Harry's Game

by Gerald Seymour

  And they’d been right. Rennie could see that now. He and his colleagues didn’t poke their noses into the corners and crannies of the Provisional heartland. They let the army do that with their fire-power and their armour plating, while the detectives sat back and contented themselves with the interrogation of the flow of arrested men. It was the next best thing, but not good enough.

  He’d never been much for the cloak and dagger stuff himself. Too big, too heavy, too conspicuous, not a man to flake his way into a crowd, not ordinary enough. But there were others who had been good at it, till the funerals became too frequent, and the Chief Constable had called a halt.

  One man, for instance, had been the king of the Branch men till he died up the Crumlin in a hail of automatic fire. Just watching the nightly riot when the sniper spotted him, and gone was a card-index memory, a walking filing system.

  Rennie’s report turned out to be a drab document. A succession of negatives after a score of calls and a search through the big tin drawers that carried the buff folders and the photographs and case histories. The Chief Constable came into the room as Rennie was pushing the typewriter back across the table.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing at all, sir. It’s a blind alley so far. No-one saying anything. Not a word.’

  ‘I told them in London that it’ll come at this end, the man they’re looking for. His equipment was too good for anyone based in London. He’ll be here. How many do we know who’re capable of it, capable of the discipline, of that sort of training?’

  ‘There are quite a few,’ said Rennie, ‘but none of them out. I could name half a dozen in Long Kesh who we would be looking for if they were free. But, taking them out of the game, I can’t see anyone. A bit ago, yes, but not now.’

  ‘I’m calling for a very big effort, maximum effort,’ the Chief Constable had walked away from the table and was talking half to himself, half out into the darkness beyond the shatterproof taped windows. ‘London have said in the past that they don’t get the co-operation they’re looking for when there’s a big one in England, and they come here for our help. I don’t want them saying that this time. God, it’s a damned nuisance. All the manpower, all the effort, everything that has to be dropped for a thing like this. But we have to have him.’

  He looked for a long time into the black distance beyond the floodlit perimeter fence. Then swung on his heel. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and closed the door carefully behind him.

  It’ll go on a bit now, thought Rennie, every night here for the next few weeks, typing away, and with little to show for it, unless we’re just lucky. Just lucky, and that doesn’t happen often.

  But just before midnight came the first positive identification of the killer back in the city. The duty major in intelligence section at Lisburn military headquarters, leafing through the situation reports of the evening, read that a patrol of the Lifeguards had for fifteen minutes closed the Hillsborough to Banbridge road while they investigated a package at the side of the road. It was cleared after the bomb disposal expert arrived and found the bag contained a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch, duty free and bought at Schipol airport. He hurriedly phoned his chief at home, and the RUC control centre. But, nagging at him, was the question of how such an operation as the Danby killing could have been mounted, with no word coming out.

  The man was asleep now, in the spare back bedroom of a small terraced house off the Ballymurphy Bull Ring. He’d come at 11.25 up from Whiterock where he had stayed since arriving in Belfast. Round him a safety system was building, with the arrangement that he’d sleep till 5.30, then move again up into New Barnsley. The Brigade staff in Belfast were anxious not to keep him long in one place, to hustle him round. Only the Brigade commander knew the value of the man the precautions were made for . . . No-one else was told, and in the house he was greeted with silence. He came in fast over the back fence, avoiding the kids’ bikes, ducked under the washing lines and made his way through the damp, filthy scullery into the back room. The family was gathered in semi-darkness with the television on loud – Channel 9. His escort whispered into the ear of the man of the house, and was gone, leaving him. The man was not from this part of the city, and was not known anyway.

  His arrival and needs, after four years of warfare, were unremarkable. In the ‘Murph’ his name could be kept secret, not his reason for running – not after the Scotland Yard photokit had been flashed up on the screen during the late-night news. On orders from London the photo had been withheld until after the intelligence and Special Branch officers had attempted to identify the killer. With their failure the picture had been released.

  The family gathered round the set to hear the announcer.

  Scotland Yard have just issued a photokit picture of the man they wish to interview in connection with the murder of Mr Henry Danby, the Minister of Social Security, at his home in central London yesterday morning. The picture has been compiled from the descriptions of several eye-witnesses. Scotland Yard say the man is aged about thirty, has short hair, with a parting on the left side, a narrow face, with what a witness calls ‘pinched cheeks’. The man is of light build, and about five feet nine inches tall. When last seen he was wearing grey trousers and a dark brown jacket. He may also have a fawn-coloured macintosh with him. Anyone who can identify this man is asked to get in touch immediately with the police on the Confidential Line of Belfast 227756 or 226837.

  High on the fireplace over the small fire grate was a carved and painted model of a Thompson machine-gun, a present to the family from their eldest son, Eamon, held for two years in Long Kesh. It was dated Christmas 1973. Below the gun the family registered no reaction to the picture shown on their screens.

  In the small hours Theresa, Eamon’s sister, tiptoed her way round the scarred door of the back room. She eased her path over the floorboards, still loosened and noisy since the army came to look for her brother. In the darkness she saw the face of the man, out from under his blankets with his arms wrapped around his pillow, as a child holds a favourite doll. She was shivering in the thin nightdress, transparent and reaching barely below her hips. She had selected it two hours before to put on before waiting to be sure her people were asleep. Very gently at first, she shook the shoulder of the man, till he started half out of bed, gripped her wrist, and then in one movement pulled her down, but as a prisoner.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he said it hard, tautly, with fear in his voice.

  ‘It’s Theresa.’ ?There was silence, just the man’s breathing, and still he held her wrist, vice-like. With her free hand she moved back the bedclothes and moved her body alongside his. He was naked and cold; across the room she saw his clothes strewn over the chair by the window.

  ‘You can let go,’ she said and tried to move closer to him, but only to find him backing away till the edge of the single bed stopped his movement.

  ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘To see you.’

  ‘Why did you come?’ Again harsher, louder.

  ‘They showed your picture . . . on the telly . . . just now . . . on the late news.’

  The hand released her wrist. The man flopped back on the pillow, tension draining out of him. Theresa pressed against his body, but found no response, no acknowledgement of her presence.

  ‘You had to know, for when they move you on. I had to tell you . . . we aren’t your enemies. You’re safe with us . . . there’s no danger.’

  ‘There are six men in the city who know I’m here – and you . . .’

  A little more nervously she whispered back, ‘Don’t worry yourself, there’s no narks here, not in this street . . . not since the McCoy girl . . . they shot her.’ It was an afterthought – Roisin McCoy, soldier’s girl-friend, part-time informer, found shot dead under Divis mountain. Big outcry, no arrests.

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’

  ‘I didn’t come to talk, and it’s freezing, half out of the bloody clothes.’

  He pulled her down, close now
against him, the nylon of her nightdress riding up over her hips and breasts. She pushed against him, screwing her nipples against the black hair of his chest.

  ‘Not much, are they?’ she murmured. ‘Couple of bloody bee stings.’

  The man smiled, and the hand that had grasped her wrist to the point of half stopping the blood flow now stroked and rubbed urgently at the soft white inside of her thighs. She reached down and felt his stomach back away as she took hold of him, limp and lifeless, pliable in her hand. Slowly, then frantically, to match her own sensations she stroked and kneaded him, but without success.

  Abruptly the man stopped his movements, pulled his hand away from the moist warmth.

  ‘Get out. Bugger off. Get out.’

  Theresa, nineteen years old, four of them spent on the mill weaving line, had heard and seen enough in her life to say, ‘Was it that bad . . . London . . . was it . . . ?’

  The interruption was a stinging blow across the right side of her face. His cheap onyx wedding ring gouged the skin below the eye. She was gone, out through the door across the passage to her bed; there she lay, legs clenched together, fascinated and horrified at the knowledge she had.

  In her half-sleep she heard the whisper of voices and the footsteps on the stairs as the man was taken to his next place of hiding.

  In the Cabinet Room the Prime Minister was showing little patience for the lack of a quick arrest. He had heard the Commissioner say that the case was static in London now, and that the main police effort was to establish how and where the man had entered the country. The boarding house in Euston where he had slept the night before the shooting had been searched, but nothing found. As expected the gun had yielded no fingerprints, and the same process of elimination was being used on the car. Here it was pointed out that the police had to identify the fingerprints of everyone who had handled the car over the previous six weeks or so before they could begin to come up with a worthwhile print and say this was the killer’s. It would take a long time, said the Commissioner, and involved drivers, Avis staff, garage personnel. Nothing had been found on the basics – steering wheel, door handle, gear lever. He reported on the new security measures surrounding Ministers, pointed out that they were nearly if not totally a waste of time if politicians did not co-operate, and urged no repetitions of the situation by which the murdered Minister had been able to decide for himself that he no longer wanted protection. He finished by putting the proposition that the killer had no contact in Britain, and had operated completely on his own. Reservations for tickets in Dublin, Heathrow and Amsterdam had all been made over the phone and were untraceable. He fell back on the theme that the solving of the crime would happen in Belfast, and that yesterday a Chief Superintendent from the Murder Squad had gone to Belfast to liaise with the RUC.

  Frank Scott, the Chief Constable, reported nothing had come in on the confidential phones, and as yet there had been no whisper on the Special Branch net. ‘Now we know he’s in the city we’ll get him, but it may not be fast – that’s the situation.’ It had been left to him to report the finding of the Amsterdam duty-free bag.

  ‘That’s what you said two days ago,’ snapped the Prime Minister.

  ‘And it’s still the situation.’ ?The Chief Constable was not prepared to give ground. The Northern Ireland Secretary chipped in, ‘I think we all accept, Frank, that it’s near impossible to stampede this sort of operation.’

  ‘But I have to have results.’ ?The Prime Minister drummed his knuckles on the table. ‘We cannot let this one hang about.’

  ‘I’m not hanging about, sir, and you well know that no-one in my force is.’ The Ulster policeman’s retort caused a certain fidgeting down the sides of the table from Ministers who had begun to feel their presence was irrelevant to the matter in hand – other than that by their arrivals and departures the cameras could witness the activity and firm hand of government. The Commissioner wished he’d come in faster. One up to the RUC.

  The Prime Minister, too, sensed the chilliness of the situation, and invited the opinion of General Fairbairn. As the GOC Northern Ireland, commanding more than fifteen thousand men there, he expected to be listened to. He weighed his words.

  ‘The problem, sir, is getting inside the areas the IRA dominate. Getting good information that we can trust and then can act on fast enough while the tips are still hot. Now, we can thrash around as we did yesterday morning, and as we have done to a more limited degree this morning, and though we pick up a bit – a few bodies, a few guns, some bomb-making equipment – we’re unlikely to get at the real thing. I would hazard the motive behind the killing was to get us to launch massive reprisal raids, cordon streets off, taking house after house to pieces, lock hundreds up. They want us to hammer them and build a new generation of mini-martyrs. It’s been quiet there these last few weeks. They needed a major publicity-attracting operation, and then a big kick-back from us to involve people at street level who are beginning to want to disengage. The raids we have been mounting these last thirty-six hours are fair enough as an initial reaction, but if we keep them up we’ll be in danger of reactivating the people who had begun to lose interest in the IRA.’

  ‘What about your intelligence men, your men on the inside?’

  ‘We don’t go in for that sort of thing so much now, we tend to meet on the outside – after the young captain was murdered three months ago, horrible business . . . the Ministry wasn’t happy, we suspended that sort of work.’

  ‘Suspended it?’ The Prime Minister deliberately accentuated the touch of horror in his voice.

  ‘We haven’t had an operation of anything like this size to handle for around a year; things have been running down. There hasn’t been the need for intelligence operatives. Now we would have to set up a new unit completely – the men we have there at the moment are too compromised. I don’t think in your time-scale, Prime Minister, we have the time to do it.’

  He said the last drily, and with only the faintest hint of sarcasm, sufficiently guarded to be just about permissible for a General in the Cabinet Room at No. 10 Downing Street.

  ‘I want a man in there . . . nothing else to think about.’ The Prime Minister was speaking deliberately, the Agriculture man thought – nice and slowly, just right for the transcript being scribbled in the corner.

  ‘I want an experienced agent in there as fast as you can make it. A good man. If we’ve picked the killer up by then, nothing lost, if not . . . I know what you’re going to say, General: if the man is discovered I will take the rap. That’s understood. Well?’

  The General had heard enough to realize that the interchange of ideas had been over several minutes earlier. This was an instruction by the Head of Government.

  ‘For a start, sir, you can get the gentleman taking the notes over there by the door to take his last page out of the book, take it over to the fire and burn it. You can also remind everyone in the room of the small print of the Official Secrets Act. Thank you.’

  The General got up, flushed high in his cheeks, and, followed hurriedly by the Chief Constable, who was sharing his RAF plane back to Belfast, left the room.

  The Prime Minister waited for the door to close, and the angry footsteps to hasten down the corridor.

  ‘They’re free enough with the advice when they want us to play round with political initiatives, but the moment we come up with a suggestion . . . That’s the way it’s always been. I’ve had four generals in my time at Downing Street telling me it’s all about over, that the Provisionals are beaten, that they’re finished. They reel off the statistics. How many sticks of gelignite they’ve found, how many rifles, how many houses have been searched, how the back of the opposition is broken. I’ve heard it too often – too often to be satisfied with it.’

  His eyes ranged up the shining mahogany table, along the line of embarrassed faces till they locked on to the Minister of Defence.

  ‘Your people have the wherewithal for this sort of thing. Get it set up, please, and control
led from this end. If our friend the General doesn’t like it, then he won’t have to worry himself.’

  That afternoon in an upper room above a newsagent’s shop near the main square in Clones, just over the border in County Monaghan, half of the twelve-man Army Council of the Provisional IRA met to consider the operation mounted two days earlier in London. Initially there was some anger that the killing had not been discussed by all members in committee, as was normal. But the Chief of Staff, a distant, intense man with deep-set eyes and a reputation for success in pulling the movement together, glossed over the troubles. He emphasized that, now the shooting had taken place, the priority in the movement was to keep the man safe. Unknowingly he echoed the British Prime Minister five hundred miles away in Whitehall when he said, ‘Every day we keep the man free is a victory. Right? They wanted to pull two battalions out next month; how can they when they can’t find one man? We have to keep him moving and keep him close. He’s a good man, he won’t give himself away. But at all costs we have to keep their hands off him. He’s better dead than in Long Kesh.’

  It was getting dark when the RAF Comet took off from Tempelhof airport, Berlin, with its three passengers. Halfway back and sitting in an aisle seat Harry still felt bewildered. Two hours earlier he had been called to the Brigade commander’s office at HQ under the shadow of the old Nazi Olympic stadium, and instructed he was going to London on urgent military business. He was told he wouldn’t need to go home to get his bag, that was being done, and no, it would not be suitable for him to phone home at this moment, but it would be explained to his wife that he had been called away in a hurry.