…'
'It is.'
It was past the time he was usually gone when he was going to work, so she would have known that he was ducking out, and he'd said that he wasn't taking the kids to school.. She threw him the coat to catch.
Siobhan flounced past him and threw on her own winter coat, and she picked up little Mary and pushed Francis and Doloures and Patrick out through the door, slammed it after her. His mother went into the kitchen. He leaned against the wall in the hallway and the emotion boiled in him. He heard Siobhan's car starting up, reluctantly, outside.
He didn't know whether he would see the kids again, and he hadn't said goodbye to them.
Fear and helplessness welled in him. He was trapped by the bitch. He could remember the first time…
They had been four years in England. Francis was born, and Doloures. Patrick was started. A good little business going, a fresh start, and more on the black than shown to the Revenue. A painter/decorator business in Acocks Green in Birmingham. Doing his own thing and also called in by the big builders, plenty of work and the past buried. Coming back late, drink taken, and waved down by the feckin' coppers. Blood test, urine test, three times over. He had a bank loan on the van and a mortgage on their brick-built home, two bedrooms and a back garden and perfect.
He could work out what had happened. They'd a Paddy in the cells, and they'd pumped his name into the computer. Booked him on Drunk in Charge, then held him on the Prevention of terrorism. All spilled out by the computer. 1974, five years, possession of a Luger pistol and Thompson sub-machine gun, Belfast Crown Court. 1979, three years, conspiracy to cause. explosions, Dublin Special Criminal Court. Less than frank, they’d said with the building society. Less than honest, they'd told him with the bank. Big trouble… He was looking at a driving ban, the calling in of his mortgage, the winding up of his loan, plus an exclusion order. She'd come to the cell, the third day. Very quiet, just business, none of the swagger and bully of the detectives.
She’d worn a navy suit. She'd had a typed-up exclusion order and the drunk in charge paperwork in her hand. She had stood in front of him, torn them both up, and gone to the lavatory and flushed them away. He could remember it still, the way that he had feckin’ dribbled his thanks to her. He’d eat from the bitch’s hand, then, now. They had walked out of the police station and left behind the detectives and the desk sergeant, and she'd looked at the lot of them as if they were beneath her contempt. In a cafe down the road, over two cups of tea that she paid for, she had told him she would be in touch, said she'd see him. A small smile on her face, like she'd know where to find him.
Vinny drove.
Jacko from Pomeroy was in the passenger seat, and Malachy from Coalisland was in the back with Mossie.
Vinny thought it downright daft to wear a bright red coat, the sort that couldn't help but be noticed. But he was only Vinny Devitt, the driver, and Mossie Nugent was the big cat… Not for Vinny to ask why.
They went up the mountain first, to the derelict barn that was screened by a conifer plantation. No talking in the car, the talking would be when it was over, time then for the laughter and the cheering and the unzipped excitement.
At the barn they collected the gun from the O.C. and the Quartermaster. It was for Jacko, and Malachy would feed the belt. Easy enough for Vinny to see that Jacko and Malachy knew the weapon, bloody great heavy thing… It was the first that Vinny knew of the plan, and Jacko and Malachy. They were talked through it by the O.C.
There was an old bedspread in the barn, pink flowers on yellow, and they wrapped the 50-calibre in it and carried it back to linear.
All of them quiet in the car when Vinny drove back onto the road that ran down the mountain from Altmore.
One of them had a beard that covered his throat. One of them had long greased hair onto his shoulders. One of them looked to be from the Pacific islands, perhaps Fijian. One of them was the cardboard city man. They all knew Cathy.
Bren watched from the colonel's office. It was her world and not his.
There was no tension in the room The colonel had gone because it was not his world either The plan was on the colonel’s desk with the coffee cups and the plate of biscuits and the ashtray that was already filled.
She hadn't talked about it in the car, just told him to drive to Dungannon, said what time they were expected, allowed him to get on with the job of reaching the barracks on her schedule.
They were planning a killing. That was their world and Cathy was a part of it. The world was Cathy and the calm light of her eyes, and it was four men wearing bulky black overalls and woollen caps that were folded up and could be pulled down for balaclavas.
No fuss and no hurry. Time to pour more coffee.
Bren knew they had been in the Colonel's office for hours because the room was fogged with cigarette smoke. On the floor, discarded amongst the big olive green back-packs, was the all-in anthology of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, open now at Act Two, Scene Two, King Lear.
Bren saw that she was not interrupted. She was part of their territory, as if by right… Bren wondered if it were just because she was a woman, or how it was that she had earned the respect of those hard men. Hard? Of course they were bloody hard. They were going out killing with no more fuss than Bren managed when he was off down to Mr Manjrekar's corner store With his weekend shopping list. He wondered whether Mr Willkins had the least notion of what was planned that morning, and whether Hobbes sat beside a telephone and waited for news.
He just wanted to be a part of her world, and share the light and warmth as did these four men.
Cathy said, ‘’..He’s wearing the red coat, that's what we agreed. He’d bloody better well better he wearing it. He's a dozy slob, but i think he took it on board. So just don't spoil my day, there's good darlings, just don't forget that it's a red coat, and if, God help us, they turn up in Pink Panther suits, my man is heavy, he’s big, he’s late thirties, going bald at the back, and he limps. And we don’t shoot limping grouse, do we? not out of season, anyway, eh, David?’’
Nothing flamboyant, not theatrical, None of the leadership crap, and nothing that was an excuse for feminine softness. She was amongst her own.
Cathy said quietly, 'Good luck.'
The semi-detached and whitewashed houses climbed the hill to the west of the Killyman Road. The barracks on the far hill, across the road, across the rough ground, behind the steel perimeter fence, dominated the estate. Smoke from living-room fires pushed from the chimneys. A child played in the road in front of his house with a tricycle. A doctor hurried back to his car. A baby, tightly blanketed in its pram, bawled with healthy lungs. A woman put down her heavy shopping bag, reached for her house keys. A young man walked to the newsagents for cigarettes, went slowly because he had time to kill and no work to go to. The estate ignored the soldiers who looked down at them from the watch- towers of the barracks, didn't speak to the soldiers when they patrolled through the back streets.
Mrs Byrne hung out her washing and didn't think much of the chances of it drying.
It was the Donnelly woman at the door.
Siobhan forced the smile, and she took the eggs. She said that it was so kind of her to think of them for fresh eggs again, they tasted so much better, didn't they, than the eggs from the shops. She enquired, caringly, whether the house was repaired. She told her that her Mossie had been busy, so busy, that was why he hadn't been round to help her with the house repairs.
Siobhan didn't ask her inside. She took the eggs on the doorstep. She was alone in the house and it was the way she wanted it. Grandma was gone walking Mary in the pushchair. Too great a confusion for Siobhan Nugent to invite her neighbour in for a cup of tea and a gossip about whose daughter was pregnant, whose son had found work, whose father was taken sick, whose uncle had gone bankrupt… Too great a confusion because of her husband… She closed the door.
She went back inside Too great a confusion for her. Her Mossie a tout, and her Mossie was gone today without explanation. After she had come back from the school, Siobhan had listened to every news bulletin on the B.B.C… coming close to one o'clock. One day it was going to be on the radio…
There were two in the ditch on the east side of the Killyman Road, where the brambles grew across the banks, hiding them. There were two in the car parked between two blocks of garages at the top of the estate.
