Emerald Decision

was the man with the sudden increase of grocery purchases. Words picked up, rumours, friends who had not seen Rourke for a couple of days, changes of habit, a stranger who was a cousin from Killarney — McBride had narrowed the field until there was only Rourke. And his stranger-friend-relative.

If the man was German, then McBride would have him.

He studied the barman's bald head in the Guinness-advert mirror behind the bar, watched him move into paler reflection of the glass in front of a cigarette advert framed and hung like a work of art. The barman was aware of McBride's unwelcome status as a stranger. A heavy-set man had come out of a back room, at his invitation, and studied McBride malevolently for whole minutes before disappearing again. McBride enjoyed the silent encounter, the ripples he was causing on this Republican pond. Other men studied him from time to time, but lost interest in his bland and silent exterior. He looked, sitting against the wall on a wooden bench, unthreatening. The possibility of his being a police informer could be decided by others.

As he was buying his third pint of chilly, flat bitter, Rourke came into the bar with another man. Short, dark, possibly Irish. McBride was immediately disappointed, until he corrected himself in amusement. No Prussian-officer- looking German would be sent to Ireland, anyway. He returned to his seat, the barman's eyes on him as Rourke introduced his cousin Mike to the regulars. It was a charade, McBride concluded, a small, intense excitement nagging at his stomach, making him belch quietly. The barman seemed concerned to draw Rourke's attention to McBride. Eventually, Rourke turned his back to the bar, raised his glass while he studied McBride. He recognized him from Ross Carbery, and his connection with Devlin passed clear as a signal across Rourke's broad, lumpy face. His eyes narrowed.

'Good evening to you, Mr Rourke — and to your cousin,' McBride said amiably, raising his glass. The barman seemed to relax at once, then become more suspicious.

'McBride,' Rourke replied, putting down his glass, seeming at a loss. Almost visibly searching for a bolt-hole. Then the familiar territory of the bar seemed to reassert itself. McBride was on his own, impotent. The 'cousin' seemed puzzled yet cognizant of some unease, even danger. He studied McBride, met his eyes for a moment when mutual professionalism passed between them like some Masonic recognition, then turned back to the bar and began whispering to Rourke.

McBride stood up, his drink half-finished, and headed for the lavatory at the back of the hotel. As he emerged into the wet night, he was immediately aware of the stench from the urinal, the path wet and slippery under his feet, the noise of a passing car, the screech of a fiddle from an upstairs room. He was more aware, had shed a skin, felt the night dangerous and close around him. He went into the concrete urinal, feeling for a light-switch he suspected was not there, his hand scraping lightly across the rough brick of the wall. The poor light of one distant round-the-corner street lamp. He stood, shoulders hunched, waiting.

The big shadow of a man, blocking the poor light at the corner of McBride's eye. The heavy-set man from the back room. McBride whistled softly, as if slightly embarrassed at his proximity. Then he made as if to pass the big man, who suddenly blocked his exit.

'Something troubling you?' McBride asked pleasantly, tensing himself as the big man stepped back, allowing him to pass out of the urinal. McBride took two steps, hunched himself suddenly, and stepped to one side. The kidney-punch caught him a half-blow in the side, and he gasped. Then the man was on him in the yard, reaching his arms round him, seeking to aim a blow head-against-head, knee moving to strike the groin. Dirty, untidy fighting, just in case McBride was an expert.

McBride felt himself losing balance, his feet scrabbling to retain purchase on the wet ground as the big man grabbed him, paining his ribs, making breathing difficult, noisy. McBride kept his head back, trying to avoid being stunned by a blow from the big man's forehead.

Smell of dried sweat, old unwashed clothes, a meal on the man's breath. McBride's feet came up from the concrete as the man lifted him.

McBride had gone into his embrace with one arm crooked against his chest, as if it were being carried in a sling. Now, as the man's head jabbed closer again, catching McBride on the chin and grinding his teeth together, he stabbed back as the nostrils moved into vision. He jammed his fingers into them, raking outwards. The man screamed in pain. McBride dropped to the floor, gagging for breath, then rose to one knee and drove his head into the man's abdomen, knocking him over. Noise of a gun skittering across the concrete, dislodged as the big man went down. McBride kicked him in the side of the head, carefully and weightedly, then leaned over him, recovering as if from a distance race.

When his breathing became easier, he dragged the unconscious man behind the urinal, and let him drop behind a heap of beer-crates. The man wasn't dead — McBride would have regretted the unnecessary force needed to kill which might have been forced upon him by sheer physical size. He did not consider the possibility of some vendetta having been created in this wet, dark yard between himself and the IRA.

He heard an engine start up, a car pull away. Rourke and his cousin, presumably, heading back to Ross Carbery. Then, suddenly, he knew what was on the point of happening, and he began running out of the hotel yard towards the motorcycle he had left in a ditch on the outskirts of Clonakilty.

* * *

Rourke was in the outhouse, with the scent of stored apples and a hidden poteen still and two sacks of potatoes. He'd been killed with a narrow sharp knife that might have served as an advertisement of the killer's nationality and profession. The blade had been inserted between the fourth and fifth ribs, and thrust into the heart. When it was removed, not much blood had emerged. Far less, McBride thought as he knelt over the body, than had drenched Caesar or dyed Agamemnon's bathtub. But those two had been killed by amateurs.

McBride felt the short hair on the back of his neck rise, as if the German were still in the outhouse, or the cottage, or behind the nearest knoll. He assumed he'd be long gone, over the hills and far away, but he left the body and began a methodical search of the cottage. The stone walls seemed damp, the cottage long empty and uninhabited.

The German had slept in the one bedroom, Rourke on the sofa, presumably. Supplies — courtesy of Devlin — had been laid in for an extended stay, possibly two weeks or more, and there was drink in abundance which wasn't poteen but beer and Old Bushmills. The German had refused to drink the stuff Rourke made in his outhouse. No maps, no radio, no clothes — except a rolled-up pair of socks that had been missed under the bed — no sign that the German would come back.

Would he?

Surely not — not for his socks, and if he had a radio, it wouldn't be buried at the house. He was running—

Was he? Why? Because of one man, someone Rourke knew, seen briefly in a bar in Clonakilty and presumed to have been removed like a mote from his eye?

And then McBride knew that the German was outside somewhere, waiting. Had seen and heard McBride arrive, had hidden the evidence of his presence as casually as he had removed the body to the outhouse—

And was now waiting to move in.

McBride shivered. He knew it — knew it. This was too good a place to abandon, even when the terrified Rourke had been disposed of. He was out there, somewhere—

His head snapped round as he caught the light splashing on the cottage's stone wall — fiery red, followed by the crump of the explosion.

A theatrical announcement by the German, blowing up the petrol tank of the motorbike. The challenge issued, the threat made. He was outside.

* * *

Ashe could see Gilliatt down on the sweep deck of HMS Bisley, picking up the quarter deck telephone. He watched the sweep deck crew — the Buffer, the Chief Stoker and another stoker, a leading seaman and four ordinary seamen — at their stations, then he very consciously cleared his throat into the bridge telephone. He felt the insides of his mouth dry and old like an uninhabited cave, and sucked spit from his cheeks.

'Number One, prepare to sweep in 'J' formation to port. Set for deep sweep, twenty-five fathoms.'

'Aye, aye sir.' Ashe watched him repeat the orders to the sweep deck crew, and in the moment before any man moved, Ashe envisaged the whole scene before him, and political horizons beyond. The Bisley was rolling gently with the swell in the grey dawn, the rest of the flotilla lying