Harry had wondered how this moment would be. How he would feel if the man were dead, destroyed. There was no hatred, no loathing for the slight body that lay on the grit of the tarmac. There was no elation, either, that his world and his system had beaten that of the young man who they had told him was the enemy, evil, vermin. Harry felt only emptiness. All the training, all the fear, all the agony, directed to killing this awkward, shapeless nonentity. And now nothingness. He looked again at the wife as she stayed bent over her lifeless man, and began to walk up the hill out of the Ardoyne.
She was watching him, hands still on the man’s body, when the shot came. Simultaneously with the crack she saw Harry stagger, appear to regain his balance, and then career backwards, before thudding against the front wall of a house. His arms were pressed against the middle of his chest. Then he toppled in slow motion over onto the pavement.
In the OP it was Smith who was at the aperture, giving a continuous description to the lance-corporal who relayed the message back to headquarters over the radio telephone.
‘There’s a man running up behind Downs. With a shooter. A revolver, looks like, a little one. Tell ’em to shift ’emselves back at HQ. Downs has his hands up, and they’re talking. Not much, but saying something.’
From the telephone set Burns called, ‘What about the other bloke, they want to know, what’s he look like?’
‘Civvies, anorak and jeans. It’s a short-barrel revolver he’s got, not Downs… the other man. Scruffy-looking. He’s making a run for it, Downs is. Bloody hell, he’s down, tripped himself. Fuck me, he’s going to shoot him, he’s going to shoot him!’
High in the hidden observation post Burns heard the single shot.
‘I can get the bugger, can’t I, Dave? He just shot the other bastard. Waving a gun about and all that, it’s enough.’
Smith was manœuvring his rifle into position. The old Lee Enfield with the big telescopic sight, the sniper’s weapon, the marksman’s choice.
‘I’ve a good line on him from here. No problem.’ Smith was talking to himself, whispering into the butt of the rifle. Burns was motionless and watched from the back of the OP, nestled among the blankets and sacking as Smith drew back the bolt action, and settled himself, shifting his hips from side to side to get comfortable for the shot. He was a long time aiming, wanting to be certain the first time. The firing echoed round under the roof of the mill.
‘Did you get him?’ urged Burns.
‘A real bloody peach.’
The sharpness of the pain numbed Harry. As he lay, stomach down on the pavement, he could feel nothing, his head was facing the walls of the houses away from the street. Green moss rubbed close to his nose, and beyond that lay the jagged edge of a milk bottle, and, huge and high, a front doorstep. There was no understanding of what had happened. Just the noise, and the helpless collapse, the blow that had carried him from his feet.
He worked his right hand slowly from under him where it had gripped his chest. The fingers were scarlet and shiny. The effort was so great. No strength left, no power, and endless labour just to move an arm. The action of all the muscles, all working in his biceps, his heavy shoulders, and deep behind the ravaged rib cage, combined to bring on the first stabs of agony. Bruised from his fall, his face contorted with pain, the upper teeth clamping on the softness of his lip, he struggled to control the spasms.
And with the pain came the realization of what had happened. They’ve had you, Harry. As you stood there like a big idiot, consumed in your inviolability, they took you. So silly. Just standing there, in the heart of the Ardoyne, standing and waiting, and they obliged. His mind was clearing as the flesh and tissue round the great wound torn by the bullet throbbed out its protest. This is the way it ends, he knew that. Here against the dampened pavings, by the weeds and the fractured glass, among hatred and loathing. Some little swine out there with a rifle, taking a long time, waiting for the moment, not hurrying. That was the way death comes, Harry. Billy Downs already dead, the woman beside him; that was somewhere in the greater distance, away beyond.
Other faces were closer, sharp-etched now… Davidson, in the garden near Dorking — it’ll be dangerous, he had said. Hadn’t wanted to say it, thought it might frighten… Mary came closer to him, and the boys, big faces happy with laughter, all noise and running to him. Take hold, Harry, fight it.
The impact of the shot had flung Harry several feet back before it felled him. His hands with animal instinct had closed on his stricken body, the revolver careering from his fist and bouncing into the roadway where it rested.
Harry forced himself upwards, using his right hand to provide the lever till he could jackknife his lower body under him and spread the great weight from the arm onto his knees. The first time he failed, collapsing back into the pool of blood. Again he attempted it, this time with greater success, till, like a pantomime dog, he began to work his way up the hill. There were people at the doorways now, but none moved or spoke as the Englishman dragged his way past. A single child screamed as his opened coat slipped from his left hand fingers, and permitted a flow of blood down onto the ground and over the hardness of the pavement before his knees smeared its ordered passage.
A hundred pairs of eyes watched Harry move away, aware that this was the effort of a man already doomed but unable to accept it. These people knew the inevitability of death, knew how a man fought to stave off its coming, and knew from the signs when he would win, and when lose. The Englishman they knew would lose, the blood told them that, the whiteness of his face, the breathing, irregular and bubbling. And then they saw Billy Downs’s wife rise up from the road where her man lay and walk with quick, neat steps towards Harry. They saw that in her path was the revolver.
She bent down and picked it up. It was heavy, cumbersome in her small hand. Her index finger had to strain forward to find by feel the metal coldness of the trigger arm. She didn’t look at the gun, or check it as a man used to handling firearms would have done. Those people at their doors who saw themselves in line with her and Harry backed away, seeking the safety of their front doors, but the uninvolved stayed to see what would happen.
Eighteen inches from his head a door slammed, its noise breaking Harry’s thought, diverting his attention from his sole preoccupation of taking himself beyond the pain of Ypres Avenue, and then he heard the brush of her feet, scurrying closer to him. She walked on past him and then spun round, blocking his way till his face was close to her legs. Harry subsided backwards, his hand still holding his body up, but his weight down on his hips. He could see all of her from there, not just the legs and the feet, but her coat that was old and tired, her face once pretty and now hideous from the grief and shock of the last few minutes, and her short narrow arm, and the tight, pale-skinned clenched fist. And the revolver, too big for her, grotesque.
The barrel of the gun was steady, so were her eyes, nothing distracting her from the man near-prone in front of her.
She said, ‘You didn’t have to shoot my man. What was Billy to you? What did it matter to you, what happened to him? He was finished, broken, and you cut him down like a rat in the gutter. And you talk about rules and challenges. What rule was that, to kill Billy, hurt and unarmed?’
There was no fear in Harry now. It had all evaporated a long time back. The words came hard to him. ‘You know why he died, what he did. He was against us. Each was determined to destroy the other. He understood that.’