Pray for Us Sinners

“I doubt it. I’ll tell you one thing, though”—and there was pleasure in his voice—“it wasn’t that cunt Fogarty.”

  “I heard.” Conlon’s words were flat. He understood the need to deal harshly with touts but could not approve of McGuinness’s obvious enjoyment. “There’s no word of any arrests?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sean leaned over the table. “Davy knows that part of the world. He’ll have gone to ground somewhere.”

  “Aye, and he’s got two of my men with him—and a couple of ArmaLites, a Heckler and Koch, and a Colt.”

  “Shit, Brendan. Davy and your men are more important than a couple of guns. Is there anything we can do to get them out?”

  “Don’t worry about them, Sean.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “They may not have got the soldiers, but remember why we sent them out in the first place?”

  “To test your gear.”

  McGuinness smiled. “Aye. And it’s working. The soldiers’ll pack up the search tomorrow.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” said McGuinness, “I heard them give the orders half an hour ago.”

  “So you reckon Davy’ll be all right?”

  “Bugger McCutcheon. The stuff works.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  SUNDAY, MARCH 24

  McCusker looked up and opened one eye as if to say, “So. You’re back.”

  “Aye,” Davy croaked. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was cold, exhausted, filthy, unshaven, hungry, and desperately thirsty. His leg throbbed. He would kill for a cigarette.

  Kill? He had done.

  Here it was, late Sunday afternoon, and both the poor bloody animal and he had been without food since Friday night. “I’ll get your grub in a minute.”

  The cat rose, arched his back, and gave a little shudder and a great yawn.

  “Hang on, McCusker. Wait ’til I get myself a drink.” God, but he was thirsty. He wanted a bath and a shave, and sleep. But first, water. Davy filled a tumbler from the tap and drank, great gulping swallows. He went over to the dresser, opened the drawer, and rummaged about until he found a bottle of aspirin and the Woodbines. He swallowed two of the white tablets, then lit up, hacking as the smoke burnt his dry throat.

  He returned to the sink and set his empty glass on the counter. He saw his face in the window. Gaunt, grey-stubbled cheeks, red-rimmed eyes, dark circles under. His eyes looked into their own reflection. The wee girl wasn’t your fault, he told himself. And he saw the lie for what it was.

  He inhaled again. He’d better see to the cat. “All right, McCusker.” Davy filled the bowl and stood watching as the animal wolfed the pellets.

  He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the peg. No wonder he smelled like a barnyard. He’d not had the coat off since Friday. It was covered in mud stains and smeared with patches of dried cow clap. He lifted the left sleeve. Torn all to hell. That coat was going into the rubbish.

  Davy refilled his glass and gulped. God, but that was good, and the aspirin must be working. The pain in his thigh had lessened. It was a pity that aspirin didn’t work for heartache. He felt his fingers, cold where water had slopped over the rim of the glass. Some of the mud on his hand had been washed away, and he saw white streaks through the dirty brown. He put the glass down, held the cigarette between his lips, and rinsed his hands under the cold stream. He lifted a cake of Sunlight and scrubbed with the coarse soap until his skin was red and the dirt gone. In his mind he heard Father Dominic’s soft southern brogue as he’d stood at the front of Davy’s class, thirty years ago, reading the Easter story. Pontius Pilate washed his hands.

  His own hands trembled as he shook the drops off with heavy flaps of his wrists and groped for a tea towel. He’d not wash away that wee girl’s blood so easily. He stood, head bowed, eyes closed, fists clenched about the rag. Davy spat the fag into the sink. What a fuckup.

  It was all the “ifs.” If the Rover had behaved as he had anticipated. If the soldiers hadn’t known to avoid the ruts in the track. If there had been mud between the trigger plates. If the shattered man and his family had not been on the lane. If he could have run faster. If she hadn’t screamed. If she hadn’t screamed, “Pleeease…”—fingers bloody, clawing at the glass.

  He heard McCusker eating, making crunches like the snapping of small, brittle bones.

  Davy dragged at the piece of cloth in his big hands and heard the fabric rip. The tap still ran. Water be damned. He threw the torn rag onto the counter, turned off the tap, opened a cupboard, and took out a half bottle of Jameson. The neck of the bottle chittered against the glass as he poured.

  He pulled out a chair and sat, drink held in both hands, angry and bone-weary. He sipped at the neat spirit, feeling its heat. Something landed in his lap. He gasped and started, nearly spilling the whiskey. He recognized McCusker’s soft warmth as the cat settled and began to purr.

  “You stupid bugger. You near scared me to death.”

  McCusker looked up languorously, thrusting his head against Davy’s hand.

  “It’s all right for you. You think when I stay out all night I’m on the tiles. How would you like to spend two nights huddled under a turf pile?”

  McCusker butted insistently. Davy fondled the cat’s ears.

  “We’d to wait until it was safe to send one of the lads to phone for a car, and we’d to leave the guns and grenades under the turf.”

  McCusker buried his pink nose in his paws.

  Davy finished his whiskey. His eyes felt as if someone had poured sand from Ballyholme Beach under their lids. He yawned. He must have a bath before bed. Food could wait. He stood slowly, decanting the cat onto the linoleum floor.

  The room was darker now as the shadows lengthened outside. Davy put the bottle back in the cupboard. He heard a single mew and turned to see McCusker looking, hope in his eyes, at the bag of cat food in the cupboard. Davy shook his head. “No more in there for you tonight.”

  Aye, and maybe no more missions for Davy. Certainly not the big one.

  What the hell was Sean going to say? He’d been relying on Davy. Relying, for Christ’s sake, and he’d been let down. Davy McCutcheon had never let Sean down. Never. The CO’d give the plastique to someone else. And he’d be right to. But it would rankle. A man still had his pride.

  Davy hesitated as he closed the cupboard door. He wasn’t sure if he really cared about the Semtex. He could still hear the “pleeease…,” smell the roasting flesh, see the little hand. He closed his eyes, trying to banish the scene that had played in his head, over and over, while he’d huddled under the turf.

  He told himself, rubbing his leg, that he knew better than most what explosives did to flesh. He wasn’t a child. But the “pleeease…” echoed. She was a child. And children didn’t need to die for Ireland. Not like that.

  He turned and saw Fiona’s picture. He shook his head. “I should have heeded you, girl.” Davy made a strangled noise, deep in his throat. “The Cause?” For the first time in nearly thirty years, Davy McCutcheon began to doubt the rightness of it. He felt like a priest in a leper colony, seeing the evil of the disease and questioning the goodness of God Almighty.

  “Jesus, Fiona,” he muttered. “Maybe Jimmy’s right. I should get out.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MONDAY, MARCH 25

  The major massaged his temples and tried to concentrate on the chart on his desk. The conundrum was worse than the Times’s cryptic crossword puzzle. He tapped the end of a pencil against his teeth and looked again at the lists he had drawn up. Looked at them for what seemed like the millionth time.

  Sir Charles had phoned yesterday morning to say that his people had finally found all the information the major had wanted. He felt the beginning of a headache, dull behind his eyes as he recalled Sir Charles’s parting remarks. “Nothing new at your end, Major? No? Oh, well. Soldier on. Don’t want to put you under any pressure.” That man could exert more pressure with his unde
rstated civility than a hydraulic ram at Belfast Shipyards.

  The paperwork had been choppered into Thiepval at seven, and the major had been trying to make sense of it all morning. Trying to link the names of Special Branch officers with knowledge of troop movements prior to raids on army personnel.

  He had drawn a chart of potential RUC suspects. There were four columns of Special Branch men who worked in the most troublesome parts of the city. Each column represented the police station to which the men were attached. Of the fifty-eight potential suspects, fifty-five were scratched off for one reason or another.

  The major ran a hand across the back of his neck, feeling the tension in the muscles. The other three men? Damn it, that was where the whole thing started to unravel. Each of the RUC men was Catholic. It was more likely that the sympathies of a Catholic officer would be Republican. All of them worked undercover and had ample opportunity to have contacts in the Provos. They were all attached to the Springfield Road station, deep in the heart of PIRA territory. Two of the three had known about one or two of the impending security operations. One, Sergeant Samuel Dunlop, had known about five. Sergeant Samuel Dunlop. So far, so good. But—and it was a big but—none had known about all twenty. The pattern of one man’s knowing and being in a position to tip off the terrorists, the pattern he was counting on discovering, simply wasn’t there.

  He mumbled the names of the three detectives. “Dunlop, Logan, or O’Byrne? Dunlop, Logan, or O’Byrne? Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.” He was missing something, but what? He threw down his pencil. What was he missing? His stomach growled. Lunch, and the morning paper. That was what he was missing.

  He thought about crossword puzzles. How many times had he been absolutely stuck. Four across: “Ophidian summer (5).” Ophidian summer? Ophidian? Eventually, he would put the paper down in desperation, walk away, mind on other things, and somehow, in the mysterious way of synapses and little brain circuits he did not understand, the answer would appear unbidden: “Adder.”

  He stood. He’d take a couple of aspirin before the ache turned into a real throbber, wash, and head over to the officers’ mess for lunch.

  * * *

  Marcus had pissed away twenty pounds at an off-track bookmaker’s. Two bookie’s clerks stood behind a grille, happily taking the punters’ money, stacking the notes in drawers beneath the counter, then waiting as the race came up on a television screen mounted high on another wall.

  Men in cloth caps and mufflers, worn suits, or threadbare jackets and moleskin trousers sat on wooden benches watching the tiny horses fly round a track at Aintree in England. Men with dull eyes and lifeless faces. When a race was over, one or two bettors would rise, go to the wickets, and collect their winnings. The rest seemed untroubled by their losses. They had been losers all their lives.

  These men had no jobs, no prospects of jobs, and they lived in even worse accommodations than Marcus’s shitty place, lived on fried bread and potatoes, stayed cold and damp all winter. Their only respite was a cigarette, a pint, and a bet on the races. And they’d never known anything else.

  He’d been unemployed for only a couple of weeks and was just about ready to climb the walls. Marcus Richardson was used to action, and he surmised that Mike Roberts, explosives man, would have been equally browned off.

  Men went to and came from the pub next door, their breath heavy with the smell of stale beer. This was how they spent their afternoons, had done since they were old enough to drink and would do until they were too feeble to walk to the betting shop. These men weren’t Provos; they didn’t give a shit for the Cause. They just wanted to draw their dole, smoke their fags, sink their pints, and put a few quid on the next race.

  Marcus wondered why the major had told him to frequent these places. He was as likely to meet a Provo here as he was to find a Greek shipping magnate. He supposed it was all part of trying to become accepted in the neighbourhood. But despite his best endeavours to seek advice or congratulate some of the winners, he had been rebuffed. He was a stranger, as out of place as a Shinto priest in a Benedictine monastery.

  To hell with wasting any more money here. His supply was running low and he’d need a few quid tonight. He glanced at the TV screen. The three o’clock was under starter’s orders, so he’d three more hours to kill until he picked up Siobhan at six.

  He’d hardly dared hope, when he asked her out on Saturday, that she’d accept. But she did, and tonight—although Mike Roberts might feel at home in the crud of New Lodge—Marcus Richardson was going to treat himself to the kind of comfort he was accustomed to. Good food, dim lights, a bottle of wine, and the company of the most stunning creature he had ever met. He pictured her velvet-blue eyes, her cascade of long blond hair, her trim figure. Beautiful.

  He heard a man beside him say, “Ah, fuck!” The race had finished, and obviously his horse had not come in.

  “Tough titty, mate,” Marcus said and was rewarded with a scowl. “Never mind. Maybe one of us’ll get lucky in love.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  MONDAY, MARCH 25

  Mrs. Gordon peeped out between the curtains of 12 Grange Park in Dunmurry. A man carrying a rolled rug was coming up her drive. She went to answer the door.

  He stood there, looking at a piece of paper. “Sorry to bother you, missus.”

  She caught a glimpse of Mrs. Dunlop from across the street. Nice woman, for a Catholic. Her husband was a policeman, and her two little girls were very polite. Mrs. Gordon waved. The wave was returned. She turned to the man on her doorstep. “Can I help you?”

  “Aye. I’ve the car parked one street over and I’ve walked miles. I’m looking for Fifteen Grange Crescent.”

  “I don’t think I know that street.”

  “Here.” He offered her the piece of paper. “Have a wee look.”

  “Oh dear. This is Grange Park. You want Grange Crescent. That’s in Dundonald.”

  “Dundonald’s miles away. Ah, Jesus. Sorry, missus, I’ll never get this there tonight.” He peeped over her shoulder. “Could I use your phone? Call the shop?”

  She hesitated. The television was always telling people not to let anyone they didn’t know into their houses.

  “Please, missus? I could lose my job over this.”

  She thought he looked a decent young man, and it would only be for a second or two. “Come in.”

  * * *

  The major decided to have a brandy after lunch. He went through to the anteroom, sat in a leather-upholstered armchair, gave his order to a white-coated mess steward and picked up the folded paper to scan the lead story. He shook his head. Another one early Saturday morning. Four dead. Mother, father, ten-year-old girl, and a babe in arms. The PIRA had already issued an apology. An apology, for God’s sake. It seemed they’d been after an army patrol. He turned the paper over. The attack had been made on a deserted road in the Antrim Hills.

  Someone coughed discreetly. The major looked up.

  “Your brandy, sir.”

  “Table.”

  The steward placed the snifter on a low rosewood coffee table, slipped a mess chit beside the glass, and quietly withdrew.

  The major signed the chit, lifted the glass, and sipped. The newspaper report was pretty sketchy, but he sensed that this was another of those PIRA jobs planned and executed on information received. He rose and carried his glass and the newspaper to where the two fellow officers, a staff colonel and a military police captain, stood.

  “Afternoon, gentlemen.”

  “Afternoon, Smith.” The staff officer, who had a chubby face and a florid moustache and looked like a pallid Sir John French, moved aside. “Join us?”

  The major held up the paper. “Just wondered if either of you knew anything about this.”

  “I didn’t do it, guv. Honest.” The military police captain’s pseudo-cockney accent was slurred. “It was me, bruvver.”

  The major smiled at the weak humour. “Just curious.”

  “Bloody good thing our lads weren’t hu
rt.” The staff officer was taking the question more seriously. “Pity about the locals.”

  “Indeed.” Smith hesitated. “What was the patrol after?”

  “An ammo dump.”

  “Ammo dump?”

  “Mmm. Seems for once the RUC decided to let us in on something.”

  The major halted his glass, halfway to his lips. “RUC?”

  “Someone in their upper echelon got the word from one of his informers. Last night. Notified our HQ. Gave us the location of an arms dump. Asked for a fastball with a couple of Land Rovers.”

  “Fastball?”

  “You know. Immediate response to an emergency situation. No time to assemble the whole might of our troops. Just shove in what’s handy.”

  The MP officer chuckled. “Sounds as if it was a flexiplan to me. AKA no bloody plan at all.”

  His companion coughed. “All a bit embarrassing. After the explosion, the Rovers were able to get turned around and race back. Of course, we send out Royal Engineers to look for explosives. Not really combat troops.”

  The MP gave him a dirty look, clearly disliking any disparagement of soldiers who were not members of line regiments. The staff officer ignored the look. “They couldn’t find anything but the civilians. Some signs there’d been an ambush, not just a random bomb. The grass was flattened behind a hedge. Spent .223 cases all over the place. No sign of the brave Irish.” His moustache bristled. “Just the poor devils in the burnt-out car.”

  The MP added, “And when the RE squad went in to dig up the cache from under a potato clamp, they found potatoes. Nothing but spuds.”

  “That is disappointing.” The major wanted to know more. “Were our blokes playing nursemaid to the coppers?”

  The staff officer snorted. “No. On their own. Actually, I think the lieutenant in charge was rather pleased. Our lads get a bit pissed off looking after the RUC. They get paid twice as much as our troops.”

  “That’s why I joined the MPs. For the money.” The captain sank his drink and rolled his eyes.

  The major ignored his colleague. He’d more important things to think about. He’d have to get the details of this attack. The RUC had set it up, and yet there was no munitions dump. Now, had a member of the constabulary deliberately planted the gen, or had he been fed duff info by a tout? It certainly had the smell of a decoy operation. The major badly needed to know which RUC officer had called for the strike. Dunlop, Logan, or O’Byrne? He turned to the staff officer. “I don’t suppose you know who our RUC liaison was?”