Bren tried to capture, indelibly, the remnant of this family. He nodded his thanks to the old lady, he gazed, through tears welling in his eyes, at the three silent children, staring hollow-eyed at him. He blundered out into the hall. His hands found the steep rail of the steps to the loft. He held it for support. The roar of a helicopter gathered over the house.
He went to the front doorway. There were ropes and a chain snaking, swinging, down from the helicopter and the policemen and soldiers were running the chain and the ropes under the chassis of the old Cortina estate. They wanted the evidence out quickly. They wanted to be gone, the soldiers and the policemen. The slopes of Altmore mountain were that sort of place. The one car had been allowed forward. Bren watched. It was parked close to where the uncut hedge bent under the downdraft of the rotors. He saw the priest, a big man and walking well, and never bothering to look up at the hovering helicopter, never sparing a glance at the men with the ropes and the chain. The priest came up the front path and to the door. He stood in front of bren and challenged him to move aside. There was contempt for him in the priest's eyes, and blame. He stepped aside. He wondered what the priest would say to the mother of a tout and to the children of a tout.
Mossie's car swayed beneath the helicopter. The helicopter banked away.
Below it, the opened door of the Cortina estate, Mossie's door, flapped.
Cathy shouted, 'There's two bodies down on the border. They're not identified yet, but it's a man's and a woman's.'
He wanted to be away from her.
Bren walked halfway down the front path. There were weeds in the flower beds and the winter debris on the grass. He turned, 'Cathy.. .'
She came to him, she stood in front of him. She looked into his eyes.
The scarf on her head had slipped from the beauty of the red gold of her hair.
Bren said, 'We should never have let him…'
'It was his best chance.'
'I suppose you'd say that getting Donnelly made it worthwhile.'
'Nothing makes losing Song Bird worthwhile.’’
'I'm going home.'
It had grown in him through the night hours, alone in his flat. He had steeled himself to the dicision. Perhaps he hoped that she might fight him…
Cathy shrugged, 'I'm sorry, I mean that…You had what it takes.'
'I had nothing, and I am going because there is nothing for me to to contribute. You don't think you'll be staying…?’’
'I'm not going anywhere.'
He flared. 'Switch on, Cathy, I'm here because a tout was lost and a lost tout talks. Our guy compromised. I was sent as the the fast solution stop-gap. Mossie’s lost, Mossie'll have talked or they wouldn't have killed him They'll have bled him dry before they murdered him. Don’t you understand it, compromised..?’’
'Give my regards to Mr Wilkins,'
'They know your face, your work, and they know your style.
Nowhere's safe for you. Vulnerable, do you hear any thing?'
'Not your worry… Thanks for the concern. I'll cope.'
He wondered if he fooled himself, if she would talk round Hobbes, batter Wilkins into submission, if she would be staying. He wondered if she deluded herself, if he would meet her in a corridor in Curzon Street within the month, if she would nod at him and smile and share the coffee machine, if she would ignore him. He looked into her face.
He gazed down at the red-gold peep of hair jutting from under the scarf. Of course she was compromised, of course she should go home.
He thought she was beyond the reach of his love.
He would never forget…
Cathy said, 'We were going well, in time we'd have made a good team.'
Bren mouthed it quietly, 'I'm going home before I'm destroyed…'
'… There won't be much for you, Bren, not with you walking out of here, but then you'll have thought that through…'
Bren said, 'I'm going home before I am destroyed, before I know for certain that there is no light, no hope, no future. I wouldn't want to know that, not for certain.’’
He reached to shake her hand. She kissed his cheek.
Bren walked away to his car. He could see up the lane. In the yard behind the farmhouse a young boy was carrying a bale of hay from the barn. The bright sunlight was on the mountain slope, catching the dead bracken.
He turned. He looked back for her. She had stood her ground beside the gate. She waved to him.
He would drive back to the flat, and pack and go to the airport. He would be in London by the end of the day. He unlocked the door of his car. He was not strong enough for life without light and hope and a future. It was her world, Cathy Parker’s world, in front of him, behind him, around him
He sat in his seat, and he leaned forward against the steering wheel.
He watched a hawk circling high. He didn't understand why the hawk had no fear of the hovering Lynx helicopter above it.
He knew where she would be, later that day She was in the eye of his mind. She would be hemmed around by her men, her people. There would be the cardboard city man, and Herbie and Jocko. There would be the guns that they carried to protect her. Near to her, but warned back from coming too close, would be the soldiers and the policemen.
He saw her walking the length of the hill, going up the middle of the lane between the bare hedgerows. There would be the bodies in the ditch, dumped. There would be the dustbin bags over the heads of the bodies, and the bale twine cutting at the wrists of the bodies, and there would be the bare and lifeless feet of the bodies. When the bags had been cut away from the heads of the bodies she would look down into the faces of her Song Bird and her Song Bird's woman. She would not have shrunk from making the identification. And she would be gone from the lane, gone from the consequences of her work. It was what Bren imagined…
He drove away. A last time he looked, back over his shoulder for the hawk. The bird soared, floated, feathered.
'God keep you safe, Cathy…'
The hawk dived to kill, brilliant in the low winter sunlight, without fear.
