Harry's Game

Chapter 16

The Belfast Brigade still met in a semi-detached corporation house in the centre of the conglomeration of avenues, crescents, walks and terraces that make up the huge housing estate of Andersonstown. It was very different country to the Falls and the Ardoyne. Landscaped roads, and flanking them a jigsaw of neat red-brick homes. Ostensibly the war had not come here with the same force as in the older battlegrounds closer to the city centre, but such an impression would be false. This was the Provo redoubt, where the Brigade officers and top bomb-makers had their hideouts, where the master snipers lay up between operations, where five thousand people voted for a Provisional supporter in a Westminster election. Cups of tea were rare for the troops here, and it was the tough and experienced battalions who were asked to hold the ring with the most dedicated and intransigent of the enemy.

The particular house where the Brigade met had been chosen with care. It had been noticed that the combination of a twist in the road and a slight lip shielded both the front and rear doors of the house from the army camp some three hundred yards away. The house could be approached from the rear with virtual impunity.

The Brigade commanders were key figures in the campaign in the main urban area of Northern Ireland. Some, like Joe Cahill and Seamus Twomey, had become household names round the world, famous as the men who had converted the guerrilla wars of South East Asia and the Middle East and Latin America into West European terms. Promotion had exposed younger men to the job, none of them any the less hardliners for their youth… Adams, Bell, Convery. All had learned assiduously the arts of concealment and disguise. Their capture called for rounds of drinks and celebration toasts in the mess of the army unit concerned, and articles in the national press maintaining that the Provos were about to fold up. But within a week of the one-time commander being carried off to Long Kesh so another young man moved forward into the scene to take over. During their reign in office, however short, they would set the tone of the administration. One would favour car bombs, another would limit attacks only to military and police targets, or direct operations towards spectaculars such as big fires, major shoot-outs and prison escapes.

Each left his imprint on the situation, and all went into the mythology of the movement. The one common factor was their ability to move, almost at will, round the rambling Andersonstown estate. Their names were well known to the troops, but their faces were blurs taken for the most part from out-of-date photographs. One had ordered his wife to destroy all family pictures that included him, and given all his briefings from behind curtains and drapes, so that under the rigours of cross-examination his lieutenants would not be able to give an accurate description of him. The most famous of all had sufficient mastery of impersonation to be able to win an apology for inconvenience from a young officer who had led a search party through the house where the Brigade commander was giving an interview to a reporter from a London Sunday.

To a portion of the community their names provoked unchecked admiration, while to those less well disposed they sowed an atmosphere of fear. There were enough youths with ‘kneecap jobs’ and daubed slogans of ‘Touts will be shot dead’ for the message not to have to be repeated that often.

That there were a few prepared to risk the automatic hooding and assassination was a constant source of surprise to the army intelligence officers. Money was mostly the reason that men would whisper a message into a telephone booth, but not even then big sums. There was seldom the wish to rid the community of the Provisionals… Men who felt that way stayed silent, kept their peace, and went about their lives. It was because the Brigade commander and his principal lieutenants could never be totally certain of the loyalty of the men and women who lived in Andersonstown that they delayed their meeting till midnight, though their arrival at the house had been staggered over the previous seventy minutes.

None was armed. All were of sufficient importance to face sentences of up to a dozen years if caught in possession of a firearm. If arrested without a specific criminal offence provable against them they could only be detained in the Kesh — with the constant likelihood of amnesties.

They took over a back bedroom while below the lady of the house made them a pot of tea. She took it up the stairs on a tray with beakers and milk and sugar. They had stopped talking when she came in and said nothing till she had placed the tray on the flat top of a clothes chest, and turned to the door.

‘Thanks, mam,’ the Brigade commander spoke, the others nodding and murmuring in agreement. She was away down the stairs to busy herself with her sewing and late-night television. When that was over she would sleep in her chair, waiting for the last man to leave the house to tell her the talking was over. The woman asked no questions and received no explanations other than the obvious one that the positioning of the house made it necessary that the men should use it.

There were six men in the room when the meeting started. The Brigade commander sat on the bed with two others, and one more stood. Frank and Seamus Duffryn were on the wooden chairs that, apart from the bed and the chest, represented the only furniture in the room. The present commander had been in office more than six months, and his general features were better known than was common. He scorned the flamboyance of masks. From the pocket of his dark anorak he brought a small transistor radio of the sort with a corded loop to be slipped over the wrist so that he could walk along the pavement with it pressed to his ear. This was how he kept abreast of the activities of the ASUs, the Active Service Units.

The crucial listening times of the day for him were 7.50 a.m., the 12.55 lunchtime summary, and then five to midnight. Each day the BBC’s Northern Ireland news listed with minute detail the successes and failures of his men. Shootings, hijackings, blast bombs, arms finds, stone-throwing incidents, all were listed and chronicled for him. The lead story that night was of the shooting at a policeman’s house in Dunmurry.

The men in the room listened absorbed to the firm English accent of the announcer.

The gunman had apparently held Mrs Rennie and her two children at gunpoint in their house for some hours while he waited for her husband to return from duty. A police spokesman said that when Mr Rennie entered the living room of his home the gunman fired at him. Mr Rennie dived for shelter behind an armchair just as his younger daughter ran towards him. It seems the child ran into the field of fire of the terrorist, who then stopped shooting and ran from the house. Mr Rennie told detectives that when the girl moved he thought she was going to be killed as the gunman was on the point of firing at him. The family are said to be suffering from shock and are staying the night with friends.

In the Shantallow district of Londonderry a blast bomb slightly wounded…

The commander switched off the set.

‘That’s not like bloody Downs from the Ardoyne. Not like him to lose his nerve. Why should he do that?’

‘Stupid bastard. We needed Rennie killed. Put a lot of planning in and a deal of work to have him rubbed. Then it’s screwed. Could be they’re just feeding us this crap.’ It was the Brigade quartermaster who came in.

‘Doesn’t sound like that. Sounds like Downs just threw it. Hardly going to fool us, are they? The bugger Rennie, he’s alive or he’s dead. We sent for him to be killed, he’s not. So that means it’s failure, can’t be any other answer. What matters is that our man couldn’t finish it.’

He pondered on the decision he was about to take as the other men waited for him. He alone knew of the link between Danby in London and the man Downs from the Ardoyne. Later perhaps he would include the others in the knowledge, he decided, but not now. At this stage, he felt the fewer the better. Some of the commanders ran the office by committee, but not the man who now spoke again.

‘On from there. What about the man they’ve put in? What do we have?’

‘I think it’s watertight.’ Frank had taken the cue and come in. Frank had been with the Provisionals since the split with the Officials, the ‘Stickies’ as they called them, but this was the first time he had been in such élite company. It slightly unnerved him. ‘The girl he was laying spilt it all. It’s incredible, what he told her. She was saying that he says to her that he was sent over to get the man that shot Danby in London. She told him about the girl, the one that was picked up and taken to Springfield, the one that hanged herself. It was because he shopped her that she was taken in. She says she challenged him about it yesterday afternoon. He admitted it.’

The Brigade intelligence officer was sitting on the bed beside the commander. Hard face, tight pencil lips, and darting, pig-like eyes.

‘What’s his name, the Englishman?’

‘The name he’s using is Harry McEvoy. I doubt if it’s real or—’

‘Course it isn’t. Doesn’t matter that. They must be a bit touched up then over there, if they send a man over on his own, to find us just like that.’

Duffryn spoke.

‘But it all fits with what we had from the hotel. The army man and the RUC. The bit we had about them putting a man in and then not telling the brass. We thought we’d caught the buggers griping about it. It has to be some nonsense drawn up by one of them bastards sat behind a desk in London, in the Ministry.’

Duffryn was little more than a name to the commander. He looked at him with interest.

‘You had a line on the man first, right? Through his accent? Where is he now? What’s covering him?’

‘He’s at the guest house, where he has his lodgings. It’s called “Delrosa”, run by Mrs Duncan, off the Broadway. She’s all right. He’s there in a back room that he rents. The front and back are watched at the moment and the lads have been told in the last hour or so that if he goes out he’s to be tailed. But they must stay right back.’

‘And the girl you’ve talked to, won’t she warn him?’

‘We told her not to. I think she understood. She won’t do anything,’ Frank said.

The commander lit his fourth cigarette in less than half an hour, pulled at it, forcing the smoke down into his throat.

‘I think we want him before we hood him. We would like to talk to him for a bit first. Pick him up and bring him in for a talk. Does he work?’

‘In a scrap yard. He leaves to walk there about eight, just a few minutes after perhaps.’

‘Take him when he’s walking. On the main road, get him into a car and take him up the Whiterock, into the Crescent, the house there we’ve used. I don’t want him killed unless it’s that or he’s away. Remember that, I want him chatted with.’

For Frank and Seamus it seemed the end of their part in the evening. They rose out of the chairs, but were waved down by the commander.

‘Where’s Downs now?’

The Brigade quartermaster said, ‘The message came through just before I left to come here. The wound he got, it’s a light one, in the arm. Flesh. It’s being fixed up now by the quack in the Murph. He’s OK, but he hasn’t gone home yet. The quack will want to keep an eye on him for the next few hours.’

The Brigade commander talked to no-one in particular.

‘What do they say when a driver’s been in a crash? A lorry driver, bus, heavy truck? That sort of thing. What do they say? Send him straight back out again. Don’t hang about fidgeting and mumbling about it. Get stuck in again. Downs can go on this one. His nerve wasn’t too good last night. He’ll need this to get him back into scratch again. He’ll want to retrieve himself a bit. Get him here in an hour. Downs can finish him after the talking to.’

It amused him: the fox turning back on the hound.

For Frank and Seamus the briefing was finished. They went out through the back of the house to where a car was parked some three hundred yards away, keys in the dash. Frank would drive on to the doctor and drop Seamus near his home.

Seamus Duffryn was frightened for the first time since he had become involved with the movement. He’d been present three months earlier at an interrogation. A kid from up in Lenadoon. The charge was that he had betrayed colleagues in the movement to the military. The muffled screaming of the youth was still in his ears, bouncing and ricocheting about. They’d burned his naked stomach with cigarette ends while he was strapped in a chair, with a blanket over his head folded several times to deaden the noise. He’d screamed each time the glowing ash met his skin, from a deep animal desperation and not with hope of release. Seamus Duffryn had become involved that night, and would become involved again tomorrow. The paper stuff he did, that was unimportant. This is when it mattered and you were either in the movement or you were out of it. There had been an awful, shaming thrill through his entire body when he saw the light grey material of the boy’s trousers turn to heavy charcoal. As the urine ran down the kid’s leg there’d been the steam rising through the trousers, and the hood had gone on, and the gun had been cocked. At the moment they shot him the kid was still screaming but uncontrolled.

If McEvoy was British army, how would he take it? Duffryn wondered. That was a nothing from Lenadoon. McEvoy would be different. How would he stand up to their interrogation and the ritual end?

He would find out by tomorrow night. He hurried on his way through the night to his home and his mother.

After he’d made his phone call to London Harry had spent the rest of the day in his room. Before dark he gazed mindlessly into the abstract of roofs and walls that was the view from his window. He had not gone down to Sunday high tea, and to Mrs Duncan’s enquiries only replied that he thought he had something of a chill coming on. He was going to have an early night, he shouted through the door. She had wanted to bring him a hot drink in his room, but through the closed door he managed to persuade her that there was no need.

He wanted to be alone, shutting out the perpetual tension of moving in company and living the falsehood that had been planned for him. That girl. It had upset him. Created imbalance in the delicate poise he had taken up. Blown by a silly girl who couldn’t stop talking. Up on a mountain, wind and rain, like some cigarette advertisement, and he’d chucked the whole operation. Ridiculous and, worse, so bloody unprofessional. He brooded away the hours. He’d put faith down on the line of a girl whose address he didn’t even know. What in Christ’s name would they be thinking in London when he put the request in for the special treatment for Harry’s bit of tail? Go raving mad, wouldn’t they? And reckon he’d twisted. No way they wouldn’t. And they’d want to get him out.

He’d heard all the radio broadcasts, searching for the formula announcement that would end it all. Arrest… Man wanted for questioning… London murder… Big operation… Tip off… Appear in court. That would be the jargon. There had been nothing.

He had steeled himself to what he would do if he heard of the capture of the man. He’d be out of the front door, straight out, with no farewells or packing of luggage, on to the Falls, and turn right along the main road, and then right again before the hospital and on down to the Broadway barracks, and in through the front door… But without the news he couldn’t end it all. He had to stay, finish the job. No arrest and it was all a failure, abject and complete. Not worth going back for, just to report how it all got boobed. Didn’t really matter what Davidson said. No arrest, no return.

But where was the bloody army? Why wasn’t it all wrapped up? Big enough, weren’t they? Got enough men, and guns, and trucks. He’s out there just waiting for you to go and get him. The National bulletins traced their way round the news; there was nothing from Northern Ireland.

The frustration mounted in Harry, welling up against his reason and his training. How much information had he pushed at them in London over the last two, three weeks? How much did they want? All sewn up, it should be, cut and dried, taped and parcelled — and now more delay. Through Josephine, streak of bloody luck there, about as much information had come out as he was ever likely to get his hands on. The long-term adrenalin was fading… he wanted out… he wanted it over… but when it was finished.

As the dusk came he unwrapped the Smith & Wesson. After locking the door he took the weapon to pieces and laid it out on a handkerchief on the bed. With a second, dirtied handkerchief from his pocket he cleaned the firing mechanism, then reassembled the gun. He would take it with him next morning to the yard. Put it in the bag where the sandwich box went. It was a sort of therapy, the gun, the instant pick-me-up. It had gone wrong. Nothing on the radio when there should have been. The girl, that was where it had gone wrong, with that bloody girl. Lovely face, lovely body, lovely girl, but that was where it all loused up. Nothing else, that’s the only point where it’s gone wrong, but that’s enough. Gossip, don’t they, and she won’t keep her mouth shut any more than the rest of them. Like she talked about Theresa, so she’ll talk about me. A lonely man in a back-room bedsitter. The gun was insurance, the disaster was less distinct.

When he went to bed he lay a long time in the dark of the room thinking about Germany, the family, home and the people with whom he worked. The other officers, easy and relaxed, none of them knowing where Harry was, and few caring. He envied them, yet felt his dislike of that easy way of life. His distrust of the others not committed to the front, as he was now, was all-consuming. It was only rarely that he turned his mind to his wife and the children. It took him time, and with difficulty he re-created them and home on the NATO base. The chasm between their environment and Harry’s was too difficult for him to bridge. Too tired, too exhausted.

His final thought was salvation and made sleep possible. Of course the man was in custody, but they’d be questioning him. It would take thirty-six hours at least. They wouldn’t rush it, they’d want to get it right. Tomorrow evening they would be announcing it, and then home, and out of the hole; another forty-eight hours perhaps, and then out.

In the early hours of that Monday morning, while Harry alternately dozed and dreamed in his bed, and while the Brigade nucleus sat up in Andersonstown waiting for Downs to come, Davidson in the Covent Garden office was scanning the first London editions of the papers.

Both The Times and the Guardian carried reports from Northern Ireland that the Provisional IRA were claiming that British intelligence had launched a special agent into the Catholic areas, and that people in those areas had been warned to be especially vigilant. Both the writers under whose bylines the stories appeared emphasized that, whether true or false, the claim would have the effect of further reducing the minimal trust between the people of the minority areas, the front-line housing estates of the city and the security forces. There was much other news competing for space — on the diplomatic front, the state of the economy, and the general ‘human interest claptrap’ that Davidson raged about. The Belfast copy was not prominently displayed, but to the man propped up on his camp bed it presented a shattering blow. He lay deep in newsprint and pondered his telephone, wondering whether there were calls he should make, anything he could usefully do.

Those bungling idiots had still failed to pick up the chap Downs and the girl Josephine. Near a day to get them, and nothing to show for it. He was astonished, too long after the war, too long after the organization had run down, too many civilians who’d never been up the sharp end. Without the arrest the scheme of which he was an integral part would collapse, and at a rate of knots. In all conscience he could not ring that man Frost again, supercilious bastard, and once more expose himself to that sarcasm. On the wall by the door the clock showed after two. For a moment he comforted himself that Harry might see the report for himself and do a bunk on his own.

No, that wouldn’t fit, scrap men don’t take The Times or the Guardian, that wouldn’t match the cover.

Davidson tried to shut the problem out of his mind, and closed his eyes. He fumbled unseeing above him till his fingers caught at the string that hung down from the light switch. By the time he drifted into sleep he had worked out his immediate future. The early retirement and professional disgrace, and all because that hoof-footed army couldn’t pick one man up. The unfairness of it all.

Frost had gone to bed a little after midnight, and lain half awake expecting the phone to ring, and unwilling to commit himself to the task of sleeping. It had to come, the message that either the man or the girl had been found. The bell’s shrill insistence eventually woke him. The army in the Ardoyne reported no known entries or departures at the house in Ypres Avenue. He authorized the unit to move in and search at 05.30 hours.

After that he slept, safe in the knowledge that Monday would be a real day, a real bugger.

The doctor had cleaned the wound. He’d found the damage slight, lessened further as the cotton wool and spirit cleaned away the caked blood that had smeared itself on the upper part of the left arm. A small portion of flesh had been ripped clear close by the smallpox vaccination scar. There was an entry and exit wound, almost together and one, and after he had cleaned it thoroughly the doctor put a light lint dressing over the pale numbed skin.

‘You can move yourself around a bit. If you need to, that is. But if possible you should stay still, take it quiet. Go put yourself in the easy chair out the back, and get a rest or something.’

‘Is it serious? Will I be left with anything?’ asked Downs.

‘If you look after it you’ll be OK, nothing to worry about, nothing at all. But you must go easy to start with. The only problem is if it gets infected at this early stage. But we’ll see that doesn’t happen — yes?’

The doctor had been associated with the fringes of the movement since the start of the violence. He asked no questions, and needed few answers. Once every fortnight or so he would hear the square of gravel flick once, twice, against his bedroom window, and in his dressing gown he would open the door to a casualty too sensitive to face ordinary hospital treatment. He had made his attitude clear at least three years earlier, that there was no point them bringing men to him who were already close to death. Take them to the RVH, he’d said. If their wounds were that bad they’d be out of it for months anyway, so better for them to get top medical treatment in the best hospital than the hand-to-mouth service he could provide. He handled a succession of minor gunshot wounds, was able to remove bullets, clean wounds and prevent sepsis setting in.

He was sympathetic to the Provisionals but he gave them no material support other than the late-night ex officio surgery. Perhaps if he had been born into the ghetto he would have been one of them, but he came from off the hill, and went to medical school after sixth-form secondary education. Though they had his sympathy he reflected he was a very different person from the hard, wild-eyed men who came to him for treatment.

Downs was very white in the chair, his shirt ripped away on the left side and his coat, holed and bloody, draped over the back. He heard the faint knock at the door down the corridor at the front of the house. There was a whispered dispute in the hall. He heard that distinctly and twisted himself round in the chair to see two men push their way past the doctor and into the room.

There was a tall man, in jeans and a roll-neck sweater. ‘The Chief wants you. He’s waiting in Andytown now. Said he wants to see you straight away.’

The doctor remonstrated, ‘Look at the state he’s in. You can see that for yourself. He should be here all night, then go and rest. He’s in shock.’

‘No chance. He’s wanted at a meeting. There’ll be no permanent damage if we take him?’

‘You’re setting back recovery time, and adding to the risk of infection.’

‘We’ll see you get a look at him tomorrow. Right now we have to go. Come on.’

This last was to Downs. Twice he looked backwards and forwards from the messenger to the doctor, willing the doctor to be more insistent. The doctor didn’t meet him, avoiding the pleading in the man’s eyes. The tall man and his colleague took hold of Downs under his armpits and gently but decisively lifted him towards the door.

The doctor said, ‘You may need these to pull him up a bit, if there’s something that he has to do. Not more than a couple at a time, after that he has to sleep. If he takes them they’ll help him for a few hours, then it’s doubly important that he rests.’

From the high wall cabinet in the back room he took down a brown pill bottle, half filled with tablets, half with a wad of cotton wool.

They always said they’d come back, but few did. If they needed further treatment they headed south, where they could lie up more easily away from the daily tensions of the perpetual hunt by the military for men on the wanted list. The doctor watched them carry the man to the car and ease him into the back, propped up against the arm-rest in the centre of the seat. He wagered himself the pills would be in use before lunchtime.

The drive between the doctor’s house and the meeting place in Andersonstown took twenty minutes. They helped the wounded man out of the car and in through the back entrance the way the night’s other visitors had come. Irritably he shrugged them off once he was inside the scullery, and independently followed their instructions to go up the stairs and in through the second door on the left of the landing.

Only the Brigade commander had remained to see him.

‘How are you, Billy? Have they fixed you up all right?’

‘Not so bad. It’s only in the flesh. Not much more than a graze, the thing went straight on through. It’s bandaged up now and the doc says it’s clean.’

‘I heard a bit about it on the radio. Said you didn’t get a shot into the bastard, you didn’t hit him. Said his brat got in the way and you didn’t fire. Is that right?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’ Oh Christ, not an inquest now. Not why, wherefore, how and when at this time of night. ‘I fired once and missed, then when I had a clear shot at him the kid came right across. She was right in front of his body and his head. I couldn’t see him so I didn’t fire.’

The Brigade commander was still smoking, in front of him the clear glass ashtray mounted with a score of filtered ends steeped in the grey powder he flicked continuously into the bowl. The debris was left in a circle round the ashtray where it balanced on the blanket over the bed.

‘If you’d just fired, child and all… then you would have got him, yes? If you’d just gone right on through with it Rennie would be dead, right?’

‘Is that what they said on the radio?’ Downs was peeved by the reception, not used to being challenged and questioned. ‘Is that what Rennie is saying, on the radio? If I had fired through the kid then I would have killed him?’

Who did this bugger think he was, thought Downs. When was this miserable sod out with an ASU? When did he expose himself? All right for those who give orders and send kids out to carry bombs into tuppenny-ha’penny supermarkets. Get out on the streets at night, know the silence of waiting, the terrible noise of action, feel a nine-millimetre slug hit you. Then come quizzing me. Anger rose in him, but not sufficient for him to shout, to release him from the discipline inculcated into him. Can’t shout at the Brigade commander. That’s mutiny.

‘I don’t know what Rennie is saying,’ said the commander. ‘The radio said the child was in the way and that you didn’t fire. That’s all. There’s no criticism of you. I know of no cause for criticism.’

Cunning sod. ‘There shouldn’t be. Rennie was no soft one. He moved bloody well.’

‘One or two people, who don’t know the facts as we do, might feel if they only had half the story that Billy Downs had ballsed it up, gone soft on the job. If they hadn’t the big picture, and knew it all, they might say Billy Downs was sent on a job, and when one of the copper’s brats got in the way that then he held his fire.’ Downs didn’t really know the commander, he was from a different part of the city. They had had no real dealings before, but rank separated them, and dictated that he must let him have his say. ‘These people, they might recall that when we shot Sean Russell, of the UDR, in New Barnsley, that he had his kids draped all over him. Now two of them were wounded, but Russell was still shot dead. The order had been to shoot him. Now we all know that it wouldn’t be fair to put your escapade tonight in the same category. And we know that your nerve is as good as ever. That you are one of the top soldiers we have. We know that, don’t we, Billy?’

‘You know it’s balls,’ said Downs. ‘I’m not soft. My nerve hasn’t gone. We’re not fighting five-year-olds. Is that what you’re saying, that we kill wee girls? Are you saying that I should have fired straight through the girl? Is that what you think I ought to have done?’

‘Don’t get ratty, Billy. It’s just we have to be careful that people who don’t know the circumstances might think that. They might point out that getting you that close to Rennie took a deal of time, and that then the front runner botched the whole bloody thing… because a kiddie got in the way. That’s nonsense, Billy.’ The voice droned on, repetition of failure dragging itself through Downs. He had to sleep, to rest, to escape from this room with this boring and nagging whore of a man.

‘We know it’s not true, Billy. We know there was a good reason for you not to shoot. We know you couldn’t see the target. We know Rennie wasn’t straightforward. I don’t know how many other people feel the same way. But that’s enough of that. Nobody will have a leg to stand on by tomorrow night. Right, Billy? We have a little job tomorrow, and by the time that’s done they’ll be silenced.’

Downs looked away, broken by the twisting of the screw. Self-doubt rampant. The commander crushed the ego out of him.

‘I’m the only one of Brigade group that knows about London. We’ve kept it tight for your protection. It’s worked pretty well… up to now. There’s a difficulty come up. The Brits have put a man in to find you. An agent. McEvoy. Harry McEvoy. Lodging down in Broadway. There’s a split in their top ranks about him. We think London wanted him but Lisburn didn’t.’

He let it sink in, watched the colour return to the man’s face, watched the fear come back to his eyes and saw the hands begin to clasp and unclasp.

‘His job, the agent’s job, is to find you. Perhaps to kill you, perhaps to take you in, or just tell them where to go. We fancy he wants to kill you. He’s been near to you already. He tipped the troops that picked up the girl that hanged herself. We think she did that rather than tell about you. Rennie was the one that questioned her. He chatted to that girl till she was ready to hang herself. You couldn’t kill him when his brat jumped in the way. You had no cause to be soft with Rennie. You’ll have a chance to let people know what you’re made of, Billy. Tomorrow we’re going to lift this fellow that’s come for you, and we’ll talk to him, then we’ll hood him. That’s where you come in. You’ll shoot him, like you shot Danby, like you should have shot Rennie.’

Downs felt faint now, exhausted by the sarcasm of the top man. He nodded, sweat rising from his crotch across his body.

‘When it’s over we’ll send you down to Donegal. Sleep it all off, and get fit again. Tonight you’ll stay in Andersonstown. They’ll pick you up at six-fifteen. They’ll have the guns when they meet you. This will sort it out, I think. Be just the right answer to those who say that Billy Downs has gone soft.’

He wanted out, and this was the chance. They were showing him the way. The way to do it properly, not so as you were looking over your shoulder for half a life-time, and running. The official way, that was how it was done. One more day, one more job. Then out. Leave it to the cowboys. The heroes who didn’t hold their fire, who shot wee kids. Squeeze the trigger right through the scream of a five-year-old. Was that Pearse’s revolution, or Connolly’s or Plunkett’s? Was it, hell. Leave it to the cowboys after one more day.