Harry's Game

Chapter 11

Within four hours of the first broadcast of Theresa’s death a soldier had been killed and heavy rioting had broken out in the Ballymurphy, Whiterock, Turf Lodge and New Barnsley estates.

The soldier had died when he was hit by a burst of shots fired at close range from a Thompson sub-machine-gun. He was last man in a patrol in Ballymurphy, and the gunman was apparently operating from the top floor of an empty council house. Some of the photographers who had gathered outside Theresa’s house to get a picture of her parents and collect a holiday snapshot of the girl herself ran in the direction of the shooting. The fleetest managed a few hurried frames as the soldiers lifted the body of their colleague into the back of a Saracen.

In the Falls and Springfield Roads, groups of youths had hijacked buses, driven them into the middle of the street, and set fire to them. After that the army moved in. Armoured cars and Land-Rovers were pelted with milk bottles and rocks by the crowds who had gathered on the pavements. The army responded by driving at them, firing volleys of rubber bullets from mountings beside the driver. At one building site a barricade of rocks and oil drums had been assembled by the time the Saracens arrived. They’d crashed into the flimsy wall, fracturing it and scattering the drums crazily across the street, when a lone youth, at the controls of a brilliant-yellow excavator-digger machine, charged back defiantly. The troops, who had been advancing behind the cover of the armoured cars, fell back as the mechanical dinosaur accelerated down a slight hill towards the toad-like armoured cars. A few feet from the impact the youth jumped clear, leaving his runaway digger to collide head on with the Saracens. The armoured cars, acting in strange concert for things so large, edged it against a wall, where it spent its force revving in demented futility.

The stoning went on a long time. Unit commanders made it clear in their situation reports to Brigade headquarters at Lisburn that they detected a genuine anger among people. Those who over the last months had shown disinclination to abuse and pelt the military were back with a vengeance. There were rumours, they said, sweeping the Catholic areas, that the girl who had killed herself in the police station had been tortured to a degree that she could stand no more, and that she had then killed herself. Provisional sympathizers were on the move off the main roads where the army patrolled, and behind the crowds, giving instructions.

Theresa’s parents were on lunchtime television, maintaining that their daughter had never belonged to any Republican organization. They described graphically how she had been taken from the lunch table the previous day. The army press desk received scores of calls, and stalled by saying this was a police matter, that the army was not involved, and pointing out that the girl had died in a police station. At police headquarters the harassed man on the receiving end told reporters that an investigation was still going on, and that the officers who were carrying out that investigation had not called back yet.

Both at army headquarters and amongst the Secretariat that administered the Secretary of State’s office at Stormont Castle there was a realization that something rather better by way of explanation was going to have to come out before the day was over.

Faced with crises the Prime Minister had a well-tried formula to fall back upon. Identify the problem. Focus all attention on it. Solve it, and then leave it alone. When he finally concentrated on any one subject his aides found he had enormous capacity to wrestle with whatever political abscess was causing the pain. But they also found that once he thought the situation dealt with then his interest faded as fast as it had risen. Northern Ireland, comparatively quiet for months, was now on the shelved list. It teetered close to what a politician had once called the ‘acceptable level of violence’. So the transcripts of the lunchtime news bulletins that were brought to him he resented as an intrusion. Violence back again. Streets closed. Casualties. The distasteful death of a young girl in the police cell. It was his habit to be direct.

From the back room office overlooking the Downing Street gardens, insipid in the November light, too many leaves left around, he called the army commander in Lisburn. Without any interruption he listened to a rundown of the morning’s events, and made no comment either when the General launched into the background of the girl’s arrest. He was told for the first time of the intelligence reports that had been fed in from London, of her questioning, what little she had admitted to knowing, and then of the finding of the body.

‘Is this the first we’ve had from our chap?’

‘First that I’ve heard of. Certainly we’ve received nothing else we could act on.’

‘And it was good stuff, accurate. Something we hadn’t had before, right?’

‘The information was factual. It didn’t take us as far as we’d hoped it might at first. I understand, though, that this is the first positive line we’ve had on the fellow we’re looking for.’

‘Seems we set a bit of a trap, and it’s rather missed its target. We’ll have to decide whether our chap’s had as much out of the pot as he’s going to get. Problem is at what stage to get him out, whether we’ve compromised him already.’ He was enjoying this, just like the way it was in the war. SOE and all that. The general cut across the line.

‘It’s not so easy, Prime Minister. It’s faintly ridiculous, but I’m told his controllers don’t know where he is, don’t even know where to get in touch with him. You appreciate that this chap is not being controlled from here. Your instructions were interpreted very strictly on this point. It’s London’s responsibility. He calls in, they don’t call him. But my advice would be that he stays. For the moment, at least. When you begin this sort of thing you stick with it. There’s no out, in, midstream, because it’s a bit too hot. He’ll have to finish it, or dry up completely.’

The Prime Minister came back, ‘We’ve no reason to believe yet that he’s been compromised? But it would be difficult, very difficult, if he were to be identified in this context.’

‘Those were the sorts of questions I assume had been answered before the instruction was given to launch this operation, Prime Minister.’

The sarcasm bit down the line.

The Prime Minister banged the phone down, then immediately flipped the console button on his desk and asked abruptly for the Secretary of State in Stormont Castle. After forty-one years in politics he could see the storm clouds gathering long before they were upon him. He knew the time had come to pull in some sail, and close down the hatches. The combination of an agent working to the Prime Minister’s orders and a teenage girl hanging herself in a cell were better ingredients than most for a political scandal of major proportions. He must start to plan his defensive lines if the worst should happen and the chap they’d sent over there should be discovered. That bloody General, not much time to run over there and his next appointment already confirmed. Entrenched, which was why he was so free with the advice. But all the same, in spite of his eminence, it must have hurt him to admit that this was the best information they’d had so far… and for all that they’d loused it up.

‘He won’t have liked it. One bright thing today,’ and then he turned his attention to the search for a fail-safe system. Call the Under-Secretary, the man in charge of this incredible non-communication set-up. In the event of catastrophe no statement till the civil servant had cleared it, and get that away to Lisburn. No acknowledgement for the agent, of course, if all goes wrong… deny all knowledge of the mission.

The Secretary of State was on the line. The Prime Minister wasted no time on pleasantries.

‘I’ve been hearing about the troubles today, and the girl. Difficult situation. I thought we were weak at lunchtime, too defensive. We need to be more positive. I’ve a suggestion to make. It’s only a suggestion, mind you, and you should bounce it off your security people and see how they react. But I think you should say something like this — get a note of it and I’ll read over what I’ve drafted. Along these lines, now. That the girl was a known associate of the man we are hunting in connection with the killing of Danby. That she was brought in quite correctly for questioning, and had been spoken to briefly before being left in the cells for the night. You must emphasize that she was not touched. Leak it that you’re prepared to offer an independent post-mortem from one of the hospitals, if you think that’ll help. But my thought is to bring it back to Danby. By the by, his memorial service is at St Paul’s this week. You’ll be there, I hope. It’ll all be in the public gaze again. We’ll be all right if we play a bit bold, and attack. Worst thing we can do is to get on the defensive.’

The linking of the killing of the British Cabinet Minister with the death of the teenager in the Falls Road police station was splashed across the last edition of the Belfast Telegraph, and extensively reported on later television and radio news bulletins. The few men in the city who knew of Harry’s existence were uncertain what effect the disclosure would have on the agent’s work and safety. They acknowledged an immediate lifting of the pressure on their public relations set-up for more information concerning the circumstances of the death.

Harry was not the only man in the city with pawns on the chequerboard.

The scrap merchant would take Harry on to his payroll. He’d obviously liked the look of him. He said he had a brother at sea, and asked Harry if he could start there and then. There was not a word about National Insurance cards or stamps, and twenty pounds a week was offered as pay. Harry was told he’d need to spend a month or so in the yard to see the way the place was run. There was to be expansion, more lorries. When they came, if it all worked out, there would be a driving job, and more money.

On his first morning Harry prowled round the mountains of burned and rusted cars. These were the stock-in-trade of the scrapman, heap upon heap of rough, angled metal.

Harry said to the neat dapper little man who was his new boss, ‘Is this what the business is? Just cars? You’ve enough of them.’

‘No problems with the supplies of that. You must have seen it, though you’ve been away. Terrible driving here. If you take the number of cars, they say, and work it out against a percentage of all the people that own them, and the number of accidents… then it’s worse than anywhere else in the whole of England or Ireland. Maniacs they are here. The boyos down the road do the rest. We’ll have a dozen wrecks in tomorrow morning. There’ll be a double-decker, as well, like as not, but they’re bastards to cut up.’

He smiled. Small, chirpy, long silk scarf round his neck, choker style, hat flat on his head. They’re all the same, thought Harry, likeable rogues.

The scrap merchant went on, ‘It’s an ill wind. Scrapmen, builders, glaziers… we’re all minting it. Shouldn’t say so, but that’s how it is. The military dump the cars that are burned out, up there on the open ground. We send a truck up and pull them down here. Not formal, you know. Just an understanding. They want them off the street and know if they put them there I’ll shift them. We’ll have a few more today, and all.’

He looked up at Harry, with the brightness evacuating his eyes. ‘People are powerful angry about this girl. You’ll find that. They get killed in hundreds here. Most of the time it doesn’t mean a damn, however big the procession. But this girl has got them steamed again.’

Harry said, ‘It’s a terrible thing pulling a girl like that out of her house.’

‘Poor wee thing. She must have been awful scared of something to want to do that to herself. Mother of Jesus rest her. Still, no politics in this yard, and no troubles. Those are the rules of the yard, Harry boy. No politics, and that way we get some work done.’

He walked round with Harry and introduced him to the other men in the yard, six of them, and Harry shook hands formally. They greeted him with reserve, but without hostility. When his escort went back to the office to look to the papers Harry was free to browse. At one stage as he meandered amongst the cars he was within eight feet of a Russian-made rocket launcher. It was the RPG7 variety, complete with two missiles and wrapped in sacking and cellophane, locked into the boot of a car. There were always people coming into the yard, and the cover was good. Access was easy at night. The launcher, sealed against the wet, had been placed there after the Provisional unit to whom it had been issued had found it inaccurate and unreliable. It had been abandoned until they could come across a more up-to-date manual of operation, preferably not written in Russian or Arabic.

As the little man said, no politics, no troubles. That first day Harry abided faithfully by it, taking his cue from the other men in the yard. Slowly does it here. The high column of black smoke from a blazing Ulster bus was ignored.

The rest of the first week that Harry was there was quite uneventful. He was accepted to a limited degree as far as small talk went, and nothing more. His few attempts to broaden the conversation were gently ignored and not pressed on his part. The death of Theresa and the start of the job probably meant, thought Harry, the start of the next phase. No immediate pointers for him to follow, only the long-term penetration remaining. Three weeks. What idiot said it could be done in three weeks? Three months if he was lucky. And it relaxed him. Going up the road each day and having the work to occupy his mind would ease him. Better than sitting in that bloody guest house. Claustrophobia.

And each day he was watched by Seamus Duffryn’s volunteers from Delrosa to the yard, and back again.

Downs was in the kitchen swilling his face in the sink, Monday-morning wash, when his wife came in white-faced, shutting the door behind her on the noise of the playing children.

‘It’s just been on the radio, about you. About a girl. The girl who killed herself.’

‘What do you mean? What about me?’

‘This girl from the Murph, it says she was linked with the man that did the London killing.’

‘It didn’t actually mention me?’

‘Said you was linked. Connected.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Theresa something. I didn’t catch it.’

‘Well, I don’t know her.’

‘It said she was being questioned about him because she was a known associate. That was another word they used — “associate”. God rest her, poor kid. She was just a child.’

‘Well, I don’t know her, and that’s the truth.’

‘That’s what they’re saying on the radio… loud and clear… where any bloody ape can hear it.’

‘Well, it’s all balls, bullshit.’

‘When you’re shouting, you’re always lying. Who was she? What was she to do with it?’

‘I don’t know her. I tell you, I just don’t know her.’

‘Billy, I’m not daft. You were in town a long time before you came back here. I haven’t asked you where you were, before you came home. Who is she?’

‘What did you say her name was?’

‘Don’t play the fool with me. You heard the first time.’

‘If it’s Ballymurphy, I stayed there one night. I came in darkness while the family was round the box. There was a girl there. Just a kid who brought me some food in the room. I was away by five-thirty.’

‘Just brought some food, did she?’

‘Course, she did… don’t bloody question me… like the fucking Branch.’

‘Just on the strength of that, brought her in and questioned her, just because she brought you some grub? Didn’t get her father in — he’s giving interviews. Just took her in.’

‘Leave it,’ he snapped at her. He wanted out. Escape.

‘Just tell me who the little bitch was and what she meant to you.’

‘She’s just a child a minute ago, now she’s a little bitch. She was nothing. Nothing. Must have blabbed her mouth off. Squealed, the little cow.’

‘How did she know who you were?’

She shouted the last question at him. She would have taken it back once the words were out and had crumpled against him. The noise and aggression slewed out of him. Beseeching. Pleading. Don’t make me answer. The found-out child and the hollow victory.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Just forget it.’

She turned away, back towards the door into the living room where the children were fighting, and one was hungry, and another crying.

‘I’ll tell you what happened…’ She shook her head, but he went on, ‘This is once and for all, never ask again. If I’d wanted her I couldn’t have done anything about it. I was so screwed up. I was sort of cold, frozen, shivering. I couldn’t do anything for her. She asked if it was me in London. I hit her. Across the face. She went back to her room. I’ve only seen her once since then. She was at the dance at the club on Saturday night. I suppose she saw me.’

He walked across to his wife and put his arms round her. The children still cried and the pitch was growing. He pulled her head against his shoulder. There was no response, but she was pliant against him, totally passive.

Downs went on, ‘That’s when she must have talked. Going home after the dance. Must have said that she knew the man that had been in London. Then some rat, some bastard, squealed. A fucking spy, a tout. Right there at one of our dances, some bastard who’ll shop you. That’s what must have happened.’

‘Forget it. We have to forget all these things. There’s nothing left otherwise.’

He held her for a long time in the darkened kitchen, lit by the inadequate bulb hanging without a shade from the wire flex. At first she wept silently and without dramatic effect, keeping her grief private, not using it as a weapon to cudgel him with. She controlled herself, and clung to him. Nothing would be different, nothing in his way of life would change.

‘You’ll go back?’

‘When they want me.’

‘You could end it all now. You’ve done your share.’

‘There’s no way that could happen.’

He needed her now, to recharge him. When the dose was enough he would go back into his own vicious, lonely world. Of which she was no part.

She was one of the crowd. The crowd of women who had so little influence over their men that it was pointless, indecent, to beg them to stay off the streets. She was still luckier than most. Her man was still with her. The bus that came each Thursday lunchtime to the top end of Ypres Avenue was well enough known. It took the women to Long Kesh to talk to their men for half an hour, across a table.

That night Billy Downs opened his door to a treble knock. He was given an envelope by a youth and saw him scurry away into the darkness. His wife stayed in the kitchen, as she too had recognized the call sign of the fist against the door. She heard him switch the hall light on, pause a few moments and then the sound of tearing paper, over and over again.

He went into the front room and threw the half-inch squares of paper that had made up the single sheet of writing into the fire. The message was from Brigade. It was short and to the point. For the moment he was to stay at home. It was believed that the girl had hanged herself before identifying him.

Davidson had had a bad week. He admitted it to the young man who was drafted in to share the office with him. The fiasco of the girl had started it off. The Permanent Under-Secretary had been on as well, laying the smokescreen that would be used if the operation went aground. Davidson had tried to counter-attack with complaints about the original lodgings and then the foul-up over the girl, but had been rejected out of hand. There was silence from Harry himself for six days after his first call. Davidson and the aide sat in the office reading papers, making coffee, devouring takeaway fish and chips, takeaway Indian, takeaway Chinese. The number that had been given to Harry was kept permanently free from all other calls.

When he did call, on the Saturday afternoon, the effect was electric. Davidson started up from his easy chair, pitching it sideways, tipping a coffee beaker off his desk as he lunged for the telephone. Papers drifted to the floor.

‘Hello, is that four-seven-zero-four-six-eight-one?’

‘Harry?’

‘How are the family?’

‘Very well. They liked the postcards, I’m told.’

Davidson was on his knees, his head level with the drawer where the recording apparatus was kept. He pulled up the lead and plugged it into the telephone’s body. The cassette was rolling.

‘Anything for us?’

‘Nothing, old chap. No, I’m just digging in a bit. I think it may go all quiet for a few days, so I’m settling into some sort of a routine.’

‘We’re worried about you in the wake of that bloody girl. We’re wondering whether we should pull you out.’

‘No way. Just getting acclimatized.’

‘I think we all feel at this end that you did very well last weekend. But we want some way to get in touch with you. This may suit you, but it’s ridiculous for us. Quite daft. We’re sitting here like a row of virgins waiting for you to call us up.’

‘It’s the way I’m happiest. I’ve been bitten, remember. On the first house. It’s going to be a touch trickier getting something further out of this, and this is the way I want it to be. Bit silly, you might say, but that’s the way it is.’

Davidson backed down and switched the subject.

‘Are they sniffing round you at all?’

‘I don’t think so. No particular sign of it yet, but I don’t know. More of a problem is that I don’t see where the next break is going to come from — what direction. I was very lucky last time, and look where the thing got us. It can’t be on a plate like that again.’

‘You’re not following anything particular at the moment, then?’

‘No, just entrenching. Getting ready for the siege.’

‘Perhaps it’s time you should come out. Like this weekend. I don’t want you hanging about wasting time. Look, Harry, we know it’s bloody difficult in there, but you’ve given the military and security people a lead that they ought to be able to do something about… Come out now. Get yourself up to Aldergrove and get the hell out…’

The phone clicked dead in his hand, before the dialling tone purred back at him. Despairingly he flicked the receiver buttons. The call was over.

Bugger. Played it wrong. Unsettled him. Just when he needs lifting. Silly, bloody fool. Should have made it an order, not a suggestion, or not mentioned it at all. The military should be following this now. The girl must have left a trail a mile wide.

Davidson could see through his uncurtained window that it was now dark outside. He thought of Harry walking back up the Falls to his digs. Past the shadows and the wreckage and the crowds and the troops, the legacy of the spluttering week-long street fighting he had been the spark to. Keep your head down, Harry boy.