The Journeyman Tailor

18

She had not slept well since the first house search, and hardly at all since they had come the last time with the helicopter. The dog had barked and that had pulled her from what sleep she had found. It was past two o'clock on the luminous clock radio at her bedside.

Attracta knew every one of the house's sounds. She knew where the bats nested in the roof, where the mice ran in the walls, and which floorboards creaked under pressure, worse since the soldiers had ripped them up.

She heard the scrape of the key in the kitchen door.

She stiffened upright in her bed. There was the murmur of a voice that carried softly up the stairs. She kept a short length of gnarled blackthorn under the bed and her hand reached down to it. There was the scratching noise of the dog's paw nails on the kitchen linoleum. She swung her legs off the bed and she eased her weight onto her feet and she stood beside the bed holding tightly to the weapon. Again the murmur, like a command, and then the steady approaching sounds on the stairs. The sleep had drained from her. She was alone in the house, with the small boy, just with the blackthorn stick. If she screamed then only Mossie Nugent might hear her, and his bungalow was a hundred yards away She faced across the room and watched the slash of dull light from the landing that came through the opened door…

The dog came first. The dog bounded at her in pleasure. The shadow figure came after the dog.

"It'me, love."

The voice she knew, she loved The voice that was in her dreams, the voice that was in her mind when she was driving to the school, going to the shop, going to the barn to get fodder for the cattle. The fear spilled from her. The blackthorn clattered onto the floor. The dog jumped in excitement at her then turned back to the figure in the doorway. She felt only a great weakness overwhelm her.

He held her in his arms. She shivered away from him as the wet mud of his clothes pressed against her nightdress but he pulled her back and against him. His face was rough, for days unshaven. The dog was leaning against her legs. Only at the first moment did she hold back, then she crushed herself against him, against the slithering mud of his clothes. The anguish ebbed from her. She kissed his mouth, she felt the drive of his tongue between her lips and teeth.

She held his head in her hands. She looked up into the shadow of her man's face.

"How much time have you got?"

"Till when?"

"Before you have to go?"

"I've come home…"

"How long?"

"I've come back home. It's to stay."

She held the cheeks of his face and his hands were on her hips and their bodies were apart. The wet and the cold of the mud had seeped to her skin. Her head shook. Surely he knew? He was as she remembered him. Perhaps thinner, perhaps with less weight in his arms. It was all so obvious to her.

"You can't stay, Jon Jo. They's searched the house three times in two months. They'll be listening to the phone. The post takes an age. I think they open the letters. They watch for you."

"I'll lie up."

It s not safe for you here."

I'll lie up on the mountain."

She fell away from him. She could feel the love and the warmth of him, and the yearning. She sat on the bed. She huddled her arms around the chill of her shoulders. There had been soldiers in this very bedroom, their sneering and hostile faces. Three times her house raped. And in little Kevin's room, great bastard brutes in their protective armour, with their guns and their sledge-hammers and crowbars.

"You can't come back…"

She felt him flinch.

"… It's just daft to think you can. They'll know you're here in a day, everyone'll know. You think there's secrets here? Jon Jo, no, no.

There's no way you can come back…" She felt his hands come to rest on her arms. "… I couldn't take it, Jon Jo, to know that you're back."

"It's you I came back to, love."

She tried so hard not to cry. She heard the whisper of her words.

"I could take it when you was away, because I didn't know where you were, not each hour, each day. I knew what you'd done. I knew what you did because the soldiers came. It was awful, but I could take it

… If you were out on Altmore, then I'd worry each living minute.. .

They'd not have shot you dead on the mainland, here they'd shoot you.

I couldn't take that, Jon Jo. Don't you see…?"

He said, "It's all I dreamed of, coming home to you and Kevin.. ."

"You were better gone, that's God's truth, you were better away. You want to know, I'll tell you… The Devitt boy was shot by the soldiers, two others with him, he's buried not two weeks. He was touted. The Riordan boy was taken in, young Patsy, and he was killed for touting.

That was idiot. Patsy Riordan was simple, he knew nothing… You hear what I'm saying, Jon Jo. There's a tout on the-mountain. That's why you're better away…"

"They told me Altmore was clean."

"What do they know, that would kill Patsy Riordan? I went to tihe Deviit boy's wake, Jon Jo. They shot him down, but they had finished him with a bullet in the head. I saw the wound, everyone did. They wanted us to see the wound… It'll be the same for you. Jon Jo, the army'll shoot you like a dog and they'll finish you with a bullet in your head, and it'll be a tout's word that kills you. That; s God's truth…"

‘’ If there’s a tout I'll find him." . She said, "You're best gone." She hated herself.

‘’I thought you'll want me back."

She had thought it through so many times. Jon Jo's homecoming.

Him back at the farm and her loving him. Her man at his home again and their loving and their laughter. She had never thought that she would tell him that he was best out of the house, far far away. He seemed to reel from her. She didn't know how she could have said it more kindly.

He was gone out of her bedroom and not looking back at her. The dog was at her feet and eyed her, his tail was bent between his legs, uncertain.

Jon Jo held the boy in his arms. The boy babbled in fear, as if still in the grip of a nightmare.

"You shouldn't be here, Da… if the journeymen tailors see you, Da. .. they'll tell the dragoons… they'll ride on the mountain after you, Da… all your bullets'll be spent… the dragoons'll hunt you and ride you down…"

"Where did he get this shit?" he snarled at her.

All the misery welling in her, all the pain. She thought the boy was waking, that his dream would finish.

"It's a story…"

"It's just shit."

She cried out, "I was trying to tell our son that a man could die for what he believed in. You weren't here to tell him. I was here, I was with him, I was waiting for the priest to call. I was trying to tell him, in my way, the future of his father."

He passed the boy to her. She saw only the great sadness in Jon Jo's eyes. Little Kevin clung to her.

She said, flat, "Whoever it is, they'll take money for naming you, Jon Jo, as they always did on Altmore…"

He was gone through the door.

She was left in the silence of the night with the fright of the child waking in her arms and the cowering dog at her feet.

"Did you see something?"

"I can't be sure…"

"Either you saw something or you didn't."

"I don't know."

"Where did you think you might have seen something?"

"At the side of the barn, I thought something moved."

"But not sure?"

"If there was anything, it certainly isn't moving now. It probably died of exposure."

He panned the camera back and forth across the grey mist of the fields and inched the image along the dark outline of the hedgerows.

He saw nothing move. With the naked eye Bren could see the light burning in the farmhouse, and further away another light in the bungalow. He wondered if Mossie Nugent slept. His teeth started to chatter.

"You're right," Cathy said. "God, it's so cold."

He could take her in his arms, he could warm her. But he stared into the screen, slowly traversed down the field, and back, slowly, on the path between the bungalow and the farmhouse, and back. He saw nothing.

The cardboard city man folded the map. Herbie stubbed out his cigarette. Jocko slipped the earpiece from his head, coiled it and put it back with the radio in the glove compartment. They were two miles from the farmhouse, by the most direct route. A foul place to be holed up for a long night on Altmore. The call had not come. The night watch was over. Herbie drove the car away.

Ernest Wilkins woke to the clamour of the alarm. He had been thirty years away, reliving the spat between Five and Six over the surveillance operation on Peter Kroger's place… damn good operation, the more so because Six had wanted in and had been seen off. None of their business… It was eighteen minutes past six.

Archie sat at the table smoking a Sobranie in a holder, his overcoat across his shoulders with a scarf round his neck. The electric fire was on, both bars burning.

"No calls?"

"Nothing."

"Well, it's early days."

"If you say so."

It was his first waking thought, nobody at Curzon Street cared but himself. He could not at first find the slippers he had stowed under the bed. He reached inside his overnight bag for his washing kit.

"Don't you understand, Archie?"

"I understand, Mr Wilkins, what is happening in Northern Ireland. I have yet to grasp, I confess, why in the very heart of central London we have to camp like Boy Scouts…"

Wilkins put on his dressing gown, and said, patiently, "Parker and Brennard will track their player to his meeting with Donnelly. This Donnelly is a psychopath who will kill without hesitation if he thinks he's at risk. Parker and Brennard will get close enough to identify him.

Where they will find him, I can't and they can't know. They may be able to call on the reserve and they may not. If not…"

"Christ, you haven't actually told Parker to…?"

Wilkins paused in the doorway. "Parker will do what is necessary."

" That's not our game, Mr Wilkins, that's the Gun Club's job."

"If it goes wrong, then it'll be damage limitation in a hurry."

Archie said, "If it goes wrong then Parker and her toy boy will be in rather poor shape."

"Well done, Archie, you finally grasped it."

He went off down the corridor to the washroom, to shave and wash his socks. Oh yes, if it went wrong Parker and Brennard would be in rather poor shape. And yes, there would be huge potential damage to be limited. They would be coming off the mountain just about now. If they could spot the man at his house and whistle up the military, so much the better. If they had to use Song bird to take them forward all the way to Donnelly, so much the worse.

He had complained yesterday to House Services about the lack of hot water. It was lukewarm again. He shaved carefully, They ought to be safely back in Dungannon by now.

She swung hard into the gateway of the Mahon Road

Barracks. Bren had his I.D. card up for the sentry to see, but Cathy just waved and the soldier smiled his greeting and the barrier was lifted. He followed her to the Five building, up the stairs. The room was alive already, men and women at the computers and the radio operators craned towards their dials. The man, Jimmy, was coming across the area with a tray of coffee mugs and he grinned at Cathy and offered his cheek for a fierce, short kiss. Bren saw it, her belonging. Jimmy carried the coffee on towards the corner, and Bren saw that the back-up had beaten them home, Jocko and Herbie in their sleeping bags on the floor. The cardboard city man, as usual, was tilted in his chair with his huge stockinged feet on the table. He watched the wild cheerfulness of their greeting for Cathy. The cardboard city man was up on his feet, crashing away the chair, hugging her as if she was back from the other side of God knows where. Herbie was crawling out of his bag, sagging boxer shorts and white legs and gripping her hand.

Jocko was pushing himself to his feet, his bag still hanging to his waist, and Cathy giggling and unzipping him. Everyone was laughing. Bren stood back. She was amongst her own. He had been something to her when she was frightened half to death. Now she had no need of him.

Bren said that he would get the coffee and she didn't seem to hear him.

He went out into the corridor, to the cupboard at the top of the stairs where the fridge and the kettle were. More laughter from behind the swing doors. Jimmy stood beside him.

"You'll be wanting the tray, herself and you and me and a couple more on the radios. Did you have a good night?"

"Who are they, for God's sake? We saw bugger all."

"Your back-up? Didn't they tell you? No, they're not the best with the social graces."

Bren said evenly, "I don't seem to get told much…"

"It'll come, don't push it… The tramp is Sir David Wain- wright, Baronet, Grenadier Guards, had the Military Cross for some do on the road to Nasirayah in the Gulf, rich as Croesus, soldiering's just a hobby

… Herbie's on his sixth tour here, five kids at home, they're all Northern Ireland babies, there'll be another when he's posted back, super gardener, takes all the prizes round here with his onions. Jocko's the Military Medal from Oman on his first tour abroad. He's a great talent with his water colours, only drawback is that they're all of the Brecons. I've a couple at home."

The kettle was boiling. "And who are you?"

Bren said, "Oh, I'm nothing. I just trail around after Miss Parker."

"It's meant kindly."

Bren spooned the coffee into the mugs "And who's she?"

"I doubt any of us know that…"

He poured the boiling water.

"… and I doubt any of us'll give up trying to find out…"

He picked up the tray.

"… You're a lucky man to work with her."

Bren carried the tray back into the work area. The cardboard city man was hunched forward in his chair. Herbie still wore just his boxer shorts and Jocko was back in his sleeping bag, on his knees, and they looked at the map spread out on the low table. Cathy was between them, sitting cross legged, and Jocko had his arm on her shoulder. The map had red pencil squares, and each square a letter on it. He passed her a mug of coffee.

She was talking and the smile beamed on her. "… he'll have the bleep on him and that'll come through to here. Jimmy'11 look after that, but that's only in case we've lost him. We hope to be closer in than you. If all goes well we'll have Song Bird and Donnelly in sight

… Thanks, Bren… If it's possible we'll whistle you in. If not

…"

She didn't have to finish it. Bren stood cupping his coffee in both hands. If it was not possible to whistle up the firepower then it would be down to the two of them. He could see it on all of their faces. They didn't rate him.

"Shouldn't be a problem," Bren said.

Cathy said she was going for a shower, and he was asleep in a borrowed sleeping bag before their three-hand card game had begun.

It was the way he had worked from the beginning. He alone knew where it was. The cache had been well made. The inside of the dustbin was bone dry. Stowed in the dustbin were plastic farm bags, tied at the neck. Inside the bags were a

Kalashnikov rifle, heavily greased, cartons of ammunition and magazines, two hand-guns, a drogue grenade, a black balaclava, camouflage denims, a pair of boots which he had oiled before they went into the sack and which were soft to the touch now, and a thermal sleeping bag. They were all dry, all as he had left them in the dustbin that he had sealed with masking tape. Jon Jo changed swiftly into the camouflage denims and pulled on his old, familiar boots, and then taking what he needed, repacking the rest, he resealed the bin and rebuilt the cover over the pit. Working fast, summoning up the urgency, because that was the way to suppress the wrenching disappointment of his homecoming.

First, he told himself, identify the tout. Second, he told himself, kill the bastard, kill the killer of old Mrs Riordan's boy, of Vinny Devitt. He would take pleasure in killing the tout. And then, then they would sit up off their arses in Dublin. The sky above Altmore would be, by Christ, on fire.

Old Hegarty, sitting motionless in the gorse with his dog, saw Donnelly fill in the pit, replace the stones over the dustbin, saw the rifle in his hand, saw him slip for cover.

He'd had his breakfast, he had sat on the toilet, he had been given his lunch box. His mother was still in her bedroom, and the children were all over her and squabbling. Siobhan opened the bedroom door. He was on his knees, half into the wardrobe. Must have been the sounds of the children, fighting, that were magnified through the suddenly opened door. She saw the bald patch on the crown of his head, his white paint-stained overalls; then the fright on his face as he swung round.

"What's you doing, Mossie?"

He held it up, the bleeper box, for explanation.

"But you don't take it."

She saw him tremble as his teeth bit at his lower lip.

"You reckon he's back?"

She watched him force down, fumbling, the wardrobe floor.

"You'll lead them to him?"

He had the buttons of his overalls unfastened, and he was working at his belt and his zipper, and he had the elastoplast beside him.

"… God, if he knew…"

He strapped the bleeper box high under his crutch.

"He'd kill you. He'd kill the both of us, if he knew."

She followed him out of the bedroom, and down the hall. She watched him go to the car with the lunch box in his hand. It was for money they could not spend. He had not said goodbye to his children.

He had said not a word to her. He drove away without a sign.

She was in the bathroom and washing the baby. The O.C. told her he was going out. She never asked why and she never asked where he was going to. He told her that he didn't know when he'd be back. He might have told her, but he didn't, that he had business with a man in Coalisland. He closed the door behind him and locked it with the mortise. He'd had the new locks put on all the doors since the summer, since the Protestants had been to the village bar with their guns, and he now kept his car always in the garage, and there was a new lock on the garage door. They weren't much, the precautions he by himself could take against the Protestant gunmen. One precaution was already taken, the message passed by a Nationalist councillor to a Protestant councillor, giving the cast-iron guarantee to the U.V.F. that every last one of them in their command structure would be singled out, shot down, their homes burned over the heads of their slags and their brats if one hair on the head of any of the Brigade officers of East Tyrone was harmed.

And his own private treaty was that for as long as he commanded East Tyrone, no U.V.F. officer of a comparable rank would be a target.

He unlocked the swing-back door of the garage, heaved it over. He switched on the light.

"Get it off."

He froze.

"Shut it off."

He saw Jon Jo Donnelly in the camouflage gear and a woollen cap rolled up onto his forehead. It was an order, and he obeyed it. He snapped the light off. "Pull the door down."

The door screeched on the runners as he dragged it down. The O.C. stood his ground. There was the flash of a match in the darkness and the glow of a cigarette and the smell of the tobacco.

He said it nervously, "Great to have you back, Jon Jo.’’

"Good to be back."

"You going well, Jon Jo?"

"I'm going alright."

"Anything you be needing…?"

"I heard there was a tout on Altmore "The voice was ice-cold and the cigarette burned and wavered in front of the O.C.

"I did what I was supposed, I brought the security, I handed it to them."

"Didn't hear me criticise you, did you? Just saying that I was told there was a tout on Altmore.’’

"The security pulled the Riordan boy in, they did him.’’

"What did he confess to?" "Don't know."

"You didn't see what he confessed to?’’

"I wasn't shown anything, nor heard a tape?’’

"Did you think it was the Riordan boy?"

"I don't know."

He saw the cigarette flake to the floor. He heard the scrape of the boot on concrete floor of the garage.

"When you pulled the security in, did you tell them you thought Patsy Riordan was a tout?"

The drip of the voice. No emotion, no surprise, no regret. He had only once been on an operation with the man, and he hadn't known he would be there until the last minute, and he'd been on the 50-calibre, feckin' incredible, not a bloody soldier bastard daring to show his face over the wall on the Altaglushan Bridge.

‘’ I didn't…it was after the Devitt boy was shot by the S.A. S, and Jacko from Pomeroy and Malachy from Coalisland. Only Mossie Nugent got clear… It had to be a tout."

"When you called the security in, who did you think was the tout?"

"It was Patsy was done."

"What did you think?"

He blurted, "I thought it was Mossie."

"Who named Patsy to the security?"

The O.C. said, quiet, "Mossie did… but I'm telling you that, Mossie's no tout. We did a policeman yesterday, a Branch man. I told Mossie the evening before and we did him the next morning, late. He hadn't been warned.

Couldn't have been Mossie… but when the Devitt boy and Jacko and Malachy were shot I didn't see how's

Mossie could have run clear from the guns, him with a bad leg…"

He heard the voice in the darkness ahead of him.

"Important man, a tout on Altmore. They'd play big stakes for an important man."

"What'll you be wanting of me?"

"That you hold your tongue."

There was the light tread of the boots. There was the swing of the back door of the garage. He waited until there were no more sounds, only the wind on the garage roof.

He saw that the back door had been jemmied open. He had been in the house and he had heard nothing.

It had been taken from him, the command of the East

Tyrone Brigade. Mossie had told him that he would still be O.C. after Jon Jo returned, but the command had been lifted from him. There had never been any arguing with Jon Jo Donnelly. He pushed the broken door closed.

While they did a check-list Jimmy fussed around them, and the cardboard city man and Jocko and Herbie were kitting up. Thermal underwear, lightweight boots, camouflage denims, balaclavas, mittens. They had swilled out their mouths and there would be no more cigarettes, and there had been no soap used. Their faces were smeared in the camouflage cream that broke the outlines and blunted the skin colour.

Bren felt the pressure growing on him, Plastic bottle and the silver tinfoil and cling-wrapped sandwiches.

The short-barrelled rapid-fire Heckler and Koch rifles, with the long-range sights and image intensifiers; the heavyweight Browning 9 mms and shoulder holsters; the radio that would fit into the rucksack; the cellular telephone; the ammunition magazines, four loaded for each of the rifles, and three loaded for each of the Brownings; binoculars; medical kits which she had not allocated to them before. He thought of his mother and father, feet in front of a winter fire, television on and her knitting and him reading the evening paper, and their not knowing what their son did, and how they would cope with a visit from Mr Wilkins if it didn't work out. His jeans were dank from the previous night's soaking and mud bath, not yet fully dried out even after a day's break on the radiators, his shirt was grimed, his sweater smelt.

Bren looked up. Across the far side of the area was the bank of television sets. Second from the right, third rack from the bottom, the view of a farmhouse and a bungalow. The back-up was ready to leave.

The man, Jimmy, said, "Good luck, all, don't worry on it and just know that we're here through the night. And if it's tonight then give the bad boy one from us…"

The Quartermaster swore, told his woman he'd drink taken, couldn't drive. His woman told him it had never made a fig of difference before, that he was to go and collect the girl from her friend's, that any decent father would think more of picking up his daughter on such a night than filling his gut with drink.

He lived on the edge of the village. His garage was filled with the new linoleum he was to lay in his kitchen and the new units. His car was out in the road because he hadn't bothered himself when he had come home to get out and open the gates and bring it onto the driveway. It was dark out on the road because the soldiers saw to it that the street lights were kept off, and bloody dangerous it made the road for women and kids and the elderly… A faint light only, from the gap in the curtains of the front room.

The figure came fast from the shadow of the hedge opposite. He saw the bulk of the man's body and the dark of his face and of his clothes.

He thought he was about to wet himself. If he hadn't been petrified still, mind swirling on the Protestants, then he'd have turned to run.

He heard the light chuckle, like the man in the darkness knew he was scared half to death.

"Heh, it's me, it's Jon Jo."

"Shit, you…"

"It's Jon Jo, and I'm back."

The Quartermaster wiped the sweat off his forehead, felt the rubbery weakness in his legs. "Jesus, you give me a turn… Jon Jo, feckin' great to have you back, big man."

"Good of you to say that."

"How's you, how's Jon Jo?"

The Quartermaster knew that Jon Jo Donnelly was thirteen years younger than himself. He could remember his own slow advancement through the Organisation, and he could remember the shooting star that had been young Jon Jo before he had gone away. Right from the day of his recruitment going his own way. Calling for a weapon to be brought to him, or for explosives, never discussing and never justifying, his own man. The Quartermaster wouldn't have dared say so, but the way Jon Jo Donnelly treated those around him was like dirt.

He had been told once that Jon Jo had gone to shoot a U.D.R. man the far side of 'gannon, and he’d found on his way to the hit a policeman, off duty, walking his child on the roadside, and he'd shot him instead, and finished him between the eyes with the kiddie half over him. A feckin' haul man, and the world a safer place with him on the mainland.

"I heard there was a tout on Altmore."

The Quartermaster gulped. "I know nothing… but they took the Riordan boy."

"Did you reckon Patsy Riordan could have touted?"

"Honest?"

I’m asking what you thought."

I thought the boy was an idiot," the Quartermaster blurted. The rain spat on the shoulders of his jacket and the legs of his trousers. Iwas quiet around them, He could hear the television from next door. He thought that if Jon Jo Donnelly were back then the killings would go harder, and the army would sit heavier, and that the Brigade officers would be dragged from their houses more often for the cells at Gough Holding Centre. He hated the cells, and the detectives, and the snipe of the questions and the curl of the cigarette smoke, and the hammer of the doors locking and closing, and the high bars on the windows.

"You keep your silence."

"You don't have to worry about me, Jon Jo."

"I wouldn't ever worry about you…"

And he was gone. The Quartermaster's knees shook. He reversed his car and thumped the kerb opposite and the rain pelted into the windscreen and twice he cut the verge as he drove to get his daughter from her friend's.

Hegarty crossed the bar to him. The dog followed the old bastard to where Mossie sat alone. Mossie thought it a crying shame that the dog's coat wasn't brushed to rid it of the burrs and the knots. Hegarty leaned across the table, stale tobacco breath in Mossie's face.

"He's back, Mossie, I's seen him," he whispered.

"Who's back?"

"Jon Jo's back."

"That's not safe talk."

"I's seen him on the mountain. I's seen him where he left his guns before he went away."

"That talk's not good for you."

"I's not afraid. Just telling you that he's back," and he shuffled himself back to the bar and his drink.

The light flashed. Bren wriggled to pull the headset over his ears. He had the pencil light and his biro and the pad of paper. It was Jimmy.

Song Bird had telephoned that Jon Jo Donnelly was back, living rough on Altmore. Cathy was half across his body, reading the message.

"About bloody time," she murmured.

Bren thought of how, one after the other, Hobbes would hear, Rennie would hear, and Wilkins would hear and he might even clap his hands and say that it was all going according to plan. And there, in that sodden, freezing hide, on the edge of the great God Almighty plan, Bren thought, what he minded most about was the sweet weight of her against her against his right side. Digging into the left side of him, where they Could be reached, were the rifles, on safety. The back-up thought he would just be the bloody gun- bearer for her. He didn't know whether they were right.

"When this is over…"

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"You are coming out of here…’’

"Not again."

"Even if I have to take you kicking and screaming…"

"Do piss off."

"I am going to put you what you are safe and where there is a normal life to be lived. I am going to do that before it is too late for you. I love you…"

"Watch the bloody screen," she said.

He stared at the farmhouse on the screen, at the light from an upper window on the back yard. He saw nothing move. He wondered if she would think the more of him if he shot Jon Jo Donnelly.