He lay on his back.
There was the glow and the wetness of her body against his.
Jon Jo Donnelly and his Attracta after the collapse of love- making.
It was what he had cried for during the months away. She nestled against him. He was back and he was home.
It should have been beautiful.
She hadn't talked to him of danger, she hadn't demanded of him when he was leaving. He had the new route into the farmhouse, in the shadow of the lean-to where the logs were stacked, and through the larder window that she had left unlocked, squeezing inside. If the house were watched then he would not be seen because he did not have to use the back door and the front door that were obvious. She hadn't questioned him about England, not about a schoolboy and not about two schoolgirls.
It should have been wonderful.
There had never been a tout on the mountain. There had been touts in Belfast and in Derry and in Newry and in Lurgan. There had never been a tout identified on Altmore… When he had been home, before he had gone away to England, there had twice been a suspension of operations because of tout fear. After the search up beyond old Hegarty's home, a mile beyond him, where the cache had been found with the R.P.G. 7 and the two rifles and nothing other than information could have taken the soldiers to that corner of a field. After the controlled explosion of a culvert bomb on the Ballygawley road, in place three days, and no military activity prior to the helicopter coming over, repeated sweeps, with the electronics, there had been the second tout hunt. It was four years back and it was two years back, and each time the outsiders had been called onto the mountain to sift for evidence. Nothing decided, nothing proved, but the unit had been stood down each time for a month, and the outsiders had moved among the volunteers with their sharp questions…Who knew of what operation? Who had been told? Who knew the locations of the caches and the identity of targets He had been questioned himself by a bald bastard with a squint and a Derry accent. There had never been a tout found on the mountain. He knew the way of touts. There would be no scramble to clear a unit from an area, not the way the handlers directed their player. They chipped at an Active Service Unit, a man here and a man there, lifted, a weapon here and a made-up bomb there, recovered… He knew about the money and he knew about the threats. He knew that men were trapped with money and bludgeoned with threats. He knew how the handlers gained their players There was no mercy for touts. There was no sentiment, Touts was for killing.
He lay on his back and she was cuddled close to him and sleeping, and the poison of a tout on the mountain filled his mind.
"Can you not sleep, Jon Jo?"
He kissed her.
"Thinking."
"You don't have to be gone, not yet."
"Thinking on what you said."
"What did I say?"
"You said there was a tout on the mountain, you said that's why I was better away…"
"Who knows you're back?"
" There's just two. The O.C. and the Q.M., it's all."
"If it wasn't wee Patsy, who might it be?"
Her fingers played in the hair on his chest. Her nails furrowed in his skin. There were some who took women when they were away, and one had gone in London to whores. There were some who screwed the girls that were in the A.S.U. s over the water. He had never met the woman or the girl that matched his Attracta. Never wanted to. He felt the soft blackness of her hair on his shoulder.
"Mossie Nugent was looked over. It was Mossie that named Patsy."
There was quiet wonderment in her voice. "Mossie's been a good friend to us. He's done all the painting and papering for us. Plus the electrics when it all fused. I give him eggs, and Siobhan, because Mossie'll not take money from me…"
"It's Mossie that's pointed at."
"I'd give my life to Mossie and know it were safe. I'd give him your life…"
"I'm just telling you what I'm hearing."
"What'll you do, Jon Jo?"
"It's not right, it's not for talking about."
There was the anger of her breath against his skin. "He's been my friend."
He started up. He heaved himself onto his elbow. He looked down at her. "What's that mean?"
"When you weren't here, and Kevin and I were alone for bloody months on end, Jon Jo, he was my friend."
"But…"
"But nothing – would you kill him, Jon Jo, my friend?"
"If it was him…"
"Would you kill him for touting, or would you kill him because when you were away he was my friend?"
Her fingers held tight in the hairs. The pain stung him. He had been a boy when Mossie Nugent had first gone to gaol. He had been a child and first learning to kick the gaelic ball from his hands and to swing the hurley stick. He could remember when Mossie had gone down for Possession and he could remember the talk in the village when Mossie had been arrested again in the Free State. He had been the volunteer, the kids hanging at his ankles and the old men buying him drink in the bar, when Mossie Nugent had come back from England. Clever, sharp, good at what he did, and Jon Jo had thought him an arse crawler.
Clever at setting up, sharp on his reconnaissance, good at his planning, and an arse crawler because he always wanted to be praised
… He could not remember when, in three years, Mossie Nugent had fired a rifle nor when Mossie Nugent had detonated a bomb… And now Mossie Nugent was Intelligence Officer and knew each move and knew each target. The man was in his mind, with the shambling walk from the injury that was always the excuse for not firing, not detonating.
Jon Jo said, "He has a bad leg."
"He fell off a ladder, everyone knows that."
"And he ran from the S.A.S. feckers who shot the Devitt boy and Jacko and Malachy…"
"You'd kill him? Wouldn't matter what I said?’’
He said, heavy, "Touts is for killing. Doesn't matter who they are, doesn't matter what friends they have, they're for killing… Time I was gone."
When he was out of the bed he pulled the sheets and blankets back over her. The fear of the tout had broken the loving. He dressed in the darkness and he sensed that she had turned away from him. When he was dressed he picked up her nightdress and carried it to the bed, and put it underneath the bedding to warm it for her. He kissed her and there was no response from her. Last thing, he lifted the Kalashnikov rilfle up from the carpet and held it loosely in his hand as he stood at the door and looked on her.
He went to stand by Kevin’s bed, to kneel and kiss the boy's cheek and then he went out through the kitchen where he took the food that she had made him, through the larder window, under the shadow of the farm buildings, through the cover of the hedgerows, up into the mountain. He would sleep, and after he had slept he would think on a meeting with Mossie Nugent.
He listened to Hobbes on the secure telephone. The voice was distant and without emotion. He'd taught Hobbes. Hobbes was his creature.
"… Yes, I confirm it, they're back and they've their heads down. The weather? Well, it's foul, it's like it always is. They've the right clothing, they're well dug in. I appreciate it isn't a picnic, but it's what they're trained for, Ernest. They've a meeting scheduled with Song Bird, sometime in the middle of the day. They had the camera on the farmhouse all night, saw nothing, not sight nor sound of him. The dog didn't even bark. He's there, somewhere, that's certain. It's only a matter of time."
Wilkins stood in the Emergency Operations room and held the telephone tight against his ear. He was shaved, showered, and dressed.
His concession to a crisis was that his suit jacket was on the hanger at the back of the door and his waistcoat was unbuttoned and held together by the chain of his watch.
"You're not pushing them too hard?"
"They know they'll get a good kick from me if they don't manage the business, Ernest. She's in great form, as you'd expect. She's satisfied with Brennard, says he's standing up well. Actually, that's like getting an Oscar from her…"
"There is the back-up."
"It's our show, Ernest, and if we can manage it on our own then that is how it will be, that's what I've told her. Quite frankly, I hope we piss all over those policemen."
"Safety must come first."
He put the telephone down. Bill was doing the duty watch, and had been late in with all the familiar excuses about roadworks on the Hammersmith flyover… If it went wrong, if it wasn't safety first and it failed, then, by God, oh yes, Hobbes was for the jump, oh yes. .. and for himself, if it went wrong, the Cornish cottage, and the endless damp, and oblivion.
"He's back, Mossie, and I'm chancing my neck telling you."
"Why's that?"
"He's like a mad bull, all strung up. He's not the Jon Jo I knew."
"No reason for me to be feared of him."
"He's talking about touts, he's asking about Patsy Riordan."
"That was settled."
"He's asking whether Patsy Riordan was the real thing."
"What's that to me?"
"He's on the mountain, it's like it's festering in him, that there's a tout.
He won't move till he's satisfied."
"Why's you telling me?"
"This is friend's talk, Mossie. Get yourself the hell out of here if there's things you can't answer. Watch yourself, God knows where he'll come from, but don't be there if you can't take the questions."
"I can answer anything," Mossie said.
He walked back to his car. The O.C. wound his window up and powered away. Nugent climbed back into his car. The Reilly girl was on her Da's tractor behind him, filling the road with the trailer. He waved at her. Old Reilly had always wanted boys and he'd to make do with girls, and they all of them drove the tractor like it was a feckin'
Ferrari. She squeezed the tractor and the trailer away past him. The O.C. had been waiting for him. They all knew when he went to work, what time, and they all knew the route he took. The place in the road was a sharp dip and old Reilly never could bother himself with the hedge trimmer and the thorn and holly grew high on each side. The O.C. had chosen the place to intercept him where he would not be seen, not by a watcher on the mountain. He sat in his car. He felt the fear gathering round him. Tomorrow was the monthly pay day. Five hundred pounds to a Building Society account held in the name of Mossie Nugent.
But if the bitch didn't help him to run then there was nowhere for him to run to.
He drove to the Housing Executive renovation on the west side of Dungannon. The fear in him was a screw, and tightening.
Hobbes' stage.
The Task Co-ordinating Group listened.
He felt the hostility from around the table and relished it.
"He's on the mountain, gentlemen, he's where I said he'd be. It's only patience that's required now. Sooner, hopefully not later, he will call for my Song Bird, and that will lead my operatives forward, with the support of back-up… I don't want any fancy ideas about a military or a police operation onto Altmore. You'd need a flight of helicopters and two brigades of infantry to search that place, and you'd have to step on top of him to find him. We're doing it the right way, gentlemen.
Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, we'll have him. Are there any questions…?"
Rennie said, "He's good, is Jon Jo. You blunder in and corner him and he'll fight like hell. I hope, Mr Hobbes, you've told that to your amateurs. No, I don't have any questions because I have a funeral to be getting to…" * She led him down the stairs of the Five area. He’d slept after his shower, didn't know whether she'd slept. He thought she looked great, whether she'd slept or not. There was the brightness back in her cheeks and the bruise on her eye was going last and there was the lush colour in her hair. He thought she looked great and that it didn't matter, not to him.
They went out through the door. The cold hit them. It was his reflex, to take her arm and steer her round the rainwater puddle. It was what any young man did for any young woman. She looked at him. It was days since he had seen it, the shyness trace.
"You alright, Bren?"
"I'm fine."
"Did you sleep a bit?"
"Sure, seemed like for ever."
Cathy said, "You shouldn't take it hard, Bren…"
"Skin of a rhino, Miss Parker."
"It's just that…"
"It's not worth talking about."
"Are you understanding?"
"Starting to."
"It never works…"
Bren unlocked the car and held the door open for Cathy. "Manual of Office Romance, Security Service Eyes Only (Attention of Field Staff), Page 29, Paragraph 8, Section 3, Sub-Section C: Don't. Full point. Got you, Miss Parker, loud and clear."
She bent down into the car. "It gets in the way," she said.
He leaned over. He kissed her on the cheek. "Can we talk about something else…?"
It was a hotel up the road and beyond the roundabout where Detective Sergeant Joseph Browne had been shot to death. Jimmy had booked the room. The back-up was to be Rennie's men. He thought there would be a team in the car park… He reckoned there would be a second team in the lobby of the hotel, watching the front doors and the corridors off to the bedrooms… He drove into the car park of the hotel. The room was booked, the courier had been sent down to do the check-in and take the key and the key had been given to Bren. He took Cathy's arm again and hurried her across the car park.
They were the couple, good-looking boy and fine-looking woman, hurrying to a hotel bedroom with a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.
The wrist of the O.C. throbbed under the plaster cast.
For four hours he had waited in his car outside the terrace of homes that the Housing Executive were renovating.
On the stroke of one, on St Anne's in Church Street, when the men on the site would have been breaking for their sandwiches and flasks, he had seen Mossie Nugent go to his Cortina, peel off his overalls, and drive away.
He didn't know what he looked for.
He followed, as he had followed him to work.
Lunchtime, and the hotel's parking area was well filled, cars and delivery vans, but he found a space from which he could see Mossie's car.
There were so many explanations. Could have been checking for work. Could have been booking for family lunch. Could have been…
He settled in his car to watch the main doors that had swung shut on Mossie Nugent's back.
She played the bitch. She had the curtains drawn behind her and the young fellow with her was standing across the room's door. He was sat on the bed. She played the bitch because she was above him, looking down on him, and all the time there was the guy behind… He was only the tout, only the paid man…
"You have the bleeper, we can locate the bleeper. Three signals is for when you are on the move, and we can track that. Two signals is when you meet him, have him right there beside you, and we move forward then. It has to be your decision as to when you think it is right for us to close, and that's one longer signal. It may be us that closes or it may be the back-up, depends on the circumstances. When we close, if you see us, you don't give any sign of recognition."
He was scared and she gave him nothing to sustain him. Staccato instructions.
He spoke soft, below the music of the radio that had been tuned in when he went into the hotel bedroom.
"He's a powerful man. He can be the devil."
"You'll be fine, Mossie, and I'll be watching for you. Wear your red jacket."
"If I don't get home, if I'm called from work," head down, sheepish,
"it's at home…"
"Work clothes, red anorak, or your white overalls. Nothing else."
He sat on the bed with his head bowed. He would do as she told him .. .
"Yeah, right, but how does I give you the signal, whatever?"
"Where is it?"
He felt the blush. He pointed. There was the cheerful grin of her.
"Got an itch, haven't you? Got a bloody awful itch, right? Got to scratch your balls, yes?"
He stood. She watched him. It was as if he amused her. He put his hand down into his pocket and his fingers went through his handkerchief and the loose change and the car keys and he pressed down through the pocket's material. He felt the cold outline against his skin and then the raised button.
Mossie said, "What's the money?"
It was his last throw. It was what he had wound himself up to demand of her. Couldn't go back, not to Siobhan, couldn't go back and tell her that he didn't know what the money would be. Alright for her, rich bitch. He'd done a house once, in Birmingham's Edgbaston, he'd been on the team of decorators, subcontract, and the house had had a hall that was bigger in the floor space than all the bungalow where he lived now with Siobhan and his mother and the four little ones, and there had been the daughter of the house who spoke the same as the bitch.
She seemed to laugh at him.
"You get plenty."
Braver, because he'd have Siobhan up his arse. "How much?"
"You get ten thousand," she said, and it was as if that wasn't a figure that was big to her.
"And I get out, right?"
"Who knows, Mossie, who knows."
He heard the door behind him click open. He turned. The man behind him had leaned out of the door and was checking the corridor. He heard the drone of a vacuum cleaner.
The man said, "On your way, Song Bird."
The bitch said, "Scratch them hard, scratch them often."
He went out into the corridor, empty. The bitch, she hadn't even wished him luck.
She said she was going shopping. His Ma had been shopping the day before. She said she was going shopping again to Dungannon. He knew the secret. He had held the secret all that day at school as to why his Ma had to go again to buy more food. He liked it that his Ma trusted him with the secret. She said that he was a grand boy and that he should, again, take the fodder up to the Mahoneys' field to the bullocks.
He had lain in his bed all of the previous night, with the blanket high over his head, and still he had heard the muffled footfall on the stair.
But he had been asleep if his Da had come to him… He said he would take a bale of hay fodder to the bullocks in the Mahoneys' field, and he had felt the distracted kiss of his Ma on his forehead.
He saw Mossie Nugent come through the swing doors. He would have driven out after him if it had not been for the way his Intelligence Officer glanced twice to the right, and then to the left, like he was checking, then scurried for his car.
He sat low in the seat. He wore a cap on his forehead. He could see through the grime of the bottom of the windscreen. He was careful. He watched Mossie drive away, and turn on the road for Dungannon.
It was the hair on a woman's head. It was red gold. She came fast out of the doors of the hotel, and a young man half ran to keep up with her.
Red gold hair. He saw her and he knew her. He saw her in the shadow light ol the bar’s car park where they'd held her, where he'd punched her, kicked her. His eye line was over the bonnet of his car. She ran to her car and the wind and the spitting rain plucked at the red gold hair and she never looked around her. He saw her as she had flung herself at him. As she had pitched him over, as he had fell the pain exploded in his wrist, as he had rolled over and seen the gun in her hand. Their car went fast out of the car park. A van moved Sudden, quick, a van driving out, and he had noticed no one go to the van, Mossie gone, and the young woman with the red gold hair gone, and a van gone behind them, had to have been the backup. There were two more coming out of the hotel. They had the fresh faces and the cut hair and the trimmed moustaches, they were the pigs and they could never hide themselves.
He had seen the break-up of a meeting.
The O.C. sagged back in his scat.
The enormity of it belted him.
A meeting, a player and a handler, a tout and a Brit with back-up.
Holy shit…
He waited a full ten minutes. He drove away and went through Dungannon and passed the Housing Executive renovation site and saw the car, and knew Mossie Nugent was back at his work.
Jimmy came to the shoulder of the woman who monitored the racks of television screens.
"What on earth…?"
"It's the cattle. They're all round it. Focus is all wrong, that's not tree trunks, that's their legs. Lovely looking beasts they were when they were further away, it's the Limousin cross with Herefords.’’
The light had just been switched on.
The greyness was falling outside the windows distorted by the anti-blast covering.
Cathy slept in the corner of Colonel Johnny's office. Bren watched the telephone. Herbie was squatted on the floor with his back against the wall and he said nothing and had a seed catalogue to read, and every few minutes, as if that was the big decision in his life, he took his pencil and licked it and entered another order on the sale sheet. Jocko had a small sketch pad on his knee, sat on a straight-backed chair, drew Cathy. Bren couldn't see the work, only the delicate short stabs of his crayons, and there was the bored look on his face that said it might just as well have been a bowl of apples. The cardboard city man, clothes older and more torn and more filthy than Bren had seen them before, had his right boot and his right sock off and carefully, rapt in the work, he darned the heel of the sock.
Shortly they would move off.
He sat and he watched the telephone. He thought that he was incomplete. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't grow vegetables, he couldn't draw nor paint to save himself, he couldn't darn because he had never been taught. Sometimes he paced, sometimes he gazed out of the window at the perimeter arc lights of the barracks over towards the pad where the helicopters came and went, always he watched the telephone and waited on it.
There was a new item for the check-list. Their equipment was in the corner, against Cathy's shoulder, and with the equipment was now a box of flares and the pistol to shoot them.
He wondered if they were frightened, any of the rest of them…
The dog circled him, and snarled. He lashed a kick at it. He saw the hatred of the little savage, but it wouldn't come closer, not while it had a sight of his boot.
The O.C. hammered on the door. There were no lights in the farmhouse. He hammered and he waited. He heard no voice and he heard no footstep, only the barking of the dog.
He shouted her name, and he shouted the boy's name. He hit the door again with his good fist, and then because it had crept closer he kicked again at the dog.
Attracta would surely have told him where he might find her man.
The darkness was gathering on the mountain above him. He turned away. He swore at the dog and backed towards the front gate and when he shut it after him then the dog launched itself at the gate. He drove back down the lane and saw that Mossie's car was not yet in the drive in front of the bungalow
The cattle were gathered at the top hedge where the field gave way to the mountain slope. He stopped. He put down the bale and waited to catch his breath. He shouted, a piping reedy voice, for the bullocks to come to him. His Ma always said that he was not just to dump the bale and cut the twine and spread the hay, he was to get the animals to it, so that they ate it before the rain was into it. He felt the cold. The darkness was closing. He yelled into the wind for the animals. He could see them at the top of the field. He gritted his teeth. He wondered where his Da was, if his Da watched him. He heaved the bale up again, onto his thin shoulder, and the taut twine cut at the palms of his hands.
He staggered under the weight of the bale. The cattle were shapes in the greyness ahead of him. He hoped that if his Da watched then that his Da was proud of him. He squelched across the field. He slid on fresh manure, fell to his knees, picked himself up, lifted the bale again.
Little Kevin crossed the field. The breath sobbed in his lungs. The wind stripped his face, tousled his hair. He slipped again on a smooth stone that he had not seen. He struggled forward. If his Da were watching from the mountain then his Da should not see him cry.
He reached them.
He cut the twine. He kicked and dragged the pressed hay from the shape of the bale. The bullocks ignored him. He pushed his way, all his strength and he had no fear of them, into the heart of the bullock mass.
He drove them apart. He saw where they had gathered.
The last of the light caught the brightness of the lens.
He was on his hands and knees and the wet of the grass was through his clothes and the mud smeared him that had churned from the bullocks' hooves. He crawled forward. He saw the lens glass set in the heart of the old moss-covered log that had always been in the hedgerow, long as he could remember. His finger moved to touch the glass, and in his ears there was the suppressed hum of power, like a bulb at home, like when his Ma said that a bulb was going down and needed changing. He crawled into the hedge and he scraped in the earth under the hedgerow of thorn and he found the cable that led into the furthest end of the log. All his strength, everything remaining to him, he tugged at the cable, two hands, he pulled the cable clear and the plug.
He ran for the bottom of the field, for the Mahoneys' lights. Ahead of him were the outline shapes of the farmhouse and the bungalow that had been watched by the hidden eye in the log in the hedgerow.
He ran as if for his life, and his Da's life. He ran as if the dragoons chased in pursuit, gasping, sobbing, running.
"Shit…"
Jimmy hurried to her.
"… I only went for a pee. It's like it's cut off."
There was the snow storm on the screen in the centre of the rack of television pictures.
Jimmy said quietly, "That's awkward, leaves us rather blind."
She heard the fist beating at the door, and the boy's cry. She was doing the children's tea, and Mossie's plate was beside the stove and his food covered, waiting on his return.
"I'm coming, I'm coming…" She wiped her hands.
She went to the front door.
He was so small, Attracta's boy. He caught at her sleeve. He couldn't speak. He was soaked through and mud-streaked. His breath came in great pants. A proud little beggar he was most times. He was pitiful.
She took him into the hallway. Siobhan crouched down in front of him.
"Now what's the matter, Kevin?"
The boy babbled. She tried to catch the gist. She understood something, not everything.
"… They've a camera… they's looking at us…I went to tell the Mahoneys, I shouted through the letter box to them, they bolted the door on me… there's a camera up there… the cattle found it me, they were round it, it's in a log, it's looking at us.. . I broke it, I broke the wire to it. The camera watches our house, looking for my Da. My Ma's gone to get food for my Da on the mountain
… It's so they can come for him, it's so's the dragoons can hunt him down. The journeymen tailor’ll tell them where they saw him, and then the camera eye will find him, and the dragoons'll come for him. .. It's how they find all the patriots, with touts, journeymen tailors…"
And her Mossie was late home for his tea, and Jon Jo Donnelly was on the mountain, and a camera was aimed at the farmhouse, and a small boy stammered the story of touts. Her kids were fighting behind her, and her Mossie was late home, and the talk of the small boy was of touts She banged on his mother's door. She shouted through the dooi that it was no time for resting, and she should see to the little ones' tea. She pulled on her coat. His mother was at the door of her room, half dressed, her teeth out. Would she look to the kids?
Siobhan said soft to the boy, "I'll take you up home. I'll wait up home with you till your Ma's back."
Little Kevin said, spent, "The journeymen tailors'll tout on him, it's the touts'll get my Da…"
She took him out into the night. She held tight to his hand. The wind off the mountain blew against them. Guilt and shame battered her, as the wind hit her. It was for money. She led the boy back up the lane. It was only for money. When the boy stumbled in his exhaustion picked him up and carried him.
Bren had the car started.
Cathy was running, and the boys behind her.
Herbie into his car, and the engine sweetly pounding.
The guns on her lap and the rucksack. The camouflage cream on her face. The wild joy and excitement in her eyes.
The cardboard city man was at her window. "You're alright, Cathy?"
"Great."
"Just give us the word."
She squeezed his hand.
"No fucking about, Cathy."
The cardboard city man sprinting to join Herbie and Jocko.
He drove out of the barracks, swerved to avoid the sentries. Cathy had the earpiece in.
Cathy said, "This is what's new… We've had the triple signal four times now. They're clocking him. Took them time, silly arses, to get the fix right. They've got that sorted. They've got a good signal now.
First signals were bloody awful. He's gone up on the Donaghmore road, then on for Gortavoy Bridge, that's Corrycroar… they'll have to do something about seeing to the bloody signal, it's not good enough, not having the proper signal… He's taken the left at Corrycroar. He's not hurrying himself. Well, doubt I would in his shoes…"
"Where'll that take him?"
"Top of the mountain."
"How far?"
"Three miles, three and a half."
"Can we find him up there from the bleeper?"
"Hope so."
"You promised him."
"Had to… He wouldn't have gone if I hadn't."
He turned to her, a fast glance. "It's not a game, you know…"
Cathy said, "Everyone's scared the first time, Bren."
He swerved up through Donaghmore village. The close village lights were behind him, just the darkness ahead beyond his headlamps and the further pinpricks of the farmhouses and bungalows that spread across the slopes and above them the dark mass that was the wilderness and the killing ground. Cathy heaved the rucksack onto the seat behind. She had the map open across her knees, and on top of the map she was loading the magazines into the two rifles.