'There are always casualties, bound to happen when you put troops in to do policemen's work.'
'A bit hard, to charge him with murder.'
'Bloody ridiculous.' They were crossing the railway bridge and Smithson paused to watch an express train rocketing beneath them.
'A dreadful place that Belfast. I go down on my knees each night and pray God I'm not sent there.'
'Keep your nose clean on the German Desk and the Lord will look pleasantly upon you. Not much of a place this, either.' Smithson sniffed unhappily at the air. They crossed Willow Lane and Smithson glanced at the scribbled directions given him by the hotel porter.
A damn good career officer, that's what Johnny Donoghue was in the mind of Adrian Pierce, damn good till they posted him to Army Headquarters at Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He'd taken the file from Smithson, read it in bed, tried to colour the portrait of the man they were sent to collect. A damn good career officer, a captain knocking on major.
Expert on Germany, steady and reliable. But the great appetite of the Northern Ireland commitment for manpower meant that Intelligence Officers must be seconded from the main battle forces of northern Europe to the twilight of counter-insurgency just past the British back door.
It had been a surveillance stake out. Donoghue and two squaddies lying up in a hide for three days and nights to watch an explosives cache and a figure approaching it at night, trousers and anorak, and it was raining and there was something in the hand. Perhaps he should have challenged, that was procedure. But why the hell should he have done that with three hundred soldiers dead and buried and the police and reservists to keep them company? Why the hell should he? Fire first and ask questions later, that's what any other army does.
The poor bastard must have damned near died of shock when he found he'd hit a child, a fifteen-year-old girl… must have fetched his food up at the very least. Not Guilty, of course. Not Guilty of murder. But the stain was there, and the judge's sarcasm. Cutting words that read no less viciously on paper than they would have sounded in the Belfast Crown Court. And nobody had wanted to know Johnny Donoghue afterwards. No celebration party back at Lisburn. Just a chilly goodbye and an escort to the RAF wing at Aldergrove Airport. Now he was back home with his mother. Now he was teaching German at night classes at the Technical College. And Smithson had said that Donoghue wouldn't be easy. Who'd blame him for that?
They walked into Cherry Road.
'Number 14,' said Smithson.
In the bathroom at the back of the house, standing at the basin in pyjama trousers, his face wet with shaving cream, Johnny Donoghue heard the beat of the knocker on the front door. Not Mrs Davies from next door because she'd know that his mother was at the shops, and she never came before eleven to share a pot of tea. Not the milk bill, not the paper bill because they came with the delivery. Who would come that early to Cherry Road? Not the meter reader, not on a Saturday morning. He cursed and scraped on with the plastic handled razor. Another knock.
His mother always left the front sitting room window ajar, so they'd know there was someone in the house. And he'd left the curtains drawn.
He sluiced the soap off his face. A fine sight he'd look, dark hair and therefore a dark beard and half of it scratched off and the other cheek set with bristles and alive. He pulled his dressing gown off the hook on the back of the door, slipped it on and tied the belt.
'Coming,'Johnny shouted.
There was an answering note. A high, clean call of thanks. No hurry.
A voice of the middle class, of the south. Johnny paused a moment on the stair in indecision, and then opened the front door. The morning light struck him and he blinked. The two men were in shadow, their features indistinct.
'Mr Donoghue? Mr John Donoghue?' The older man spoke. Police?
Army? London, anyway.
'That's me.'
'I'm Harry Smithson.'
'My name's Pierce.'
'Can we come in?' Smithson asked. Not happy at having to ask, not happy on the pavement.
' It depends what you want.'
Smithson looked around him, the automatic response. The glance over each shoulder as if in Cherry Road there might be a listener or an eavesdropper. His voice dropped. 'We were sent from London to see you, Mr Donoghue. It's a government matter.'
'Who sent you? What do they want?'
'It would be better inside… it's not trouble, Mr Donoghue, nothing like that.' Pierce seemed the same age as Johnny and better equipped to communicate.
He would have liked to send them away, liked to have spun them round and packed them away up the road, but they'd crucified him, hadn't they? A government matter, and that pricked his interest. He'd had his fill, the overbrimming cup, of men on government business. The army's Special Investigation Branch detectives who had taken his statement. The solicitor appointed to prepare his defence. The barrister paid out of public funds who represented him in court. The pin-striped suit who had come from Ministry of Defence and said that Guilty or Not Guilty there would be no place for him again in Intelligence Corps. But a government matter… and not trouble… his curiosity won through.
'You'd better come in.'
Strange how a house could quickly lose its warmth when outsiders came. Johnny apologised for the size of the living room, scuttered forward to retrieve his cigarettes and matches, to empty last night's ashtray into the grate, to gather up yesterday's newspaper, to smooth down the cushions on the sofa. And he hated himself for his concern.
'I'll go up and get dressed. Make yourself comfortable.'
'Thank you, Mr Donoghue.' Pierce was conciliatory. 'We're sorry to be barging in so early.'
Johnny nodded, then closed the door behind him and went up the stairs to his room. He dressed in the shirt hanging from his chair, the underclothes that were on the floor, searched for his shoes, took socks from the drawer. The shave would wait. Below him he heard a key in the door, the chatter of a farewell from his mother to a friend. He shoved the shirt-tail into his waist and went to the top of the stairs. The front door closed.
'Mum,' he called.
She stood small in the hallway, engulfed in her coat, wispy grey hair protected by a scarf, shopping bags around her. 'Have you done your breakfast, Johnny?'
'There's some men in the front, came to see me. I'm just dressing.'
'Would they like some tea?' The thin piping voice. After all that had happened this woman could not believe that men who came to the house could be unwelcome.
'They'll not be staying long enough for tea, don't bother, Mum.'
Not having any bastards in dark suits with the whiff of London on them make his mother fuss round to get the best china out and rinse the milk jug and flap herself as to whether the room's tidy enough. He heard her go to the kitchen, and he came down the stairs and into the front room. They were where he'd left them, close together on the sofa and they smiled as if in a chorus act and stood up.
'So how does a government matter affect me?' Straight into the eyes of Smithson, because he'd be the spokesman.
'Quite right, Mr Donoghue, we shouldn't waste time. We shouldn't beat about the bush…'
'Correct.'
'Mr Pierce and I work for that part of the Foreign Office that concerns itself with intelligence gathering…'
'Identity cards, I'd like to see them.'Johnny held out his hand, watched amused as the two dug in their wallets. He took the two plastic coated cards complete with the polaroid photographs. Access to Century House, London, Wl. Good enough.
'Very wise, Donoghue,' Smithson said. 'With your background you will know of the work initiated at Century
House. We've been asked to offer you a job, Mr Donoghue.'
Johnny squinted across, slant-eyed, at the two men. Too bloody early in the morning to be
