site he had gone to the lavatory and tried to rearrange the elastoplast so that it held better. The roll of elastoplast was at home. He didn't know where she, the bitch, was. He didn't know whether the triple signals had been received. It was his instinct to stand away from the car. To be out of the car gave him…
The light beam hit his face.
Mossie screwed his eyes shut, then blinked, then turned away from the light. He looked back into the light, into the blindness. The light wavered off him and swept the car.
''Tis you, Jon Jo…?'
The light came back to him, held him. He put his left hand out to shield his eyes.
'… It's a fine thing that you're back, Jon Jo… It's you, Jon Jo…?'
Never moving off him, holding him like the rabbit that the foreman thought he had come to shoot.
'Heh, can you take the feckin' light off me, Jon Jo…?'
The rain was in his face. His finger was on the button. He thought that the movement of his finger would be seen.
'Put the thing off, Jon Jo.'
The light died.
Mossie pressed the button. He pressed it twice.
'Where is you, Jon Jo? Will you stop your games? Where's you at?'
Only darkness in front of him.
'I was your friend, Mossie…' Behind him.
Mossie turned. The wind now pricking at the back of his neck.
'My friends are for keeping, Jon Jo.'
He started forward towards the voice.
'Well, I've a problem with that friendship.'
'You've no problem with me…'
Sideways on to him now, the voice.
'Stay where you are, Mossie… There's people telling me about Patsy Riordan.'
'What's they telling you?'
'That Patsy Riordan never had the wit to tout.'
'Security said he did.'
In front of him. Mossie spun again to face the voice.
'How long did they have him?'
'You tell me, Jon Jo, you've been listening to the talk.'
'What did they do to him?'
The voice so threatening, so quiet. He strained to hear. 'How the feck do I know? I wasn't there.'
'What do you think they did to him?'
'Roughed him a bit…'
'That what you think they do to touts, Mossie? Gone soft in security, have they? Just roughed him?'
The voice circled him. The voice to the left of him and then behind him and then to the right of him. He no longer turned to face it. He stood his ground. His finger was on the bleeper-box button. More shit scared than he had ever been. He didn't know whether they were out there, whether they were close, or whether they were drinking feckin' coffee in feckin' Belfast. He had only her word.
'I'd have said they went heavy on him, Mossie.'
'Why don't you ask them as was there?'
'If they'd gone heavy on him, Mossie, what'd he have done?'
'I don't know, Jon Jo, and…'
'You don't know much, Mossie. What would you have done?'
'I'm not a tout, I can't say…'
'Let's say they're hurting you, Mossie. The pain's bad and they're telling you that's for starters. The pain's going to be worse, it's only the beginning. Then they tell you that if you cough it, if you tell them what you know, then, perhaps, it's going to be settled. That's what they do, Mossie. They give it you hard and they give it you soft, but the harder gets worse till you're crying louder for the soft. What I'm saying, when the hurting's bad they offer you a way out. You agree with me, you'd want to take the way out?'
'It's not for me to say.'
Close to him, right behind him. Mossie half jumping. The fist against his shoulder, then the barrel of the weapon cold against his skin.
'He'd talk, Mossie, don't you reckon so? He'd be messing his pants and he'd be talking. Isn't that what you'd be doing, Mossie?'
'I don't…'
'But he didn't. There was no confession from Patsy Riordan.'
The muzzle of the gun was off his neck. The fist was away from his shoulder. His stomach was falling, his knees were quivering. He should never have come, and he didn't know whether she, the bitch, was close.
'Perhaps he didn't confess because he'd nothing to confess to. You're a clever man, Mossie, that make sense to you? What you looking for, Mossie? I'm here, I'm in front of you. I'm not behind you… Are you looking for your friends, Mossie?'
'That's just daft talk.'
'Have you got some problem, Mossie?'
'Damn right. You's my problem. All your smart talk is my problem. .. I've had this shit. I don't need you telling me about the Riordan boy.
I told the man from security. I was clean, clear.'
The soft voice in darkness. 'It's what I heard.'
'Well, hear this, too, Jon Jo. We've been fighting over here, perhaps you didn't read our papers when you were in England. We have a hard war here. We've got more on our plates than stupid feckin' tossers of English policemen. We've got the real war here, not the war against women and kids…'
'I heard. I heard you were doing well… And I heard there was funerals.'
'Wars go hard. Here we fight, we don't hide.'
'That's what I don't believe about you, Mossie. I think you hide a lot.
If I roughed you a bit, Mossie, if I slapped you round a bit, would you slip some of what you hide?'
He was gone. He knew he was gone.
He waited for the blow, the punch, the gun barrel. It was in his mind, when the bitch had come to the police cell and torn up the charge sheet, and he waited for the fist. He thought of the meetings with her, the lay-bys and the car parks and the quarry off the Armagh road, and he waited for the boot. He had run from the soldiers, and the Devitt boy and Jacko and Malachy had been on the pavement and the gutter behind him, and the red anorak he had worn had streamed in the wind.
He waited. He didn't know whether Jon Jo circled him, whether he was behind him or in front of him.
'What's touts for, Mossie?'
He sobbed the words. 'For killing, touts is for killing.'
Behind him, savage cold. 'Take your hands out of your pockets, Mossie…'
His finger drifted on the button. There was no strength in him. He could feel the button. He had neither the strength nor the trust to press the button.
'… Take your hands out of your pockets, Mossie, and put them on the top of your head…'
Mossie did as he was told. He always did.
'… Kneel down, Mossie…'
He knelt and the wet was on his knees, and the tears were on his face, and the box cut into his groin, and the gun's muzzle was against the nape of his neck.
'How long have you been touting, Mossie?'
He could see, but he could not hear. Bren could see through the image intensifier on the Heckler and Koch. He was too far back to hear. He had seen Jon Jo Donnelly circling Song Bird, now he could see Song Bird kneeling and the grey-green form of the target above him. The cross-hairs were on the target. The voices were a murmur, mixed with the wind and the rain's fall and the stream's clatter, too indistinct for him to him to hear. It was for
