Duffryn spoke.
‘But it all fits with what we had from the hotel. The army man and the RUC. The bit we had about them putting a man in and then not telling the brass. We thought we’d caught the buggers griping about it. It has to be some nonsense drawn up by one of them bastards sat behind a desk in London, in the Ministry.’
Duffryn was little more than a name to the commander. He looked at him with interest.
‘You had a line on the man first, right? Through his accent? Where is he now? What’s covering him?’
‘He’s at the guest house, where he has his lodgings. It’s called “Delrosa”, run by Mrs Duncan, off the Broadway. She’s all right. He’s there in a back room that he rents. The front and back are watched at the moment and the lads have been told in the last hour or so that if he goes out he’s to be tailed. But they must stay right back.’
‘And the girl you’ve talked to, won’t she warn him?’
‘We told her not to. I think she understood. She won’t do anything,’ Frank said.
The commander lit his fourth cigarette in less than half an hour, pulled at it, forcing the smoke down into his throat.
‘I think we want him before we hood him. We would like to talk to him for a bit first. Pick him up and bring him in for a talk. Does he work?’
‘In a scrap yard. He leaves to walk there about eight, just a few minutes after perhaps.’
‘Take him when he’s walking. On the main road, get him into a car and take him up the Whiterock, into the Crescent, the house there we’ve used. I don’t want him killed unless it’s that or he’s away. Remember that, I want him chatted with.’
For Frank and Seamus it seemed the end of their part in the evening. They rose out of the chairs, but were waved down by the commander.
‘Where’s Downs now?’
The Brigade quartermaster said, ‘The message came through just before I left to come here. The wound he got, it’s a light one, in the arm. Flesh. It’s being fixed up now by the quack in the Murph. He’s OK, but he hasn’t gone home yet. The quack will want to keep an eye on him for the next few hours.’
The Brigade commander talked to no-one in particular.
‘What do they say when a driver’s been in a crash? A lorry driver, bus, heavy truck? That sort of thing. What do they say? Send him straight back out again. Don’t hang about fidgeting and mumbling about it. Get stuck in again. Downs can go on this one. His nerve wasn’t too good last night. He’ll need this to get him back into scratch again. He’ll want to retrieve himself a bit. Get him here in an hour. Downs can finish him after the talking to.’
It amused him: the fox turning back on the hound.
For Frank and Seamus the briefing was finished. They went out through the back of the house to where a car was parked some three hundred yards away, keys in the dash. Frank would drive on to the doctor and drop Seamus near his home.
Seamus Duffryn was frightened for the first time since he had become involved with the movement. He’d been present three months earlier at an interrogation. A kid from up in Lenadoon. The charge was that he had betrayed colleagues in the movement to the military. The muffled screaming of the youth was still in his ears, bouncing and ricocheting about. They’d burned his naked stomach with cigarette ends while he was strapped in a chair, with a blanket over his head folded several times to deaden the noise. He’d screamed each time the glowing ash met his skin, from a deep animal desperation and not with hope of release. Seamus Duffryn had become involved that night, and would become involved again tomorrow. The paper stuff he did, that was unimportant. This is when it mattered and you were either in the movement or you were out of it. There had been an awful, shaming thrill through his entire body when he saw the light grey material of the boy’s trousers turn to heavy charcoal. As the urine ran down the kid’s leg there’d been the steam rising through the trousers, and the hood had gone on, and the gun had been cocked. At the moment they shot him the kid was still screaming but uncontrolled.
If McEvoy was British army, how would he take it? Duffryn wondered. That was a nothing from Lenadoon. McEvoy would be different. How would he stand up to their interrogation and the ritual end?
He would find out by tomorrow night. He hurried on his way through the night to his home and his mother.
After he’d made his phone call to London Harry had spent the rest of the day in his room. Before dark he gazed mindlessly into the abstract of roofs and walls that was the view from his window. He had not gone down to Sunday high tea, and to Mrs Duncan’s enquiries only replied that he thought he had something of a chill coming on. He was going to have an early night, he shouted through the door. She had wanted to bring him a hot drink in his room, but through the closed door he managed to persuade her that there was no need.
He wanted to be alone, shutting out the perpetual tension of moving in company and living the falsehood that had been planned for him. That girl. It had upset him. Created imbalance in the delicate poise he had taken up. Blown by a silly girl who couldn’t stop talking. Up on a mountain, wind and rain, like some cigarette advertisement, and he’d chucked the whole operation. Ridiculous and, worse, so bloody unprofessional. He brooded away the hours. He’d put faith down on the line of a girl whose address he didn’t even know. What in Christ’s name would they be thinking in London when he put the request in for the special treatment for Harry’s bit of tail? Go raving mad, wouldn’t they? And reckon he’d twisted. No way they wouldn’t. And they’d want to get him out.
He’d heard all the radio broadcasts, searching for the formula announcement that would end it all. Arrest… Man wanted for questioning… London murder… Big operation… Tip off… Appear in court. That would be the jargon. There had been nothing.
He had steeled himself to what he would do if he heard of the capture of the man. He’d be out of the front door, straight out, with no farewells or packing of luggage, on to the Falls, and turn right along the main road, and then right again before the hospital and on down to the Broadway barracks, and in through the front door… But without the news he couldn’t end it all. He had to stay, finish the job. No arrest and it was all a failure, abject and complete. Not worth going back for, just to report how it all got boobed. Didn’t really matter what Davidson said. No arrest, no return.
But where was the bloody army? Why wasn’t it all wrapped up? Big enough, weren’t they? Got enough men, and guns, and trucks. He’s out there just waiting for you to go and get him. The National bulletins traced their way round the news; there was nothing from Northern Ireland.
The frustration mounted in Harry, welling up against his reason and his training. How much information had he pushed at them in London over the last two, three weeks? How much did they want? All sewn up, it should be, cut and dried, taped and parcelled — and now more delay. Through Josephine, streak of bloody luck there, about as much information had come out as he was ever likely to get his hands on. The long-term adrenalin was fading… he wanted out… he wanted it over… but when it was finished.
As the dusk came he unwrapped the Smith & Wesson. After locking the door he took the weapon to pieces and laid it out on a handkerchief on the bed. With a second, dirtied handkerchief from his pocket he cleaned the firing mechanism, then reassembled the gun. He would take it with him next morning to the yard. Put it in the bag where the sandwich box went. It was a sort of therapy, the gun, the instant pick-me-up. It had gone wrong. Nothing on the radio when there should have been. The girl, that was where it had gone wrong, with that bloody girl. Lovely face, lovely body, lovely girl, but that was where it all loused up. Nothing else, that’s the only point where it’s gone wrong, but that’s enough. Gossip, don’t they, and she won’t keep her mouth shut any more than the rest of them. Like she talked about Theresa, so she’ll talk about me. A lonely man in a back-room bedsitter. The gun was insurance, the disaster was less distinct.