Cathy to do it… For Christ's sake, woman, do it… Time spiralling, the opportunity spilling down the drain. He didn't know why she didn't shoot. He lay on his stomach.
The trees were around him. The kneeling figure and the standing figure, sharp in the lens at fifty paces in the clearing, close to the road and the bridge.
How much bloody longer did she want?
Her voice.
The hissed urgency.
‘’I’m blocked, bastard trees, can't aim, I've only 20 per cent target…’’
He had is finger inside the trigger guard. His thumb eased the safety. He had the butt against his shoulder. He had the scope against his eye. So clear in front of him. He could see the face of the target… His finger rested on the trigger. Where were the boys? When it was their work, where were they? 'Do it…'
Jon Jo heard what he said.
Mossie said, through the tears, 'It's what they made me. They made me a tout…'
He had the weapon's barrel hard against Mossie Nugent's neck. The questions, they'd been easy. The answer came so feckin' hard.
'… You don't know what it's like when they've trapped you. You wouldn't know, Jon Jo. You's trapped, and they's the claws in you.
You's can never back away.'
The answer came so hard to him. The answer was harder than anything that he had known. Mossie Nugent, snivelling, blubbering bastard, had been calling at his Attracta's. He was gone now anyhow, but the answers made it right. The answers came from a man grovelling, and he was crying for mercy.
'It's your own friends. What meant anything to you? Did you take their money, Mossie…?'
'Don't kill me… I'll go and never come back.'
The cold came again to Jon Jo. 'Would you tout on me?'
'I's trapped, don't you see?'
'You'd tout on me?'
'Oh, Jesus. It was you special that they wanted.'
He heard the plea in the voice. It was the cry for forgiveness. He had not heard a cry from two schoolgirls, nor from a schoolboy buying a ticket at a railway station.
The pistol shook in the grip of his hands. He understood. Stay- ing too long. Shouldn't have come, shouldn't have stayed. Should have been in the caves by now. Should have been gone.
'I'll not hurt you, Mossie. I'll…'
He would shoot and he would run. The barrel was at the bone of the neck…
Jon Jo felt himself lifted. He was careering back. The gale punch had whipped him. He tried to hold his feet, and fell, and he tried to stand again and he slipped. No sound around him, and no movement. Tried to crawl and had no strength. And the pain had come, exploding in him.
Bren lay on his stomach. The slammed weight of the recoil had hit his shoulder. The blast of the noise had killed his ears. He followed the target through the haze of the image intensifier. His target stood again, fell again, and crawled. Bren could not move. She was at his ear.
'Christ, you cut it fine…' He saw Song Bird crumpled in front of him, his head in his hands and his head bent down to his knees. She was shaking at his shoulder and then she punched it. 'Bloody good shot, Bren. Well done…' She was standing above him. He heard nothing, but he saw the flash of light behind her. The flare burst, brilliant bubbling red in the night sky. The light of the flare reflected back from the low cloud. 'Come on, old thing, don't just lie there.' And then the crisp belt of her voice into the radio.
They had been at the door of the farmhouse.
They had heard the shot, booming, echoing down off the mountain in the wind. They saw the bright blood colour of the flare.
Little Kevin was against Attracta's leg. They stood at the door and Siobhan was on the path beyond the step. They watched the tumbling dying of the flare.
Attracta said, 'My Jon Jo, he's up there.'
The taste of the tea was in Siobhan's mouth, and the warmth of the kitchen still lingered around her.
The voice of the boy babbled, muffled in the skirt against his mother's leg. 'The journeymen tailors'll get the dragoons to kill the patriot. It's the touts that'll get him. Ma, is that the end of the story?'
Siobhan Nugent went to Attracta Donnelly. Mossie's wife's arms were around Jon Jo's wife's neck. She kissed the face of her neighbour. She ran the length of the front path.
The telephone was ringing, Charles was first to it. Wilkins watched…
Charles held the telephone against his ear, and there was the dry, droll smile on his face.
'I'll tell him, he has been very anxious to hear… Goodbye.'
It was the moment of triumph or the moment of failure. You never could tell with Charles, infuriating man.
'Splendid news, Ernest… your wife, the plumber's in at last, the immersion's working again. She thought you'd want to know so you wouldn't worry…'
He'd kill that woman. So help him, he'd do a life sentence for her. He slumped against the wall. His head was close to the life- size photograph of Jon Jo Donnelly. The telephone rang. Again Charles beat him to it.
'An incident on Altmore. An incident? Is that the best you can do? It looks to me as though Mr Wilkins could use a little bit more detail
…
Ah yes, thank you, Jimmy, a shooting incident. That's more like it.
What shall I tell him? Three hundred rabbits believed seriously injured
…? You'll come back if you get an exact head count, bless you, Jimmy.' Charlie put the receiver down. 'Well, you heard what the man said, Ernest. Rather a confused picture on Altmore just at present.'
He wanted him dead. He gazed at the photograph. Too damned old for it all. The shame surged in him. He wanted him dead, killed.
He heard the voice, the command shout.
'Stay still. Don't move, Mossie.'
The eye of the night scope was on the figure. The figure crawled a few inches at a time towards the far tree line. The figure struggled to be out of the clearing. He had done it. He had cut the figure from his legs, reduced him to a crawling effort of escape. The shadows swam around him. Coming quickly and coming silently. He never took the night scope sight away from the target figure, but he saw them running, the shadows, hunched and bent. A shadow merged with her, then moved on. They were spread out, three of them. Two shadows, from opposite sides, ringing the clearing. The third s hadow away from her and then forward to the still kneeling Song Bird, crouching over him. The protection had arrived. He watched the shadows, sometimes he lost them in the tree shapes, sometimes he saw them clear. Flitting shadows that closed on the target figure. He could almost have shouted out to the fallen man that the danger was on him. Bren watched in the image intensifier. Too late to warn the target. They were black in the scope, one tall and one short, one who painted water colours and one who grew onions. It was because of what he had done, and because of what she had told him to do. The shorter man going in, grabbing the weapon from the target's hand. No resistance. The second figure moving forward. It was very quick. The boot onto the small of the back of the target, the weapon pointing down. It was the moment when Bren closed his eyes, and the moment of the crash of the single shot bouncing in his ears… and then he heard the first stirrings of the helicopter rotors.
The light flooded down from the helicopter. Through the night scope the clearing had seemed huge, but the light from the helicopter shrunk it. Bren stood up. The Heckler and Koch hung against his leg.
It was cardboard city who had gone to Song Bird. He shouted at Bren.
'Make safe your weapon.'
They were the professionals, and they had not been there…
He wanted no more part of it. Cathy had the radio across her lace.
The body of Jon Jo Donnelly was at the far side of the clearing and in the beam from the helicopter Bren saw the hole at the shoulder of the tunic. The cardboard city man dragged Song Bird to the edge of the clearing. Herbie and Jocko were crouched over the target figure, and the rotors whipped their camouflage smocks as the first
