Renegades

by Hutson, Shaun;

  ‘So what?’ Doyle said, scornfully. ‘I hope they kill a few more.’ He raised his glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to the rebels,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘You bastard,’ snarled the drunken man, lunging at him.

  Bingo.

  Doyle moved away from the bar, side-stepping the clumsy dive with ease, but the man rounded on him, preparing to throw a punch.

  ‘Cut it out,’ shouted the barman, seeing the impending trouble.

  ‘You’ve got a fucking big mouth,’ the drunk said, glaring at Doyle.

  ‘Then make me shut it, shithead,’ he rasped, waiting for the inevitable onslaught. Doyle took a step backwards towards the unused pool table. Two cues were lying on it.

  ‘Leave him, Tommy,’ said someone further down the bar but the drunk was incensed, his reason clouded by the amount of booze he’d consumed.

  ‘I’m going to knock your fucking head off,’ he hissed at Doyle.

  ‘Then do it,’ he snapped back.

  The man ran at him.

  From a booth in the corner, Billy Dolan looked on with interest.

  Thirty-Seven

  The attack was clumsy.

  Doyle side-stepped the drunken man’s charge with little difficulty, his hand closing around a cue on the pool table.

  As the man rose Doyle gripped the long piece of wood tightly and swung it with savage force.

  The blow caught the man full in the face as he was rising. The thick end of the cue shattered two of his front teeth as it hit him squarely in the mouth. The enamel disintegrated under the impact, one tooth torn from the gum and forced through his upper lip. Blood poured from the hideous injury and the man dropped to his knees, both hands held to the bleeding cavity, moaning in pain as others came to his aid.

  Doyle thought about bringing the cue down on the top of the man’s head but finally he threw it to one side, his eyes on the two other men by the bar who’d been with his opponent before the fracas began. One of them took a step towards him but Doyle shook his head, his hand going to his jacket pocket.

  The man didn’t know there was nothing in there but he backed off nonetheless.

  Shouts now filled the pub. Of rage. Outrage.

  ‘Get out of here,’ shouted the barman, flipping open the bar and ambling towards Doyle. ‘Go on, get out of my fucking pub.’

  The counter-terrorist had every intention of doing so; he even tolerated a half-hearted push from one of the injured man’s colleagues. Then, suddenly, he was in the street, the sounds of bedlam closed off as the main doors of the pub shut behind him. He began walking immediately, hands dug deep in his jacket pockets, his pace even and unhurried.

  He smiled as he remembered the sight of the drunken man’s face after he’d hit him with the cue. It had felt good, all the more amusing to Doyle because he’d inflicted the damage defending the name of an organization he’d spent a good portion of his life fighting. The irony kept the grin on his face as he walked.

  He wandered down streets of terraced houses, each one looking as if it had been deposited from the end of a huge conveyor belt. They had a depressing uniformity; the only concessions to individualism were different coloured curtains or front doors.

  On the other side of the road there was a shop, a small general-purpose store. Its windows were heavily boarded up. Slogans had been sprayed over the metal guards.

  FREEDOM FOR IRELAND

  BRITS OUT

  GOD BLESS THE CAUSE

  A group of children were kicking a ball about, bouncing it off a parked car nearby. The ball spun loose and skidded in Doyle’s direction. He trapped it expertly with one foot, flipped it up into the air and began knocking it from one foot to the other then from one knee to the other, finally balancing it on his head as the youngsters watched. He finally flipped it up, caught it on the volley and sent it crashing against a lamp post.

  ‘Flash bastard,’ said one of the children as he passed.

  Doyle grinned broadly and walked on.

  Two women standing in the doorway of a house looked across at him, perhaps not recognizing his face, wondering who this newcomer to their community was. Life on the estates of Belfast was very insular; everyone knew everyone else’s business. There were no secrets. It was as if the whole country were part of one gigantic conspiracy.

  He stopped to light a cigarette, tossing the spent match into the gutter.

  It was as he turned into Whiterock Road that he realized he was being followed.

  He had suspected as much when he stopped to kick the kids’ football but he had only glimpsed the man briefly out of the corner of his eye. To a less trained man the tail probably would have been anonymous, as it was intended, but to someone in Doyle’s profession the pursuer might as well have been wearing a sandwich board proclaiming the fact.

  A friend of the injured man’s, perhaps?

  A plain-clothes policeman even, suspicious of such open support for the IRA renegades?

  A number of alternatives passed through Doyle’s, mind as he walked on.

  He crossed the road, glancing back supposedly to check for traffic.

  His pursuer was still there.

  Gaining, if anything.

  Doyle reached the other side of the road and slowed his pace. Fuck this; he wasn’t going to wear himself out for nothing. He dropped to one knee and pretended to adjust his boot, aware how easy it would be to slip the .38 from its holster should he need to.

  He heard footsteps quickening behind him.

  There were about a dozen people on the street but Doyle didn’t care. If he had to he would use the gun.

  The footsteps drew closer.

  ‘Hey,’ a voice called.

  Doyle got to his feet, his pursuer now less than ten feet behind him.

  ‘Hey, you,’ the voice called again, much closer this time.

  Doyle turned, not wanting to be caught off guard.

  The man who approached him was in his early twenties, a little shorter than Doyle.

  He was smiling.

  ‘I saw what happened in the pub, back there,’ said Billy Dolan.

  ‘What if you did?’ said Doyle challengingly.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you that if you’re in there again I’ll buy you a drink.’

  Doyle’s facial expression didn’t change.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘I heard what that mouthy bastard was saying about the IRA before you put one on him. I wanted to thank you. The Cause doesn’t have too many friends right now. One more never hurts.’ He smiled that broad, infectious smile again.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Doyle. ‘I’ll take you up on that drink.’ He faltered, realizing he didn’t know the man’s name.

  ‘Billy.’

  Doyle extended a hand which Dolan shook warmly.

  ‘Good to meet you, Billy,’ he said, looking closely at the man’s face, taking in every detail, every furrow and line, every nuance of expression. ‘My name’s Sean.’

  ‘I’d buy you one now but I’ve got to be off,’ said Dolan. ‘But, like I said, if you’re in there again the offer stands.’ He turned and headed back across the road, raising a hand as a gesture of farewell.

  Doyle watched him go, looking down briefly at his own right hand as if he could still feel the strength of the man’s grip.

  ‘Well, Billy,’ he said, softly, his Irish accent now gone. ‘Maybe I will let you buy me that drink after all.’ Then, smiling, he turned and headed towards the bus stop at the bottom of the road.

  Thirty-Eight

  She wanted to see where he’d died.

  That had been her first, irrational, ridiculous thought, looking out of the plane onto Belfast.

  She had wanted to see the place where her brother had been murdered.

  Now Georgina Willis stood against the window of her room on the tenth floor of the Excelsior Hotel and looked out across the city where her brother had been killed.

  It was late afternoon; the sky already dark with approaching rain clouds. Th
e weather forecast even spoke of some localized fog. She pressed her face to the cold glass and sighed, glancing down at the people milling about in the streets below, at the cars and buses which clogged the roads. From here, Belfast seemed like any ordinary city, full of shoppers and business people, tourists and visitors. But since 1969 it had been a battleground. And, just when that conflict had looked like reaching a final conclusion, the threat had risen once more to cloud the minds of those who lived in the province. It seemed as if so much hope was to be dashed, already had been dashed, in the blaze of automatic weapons at Stormont less than a week earlier.

  But those that had died at Stormont had been faceless to her in the widest sense. Yes, she knew their names,. but their deaths had been unfortunate. Their passing had not touched her life. They had been strangers.

  She thought that most of the pain of losing her brother had passed by now, but as she stood gazing out over the city she found the hurt rising again inside her, swelling like a blister on her consciousness. She finally moved away from the window, walking across to the bed. There she sat on the edge and took off her shoes, massaging her aching feet. The shift had seemed unusually long behind the main bar of the hotel. Shed been working for over four hours, pulling pints and measuring shorts, cleaning glasses, chatting with the other bar-staff and customers alike.

  There had been little information worth storing, little worth telling Doyle when he returned. If he ever did.

  She had seen little of him in the past two days. He had a room next to hers, but when he wasn’t posing as a night porter he was out and about in the city. She’d seen him for less than an hour since they’d arrived in Belfast two days before. He was becoming restless, angry that no leads were turning up. It seemed that Maguire and his men had disappeared into thin air after the killing of Reverend Pithers. There had been talk of the latest murder in the hotel and Georgie had probed and cajoled her colleagues to speak their views on what had happened in the vain hope that one of them might have some shred of information worth following up, but so far she had heard nothing.

  She unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it onto the bed, slipped off her skirt and threw that to one side as well. She wandered through into the bathroom and turned on the shower, testing the water with her hand. Then she pulled off her bra and knickers, wrapped a white housecoat around her and padded back into the bedroom. She put her skirt and blouse on a hanger and crossed to the wardrobe.

  As she opened the door she looked down at her handbag.

  The gun was inside.

  While she waited for the shower to heat up she took the pistol from her bag and walked across to the bed with it; where she sat, one leg drawn up beneath her, the gun cradled in her hand.

  The Sterling .357 Magnum was surprisingly light; it was one of the reasons she had chosen it. It was chambered for either .38 or .357 rounds. Georgie flipped out the cylinder and spun it, checking each chamber. In her bag she had the ammunition. She was using Blazer rounds, light and hollow-tipped.

  She raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger, smiling at the smoothness of the action. The hammer slammed down on an empty chamber, the metallic crack echoing around the room. She replaced the weapon, wandered through into the bathroom, took off her robe and stepped beneath the shower, enjoying the feel of the water on her skin. She adjusted the spray so that the jets stung her skin and stood beneath the spray, eyes closed, allowing the water to bounce off her. It ran over her breasts and down her stomach, through her light pubic hair. The hiss of the shower was loud.

  Loud enough to mask the sounds outside her door.

  Georgie did not hear the rattle as someone tried to turn the handle.

  She stood beneath the shower, allowing the water to wash the smell of smoke and drink from her hair, to scour the tiredness from her muscles.

  The door-handle twisted.

  She heard nothing beneath the pounding spray.

  She reached for the soap.

  ‘Shit,’ she murmured, noticing that she had left it by the sink.

  She stepped from beneath the shower, almost slipping on the tiled floor as water ran down her legs, one hand wiping moisture from her eyes.

  She was about to step back into the shower when she heard the rattle of the lock.

  Through the open bathroom door she could see the handle moving very slightly.

  Without a second thought she sprinted through into the bedroom, naked, leaving soggy footprints on the carpet as she scuttled towards the wardrobe.

  Towards the revolver.

  The sounds outside the door had ceased for a moment and Georgie opened the wardrobe quietly, wincing when the hinges creaked. She kept one eye on the door, pulling the gun and ammunition from her bag.

  The handle moved once more.

  She slid six bullets quickly and carefully into their chambers and snapped the cylinder shut. Then, raising the gun before her, she pressed herself against the wall and moved towards the door, leaving wet slicks against the wallpaper.

  She heard a click as the lock was slipped, she guessed with a credit card.

  The door began to open.

  Georgie steadied the gun in both hands, making sure that, if the door was pushed; she would still have clear access to the intruder.

  The door opened a little more; she saw the outline of a shadow fall across her threshold.

  A figure took a step inside.

  She lowered the .357, her heart pounding that little bit faster.

  The intruder was in now.

  Georgie smiled and thumbed back the hammer, pushing the barrel of the weapon against the intruder’s head.

  ‘You move and I’ll blow your fucking head off,’ she whispered.

  Thirty-Nine

  It took Georgie a couple of seconds to realize what was happening.

  To recognize the long hair, the leather jacket.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Doyle,’ she said, lowering the pistol. ‘Couldn’t you just knock?’

  The counter-terrorist turned to face her, a smile spreading across his lips as he saw that she was naked, her body still dripping water. Georgie suddenly seemed to realize as well and tugged the blanket from the bed, wrapping it around herself. Her cheeks flushed.

  ‘What the hell are you doing creeping around breaking into my bloody room, anyway?’ she said, irritably, returning the .357 to the wardrobe. As she turned her back on him he saw that the blanket didn’t serve as a very good wrap around. Her buttocks were bare. Doyle raised his eyebrows approvingly. He walked across to the bed and sat down.

  ‘We are supposed to be a couple,’ he said, still smiling, stroking the scar on the left side of his face.

  It was as he raised his hand she noticed there was blood on it.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked, nodding towards his hand.

  Doyle noticed it now too and shrugged.

  ‘It’s not my blood,’ he told her. ‘It’s from some mouthy mick I met in a pub.’

  She walked back into the bathroom, pushing the door shut behind her, finishing her shower quickly. She emerged a moment later, dressed in the bath robe, her hair dripping. She wiped it with a towel.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Just the usual chit-chat,’ she said., ‘Everyone’s outraged by what’s happened, can’t understand why the killing took place. The usual sort of thing. Nothing to go on. What about you?’

  ‘If anyone knows anything about Maguire they’re keeping it bloody quiet,’ he said, lying back on the bed, arms folded behind his head. ‘No one even wants to admit allegiance to the IRA since what happened.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Apart from one guy I met today in a pub in Ballymurphy.’ He told her briefly what had happened in the pub.

  ‘Who was this guy who followed you?’ she wanted to know, running fingers through her hair to dry it.

  ‘His name was Billy. I didn’t get his last name, unfortunately. Young. Early twenties, about five-eight, dark-haired, grey eyes. I’m going back tomorrow, see if
I can find him. It’s not much of a lead but it’s all we’ve got at the moment.’ .

  She finished drying her hair, perched on the end of the bed looking down at Doyle.

  ‘Where the hell have you been for the last two days? I’ve hardly seen you?’

  ‘Doing my job,’ he said. ‘We came here to find Maguire, not go on a sightseeing trip.’ He regarded her coldly for a moment.

  ‘You don’t have to be so hostile, Doyle. I’m on your side, remember?’ she said quietly.

  He swung himself up and prepared to get to his feet.

  ‘If it hadn’t been me coming through that door just then,’ he said. ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘Fired, if necessary. Does that surprise you?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘You’re off tonight, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I know because I checked the rotas. I’m off too.’

  ‘Want to go out somewhere?’ he asked, almost as if it were a natural thing to do. ‘A meal, perhaps? You never know, we might even overhear something.’

  She smiled.

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said.

  He was already heading for the door.

  ‘I’ll be back in half an hour, I want to get cleaned up,’ he told her. He paused as he reached the door. ‘Have you got anything else with you except that Sterling?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ve got a PD Star. Why?’

  ‘Bring it,’ he said flatly. ‘Slip it in your stocking top.’ He winked at her. ‘Just in case.’

  Then he was gone.

  Georgie went back to the wardrobe and found the Star in a side compartment of her handbag. At less than four inches in length it fitted into the palm of her hand, but its 9mm calibre meant that, should it be needed, it was more than adequate for bringing down a man. She laid it beside her on the dressing table as she began to apply her make-up.

  Doyle was bang on time.

  At 8.36 p.m. they rode the lift to the ground floor where he invited her to take his arm.