A Prospect of Vengeance

which was a short-lived splinter-group no one ever seems to have quite sussed out. But not to be confused with the INLA

— the Irish National Liberation Army — see?'

After Beirut this was peanuts. But, nevertheless, he had always steered Jenny away from Irish entanglements —

whenever that possibility had arisen; and (probably because of her divided family loyalties) he had never had any trouble there. So heaven only knew what she would make of this complication, then.

'But he was IRA — ultimately, Reg?'

'God only knows! When you get far out, on the edge . . . you don't know who you're really dealing with: it could be the really top IRA boyos, with their big cars parked outside their big houses in Dublin ... or it could be the Marxist-Leninists, pure in thought — an' put a bomb in an orphanage, if they reckoned it could further the workers' cause, long term ... Or it could be the Mafia or the KGB, doin' what comes naturally

— ' Buller shrugged. ' — if you want to know what Michael O'Leary was for ... then you'd best ask Colonel Butler — or maybe David Audley. But don't rely on whatever they tell you. So don't ask me, for God's sake!' Grin. 'But somebody peached on him — O'Leary — anyway. Yes.' Out of the shrug, and the grin, came recovery. 'The point is, O'Leary missed his target — all he got was half-a-dozen ducks, on a duckpond, when the bomb went off.' Genuine grin. 'So fuck him, then.'

'But he got away.' Deep inside Reg Buller, within the cynicism, there was a core of old-fashioned patriotism, like a dummy2

Falklands Factor, thirsty for victory after years of defeat.

'Didn't he? Until Thornervaulx, anyway.'

Buller shook his head. 'No. He got clean away. He was a pro, was O'Leary: he had his escape route all mapped out — they didn't get a smell of him, not a smell.' Shake became nod. 'He was a real pro.'

There was something not right here — something which did smell. 'What are you trying to tell me, Reg? He did get away, at first . . . But they did catch him — '

'No. That's just the story in the papers.'

And you never ought to believe what's in the newspapers.

And Buller had already told him that, anyway. So that was the end of the questions: he would wait now, for the answers.

Buller tossed his head, accepting his silence. 'Accident, I told you . . . Terry was driving down this road, in the rain . . .

Actually, he was goin' to interview this CND Vicar he knew, who was refusing to have a Remembrance Service, the next day. Because it was a Saturday — November 11. An' the next day was when they were all going to have the services, an'

Terry reckoned there might be a demonstration against the Vicar, an' he might be able to flog a story to Fleet Street. So he was just sewing up the loose ends, in his spare time.

Because he wasn't covering a football match, that Saturday afternoon.'

Ian drank another careful measure. It was now Saturday, November 11, 1978 ... on a wet afternoon, somewhere near dummy2

Thornervaulx Abbey in Yorkshire. And that was still a week away from Philip Masson's own last journey, to his shallow grave far to the south, anyway.

'So he was driving along, minding his own business — ' Reg Duller drained his glass, and lifted it towards the barmaid, catching her eye instantly, as Ian himself never could ' — an'

he heard this Police siren, in the distance — ' Down went the glass, but not the eye, which was fixed on the stretched black silk, and 40D-cups which barely restrained the advance of those splendid breasts towards them, past less favoured customers. Thank you, love. And my friend too, love.' Buller encompassed her, over-hanging- bosom and all, as she swept away his empty glass and replaced it with a full one, leaving Ian's unfinished one contemptuously, and was gone. 'An'

then he heard another bell ... so being Terry — or Tel, as we always used to call him . . . an' being properly brought up ...

he turned his car round, an' followed 'em.'

That was right: that was the old-style journalist, of Reg Buller's vintage, who followed the sound of the policeman's siren and the fireman's bell in the same way as the old-fashioned captains had steered their ships towards the sound of the guns, in the hope of bloodshed.

'Of course, the Police 'ud been out, all that weekend, running about like blue-arsed flies, after any word of O'Leary.' Buller shrugged. 'But the word was, they reckoned, he was long gone — Liverpool, or Glasgow, or Manchester . . . But long gone, anyway. But there was always a chance.'

dummy2

That was the old style: the best stories were always the ones that came out of nowhere, very often. The trick was to pretend that they were no surprise, and that you'd expected them all along, sooner or later, having your finger on the pulse of events.

'So he followed 'em — round the roads over the top, down in the Thor Brook there, over the narrow bridge, where you have to back up if you don't get halfway across, an' some other car has just got there before you — it's the original old bridge, that the monks built, there.'

More and more, the picture was emerging: like, out of the original 1978 mist-and-rain, in darkest and most back-of-beyond North Yorkshire, under the dripping overhanging trees in the deep valley of Thornervaulx Abbey, with the Police sirens shrieking anachronistically, to sound alarms which had not been heard there since the times of the wild Scottish raiders.