The Chinaman

by Stephen Leather

  A horn sounded and he realised the light had turned green. He missed first gear and went into third by mistake and the van stalled. The horn blared out again and it was joined by others until he got the engine started again and pulled away jerkily.

  He drove along the Falls Road, the Royal Victoria Hospital on his left, and the city changed character. It took on a brooding, menacing air. He saw burnt-out cars down side roads, rusting hulks that had obviously been there for months, like the skeletons of long-dead animals. There were children everywhere, in push-chairs, playing football on the pavements, walking with their parents, standing on street corners, loitering outside pubs, children with worn clothes and unkempt hair and runny noses. He drove by red-brick houses that had been gutted and never repaired, derelict wrecks like rotting stumps in a mouthful of bad teeth. There were splashes of colour among the drab greyness – extravagant murals on the gable ends of the terraces, paintings of masked men with machine guns, elaborate crosses, memorials to hunger strikers who had died in prison, and the tricolour, the Irish flag. There were slogans too, many of which Nguyen didn’t understand, but there were some he could read: ‘Support The Provisionals’, ‘Troops Out’, ‘Ireland for the Irish’. He drove by a pub, windows protected with thick wire mesh. There were two men standing either side of a black wooden door with their hands in their pockets and they scrutinised the van with hostile eyes. Lookouts, Nguyen decided. He would have to be more careful where he showed himself. The city centre had lulled him into a false sense of security. Out here, in the Catholic working-class areas, he could feel the mistrust in the air like the cloying damp of a morning mist. The men saw that Nguyen was Oriental and immediately lost interest in him.

  The road curved gently and on his right Nguyen saw a huge graveyard which stretched as far as he could see, and then another cemetery on his left as he followed Glen Road and then turned left at a roundabout and headed south-east on Kennedy Way through the district shown on the map as Andersonstown. He slowed down to look at two depressing rows of flats, precast greying concrete with dirty windows and badly painted frames. The muddy verge of trampled grass that surrounded the blocks was littered with empty crisp packets, tattered pages of abandoned tabloid newspapers, stale fish and chip wrappers and broken bottles, the flotsam and jetsam of inner city life. Nguyen was unable to understand why the people who lived there did not take better care of their surroundings. How could they tolerate such squalor, he thought. Living in poverty was one thing, but that was no excuse for behaving like animals. He shook his head sadly.

  He drove towards a place called Malone and the surroundings improved, the depressing neglect giving way to well-kept gardens and freshly painted houses, and then he indicated left on to Malone Road, heading back to the city centre. Just before he reached the city’s Botanic Gardens he turned left into Wellington Park, musing over what he had seen. The people who lived in the depressed areas had little to lose, he realised. If his enemy came from the rubbish-strewn slums and the neglected high-rise monstrosities, then surely prison would hold no fear for them. Children reared there would be tough, uncaring, loyal to their own and aggressive against intruders. Their poverty would bind them like iron chains. He wouldn’t be taking on one man, he would be going against the whole of the IRA. He switched off the engine and stared out with unseeing eyes. It had to be done, whatever the cost. He had no choice. He owed it to his wife, and to his daughters.

  Liam Hennessy stood in his garden and looked up at the rocky outcrop they called Napoleon’s Nose. Not that it looked like a nose, or any other part of Napoleon’s anatomy. Jackie, his red setter, loped out of the house and over the lawn towards him. He bent down and ruffled her ears and let her lick his hands.

  He walked around the lawn with his dog, checking the trees and plants. He was a keen gardener but his law practice and political activities left him little time to attend to the half acre or so that surrounded his four-bedroomed red-brick house in Antrim Road. He employed part-time a retired gardener who had formerly helped to tend the city’s Botanic Gardens, but he insisted on checking his progress every morning. He knelt down and examined a heather-covered rockery and Jackie ran up and licked his cheek with her sloppy tongue. He pushed her away and laughed.

  ‘She wants a walk,’ said his wife. He turned and straightened up, brushing his knees.

  ‘You could creep up on the devil himself, Mary,’ he laughed. She handed him a mug of tea.

  ‘Your dog wants a walk,’ she repeated. Mary Hennessy looked a good deal less than her forty-six years, tall and slim with dark brown, lightly curled hair in a pageboy cut. Hennessy looked at her appreciatively as he took the mug. She didn’t look like a woman who had two teenage children. Her skin was smooth and lightly tanned and the few wrinkles she had made her look all the more beautiful. She still turned the heads of men half her age and she knew it. There were times when he was so afraid of losing her that his stomach churned.

  ‘Our dog,’ he corrected.

  She nodded at the setter as it sat at his feet looking up at him with undisguised love. ‘Just look at her,’ she said.

  ‘I can remember when there was a look not unlike that in your own fair eyes,’ he teased, and she laughed. The phone rang and she ran across the lawn to the house. She runs, for God’s sake, thought Hennessy, she runs like an excited child and she laughs out loud. He tried to remember when he’d last laughed out loud. He couldn’t recall exactly when it was but it was after hearing Ian Paisley being interviewed on television and it wasn’t a gentle, lilting laugh like Mary’s, it was sarcastic and biting.

  ‘Jackie,’ he said, ‘I am getting old.’

  The red setter looked up at him and woofed as if agreeing and he reached down and patted her on the head.

  ‘There’s no time for a walk, old girl. The car will be here any moment, sure enough.’

  Jim Kavanagh and Christy Murphy were at Hennessy’s side all day and most of the evening, but during the night they went home to sleep and their places were taken by two men from a pool of about a dozen trusted volunteers who stayed outside his house in whatever car they were using. Jimmy McMahon took the black Jaguar to his own house in north Belfast and brought Kavanagh and Murphy with him first thing in the morning. Hennessy looked at his watch. They were late.

  Mary appeared at the back door and waved to him. ‘It’s Christy,’ she shouted.

  Jackie’s ears pricked up and she romped towards her in the mistaken belief that she was being called in for some titbit. Hennessy walked after her, cursing under his breath and taking care not to spill his tea. The Jaguar had only just come out of the garage after a very expensive service and he hoped it hadn’t been in an accident.

  Mary handed the phone to him. Murphy sounded short of breath. ‘The bastards tried to kill us,’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Hennessy.

  ‘The bastards tried to blow us up.’

  ‘Calm down, Christy,’ Hennessy soothed. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  He heard Murphy take a deep breath before speaking. ‘We went to get the Jaguar out of Jimmy’s garage. He got into the driving seat and was just about to start up the sodding thing when we saw it. Holy Mary, mother of God, if we hadn’t spotted it we’d all have been . . .’

  ‘What happened?’ interrupted Hennessy impatiently.

  ‘They used a flash-bulb and a couple of wires.’

  ‘A flash-bulb?’

  ‘A flash-bulb, and it had been covered in some sort of red powder. It was a home-made detonator, as soon as the ignition key was turned it would have exploded the petrol in the tank.’

  ‘OK, Christy. Where are you now?’

  ‘We’re all in Jimmy’s house.’

  There was a muttering in the background and the sound of a bottle clinking against a glass. The boys were having a wee snort to calm their nerves, and Hennessy didn’t blame them. They’d had two narrow escapes in as many days.

  ‘Listen, this is what you do. Hav
e you removed it?’

  ‘Sure enough, we pulled it out of the tank, but it’s still connected.’

  ‘Leave it just as it is. Call Willie O’Hara and get him to look at it, he knows what he’s doing. And get him to check out the whole car, from top to bottom. As soon as he’s given it the all clear, you and Jim come on over. And Christy?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Take it easy.’

  He replaced the receiver. The mug of tea was still in his left hand, untouched. He sipped it, a deep frown on his forehead.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked his wife.

  He nodded. ‘Somebody has just tried to blow up the car.’

  Mary’s eyes widened and her mouth opened. He hadn’t told her about the explosion at the office because he hadn’t wanted to worry her, but he took her into the kitchen and sat her down at the pine breakfast table and told her that there had been two attempts on his life, albeit half-hearted ones.

  There was a scratching noise at the door and Hennessy walked over to let in the dog. She scuttled beneath the table and Hennessy realised then how vulnerable he was. He went down the hall, opened the front door and waved over the two men sitting in a blue Ford Escort to the left of the driveway. He told them to be extra careful and sent one of them to stand guard by the back door until Murphy and Kavanagh arrived.

  He returned to the kitchen and flashed his wife a smile as he sat down.

  ‘Who do you think is behind this? The Ulster Defence Association?’

  Hennessy shrugged and looked down at his mug of tea. A brownish scum was beginning to form on the surface and he poked it with his finger.

  ‘There was some clever dick inspector at the office who said it might be a warning.’

  ‘A warning?’

  Hennessy looked up and was pleased to see the concern in her eyes. ‘The bomb in the office wasn’t really a bomb, it was a home-made affair that was limited in terms of the damage it could do. And from the sound of it the job they tried to do on the car today was pretty amateurish, too. I mean, they must be pretty stupid not to realise that the first thing we do every morning is to check out the car.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to warn you, Liam? The UDA don’t normally bother issuing warnings, do they?’

  She was right, of course. In recent years there had been an unspoken agreement between the various political groupings not to assassinate the top echelons, an understanding that the leaders had to be able to talk with their opposite numbers without the constant fear of a shotgun blast through the letterbox or a pistol to the back of the neck. The Brighton bombing had shown that no one was safe, not even the Prime Minister, and the whole world had seen a President take a bullet from a lone gunman. The Paisleys and the Adamses and the Hennessys wouldn’t last a week if they ever declared open season on each other, but as it was they could move fairly safely through the city. They still kept their bodyguards and trusted the opposition about as much as they trusted the British Government, but the bad old days when a bodyguard had to take a bullet in the shoulder to protect Hennessy were long gone. But if the truce was now over, there’d be no warning, they’d just cut him down with a hail of bullets as he got out of his car. They wouldn’t mess around with do-it-yourself bombs. No, this couldn’t be political. But if it wasn’t political, what was it?

  He stood up and put his hand gently under Mary’s chin, tilting her head upwards. ‘There was a man came round to the office yesterday, a Chinaman. His wife and daughter were killed in one of the London bombings. He thinks I’m responsible.’

  ‘He came all the way to Belfast to see you?’

  ‘He wants me to tell him who’s behind the bombing campaign. I sent him packing and a few minutes later our toilet exploded. Now this.’

  She shook her head away from his hand. ‘Why haven’t you told the police this?’

  ‘We’re not sure it’s him. And anyway, it’s the sort of thing we can handle ourselves.’

  ‘Liam!’ she said angrily. ‘You’re playing with our lives here!’

  ‘If it is him we’ll soon stop him, don’t worry. He’s Chinese, he won’t be difficult to spot in Belfast.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said. The look of concern had gone now, and it had been replaced by something else, something that seemed to Hennessy to be uncomfortably like contempt. It was a look that his wife was giving him more and more often these days, he thought with a heavy heart. He couldn’t seem to do anything right. He decided not to try to win her around, knowing that he was sure to fail.

  ‘I’ll be in the study until Jim and Christy get here,’ he said as he walked out of the kitchen. Jackie rushed out from under the table, her claws clicking against the tiles, and loyally followed him out.

  He went into his study and closed the door. Jackie went to her wicker basket by the side of the french window which led on to the small patio and she settled into it with a deep and mournful sigh as if offering sympathy for the rough treatment he was getting from Mary. He knew that she would prefer him to take a tougher line with the Protestant extremists, and on more than one occasion she’d urged him to mount an all-out offensive against the UDA. It was so strange, he thought, the way that he himself had mellowed over the years and she had become more and more committed to an armed struggle. The more he tried to persuade her that the only solution was a negotiated one, the more she seemed to turn away from him, physically and emotionally. But he knew that he was right, that his way was the only way forward. Anything else would only end in bloodshed. Knowing that he was right didn’t make him feel any better.

  There was a safe set into the wall behind a framed hunting print over a cast-iron fireplace; Hennessy opened it and took out a brown A4 manila envelope. He flicked the open end with a thumbnail as he walked over to the desk. Inside was a sheaf of papers, each a report on an individual arms cache. There were fifteen in all, and he was expecting a further six by nightfall. He spread the sheets out on the desk and examined them. Three of the caches had been interfered with. In all, fifteen kilograms of Semtex had been taken, along with a dozen detonators, two mercury tilt switches, two handguns and a small amount of ammunition. Everything else necessary for the construction of bombs – wires, timing devices, transmitters – could be bought from High Street stores. Hennessy was sure that the maverick IRA team had been stealing from the organisation’s munition dumps and he was equally certain that they were being helped by somebody inside the organisation. The trouble was that there was no pattern, no connection between the three dumps. They were the responsibility of three different IRA cells. He grunted and gathered up the papers. Jackie lifted her head and watched him put the sheets back into the envelope.

  ‘Maybe the remaining inspections will supply the answer,’ he said to her and she chuffed in agreement.

  Hennessy heard a car arrive outside and footsteps crunching on the gravelled drive before the doorbell rang. He waited to see if Mary would answer it, but he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. He went and opened the door to let in Kavanagh and Murphy and a small sharp-faced man with a straggly moustache and grey, watery eyes, Willie O’Hara. Jimmy McMahon stayed outside in the Jaguar, reluctant to let it out of his sight. Willie was wearing his normal baggy grey suit, the trousers held up by a greasy brown belt, and he was carrying a paper bag. Hennessy took the three men into the study. ‘Was the car clear?’ he asked O’Hara.

  ‘Other than this?’ answered the little man, holding up the bag. ‘Yeah, this was all, but it would’ve been more than enough.’ He reached in his hand and took out a coil of black wire and held it out to Hennessy. ‘Crude, but it would’ve done the job.’

  There were two pieces of wire, each about ten-foot long, and both had been soldered to the flash-bulb.

  Hennessy pointed to the red powder which covered the flash-bulb. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  O’Hara’s eyes shone. ‘Ground up match-heads,’ he said. ‘Mainly potassium chlorate. Just to add an extra kick. Probably wouldn’t have been neces
sary, but it’s a nice touch.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘Whoever it was had prised open the fuel cap and left the flash-bulb dangling just inside the tank, in the fumes above the petrol. You turn the key and up she goes.’

  ‘Guaranteed?’

  O’Hara frowned, wondering what Hennessy was getting at. ‘Pretty certain. I mean, it’s not the sort of gadget we’d use because there’s always an outside chance that the bulb might fall into the petrol in which case it wouldn’t ignite it. And it’s also pretty easy to spot.’

  ‘A warning?’

  O’Hara nodded eagerly. ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. Is somebody giving you trouble?’