The Journeyman Tailor

9

Through the wall behind the bed head he heard his mother's coughing.

Her chest was worse this winter. At the foot of the bed he heard their little Mary shifting in her sleep.

He lay on his back. He stared up into the blackness. The best years of their lives, his and Siobhan's, had been before the bitch had her nails in him. They were good years in Birmingham. In the same bed, shipped back with all their furniture, he had told his Siobhan that it was necessary for them to return to Ireland. She had cried and submitted. He thought that she had come back with him because she had no other choice. She was hard against him, his arm slipped gently around her shoulder.

"You's alright…?" He had thought she was asleep.

"Course I'm bloody alright."

"You's alive…"

He was alive because he was the bitch's toy thing. And Vinny Devitt, who wasn't, was in the mortuary of the South Tyrone (General) Hospital, with Jacko and Malachy.

"Why didn't they shoot you?"

"I'm precious, because I'm precious to the bitch."

"Did you's think they'd shoot you?"

"I was wearing the red coat."

"You weren't shot because they'd told you what to wear?"

"Why I had to have the red coat."

"You's important to them?"

"It's what the bitch says."

"Will you get more money?"

"I gets one hundred and twenty-five pounds a week. I gets five hundred pounds a month. I gets six thousand pounds a year. That’s what I get..,"

"How long does you get the money?"

"Till I'm no more use to the bitch, till the trap's closed."

"How long's that?"

"For feck's sake, I don't know…"

"You'll be waking Mary. Why was they killed today?"

His mother hacked her cough again. He could hear the fire dying in the sitting room, the last spit of damp wood.

"To protect me."

"Three men…?"

"To keep me alive."

"Keep you alive?"

"So I survive, that's what three men died for, so I live to tout another day."

"Is you frightened, Mossie…?"

Always the fear was with him. The fear crept with him to the bed. The fear stalked him when he pasted wallpaper and painted. The fear bit at him when he went to the meetings with his O.C., and when he went to meetings with his handlers. The fear was with him when he kicked the plastic football on the back grass patch for Francis, and when he dressed Doloures, and when he cuddled Patrick, and when he cut little Mary's food for her. He was never without the fear.

"I don't know how to leave it, the fear…"

"Leave it behind you?"

"I don't know how to."

"Is you more frightened of your own people, or of them?"

"No difference, both bleeding me, and no going back."

"When could you have gone back?"

"Doesn't matter, too long ago…"

Yeah, great, Mossie Nugent could have told the redhead to go feck herself… Could have had his driving ban, and his mortgage- recalled and his bank loan revoked, could have been put on the ferry boat with his exclusion order. No vehicle and couldn't work, bank loan revoked and debt, mortgage called in and bankruptcy, exclusion order served and home to the north where every man knew that the names of those served with the Prevention of terrorism Act exclusion order were slipped to the Proddie murder squads. He'd thought of that scene, over and over. He had thought he was going to get a beating and he'd found himself thanking the bitch. Oh yeah, that was too long ago.

He had gone home, had told Siobhan it was a mistake, all sorted.

Three months later, going down the shop for fags, hadn't recognised her at first, old jeans and scruffy anorak. All she needed was that he drink at a certain pub, that he watch a certain man. Regular meetings, and then the suggestion that he should sell up, take his family home… too late then to go back. Returned to Altmore mountain, bumping into her in Irish Street, and the note passed with her scribbled telephone number, and the money… too late then to go back.

"Would you like me to make you a pot of tea?"

"It'd be good."

"I's with you, Mossie. It'll be easier now."

He held her tight, crushed her against him. For six years he had lived that lie.

His voice was quiet in her hair. "Last year I tried to break with her.

Lasted three months. I cut the meetings. When I was down in Portadown last year, working on the new council place, she caught up with me. I never saw her, but she watched me. Letters were left for me, no beggar ever seemed to remember seeing them left, but they had my name on them. There was a photograph, Joey Fenton who was shot for touting, that was first. Next month, alter I'd broken the second meeting, there was a bullet. Third month, after I'd broken the third meeting, she sent me the note, her writing, addressed to the O.C., it named me as a tout… If they thought you knew, they'd kill you too. .."

He felt her lips brush his forehead. She said she'd go and make the tea.

He had never been so cold. The damp seeped through the sides of the hide and puddled on the flooring of plastic. The cold numbed his feet, it ached in his buttocks and his shoulders shook with it The only part of his face that was exposed, between the woollen cap pulled down over his forehead and the scarf wrapped across his mouth and throat, was raw with cold. It was as if she tested him. They had come to the hide as the dusk settled. They had hugged the hedgerows and crawled in the gorse, light enough for him always to be able to see Cathy as she had led the way. He was ice cold and he did not complain. His teeth chattered, a distraction beside the suppressed hum of the electronics.

He felt the dig of her elbow in his ribs. She pulled his head round and she fed him a stick of chewing gum. There was her chuckle, very quiet, beside him. His teeth pounded on the chewing gum and the chatter was gone.

The light at the back of the bungalow came on.

The white brilliance flared the television screen.

There was barely room for the two of them in the hide. Bren's body below, and Cathy's half on top of him. Her leg was over his thigh.

So much that he wanted to know about her…

"Bren…" Her voice was abrupt.

"Yes."

"I ate too many sausages."

"Yes."

"You silly bugger, I want to crap."Fine by me, Miss Parker."

He had seen her the day before, treated as equal by the men of the Special Air Service, taken as a friend by the man who could kill and then eat a plate of sausages and beans and chips with her before they made their dry statements to the sympathetic detectives and the supercilious bastards of the army's Special Investigation Branch'. He had been with her the day before, in the watchtower, and seen that she had never flinched through a shooting that left three men dead… and the head shot off the one whose legs were still jumping.

She wriggled away from him.

She was crouched half over his legs, bent double.

She cursed and he thought that her fingers were too chilled to work the buttons of her trousers.

She swore again as she tried to unfold the tinfoil.

Bren stared ahead of him. He saw the light go out in the kitchen of the bungalow. The only street lights were away to the left, the village lights. The mountain was black cloaked,. The darkness was around him.

She wriggled, struggled, in the confined space.

She would have closed the tinfoil over, sealed it.

She would have pulled her trousers back to her waist, fastened them.

She lay beside him, and her leg crossed over his and he could feel the sweet heat of her breath on the nape of his neck.

"Sorry about that," she said.

They left half an hour before the first smear of the dawn, and she took her wrapped tinfoil with her. She didn't tell him that he had passed any test. He thought she would have told him if he had failed.

Late, always late, the story of his whole damned life.

The big Mustang, left-hand drive, swung off the Killyman Road and into the estate. He was late, very late, a whole twenty-four hours late, but that was because he had been on assignment up on the north coast all through the last day and it was now two weeks since the radio in the Mustang had been screw drivered out in the Belfast centre car park and he had heard not a damn thing of the business before the late night news.

With a pounding heart he saw the woman with the bucket advancing on the pavement.

And he would have been there at dawn, first light, if the overnight rain hadn't seeped into the electricals under the bonnet, and certainly would have been there by mid-morning if the garage, scoundrels there, had accepted his cheque for petrol.

Eighteen stone and dieting, trying to, he pitched his legs out. "Hold it, Madam. Give me time."

She stopped. She was a tiny woman, and she carried a plastic bucket in one hand and a kitchen mop in the other.

"Hold your good work, Madam, two minutes will satisfy."

She stared at him.

'The blood, Madam, give me two minutes for the blood."

He had the driver's seat tipped forward. The harness had snagged the seatbelt. He swore, he pulled the harness out.

"Have to have the blood, Madam, can't have a killing story without the blood."

He used two cameras, and that was the beauty of the harness. The harness was a frame across his chest, supported over his shoulders. A camera to the right of the frame and a camera to the left, and a mutual microphone held between them that recorded sound for both. The sound, as was pointed out with increasing frequency by his clients, was often little more than the billow of his breathing when he exerted himself.

She watched. Silly little woman, didn't have to stare.

"Who's news is you's?"

He tugged at the hair on his lower chin, where the whitened sideburns curved towards his upper lip. It was his familiar gesture.

There were children emerging from gardens and houses, horrible-looking urchins.

"Peregrine Forster is the name, Madam, camera correspondent of the N.H.K. network of Japan and the Globo channel of Brazil, known to the trade as 'Perry', well known… Now, if you would be so kind as to stand back from the blood…"

It was a rich English accent, cultivated over six years as a Flying Officer in the Royal Air Force, first with Accounts and then transferred to Kitchens. Always had trouble getting the cable leads into the right sockets under pressure, being watched. The urchins were gathering, sharks coming from the deep at the scent of cattle offal; he had done time in Singapore and knew about sharks, more about sharks than cameras.

"Is they interested, in those places…?"

To lie or not to lie, always better to lie… "Interested? Tonight they'll be holding open the lead position in their newscasts. .. But there has to be blood."

His head tilted to the left. His left eye closed on the viewfinder of the N.H.K. network of Japan. The blood was all but dried onto the pavement and into the gutter. There was one good dribble that he could follow. His head tilted to the right and his right eye locked to the viewfinder of the Globo channel of Brazil. The pictures would be air freighted to London and would be lucky, damn lucky, to get further.

Pity there weren't any flowers. Pity all his cash had gone on the petrol and he couldn't run to a couple of tear-jerking bouquets. The children were all around him.

"Very quiet, please, and stay back from the blood…"

He filmed. Patch of blood, Madam with bucket and mop, dribble of blood, wide-eyed and dirty faces of children.

Very professional. Peregrine Forster, late of selling insurance and more late of greetings cards and very late of the Royal Air Force, had based himself in Northern Ireland three years back… it was a living.

He stood back. Again the cameras were switched on. The pulse lights flashed in his right eye and his left eye. He ran forward. He came ahead at a good trot. He jerked to a halt and he peered from one viewfinder to another, into the patch of blood and the blood dribble.

The small woman called out. "Mister, you's filmin' things that aren't happenin'…"

"Reconstruction, Madam, gives added poignancy to tragedy."

He started to heave the harness from his shoulders. He laid the cameras back onto the rear seat of the Mustang. The little blighters were all round him, giggling.

"Shouldn't you be showing more respect, Mister?"

"Casualties of war, Madam, yesterday's grief and today's statistics…

Bugger off, you little bastards…"

The kids fled. He heard the life of their laughter as they went. It was only when he sat back into the Mustang that he appreciated the fuckers had let out the air in his rear right tyre. By the time he had Jacked up the car, and changed the wheel, and jacked down the car, the woman had gone, and the pavement and the gutter had been scrubbed clean.

Not a blood stain to be seen.

Well, Perry Forster would have said, perhaps as he filled in so expertly his expenses sheets, "We all have to earn a crust, and the tools of my trade are old blood on the pavement."

It was the last funeral of the day, Vinny Devitt's. Mossie went. He was far back in the procession of men and women and children who walked from the Devitt house to the church. A piper led them Mossie had stayed away from the funerals of Jacko and Malachy.

Both of their families had told the Provisionals, given it to them straight and then slammed the family front door on them, that they wanted no part in a stunt. No tricolour flag, no black beret, no black gloves on either coffin.

Devitt's was a funeral with full honours. There had been shots fired in the night by masked men close to the Devitt home. In the middle of the afternoon, when the rain clouds masked the crest of the mountain, the piper led the procession the mile to the church. A narrow lane was the route. The piper's lament was blotted out by the drone of the helicopter above, and there was a phalanx of police in front of the piper and following up the mourners, and more police walking sober-faced beside the procession so that the Altmore people were hemmed in by the men in their visored helmets, who carried the riot sticks.

It was a good turn-out.

The man from Belfast Sinn Fein, over the open grave, spoke of a hero and of the certainty of ultimate victory.

Twice Mossie met the eyes of the O.C. inside the church and across the grave, cold and bitter. What Mossie had heard, Gerry Brannigan's boy had gone, run for the safety of the Republic, gone after saying that East Tyrone Brigade was as secure as a feckin' sieve.

He thought the tout hunt would start as the last shovel of dirt covered the coffin, and he had been guaranteed that he was protected.

It was the aftermath of a killing, not the planning of it.

The Assistant Under-Secretary stayed away from the Task Co-ordinating Group. The colonel, Army Intelligence, took the chair, his right by rota.

First business from the major, a cache on the Limavady road out of Londonderry that had been watched for twelve days now without result

– how much longer could manpower be deployed? A report by the Assistant Chief Constable on a police approach to a North Antrim volunteer – early days but promising. An inquest, led by Rennie, into the appearance of an Andersonstown "bad boy" at a Sinn Fein news conference where the little bastard had squealed that he had been approached, offered money, and gone straight to his solicitor and then the Provos – damage limitation, and the lesson was that the handlers had moved too fast. A query from the colonel, the increasing quantity of "traces" on a south County Down man, presumably rising in the Organisation – questioning whether it would be a suitable time to pull him into Gough Barracks, Armagh, and let the Southern Region crime squad fellows have him for seven days and three sessions a day.

Agreed.

Last item before coffee, and Hobbes broke his silence.

"Dungannon, I thought, was good."

The major said, "It was first-class information, made it pretty straightforward.'

The colonel said, "A good example of what can be achieved when we all pull together."

The Assistant Chief Constable said, "Invaluable source, your Song Bird, would there were more like him, but I'd say we got away with it by the skin of our teeth. Parading their weapon was critical. But I'm getting it on the grapevine that one of the team got clean away."

The major said softly: "A householder was right behind the target. It was very responsible fire control…"

Rennie spluttered on his pipe.

Hobbes smiled. "Yes, Howard."

The smoke clouded Howard Rennie. He let them wait. He coughed from the depth of his throat. "If the safety of Song Bird, whose identity Mr Hobbes is unwilling to share, has been preserved then the shooting was justified. If the risk to Song Bird has been increased, then the operation was a disaster. Time, gentlemen, will tell us whether self-satisfaction is in order."

Hobbes bit at his lip. "Thank you, Howard, I'll minute that."

He put the milk bottle down onto Mrs Byrne's kitchen table. The petrol was amber in the clear bottle. He put the box of matches beside the bottle.

The O.C. said, "It's a nice kitchen, missus."

She told him what she had seen.

She talked because of the threat to her kitchen of scattered petrol and a thrown match. And she talked to the O.C. because her nephew's wife's brother was on remand in the Crumlin Road gaol, and because her neighbour's cousin had been under psychiatric treatment for two years in Belfast after four days in the Castlereagh holding centre. And she talked because she had seen three young men cut down by the soldiers, no warning shout, no chance to surrender, not even a priest allowed near them for an hour. She talked.

"You're sure on that, missus…?"

"Jesus was looking for him. He went by Mrs Hylton's door, half fell on her fence, then by Mrs Smyth's door, then he went down the side of Mrs Smyth's, I don't know how they missed him, God is my witness, one of them was not ten feet from him. I thought he was dead, all fast I was praying for him. Bright coat he had but it was like they didn't see him. Definite, he had Jesus watching for him, and he'd a bad leg and he didn't run that quick. It was just butchery, what was done to the rest of them…"

There was a washing basket, filled, beside her kitchen door. Mrs Byrne rummaged in the bottom of it, and there was her grin that was a little bit of mischief, and she handed the O.C. the short-barrelled pistol that had been thrown at her.

"And they didn't see that either, the soldiers…"

He apologised to her, and meant it, and he took away with him his matches and the milk bottle that was filled with petrol.

The O.C. went back to his home, to write letters for hand delivery, to send a message for a meeting.

There was the stinging blow of the fist against Mossie's cheek.

The O.C. snarled in his face, "There's three men dead."

"You've no call to be accusing me." Tears welling in his eyes.

"They let you run."

"Who told you?"

"I was told."

"Who?"

"The woman, she sees it all." "You's taking her word, not my word?"

"She says they let you run."

"Is you blaming me for running?"

"Why'd they let you run?"

"To prove myself, what do I have to do? Have to get myself feckin' stiffed?" Mossie yelled back at him.

"She says…"

"Been sneaking round her, have you? Shame, that's what you should have."

"What she says was.."

"And you wouldn't feckin' know what happened, 'cause you weren't there, 'cause you're never there, too feckin' important to be…"

The O.C. had him by the throat. The O.C. was smaller than Mossie and reaching up to snatch at the flesh under his chin.

The barb sunk home. The hatred, and the hesitancy. "O.C. s is never operational, every bastard knows that."

"I went, I was there, I was lucky."

The anger in Mossie was fear. Good act, played well, because the fear was real. The hands came away from his throat. He didn't know whether he was believed. If he was not believed…

The O.C. said, grim, "There was three men shot dead. There was one who ran. The one who ran can't go fast. The one who ran was right in view of the soldiers, past two houses. You tell me, Mossie, because you was there, you tell me why one, only one was able to run from the soldiers. Tell me, Mossie…"

Better when they were shouting, face to face, easier eyeball to eyeball.

He'd had five years to prepare himself to answer the accusation. Five years of churning the question in his mind. Was he a tout? Five years to prepare the answer, and never knowing when the question would come. He had just run, panicked, hadn't even seen the bastard soldier, only heard the crack of the bullet against the wall, then the ricochet whine. The question was with him…

"I don't know."

"You're staying here. You'll stay while I'm gone. You think of running, and you think where you'll go. You run now and that's my answer."

Mossie stood his full height… fight, to fight was the best, fighting for his life.

"You're not fit to lead, you're rubbish. If Jon Jo Donnelly was here.. . You're not fit to be in Jon Jo's shoes."

He saw the loathing in the O.C.'s eyes. "My question, why'd they let you get clear? Just you, why? You run and I've my answer, and Jon Jo isn't here."

Mossie was left in the barn. There was nowhere to run to and there never had been.

The O.C. came back to the barn in the middle of the afternoon, driving his tractor with the trailer bumping behind. The tractor, open-topped and without four-wheel drive, had been in his family since before he was born. He had driven it first when he was too small to sit on the seat and reach the wheel and the pedals. There were hay bales on the trailer.

Standing behind him, gripping his shoulders, was a man who had come from Lurgan in answer to a summons. The O.C. was elaborate and careful because he assumed, always, that he was watched. He assumed always, too, that his enemy had him under surveillance from cameras and from the soldiers of the Close Observation Platoons and from the police of the E. 4 section. He had not met the man from Security before, never had cause. The man wore heavy-framed clear-glass spectacles to disguise his face. If they were under surveillance, it would not be thought unusual, shifting bales of hay.

They splashed through the puddle in the doorway, below the broken guttering. Mossie sat facing the doorway, knees against his chest, arms around his knees.

The O.C. and the man from Lurgan dumped down the bales of hay they had carried inside.

"So, you's Mossie Nugent…"

The man from Lurgan had a voice from far down in his throat.

‘I am.’’

The O.C. watched. Mossie pushed himself up against the wall behind him. It was not for the O.C. to speak, he had called in the security section. He would stand aside wile they trampled through the Brigade.

He lit a cigarette. It was a sort of humiliation that he felt because until a tout was found, until the Brigade was sanitised, he had handed away his control of the war.

"I'm from the security, Mossie, I'm from the security because I've a nose for rats. What I say, Mossie, is that rats are best shot. We had a rat last month and we shot him. To me, touts is rats."

He had thought Mossie Nugent great, a fine and careful intelligence officer. He didn't know the working of South Down Brigade or the Mid Ulster Brigade, but he had once been on a hit with the Derry Brigade and he'd thought the intelligence officer of Derry Brigade was just shit, all talk. Good times he'd had with Mossie. Couldn't fault him. He saw that Mossie looked the man from Lurgan straight back in the eyes.

Mossie said, "I'm not a tout."

"Did I say you was, Mossie? Did you hear me accuse you?"

"I hear you talking of touts. I's no tout."

"My position is laid down by Army Council orders. I'll quote it for you, so there's no misunderstandings. 'We wish to reiterate our stated position on informers. No matter how long a person has been working for the enemy, if they come forward, they will not be harmed. Anyone caught touting will be executed.' Be difficult not to understand that, eh, Mossie? I'm going to ask you the question…"

"Go feck yourselves, the both of you. I've had all I need of this joke.

Away and play somewhere's else."

"Just listen to my question, Mossie. You may want time to think on it, because it's just the one chance, Mossie. It's like the Army Council says, a tout comes forward, a tout won't be harmed. But the Army Council says also, a tout lies and is then found out, that tout's dead. I give a man the one chance to come forward…"

"I'll remember you, you bastard, don't think I won't."

The O.C. watched. He thought the man from Lurgan terrifying, and he saw the way that Mossie's eyes never left the face of the man.

"Haven't asked the question yet, Mossie," the voice ground softly on,

"because I'm being fair with you. Can't say I'm not fair. The chance is never offered again, that's why you might be wanting to think on your answer. I told you, Mossie, I've a nose for rats."

Mossie said nothing, only stared at the man. Tense, his fists white-knuckled. Ready to spring.

The O.C. felt the shiver in his body. Frightening to him, the tap drip of the man from Lurgan's voice. He had known Mossie since he could remember. He had been at the small kids' school when Mossie had first gone to prison.

The voice beside him was chilled, quiet. "One and only one chance .. . Mossie, is you a tout?"

"Go feck yourself."

"Is you a tout?"

"No, I'm not a tout. I'm the Intelligence Officer of this Brigade

…"

The voice beside him hardened. "You was the only one who knew."

"Not true."

"Your O.C. knew, and you knew."

"Not true."

"Who else knew?"

Mossie's finger stabbed at him. "Ask him."

The O.C. flinched.

The man from Lurgan turned slowly, precisely for a big man, towards him. "You told me it was just him and yourself. Who else knew?"

The O.C. blurted, "No one else knew."

He saw the finger again pointing at him. "You lie. What did vou say yourself? You said, 'How long was the little bastard there?' When the Riordan kid brought the tea. I've given my life to the Organisation. I's done time for the cause. Before you look to me you should go talk with the little bastard…"

The man from Lurgan spat, "You didn't tell me."

He said, weak, "I hadn't remembered…"

Mossie, shrill, "Go look at Patsy Riordan. Go look at anyone else he's forgotten."

They let Mossie go, let him walk back to his home. The O.C. talked with the man from Lurgan about the kid who was not the full shilling, who was just used to run messages, On their lips was the name and the history of the kiddie who could have been good on the gaelic team, Under-19s. Patsy Riordan.

"I had no choice."

There was wonderment in her voice. "You gave them his name?"

"I gave them his name or I was gone."

He had shouted at the little ones to drive them from the room. He had slammed the door on his mother. Mossie sat on the bed and cupped in his hands was the whiskey bottle. He felt the shake in his body.

Siobhan stood above him. He drank from the neck of the bottle.

"She's a grand woman, Mrs Riordan…"

"Gone. They don't finish till they've it out of you. You can't stand against them. Don't you understand, it's torture, it's beatings

… I had to."

"He's just a simple, stupid boy…"

"I was dead."

"He's never done you no harm…"

Slowly, trying to control the splutter of his voice, he explained to her what must be done.

He told her the way he thought it would be. He had bought himself time, that was all. He was still the suspect and he would be watched.

There was a chance, possible, that the security could tap into a phone.

He would not dare to use the telephone at home, nor could he dare to drive to Dungannon and use a public telephone. He would be followed.

"Should you be using the bleeper thing?"

"You needs to slip away, natural, not in a bloody helicopter so's the whole mountain knows." It would be the living death. It would be five years, ten years, twenty years, of living with minders and with fear at his shoulder. To press the bleeper was the last resort.

"What do you want me to do?"

He breathed deep. He involved her.

"You go the town. You take the kids, like it's just visiting..

He wrote the number on the inside of his cigarette packet and slid the tinfoil wrapping back over the number.

"… You ring this number. You ring it for as long as it takes. Might be a man, might be a woman. They may make you ring them twice. You have to tell them it's for Song Bird, that it's a meeting you need, no feckin' about, right now. They'll tell you where. You go where they tell you. Tell them what happened to me, and tell them I named Patsy Riordan."

"What'll happen to Patsy Riordan?"

"Not my worry."

He slumped on the bed. He lay in the darkness and he smelled the whiskey on his shirt front. He heard Siobhan rounding up the kids, telling his mother that she was taking them out, going visiting.

Not Mossie's worry, what happened to Patsy Riordan.

She was seen to drive away. She was identified when she turned from the lane onto the road from Aghnagat to the village. It was seen that the children were with her. The men resumed their watch on the bungalow. There were no curtains drawn. They saw Mossie Nugent moving inside the bungalow, silhouetted against the lights.

The men of the security section gathering on Altmore came from Lurgan and Armagh city, from south County Down and from north County Antrim, from the villages of west Tyrone and east Derry. They came because they were called to a tout hunt.

Across the mountain they also watched the Riordan home, saw a man go out to feed his caged birds, saw a youngster in a garage working at the engine of a motorcycle.

He lifted the green telephone. He had let the bell ring for a full half minute. He had been by the door, his coat on, his briefcase in his hand, when the bell had started.

Hesitant, "Yes, can I help you?"

A woman's voice. "Hello there, I was wondering…"

Brisk. "I think you have the wrong number."

"It's for Song Bird."

Christ… snatching for a pen from his inside pocket, for paper.

"Yes?"

"I'm Siobhan Nugent, his wife. He told me to ring you…"

The telephone was Bren's link with the jungle. He heard the des-peration of the woman. He tried to be gentle. He heard the choke in her voice. She was to ring back. He went through the procedure. In exactly ten minutes she should telephone again.

Frantic now. Ringing the number for Cathy, waking her by the sound of it, being given a meeting place, being told when she would collect him, given the numbers to call for back-up. Asking for Rennie at Lisnasharragh barracks, couldn't be reached. Asking for a major at Lisburn H.Q., told there were no personnel available. Asking for an Assistant Chief Constable at R.U.C.'s Knock Road, hearing the dry chuckle, telling him it was panic time, giving him the co-ordinates, being told there would be Divisional Mobile Support Unit presence in the area, and the radio code they could be reached on, grovelling thanks to the Assistant Chief Constable. Picking up the green telephone on the first ring.

It was the fear that she communicated to him, it was her fear that was still with him all the time until Cathy came for him.

She thought the young woman was wonderful, the one that Mossie called the bitch. So calm, and such a lovely face…

"There is absolutely nothing for you to fret over. I'll take care of everything. Just trust me, Siobhan…"

There was a young man behind her and when she turned away then he went to her car and opened the door for her, like a gentleman. The faces of her children were pressed against the back window.

"Super children, Siobhan, you must be very proud of them. No worries now, I'll see you're safe, that's a promise…"