On those early occasions he had often missed with the crucial first shot, firing too hurriedly, and then had to run like a mad thing with the noise and shouting of the soldiers behind him. They were heady moments, hearing the voices of the English troops with their strange accents bellowing in pursuit as he weaved and ducked his way clear.
Amongst a small group, though, his reputation had improved and his future value was reckoned as such that for nearly a year he had been left to lead what amounted to a normal life in the Ardoyne. Around him the army removed all but a tight hard core of activists. He was left at home, his name not figuring on the army files, his photograph absent from the wanted lists.
In their four years of marriage his wife had borne him twins, both boys, and conceived some weeks before their wedding, and two daughters. The time that he was away preparing for London, in the English capital, and then hiding in Northern Ireland before coming back to Ypres Avenue was the longest he had ever been away from his family. As he sat in the room where the light began to filter its gentle way through the thin cotton curtains he reflected on the hugeness of his disappointment at the way his wife had reacted.
He was still slumped in his chair when she came downstairs, a little after six. She came into the room on tiptoe and up behind the chair, and leaned over and kissed him on his forehead.
‘We’ll have to forget it all,’ she said. ‘The kids’ll be awake soon. They’ve been upset, you being away so long, and the wee one has the cough. They’ll be excited. There’s a dance at the club on Saturday. Let’s go. Mam’ll come down, and sit. We’ll have some drinks, forget it ever happened.’
She kissed him again.
‘We need some tea, kettle’s up.’
He followed her into the kitchen.
For Davidson, in his offices above a paint store in Covent Garden, it was to be a bad morning. He had asked for an appointment with the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence. The Boss. The Gaffer. Appointments with subordinates only when there was a fiasco or a potential fiasco. Davidson had to explain that their operator had gone missing and had never checked into the address that had been suggested to him.
Davidson had been hoping for a phone call, or failing that at least a letter or postcard to the office, saying, if nothing else, that Harry was installed and working. The complete silence was beginning to unnerve him. The previous day he authorized the checking of the Antrim Road guest house — discreetly, by telephone — for a Mr McEvoy, but the word had come back that no-one of that name had been near the building. There was no way Davidson could find out in a hurry whether the package containing the pistol sent for collection had in fact been picked up. He told himself there was no positive foundation to his fears, but the possibility, however faint, that Harry was already blown or dead or both nagged at Davidson. Nagged enough for him to seek a rare audience in the Ministry.
By early afternoon the brandies were on the table in the restaurant of the big hotel on the outskirts of the city. Both the Brigadier and the Chief Superintendent were in their own clothes and mildly celebrating the promotion and transfer of the army officer from second in command of the Brigade with responsibilities for Belfast to a new appointment in Germany. Both knew from their own intelligence-gathering agencies in vague terms of the sending of Harry and the Prime Minister’s directive — it had come in a terse, brief message from the GOC’s headquarters. There was little more to it than the statement that a special team had been set up to spearhead the hunt for Danby’s killer, and that all other operations in this direction should continue as before. During the serving of the food neither had spoken of it, as the waiters hovered round them. But with the coffee cups full, and the brandy glasses topped up, the subject was inevitably fielded.
‘There’s been nothing from that fellow the PM launched,’ muttered the Brigadier. ‘Long shot at the best of times. No word, I’m told, and Frost in intelligence is still leaping about. Called it a bloody insult. See his point.’
‘Sunk without trace, probably. They sniff them out, smell them a mile off. Poor devil. I feel for him. How was he supposed to solve it when SB and intelligence don’t have a line in? If our trained people can’t get in there, how’s this chap?’
‘Bloody ridiculous.’
‘He’ll end up dead, and it’ll be another life thrown away. I hope he doesn’t, but if he sticks at it they’ll get him.’
‘I expect your SB were the same, but intelligence weren’t exactly thrilled. What really peeved them was that at first they weren’t supposed to know anything, then it leaked. I think the Old Man himself put it out, then came the message, and there wasn’t much to show from that. Frost stayed behind after the Old Man’s conference last Friday and demanded to know what was going on. Said it was an indication of no confidence in his section. Threatened his commission and everything on it. GOC calmed him down, but it took a bit of time.’
The music was loud in the dining room, and both men needed to speak firmly to hear each other above the canned violin strings. The policeman spoke:
‘I think Frost’s got a case. So have we for that matter’… in mid-chord and without warning the tape ran out… ‘to put a special operator in on the ground without telling…’ Dramatically conscious of the way his voice had carried in the sudden moment of silence he cut himself short.
Awkwardly the two men waited for the half-minute or so that it took the reception staff away in the front hall to loop up the reverse side of the three-hour tape, then the talking began again.
The eighteen-year-old waiter serving the next table their courgettes had clearly heard the second half of the sentence. He repeated the words to himself as he went round the table — ‘Special operator on the ground without telling.’ He said it five times to himself as he circled the table, fearful that he would forget the crucial words. Then he hurried with the emptied dish to the kitchen, scribbling the words in large spidery writing on the back of his order pad.