'It's just shit.'
She cried out, 'I was trying to tell our son that a man could die for what he believed in. You weren't here to tell him. I was here, I was with him, I was waiting for the priest to call. I was trying to tell him, in my way, the future of his father.'
He passed the boy to her. She saw only the great sadness in Jon Jo's eyes. Little Kevin clung to her.
She said, flat, 'Whoever it is, they'll take money for naming you, Jon Jo, as they always did on Altmore…'
He was gone through the door.
She was left in the silence of the night with the fright of the child waking in her arms and the cowering dog at her feet.
'Did you see something?'
'I can't be sure…'
'Either you saw something or you didn't.'
'I don't know.'
'Where did you think you might have seen something?'
'At the side of the barn, I thought something moved.'
'But not sure?'
'If there was anything, it certainly isn't moving now. It probably died of exposure.'
He panned the camera back and forth across the grey mist of the fields and inched the image along the dark outline of the hedgerows.
He saw nothing move. With the naked eye Bren could see the light burning in the farmhouse, and further away another light in the bungalow. He wondered if Mossie Nugent slept. His teeth started to chatter.
'You're right,' Cathy said. 'God, it's so cold.'
He could take her in his arms, he could warm her. But he stared into the screen, slowly traversed down the field, and back, slowly, on the path between the bungalow and the farmhouse, and back. He saw nothing.
The cardboard city man folded the map. Herbie stubbed out his cigarette. Jocko slipped the earpiece from his head, coiled it and put it back with the radio in the glove compartment. They were two miles from the farmhouse, by the most direct route. A foul place to be holed up for a long night on Altmore. The call had not come. The night watch was over. Herbie drove the car away.
Ernest Wilkins woke to the clamour of the alarm. He had been thirty years away, reliving the spat between Five and Six over the surveillance operation on Peter Kroger's place… damn good operation, the more so because Six had wanted in and had been seen off. None of their business… It was eighteen minutes past six.
Archie sat at the table smoking a Sobranie in a holder, his overcoat across his shoulders with a scarf round his neck. The electric fire was on, both bars burning.
'No calls?'
'Nothing.'
'Well, it's early days.'
'If you say so.'
It was his first waking thought, nobody at Curzon Street cared but himself. He could not at first find the slippers he had stowed under the bed. He reached inside his overnight bag for his washing kit.
'Don't you understand, Archie?'
'I understand, Mr Wilkins, what is happening in Northern Ireland. I have yet to grasp, I confess, why in the very heart of central London we have to camp like Boy Scouts…'
Wilkins put on his dressing gown, and said, patiently, 'Parker and Brennard will track their player to his meeting with Donnelly. This Donnelly is a psychopath who will kill without hesitation if he thinks he's at risk. Parker and Brennard will get close enough to identify him.
Where they will find him, I can't and they can't know. They may be able to call on the reserve and they may not. If not…'
'Christ, you haven't actually told Parker to…?'
Wilkins paused in the doorway. 'Parker will do what is necessary.'
' That's not our game, Mr Wilkins, that's the Gun Club's job.'
'If it goes wrong, then it'll be damage limitation in a hurry.'
Archie said, 'If it goes wrong then Parker and her toy boy will be in rather poor shape.'
'Well done, Archie, you finally grasped it.'
He went off down the corridor to the washroom, to shave and wash his socks. Oh yes, if it went wrong Parker and Brennard would be in rather poor shape. And yes, there would be huge potential damage to be limited. They would be coming off the mountain just about now. If they could spot the man at his house and whistle up the military, so much the better. If they had to use Song bird to take them forward all the way to Donnelly, so much the worse.
He had complained yesterday to House Services about the lack of hot water. It was lukewarm again. He shaved carefully, They ought to be safely back in Dungannon by now.
She swung hard into the gateway of the Mahon Road
Barracks. Bren had his I.D. card up for the sentry to see, but Cathy just waved and the soldier smiled his greeting and the barrier was lifted. He followed her to the Five building, up the stairs. The room was alive already, men and women at the computers and the radio operators craned towards their dials. The man, Jimmy, was coming across the area with a tray of coffee mugs and he grinned at Cathy and offered his cheek for a fierce, short kiss. Bren saw it, her belonging. Jimmy carried the coffee on towards the corner, and Bren saw that the back-up had beaten them home, Jocko and Herbie in their sleeping bags on the floor. The cardboard city man, as usual, was tilted in his chair with his huge stockinged feet on the table. He watched the wild cheerfulness of their greeting for Cathy. The cardboard city man was up on his feet, crashing away the chair, hugging her as if she was back from the other side of God knows where. Herbie was crawling out of his bag, sagging boxer shorts and white legs and gripping her hand.
Jocko was pushing himself to his feet, his bag still hanging to his waist, and Cathy giggling and unzipping him. Everyone was laughing. Bren stood back. She was amongst her own. He had been something to her when she was frightened half to death. Now she had no need of him.
Bren said that he would get the coffee and she didn't seem to hear him.
He went out into the corridor, to the cupboard at the top of the stairs where the fridge and the kettle were. More laughter from behind the swing doors. Jimmy stood beside him.
'You'll be wanting the tray, herself and you and me and a couple more on the radios. Did you have a good night?'
'Who are they, for God's sake? We saw bugger all.'
'Your back-up? Didn't they tell you? No, they're not the best with the social graces.'
Bren said evenly, 'I don't seem to get told much…'
'It'll come, don't push it… The tramp is Sir David Wain- wright, Baronet, Grenadier Guards, had the Military Cross for some do on the road to Nasirayah in the Gulf, rich as Croesus, soldiering's just a hobby
… Herbie's on his sixth tour here, five kids at home, they're all Northern Ireland babies, there'll be another when he's posted back, super gardener, takes all the prizes round here with his onions. Jocko's the Military Medal from Oman on his first tour abroad. He's a great talent with his water colours, only drawback is that they're all of the Brecons. I've a couple at home.'
The kettle was boiling. 'And who are you?'
Bren said, 'Oh, I'm nothing. I just trail around after Miss Parker.'
'It's meant kindly.'
Bren spooned the coffee into the mugs 'And who's she?'
'I doubt any of us know that…'
He poured the boiling water.
'… and I doubt any of us'll give up trying to find out…'
He picked up the tray.
'… You're a lucky man to work with her.'
Bren carried the tray back into the work area. The cardboard city man was hunched forward in his chair.
