Jig

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘We need to talk, Charlie,’ Pagan said.

  ‘What would I have to say to you?’ Charlie Locklin asked in a sullen way. He had a hybrid accent, part Dublin, suffused with some Cockney variations.

  ‘This and that.’ Pagan gazed round the room. It was crowded with plastic furniture. ‘Class place, Charlie.’

  Charlie Locklin appeared wary, as well he might. There were half a dozen hand grenades under the floorboards, and an old Luger, in good working order, concealed beneath some boxes in the attic. Locklin was a stout man with a variety of tattoos on his bare arms. Hearts and flowers and serpents. They had a gangrenous tint, as if they’d been done by a half-blind tattoo artist at some decrepit seaside resort. Pagan had decided long ago that there was something essentially squalid about the Charlie Locklins of this world. They needed squalor to hatch out their violent little schemes the way a fly needs decay for its larvae.

  ‘I don’t like you coming here,’ Locklin said.

  ‘I don’t like being here, Charlie.’ Pagan rose, went to the window, parted the drapes. The mean little street with its blue windows winked back at him. About four miles away was Her Majesty’s Prison at Wormwood Scrubs, a formidable place. ‘Blown anything up recently, Charlie? Been playing with any explosives?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pagan.’

  ‘Last night somebody blew up a car in Mayfair. Nice car. A Jaguar. Unfortunately, there was a person in it at the time.’

  Charlie Locklin looked puzzled. ‘I’m not responsible for that.’

  There was a silence. Pagan looked at a clock on the mantelpiece. It was of imitation marble, and it had stopped at ten minutes past four. He had the impression that it had ceased working years ago, so that it was always four ten in this miserable little house.

  ‘What I want, Charlie, is a little information. I want to pick your brain. Such as it is.’ A microscope might have been useful, Pagan thought.

  Charlie Locklin took a cigarette from a battered pack and lit it, letting Pagan’s insult float over his head. ‘I don’t have anything to say to you, Pagan.’

  ‘Not very far from where we sit right now there’s a jail called the Scrubs. It isn’t pleasant, it isn’t nice, it isn’t even a safe place, especially for somebody with your particular political affiliations. The Scrubs wouldn’t be beneficial to your health, Charlie boy.’

  ‘I know all about your Scrubs,’ Charlie Locklin said.

  ‘I could throw away the key. Get you off the streets, Charlie. One less arsehole for me to worry about. I’m an inventive kind of man. I could come up with a decent reason. For example, if I was to search your house, Charlie, who knows what I might find? Our judicial system isn’t charitable to men like you these days. The British don’t think it’s sociable for the Irish to be blowing up shops and hotels and planting bombs in cars.’

  ‘I’ve never blown up anything!’

  ‘Come on, Charlie. What about Torquay?’

  ‘What the fuck! All I had was some gelignite. I never used it. I was holding it for a friend.’

  ‘Charlie, when a known sympathiser of the IRA is found skulking down a basement in Torquay with nineteen pounds of gelignite on his person, it’s a pretty fair deduction that he’s not planning some simple weekend gardening. And when you add the fact that our beloved Prime Minister was in Torquay at the same time, well, it doesn’t look like you’re going in for a little sunbathing, does it?’ Pagan took his hands out of his raincoat pockets and looked at them. They were big and blunt, like a couple of hammers. He had inherited his father’s hands, a bricklayer’s hands.

  Charlie Locklin sat down on the arm of a sofa and peered at Frank Pagan through cigarette smoke. ‘I was holding the jelly for a friend.’

  ‘Sure you were.’

  ‘I could get a knee job for talking to you,’ Locklin said.

  ‘Nobody’s going to shoot your knees off, Charlie. We talk. I leave. It’s dark outside. Who’s going to know I’ve ever been here?’ Pagan found himself wishing that Charlie Locklin would get his knees shot off because it would be one less scum to deal with, and that’s what Locklin was as far as Pagan was concerned. Scum.

  Charlie Locklin tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and watched it smoulder. Then he looked at the useless clock on the mantelpiece. Pagan stirred in his seat. Whenever he plunged into the maze of Irish terrorism, he had the sensation of being locked within a labyrinth of mirrors. Images came at you, then receded. Truths were distorted, lies enlarged. And what you were left with at the end was a handful of broken glass, like something out of a child’s ruined kaleidoscope.

  ‘Let me throw you a name, Charlie.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Jig.’ Pagan pronounced the word slowly.

  Charlie Locklin smiled. ‘If you’ve come here to talk about Jig, you’d be a damn sight better off talking about the bloody wind. Jig! He’s a fucking mystery.’

  ‘I know he’s a mystery, Charlie. Point is, what do you know?’

  ‘Nothing. Not a thing.’ Locklin laughed, as if the very idea of anyone knowing the real identity of Jig was too much of a joke to bear. Jig had all the reality of an Irish mist or one of those mythical figures of Celtic prehistory, like Cuchulain.

  Pagan rose. ‘Give me a name, Charlie. Tell me the name of somebody who might know something.’

  ‘You’re daft, Pagan. You know that? You come in here and you ask daft questions.’

  ‘Who’s likely to know, Charlie? Give me a name.’ Pagan leaned forward, pressing his face close to that of the Irishman. He had a way of making his jaw jut and the small veins in his temples bulge that changed his entire appearance. He could look dangerous and rough-edged, and when he rubbed his big hands together as he was doing now they appeared to Charlie Locklin like two flesh-coloured mallets.

  Charlie Locklin stepped away. ‘It’s a closed shop.’

  ‘A closed shop, Charlie? Are you telling me that the Irish are capable of keeping secrets? You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?’

  ‘It’s the gospel. I swear it –’

  ‘Don’t give me saints and your dear dead mother. I can’t stand all that Irish sentimentality shit. I want Jig. And somebody must know where I can find him. Jesus Christ, he can’t operate the way he does without some kind of support system. There’s got to be somebody, Charlie.’ Did Pagan hear a tiny note of despair in his own voice just then? Or was it merely fatigue? He hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.

  Charlie Locklin shook his head. ‘I’m not your man, Mr. Pagan.’

  Mister, Pagan thought. When Charlie Locklin called him Mister, it was almost certain he was being sincere. Pagan shoved his hands back into his pockets. He stared a moment at the mermaid table lamp. It struck him that it would be more plausible to locate a live mermaid in Hammersmith than a mysterious Irish terrorist who was known only as Jig, a shadowy figure forever on the farthest edges of his vision. Pagan sighed.

  Last night in Mayfair, Jig had blown up a Jaguar driven by Walter Whiteford, the British ambassador to Ireland. Pagan recalled the debris, the broken glass, the shards of metal that had been scattered halfway down South Audley Street. But mainly it was Whiteford’s head he remembered. It had been found lying twenty-five feet from the rest of his torso. How would you describe that look on the decapitated face? Surprise? Astonishment? Maybe it was disappointment for a career that had ended abruptly. Whiteford was going to be the new ambassador to the Republic of Ireland. He hadn’t even started the job although he’d given press conferences during which he’d expressed his desire to see the death penalty brought back for Irish hoodlums who committed acts of terrorism. This had clearly endeared him to Jig, Pagan thought. Foolhardy man with a big mouth. Well, Walter wasn’t shooting his mouth off any more.

  Pagan moved towards the door. The weariness he felt had a cutting edge to it. He wanted to get out of this dreary little house and into the cold street, where the wind might blow away all the cobwebs in his brain.<
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  Charlie Locklin followed him to the door. ‘I swear to God, it’s a closed shop,’ he said.

  ‘I heard you the first time, Charlie.’ Pagan raised one finger in the air, a menacing little gesture. He flicked it beneath Charlie Locklin’s nose. ‘If I ever find you’ve been lying to me, I’ll have your Irish arse inside the Scrubs in quicker time than it takes you to fart. You understand me, Charlie?’

  Locklin moved back from the wagging finger. ‘I swear, Mr. Pagan. None of the boys have ever known anything like it. I mean, usually you hear something. Some little thing, at least. But you don’t even hear a whisper about this Jig. And that’s the truth.’

  Pagan nodded. He was out in the darkened driveway now.

  ‘Just remember,’ he said. ‘You hear anything, you call me. If you don’t …’

  He let the threat dangle in the night air. Threats were always more pointed when you didn’t spell them out. He walked in the direction of his Camaro. The American car, parked among small British Fords and Minis, looked totally out of place in this narrow street. American cars were one of Pagan’s weaknesses. He liked their style, their flash.

  He turned back once when he reached the car, seeing the TV already flickering in the window of Charlie Locklin’s living room. He had the intense urge to stride back to the house and put his fist through something. The TV, maybe. Or Charlie Locklin’s skull.

  He opened the door of the car and climbed in behind the wheel. He gunned the Camaro through the streets, aware of the car from Scotland Yard following him at a distance. He reached the M4 motorway and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, watching the speed rise. When he had the Camaro up to ninety he took a cassette tape from the glove compartment and punched it into the deck. Then he rolled the window down and cold air blasted his face. He was cutting across lanes, leaving gutless British saloon cars trailing behind him, honking their horns at the madman in the Yankee gas guzzler.

  It was the only way to travel. He looked in the rear-view mirror. He couldn’t see the car from Scotland Yard but he knew it had to be somewhere at his back. The signs that said HEATHROW flashed past in a blur. Office buildings became streaks of dying light. A hundred. A hundred and five. The Camaro vibrated. The music filled the car at maximum volume.

  Come on over, baby, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on …

  They didn’t make rock and roll like this any more. Now it was all pretension and posturing boys in make-up. It was a yawn these days.

  Pagan beat his hands on the steering-wheel.

  I said now come on over, baby, we really got the bull by the horn.

  ‘I ain’t fakin’,’ Pagan sang at the top of his voice. One hundred and ten. The reality of speed. Everything was focused. Everything was crystal and hard. Speed and loud music and the wind making your face smart. ‘There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on!’

  He saw the flashing lights behind him. He smiled, drove the pedal as far to the floor as it would go, took the Camaro up to one hundred and fifteen, teased the Special Branch car a few miles more. This is it. This is the way to squash old pains. Let the poison drain out of your system at one hundred and twenty miles an hour with the Killer drowning all your thoughts.

  He released the pedal. He pulled the car onto the shoulder and waited. The Rover from Scotland Yard drew in behind him. Pagan shut the music off, closed his eyes. The man from Special Branch was called Downey. He wore a soft felt hat, the brim of which he pulled down over his forehead. He had a waxed moustache and his breath smelled of spearmint. He stuck his head in the window of the Camaro and said, ‘Frank, for Christ’s sake, why do you keep doing this?’

  Pagan looked at the policeman, grinned. ‘Therapy, my old dear.’

  Downey shook his old head. ‘You been drinking, Frank?’

  Pagan blew into the man’s face. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘This is the third time in the last ten days,’ Downey said. ‘One day, you’ll kill yourself. Bound to happen. Is that what you want, Frank?’

  ‘Can I count on you, Downey?’

  ‘Count on me for what?’

  ‘To be a pallbearer. To bear my pall. You’d look good in black.’

  Downey stepped away from the Camaro. He said, ‘Funerals depress me. Yours might be different. Might be uplifting.’

  ‘Wall to wall merriment,’ Pagan said. ‘Would be quite a ceremony. Everybody from Scotland Yard would turn out and cheer.’

  ‘Right,’ Downey said.

  Pagan smiled. He slid the Camaro forward a couple of yards, then stuck his head out of the window and looked back at Downey. ‘You been eating scrambled eggs, Downey?’

  ‘Scrambled eggs?’

  ‘You got some stuck to your wax there.’

  Downey’s hand shot to his upper lip. He felt nothing. ‘Fuck off, Frank,’ he said.

  But Pagan was already gone.

  Frank Pagan’s office overlooked Golden Square on the edge of Soho. It was an impersonal place, filled with chrome and leather furniture. At night – and it was ten o’clock by the time he got there – you could catch a thin glimpse of the lights of Piccadilly, that garish heart of London.

  Pagan had visited countless houses similar to Charlie Locklin’s during the past twenty-four hours. He had talked with scores of people exactly like Charlie in Irish enclaves throughout London, such as Kilburn and Cricklewood and Chalk Farm, known IRA sympathisers and those with affiliations to that nebulous terrorist network. He’d talked with criminals who’d done time for bombings and other acts of what Pagan considered thuggery. He hadn’t turned up anything on Jig. He hadn’t expected to. What he’d encountered was a solid wall of silence and ignorance. Everybody had heard of Jig, of course, because the bloody man was notorious and his name was in all the tabloids, but nobody knew anything about him.

  Even those journalists who had written with sneaking respect for Jig’s bravado, and who had sometimes seemed even to glorify the man in bold headlines, had never been able to uncover anything. It was as if Jig existed in a place far beyond the scope of all their investigative techniques, a place beyond probing, a fact that made him even more of a hero in certain quarters of Fleet Street. His name was mentioned often, in a tone that was almost reverential, in the wine bars and pubs of the newspaper district. Jig had become more than a terrorist. He was a star, the brightest entity in the whole constellation of terrorists. There were even some who thought the assassination of Walter Whiteford – an unpopular man with unpopular right-wing views – a justifiable act on a level with mercy-killing. This prominence Jig enjoyed reflected badly on Pagan’s section. That Jig could vanish after his killings without so much as a trace made Pagan feel useless – and yet at the same time all the more determined to catch the man.

  Pagan had moments when he wondered if Jig actually existed. Then he’d think it all through again and he’d be struck by the fact that the acts of terrorism perpetrated by Jig were different in sheer quality from random bombings of hotels and busy stores and crowded streets – and he realised there was something about this character Jig he actually admired, albeit in the most grudging way. The man never did anything that would harm an innocent bystander. The man was always careful to select his victim and the proper circumstances, when there was nobody else around to be harmed by an explosive device or a badly-aimed shot. It was a kind of tact, Pagan thought, a strange form of charity at the heart of violence.

  Pagan peered down towards Piccadilly Circus now. Jig was almost an artist. It was as if he were signing his violent portraits, as if he were saying how unlike the regular IRA rabble he was, underlining a difference between himself and all the rest, those butchers who gave no thought to children and women and anybody else who just happened to get caught accidentally in the crossfire. It was a crude war, but Jig gave it his own civilised flourish.

  For a second, Pagan thought about his boyhood, when he’d spent a couple of summers with his grandparents in County Cork. He’d developed a great fondness for the Irish and a sympathy
for their plight as inhabitants of one of the most troubled countries in Europe, but he’d never seen a solution to their problems in the violence of the Irish Republican Army. He couldn’t even imagine a situation in which the South, free of British sovereignty since 1921, would be reunited with the North. The Irish were a fractured people, polarised by religions, distanced by bigotries, and hammered to the cross of their history, which had given up more martyrs than there were holy saints in Rome.

  Pagan moved away from the window. He turned his thoughts again to Jig and the sight of what was left of Walter Whiteford on South Audley Street. When Jig had first entered Pagan’s lexicon of terrorism, it had been with the murder in 1982 of Lord Drumcannon, an old judge with a known hatred of the IRA and a propensity to sentence its members to long prison terms. Drumcannon had been shot once through the head by a sniper while walking his beagles on his country estate at Chiddingly in Sussex. The body, surrounded by yapping dogs, had been found by a gamekeeper. There was a solitary bullet hole in the centre of the skull. One shot, which was all Jig ever seemed to need.

  The next victim had been George Connaught, Member of Parliament for a district in Northern Ireland. Connaught was a hardline Protestant, the kind who thrived on the conflict between religious parties. He had been gunned down – and this was an example of Jig’s talent, his daring, Pagan thought – in broad daylight in Westminster in the spring of 1983. The MP, who revered Queen and Country as if they were twin mistresses he kept in the same apartment, had been walking back to the House of Commons after lunch at his club. One shot had been fired from a passing car, piercing Connaught’s heart.

  And then Sir Edward Shackleton, chief of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a man of known paranoia concerning his personal safety, had been blown up in his bed in suburban Belfast one night by means of a high-tech explosive device triggered long distance, a sophisticated piece of equipment which, according to Pagan’s analysts, had been manufactured in East Germany.