Harry's Game (39 page)

'They came for you, you know, this morning.'

'I know.'

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'They searched all over, and they said they'd come again. Again and again till they got you." He nodded, numbed and shocked by the pain of the running and the throbbing in his arm. "They know, don't they? They know it all. They're not so daft as you said.'

'I was told." The voice, the speaking, was a little easier now. The air was there, coming more naturally, and the legs steadied.

As she twisted herself against him, working away from the sharpness of his collar‐bone against her cheek, she felt him wince and tear away his left arm.

'Is that where they hit you? Last night it was you. At the policeman's home. Did he hit you?"

The pain came and went, surging and then sagging. "Has it been looked at? Have you seen a doctor?" Again he nodded.

'Where are you going now? What are you going to do?'

'I'm going home. It's over, finished. I just want to go home.'

'But they came this morning for you," she screamed, her voice high, hysterical that he could not understand something so simple, 'They'll be back as soon as you walk through the door.

They'll take you. They were crawling all through, under the floor boards, into the roof, looking for you. They took the place apart trying to find you.'

He wasn't listening. "They put a man in, just to find me." He said it with wonder, as if surprised that the enemy would classify him of such importance that they would take a step so great.

"We found him first. We went to get him this morning, and it just ballsed up. There's two boys shot by him, by the Englishman. And last night that was another cock‐up. That bloody copper, he...'

'I heard it on the radio.'

'Well, there's no point in running now. I'm finished with it. There'd be a reason to run if I was going on, but I'm not.'

'You mean all this? It's not just because you're hurt? We can get you away from here, the boys will shift you.'

'It's definite," he said. He was very tired now, deeply tired and

needing to sit down, to take the great weight from his legs. He picked up her shopping bag with his right hand, and draped the injured left arm over the small woman's shoulder. They began to walk by the terraced doors and the chipped and daubed red brick of the street. It was a grey Belfast morning, rain threatening, wind cold and from the east, coming in over the 207

Lough. The two threaded a path over the fractured paving stones, past the endless heaps of dogs' mess towards the house that had become Downs's goal.

The moment the two had created for each other was broken by the footsteps behind.

Instinctively both knew the noise of pursuit. In Ardoyne the knack of recognizing it was inbred.

The women on the corner were silent as Harry ran by them down the gentle incline towards where the man and his wife were walking away from him. He held the revolver close to him, reassured by the hardness of the wooden handle, roughened with age and usage. He pulled up twenty feet short of them. The pair swung round to face him.

'Don't move. Don't try to run or get your firearm. If you do I'll shoot.'

Harry barked the instructions. The harshness of his tone and its assurance surprised him. He felt almost detached from the orders he was shouting.

Tut the bag down and begin to walk towards me, and slowly. Your hands on your head. The woman‐‐she stays where she is.'

Be strong. Don't mess about with him. You'll be a long time before you shift the bastard. Don't let him dominate you. Keep the gun on him, look at his hands the whole time. Watch the hands, and keep the gun in line. Keep it so it's only got to come straight up to fire, and the catch off. Check with the thumb that the catch is off. It is, certain. Now separate them, don't let them be together so she can shield him. She'll do that, they all will, throw themselves at you to give him a yard. And shoot. If he moves shoot him. Don't hesitate. Stay still yourself. Don't march about. That disorganizes the shot you may make. Two bullets only. One up the spout, and the other in the next chamber, that's all.

Harry studied him hard. The other man, the opposition. Dirty, cowed and frightened‐‐is that the terrorist? Is that all he is? Is that the killer in all his glory? Not much to look at, not much without his Klashnikov.

'Start walking now, and remember: keep it very cool, or I shoot. What's your name?'

'Billy Downs. You're the Englishman they sent for me? The one that had the girl killed?" They'd told him the Britisher hadn't come to take him, not to put him in the Kesh, but to kill him. The fight of survival was returning, steadily and surely. "You won't get out of here, you know. Not with me on the end of your pistol, you won't.'

He looked past Harry and seemed to nod his head into the middle distance. It was cleverly done. Good try, Billy boy. But you're with the professionals now, lad. A squaddie might have turned and given you the third of a second you needed to jump him. Not Harry. Pivot round.

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Get your back to the wall. Keep going till you feel the brickwork. But watch the bastard. All the time keep your eyes on his hands.

Faced with troops in uniform, Downs would probably have submitted without a struggle and climbed into the armoured car to start whatever segment of his lifetime in captivity they intended for him. But not this way. No surrender to a single hack sent from London to kill him watched by his wife and in his own road. For a year it would be talked about‐‐the day when a lone Englishman came into Ardoyne and shot down meek little Billy Downs. The day the boy's nerve went.

He was formidable, this Englishman, in his old jeans and dark anorak, with the clear‐cut face, softer than those fashioned in the bitterness of Belfast. He had not been reared through the anguish of the troubles, and it showed in the freshness of his features. But he was hard, Downs had no doubt on that. They'd trained him and sent him from London for this moment, and Downs knew his life rested on his capacity to read the expressionless mouth of his enemy.

When he made his break all would depend on how well the Englishman could shoot, and, when he fired, how straight. Downs made his assessment ... he'll fire, but fire late, and he'll miss. He turned himself now from the waist only, and very slowly, towards his wife. He was close to her, much closer than Harry, and with his face in profile he mouthed from the far side of his lips, the one word.

'Scream.'

She read it in the shape of his mouth, the way the lips and gums twisted out the message.

Harry didn't see the instruction, and was still concentrating on the man's hands when she yelled. It came from deep down. A fierce noise from so small a woman. Harry jerked from his pre‐occupation with Downs as he searched for the source of the noise, his eyes shifting direction.

Downs had made his decision. Now or not at all, either now or the

bastard has you in his own time, to shoot like a rat in a cage. He pushed his wife violently towards Harry and started for the freedom of the open street down the hill. His first two strides took him to the edge of the pavement. A flood of adrenalin ... anticipating the shot, head down, shoulders crouched. This was the moment. Either he fires now or I make it, three, four more paces then the range and accuracy of the revolver is stretched. His eyes half closed, he saw nothing in front of him as his left foot hit hard on the steep edge of the pavement. For his heel there was support, for his sole there was nothing, only the gap between the flagstones and the gutter eight inches below. His weight was all there, all concentrated on that foot, as he catapulted himself forward, the momentum taking over.

He realized the way he was falling, and tried to twist round on to his back, but there was no time, no room. He hit the rough gravel of the road on his left arm, right on the spot where the 209

flesh had been twice torn open by Rennie's bullet. The frail lint bandage gave no protection.

With his right arm he clawed at the road surface trying to push himself uo and away from Harry, who was coming to him, revolver outstretched...

Harry saw the pain reach over and cover the man's face. He saw the hand scruffing under the body. If the man had a gun that was where it would be, down by the waist, where the hand was fumbling now. It wasn't a difficult decision any more. He raised the revolver so that the line went down from his right eye, down his right arm to the "V of the back sight and along the black barrel to the sharp foresight, and then on to the man's upper chest. He held the aim just long enough for his hand to steady, then squeezed the trigger gently into the cup of his forefinger. The noise was not great. The revolver gave only a slight kick, jolting down the rigid arm to Harry's shoulder. Below him Downs's body began to twitch, giving way to spasmodic convulsions. The blood found its own pathway from the side of his mouth out on to the greyness of the road. Like water tracking across dry earth it kept its course, faster, thicker, wider as the road discoloured with its brightness.

There was no need for the second bullet, Harry could see that.

'Why did you shoot him? He had no gun. Why did you kill him?' She was moving towards Downs, looking at Harry as she spoke. 'You didn't have to shoot. You could have run after him, and caught him. You know he was shot last night, and hit. He wasn't much opposition to you, you Britisher sod.'

She knelt down beside her husband, her stocking dragging on the

harsh surface of the road. He lay on his side, and she could not cradle him as she would have wanted. Both her hands touched the face of her man, unmarked in his death, fingering his nose and ears and eyes.

Harry felt no part of the scene; but something was demanded of him, and painstakingly he began to explain.

'He knew the rules. He knew the game he was playing. He came to London and murdered the

Cabinet Minister. In cold blood. Shot him down in front of his house. Then he went to ground.

It was a challenge to us. He must have known we had to get him‐‐you must have known that. It was a test of will. There was no way we could lose‐‐we couldn't afford to.'

Harry had wondered how this moment would be. How he would feel if the man were dead, destroyed. There was no hatred, no loathing for the slight body that lay on the grit of the tarmac. There was no elation, either, that his world and his system had beaten that of the young man who they had told him was the enemy, evil, vermin. Harry felt only emptiness. All the training, all the fear, all the agony, directed to killing this awkward, shapeless nonentity.

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And now nothingness. He looked again at the wife as she stayed bent over her lifeless man, and began his walk up the hill out of Ardoyne.

She was watching him, hands still on the man's body when the shot came. Simultaneously with the crack she saw Harry stagger, appear to regain his balance, and then career backwards, before thudding against the front wall of a house. His arms were pressed against the middle of his chest. Then he toppled in slow motion over on to the pavement.

In the OP it was Smith who was at the aperture, giving a continuous description to the lance-corporal who relayed the message back to headquarters over the radio telephone.

'There's a man running up behind Downs. With a shooter. A revolver, looks like, a little one. Tell

"em to shift "emselves back at HQ. Downs has his hands up, and they're talking. Not much, but saying something.'

From the telephone set Burns called, "What about the other bloke, they want to know, what's he look like?'

'Civvies, anorak and jeans. It's a short‐barrel revolver he's got, not Downs ... the other man.

Scruffy‐looking. He's making a run for it, Downs is. Bloody hell, he's down, tripped himself.

Fuck me, he's going to shoot him, he's going to shoot him!'

High in the hidden observation post Burns heard the single shot.

'I can get the bugger, can't I, Dave? He just shot the other bastard. Waving a gun about and all that, it's enough.'

Smith was maneuvering his rifle into position. The old Lee Enfield with the big telescopic sight, the sniper's weapon, the marksman's choice.

'I've a good line on him from here. No problem." Smith was talking to himself, whispering into the butt of the rifle. Burns was motionless and watched from the back of the OP nestled among the blankets and sacking as Smith drew back the bolt action, and settled himself, shifting his hips from side to side to get comfortable for the shot. He was a long time aiming, wanting to be certain the first time. The firing echoed round under the roof of the mill.

'Did you get him?" urged Burns.

'A real bloody peach.'

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The sharpness of the pain numbed Harry. As he lay, stomach down on the pavement, he could feel nothing, his head was facing the walls of the houses away from the street. Green moss rubbed close to his nose, and beyond that lay the jagged edge of a milk bottle, and, huge and high, a front door step. There was no understanding of what had happened. Just the noise, and the helpless collapse, the blows that had carried him from his feet.

He worked his right hand slowly from under him where it had gripped his chest. The fingers were scarlet and shiny. The effort was so great. No strength left, no power, and endless labour just to move an arm. The action of all the muscles, all working in his biceps, his heavy shoulders, and deep behind the ravaged rib cage, combined to bring on the first stabs of agony. Bruised from his fall, his face contorted with pain, the upper teeth clamping on the softness of his lip, he struggled to control the spasms.