Authors: GERALD SEYMOUR
`Not true ... and even if it were true that's better than the rest of
his life in the Kesh. Mrs McAnally, get used to one thing: after what
he's told us there's no going back for Sean, there's no "going home".
If Sean goes home he's dead in the gutter. Don't tell me you'd prefer
that.'
`You bastard.'
`We're getting repetitive, Mrs McAnally ... Thank you for sparing
me a minute.'
Rennie went out, and closed the door on her. He heard the first sob
in her throat.
He went downstairs.
He called brightly through the door. `Did you bring those cans in,
Andy?'
Inside the living room was his answer. Half a dozen Tennants cans
on the low table beside the sofa. McAnally looked questioningly at
Rennie.
Rennie said, `She's had a hell of a day, Gingy. She's going to lie
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down for a bit, best for her.'
The Cortina car was unremarkable, eight years old, paint scraped and rusted.
There were two men in the car, and in their different ways they were as unremarkable as their transport. Perhaps they were labourers, perhaps they were
a farmer's sons.
It was the third time in as many days that these two men had come south of the
border and into Monaghan town. On the previous two days they had established
the pattern of life inside and outside the workshop of the watch mender. These
two men could blend into crowds, onto streets. It was their training. Without drawing attention to themselves they had surveyed the workshop, found the rear
ground‐level window to the cellar, reckoned how fire would be contained in the
cellar, checked the daily movements of the watch mender. They could blend easily, if they didn't speak.
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**They had left Gough Barracks in Armagh as the afternoon light was dipping and instead of taking the direct road to Monaghan they had gone the long way,
through Killylea and Caledon, before turning off the road to substitute southern
car plates for northern ones.
Each man was armed with a Browning automatic pistol. It was a chance, a risk, to
be armed and to be stopped at a Garda or Irish Army checkpoint, but nothing to
the chance and risk of being blown by the Provos and left without means of defence.
In the boot of the car was a two‐gallon can of petrol.
No record existed of their orders. Their initiative was to be given free rein. They
appreciated that freedom. All the Troopers and N.C.O.s of the Special Air Service
working from Northern Ireland appreciated freedom. These two men had been
given the information that the watch mender in Monaghan doubled as a
craftsman in explosive devices.
Mr Pronsias Reilly had driven in his lunch hour to Turf Lodge. On the way back to
the city centre he had mapped out in his mind the statement that he would issue
in the name of Mrs Chrissie O'Rourke. In Mr Pronsias Reilly's book it was a 139
scandal that a woman and her kids could bèkidnapped' by police from her home
in the middle of the night at gun point.
He had told Mrs O'Rourke that he would do his certain damnedest to get her daughter back to her, and the issuing of her statement would be a positive step.
Was Mr Pronsias Reilly opposed to the Provos? Too simplistic a question for a successful young legal mind. Phrase the question again. Was Mr Pronsias Reilly opposed to violence? Definitely, he was opposed to violence, to the violence of
the British army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Special Air Service, the prison staff, the Ulster Defence Regiment, the Protestant paramilitary
assassination squads. Was Mr Pronsias Reilly opposed to Provo violence? Ah, but
with all the violence thrown against the Nationalist minority small wonder that they turned to their own army for protection.
From his own perspective he regarded himself as realistic. In the eyes of his professional colleagues, he was ambivalent.
And for their opinions he cared not a tuppenny crap.
The word had gone out, the word said that Frankie Conroy had called for a meeting at the bar in Clonard.
There were eight men in the private room, and there was a man on the staircase,
and there were two more men in the long bar to watch. `There's no pissing, no
messing, McAnally's to be stiffed. McAnally's
dead, from this time he's dead. McAnally will not appear in court. For what he's
done, he doesn't just retract his evidence and walk back to us like nothing's different. He's dead. First I want him cringing, then I want him screaming, then I
want him dead. They're crowing up there at Headquarters. They won't crow long.
Wherever he is, we reach him.'
There were no interruptions.
`We reach him, and we smash him.'
The meeting settled after Frankie's address to set up the command structure that
would replace the lifted Brigade organization, and to prepare the necessary intelligence network that would track McAnally to his safe house.
Eight men, drinking and smoking and plotting the death of Sean Pius McAnally,
tout.
'Roisin'll take us to him, whether she knows it or she doesn't. She'll take us there, right to him. She's a good girl, she's the way to him.'
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The television was on for the children, cartoons.
John Prentice had taken a chair into the hall, he'd left Andy in the living room with the kids. He thought Mrs McAnally was asleep upstairs, and Gingy had just
gone up, to leak, because he'd five Tennants in him. It wasn't the first time that
Prentice had played minder to a supergrass. He had been on the squad two years.
The last one had been a Protestant, U.V.F. thug, who'd done his show in court and been shipped off to Australia, the last one would be good news to the bookmakers in Melbourne or Sydney or Adelaide or wherever. He was a
Detective Constable in the R.U.C., he had been told that he was selected for work
of the most exacting nature. Christ, he hadn't known the half of it when he started out. He had learned to play wetnurse, nanny, prison officer, confidant and
bully. The first days were the hardest with a new supergrass. The first days were
when he had to grope to find the personality of his man, and then learn to respond to that personality, and then to control it. The psychologist who came to
Headquarters said that the relationships between a supergrass and a minder should be taken slowly the first few days. No rush, no speed, because it's ball and
chain for weeks and months.
There was a P.P.K. handgun in the shoulder holster under Prentice's jacket. He was a trained marksman. There were two sides to the job of minder. There was
the personal contact bit, and there was the bodyguard bit. He was three years senior to Goss, three years more service. He was responsible for getting Gingy McAnally into court as a credible witness offering evidence without
corroboration. He was responsible for seeing that Gingy McAnally's nerve held up, and he was responsible for keeping the man out of the gutter and out of the
sights of an Armalite.
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**A fair old responsibility for John Prentice, aged twenty‐nine. The psychologist
said that the minder had to build an atmosphere of delicate control and
influence. The psychologist characterized it as `discreet domination'. Fine for the
psychologist. The psychologist wasn't going to be cooped up for weeks with a Provo murderer and a Provo murderer's wife and their kids. In a bag in the boot of
his car was a spare shirt and spare socks and a plastic razor. He had nothing to go
back to that he could call a home. He lived in a furnished flatlet off the Newtownards Road, had been there since his wife had kicked him out of their Glengormley bungalow. Divorce yourself from the police, or she'd divorce him, 141
that had been her ultimatum. He had made his choice. He thought she was young
enough to find some other fellow. He would sleep on the sofa in the living room
of the safe house, and not think a lot about it. Andy had it coming, he had a fiancee in the Northern Bank, who didn't like the hours, and didn't like the drinking, and wasn't hot on the danger. Andy's time would come too.
He could handle Gingy, he'd decided that. He didn't know whether he could handle Roisin. He wasn't sure if Gingy could handle Roisin.
The toilet flushed. McAnally was coming down the stairs. Behind McAnally the bedroom door opened. The sleep hadn't done her much good. She came fast
down the stairs, and bumped past her man and nearly spilled him, and went into
the living room running as if she thought Andy might be abusing her kids.
Àlright, Gingy?
'Not bad.'
There hadn't been any kids in his own marriage. He'd taken his chair into the hallway because he wasn't good with kids. Andy was better. Andy came from a
vicarage in County Tyrone that was stuffed with kids. The older boy had
problems written all over him, not responding to Gingy, shrinking from himself and from Andy, and too bloody quiet. The girl was alright, the girl was too young,
but the older boy knew his father was a tout.
The cartoons were gone, on the television, and the adverts. John Prentice heard
the signature tune of the news. He heard the voices.
Mrs McAnally said, `Leave it on.'
Andy said, `Better you don't see it.'
The announcer spoke the name of Sean Pius McAnally. `Leave it bloody on.'
`You'll only hurt yourself.'
The announcer described Sean Pius McAnally as the most significant supergrass
the R.U.C. had yet found.
John Prentice came to the door of the living room. Andy had given way. The little
girl pointed in innocence at the screen and the photograph of her father. The next picture showed a house on an estate, and
the boy watched it blankly and said nothing because it was his home. Silence in
the room because all eyes were on the television, then
Roisin had her hand at her mouth and her fist was clenched tight. `That's Ma . . .'
A photograph of an elderly lady on the screen. And the announcer
said that the old lady was the mother‐in‐law of Sean Pius McAnally,
and that the lady pleaded with her daughter to come back home to
her...
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`That's Gran . . .' the little girl said.
Her daughter should come back to her, because whatever her man
had done, Roisin had done no wrong.
Shit, Andy bloody Goss should have bloody pulled the plug out. Prentice strode
into the room, straight to the television, switched it
off.
`What's you done that for?' Roisin screamed at him. `Because it's best off.'
`You tell me what I watch?
'When it's for your own good, yes.'
`You think I shouldn't know what's said about me? ... That was my
Ma that you switched off.'
`For a bit it's better you don't watch.'
`You tell him,' she turned to McAnally. `You tell him I'm watching
the bloody television.'
McAnally walked away. He stepped over Young Gerard's legs, he
went past Little Patty, on past the sofa where Baby Sean was sleeping.
He went to the back window of the living room. He could see the line
of the perimeter arc lamps circling Palace Barracks.
`Tell him to put the telly back on for me.'
He went away from the window. He was desperate, he was in agony.
She stood in front of him. Her hands were on her hips, her head was
tossed back. His lips quivered, but he could not speak.
She sneered, À man would tell him to put the telly on for me.' Nothing for Prentice to say.
`Tell him to switch it on for me.'
McAnally howled, deep in his pain. Ì only did it for you, for you
and the kids ...
'
`Lying sod.'
Ìt was just for you.'
`You hadn't the balls to go to the Kesh.' `Because I love my kids.'
`The men in the Kesh are twice the man you are.' `Because I love you.'
`You're a yellow bastard.'
McAnally hit his wife. He hit her with the flat of his hand across the
face.
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**Goss caught Young Gerard, held him struggling as he tried to get to his father,
to defend his mother.
McAnally and his wife clutched for each other. They were both weeping. Their arms were around each other, and the tears were wet on their faces. McAnally buried his kisses in Roisin's shaking, sobbing head.
Goss said to Young Gerard, `Let's make a cup of tea for your Ma, laddie.'
The watch mender in Monaghan died that evening in the cellar below his
workshop.
He was working on a booby trap when a boot kicked in the glass of the cellar's high window, when the petrol streamed down over his work bench, when the match was thrown.
The watch mender in Monaghan had never heard the name of Sean Pius
McAnally.
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Because Baby Sean's growing teeth ached in his gums the small child tossed and
cried through the night, even when Roisin cuddled his body against her. Coming
down the stairs Roisin was withdrawn inside herself and pale‐skinned and red-eyed, and McAnally had snapped that he didn't have to shave every bloody day