'Let's just take it one step at a time.'
The flight for Geneva left Bilbao airport, carrying Jon Jo Donnelly, travelling as James McHarg, on the wide route back to the mountain.
The Commander said, 'You say he's gone… well, all I can tell you is that the ferry ports, Channel and east coast, have been put on a high state of alert, and all the airports, and all the Irish routes, and there's not sight nor sound of him.'
Wilkins was the closed door. 'Is that so?'
'His landlady was adamant that he was headed for Germany or Holland…'
'Of course, what I would expect.'
'I'm going to crank Dublin up, just in case he's dumb enough to go direct…'
'I wonder if that's wise. I don't think so. Where are they now, their transferable goal posts, on the extradition issue? Close to the h alfway line? I wouldn't think it necessary to involve our Irish colleagues. I recommend the matter be resolved on our own grounds.'
'It's your funeral…'
Ernest Wilkins smiled. 'My funeral or my party, we'll have to wait and see.'
He despised senior policemen, and disguised his feelings under a bed of humility and politeness. They were such different men. He thought the policeman, the Commander of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, would retire to the boardroom of a major industrial company and augment a good pension with a fat salary. He, himself, and the office clock and the sherry gathering for colleagues in the Director General's office was beckoning, would slip away after thirty-two years of service to a Cornish cottage, to oblivion.. There would be no bar-fly anecdotes from Ernest Wilkins, only the closeted memories of the young men and young women that he had sent into the field.
With obsequious courtesy he escorted the Commander to the side-door exit of the building, then hurried back, not waiting for the lift, up the stairs to the Emergency Operations room. He was told Song Bird had rung for a meeting. He was told Parker and her minder were on the move. He felt a rare flush of excitement… he would detest the Cornish cottage and oblivion.
'… they's going to do a hit, a policeman.'
Cathy incisive. 'His name?'
'Browne. Detective Sergeant.'
'Working out of?'
'Dungannon barracks, Special Branch.'
'When?'
She was riding him, taking him, roughly, under her control.
'I don't know.'
'What do you mean, you don't know?'
'Wasn't told.'
'Why weren't you told?'
'They're keeping everything feckin' tight.'
'Where then?'
'Don't know that either.'
'What do you know, Mossie?'
'I gave you his name.'
'Tell me when.'
Mossie said, 'Want to do it fast. Want to hit him while the anger's hot on the mountain. There was plenty of love for Pius Blaney.'
Bren saw that Mossie couldn't keep his eyes from her face. He stood to the side of the quarry, a little away from them. Some of the time he listened closely, and most of the time he watched the road at the quarry entrance and the rim of the steep bank. The back-up was somewhere up the road, with difficulty squeezed on the telephone from Rennie.
'Heh, miss, you did well out there. But, Jesus, you frightened me. Can you's do your drinking in some other bar now?'
He heard her light laugh. 'How are they, our friends?'
'It was the O.C.'s wrist you broke, and you half bit off the Quartermaster's hand, the lad's in hospital…'
She gave him a new telephone number. Bren watched. A fox was slipping by the top of the quarry wall. He heard Donnelly's name. The fox stopped and stared at him, the intruder. He heard a sum of money mentioned. The fox darted away.
'Miss, if there's patrols and things there, if it's obvious they've been touted… it can come back to me.'
She slapped his shoulder. 'Just get on home, Mossie. I'll take care of you.'
Mossie's car, no lights until he was well down the road, skidded away.
He put his hand loosely on her shoulder. She let it stay there, only a moment, then shrugged it off.
Bren heard her mutter, 'Shit, why the hell did he have to tell me?'
17
She was her withdrawn and distant self. She had told him when they had come back from the meeting with Song Bird that she needed to sleep and given him a peck on the cheek at her door, told him when she would collect him. She had been full of the cold business of the morning and he had tossed through the night, alone in his bed, where the words of hope and light and a future had pierced his mind.
They were round Hobbes' kitchen table, dabbling with cornflakes and toast and coffee.
'It's just a problem we could have done without, but it won't go away, and it has to be addressed.'
Cathy said, 'The nub of it is Song Bird's physical security.'
'The nub of it – let me put it in a slightly different way – is that, to protect the policeman, do we endanger our Song Bird?'
Cathy said, 'Saturate the area round the policeman and you might just as well send up a barrage balloon trailing a message 'Come in Mossie Nugent, your time is very nearly up'.'
'I don't think I can be hearing you right, Cathy.'
'You said it was a problem, I've not disagreed.'
There was the quiet round the table. The neon beamed down on them.
It was still grey outside. There was a curry take-away carton on the draining board and an empty wine bottle. Bren wondered, in the silence, how much Hobbes minded that his wife was not over here with him.
'You're saying the policeman's nothing more than a nuisance…'
Cathy said, 'No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in a finely calculated arrangement of priorities, which I by God didn't ordain, Sony Bird comes first
It was a policeman's life, a man's life.
Bren was about to burst. The anger steamed in his tiredness.
'Hell of a shame he told you…'
Cathy said, 'But he did, and I told you…'
Bren's finger jabbed alternately at Hobbes and Cathy. Past breaking point. 'Jesus, this is not a bloody board game, this is just goddamn stupid. This is a man's life…'
Hobbes cut him off. 'What's your difficulty?'
Bren shouted, control gone. 'It's not a difficulty, it's a man's life.'
Cathy said, 'But it's Song Bird's life.'
Bren's fist slammed onto the table. 'It isn't one or the other. You have no choice but to protect D.S. Browne. You have no choice but to protect Song Bird. That's your obligation. You're not God, sitting in bloody judgement…'
'Steady down, young man.'
Cathy said, 'Put the lid on it, Bren.'
'Sorry, Cathy, this isn't the sort of thing you put a lid on. I was a party to Patsy Riordan being fingered, I have
