close, would be the soldiers and the policemen.

He saw her walking the length of the hill, going up the middle of the lane between the bare hedgerows. There would be the bodies in the ditch, dumped. There would be the dustbin bags over the heads of the bodies, and the bale twine cutting at the wrists of the bodies, and there would be the bare and lifeless feet of the bodies. When the bags had been cut away from the heads of the bodies she would look down into the faces of her Song Bird and her Song Bird's woman. She would not have shrunk from making the identification. And she would be gone from the lane, gone from the consequences of her work. It was what Bren imagined . . .