how's
Mossie could have run clear from the guns, him with a bad leg…'
He heard the voice in the darkness ahead of him.
'Important man, a tout on Altmore. They'd play big stakes for an important man.'
'What'll you be wanting of me?'
'That you hold your tongue.'
There was the light tread of the boots. There was the swing of the back door of the garage. He waited until there were no more sounds, only the wind on the garage roof.
He saw that the back door had been jemmied open. He had been in the house and he had heard nothing.
It had been taken from him, the command of the East
Tyrone Brigade. Mossie had told him that he would still be O.C. after Jon Jo returned, but the command had been lifted from him. There had never been any arguing with Jon Jo Donnelly. He pushed the broken door closed.
While they did a check-list Jimmy fussed around them, and the cardboard city man and Jocko and Herbie were kitting up. Thermal underwear, lightweight boots, camouflage denims, balaclavas, mittens. They had swilled out their mouths and there would be no more cigarettes, and there had been no soap used. Their faces were smeared in the camouflage cream that broke the outlines and blunted the skin colour.
Bren felt the pressure growing on him, Plastic bottle and the silver tinfoil and cling-wrapped sandwiches.
The short-barrelled rapid-fire Heckler and Koch rifles, with the long-range sights and image intensifiers; the heavyweight Browning 9 mms and shoulder holsters; the radio that would fit into the rucksack; the cellular telephone; the ammunition magazines, four loaded for each of the rifles, and three loaded for each of the Brownings; binoculars; medical kits which she had not allocated to them before. He thought of his mother and father, feet in front of a winter fire, television on and her knitting and him reading the evening paper, and their not knowing what their son did, and how they would cope with a visit from Mr Wilkins if it didn't work out. His jeans were dank from the previous night's soaking and mud bath, not yet fully dried out even after a day's break on the radiators, his shirt was grimed, his sweater smelt.
Bren looked up. Across the far side of the area was the bank of television sets. Second from the right, third rack from the bottom, the view of a farmhouse and a bungalow. The back-up was ready to leave.
The man, Jimmy, said, 'Good luck, all, don't worry on it and just know that we're here through the night. And if it's tonight then give the bad boy one from us…'
The Quartermaster swore, told his woman he'd drink taken, couldn't drive. His woman told him it had never made a fig of difference before, that he was to go and collect the girl from her friend's, that any decent father would think more of picking up his daughter on such a night than filling his gut with drink.
He lived on the edge of the village. His garage was filled with the new linoleum he was to lay in his kitchen and the new units. His car was out in the road because he hadn't bothered himself when he had come home to get out and open the gates and bring it onto the driveway. It was dark out on the road because the soldiers saw to it that the street lights were kept off, and bloody dangerous it made the road for women and kids and the elderly… A faint light only, from the gap in the curtains of the front room.
The figure came fast from the shadow of the hedge opposite. He saw the bulk of the man's body and the dark of his face and of his clothes.
He thought he was about to wet himself. If he hadn't been petrified still, mind swirling on the Protestants, then he'd have turned to run.
He heard the light chuckle, like the man in the darkness knew he was scared half to death.
'Heh, it's me, it's Jon Jo.'
'Shit, you…'
'It's Jon Jo, and I'm back.'
The Quartermaster wiped the sweat off his forehead, felt the rubbery weakness in his legs. 'Jesus, you give me a turn… Jon Jo, feckin' great to have you back, big man.'
'Good of you to say that.'
'How's you, how's Jon Jo?'
The Quartermaster knew that Jon Jo Donnelly was thirteen years younger than himself. He could remember his own slow advancement through the Organisation, and he could remember the shooting star that had been young Jon Jo before he had gone away. Right from the day of his recruitment going his own way. Calling for a weapon to be brought to him, or for explosives, never discussing and never justifying, his own man. The Quartermaster wouldn't have dared say so, but the way Jon Jo Donnelly treated those around him was like dirt.
He had been told once that Jon Jo had gone to shoot a U.D.R. man the far side of 'gannon, and he’d found on his way to the hit a policeman, off duty, walking his child on the roadside, and he'd shot him instead, and finished him between the eyes with the kiddie half over him. A feckin' haul man, and the world a safer place with him on the mainland.
'I heard there was a tout on Altmore.'
The Quartermaster gulped. 'I know nothing… but they took the Riordan boy.'
'Did you reckon Patsy Riordan could have touted?'
'Honest?'
I’m asking what you thought.'
I thought the boy was an idiot,' the Quartermaster blurted. The rain spat on the shoulders of his jacket and the legs of his trousers. Iwas quiet around them, He could hear the television from next door. He thought that if Jon Jo Donnelly were back then the killings would go harder, and the army would sit heavier, and that the Brigade officers would be dragged from their houses more often for the cells at Gough Holding Centre. He hated the cells, and the detectives, and the snipe of the questions and the curl of the cigarette smoke, and the hammer of the doors locking and closing, and the high bars on the windows.
'You keep your silence.'
'You don't have to worry about me, Jon Jo.'
'I wouldn't ever worry about you…'
And he was gone. The Quartermaster's knees shook. He reversed his car and thumped the kerb opposite and the rain pelted into the windscreen and twice he cut the verge as he drove to get his daughter from her friend's.
Hegarty crossed the bar to him. The dog followed the old bastard to where Mossie sat alone. Mossie thought it a crying shame that the dog's coat wasn't brushed to rid it of the burrs and the knots. Hegarty leaned across the table, stale tobacco breath in Mossie's face.
'He's back, Mossie, I's seen him,' he whispered.
'Who's back?'
'Jon Jo's back.'
'That's not safe talk.'
'I's seen him on the mountain. I's seen him where he left his guns before he went away.'
'That talk's not good for you.'
'I's not afraid. Just telling you that he's back,' and he shuffled himself back to the bar and his drink.
The light flashed. Bren wriggled to pull the headset over his ears. He had the pencil light and his biro and the pad of paper. It was Jimmy.
Song Bird had telephoned that Jon Jo Donnelly was back, living rough on Altmore. Cathy was half across his body, reading the message.
'About bloody time,' she murmured.
Bren thought of how, one after the other, Hobbes would hear, Rennie would hear, and Wilkins would hear and he might even clap his hands and say that it was all going according to plan. And there, in that sodden, freezing hide, on the edge of the great God Almighty plan, Bren thought, what he minded most about was the sweet weight of her against her against his right side. Digging into the left side of him, where they Could be reached, were the rifles, on safety. The back-up thought he would just be the bloody gun- bearer for her. He didn't know whether they were right.
