Harry's Game (28 page)

Josephine's uncle, Michael O'Leary. A little after three o'clock the unit reported in that it had been unable to locate the girl. By then a

critical amount of the available time had run out.

It took more than two hours from the time Frost called the army headquarters dominating Ardoyne and told them of the tip to the moment Billy Downs was identified. First the troops who had taken part in the search operation at the caeli had to be located. The lieutenant who 146

had led the raid was in Norfolk on weekend leave, and there was no answer to his telephone.

The sergeant, the next senior man out, recalled that he had busied himself near the door on security, but he was able to name the six soldiers who had carried out the split‐up question-and‐answer work. Private Jones was now in

Berlin, but Lance‐Corporal James Llewellyn was picked up by a Saracen from a foot patrol on the far side of the Battalion area. There was no written record, of course. That, along with Jones, were the only two pieces of evidence of the confrontation, and both had now disappeared. Llewellyn stared at the photokit issued in London that had been brought up from the guard room.

'That's the one it's like, if it's any of them. It's Downs. It's not a great likeness. It's not easy to pick him on that picture. But if he was there that's the one it was. There was his woman there, in yellow. She ran out across to him.'

With the name they attacked the filing system. Billy Downs. Ypres Avenue, number 41. There'd been a spot‐check on his story about being down in Cork with his mother. The Garda had been fast for a change, and had cleared him of involvement. They said he'd been there through that period. There's been a query about him because he was away from home. Otherwise, clean with nothing known. The net inside the headquarters spread wider, to include the policeman who had seen him that night in the small hours.

'He was very cool. Not even a sweat on his palms. I know, as I looked.'

It was into the afternoon that they called Frost back.

'We think we've located the man you want. He's Billy Downs, without an "e" on the end. Ypres Avenue, wife and kids. Very quiet, from what we've seen of him. Unemployed. His story stuck after the Garda ran a check on the alibi he gave us to account for his long absence from the area. There was no other reason to hold him. Like to point out that the chaps that have actually seen this fellow say that he's not that like the pics you put out. Much fatter in the face, I'm told.

Perhaps you'll let us know what you want done. We've a platoon on immediate. We can see pretty much down that street: I've an OP in the roof of a mill, right up the top.'

Frost growled back into the phone, "I'd be interested in knowing if Mr Downs is currently at home.'

'Wait one." As he held on for the answer Frost could hear the distant sounds of the unit operations room as they called up the OP on a field telephone. "Not quite so hot, I'm afraid.

They log comings and goings. We think Downs left his home, that's number forty‐one, around twenty‐five minutes ago. That's fifteen‐o‐five hours precisely that he went out. But he goes in and out pretty regularly. No reason to think he won't be back in a bit.'

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'I'd like it watched," said Frost, "but don't move in yet, please.

This number will be manned through the evening and the night. Call me as soon as you see him.'

Downs was on his way by car up the Lisburn Road at the time that the observation post overlooking Ypres Avenue was warned to look out for him. There were several subsequent entries in the exercise book the two soldiers kept for logging the comings and goings in the street. They had noted him as soon as he came from his front door and began the walk up the hill away from them to one of the decreed exits from Ardoyne. When the message came through on the radio telephone to the troops Downs was just out of his heartland, standing in the no‐man's ground at the top of the Crumlin waiting for his pickup. This was neither Protestant nor Catholic territory. Side streets on either side of the road shut off with great daubed sheets of corrugated iron. Two worlds split by a four‐lane road with barricades to keep people from each other's throats. Scrawled on one side was "Up the Provos', and "British Army Out', and beyond the opposite pavement the messages of "Fuck the Pope" and "UVF'.

He was edgy waiting there in daylight beside such a busy road, one used heavily by military traffic, and the relief showed in his face when the Cortina pulled up alongside him, and the driver bent sideways to open the passenger door. The car had been hijacked in the Falls thirty-five minutes earlier.

A moment later they moved off, weaving their way through the city. By the crossroads in the centre of the sprawling, middle‐class suburb the car turned left and up one of the lanes that lead to the Down countryside through a small belt of woods. They turned off among the trees.

The driver unlocked the boot and handed over the Armalite rifle. It was wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. Downs checked the firing mechanism. It was a different weapon to the one that he had used before in his attack on the patrol, and was issued by a quite unconnected quartermaster. But the rifle came from the same original source‐‐Howa Industries, of Nagoya in Japan. It had been designed as a hunting weapon, and that astonished him. What sort of animal did you take a killing machine of this proven performance to hunt? He released the catch on the stock to check that the folding hinge was in working order. That reduced the length of the weapon by eleven inches, bringing it down to less than two‐and‐a‐half feet, so that it would comfortably fit into the padded inside pocket of his coat. He was passed the two magazines, glanced them over and fitted

one deep into the attachment slot under the belly of the gun. He activated a bullet up into the breech, and flicked with his thumb at the safety catch to ensure it was engaged. The volunteer at the wheel watched the preparations with fascination.

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With the stick folded, Downs pushed the rifle down into the hidden pocket.

'I don't know how long I'll be," he said. "For God's sake don't suddenly clear off or anything smart. Stick here. At least till midnight.'

They were the only words Downs spoke before he disappeared into the growing darkness to

walk the half‐mile towards Rennie's house. The only words of the whole journey. The teenager left behind with the car amongst the trees subsided, shivering, into the driver's seat to wait for his return.

The regular Sunday afternoon visit to the office to clear the accumulation of paper work off his desk was no longer a source of controversy between the policeman and Janet Rennie. It had been at first, with accusations of "putting the family into second place' being levelled. The increasing depression of the security situation in the province had caused her to relent.

It was now understood that she and the two girls, Margaret and Fiona, would have their tea, watch some television and then wait for him to get home before bedtime.

Over the last four years Janet Rennie had become used to the problems of being a policeman's wife. A familiar sight now was the shoulder holster slung over the bedside chair when he had an extra hour in bed on Saturday mornings, before the weekly trip to the out of‐town supermarket. So too were the registration plates in the garage, which he alternated on the car, and around the house the mortise locks on all the doors, inside and out. At night all these were locked with a formal ritual of order and precedence, lest one should be forgotten, and the detective's personal firearm lay in the half opened drawer of the bedside table, on which rested the telephone which, as often as not, would ring deep into the night.

Promotion and transfer to Belfast had been hard at first. The frequency of the police funerals they attended along with the general level of danger in the city had intimidated her. But out of the fear had come a fierce‐rooted hatred of the IRA enemy.

Janet Rennie had long since accepted that her husband might not last through the troubles, might be assassinated by one of those

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feyed, cold‐faced young men whose photographs she saw attached to the outside of the files he brought home in the evenings and at weekends. She didn't shrink from the possibility that she might ride in the black Austin Princess behind the flag and the band to a grey, country churchyard. When he was late home she attacked her way through the knitting, her therapy along with the television set. He was often out late, seldom in before eight or nine‐‐and that was a good evening. But she felt pride for the work he did, and shared something of his commitment.

The girls, seven and five, were in the bright, warm living‐room of the bungalow, kneeling together on the treated sheepskin rug in front of the open fire, watching the television when the door bell rang.

'Mama! Mama! Front‐door bell!" Margaret shouted to her mother at the back, too absorbed to drag herself away from the set.

Janet Rennie was making sandwiches for tea, her mind taken by fish‐paste fillings and the neatness of the arrangement of the little bread triangles. They had become a treat, these Sunday teas, the girls and their mother playing at gentility with enthusiasm. With annoyance she wondered who it could be. Which of the girls from the close was calling right at tea time?

The bell rang again.

'Come on, Mama. It's the front door." Margaret resigned herself. 'Do you want me to go?'

'No, I'll do it. You stay inside, and you're not going out to play on your bikes at this time of night.'

She wiped her hands on the cloth hanging beside the sink. Right from the start she ignored the basic rule of procedure that her husband had laid down. As her hand came up towards the Yale lock that was always on, she noticed that the chain had been left off since the children came back from playing with their friends of three doors down. It should have been fastened. She should have fastened it before she opened the door. But she ignored the rules and pulled the door back.

'Excuse me, is it Mrs Rennie?'

She looked at the shortish man standing there on her front doorstep, hands in his coat pockets, an open smile round his face, dark hair nicely parted.

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'Yes, that's right.'

Very quietly he said, "Put your hands behind your head, keep them there and don't shout.

Don't make any move. I know the kids are here.'

She watched helplessly as through his coat, unbuttoned and open, he drew out the ugly squat black shape of the Armalite. Holding it in one hand, with the stock still folded, he prodded her with the barrel hack into the hallway. She felt strange, detached from what was happening, as if it were a scenario. She had no control over the situation, she knew that. He came across the carpet past the stairs towards her, nicking the door closed with his heel. It clattered as it swung to, the lock engaging behind him.

'Who is it, Mama?" From behind the closed door of the lounge Fiona called out.

'We'll go in there now. Just remember this. If you try anything I'll kill you. You, and the children.

Don't forget it when you want to play the bloody heroine. We're going to sit in there, and wait for that bastard husband of yours. Right? Is the message all plain and clear and understood?'

The narrow barrel of the Armalite dug into her flesh just above rhe hip as he pushed past her to the door and opened it. Their mother was half into the room before Fiona turned, words part out of her mouth but frozen when she saw the man with the rifle. Even to a child three months off her fifth birthday the message was brilliantly obvious. The girl rose up on her knees, her face clouding from astonishment to terror. As if in slow motion her elder sister registered the new mood. Wide‐eyed, and with the brightness fading from her, she saw first her sister's face then her mother standing hunched, as if bowed down by some great weight, and behind her

Downs with the small shiny rifle in his right hand.

Too frightened to scream the elder girl remained stock still till her mother reached her, gathered the children to her, and took them to the sofa.

The three of them held tightly to each other as on the other side of the room Downs eased himself down into Rennie's chair. From there he was directly facing the family, who were huddled away in the front corner of the sofa to be as far as possible from him. He also had a clear view of the door into the room, and of the window beyond it at the far edge of the lounge. It was there that he expected the first sign of Rennie's return, the headlights of the policeman's car.

'I'll warn you for the last time, missus. Any moves, anything clever, and you'll be dead, the lot of you. Don't think Mrs Rennie, when it comes to it, that you're the only one at risk. That would be getting it very wrong, a bad miscalculation. If I shoot you I do the

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kids as well. We'll leave the TV on, and you'll sit there. And just remember I'm watching you.

Watching you all the time. So be very careful. Right, missus?'

Billy Downs paused and let the effect of his words sink in on the small room.

'We're just going to wait," he said.

I

FIFTEEN

The four men sent to question Josephine Laverty had none of the problems finding her that the British army unit in the Springfield Road had encountered. Smiling broadly, the oldest in the group, and the leader, suggested that old Mrs Laverty might care to go into the kitchen and take herself a good long cup of tea.