The Secretary of State was on the line. The Prime Minister wasted no time on pleasantries.
‘I’ve been hearing about the troubles today, and the girl. Difficult situation. I thought we were weak at lunchtime, too defensive. We need to be more positive. I’ve a suggestion to make. It’s only a suggestion, mind you, and you should bounce it off your security people and see how they react. But I think you should say something like this — get a note of it and I’ll read over what I’ve drafted. Along these lines, now. That the girl was a known associate of the man we are hunting in connection with the killing of Danby. That she was brought in quite correctly for questioning, and had been spoken to briefly before being left in the cells for the night. You must emphasize that she was not touched. Leak it that you’re prepared to offer an independent post-mortem from one of the hospitals, if you think that’ll help. But my thought is to bring it back to Danby. By the by, his memorial service is at St Paul’s this week. You’ll be there, I hope. It’ll all be in the public gaze again. We’ll be all right if we play a bit bold, and attack. Worst thing we can do is to get on the defensive.’
The linking of the killing of the British Cabinet Minister with the death of the teenager in the Falls Road police station was splashed across the last edition of the Belfast Telegraph, and extensively reported on later television and radio news bulletins. The few men in the city who knew of Harry’s existence were uncertain what effect the disclosure would have on the agent’s work and safety. They acknowledged an immediate lifting of the pressure on their public relations set-up for more information concerning the circumstances of the death.
Harry was not the only man in the city with pawns on the chequerboard.
The scrap merchant would take Harry on to his payroll. He’d obviously liked the look of him. He said he had a brother at sea, and asked Harry if he could start there and then. There was not a word about National Insurance cards or stamps, and twenty pounds a week was offered as pay. Harry was told he’d need to spend a month or so in the yard to see the way the place was run. There was to be expansion, more lorries. When they came, if it all worked out, there would be a driving job, and more money.
On his first morning Harry prowled round the mountains of burned and rusted cars. These were the stock-in-trade of the scrapman, heap upon heap of rough, angled metal.
Harry said to the neat dapper little man who was his new boss, ‘Is this what the business is? Just cars? You’ve enough of them.’
‘No problems with the supplies of that. You must have seen it, though you’ve been away. Terrible driving here. If you take the number of cars, they say, and work it out against a percentage of all the people that own them, and the number of accidents… then it’s worse than anywhere else in the whole of England or Ireland. Maniacs they are here. The boyos down the road do the rest. We’ll have a dozen wrecks in tomorrow morning. There’ll be a double-decker, as well, like as not, but they’re bastards to cut up.’
He smiled. Small, chirpy, long silk scarf round his neck, choker style, hat flat on his head. They’re all the same, thought Harry, likeable rogues.
The scrap merchant went on, ‘It’s an ill wind. Scrapmen, builders, glaziers… we’re all minting it. Shouldn’t say so, but that’s how it is. The military dump the cars that are burned out, up there on the open ground. We send a truck up and pull them down here. Not formal, you know. Just an understanding. They want them off the street and know if they put them there I’ll shift them. We’ll have a few more today, and all.’
He looked up at Harry, with the brightness evacuating his eyes. ‘People are powerful angry about this girl. You’ll find that. They get killed in hundreds here. Most of the time it doesn’t mean a damn, however big the procession. But this girl has got them steamed again.’
Harry said, ‘It’s a terrible thing pulling a girl like that out of her house.’
‘Poor wee thing. She must have been awful scared of something to want to do that to herself. Mother of Jesus rest her. Still, no politics in this yard, and no troubles. Those are the rules of the yard, Harry boy. No politics, and that way we get some work done.’
He walked round with Harry and introduced him to the other men in the yard, six of them, and Harry shook hands formally. They greeted him with reserve, but without hostility. When his escort went back to the office to look to the papers Harry was free to browse. At one stage as he meandered amongst the cars he was within eight feet of a Russian-made rocket launcher. It was the RPG7 variety, complete with two missiles and wrapped in sacking and cellophane, locked into the boot of a car. There were always people coming into the yard, and the cover was good. Access was easy at night. The launcher, sealed against the wet, had been placed there after the Provisional unit to whom it had been issued had found it inaccurate and unreliable. It had been abandoned until they could come across a more up-to-date manual of operation, preferably not written in Russian or Arabic.
As the little man said, no politics, no troubles. That first day Harry abided faithfully by it, taking his cue from the other men in the yard. Slowly does it here. The high column of black smoke from a blazing Ulster bus was ignored.
The rest of the first week that Harry was there was quite uneventful. He was accepted to a limited degree as far as small talk went, and nothing more. His few attempts to broaden the conversation were gently ignored and not pressed on his part. The death of Theresa and the start of the job probably meant, thought Harry, the start of the next phase. No immediate pointers for him to follow, only the long-term penetration remaining. Three weeks. What idiot said it could be done in three weeks? Three months if he was lucky. And it relaxed him. Going up the road each day and having the work to occupy his mind would ease him. Better than sitting in that bloody guest house. Claustrophobia.
And each day he was watched by Seamus Duffryn’s volunteers from Delrosa to the yard, and back again.
Downs was in the kitchen swilling his face in the sink, Monday-morning wash, when his wife came in white-faced, shutting the door behind her on the noise of the playing children.
‘It’s just been on the radio, about you. About a girl. The girl who killed herself.’
‘What do you mean? What about me?’
‘This girl from the Murph, it says she was linked with the man that did the London killing.’
‘It didn’t actually mention me?’
‘Said you was linked. Connected.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Theresa something. I didn’t catch it.’
‘Well, I don’t know her.’
‘It said she was being questioned about him because she was a known associate. That was another word they used — “associate”. God rest her, poor kid. She was just a child.’
‘Well, I don’t know her, and that’s the truth.’
‘That’s what they’re saying on the radio… loud and clear… where any bloody ape can hear it.’
‘Well, it’s all balls, bullshit.’
‘When you’re shouting, you’re always lying. Who was she? What was she to do with it?’
‘I don’t know her. I tell you, I just don’t know her.’
‘Billy, I’m not daft. You were in town a long time before you came back here. I haven’t asked you where you were, before you came home. Who is she?’
‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Don’t play the fool with me. You heard the first time.’
‘If it’s Ballymurphy, I stayed there one night. I came in darkness while the family was round the box. There was a girl there. Just a kid who brought me some food in the room. I was away by five-thirty.’