Harry moved on past the car and up to the junction of the side street and the Falls, where the Catholic community came into town, and where the traffic snarl-ups were beginning.
The side of the road that Harry walked on, though, was virtually clear, with just an occasional car speeding past him. He was a punctual man. The army and his aunt’s upbringing had disciplined him in this, and his lateness this Monday morning annoyed him. He checked with his left wrist to see how far behind the morning schedule he was, and realized with a suppressed oath that he had left his watch behind… Where?… Not in his room, not at breakfast… in the bathroom after shaving. He was thirty yards into the Falls, the guest house some seventy-five back round the corner. Damn and blast it. Only a hundred yards back to get it. He wavered. And then, a hundred yards back to where he was now. Two hundred yards. Nothing. It’s a naked feeling without a watch. Not as bad as leaving glasses behind, or your fly unzipped, but an irritation. Harry swung on his heel and walked back towards Delrosa.
As he turned the corner Duffryn was beside the driver’s door of the car, at the handle and in the process of opening it. Frank was already in the back seat, and the man coming out of the house last was halfway between the front door and the car.
For a moment all four men froze.
Harry, mind racing like a flywheel, trying to put a situation and background to the familiarity of the face in front of him.
Where? Where did that face come from? Find it.
It was fractional, the lapse of doubt before the image slotted. The dance, the woman in yellow, the army crashing in, and as the concentration lasted so the face confronting him across the street suffused into the detail of the photokit picture. Outline of cheekbone structure, that matched. More so than when the man had been at the club, the contours of the flesh on the face merged with the painstaking impression built up in London. Perhaps it was the strain Downs had been under these last hours, or the pain from the wound, but the features at last resembled those the old lady had seen in the park, that the girl in the Underground station had stared at as she fought to keep her balance.
The first movement. Harry reached into his anorak pocket, thrust deep with both hands to pull out the pistol. He dragged at the white towelling, and ripped it from the blackness of the gun, tearing a ladder of bright cotton on the foresight. Thirty feet away Duffryn flung himself face down behind the car, his mind clouded by the sight of the gun in the enemy’s hand. Frank jack-knifed his body over the front passenger seat to open the glove compartment where the Luger lay, stretching himself over the obstacle of the headrest. Downs bent low, ducking forward towards the back of the car. Out of sight and to the rear right door beyond which his beloved Armalite was resting.
Aimed shots, Harry boy. Don’t blaze. Aim and you’ll hit the buggers. He shrugged the duffel bag from his shoulder onto the paving stones, and, legs squat and apart, brought the revolver up to the aim position. Knees slightly bent, body weight forward, both arms extended and coming together with the gun at eye level. The classic killing position. Hands and gun as one complete sighting apparatus. Squeeze, don’t jerk the trigger. Take it gently. The thumb of the right hand fumbled forward, rested on the safety catch in the ‘on’ position, and eased it forward.
In the big ‘V’ of the arms, reaching to the barrel of the revolver, was the contorted shape of Frank, still stretching for the Luger. Harry steadied as the man lurched back into the rear seat with the gun in his hand, and fired his first shot. The left side of the rear window disintegrated, and Frank jolted as the bullet hit him in the throat. The effort of getting at the Luger had denied him a clear look at Harry. Bewilderment was spread over his face as he subsided onto the back seat with a rivulet of crimson flooding down onto the collar of his shirt. Not in itself a fatal shot, but it would become one if Frank did not get immediate hospital treatment. He was out of Harry’s sight now. The Englishman stood stock-still, looking for the next target. Come out, you bastards. Show yourselves. Where’s the bloody man we want? Which of you has the next gun? Who shoots next? Steady, Harry boy. You’re like a big lamp-post up there, you berk, right in the open. Get some cover.
Harry knelt on the pavement.
‘Come out with your hands above your heads. Any attempt to escape and I’ll shoot.’
Good control, Harry, dominate the buggers.
Downs whispered to Duffryn as they huddled on the reverse side of the car.
‘Make a run down the hill. He’ll not hit you with a hand gun. But for God’s sake run — and now!’
He pulled Duffryn past him and shoved him out into the open and away from the sanctuary of the car. Downs shouted after him, ‘Run, you little bastard, and weave…’
Duffryn, in deep terror, bolted from the cover. Out of control and conscious only of the empty space around him he sprinted down the street in the direction of Delrosa. His intention was to shift direction from right to left and to change his speed at the same time. The effect was to slow him down and make him the easier target. Harry fired four times. By the time he pulled the trigger for the second time he had sensed that he was after a man who had never faced this type of situation before. He heard Duffryn sob out as he ran, pleading, merging with his shout as the third shot caught him between the shoulder blades. Duffryn cannoned forward into the lamp-post, leant spread-eagled against it for a few seconds, and then slid down to become a shapeless mass at its base. The fourth bullet, unnecessary, jolted into his sluggish body. Duffryn would live; neither of the hitting bullets had found a critical resting place.
Now that he was down and stationary the confusion ebbed, and clarity came to the young intelligence officer. The enemy would kill him. No doubt — certainty. It seemed not to matter. There was hurt but not so much as Duffryn had expected. He was puzzled he could barely picture the face of the Englishman who had shot him. The clothes he could see, and the gun resting between the hands and the kick as it rocked back when Frank was shot. But there had been no face. The gun obscured it. He had not even seen his enemy. He never would now.
The moment that Duffryn had run Downs eased open the front door of the Escort, forced himself upwards into the driving seat and started the engine. The four shots that Harry had fired at the decoy — the hare with the job of distracting him — had given Downs sufficient time to get the car rolling in the direction of the Falls.
Harry swung the revolver round tracking his attention away from the fallen boy to the moving car. He saw Downs’s head low over the wheel before it swung lower still, below the dashboard. That was the moment he fired, knowing instinctively as he did so that he was going too high. The bullet struck the angle of the roof of the car, exited and thudded into the wall of the house opposite. Count your shots, they always drilled that. He had done, and he was out, chamber empty, finished, exhausted. Three more cartridges in the picnic bag, down at the bottom below the plastic food box and the coffee flask. Frantically he broke the gun and pushed the used cases out so that they clattered and shone on the pavement. He slid in the three replacements, copper-plated ends and grey snubnosed tips.
Downs was out in the traffic of the Falls, desperate to avoid the cars round him, but unable to escape from the conformity of the Catholic route into town. As a reflex Harry ran after him, revolver still in hand. He saw cars shy away from him as he came out into the traffic lanes, heard the grind of gears and scraping of brakes as men tried to put space between him and themselves. It was as though he had some plague or disease and could kill by contact. His man was edging away when Harry worked out the equation. Nine cars back was a Cortina Estate, crawling with the others and unwilling to come past the man waving his revolver. Harry ran to the passenger door. It was unlocked. As he looked into the driver’s eyes he shouted at him.