Mossie went along the back road behind the lip of the mountain. He drove down the lane that was rutted wilh winter weather, he splashed slowly over the pot-holes. He had come past the turning to Cornamaddy and past the back road to Inishyegny. It was where he had played as a boy, amongst the trees and the broken walls of what had once been a fortress for the English. The bleeper box cut into his groin.
Twice he was hooted from behind, and once he saw the driver, speeding past, turn to give him the finger for going so slow.
There were times when Mossie felt the excitement, the blood drive, when he performed for the bitch. For her he could walk on water.
There were times when he felt the exhilaration of the double twist of his world. He could push aside mountains. Now, the excitement and exhilaration were buried. He went by the falling lane that slipped steep on the slope to Crannogue, where the stream tumbled between the reservoir lakes. He had answered the call, as the bitch had known he would.
The foreman had come from the portacabin office behind the row of homes being renovated for the Housing Executive. He would have blasted any other worker for having a personal call come through to the site office, but he knew Mossie had been to prison, twice, and he knew what for. He would not know whether the stick was broken or the man was still involved, but he had seen the respect and the wariness of those of his workers who came from the same community as Mossie Nugent.
The foreman wasn't going to cross a man who might be senior in the Organization.
He said he'd meet you up by the Back Bridge, up Altmore Forest, some time past six, said you'd know who he was, wouldn't give me the name, cocky frigger. He said you was doing rabbits with lamps. He said to be sure you was there…"
He had gone on with his painting. He had left at the normal time. He hadn't rung Siobhan and he hadn't rung the number that would go through to the bitch's people. He might have been watched, and he might not. The man had been more impatient than curious. Not a bad excuse. Fine good rabbits on Altmore, and money to be had for them in the village. It was only sensible to think that he might be watched, followed.
He had pressed the button, hard, three times, when he had left the work site, and again before he was past the Golf Club, again going through Donaghmore and again at Skea Bridge. Damn near pushed the button through the box when he had turned off the Pomeroy road at Corrycoar, and the rain coming. Il was as if he was shouting and could hear no answer. He could only trust that they heard.
Mossie saw, on more than one occasion, lights on the road behind him. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the lights kept the distance between them. He swore to himself because the back window was running mud and water, and the road wound and climbed. He couldn't be sure. He came to the crossroads. His wipers were going hard, bailing the water from his windscreen. The foreman would now be in front of his fire with the rain hitting his windows, and he'd be thinking it was a feckin' awful night to be out for gun sport.
He pressed the button at the crossroads, and turned left. It was the road past the deep reservoir, leading to the Back Bridge. He pressed the button again.
He had no one else to trust, only the bitch.
"Straight on." "You said he'd turned left." "Do as 1 bloody tell you."
Bren went over the crossroads. Jimmy had said over the radio that the track on Song Bird's car showed it had gone left at the crossroads.
He looked once, but the tail-lights were lost.
"Round this corner, stop. Cut the lights. Turn here. Back like a rat up a sewer. Move it, Bren."
The adrenalin pumped in him. It would have been her litle game.
Lights off, hitting a stone behind as he turned, bouncing off it, scraping the tyres. He was hunched over the wheel and peering through the rain.
He understood. Anyone watching the approach of Song Bird's car would have seen the lights behind, and seen them go straight on, and lost them behind the outline of the hill they called the Sentry Box. He wound down his window and navigated by the right-hand verge, going as smoothly and as quietly as he could in third, praying that no one else would be using this road. They were back at the crossroads. He turned right.
Cathy was hunched forward, her hands clamped over her ears, she whispered, "He's stopped."
"How far?"
"They reckon less than a mile… Christ…"
Bren threw the wheel over… Some lunatic with his dog… He didn't know how he had missed him. He'd bloody near put the man in the ditch. He registered the long overcoat, the woollen cap, the dog cringing back against the man's legs, and they were past him, as the man stumbled and swore, and Bren knew in an instant that it was the spycatcher from the Library in Dungannon.
"Well left, sunshine," Cathy said.
There was her light chuckle. He thought he would rather have vomited than laugh. She reached back and pulled the rucksack through the space between their seats. She laid one of the rifles across his lap.
She reached inside the rucksack and he heard the click of a switch. It would be the homing signal for the back-up. He heard her breathing, calm and controlled, as if that was the way she had been taught.
‘’Far enough,’’ Cathy said. She armed her rifle.
They were out of the cat She threw him the rucksack, didn't help him to sling it. She was on the move.
They were the men who waited.
Hobbes had the call from Jimmy, that they were going forward, that Song Bird was close to his rendezvous with Donnelly. He poured himself a second glass. What he called, at times like this, Headmaster’s whisky. .
Rennie was still in his office. He said he would telephone Dungannon and put Scenes of Crime on stand-by as soon as he had finished cleaning the graveside mud off his shoes.
Colonel Johnny stamped away down his corridor to alert the Quick Reaction Platoon and to ask the two helicopter pilots assigned to him to begin at once the checks for take-off.
Ernest Wilkins had the call on the fifth floor of Curzon Street high above the evening traffic clog of the rush home and pushed aside the tray from which he had eaten the Stilton salad brought by Bill from the canteen, and felt an old and tired man.
It would be the next call that they waited for… to tell Hobbes he had won or failed, to tell Rennie he had been right or wrong, to tell Colonel Johnny whether he should hug that sweet super girl or speak a quiet prayer for her, to tell Ernest Wilkins whether it was Downing Street in triumph or the Director General's office in failure.
Each man in his own place, quiet and waiting for a telephone to ring.
Mossie stopped the car and killed the lights. He climbed out of the car and he slammed the door shut. The rain in the wind spattered on his face. The cold bit into the cotton of his work overalls. He peered into the darkness. He strained his ears. He could see the parapet of the bridge and the trees all round. He could hear the wind and the sigh of his fast breathing and the tumble of the floodstream on the rocks under the bridge. He left his windcheater in the car. No way he was going to obscure his white overalls. He put both hands in his trouser pockets, one hand through the slit at the hip of the overalls and down into his trouser pocket with his handkerchief and his change, and his finger rested on the button of the bleeper box. He thought the elastoplast was loosening. Before he had left the site he had gone to the lavatory and tried to rearrange the elastoplast so that it held better. The roll of elastoplast was at home. He didn't know where she, the bitch, was. He didn't know whether the triple signals had been received. It was his instinct to stand away from the car. To be out of the car gave him…
The light beam hit his face.
Mossie screwed his eyes shut, then blinked, then turned away from the light. He looked back into the light, into the blindness. The light wavered off him and swept the car.
"'Tis you, Jon Jo…?"
The light came back to him, held him. He put his left hand out to shield his eyes.
"… It's a fine thing that you're back, Jon Jo… It's you, Jon Jo…?"
Never moving off him, holding him like the rabbit that the foreman thought he had come to shoot.
"Heh, can you take the feckin' light off me, Jon Jo…?"
The rain was in his face. His finger was on the button. He thought that the movement of his finger would be seen.
"Put the thing off, Jon Jo."
The light died.
Mossie pressed the button. He pressed it twice.
"Where is you, Jon Jo? Will you stop your games? Where's you at?"
Only darkness in front of him.
"I was your friend, Mossie…" Behind him.
Mossie turned. The wind now pricking at the back of his neck.
"My friends are for keeping, Jon Jo."
He started forward towards the voice.
"Well, I've a problem with that friendship."
"You've no problem with me…"
Sideways on to him now, the voice.
"Stay where you are, Mossie… There's people telling me about Patsy Riordan."
"What's they telling you?"
"That Patsy Riordan never had the wit to tout."
"Security said he did."
In front of him. Mossie spun again to face the voice.
"How long did they have him?"
"You tell me, Jon Jo, you've been listening to the talk."
"What did they do to him?"
The voice so threatening, so quiet. He strained to hear. "How the feck do I know? I wasn't there."
"What do you think they did to him?"
"Roughed him a bit…"
"That what you think they do to touts, Mossie? Gone soft in security, have they? Just roughed him?"
The voice circled him. The voice to the left of him and then behind him and then to the right of him. He no longer turned to face it. He stood his ground. His finger was on the bleeper-box button. More shit scared than he had ever been. He didn't know whether they were out there, whether they were close, or whether they were drinking feckin' coffee in feckin' Belfast. He had only her word.
"I'd have said they went heavy on him, Mossie."
"Why don't you ask them as was there?"
"If they'd gone heavy on him, Mossie, what'd he have done?"
"I don't know, Jon Jo, and…"
"You don't know much, Mossie. What would you have done?"
"I'm not a tout, I can't say…"
"Let's say they're hurting you, Mossie. The pain's bad and they're telling you that's for starters. The pain's going to be worse, it's only the beginning. Then they tell you that if you cough it, if you tell them what you know, then, perhaps, it's going to be settled. That's what they do, Mossie. They give it you hard and they give it you soft, but the harder gets worse till you're crying louder for the soft. What I'm saying, when the hurting's bad they offer you a way out. You agree with me, you'd want to take the way out?"
"It's not for me to say."
Close to him, right behind him. Mossie half jumping. The fist against his shoulder, then the barrel of the weapon cold against his skin.
"He'd talk, Mossie, don't you reckon so? He'd be messing his pants and he'd be talking. Isn't that what you'd be doing, Mossie?"
"I don't…"
"But he didn't. There was no confession from Patsy Riordan."
The muzzle of the gun was off his neck. The fist was away from his shoulder. His stomach was falling, his knees were quivering. He should never have come, and he didn't know whether she, the bitch, was close.
"Perhaps he didn't confess because he'd nothing to confess to. You're a clever man, Mossie, that make sense to you? What you looking for, Mossie? I'm here, I'm in front of you. I'm not behind you… Are you looking for your friends, Mossie?"
"That's just daft talk."
"Have you got some problem, Mossie?"
"Damn right. You's my problem. All your smart talk is my problem. .. I've had this shit. I don't need you telling me about the Riordan boy.
I told the man from security. I was clean, clear."
The soft voice in darkness. "It's what I heard."
"Well, hear this, too, Jon Jo. We've been fighting over here, perhaps you didn't read our papers when you were in England. We have a hard war here. We've got more on our plates than stupid feckin' tossers of English policemen. We've got the real war here, not the war against women and kids…"
"I heard. I heard you were doing well… And I heard there was funerals."
"Wars go hard. Here we fight, we don't hide."
"That's what I don't believe about you, Mossie. I think you hide a lot.
If I roughed you a bit, Mossie, if I slapped you round a bit, would you slip some of what you hide?"
He was gone. He knew he was gone.
He waited for the blow, the punch, the gun barrel. It was in his mind, when the bitch had come to the police cell and torn up the charge sheet, and he waited for the fist. He thought of the meetings with her, the lay-bys and the car parks and the quarry off the Armagh road, and he waited for the boot. He had run from the soldiers, and the Devitt boy and Jacko and Malachy had been on the pavement and the gutter behind him, and the red anorak he had worn had streamed in the wind.
He waited. He didn't know whether Jon Jo circled him, whether he was behind him or in front of him.
"What's touts for, Mossie?"
He sobbed the words. "For killing, touts is for killing."
Behind him, savage cold. "Take your hands out of your pockets, Mossie…"
His finger drifted on the button. There was no strength in him. He could feel the button. He had neither the strength nor the trust to press the button.
"… Take your hands out of your pockets, Mossie, and put them on the top of your head…"
Mossie did as he was told. He always did.
"… Kneel down, Mossie…"
He knelt and the wet was on his knees, and the tears were on his face, and the box cut into his groin, and the gun's muzzle was against the nape of his neck.
"How long have you been touting, Mossie?"
He could see, but he could not hear. Bren could see through the image intensifier on the Heckler and Koch. He was too far back to hear. He had seen Jon Jo Donnelly circling Song Bird, now he could see Song Bird kneeling and the grey-green form of the target above him. The cross-hairs were on the target. The voices were a murmur, mixed with the wind and the rain's fall and the stream's clatter, too indistinct for him to him to hear. It was for Cathy to do it… For Christ's sake, woman, do it… Time spiralling, the opportunity spilling down the drain. He didn't know why she didn't shoot. He lay on his stomach.
The trees were around him. The kneeling figure and the standing figure, sharp in the lens at fifty paces in the clearing, close to the road and the bridge.
How much bloody longer did she want?
Her voice.
The hissed urgency.
‘’I’m blocked, bastard trees, can't aim, I've only 20 per cent target…’’
He had is finger inside the trigger guard. His thumb eased the safety. He had the butt against his shoulder. He had the scope against his eye. So clear in front of him. He could see the face of the target… His finger rested on the trigger. Where were the boys? When it was their work, where were they? "Do it…"
Jon Jo heard what he said.
Mossie said, through the tears, "It's what they made me. They made me a tout…"
He had the weapon's barrel hard against Mossie Nugent's neck. The questions, they'd been easy. The answer came so feckin' hard.
"… You don't know what it's like when they've trapped you. You wouldn't know, Jon Jo. You's trapped, and they's the claws in you.
You's can never back away."
The answer came so hard to him. The answer was harder than anything that he had known. Mossie Nugent, snivelling, blubbering bastard, had been calling at his Attracta's. He was gone now anyhow, but the answers made it right. The answers came from a man grovelling, and he was crying for mercy.
"It's your own friends. What meant anything to you? Did you take their money, Mossie…?"
"Don't kill me… I'll go and never come back."
The cold came again to Jon Jo. "Would you tout on me?"
"I's trapped, don't you see?"
"You'd tout on me?"
"Oh, Jesus. It was you special that they wanted."
He heard the plea in the voice. It was the cry for forgiveness. He had not heard a cry from two schoolgirls, nor from a schoolboy buying a ticket at a railway station.
The pistol shook in the grip of his hands. He understood. Stay- ing too long. Shouldn't have come, shouldn't have stayed. Should have been in the caves by now. Should have been gone.
"I'll not hurt you, Mossie. I'll…"
He would shoot and he would run. The barrel was at the bone of the neck…
Jon Jo felt himself lifted. He was careering back. The gale punch had whipped him. He tried to hold his feet, and fell, and he tried to stand again and he slipped. No sound around him, and no movement. Tried to crawl and had no strength. And the pain had come, exploding in him.
Bren lay on his stomach. The slammed weight of the recoil had hit his shoulder. The blast of the noise had killed his ears. He followed the target through the haze of the image intensifier. His target stood again, fell again, and crawled. Bren could not move. She was at his ear.
"Christ, you cut it fine…" He saw Song Bird crumpled in front of him, his head in his hands and his head bent down to his knees. She was shaking at his shoulder and then she punched it. "Bloody good shot, Bren. Well done…" She was standing above him. He heard nothing, but he saw the flash of light behind her. The flare burst, brilliant bubbling red in the night sky. The light of the flare reflected back from the low cloud. "Come on, old thing, don't just lie there." And then the crisp belt of her voice into the radio.
They had been at the door of the farmhouse.
They had heard the shot, booming, echoing down off the mountain in the wind. They saw the bright blood colour of the flare.
Little Kevin was against Attracta's leg. They stood at the door and Siobhan was on the path beyond the step. They watched the tumbling dying of the flare.
Attracta said, "My Jon Jo, he's up there."
The taste of the tea was in Siobhan's mouth, and the warmth of the kitchen still lingered around her.
The voice of the boy babbled, muffled in the skirt against his mother's leg. "The journeymen tailors'll get the dragoons to kill the patriot. It's the touts that'll get him. Ma, is that the end of the story?"
Siobhan Nugent went to Attracta Donnelly. Mossie's wife's arms were around Jon Jo's wife's neck. She kissed the face of her neighbour. She ran the length of the front path.
The telephone was ringing, Charles was first to it. Wilkins watched…
Charles held the telephone against his ear, and there was the dry, droll smile on his face.
"I'll tell him, he has been very anxious to hear… Goodbye."
It was the moment of triumph or the moment of failure. You never could tell with Charles, infuriating man.
"Splendid news, Ernest… your wife, the plumber's in at last, the immersion's working again. She thought you'd want to know so you wouldn't worry…"
He'd kill that woman. So help him, he'd do a life sentence for her. He slumped against the wall. His head was close to the life- size photograph of Jon Jo Donnelly. The telephone rang. Again Charles beat him to it.
"An incident on Altmore. An incident? Is that the best you can do? It looks to me as though Mr Wilkins could use a little bit more detail
…
Ah yes, thank you, Jimmy, a shooting incident. That's more like it.
What shall I tell him? Three hundred rabbits believed seriously injured
…? You'll come back if you get an exact head count, bless you, Jimmy." Charlie put the receiver down. "Well, you heard what the man said, Ernest. Rather a confused picture on Altmore just at present."
He wanted him dead. He gazed at the photograph. Too damned old for it all. The shame surged in him. He wanted him dead, killed.
He heard the voice, the command shout.
"Stay still. Don't move, Mossie."
The eye of the night scope was on the figure. The figure crawled a few inches at a time towards the far tree line. The figure struggled to be out of the clearing. He had done it. He had cut the figure from his legs, reduced him to a crawling effort of escape. The shadows swam around him. Coming quickly and coming silently. He never took the night scope sight away from the target figure, but he saw them running, the shadows, hunched and bent. A shadow merged with her, then moved on. They were spread out, three of them. Two shadows, from opposite sides, ringing the clearing. The third s hadow away from her and then forward to the still kneeling Song Bird, crouching over him. The protection had arrived. He watched the shadows, sometimes he lost them in the tree shapes, sometimes he saw them clear. Flitting shadows that closed on the target figure. He could almost have shouted out to the fallen man that the danger was on him. Bren watched in the image intensifier. Too late to warn the target. They were black in the scope, one tall and one short, one who painted water colours and one who grew onions. It was because of what he had done, and because of what she had told him to do. The shorter man going in, grabbing the weapon from the target's hand. No resistance. The second figure moving forward. It was very quick. The boot onto the small of the back of the target, the weapon pointing down. It was the moment when Bren closed his eyes, and the moment of the crash of the single shot bouncing in his ears… and then he heard the first stirrings of the helicopter rotors.
The light flooded down from the helicopter. Through the night scope the clearing had seemed huge, but the light from the helicopter shrunk it. Bren stood up. The Heckler and Koch hung against his leg.
It was cardboard city who had gone to Song Bird. He shouted at Bren.
"Make safe your weapon."
They were the professionals, and they had not been there…
He wanted no more part of it. Cathy had the radio across her lace.
The body of Jon Jo Donnelly was at the far side of the clearing and in the beam from the helicopter Bren saw the hole at the shoulder of the tunic. The cardboard city man dragged Song Bird to the edge of the clearing. Herbie and Jocko were crouched over the target figure, and the rotors whipped their camouflage smocks as the first helicopter landed.
There were troops ducking from the helicopter, running under the low rotor thrash. He disengaged the magazine. He cleared the breech.
He pocketed the live round. He saw Cathy stride over to Song Bird and the cardboard city man. She had to shout against Mossie's head. Bren could just hear her.
"Well done, Mossie. Sorry we left it so late."
Bren saw the pleading on his face, just as had been when he pleaded for his life.
"You're not hurt? That's good. Get moving Don’t go straight home Stop and get yourself a couple of pints. Make it natural. I can get you a long slow search if you need an alibi for the last half-hour. Let me know if need be, but for heaven’s sake keep your head down for the next two or three days Safe home, Mossie " She thumped his shoulder Bren watched. Mossie walked away Each stride and the strength grew back in his legs. Cathy wasn’t looking over her shoulder at him.
Cathy was hard in talk with the cardboard city man and Colonel Johnny, and the colonel put his arm on her shoulder and she removed it briskly and pointed to Bren. Bloody good, credit where it was due, He saw Mossie go out from the range of the lights, trudging away towards his car. It was what they taught the recruits on the Source Unit seminar, that there should never be emotion between a player and a handler, didn't matter how valuable was the players’ talk. All by the bloody book, all the emotion stifled, strangled, chucked out of the bloody window.
Jocko was beside him "Good effort. A perfectly adequat shot, in the circumstances.’
He took the rifle from Bren, and Bren gave him the magazine and the last live round
"… You did well, but it has to be down to us. You don't exist, you see."
Jocko had one of Bren's arms, and Cathy had the other and they ran him to the open door of the helicopter.
Bren felt the shudder as it lifted off, swooped up out of the forest.