‘They put the glove down, didn’t they? That’s what shooting Danby was about. To make us react and see how effectively we would counter-attack. They killed him as a test of strength. We have to get the man and the team that did it. Either we do, or they’ve won. That’s the game.’
‘So it’s not just Queen and Country? Forces of Right against Forces of Evil?’
‘It’s nothing to do with that. They’ve challenged us. Given us a bait we cannot ignore. That’s why we’re in there kicking. We have to get the killer before the next time.’
‘Who are you then, Harry? Who do you work for? Who pays your cheque?’
‘You won’t get that. You’ve too much already. Christ only knows why, I’ve—’
‘And where does little Theresa fit into this big act? You’re here to avenge a death. There’s been one more already. How many more people get hurt, getting in the way, to make it still worthwhile for you?’
‘Quite a lot.’
‘So, even in death, some count for more than others.’
‘Right.’
She shifted the ground, and softened the attack.
‘What sort of fellow is he, this man you’re looking for?’
‘I don’t know much about him. I’ve an idea what he looks like, but not a good description. I don’t know his name. He’s a cool customer, and he’ll be a crack shot. One of the top men, but they’ll have kept him out of the main eye of things.’
‘When Theresa talked about him, do you know what it was made her say it?’
‘’Course I don’t know. How could I?’
‘I mean, she wouldn’t just bring a thing like that out of the blue, now would she? She said to me that the man that did the London killing was at that dance. He was there the whole time with his wife. She was looking such a misery that Theresa said she couldn’t have been getting enough. That’s how it all started. She said the cow couldn’t be having it away, then she went into her own bit. That was to back her story up. She didn’t know anything else.’
‘That’s the truth, Josephine?’
‘She didn’t have to die, alone like that, just with those bastard coppers around her. All she knew was what I said. I doubt she even knew the man’s name.’
She had started to shout again, spitting out the unsaid accusation at Harry. The weakness had gone. The heat of her attack burst round the tiny marooned inside of the car.
‘You might as well have killed her yourself, Harry. She wasn’t involved in any way at all. You came here with your challenges, and the bloody games you play. And a wee girl dies who had nothing to do with it. There’s enough innocent people killed here without strangers coming and putting their fingers in and digging out more shit.’
She crumpled then. Sobbing rhythmically and noiselessly. Gazing into the steamed-up window beside her. The rain was still falling.
Harry was deciding what he should do on his return to Belfast. His ego was rumpled by the way the girl had broken through him. He ought to have killed her up there on the hill, but she had said she was no threat to him and he believed it. His ego was of less importance, though, than the news she had just given him. The man who he searched for had been at the céilidh the previous weekend.
She shook herself, trying to shrug away her misery.
‘Come on, I want a drink. There’s a pub just down the road. You can’t stop for the dead. Not in Ulster. Like they say, it all goes on. I should have dropped it ages ago. Come on, let’s go have a couple of hot tods.’
She leaned over and kissed him lightly, again on the cheek.
Then she began to adjust her face, working with deftness from the little pouch that came out of her bag, painting over the reddened and flushed valleys under her eyes.
When she had finished she said, ‘Don’t worry, hero boy, I won’t tell the big bad Provies about you. But if you’ve ever taken advice, I’m telling you, don’t hang about. Or whatever medal you’re after will have to go in the box with you.’
They drove down the hill to where the pub and petrol station were nestled in a redoubt cut out from the stone. He ordered the drinks she wanted — Irish, with hot water and sugar and lemon.
The faint sunlight that had seen them out of Belfast was long since gone as Harry drove back on the shiny, watered road into the city. They spoke hardly a word all the way, and Harry dropped her off where he had met her in the morning, on the corner of Grosvenor and the Falls. Just before he stopped he asked her where she lived, so that he could drop her at the door. She said it would be better at the main road.
‘When will I see you again?’ he said, as she climbed out of the car. The traffic was hustling them.
‘Next week, at Mrs Duncan’s. You’ll see me there.’
‘And we’ll go out somewhere? Have a drink?’
‘Perhaps.’
She knew so much more than she had wanted to, or was equipped to handle. What had started as something of a game had become considerable enough to subdue her into a morose silence most of the way home. She darted out of the car, and without a wave disappeared into the Clonard side streets.
Harry dropped the car off at the garage and walked back to Delrosa. His mind was filled with that conversation he’d had with Davidson in the garden. The loneliness factor. Sounded so astonishing when the old chap was trying to put it over as a problem. What had he said? ‘Unless you’re aware of it, there will come a time when you want to tell someone.’ Fumbling his way into it because it embarrassed him that his chosen man could possibly fall into so well-signposted a pit, embarrassed even to suggest it. And that’s the way it was, because Davidson knew what it was about, was the only one of them who knew what it was about. How many of the others could transpose themselves into the hostility of this community, live day-in, day-out with the fear and the strain and the isolation?
Don’t go on with it, Harry boy, let it rest there. Don’t let it infect you. The cancer of doubt spreads fast enough, Harry. Drop it.
Billy Downs decided he would go for Rennie the next day, Sunday.
The reports that were available from the minders who had been cautiously watching the policeman suggested that he made a habit of going to the interrogation centre on Sunday afternoons. He stayed a few hours and reached home around seven in the evening. It fitted with the plan that Downs had made. He discussed none of this with his wife, but as his preoccupation with the killing grew so they moved about their house, two strangers under the same roof. Life was carried on with a series of gestures and monosyllabic phrases.
Downs had been informed of the arrangement by which he would take possession of the Armalite rifle that he would use for the attack, and he had reported up the chain on the timing and the date that he would want the operation set in motion. It had been suggested to him that the Armalite was an unsuitable weapon for a close-quarter killing, but in the face of his wishes the point had not been pressed.
The huge power of the weapon excited him to such a degree that he could think of taking no other. The bullet that he intended should kill Rennie would leave the barrel at a muzzle velocity of 3250 feet per second. The statistics that he had read in a sales brochure astounded and exhilarated him. It weighed slightly less than seven pounds and would fit comfortably into the poacher-style pocket he had fashioned on the inside of his raincoat. And he would be far from his safe base area: if he were intercepted by the army or police then the sharp crack of the Armalite would be enough to send his enemy scurrying for cover for the few seconds he might need to get clear. He had asked for two thirty-round magazines for the weapon, just in case.