by Alan Judd
‘No.’
‘Chicken.’
‘Well, what could we do about it? We can’t go to Edward or the CO and say we’ve been creeping around the monastery specifically against orders and we’ve found some suspicious-looking boxes that might contain arms.’
‘They are arms.’
‘And if they are we don’t know who put them there. It could be that all the monks are in on it or it could be just two or three of them or none at all – there might be ways in to the tunnel from the outside and the monks might know nothing about them.’
‘I’m going to do something even if you’re not.’
‘But what?’
‘Bring some out.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘If we were all as sane as you, Charles, we’d never do anything. A little madness makes the world go round.’ Chatsworth laughed. They were walking slowly, side by side, along a poorly-lit street adjacent to the monastery. The little terraced houses were dark and curtained as though their eyes were tightly shut. There was a bang from somewhere behind, not very loud, and Chatsworth dropped forward on to his hands and knees. He stayed there, propped on all fours and looking straight ahead as though waiting for a child to sit astride his back and play a game of horses and riders. ‘My God, I think I’ve been hit,’ he said.
Charles’s first reaction was disbelief. The stiff-upper-lip cliché made it appear that Chatsworth was clowning. But Chatsworth remained where he was and Charles realised that he had himself taken cover in the shadow of a house, unconsciously and immediately. The rest of the patrol was also under cover. Everyone was looking about him but no one knew where the shot had come from. Helped by the wireless operator, Charles dragged Chatsworth into the shadow.
‘Christ Almighty, sir, there’s a bloody great hole in your flak jacket!’ said the wireless operator, delightedly.
Chatsworth groaned. Even in the poor light Charles could see that there was a gaping hole in the right shoulder of his flak jacket. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.
‘No. Yes.’ Chatsworth remained on all fours peering ahead with a preoccupied look. ‘I’ll be all right. You go on without me.’
‘For Christ’s sake! Can you sit up?’
Chatsworth sat up slowly.
‘Does it hurt now?’
‘No.’ Chatsworth sounded surprised and mistrustful. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
Charles looked again at the rest of the patrol. Nothing moved in the street or near it and the only sound was of traffic on the Falls Road a few streets away. It must have been a one-off sniper and the gunman would by now have made good his escape from wherever he had been. It was very peaceful in the street and the monastery looming above them was almost reassuring. Charles shouted to his men to remain under cover. He then tore Chatsworth’s shell dressing from where it was taped on to his belt and began feeling his chest under his flak jacket. ‘I can’t feel any exit wound. Does it hurt to breathe?’
Chatsworth took several deep breaths, which seemed to take a long time. ‘No.’
Charles then slid his hand under the back of Chatsworth’s flak jacket, beneath the hole. ‘I can’t feel any blood. There’s a lump, though. Tell me if it hurts when I press.’ He pressed lightly and from Chatsworth’s convulsion and muted cry he was able to form a judgment. ‘That must be it. It hasn’t gone into you. Just broken the skin, I think. Better not move it, though, till Henry Sandy’s had a look at it.’
Chatsworth stood up slowly. ‘He’ll be too pissed to see it. Where d’you think it came from?’
‘No idea. Could’ve been an alleyway back down by the crossroads or maybe from the monastery grounds. There’s been no movement anywhere.’
Chatsworth was suddenly indignant. ‘I haven’t been shot by a bloody monk, have I?’
They radioed the news and then waited for another patrol to join them, after which they searched the area fruitlessly. Chatsworth walked back to the Factory, which was only a few streets away, apparently fit but a little pale. There was another search the following morning, this time to locate the fire position in the hope of finding the empty cartridge case, but nothing was found. The matter was reported in terms of an FUP that was NT after an NK gunman had fired one low-velocity .45 round – in other words, after the shooting by a not-known gunman there was a follow-up but there was no trace. The bullet was thought to have come from a revolver and had been battered almost spherical on its way through Chatsworth’s flak jacket. It had broken the skin and caused slight bruising but had not penetrated fully. Informed opinion had it that it must have been a ricochet, but Chatsworth never accepted this, presumably feeling that it somehow lessened the seriousness of the event. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that his flak jacket had saved him from serious injury and he was more shaken than he cared to reveal. For several days he was quieter than usual but after that he recovered his assertiveness and became very proud of his wound. Henry Sandy was treating it and found that, instead of healing rapidly as it should have, it was getting worse from day to day. He threatened Chatsworth with lead poisoning and impotence and Chatsworth then confessed to daily acerbations of the wound in order to ensure a more dramatic scar than the faded boil mark he was likely to get. The wound then healed but Chatsworth kept his holed and slightly bloodstained shirt as a relic and refused to have his camouflage smock replaced. He repaired it himself with a conspicuous cross patch of tape on the tear but he did, nevertheless, exchange his flak jacket for an intact one.
There was a more immediate result of the incident. The CO came to the Factory that night to get a first-hand account from Chatsworth – who was able to tell him even less than anyone else since he had not even noticed the shot. None the less, the CO listened gravely, smoothing his black hair with the palm of his hand, and then said: ‘I’ve been expecting this for some time. You realise that. But I didn’t expect it here. Deliberate, calculated murder – it would have been if it hadn’t been for your flak jacket. You’re a very lucky young man, you realise that. Strange that they should have used a revolver, if that’s what it was. A high-velocity rifle would have been far more effective, as they must know only too well. Which leads me to believe that it might have been someone doing a bit of freelancing. Not a properly set-up job. It’s a pound to a penny it was someone from the new estate rather than one of the boyos from here. They don’t like shitting on their own doorsteps, these people.’ He looked at the tired, respectful faces surrounding him in the ops room. ‘But I’m glad it happened, very glad. There’s a lesson here for all of us – hard targets. If I’ve said that once I’ve said it a thousand times. Have I not, Edward?’
Edward, who had been fiddling with a government issue biro, looked up earnestly. ‘Yes, sir. More than once.’
‘Hard targets, gentlemen. I cannot emphasise that enough, though God knows I’ve been saying it since before we arrived. And yet still – still – people – or, rather, officers – walk in pairs beneath street-lamps in terrorist areas and wonder why they get shot. Think yourselves lucky, all of you, even those who weren’t there, because you could well have been. Any questions?’
The CO looked around, his jaw thrust forward as though that was where he wanted to take the questions when they came. But none came, his glance softened, he allowed his lips to relax into a wry little smile and his brown eyes twinkled. ‘Good. Take it you all understand. Now for the good news. Within the last hour a car was stopped at a VCP in the City Centre. Five men in it, three of them armed, and all five live in the new estate. The brigadier wants us to search their houses in conjunction with the RUC, and we are at this very moment waiting for confirmation from Brigade. It’ll stir up trouble, I daresay, but that’s all right with me. Good. Now, three platoons from A and Support companies will RV here in fifteen minutes. Their job is to stand by in case of trouble. Edward, I want your platoons to do the actual search because they know the estate best. I shall lead the attack but I want you on hand to deal with any trouble the way you dealt with that Peace Line business �
�� straight in and no nonsense. Don’t give ’em a chance to get going. Okay?’
‘Right, sir.’ During the next half hour preparations were made and Edward bustled around busily, becoming the more irritable as his grasp of what was going on grew weaker. The CO was also busy being decisive but was obviously in high good humour. At one point he clapped his hand on Chatsworth’s injured shoulder and said, ‘Well done, my boy, well done. You’ve done the battalion a power of good. Keep it up.’
When the three standby platoons arrived there was more noise and confusion in the Factory than ever. The ops room became an extension of battalion headquarters, taking on its atmosphere of tension, panic, fear and frenetic activity. Very soon everyone seemed to have at least three things to do which depended upon their getting hold of someone else who either couldn’t be found or also had three things to do. The CO gave orders in a loud voice and then demanded in an even louder voice to know what had happened about them. Edward flapped and squawked like a worried hen but no one paid him any more than the most formal attention. It was a place that Charles would normally have sought to avoid with all manner of ruses and stratagems, but on this occasion he hung around trying to have a word with Nigel Beale. He and Chatsworth had decided to pass on to Beale, in a suitably disguised form, the information about the boxes in the monastery. In remaining in the ops room at such a time they risked being given unnecessary tasks or being accused of being idle, which amounted to the same thing, but they had decided the matter was of sufficient importance to justify temporary discomfort. Chatsworth was despatched to do a weapon inspection before they had a chance to get to Beale, who was busy with the CO, but Charles persisted and eventually got him alone. He told him that a man had approached them on the street, some time before the shooting, and had told them that there were boxes with weapons in them hidden in a tunnel beneath the monastery. Such incidents were not uncommon: people sometimes approached patrolling soldiers at night and volunteered information of varying importance and reliability. Often they would just say that there was a weapon in number forty-six or that there was going to be trouble on Saturday, but they would never reveal their identities or how they came by the information. Nevertheless, the soldiers who patrolled regularly knew some of them by sight.
Nigel was intensely interested. ‘He told this to you and Chatsworth? How reliable is it?’
‘No idea. Never seen him before.’
‘Sounds very plausible, though. Just the sort of place they would use if they could get access to it. Probably Armalites.’
‘That’s what we thought.’
Beale looked suspicious. ‘What made you think that?’
‘They said on television that Armalites were coming from America.’
Nigel drew closer. ‘Keep this to yourself, Charles. Even if there’s nothing in it we don’t want it getting about. It would be a dangerous rumour to have around. I’ll pass it on to the CO as soon as I can get a word in.’ He made a crabbed little note on his mill-board and nodded conspiratorily to Charles.
The search teams moved out at 2245 hours. The search was to go in at 2300. Charles had with him a corporal and three soldiers, as well as three RUC constables who were to do the actual searching. In charge of the RUC men was a Sergeant Mole, sent from the police station occupied by battalion HQ. He was a portly, silver-haired, easy-going man with a pleasantly soft accent instead of the usual Belfast one. ‘Ever done a search before, sir?’ he asked Charles.
‘No, I haven’t. I shall be looking to you for guidance, Sergeant Mole.’ It had taken Charles some time to get used to the RUC’s strict adherence to military command structures.
Sergeant Mole lit his pipe, his double chin bulging over his green collar. He looked reassuringly avuncular. ‘Nothing to worry about, sir. I’ll do the talking and you send your men clean through the house into every room straightaway in case there’s anyone who wants to try any funny business. Tell them to get everyone in the house down into the front room. Then search the garden and any sheds. When we start to search we’ll take a room each and have one of your men with each of us in case we find any villains hiding in the airing cupboard or in case anyone claims we planted a howitzer in there. Wouldn’t be the first time, I’m afraid.’
They moved in convoy to the estate and then each search party, with its escort, drove quickly to its appointed address. The estate was unlit, as usual, although many of the houses still had their lights on. It was not a cold evening, and groups of people sat drinking on some of the doorsteps. Other groups were gathered on street corners. Derisive shouts followed the convoy as it moved in and there was a desultory banging of dustbins, but the operation was mounted too quickly for the warning to be effective.
The object of Charles’s search was an end-of-terrace house with a rubbish-heap of a garden but no broken windows and a front door that still showed traces of paint. The escort party debussed and crouched by the tatty privet hedges in the street while a couple ran round to the back of the house to cut off any escape through the gardens. Sergeant Mole knocked on the door with Charles beside him and the rest of the party by the side wall out of sight. It was opened by a diminutive, middle-aged woman with grey hair, a bony, wrinkled face and glasses with very thick lenses. ‘Mrs Ray?’ asked Sergeant Mole. She stared at the uniformed men. Her lips moved once as though to speak but she said nothing. ‘We’ve arrested your son Michael and I’m afraid we’re going to have to search your house, Mrs Ray.’ She still said nothing. Sergeant Mole stepped purposefully inside and she moved back hesitantly. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ray, but we have to search the house.’ She let go of the door handle and ran into the living room with one hand over her face. Charles stepped inside and beckoned the soldiers to follow. There was an unpleasant, airless smell, and the sounds of a television came from the living room. The corporal and one soldier ran straight upstairs, their boots thumping heavily, and the two other soldiers went quickly through the downstairs rooms. Charles followed Sergeant Mole into the living room. The woman stood by the electric fire, still with one hand over her face, holding a girl of about twelve with the other. A short, fat man with curly dark hair and wearing braces turned down the sound on the television. ‘Sorry to have to do this, Mr Ray,’ said Sergeant Mole, ‘but your son was found driving a car in which there were arms and wanted men. Could you tell me which is his room?’
‘Back room,’ said the man, in a matter-of-fact way.
‘He shares wid his brothers,’ added the woman quickly. ‘He’s no harm, they’re no harm, none of them.’ She pulled the girl closer to her. One of the soldiers came in with two boys, one in his teens and the other about nine or ten. They were tousled and frightened. The smaller one wore dirty underpants and the elder held a pair of jeans around himself. The soldier who shepherded them in looked embarrassed. ‘Found them upstairs, sir. No more.’ He went back up the stairs.
Sergeant Mole then left the room and the woman put her arm round the girl, as though to prevent her from being touched by anyone. The little boy sat on the tatty sofa and the elder one stood sullenly by the electric fire, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The man said something which Charles had to ask him to repeat. He said it again but Charles’s ear was unaccustomed to the thick West Belfast accent. Finally, the man repeated the four words with sarcastic slowness. ‘Is-he-all-right?’
Charles was concentrating so much on understanding that he had to think for a moment who was meant. ‘Yes – yes, as far as I know,’ he said. ‘I think he’s all right. There was no trouble, I believe.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s in custody. I’m afraid I don’t know where. I wasn’t there.’ There was a silence. Charles felt sorry for the people and wanted to say so, but he knew that anything he said or did would be filtered through the medium of his boots, beret, flak jacket and rifle. There was no escaping his role. ‘I’ll try to find out for you,’ he said lamely in the end. Advertisements flickered soundlessly across the television screen. The man moved an asht
ray from the arm of the sofa to the mantelpiece.
‘I’ll make tay,’ muttered the woman. She took her hand from her face and walked with tightly-folded arms out of the room. The girl ran after her.
‘I’ll see if I can find out where your son is,’ Charles said again, but the fat man turned his back and sat on the sofa without speaking. The two boys stared. Charles went upstairs and asked Sergeant Mole, who was turning out a cupboard in the front bedroom. ‘This hasn’t been turned out since the house was built,’ he said with genuine disgust. ‘You can smell it in the street, I reckon.’ By the time Charles got back down the woman had made the tea and was standing sipping it, holding the cup in both hands. ‘He’s in Hastings Street police station,’ he said.
The woman’s eyes, enlarged by her spectacles, looked directly at him for the first time. ‘He’s never in no trouble,’ she said. ‘He ain’t any of them. He don’t have no trouble wid him.’ Her lips trembled. ‘God strike me dead if I lie.’
Charles was called out of the room by a voice from upstairs. As he left the room he caught his rifle butt on the door-jamb. He looked back to apologise but said nothing.
His corporal was at the top of the stairs. ‘Found something, sir,’ he said in a low voice. ‘In the back room.’ The room was very small and there was hardly room to move around the double bed. It was where the three boys slept, and was filthy. The room stank. One of the policemen held up the top end of the mattress. On an old brown blanket beneath was a rusty revolver with a broken handle. It seemed a pitiful gesture. Sergeant Mole picked it up in a piece of cloth. ‘Old Webley,’ he said. ‘Very old. Loaded, too. Silly young fool. It’ll have his paw-marks all over, I don’t doubt. What a place to hide it, eh?’
Nothing more was found in the rest of the house. Sergeant Mole showed the revolver to the family in the living room. They gazed sullenly at it. The woman blinked tearfully. ‘He’s had no trouble before,’ she said. ‘He niver told us he had that. It’s no hisn, it can’t be. Someone else has put it there.’ She pressed a tightly-screwed handkerchief to her thin nose. ‘It’s never his, it can’t be his. He never told us about it. Dear God, it can’t be hisn. He would’ve said. He’s not with them. He’s not a part of it.’