‘He was very cool. Not even sweat on his palms. I know, as I looked.’
It was into the afternoon that they called Frost back.
‘We think we’ve located the man you want. He’s Billy Downs, without an “e” on the end. Ypres Avenue, wife and kids. Very quiet, from what we’ve seen of him. Unemployed. His story stuck after the Garda ran a check on the alibi he gave us to account for his long absence from the area. There was no other reason to hold him. Like to point out that the chaps that have actually seen this fellow say that he’s not that like the pics you put out. Much fatter in the face, I’m told. Perhaps you’ll let us know what you want done. We’ve a platoon on immediate. We can see pretty much down that street: I’ve an OP in the roof of a mill, right up the top.’
Frost growled back into the phone, ‘I’d be interested in knowing if Mr Downs is currently at home.’
‘Wait one.’ As he held on for the answer Frost could hear the distant sounds of the unit operations room as they called up the OP on a field telephone. ‘Not quite so hot, I’m afraid. They log comings and goings. We think Downs left his home, that’s number forty-one, around twenty-five minutes ago. That’s fifteen-o-five hours precisely that he went out. But he goes in and out pretty regularly. No reason to think he won’t be back in a bit.’
‘I’d like it watched,’ said Frost, ‘but don’t move in yet, please. This number will be manned through the evening and the night. Call me as soon as you see him.’
Downs was on his way by car up the Lisburn Road at the time that the observation post overlooking Ypres Avenue was warned to look out for him. There were several subsequent entries in the exercise book the two soldiers kept for logging the comings and goings in the street. They had noted him as soon as he came from his front door and began the walk up the hill away from them to one of the decreed exits from the Ardoyne. When the message came through on the radio-telephone to the troops, Downs was just out of the heartland, standing in the no-man’s ground at the top of the Crumlin waiting for his pick-up. This was neither Protestant nor Catholic territory. Side streets on either side of the road shut off with great daubed sheets of corrugated iron. Two worlds split by a four-lane road with barricades to keep people from each other’s throats. Scrawled on one side was ‘Up the Provos’, and ‘British Army Out’, and beyond the opposite pavement the messages of ‘Fuck the Pope’ and ‘UVF’.
He was edgy waiting there in daylight beside such a busy road, one used heavily by military traffic, and the relief showed in his face when the Cortina pulled up alongside him, and the driver bent sideways to open the passenger door. The car had been hijacked in the Falls thirty-five minutes earlier.
A moment later they moved off, weaving their way through the city. By the crossroads in the centre of the sprawling, middle-class suburb the car turned left and up one of the lanes that lead to the Down countryside through a small belt of woods. They turned off among the trees.
The driver unlocked the boot and handed over the Armalite. It was wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. Downs checked the firing mechanism. It was a different weapon to the one that he had used before in his attack on the patrol, and was issued by a quite unconnected quartermaster. But the rifle came from the same original source — Howa Industries, of Nagoya in Japan. It had been designed as a hunting weapon, and that astonished him. What sort of animal did you take a killing machine of this proven performance to hunt? He released the catch on the stock to check that the folding hinge was in working order. That reduced the length of the weapon by eleven inches, bringing it down to less than two-and-a-half feet, so that it would comfortably fit into the padded inside pocket of his coat. He was passed the two magazines, glanced them over and fitted one deep into the attachment slot under the belly of the gun. He activated a bullet up into the breach, and flicked with his thumb at the safety catch to ensure it was engaged. The volunteer at the wheel watched the preparations with fascination.
With the stock folded, Downs pushed the rifle down into the hidden pocket.
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake don’t suddenly clear off or anything smart. Stick here. At least till midnight.’
They were the only words Downs spoke before he disappeared into the growing darkness to walk the half-mile towards Rennie’s house. The only words of the whole journey. The teenager left behind with the car amongst the trees subsided, shivering, into the driver’s seat to wait for his return.
The regular Sunday afternoon visit to the office to clear the accumulation of paper work off his desk was no longer a source of controversy between the policeman and Janet Rennie. It had been at first, with accusations of ‘putting the family into second place’ being levelled. The increasing depression of the security situation in the province had caused her to relent.
It was now understood that she and the two girls, Margaret and Fiona, would have their tea, watch some television and then wait for him to get home before bedtime.
Over the last four years Janet Rennie had become used to the problems of being a policeman’s wife. A familiar sight now was the shoulder holster slung over the bedside chair when he had an extra hour in bed on Saturday mornings, before the weekly trip to the out-of-town supermarket. So too were the registration plates in the garage, which he alternated on the car, and around the house the mortise locks on all the doors, inside and out. At night all these were locked with a formal ritual of order and precedence, lest one should be forgotten, and the detective’s personal firearm lay in the half-opened drawer of the bedside table, on which rested the telephone which, as often as not, would ring deep into the night.
Promotion and transfer to Belfast had been hard at first. The frequency of the police funerals they attended along with the general level of danger in the city had intimidated her. But out of the fear had come a fierce-rooted hatred of the IRA enemy.
Janet Rennie had long since accepted that her husband might not last through the troubles, might be assassinated by one of those wild-eyed, cold-faced young men whose photographs she saw attached to the outside of the files he brought home in the evenings and at weekends. She didn’t shrink from the possibility that she might ride in the black Austin Princess behind the flag and the band to a grey, country churchyard. When he was late home she attacked her way through the knitting, her therapy along with the television set. He was often out late, seldom in before eight or nine — and that was a good evening. But she felt pride for the work he did, and shared something of his commitment.
The girls, seven and four, were in the bright, warm living room of the bungalow, kneeling together on the treated sheepskin rug in front of the open fire, watching the television, when the doorbell rang.
‘Mama! Mama! Front-doorbell!’ Margaret shouted to her mother at the back, too absorbed to drag herself away from the set.
Janet Rennie was making sandwiches for tea, her mind taken by fish-paste fillings and the neatness of the arrangement of the little bread triangles. They had become a treat, these Sunday teas, the girls and their mother playing at gentility with enthusiasm. With annoyance she wondered who it could be. Which of the girls from the close was calling right at teatime?
The bell rang again.
‘Come on, Mama. It’s the front door.’ Margaret resigned herself. ‘Do you want me to go?’
‘No, I’ll do it. You stay inside, and you’re not going out to play on your bikes at this time of night.’
She wiped her hands on the cloth hanging beside the sink. Right from the start she ignored the basic rule of procedure that her husband had laid down. As her hand came up towards the Yale lock that was always on, she noticed that the chain had been left off since the children came back from playing with their friends of three doors down. It should have been fastened. She should have fastened it before she opened the door. But she ignored the rules and pulled the door back.