Stand By, Stand By

EIGHT

After that fiasco it took me three or four days to chill out. My big disappointment was not so much that the PIRA had pulled out of their operation; what pissed me off was the fact that I’d missed — or rather, been deprived of — a golden chance of settling my personal score. The whole business could have been squared away. If Mike and I had opened fire, we’d have had little trouble afterwards establishing that we’d used reasonable force; having been faced with four armed men, we would have had no difficulty in maintaining that our lives had been in jeopardy.

The wash-up didn’t provide any clues as to why the players had quit, but it did reveal why the desk had forbidden us to shoot. We learnt that one of the four gunmen was a key tout, and that his continued existence was considered of paramount importance. Better him alive than Farrell dead — at least, that was what we were told at the time. Later, I came to wonder if that was the whole truth.

This setback made me do some hard thinking. Farrell had lost his dog, but he probably thought Buster had saved his life. There was no way he could pinpoint the identity of the would-be assassin who’d tried to nail him, but he would certainly guess that it had been a member of the security forces. After such a close shave, he surely wouldn’t risk himself in the field again for a while. My own time in Ulster was rapidly ticking away. It followed that, if I was going to get Farrell, I must go after him on my own.

The idea excited me, because I knew how dangerous a solo mission would be. Of course I’d just had another illustration of how vital it was to work in pairs. If that dog had got hold of me on my own I could easily have ended up getting captured. The risks of a one-man operation were all too obvious. But there was something about Farrell’s arrogance that goaded me on: the way he’d yelled at his own guys as he arrived at the barn — even those few words had made him sound a real bully-boy.

Already I’d formed the outline of a plan. I’d find out where he lived, set up an OP on his house, observe his movements in and out, and then, once I had him sussed, take him out with my secretly confiscated 9mm Luger. I’d fired so many thousands of rounds on the range that I was confident I could put a double-tap into his head from fifteen or twenty metres — and that would be the end of him. My main difficulty was to get enough time off. To find the house might take several recces; to establish the pattern of his movements would need several more. I could take the odd evening off and pretend to be socializing with my in-laws, but sooner or later I would surely get caught by some emergency — a call would go out, pulling all the guys back, and I wouldn’t be there to answer it. Instead, I’d be stuck out in the middle of some godforsaken bog, waiting for Mr Big-Boy to come home.

The next time I visited Kath’s parents was for Christmas lunch. We had a fine meal with all the trimmings, and then the traditional handing-out of presents from under the decorated tree. Tim, being easily the youngest person present, got the job of messenger, taking each package to the right person. As long as he was the centre of attention he behaved perfectly, but later he threw a tantrum for no visible reason, and I could see he was becoming too much for his gran. I think he was reacting to the loss of his mother and the break-up of his home. Apparently these rages were becoming quite frequent. Suddenly he’d let fly with a scream and refuse to cooperate. No wonder he was getting on Meg’s nerves — and on mine.

Lying in my cabin one night, unable to sleep, I started thinking about Tracy (as usual). I’d been phoning her most evenings, and had sent an expensive silver bracelet as a Christmas present. Our relationship was going great guns — as far as it could while we were a few hundred miles apart. I had no doubt we were going to stick together when I got home, and I was pretty sure she’d take Tim over, as if he were her own. She had only ever seen him as a baby, when he’d been brought into the Med Centre in Hereford, but that didn’t seem to worry her.

Now I had a brainwave. Partly because I’d volunteered to work over Christmas, I had a week’s leave coming up, and I’d been planning to go home. But if I did the opposite, bringing Tracy over, I could take local leave, and have a chance to pursue my own devious plans in the Province. At the same time, she could start getting to know Tim. Furthermore — my mind ran on — we could have a kind of premature honeymoon at my in-laws’ holiday cottage on the north coast. The place was standing empty, and it was in a safe enough area. We’d take Tim with us, and at the very least give Meg a break. Afterwards, if all had gone well, Tracy might take him back with her to Keeper’s Cottage and start getting our family settled there — maybe not after this first visit, but some time later.

For once the tide seemed to be running in my favour. Three phone calls fixed everything: one to Tracy, one to Meg, one to the airline. The great thing about Tracy — or one of the great things about her — was the positive way she reacted to new ideas. I can’t stand people with negative attitudes, who reject suggestions on principle before they’ve even thought about them. Tracy’s outlook was the opposite of that: everything new was fun, or likely to be — and so it turned out when I suggested that she might come over. ‘Great!’ was her reaction. Susan could hold the fort at KC. She herself could take a week off work any time, she said. Her only question was, ‘When?’

Meg was almost equally enthusiastic. I put over the idea that Tracy was a trained nurse, and fully capable of looking after a young child. I said, truthfully enough, that her elder sister had two young boys of her own, and that Tracy had helped look after them. I’m sure my in-laws must have seen the way things were going. They’d known that I’d left Tracy in possession of the house in England, and when I said she was coming over, no doubt they put two and two together; but they were too sensible to criticize my arrangements. As for the troop — instead of having to creep out on surreptitious expeditions, I merely said that I was proposing to spend my leave in a holiday cottage on the north coast.

After its last little dust-up the Sierra had been smartly retired from our stable of cars, and in its place I had a Cavalier. This time I drove with one eye permanently on the rear mirror, and once I’d come off the M2 at Junction Four, I made a couple of unnecessary stops — one at a garage to buy some peppermints, one in a layby to check under the bonnet for some imaginary engine fault. Satisfied that I had no tail, I headed up round the edge of the hills towards the village of Ballyconvil.

The place was so small that when I saw it my heart sank. Four, five, six little houses straggling along the road — and that was it. One, with ‘LIAM’S’ painted white-on-green above the door, was a bar cum general store, and the others were ordinary dwellings, so poor and mean I couldn’t imagine Farrell setting foot inside any of them, let alone living there. If the village had been anywhere at home, I’d have gone into the pub for a pint and made casual inquiries about the neighbourhood; but here, I knew, the appearance of a stranger speaking with an English accent would immediately raise an alert. Word would go round in a flash; everybody would be talking and on the lookout.

All I could do was drive straight through the place and on up the hill. But as I glanced back to my left, I realized that there was one more house, set apart from the rest of the hamlet on higher ground. It was hidden from the road directly below it by the fact that it stood back on a ledge, and remained out of view until anybody passing was clear of the other houses. The place looked like a farm, with a couple of barns set round a yard, but even a fleeting glimpse gave the impression that it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill ramshackle farmhouse. The old buildings had been renovated in the past year or two: the roofs were tidy and straight, the windows in the house new. The set-up looked too smart to be a working farm. Right, I thought, that can only be him.

I drove on for twenty minutes, stopped in a lay-by and watched the mirror for ten minutes between intervals of studying my 1:50,000 map. Very few cars passed, and none gave me any cause to worry. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to park in the village when I did my CTRs; I needed somewhere secure to leave the car. My eye fastened on some blocks of forestry, green on the map. The one nearest to Ballyconvil was round the back of the hill from the farm, but only one kilometre or so away across country. It was worth a look, anyway.

A short drive brought me into sight of it. As I expected, it was a dense conifer plantation which climbed the hillside and swept round into a big bowl. The public road followed the contour-line below it, and a barbed-wire fence bounded its lower edge. After a few hundred metres I came to the entrance, a gravelled drive leading up into the trees and turning left. Following the road, I came to a barrier in the form of a heavy wooden pole, hinged on a pivot at one end and padlocked with a chain to a post at the other. No supersonic knickers here — only a sign saying: ‘FORESTRY COMMISSION, NO ADMISSION TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS.’

I got out and had a look round. The gates were nicely out of sight of the main road. The gravel was clean and hard, so that tyres left no mark on it. A careful check of the chain, the padlock and the ground showed that the entrance had not been opened for some time. Evidently there was no work going on in the wood, no thinning or felling. The set-up seemed ideal for my purposes. After my lock-picking course at LATA, the barrier would present no problem. Once inside, I could drive up to a convenient point in the forest, hide the car, and go in round the shoulder of the hill on foot. If, by ill chance, someone came across the vehicle while I was away and reported it, I’d say that it had been nicked, and must have been dumped up there by the villains.

With that settled, I turned round and drove back along the same road. My second pass through Ballyconvil confirmed earlier impressions. The farmhouse came into view as I approached the village, and I saw that its walls had been freshly painted white. The window frames were new and made of dark wood. The roof was as it should be — traditional slate. At the back, a stretch of high-wire fence was showing. Somebody had spent a lot of money on the place. But there was no car outside the door, and no sign of any activity.

That second pass also gave me a chance to look at the background. Behind the house, rough grass fields sloped away up the flank of the hill, with much the same texture as the one in which Mike and I made our OP; but after only one field’s width the farmland gave out and the mountain proper began. The cut-off was a fence running horizontally round the contour; above it, thickets of gorse grew among the bracken, and higher still the bracken gave way to heather. It looked as though the gorse would be perfect for an OP — prickly, but brilliant cover, within less than two hundred yards of the target.

On the morning Tracy was due in, I got Pat to lift me out to the City Airport, and I was there in time to pick up a hire-car before the flight from Birmingham landed. When the car-hire girl told me all she had left was a red Datsun I nearly flipped. Red! That was the last colour I wanted. Especially in the forest — it would show for miles. But then I told myself, ‘Come on, you’re a civvy tourist for the week. Behave like one.’ So I paid with my Visa card, gave my in-laws’ address, and signed for the Datsun.

When Tracy appeared in the scruffy arrival area, we ran straight to each other and held on tight without speaking. I think other people could feel the high current of emotion flowing between us, because they kept away and didn’t even look in our direction. Through her shiny blue shell-suit she felt slim and fit.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said.

‘I know. Things are pretty tense over here.’

‘It suits you, though.’

‘Good!’

This was her first visit to Belfast, and as we headed out for Helen’s Bay I explained that we were already on the north-eastern edge of the city, well away from all the nasties in the West. The holiday cottage, I said, was even farther from the centre of the troubles, so that there was no need to worry.

Tracy went over big with both my in-laws — she said all the right things, and made an immediate hit. Den told her she was too thin, and said she should eat more; in particular, he insisted she should have another piece of the lemon cake which Meg had made and put out with the coffee. As for Tim — Tracy started straight in, playing with his train set and talking to him as if he was an adult. I couldn’t believe it. After about thirty seconds they were having a serious discussion about why the signals went green for go and red for stop.

It didn’t seem the right moment for a talk about long-term plans, so we packed up and got going, on the basis that all three of us would be away for the week. Den had bought Tim a new car-seat because he’d outgrown his old one, and we fixed that in the back of the Datsun. As we drove off I realized what great cover it was to look like a regular family on holiday in a hire-car, innocent and harmless as could be. Only I knew that the Luger was in the boot. We stopped once to stock up from a little supermarket in a village, and the entire journey took not much more than an hour.

The cottage wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting. I’d been imagining something tucked away on its own — but I hadn’t known the address: No. 1 Coastguard Row. It was one of four, built for the local coastguards, and stood at the end of a little terrace overlooking the sea, perched above the road so that you had to leave the car down below and walk up a flight of stone steps to the front garden. I immediately thought, Ah, this is handy, because the houses were out of sight of the road, and nobody would spot a car coming or going at odd hours of the night or early morning.

Inside everything was fine. Meg had phoned a friendly neighbour, who kept a spare key, and got her to switch on the underfloor heating, so that the place was warm and welcoming. Tim had been there before, so of course he considered himself an expert on the house’s layout, and showed us which rooms were which.

It was a good job we had him with us, otherwise we’d have spent all day in bed, as well as all night.

With a fire going in the front room the house became a cocoon, cradling our little family, and there wasn’t much temptation to go outside. All the same, that first afternoon we walked along the shingly beach. The tide was coming in, and the sea was flat and calm, with only the tiniest waves turning over as they hit the shore. I showed Tim how to choose flat stones and give them an underarm flick so that they did ducks-and-drakes across the water. At that stage he wasn’t much good at throwing, and he spun himself round in circles with his efforts to get more leverage on to his arm. I noticed that there was plenty of driftwood on the high-tide line, so on the way back I collected an armful for the store in the shed behind the cottage.

All the time I was thinking of the white farmhouse at Ballyconvil and the dark forest on the hill. How was I going to account for my need to be absent for hours at a time? Why should I want to disappear in the middle of what was, in effect, our honeymoon?

I’d already tried to explain to Tracy that guys in the Regiment habitually told their wives and girlfriends as little as possible about what they were doing. It was plain good sense and good security, I said, to restrict knowledge to a minimum. With her knack of going straight to the point, she’d come back with, ‘Well, that doesn’t sound great. If you’re not coming clean about your work, how am I to know what else you may be covering up?’ She was right, of course. Secrecy breeds distrust — and now, with our relationship hardly started, I was going to have to start deceiving her.

I said nothing that day. While she was getting supper on the go I walked down to the pub at the other end of the village. Den had told me that out there, in tourist country, it was safe enough, especially as he and Meg were well known locally. The place was called the Spanish Galleon, and the walls were covered with mementoes of the Armada, mostly pictures of fantastic gold jewellery recovered from the Girona, which was wrecked off the coast in the autumn of 1588. I bought myself a pint of stout and explained to the landlord that we’d come to the cottage for the week. I couldn’t tell whether or not he knew about Kath, so we just had a general chat, mostly about fishing. A fellow about my age, who was already at the bar, said he had a friend who owned a fishing boat at some place nearby. After a while I bought a bottle of plonk for supper and set off home.

In the morning, before it was fully light, Tim came bursting into our room in his pyjamas. ‘Why are the beds pushed together?’ he demanded.

‘So we can have a cuddle,’ said Tracy.

‘Gran and Grandad don’t have them like that.’

‘Well — come on in and have a cuddle anyway.’

Next thing, he was in between us, wriggling like a ferret.

‘Why are you bare?’ he asked accusingly.

Jesus! I couldn’t help laughing.

‘This duvet’s nice and warm,’ said Tracy. ‘We don’t need pyjamas.’

So it went on. She was brilliant with him, especially when he started on about God.

‘Who’s God?’ he wanted to know.

‘He’s like a big father, up there in heaven.’

‘Why can’t I see him, then?’

‘He’s like the wind. You can feel the wind, but you can’t see it. You know? God’s like that.’

‘What does he feel like?’

‘Sort of warm. Like if someone’s kind to you. He feels good.’

‘Is Mummy in heaven?’

‘Yes. I’m sure she is.’

‘Why did she have to go there?’

‘I expect God wanted her.’

‘What did he want her for?’

‘Because she was a very good person.’

‘Can I go and see her?’

‘Not really…’

The inquisition was relentless, but Tracy was equal to it; she never lost her cool or cut Tim short with an unsympathetic answer. By the end of breakfast there was a terrific bond between the two of them. Altogether we were a happy family that morning.

It was all the harder, then, to break the news that I had to go off in the afternoon to do a job of work. Tracy looked really pissed off. ‘But I thought you were on leave,’ she said. ‘That’s the whole point of my being here.’

‘I know,’ I prevaricated, ‘But there were a couple of things outstanding. I promised the lads I’d get them done.’

She knew I was being deliberately evasive, but because of the earlier conversations we’d had about security she didn’t press for more information. When I said I’d be back after dark, she just said, ‘Take care. You’ll find supper waiting.’

It was less than an hour’s drive to Ballyconvil. But I didn’t go to the village at all. Navigating with the help of the big-scale map, I took a swing out right-handed, to the west, and came up to the forestry plantation from the opposite direction. Once again the entrance was deserted. A quick check confirmed that nobody had moved it since my last visit. Pulling on a pair of thin silk gloves, I brought out my little collection of bent levers and spikes, and in a minute I had the padlock open. The barrier-pole swung up easily, with the lump of concrete on its end acting as a counterweight. With the car through, I closed the gates and put the padlock back in position.

Inside the plantation, the road climbed to the left in a wide curve. The spruces on either side were quite large — maybe thirty years old and fifty feet tall — and they’d never been thinned, so that they were growing in a solid mass. Nobody could look into the forest from a distance and see a car moving. Half a kilometre up, I reached a fork and took the left, along the contour, in the direction I wanted. Round a corner the road suddenly came to an end in an apron of gravel, a spread big enough for timber-trucks to turn. Uphill, above it, was a small patch of bare ground under the first rows of trees; I got out and checked that it was firm, then backed the car as far under the branches as it would go, out of sight of any passing helicopter. I’d thought about cutting branches and covering it completely, but decided that, if I did, it would be too obvious that somebody had tried to hide it. Instead, I relied on an element of bluff. On the front passenger seat I left a book that I’d sent away for: Field Guide to the Birds of the British Isles. (I’d taken some stick when that arrived in the warehouse and was opened by Security in case it was a bomb — ‘Fucking hell, there’s only one kind of bird that Geordie’s interested in,’ and so on. Very witty.) Now, I hoped, it might come into its own.

I locked up, settled my day-sack on my back and set off along a fire-break that continued the line of the hard road. It felt odd to be moving operationally in the open without a G3 or a covert radio. It felt even odder to be on my own, without at least one partner in immediate contact. All I had in the way of equipment, apart from the Luger and the kite-sight, was my knife, wirecutters, secateurs, a torch and a pair of binoculars. While planning the sortie I’d thought hard about borrowing one of the troop cameras, so that I could take pictures of Farrell, develop them myself, and make certain I had the right man. After a while, though, I’d abandoned the idea. One problem was that I couldn’t take a camera away for a whole week without its absence being noticed — and in any case, I knew well enough what Farrell looked like. What with Pink Mike’s photos and our live sighting at the transit hide, there was no chance I could mistake him.

Heather and rough grass had grown across the ride, but along the middle a narrow path had remained open, and the going was easy. About two hundred metres from the turning-place it bent to the right. As soon as I was out of sight of the car I dropped down and crawled into the wood, coming round in a half-circle under the trees and putting in a few minutes’ covert observation to make sure nobody had followed me up.

That was easier said than done. The lower branches of the trees had all died from lack of light, but they were still stiff and spiky, the lowest of them growing to within a couple of feet of the ground. Even when I tried to crawl along the smooth carpet of old pine needles; my day-sack kept catching. In most places the only remedy was to belly-crawl, right down flat. Even as I was worming my way back to the path I thought how impossible it would be to make any speed through a plantation as dense as this.

Like a snake, I wriggled carefully up to the edge of the ride, and for fifteen minutes I lay there watching the car through binoculars. Nothing moved, and gradually I relaxed. Maybe I was being excessively cautious — but you never know.

Emerging again, I shook the spruce needles out of my shirt collar and went on along the track. In a few minutes I came to the boundary fence — a two-metre — high barrier of squared wire — and looked cautiously out. Ahead was the slope of the open hill, falling from right to left: wide stretches of heather, patches of dead — looking grass, clumps of gorse. Unless there was somebody up on the hill itself, which seemed unlikely, I felt confident no one would see me, because the nearest farmland and houses were way down over the brow. In any case, I had done my best to dress up as a hiker or bird-watcher, in a dull-coloured windproof and thick grey Norwegian stockings pulled up to the knees over my jeans, like plus fours.

Take it easy, though, I told myself. Don’t rush it. I gave myself a couple of minutes inside the fence, then climbed over and took another look round. Somehow I needed to mark my entry-point, for when I came back in the dark. To have tied a handkerchief to the fence would have been too obvious. Looking back into the wood, I saw a bare dead branch, stripped of its bark and nearly white. I climbed back in, threaded it into the mesh near the top of the wire at an angle, as if it had blown there, and climbed out again.

On the move in the open, I worked my way round the contour. Only ten minutes later I stuck my head cautiously over a rise and found I could see down to the farm. A short belly-crawl brought me into a dry streambed, and that in turn led down to a clump of gorse just above the highest field. Having crept round the edge of the bushes, I cut away some of the lower branches and scraped the ground beneath them clear of prickles to make a comfortable nest. With minimum effort I’d fashioned myself a perfect OP.

The farmhouse and its outbuildings were less than 200 metres below me. The house — to the right as I looked — was long and low, and ranged with its back to the hill, which rose in a mown grass bank immediately behind, so that the top of the bank was only a few feet from the gutter of the slate roof. House and bank were separated by a path no more than a yard wide. There were only two windows in the back of the house, and both were small — lavatories or bathrooms, I guessed. The left-hand end of the house jutted forward, away from the hill, like the foot of a blunt L, and there, in the middle of the end wall, in my full view, was the front door, with a little pitched roof over a porch.

To me, the house was of secondary interest. Far more important was the high mesh fence which bounded the property and abutted the ends of the farm buildings, so that the entire establishment was enclosed by wire or stone; it took me a few moments to work out that the area surrounding the house was one huge dog-run. The drive came in through gates a couple of metres high on the side farthest from me. Any doubt about this being Farrell’s place was dispelled when a dog suddenly came into view, sniffing along the perimeter fence. The animal was a hefty-looking Rottweiler, no doubt the partner of the late and unlamented Buster.

Scanning for details, I spotted a video camera on one corner of the house, covering the approach, and what looked like a security light high on the wall. At first I imagined that the light would be activated by infra-red sensors, but then I realized that if a dog was loose in the compound outside, the system would drive people crazy by popping on and off all night.

There appeared to be nobody at home; certainly there was no car standing outside. Then, as I lay watching, I heard a cow bellow, and I realized that at least one of the barns was still in use for its original purpose. That was a surprise. From the high standard to which the outbuildings had been renovated, I’d assumed that farming had gone out of the window. Then I thought, Maybe keeping cattle is a form of cover, a pretence of normality designed to draw attention away from other activities.

The afternoon passed slowly. At about 3.30 light rain began to fall, so I pulled on my waterproof. The temptation to doze off was strong, especially after our energetic sessions during the night. To stay awake, I kept trying to work out how I would drop Farrell if or when he came home. By far the easiest would be to get him with a G3 or a hunting rifle from up the hill, above the compound and outside it. But since I couldn’t sneak a G3 out of the warehouse (or lay my hands on a hunting rifle), I was going to have to go in close and use the Luger. Because the dog was constantly on the move around its patch, that was going to be difficult. I tried to measure the distance between the porch, where Farrell would probably get out of his car, and the nearest point of the top fence from which I’d have a clear view of him: twenty-five metres at least. I’d want to be closer than that to make sure.

At least the Luger was in good shape. When I first got it, I saw that it was old but in immaculate order, as we generally found with PIRA weapons. Someone had really looked after it — but all the same I’d stripped it down, cleaned it thoroughly and given it a good oiling. One afternoon, when a gale was blowing and the noise of the wind was enough to cover the shots, I’d managed to take it out into an old gravel pit and put twenty or thirty rounds through it, so I knew it wouldn’t let me down.

Just after four o’clock there came a surprise. Up the drive wandered an old crone, a real bog peasant, with a black scarf round her head, an ancient overcoat nearly down to her ankles, buttoned-up boots, and smoking a pipe. The dog ran to meet her, and as she let herself in through the gates it jumped up with its paws on her shoulders. She gave it a kiss and slipped it some tit-bit, after which it went with her as she headed into the farmyard. Through the binoculars I watched her take the pipe from her mouth and put it down on what looked like an old stand for milk-churns. Then she disappeared into one of the sheds and came out with a bucket. A steel gate clanged as she went into the open — fronted barn, presumably feeding the cattle in there. Later she brought an armful of hay across the yard and dumped that in the same area. All the time the dog was at her heels, clearly glad of her company. Then she picked up her pipe and vanished round the far side of the house, where I guessed she was feeding the dog. Finally she went back out through the gates. This time I saw that they opened automatically, presumably worked by pressure pads under the road.

Darkness fell soon after the old girl had disappeared down the hill. I wanted to move in closer, but the wind was dangerous; I could feel what there was of it eddying past me from above — and after our experience at the transit hide, I didn’t want to blow things by stirring up the dog. So I stayed where I was and waited.

My reward arrived just after six o’clock. Headlights came blazing up the hill and a car swept in towards the gates, which opened in front of it. I saw the Rotty rush out and leap around as the car cruised forward and pulled up outside the door. On went the security light, and out got three men. I saw straight away that the driver was Farrell, but I could make nothing of the other two. The car was a Mercedes estate, and before any of the men entered the house they opened the tailgate, took out some heavy-looking suitcases, two apiece, and staggered across to the nearest outbuilding. From the way they were buckling at the knees I could tell they had a fair weight on board. When they reached the outhouse Farrell produced a bunch of keys, with which he unlocked a door. Once the suitcases were stashed inside, the men went over to the house, and soon several lights were showing as they settled down inside.

That was enough for day one of my campaign. I’d established that the farmhouse was Farrell’s, and that he was using it. All I had to do now was devise some means of getting in close. As I walked back up the hill in the dark, my mind was already working on it.

At the forest gate I put on my gloves again to close the padlock, once again leaving it cocked at a particular angle, so when I returned I would see if anyone else had been through.

In bed that night we were still lying entwined, with Tracy’s back towards me, when she said, ‘Geordie, what are you doing?’

I was half asleep, and muttered, ‘What?’

‘Out there, with that gun.’

‘What gun?’

‘The pistol. I found it under that pile of clothes.’

‘Oh, that. I need it for self-protection. That’s all.’

She went quiet for a minute, then said, ‘You’re going after someone, aren’t you?’

I tried to keep myself relaxed. If I let myself tense up, she’d be bound to feel it. I was in a real spot. If I tried to bluff it out, she’d know I was lying — she had a tremendous sense for that. And if I did start telling lies, I’d undermine our relationship right at the beginning.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’ll be all right.’

‘It’s the person who killed Kath, isn’t it?’

‘Trace!’ Now I did tense and pull away from her. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

‘I guessed it. I’ve had the whole afternoon to think about it. I reckoned, Either he’s on leave, or he isn’t. He can’t be half-working. I know you lot don’t work alone. It’s always in pairs, isn’t it?’

I nodded. My forehead was still against the back of her head, and, although she couldn’t see me she could feel the movement.

‘Well? You’re trying to kill him?’

I nodded again.

‘Why?’

‘He killed Kath. That’s why.’

‘I don’t suppose he meant to.’

‘He sent the bomber to kill somebody. He’s killed plenty of others, too. He’s a murdering bastard.’

‘An eye for an eye.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why not just leave him?’

‘Trace, this is nothing to do with you.’

‘Of course it is!’ She suddenly turned over to face me and said angrily, ‘If we’re going together, I’m part of everything you do.’

I wanted to tell her gently that she couldn’t be, that my profession made any such arrangement impossible. But I sidestepped, and said I’d reconsider things when we were fresh in the morning.

‘The trouble with you,’ she said, ‘is that you’re a loner. You know that, don’t you? You’re always wanting to do things on your own.’

Next day, Tuesday, the weather gave me a breathing space. A westerly gale brought in tremendous rainstorms, which continued on and off until dark, and made it no sort of a day for lying out in the open. After lunch we went for a drive up the coast and walked along part of the Giant’s Causeway. Tim loved the amazing formations of rock, like chopped-off pillars, and jumped tirelessly from one to another until another storm drove us back into the car. I suspected Tracy thought she’d won the argument — although I hadn’t made any definite promise to lay off, I didn’t seem to be taking any further action.

In fact my mind was working full-time on the problem of how to get in close on Ballyconvil farmhouse. Wire-cutters would see to the perimeter fence all right, and if I came along the back of the house, between the grass bank and the building, I could position myself at the corner, only two or three metres from where Farrell had got out of the Merc. But what about the ruddy dog? If I bought a pound of steak, or liver, and doctored it up, there was little doubt that the Rotty would wolf it down. But if I put the dog under before Farrell returned home, he would immediately notice something was wrong if the beast didn’t run out to greet him. Worse still, it might freak out in front of the house, where he’d be bound to see it. And what if he arrived back with a couple of other guys, as he had before? Would I have to take them out as well to make my getaway?

When Wednesday dawned fine, I decided I would have to have another go. Tracy was upset, of course, and we had our first real row; but I limited the damage by promising that I was only going on another recce — which was true up to a point. I needed to check Farrell’s movements at least once more before committing myself.

This time I started later, and didn’t reach the forestry gates until 1600. I took a careful look at the padlock, decided it hadn’t moved since my last visit, drove through and up to the same parking place. Once again I saw nobody on my way to the OP, and I was there in time to watch the old peasant-lady going about her evening business. The dog was loose as before; it followed her about, and from the pattern of their movements I reckoned she fed it at the same place, out of my sight. That could be a problem: after its meal, it would be less hungry.

With the clear sky, the light was hanging on for a few extra minutes, and full dark didn’t come down until after five. By then the wind had turned to the north, straight in my face, and I reckoned it was safe to move down to a position only fifty metres above the wire. There I lay down behind a solitary gorse bush, studying the farmyard with the kite-sight. The dog must have laid up somewhere, because I couldn’t see it, and in the hour that followed I had nothing to do but think. In particular I thought about the amazing contrast between being cocooned in the light and warmth of the family one minute, and lying alone on a cold, black hill the next, trying to fight the forces of darkness singlehanded. Maybe Tracy was right? Maybe I was a loner?

The Merc came up the drive at almost exactly the same time as before, just after six. Was this another delivery of weapons or whatever? Once again the dog raced out to meet the car and danced attendance as it moved up to the front door, but this time only two people got out: Farrell and a woman. Through my binoculars she looked young and smartly dressed, in a pale jacket and skirt and carrying a handbag that must have been made of patent leather, because it flashed in the security lights. This time I got a good sight of him, too. He’d put on weight since those photographs; I could see it about the jowls. There was his limp again, too — a small dip on the left foot — but still he moved quite sharply. I watched him unlock the door and hold it open for his companion. Then the house came to life as the interior lights went on one by one and the security lamps were doused.

‘You think you’re safe in there,’ I said quietly. I held in an imaginary pressel-switch and said, ‘Tango One, target complete in house. Permission to proceed. Over.’ Then I told myself to stop pissing about, and set off for the car.

I was back at the cottage by eight o’clock. Tim was already asleep, and a good smell of supper filled the air. I sat down at the kitchen table, preparing to relax, but Tracy pulled me up sharp. ‘A man called to see you,’ she said.

‘Jesus! What sort of a man?’

‘I dunno. About your age. Quite scruffy.’

‘Irish?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He said, were you the man who’s mad after the fishing?’ She put on an Ulster accent, rather well.

‘Oh — right. It was that guy from the pub, then.’ I remembered I’d talked to a man in the Spanish Galleon about the possibility of going out in one of the local boats — but I hadn’t made any arrangement.

‘He was wearing earrings,’ Tracy said.

‘Not my fellow, then. Someone else.’

‘Don’t look so worried.’

‘Listen!’ I stood up. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘What — now?’

‘Yes, right away.’

‘Why? You keep telling me this is a safe area.’

‘Yes, but now the bastards have found me.’

‘Oh, Geordie — come on! Your imagination’s running away from you. The man was friendly enough. Relax. Sit down and have a drink.’

I sat down again, and took a sip from the glass of red wine she’d poured for me. But I wasn’t feeling relaxed in the slightest.

‘What did he say?’

‘He asked how long we were staying.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘To the end of the week.’

‘Then what?’

‘He said he’d call back tomorrow.’

‘Hell!’

The inquiry could have been genuine, but the conversation in the pub had been so casual it didn’t seem likely. Or was Tracy right? Was I becoming the victim of my own fantasies, seeing enemies everywhere?

Once you’re in that state of mind, getting out of it is very difficult, and I couldn’t shake it off. I did settle enough to decide we’d stay in the cottage that night, but first I took two of the wooden chairs from the kitchen and jammed one at an angle under the handle of the front door, the other at the back. I also dug the Luger out of my day-sack and kept it handy, wherever I was. Tracy thought I was overreacting, I know, but she saw how serious I was, and didn’t say much.

After supper I said, ‘Look — I’ve got a plan. You don’t have to go along with it. It’s up to you.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘They’ve seen me here. They’ve seen you with me. Someone has. Therefore, the quicker we get you back to England, the better. In the morning we’ll pull out of here, back to Belfast, and I’ll put you on the plane.’

She reached across the corner of the table and put her hand over mine. Her eyes were swimming.

‘I’m sorry, love.’ I said, ‘But that’s the safest.’

Still she looked at me.

‘There’s something else,’ I went on. ‘I think you should take Tim with you. If you will.’

That was too much. She burst into tears, head down on the table. I held on tightly to her hand.

‘Don’t cry. As I said, you don’t have to.’

‘No, no!’ she said fiercely, sitting bolt upright. ‘It isn’t that. It’s the opposite. I want to have Tim with me. But I want you too. I want all of us to be together, somewhere safe.’

The night passed without incident, but in the morning I inspected the car with the utmost care, checking the wheels for any sign of a trigger device, and lying flat on my back in the road to wriggle underneath and scan for booby traps. When I found nothing, I wondered again whether I wasn’t creating a drama about nothing.

We closed down the cottage and handed the key back to the neighbour, making up some excuse for leaving early. Then, from a call-box in the next village, I phoned my in-laws to warn them that we were on our way back. I didn’t try to explain that Tracy was going to take Tim to England with her — better to leave that one until we could talk it through in person. Over the phone, our decision might have sounded like an insult — as though we didn’t trust Meg to look after the boy properly.

As soon as we knew we’d got tickets on the afternoon plane, Tracy packed up Tim’s kit and stuck it out in the hall. Then we all had a cheerful lunch, with everybody in good spirits. Far from there being any tears, Tim was thrilled by the prospect of another flight, and of going back to Keeper’s Cottage. Looking at him, and thinking how like Kath he was becoming, I reckoned he had inherited something of her steady nature: as long as people were kind to him, he didn’t seem to mind who he was with. And of course Tracy had been wonderful with him from the start. It may have been wishful thinking, but I honestly felt that he was already seeing her as his mother.

With only three days of leave left, it was hardly worth my going to England. On my way to the airport I promised not to go chasing after personal enemies any more. From now on, I said, I’d just keep my head down.

It was two-thirty when we reached the terminal, for the three-fifteen flight. I helped them check in, and waved goodbye as they disappeared into the security area, with promises I’d phone that evening to make sure they were safe home.

As soon as they had gone, I hustled back to the short- term car-park. I’m afraid I’d told Tracy that I was going to turn the hire-car in and get one of the guys in the troop to come out and lift me back to camp. In fact I never went near the car-hire office. I drove the red Datsun out of the airport and headed straight for Ballyconvil.