The major who commanded the company had received only a short briefing. He had been told the man they were looking for was named Billy Downs, the address of his house, and that he was expected to search several houses. He was thirty-three years old, on his fourth tour to Northern Ireland, and as a company commander in South Armagh on his last visit had witnessed four of his men killed in a culvert bomb explosion. His hatred of the Provisionals was deep-rooted and lasting. Unlike some of his brother officers who respected the expertise of the opposition he felt only consuming contempt.
What Downs was wanted for he hadn’t been told, nor what his status was in the IRA. He’d only guessed the reason for the raid when they had unpinned the picture from the guardroom wall and given it to him. It was the photokit that had gone up five weeks earlier after the London shooting and remained top of the soldiers’ priority list. The intelligence officer down from Lisburn noticed the flash of recognition spread across his face as he looked down at the picture.
Once the street was sealed there was time to work carefully and slowly along the road. No. 41 was the third house they came to. The soldiers banged on the door with their rifle butts. The few who had seen the picture of the man they wanted were hanging on the moment of anticipation, wondering who would come and open the door.
From upstairs came the noise of crying, steadily increasing to screaming pitch as the family woke to the battering at the wooden panels. Downs’s wife came to the door, thin and frail in her nightdress and cotton dressing gown. A tiny figure became silhouetted against the light from the top of the stairs when she drew back the bolts, turned the key and stood against the soldiers. The troops in the search party pushed past her, huge in their boots and helmets and flak jackets. They raced up the stairs, equipment catching and bouncing off the banisters. A lieutenant and two sergeants. All had seen the picture, all knew what they were there for. The officer, his Browning pistol cocked and fastened to his body by a lanyard, swung his left shoulder into the front bedroom door, and bullocked his way to the window. The man behind switched on the light, covering the bed with his automatic rifle.
Two faces peered back at the intruders. Saucer-eyed, mouths open, and motionless. The troops patted the bodies of the children and pressed down the bedclothes round them, isolating the little humps they made with the blankets. They looked under the bed and in the wardrobe. There were no other hiding places in the room.
They had come in hard and fast, and now they stopped, halted by the anticlimax of the moment.
The lieutenant went to the top of the stairs and shouted down.
‘Not here, sir.’
‘Wait there, I’ll come up.’
The major came in and looked slowly round the room.
‘Right, not here now. But he has been, or she’s a dirty little bitch round the house. There, his pants, vest, socks. I wouldn’t imagine they lie round the house too long.’
By the window was the crumpled pile of dirty clothes underneath the chair that Downs used to hang his coat and trousers on at night.
‘Get her up here,’ said the major. ‘And get the floorboard chaps. He’s been here pretty recently. May still be in the house. If he’s about I want him found, wherever he is, roof, basement if there is one, wherever.’
She came into the room, her two younger children hanging like monkeys over her shoulders, thumbs in mouths. Like their mother they were white-faced, and shivering in the cold away from their bedclothes.
‘We were wondering where we might find your husband, Mrs Downs.’
‘He’s not here. You’ve poked your bloody noses in, and you can see that. Now get out of here.’
‘His clothes are here, Mrs Downs, you and I can both see that. I wouldn’t expect a nice girl like you to leave his dirty pants lying on the floor that many days.’
‘Don’t be bloody clever with me,’ she snarled back at him. ‘He’s not here, and you can see that, now get your soldiers out of here.’
‘The problem, Mrs Downs, is that we think your husband could still be here. That would be the explanation for his clothes being on the floor. I’m afraid we’re going to have to search round a bit. We’ll cause as little disruption as possible. I assure you of that.’
‘Big heroes, aren’t you, when you have your tanks and guns. Big and bloody brave.’
The soldier with the crowbar mouthed an apology as he came past her. He flipped up a corner of the thread-worn carpet and with a rending scrape pulled up the board at the end of the room. In four separate places he took the planks up before disappearing to his hips down the holes he had made. The major and his soldiers waited above for him to emerge with his torch for the last time and announce with an air of professional disappointment that the floor space was clear. Using ladders, they went up into the loft, shaking the beams above the major and the man’s wife, and swinging the light fitting.
‘Nothing up there either, sir.’
The ground floor was of stone and tile, so that stayed put, while the expert banged on the walls with his hammer in search of cavities. The coal bunker out in the yard was cleared out, the wooden framework under the sink taken down.
‘It’s clean, sir.’
That was the cue for her to return to the attack.
‘Are you through now, you bastards? All these men and one little house, and one wee girl alone with her kids, and it takes all of you and your bloody guns and Saracens—’
‘You know why we want him?’ The major lashed out. ‘You know what he did? We’ll go on till we get him. If we have to rip this house to pieces each week till we get him, we’ll do that. Doesn’t he tell you where he’s going at night? Doesn’t he tell you what he did last month? Try asking him one day.’
He strode out through the house, followed by his search team. It was three minutes after six o’clock. Failure and frustration was how the majority of these raids ended. He knew that, and he’d never lost his temper before, never gone overboard as he’d done with the woman in No. 41. He comforted himself on two points. It needed saying; and the intelligence officer who had tagged along hadn’t heard it.
Once the army had gone a clutch of neighbours moved into the house to gather round the woman and commiserate on the damage left behind. None knew of the importance of Billy Downs among the Provisionals and so news of the army outrage at the house would travel fast through the community. Yet those that came to dress the children and help in the clearing up and the making of tea and breakfast noted how subdued was their friend. Cowed by what had happened. That was not the usual way. The familiar reaction was to greet the going of the soldiers with a hail of insults and obscenities at their backs. But not this woman.
Once the friends and neighbours had left her, to get their own families ready for work or school or just dressed and fed, the words of the officer returned to ring in her ears. Quietly she padded about the house, her children in a crocodile procession behind her, checking to see which of her few possessions were damaged or tarnished or moved.
This was the confirmation. God, this was what she had feared. Right back to the first night back home after London, she had been waiting. So much wind this confidence he had, that no-one knew him. Like a rat he was, waiting in a barn with the door shut for the farmer to come in the morning with his gun and his dogs. The big, fresh-faced officer, with the smears on his cheeks, with his suspicion of a moustache and posh accent, who hated her, he had laid down the future. He had mirrored her nightmares and hallucinations while she lay sleepless beside her man. They would come, and come again for him, and keep on till they found him.