Harry's Game (22 page)

On his first morning Harry prowled round the mountains of burned and rusted cars. These were the stock in trade of the scrap man, heap upon heap of rough, angled metal.

Harry said to the neat dapper little man who was his new boss, "Is this what the business is?

Just cars? You've enough of them.'

'No problems with the supplies of that. You must have seen it, though you've been away.

Terrible driving here. If you take the numbers of cars, they say, and work it out against a percentage of all the people that own them, and the number of accidents... then it's worse than anywhere else in the whole of England or Ireland. Maniacs they are here. The boyos down the road do the rest. We'll have a dozen wrecks in tomorrow morning. There'll be a double decker, as well, like as not, but they're bastards to cut up.'

113

He smiled. Small, chirpy, long silk scarf round his neck, choker style, hat flat on his head.

They're all the same, thought Harry, likeable rogues.

The scrap merchant went on, "It's an ill wind. Scrap men, builders, glaziers ... we're all minting it. Shouldn't say so, but that's how it is. The military dump the cars that are burned out, up there on the open ground. We send a truck up and pull them down here. Not formal, you know.

Just an understanding. They want them off the street and know if they put them there I'll shift them. We'll have a few more today, and all.'

He looked up at Harry, with the brightness evacuating his eyes. 'People are powerful angry about this girl. You'll find that. They get killed in hundreds here. Most of the time it doesn't mean a damn, however big the procession. But this girl has got them steamed again.'

Harry said, "It's a terrible thing pulling a girl like that out of her house.'

'Poor wee thing. She must have been awful scared of something to want to do that to herself.

Mother of Jesus rest her. Still, no politics in this yard, and no troubles. Those are the rules of the yard, Harry boy. No politics, and that way we get some work done.'

He walked round with Harry and introduced him to the other men in the yard, six of them, and Harry shook hands formally. They greeted him with reserve, but without hostility. When his escort went back to the office to look to the papers Harry was free to browse. At one stage as he meandered amongst the cars he was within eight feet of a Russian‐made rocket launcher. It was the RPG 7 variety, complete with two missiles and wrapped in sacking and cellophane, locked into the boot of a car. There were always people coming into the yard, and the cover was good. Access was easy at night. The launcher, sealed against the wet, had been placed there after the Provisional unit to whom it had been issued had found it inaccurate and unreliable. It had been abandoned until they could come across a more up‐to‐date manual of operation, preferably not written in Russian or Arabic.

As the little man said, no politics, no troubles. That first day Harry abided faithfully by it, taking his cue from the other men in the yard. Slowly does it here. The high column of black smoke from a blazing Ulster bus was ignored.

The rest of the first week that Harry was there was quite uneventful. He was accepted to a limited degree as far as small talk went, and nothing more. His few attempts to broaden the conversations were gently ignored and not pressed on his part. The death of Theresa and the start of the job probably meant, thought Harry, the start of the next phase. No immediate pointers for him to follow, only the long‐term penetration remaining. Three weeks. What idiot said it could be done in three weeks? Three months if he was lucky. And it relaxed him. Going up the road each day and having the work to occupy his mind would ease him. Better than sitting in that bloody guest house. Claustrophobia.

114

And each day he was watched by Seamus Duffryn's volunteers from Delrosa to the yard, and back again...

Downs was in the kitchen swilling his face in the sink, Monday morning wash, when his wife came in white‐faced, shutting the door behind her on the noise of the playing children.

'It's just been on the radio, about you. About a girl. The girl who killed herself.'

'What do you mean? What about me?'

'This girl from the Murph, it says she was linked with the man that did the London killing.'

'It didn't actually mention me?'

'Said you was linked. Connected.'

'What was her name?'

'Theresa something. I didn't catch it.'

'Well, I don't know her.'

'It said she was being questioned about him because she was a known associate. That was another word they used‐‐"associate". God rest her, poor kid. She was just a child.'

'Well, I don't know her, and that's the truth.'

'That's what they're saying on the radio ... loud and clear ... where any bloody ape can hear it.'

'Well, it's all balls, bullshit.'

'When you're shouting, you're always lying. Who was she? What was she to do with it?'

'I don't know her. I tell you, I just don't know her.'

'Billy, I'm not daft. You were in town a long time before you came back here. I haven't asked you where you were, before you came home. Who is she?'

'What did you say her name was?'

'Don't play the fool with me. You heard the first time.'

115

'If it's Ballymurphy, I stayed there one night. I came in darkness while the family was round the box. There was a girl there. Just a kid who brought me some food in the room. I was away by five thirty.'

'Just brought some food, did she?'

" "Course, she did ... don't bloody question me ... like the fucking Branch.'

'Just on the strength of that, brought her in and questioned her, just because she brought you some grub? Didn't get her father in‐‐ he's giving interviews. Just took her in.'

'Leave it," he snapped at her. He wanted out. Escape.

'Just tell me who the little bitch was and what she meant to you.'

'She's just a child a minute ago, now she's a little bitch. She was nothing. Nothing. Must have blabbed her mouth off. Squealed, the little cow.'

'How did she know who you were?'

She shouted the last question at him. She would have taken it back once the words were out and had crumpled against him. The

noise and aggression slewed out of him. Beseeching. Pleading. Don't make me answer. The found‐out child and the hollow victory.

'I'm sorry," she said. "Just forget it.'

She turned away, back towards the door into the living‐room where the children were fighting, and one was hungry, and another crying.

Til tell you what happened..." She shook her head, but he went on,'‐‐This is once and for all, never ask again. If I'd wanted her I couldn't have done anything about it. I was so screwed up. I was sort of cold, frozen, shivering. I couldn't do anything for her. She asked if it was me in London. I hit her. Across the face. She went back to her room. I've only seen her once since then. She was at the dance at the club on Saturday night. I suppose she saw me.'

He walked across to his wife and put his arms round her. The children still cried, and the pitch was growing. He pulled her head against his shoulder. There was no response, but she was pliant against him, totally passive.

Downs went on, "That's when she must have talked. Going home after the dance. Must have said that she knew the man that had been in London. Then some rat, some bastard, squealed.

116

A fucking spy, a tout. Right there at one of our dances, some bastard who'll shop you. That's what must have happened.'

'Forget it. We have to forget all these things. There's nothing left otherwise.'

He held her for a long time in the darkened kitchen, painfully lit by the inadequate bulb hanging without a shade from the wire flex. At first she wept silently and without dramatic effect, keeping her grief private, not using it as a weapon to cudgel him with. She controlled herself, and clung to him. Nothing would be different, nothing in his way of life would change.

'You'll go back?'

'When they want me.'

'You could end it all now. You've done your share.'

'There's no way that could happen.'

He needed her now, to recharge him. When the dose was enough he would go back into his

own vicious, lonely world. Of which she was no part.

She was one of the crowd. The crowd of women who had so little influence over their men that it was pointless, indecent to beg them to stay off the streets. She was still luckier than most.

Her man was still with her. The bus that came each Thursday lunchtime to the

top end of Ypres Avenue was well enough known. It took the women to Long Kesh to talk to their men for half an hour, across a table.

That night Billy Downs opened his door to a treble knock. He was given an envelope by a youth and saw him scurry away into the darkness. His wife stayed in the kitchen as she too had recognized the call sign of the fist against the door. She heard him switch the hall light on, pause a few moments and then the sound of tearing paper, over and over again.

He went into the front room and threw the half‐inch squares of paper that had made up the single sheet of writing into the fire. The message was from Brigade. It was short and to the point. For the moment he was to stay at home. It was believed the girl had hanged herself before identifying him.

Davidson had had a bad week. He admitted it to the young man who was drafted in to share the office with him. The fiasco of the girl had started it off. The Permanent Under Secretary had been on as well, laying the smoke screen that would be used if the operation went 117

aground. Davidson had tried to counter‐attack with complaints about the original lodgings and then the foul‐up over the girl, but had been rejected out of hand. There was silence from Harry himself for six days after his first call. Davidson and the aide sat in the office reading papers, making coffee, devouring takeaway fish and chips, take‐away Indian, take‐away Chinese. The number that had been given to Harry was kept permanently free from all other calls.

When he did call, on the Saturday afternoon, the effect was electric. Davidson started up from his easy chair, pitching it sideways, tipping a coffee beaker off his desk as he lunged for the telephone. Papers drifted to the floor.

'Hello, is that three‐sevenzerofoursixeight‐one?'

'Harry?'

'How are the family?'

'Very well. They liked the postcards, I'm told.'

Davidson was on his knees, his head level with the drawer where the recording apparatus was kept. He pulled up the lead and plugged it into the telephone's body. The casette was rolling.

'Anything for us?'

'Nothing, old chap. No, I'm just digging in a bit. I think it may go all quiet for a few days, so I'm settling into some sort of a routine.'

'We're worried about you in the wake of that bloody girl. We're wondering whether we should pull you out.'

'No way. Just getting acclimatized.'

'I think we all feel at this end that you did very well last weekend. But we want some way to get in touch with you. This may suit you, but it's ridiculous for us. Quite daft. We're sitting here like a row of virgins waiting for you to call us up.'

'It's the way I'm happiest. I've been bitten, remember. On the first house. It's going to be a touch trickier getting something further out of this, and this is the way I want it to be. Bit silly, you might say, but that's the way it is.'

Davidson backed down and switched the subject.

'Are they sniffing round you at all?'

118

'I don't think so. No particular sign of it yet, but I don't know. More of a problem is that I don't see where the next break is going to come from—what direction. I was very lucky last time, and look where the thing got us. It can't be on a plate like that again.'

'You're not following anything particular at the moment, then?'

'No, just entrenching. Getting ready for the siege.'

'Perhaps it is time you should come out. Like this weekend. I don't want you hanging about wasting time. Look, Harry, we know it's bloody difficult in there, but you've given the military and security people a lead that they ought to be able to do something about... Come out now.

Get yourself up to Aldergrove and get the hell out...'

The phone clicked dead in his hand, before the dialling tone purred back at him. Despairingly he flicked the receiver buttons. The call was over.

Bugger. Played it wrong. Unsettled him. Just when he needs lifting. Silly, bloody fool. Should have made it an order, not a suggestion, or not mentioned it at all. The military should be following this now. The girl must have left a trail a mile wide.

Davidson could see through his uncurtained window that it was now dark outside. He thought of Harry walking back up the Falls to his digs. Past the shadows and the wreckage and the crowds and the troops, the legacy of the spluttering week‐long street fighting he had been the spark to. Keep your head down, Harry boy.

TWELVE

It was acknowledged at the highest levels of the IRA's Belfast brigade command that the campaign was at a crucial stage, the impetus of the struggle consistently harder to maintain.

The leadership detected a weariness amongst the people on whom they relied so greatly for the success of their attacks. But the differences between the people at street level and then-protectors, as the Provisionals saw themselves, were growing. Money was harder to collect for the families of those imprisoned, doors generally left unlocked for the gunman or blast bombers to escape through were now bolted, and the confidential phones at police headquarters where the informers left their anonymous messages were kept busy with tip‐offs that could only come from the Catholic heartland.