Harry's Game

Chapter 10

Seamus Duffryn, the latest of the intelligence officers of E Company, Third Battalion Provisional IRA, had made Sunday his main working day. It was the fourth weekend he’d been in the job, with a long list of predecessors in Long Kesh and the Crumlin Road prison. Duffryn was in work, a rarity in the movement, holding down employment as mate to a lorry driver. It took him out of town several days a week, sometimes right down to the border and occasionally into the Republic. Being out of circulation he reckoned would extend his chances of remaining undetected longer than the average of nine weeks that most company-level officers lasted. He encouraged those with information for him to sift through to leave it at his house during the week where his mother would put it in a plastic laundry bag under the grate of the made-up but unlit front-room fire. He kept the meagre files he had pieced together out in the coal shed. There was a fair chance if the military came and he was out that they would stop short of scattering the old lady’s fuel to the four winds in an off-the-cuff search.

On Sunday afternoons his mother sat at the back of the house with her radio while Duffryn took over the front-room table, and under the fading coloured print of the Madonna and Child laid out the messages that had been sent to him. They were a fair hotch-potch, and at this level the first real sorting of the relevant and irrelevant took place. They concerned the amounts of money held at the end of the week at small post offices, usually a guess and an overestimate, the occasions when a recognized man of some importance drove down the company’s section of the Falls, the times that patrols came out of the barracks. Then there was the group that fell into no natural pattern, but had seemed important enough for some volunteer to write down and send in for consideration.

He kept this last group for his final work, preferring to spend the greater part of the afternoon on the detail of the job that he liked best, checking over the information from his couriers and the eyes that reported back on what was happening at street-corner level. His sifted reports would then go to his company commanding officer, a year younger and three and a half years out of school. The best and most interesting would go up the chain to Battalion.

The afternoon had nearly exhausted itself by the time he came to the final group, and the one report in particular that was to take him time. He read it slowly in the bad light of the room, and then went back and reread it looking for the innuendo in the ambiguous message. It was a page and a half long, written in pencil and unsigned by name. There was a number underneath which denoted which volunteer had sent it in. He went through the report of probably only one hundred words for the third time till he was satisfied he had caught its full flavour and meaning. Then he began to weigh its importance.

Strangers were the traditional enemies in the village-sized Catholic communities of Belfast. The Short Strand, the Markets, the Ardoyne, Divis, Ballymurphy… all were self-sufficient, integral units. Small, difficult to penetrate, because unless you belonged you had no business or reason to come. They boasted no wandering, shifting groups, no cuckoos to come and feed off them. Those who were admitted after being burned out or intimidated away from their homes came because there were relatives who would put roofs over their heads. There were no strangers. You were either known or not admitted.

What concerned Duffryn now was the report on the stranger in the Beachmount and Broadway area. He was said to be looking for a job and getting long-term rates at Delrosa with Mrs Duncan. There was a question about his speech. The scribbled writing of the report had the second name of McEvoy. First name of Harry. Merchant seaman, orphaned and brought up in Portadown. No harm in that and checkable presumably. The interest in the report came later. The flaw in the set-up, the bit that didn’t ring true. Accent, something wrong with the accent. Something that had been noticed as not right. It was put crudely, the reason Duffryn read it so many times to get the flavour of the writer’s opinion:

‘Seems to talk OK, then loses us for a moment, or a word, or sometimes in the middle of a word, and then comes back… his talk’s like us mostly but it comes and goes… it’s not just as if he’d been away as he says. Then all his talk would have gone, but it only happens with odd words.’

It was enough to cause him anxiety, and it took him half an hour to make out a painstaking report for his superiors setting down all the information he had available on the man called McEvoy. The responsibility would rest higher up the chain of command as to whether or not further action was taken. He would keep up surveillance when he had the manpower.

There were difficulties of communication in the city and it would be some days before his message could be passed on.

Private Jones was on board the 15.30 Trident One back to Heathrow. He was out of uniform but conspicuous in his short haircut and neatly pressed flannels. He had been told he would be met by service transport at Heathrow and taken to Northolt where he would be put on the first flight to Berlin and his new posting. It had been impressed on him that he was to speak to no-one of his encounter the previous night. The incident was erased.

Interrogation was an art of which Howard Rennie had made himself a master, an authority, skilled at drawing out the half-truth and capitalizing on it till the flood-gates of information burst. He knew the various techniques; the bully, the friend, the quiet business-like man across the table — all the approaches that softened the different types of people who sat at the bare table opposite him. The first session with the girl had been a gentle one, polite and paternal. It had taken him nowhere. Before they went into the interview room for the second time Rennie had explained his new tactics to the officer from army intelligence. Rennie would attack, and the Englishman capitalize on it. Two men, each offering a separate tempo, and combining together to confuse the suspect.

The detective could recognize his own irritability. A bad sign. One that demonstrated the hours he’d put in that week, the sleep he had forfeited. And the girl was playing him up. They’d given her the easy way. If she wanted to play it like the boyos did, then good luck to her. But she was tired now, dazed by the surroundings and the lights, and hungry, having earlier defiantly refused the sandwiches they brought her.

‘We’ll start at the beginning again, right?… You were at the dance last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘What were you wearing? We’ll have that again.’

‘My pink dress.’

That much was established again by the detective. They’d got that far before. He’d done the talking. The army captain had said nothing as he sat behind the girl. A policewoman was also in the interview room, seated to the side of the desk and taking no part in the questioning. The questions came from the big man, directly opposite Theresa, just across the table.

‘Your home in Ballymurphy… it’s a hideout?’

‘No.’

‘It’s used as a hideout. We know that. It’s more we want. But it’s where the boyos lie up?’

‘No.’

‘We know it is, you stupid bitch. We know they stay there.’

‘Why ask me, then?’ she shouted back.

‘It’s used as a hideout?’

‘You say you know it is.’

‘How often?’

‘Not often.’

‘How many times in the last month? Ten times?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Five times, would that be about right? In the last month, Theresa?’

‘Not as often as that.’

‘How about just once, Theresa? That’s the one we’re interested in, just the once.’ It was the officer behind her who spoke. English. Soft voice, different to those RUC bastards. She sat motionless on the wooden chair, hands clenched together round the soaked and stained handkerchief from the cuff in her blouse.

‘I think we know one man came.’

‘How can I tell you…?’

‘We know he came, girl, the one man,’ the big Branch man took over again. ‘One man, there was one man, wasn’t there? Say three weeks ago. For a night or so. One man, yes or no?’

She said nothing.

‘Look, girl, one man and we know he was there.’

Her eyes stayed on her hands. The light was very bright, the tiredness was ebbing over her, swallowing her into itself.

‘One man, you stupid cow, there was one man. We know it.’

No reply. Still the silence. The policewoman fidgeted in her seat.

‘You agreed with us that people came, right? Not as many as five, that was agreed. Not as many as ten, we got that far. Now, understand this, we say that one man came about three weeks ago. One man. A big man. He slept in the house, yes or no? Look at me, now.’

Her head came up slowly now to look at the policeman directly in front of her. Rennie kept talking. It was about to happen, he could sense it. The poor girl had damn all left to offer. One more shove and it would roll out.

‘You don’t think we sent out all those troops and pigs just for one girl if we don’t have it cast iron why we want to talk to her. Give us a bit of common. Now the man. Take your time. Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’ It was barely audible, her lips framing the word with a fractional fluttering of the chin. The army man behind her could not hear the answer, it was so softly spoken. He read it instead on the face of the detective as he sighed with relief.

‘Say it again,’ Rennie said. Rub it in, make the girl hear herself coughing, squealing. That keeps the tap flowing. Once they start keep up the momentum.

‘Yes.’

The detective’s face lost some of its hostility. He leaned forward on the table. ‘What was his name? What did you call the man?’

She laughed. Too loud, hysterically.

‘What are you trying to do to me? You trying to get me done in? Don’t you know I can’t… I couldn’t anyway, I don’t know it.’

‘We want his name.’ Cut the softness. The crisis of the interrogation. She has to go on from here. But the little bitch was sticking.

‘I don’t know his name. He was hardly there. He just came and went. It was only about six hours, in the middle of the night.’

‘He was in your house. Slept… where did he sleep?… in the back room?… yes, we know that. He’s on the run, and you don’t know his name? Don’t you know anything about him? Come on, Theresa, better than that.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I tell you I just don’t… that’s honest to God. He came in and went upstairs. He was gone before morning. We didn’t see him again. We weren’t told anything. There was no need for us to know his name, and when he came we didn’t talk to him. That’s the truth.’

Behind the girl, and out of her sight, the army officer put up his hand for Rennie to hold his questions a moment. His voice was mellow, more reasonable and understanding to the exhausted girl in the chair four feet in front of him.

‘But your father, Theresa, he’d know that man’s name. We don’t want to bring him in. We know what happened that night, up in this man’s room. We know all about that. We’d have to mention it. They’d all know at home. How would your Dad stand up to all this, at his age? There’s your brother. You must think of him as well. It’s a long time he’s been in the Maze… it would go well for him.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t. You have to believe me. He never said his name. It’s because he wasn’t known that he came, don’t you see that? It was safe that way. Dad doesn’t know who he was. None of us did.’

‘You know why we want him?’ the detective clipped back in, swinging her attention back into the light of the room away from the peace she found in the shadows round the soldier.

‘I know.’

‘You’re sure. You know what he did?’

‘I know.’

‘Did he tell you what he’d done?’

‘No.’

‘How did you know?’

‘It was obvious. I’ve never seen a man like it. He had a hand like an old man’s. It was all tied up. Like a claw. I can’t say how he was… it was horrible.’

‘What was his name? We want his name.’

‘You’ll get me killed for what I’ve said. So help me, Mother of Jesus, he never said his name.’

The inspector pulled a photokit picture of the man from a brown envelope, and flipped it across the table to the girl. She looked at it briefly and nodded. Then she pushed it back to him.

‘Take her down,’ he said to the policewoman. The two went out of the interview room and away towards the station’s cells. He went on, ‘Bugger it. I thought we had her. I thought it was all going to flow. I have a horrible feeling the little bitch is telling the truth. We’ll have another go at her in two or three hours or so, but I don’t think she knows any more than she’s said. It makes sense. A strange house, strange people. They’re alerted someone is coming. They stick their noses into the box, and he’s a bed for the night. Come on. Let’s get a nap for a bit, and then one last bash at her.’

After they had gone Theresa sat a long time in her cell. She was alone now, as the policewoman had left her. In her own eyes the position was very clear. The army had pulled her into the station to question her about the man who had stayed at the house, the man she had gone to in the middle of the night. The man who had killed in London, was on the run, hunted, and in bed couldn’t screw. They had pulled her in because they thought something she knew was the key to their finding the man, arresting him, charging him, sentencing him, and locking him away to become a folk hero in the ghetto, however many years he rotted in a cell like this one. If she was not vital to their case then, as they said themselves, would they have sent the troops and the pigs to collect her? When he was arrested and charged and all Ballymurphy knew she had spent two days in the station being questioned… what would they say? Who would listen when she denied she had ever known his name? Who would walk away satisfied when she said she had given no information that in any way led to his capture? Who would believe her?

In the legend they’d weave her name would figure. She went back again over all that she could remember of what she had said to that bastard copper. The one who shouted in the front. Nothing, she’d said nothing that helped them. She’d looked at the photograph, but they knew that he was the man. All they needed was his name, and they didn’t know that, and she hadn’t told them. But how had they learned of the night? She had told girls, some, a few, not many. Would they betray her? Her friends in a chatter in the bog or over coffee break at the mill, would they tout to the military?

So who was going to believe her now?

She had heard what the IRA did to informers. All Ballymurphy knew. It was part of the folklore, not just there, but all over the city where the Provos operated. The vengeance of the young men against their own people who betrayed them was vicious and complete. There’d been a girl, left at a lamp-post. Tarred and feathered, they’d called it. Black paint and the feathers from a stinking old eiderdown. Hair cut off. She’d talked to a soldier. Not loved him — not cuddled or kissed him. Just talked to him, standing with him outside the barracks in the shadows. A boy who lived on the street, they’d shot him through the kneecaps. He hadn’t even been an informer. ‘Thief’ was the word on the card they hung round the gatepost where they left him. Provo justice. She hadn’t known him, just knew his face. She remembered him on the hospital crutches when he was discharged. Ostracized and frightened. They killed girls, she knew that, and men whom they reckoned were informers. They shot them and dumped their bodies, sometimes rigged with wires and batteries. Making a stiff into a bomb hoax. Then they lay a long time in the ditch waiting for the bomb disposal man to work his way through his overnight list and come and declare the body harmless. And all the reporters and photographers were there.

It was very easy to imagine. A kangaroo court in a lock-up garage. Young men with dark glasses at a table. Hurricane lamp for illumination. Arms tied behind her. Shouting her innocence, and who listens? Pulled from the garage, and the sweet smelliness of the hood going over her head, and bundled into a car for the drive to the dumping ground and the single shot.

She wanted to scream, but there was no sound. She quivered on the bed, silhouetted against the light biscuit-coloured regulation blanket with the barred-over light bulb shining down on her. If she had screamed at that moment she would probably have lived. The policewoman would have come and sat with her till the next interrogation. But in her terror she had no voice.

She knew that they would come again and talk to her, perhaps in another hour, perhaps longer. They had taken her watch and she had no sense of time now. When they came again they would ask her if she had ever seen the man on any other occasion. They would ask that over and over again, however many times she maintained she’d not set eyes on him since the night at her house. They would go on asking that question till they had their answer. They would know when she was lying, especially the quiet one behind her, the Englishman. She was tired, so tired, and slipping away. Could she keep up her denials? They would know and she would say. Before morning they would know about the dance, how the man had been there with his wife. They had taken him away. So why did they still need the name? Confusion and complicated argument swayed and tossed through the girl. They had taken him but they didn’t know him. Perhaps they had not made the connection, and then what she might say in her exhaustion would weave the net round him. Betray him. Play the Judas. If she told the English officer it would be treachery to her own. The pigs would be out for him, pulling him into another police station, and she would wear the brand. Tout. Informer. Despised.

She looked round the brick and tile walls of the cell till she came to the heavy metal bar attached to the cell window that moved backwards and forwards a distance of two inches to allow ventilation to the cell. As it was winter and the window tight shut, the bar protruded from the fitting. She estimated that if she stood on her bed and stretched up she could reach the bar. Very deliberately she sat up on the bed. She moved her skirt up over her hips and began to peel down the thick warm tights she was wearing.

When the policewoman came to her cell to wake her for the next round of questions Theresa was very dead. Her mouth was open, and her eyes bulged as if they were trying to escape from the agony of the contortions. The nylon had buried itself deep into her throat, leaving a reddened collar rimming the brown tights. Her feet hung between the side of the bed and the wall, some seven inches above the floor.

Frost was wakened by the duty officer in intelligence headquarters without explanation. The message was simply that he should be in headquarters, and that ‘all hell is about to break loose’. By the time he reached the building there was a report from the police station waiting for him. It covered only one sheet, was slashed to a minimum and was signed by his own man who had been present at the interrogation.

No marks for grammar, thought Frost, as he read it through.

‘Where’s Fairclough?’ he snapped at the duty officer.

‘On his way back here, sir.’ It was a time for short direct answers when the big man was in this sort of mood.

‘How long?’

‘Should be here in about ten minutes, sir.’ Then the sparks will come. Poor old Fairclough, thought the duty officer. Rather him than me.

The colonel went to the filing cabinet behind his desk and unlocked the top drawer, pulling it out on its metal runners and rummaging around for his dog-eared Ministry of Defence extension numbers book. It was a classified document and also listed the home telephone numbers of senior staff at the Ministry, military and civilian. He found the number of the Permanent Under-Secretary that Davidson worked to, and dialled the Surrey area code and then the six digits.

‘My name’s Frost. Army intelligence in Lisburn. It’s a hell of an hour but something has come up which you should be aware of. This is not a secure line, but I’ll tell you what I can. We were passed some information from a section of yours about a girl. That was yesterday morning. She was brought in yesterday afternoon and questioned twice. You know what about. She knew the man we want, identified the picture, and said he’d stayed in her house within the last month. Found her about three-quarters of an hour ago hanging in her cell. Very dead. That’s all I have. But I wouldn’t care to be in your man’s shoes when the opposition find out about all this. Thought you ought to know. Sounds a bit of a cock-up to me. Cheers.’

The Permanent Under-Secretary had thanked him for the call and rung off.

Frost locked away his directory and pocketed the keys as Fairclough came in a fraction behind his knock.

‘Let’s have it, Arthur.’

‘We got it out of her that the man stayed at her old man’s place. She said they weren’t given his name, and that she never knew his name. I think she was levelling with us. We left her for a couple of hours and when they came to get her out to bring her back up she’d strung herself up with her stockings. One thing should be straight, sir. She was treated quite correctly. She wasn’t touched, and there was a policewoman present the whole time.’

‘Right. Put it all down on paper, and soon. I want our version on this out fast. The information from London, on which we pulled her in. It seems to have stood up? It was real stuff?’

‘No doubt about that. She’d been with him, all right. No doubt.’

Fairclough went out of the colonel’s office to type his report. Frost went back on the phone to army public relations, another bedside telephone waking the early morning sleeper-in. He suggested that when the press enquiries started coming the men on the information desk should treat this very much as a police matter involving a girl picked up by the army for routine interrogation. He then called the head of Special Branch, first at his home where he was told he was already at Knock Road headquarters, and then at his office there. His own people had briefed him. With the slight diplomacy that he could command he made the same suggestion about press desk treatment as he had made to his own people.

‘You want our people to take the can?’ said the policeman.

‘Inevitable, isn’t it? Your police station, your interrogation. Don’t see how we can end up with it.’

‘Your bloody info set the thing up.’

‘And good stuff it was too. There should be an enquiry at that damned station as to how it happened.’

‘The Chief Constable in his wisdom had made that point. I think we should meet for a talk about the next move, if there is one, or this trail will be dead in no time.’

‘I’ll call you back,’ said Frost, and rang off.

Half-cock operation and the poor sod, whatever his name is, puts it right under our noses. And we drop it. Poor devil. And on top of that we let the girl kill herself, which puts a noose round his neck and a bag over his head. We’ve done him well today. Desertion’s the least he’s justified in doing.

Harry heard about the girl, with the rest of the province, on the early morning radio news bulletin. It was second story after the European Economic Community all-night talks. The item was brief and without explanation.

‘In Belfast a girl has died after being taken to a police station in the Falls Road area. She was found early this morning hanging in her cell and was dead by the time she reached hospital. Police named her as nineteen-year-old Theresa McCorrigan from Ballymurphy. An investigation is being carried out to find what happened. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association have issued a statement calling for a full and independent enquiry into the death. They allege two armoured cars and troops were used yesterday afternoon to arrest the dead girl from her home.’

Harry switched off the radio. He felt numb. No more playing about. No more kindergarten. These were the powers of the forces at work. A simple, ordinary, decent girl. Wants to get screwed by a bloke who cannot make it. Tells the girls in the loo about it, bit of a giggle, have a laugh together. Thirty hours later she’s so terrified that she puts something round her neck and steps off. Throttled. A bit randy, and talks too much… and now she’s dead. Harry remembered her. Across the far side of the club: in with the toughies and the big kids near the bar. Rolling a bit. Too much gin, and not enough chips to soak it up.

He was the cause of the fear. He was responsible for the agony of the girl, before she slung whatever it was underneath her chin, and swung off into the void. Had she even been questioned by then, he wondered? Had she been able to say anything? Or was it all a lot of boasting?

They all listen to those bulletins, Harry reflected, every last one of them, catching up on the night’s disasters, funding themselves with conversation for the day. Josephine would be no different. She would hear it, making her face up, having her breakfast, washing her smalls, but the transistor would be somewhere in her home. She’d hear it, and she’d put it together. Was she that fast, that clever? Had to be, it was there on a plate, and what then?

Harry would have to wait to find out. She wasn’t doing tea this week, had a different shift at work. He’d have to wait till the weekend and their next date. Have to sit it out, Harry boy, and sweat it out, and see how bright she is, and if she is bright what’s she going to do about it.

He went down the staircase, across the hall, and out to the street. He heard Mrs Duncan calling after him about his breakfast, and ignored her as he kept on going up the pavement and turned left towards Andersonstown. It took him a good hundred yards to swallow the emotion and regain control. As he walked he set out the position, making in his mind a chess-board of his job. Pawns, that’s where she rated, and pawns were expendable. Bishops and knights hurt more but they could also be lost. He and the man he was hunting were the queens of his game. The superstars, and second only to the kings, who were sacred and inviolate. If, as the queens were moved round the board, the pawns toppled over, then that was the nature of the game he and the man played. There was no time to lament the loss of pawns.

The old theme song. It had been different in Aden. There had been no involvement there. Nothing personal. A clear enemy, all that was on the board was black or white but definite. Now all the squares were grey, and the figures too. Even the two queens. There would be a problem for an outsider in picking one set of pieces from another.