Soldier E: Sniper Fire in Belfast

by Shaun Clarke

  Cranfield felt that he was choking, or about to be ill, but he managed to croak out: ‘So what …?’

  ‘We received the call this afternoon. She was shot in her own home. She was looking after her terminally ill mother when the men rang her doorbell. When she answered it, they emptied their pistols into her, killing her instantly. At the same time, all across the city, other people were murdered – seven in all. Our records show that they were all connected with O’Leary – and through him, to us.’ Dubois paused, then offered his penultimate, lacerating statement: ‘Yes, O’Leary talked … and nine people died. Congratulations, Lieutenant.’

  Cranfield didn’t ask permission to leave. He just did an abrupt about-turn and walked to the door, not sure if his legs would carry him there. In the event, they did. As he opened the door and started out, he was stopped by Dubois’ voice.

  ‘You’ve not only done irreparable damage to yourself, but also to the whole SAS. This time, if you try to make amends, don’t make a mistake.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Cranfield said.

  Then he walked out, slamming the door behind him, determined to find Quinn.

  Chapter 16

  Darkness had fallen when Cranfield, dressed in mismatching civilian clothing, including baggy brown-corduroy trousers, scuffed black shoes, threadbare coat, open-necked checkered shirt and stained navy-blue pullover, drove out of Bessbrook in a Q car, heading for the border.

  His Browning was holstered to the side of his right leg and a Fairburn-Sykes Commando knife was strapped to the other, both up under his trousers.

  Soon he was driving ever deeper into the country, along narrow, winding lanes lined with high hedgerows. Given the fiasco of this whole day, including the Chinese Parliament and his meeting with Dubois, he knew that what he was doing was a final, desperate gamble that would either redeem him or destroy him. Nevertheless, so great was his present humiliation that he felt he had finally to get Quinn or concede victory to him.

  Lambert and Ricketts, he knew, would be even more infuriated if they discovered that he had struck out on his own again – and, even worse, taken another dangerous chance – but Cranfield just didn’t give a damn, since apart from the humiliations already heaped upon him, not least by Lampton and Ricketts, he now had to contend with Dubois’ parting shot: ‘This time, if you try to make amends, don’t make a mistake.’

  Well, Cranfield thought grimly, if I make a mistake this time I won’t live long enough to be haunted by it. This time it’s for keeps.

  Stopped once by an Army foot patrol, he showed his genuine identity papers and was allowed to drive on. Soon after, he was parking his unmarked car outside a Republican bar located halfway between the border and Quinn’s cottage. It was a picturesque little place, with leaded-glass windows, now emitting light from inside, doors of solid oak, and a thatched roof. Smoke was coming out of its single chimney, indicating that an open fire was burning. When Cranfield rolled down the window of his car, he heard the distinctive sound of Irish music coming from inside.

  Although Quinn would certainly not be found in this pub, it was one he had frequented during his visits to south Armagh, and therefore one in which he had many friends. Cranfield hoped to pick something up from them, then take it from there. It was a hellishly dangerous thing to attempt, but he felt he had no choice. He would not return to Bessbrook empty-handed. The very thought was unbearable.

  After turning off the ignition and headlights, he took his genuine ID from his inside pocket and slipped it under the rubber mat on the floor. He then checked that his false ID was still in his inside pocket and double-checked his wallet, making sure that it contained only false credit cards and other personal items, with nothing that might give him away as an Englishman. According to his false ID, credit cards and even a letter from an invented mother, he was Bobby Duncan from Balkan Street, Belfast – a hard Republican street.

  Satisfied, Cranfield climbed out of the car, locked it, took a few deep breaths, then walked across the gravelled forecourt and entered the pub. It was small, warm and noisy, with a beamed ceiling, a brass-and-wood bar, a four-piece Irish band – autoharp, fiddle, flatpick guitar, mandolin and singer – a postage-stamp dance floor, already busy, and pink-faced men and women packed into seats around the walls, drinking, smoking, talking, and joining the singer as chorus on patriotic songs.

  Nobody stopped what they were doing when Cranfield walked in, but he sensed a lot of eyes turning towards him and tried to ignore them. Walking to the bar, he said with an Ulster brogue: ‘A lively wee place you’ve got here. Sure I picked a good place to stop off. Pour me a Guinness, thanks.’ Turning to the man beside him, he said: ‘Sure it warms the belly all of a winter’s night. It’s quare good when yer travellin’.’

  ‘Aye,’ the man replied, smoking his pipe and puffing a cloud of blue smoke. ‘Sure that’s a fact, Mister. Ya be just passin’ through then?’

  ‘On m’ way back to Belfast from Dublin after one of them ijit sales conventions. I’m in linens, like. A grand place, that Dublin, but quare expensive. I’ll be glad to get back t’ Balkan Street an’ put m’feet up.’

  ‘Sure there’s nothin’ like home’n hearth,’ the man replied, blowing another cloud of smoke across the bar. ‘I’d say that’s a fact of life.’

  The barman placed Cranfield’s Guinness on the counter. Cranfield thanked him, paid, had a good drink, then engaged the man beside him in conversation.

  ‘Sure that’s a quare wee band they have up there. And that singer’s real grand.’

  ‘Ach, he’s not bad. Gets them all goin’ at it. By closin’ time they’ll have to read the Riot Act. It’s a right wee place, this ‘un.’

  ‘Ach, it is,’ Cranfield said. ‘Sure I’m havin’ a grand time already.’

  Cranfield was proud of his Ulster accent and vernacular, but knowing it wasn’t perfect, he was depending on the general, noisy level of conversation to hide any slight mistakes he might make. ‘Here,’ he said to the man beside him. ‘Let me get you another. I’m Bobby Duncan, by the way.’

  ‘Sure that’s quare decent of you, Bob.’ The man stuck his hand out. ‘Mick Treacy.’ They shook hands, then Cranfield ordered the man a Guinness. The singer had stopped singing and was telling a few jokes while the fiddler tuned up behind him. The men and women in the pub roared with laughter at the jokes, their faces flushed with drink and good humour. ‘In the palm of his hand,’ Cranfield said. ‘Sure ‘e knows what ‘e’s doin’.’

  ‘Aye, he’s a rare turn,’ Mick replied. ‘Alus good for a laugh. Lives local, like.’

  ‘You’d all be locals here,’ Cranfield said.

  ‘All exceptin’ the odd traveller like yerself. It’s not a place you’d seek out.’

  The band started up again, with the singer launching into ‘Provie Birdie’, a song about three Provos who, in real life, were lifted out of Mountjoy prison by helicopter, right under the noses of the guards. It was clear from the number of customers who joined in the chorus that the song was widely known and popular.

  While engaging the amiable Mick in conversation, Cranfield sipped his Guinness and studied the smoky pub over the rim of his glass. The customers were a mixture of heavy housewives, working men in peaked caps, a few country-squire types, and, at the bar, on both sides of Cranfield, single men, most edging towards middle age. The younger men, most of whom were not too bright and undoubtedly in the Provisional, had congregated along the pine-board wall between the bar and the door and were being feted by teenage girls attracted to the excitements of terrorism. It was the young men, trying to impress the girls, who acted most like hard men and looked with blatant suspicion upon strangers. Seeing them, and the sideways glances they gave him, Cranfield sensed trouble.

  ‘Sure have another Guinness on me,’ Mick said as Cranfield turned back to face the bar. ‘With perhaps a wee Bushmills.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ Cranfield said.

  The round led into a second, helping to pass the next hou
r, then a friend of Mick’s joined them at the bar and insisted on buying a third round. Conversation flowed thick and fast, bouncing from one subject to another, though most of it was about the Troubles in Belfast, Londonderry and south Armagh. The ‘Brits’ were reviled as bastards, but deemed ignorant rather than evil. Opinions about the IRA, its vices and virtues, were surprisingly varied.

  The latter fact surprised Cranfield, as he had expected more unanimity in favour of the IRA – based on fear of reprisals, if nothing else – but everyone seemed to have his own opinion and felt free to air it.

  The arguments grew more lively, the band played ever louder, the husbands and wives along the walls continued to sing uninhibitedly, and soon all conversations were being shouted from flushed, sweaty faces, through blue-grey veils of swirling cigarette smoke.

  Eventually, just before closing time – which, as Cranfield knew, meant closing only the front door – the name of Michael Quinn was finally raised.

  ‘Sure, the Troubles could be on yer doorstep,’ Cranfield said, ‘and you wouldn’t even be knowin’ it. At least not here in the country. Not like in the Falls.’

  ‘Ach, aye,’ Mick replied, polishing off a quick Bushmills. ‘Take that incident yesterday – that to-do at Michael Quinn’s place. Sure you never see the man hereabouts, ’cept on weekends, and then the Brits shoot up the place, killin’ some lads into the bargain, and find the walls stacked high with weapons, ammunition an’ s’plosives. Enough to blow up this whole village, so I’ve heard. Sure, it makes yer hair stand on end, it does.’

  ‘Killed some lads, did they?’ Cranfield asked rhetorically. ‘Sure them bastards would kill their own mothers.’

  ‘Aye, they would,’ Mick replied, ‘but they didn’t get Quinn. It’s been said he was in the Falls at the time an’ didn’t know what was goin’ on.’

  ‘Didn’t know, my arse!’ It was Mick’s friend Kevin talking. ‘That stuff didn’t get into Quinn’s house by accident. He had to know what was goin’ on.’

  ‘A lot of poor lads kilt.’

  ‘All Provos,’ Kevin said. ‘As for Quinn, he was hidin’ out there in the Falls until the milit’ry went for him.’

  ‘Did they catch him?’ Cranfield asked.

  ‘Sure he took off like a bat out of hell an’ hasn’t been seen since. Ask me, he’s hidin’ out in Sean Doyle’s house, just two miles down the road. That’s the safe house he alus used for his PIRA mates, so that’s where he’d stop first.’

  Mick sighed. ‘Sure you could be right there. As Bobby said’ – Mick beamed a big smile at Cranfield – ‘the Troubles could be right on yer doorstep and you wouldn’t even know it. Aye, he could be right there in Doyle’s place.’

  ‘Let them British bastards worry about it,’ Cranfield said. ‘It’s their concern, not ours.’ He glanced at his watch and looked shocked. ‘Bejasus! It’s near midnight already! Me missus will kill me if I don’t get back soon. Sorry, lads, but I’m goin’ t’ have t’ go. What a quare good night that was.’ He finished off his Guinness, shook hands all round, then had the usual trouble saying goodbye in Ireland, but finally managed it.

  ‘You drive carefully now,’ Mick advised him. ‘Sure you’ve had a right few.’

  ‘Ach, I’ll be all right,’ Cranfield said, waving again and heading for the door. ‘Sure we salesmen are used t’ this. Good night, Mick.’

  ‘God bless.’

  Gratefully leaving the bar, with his stomach tightening but excitement lancing through him, Cranfield hurried back across the dark courtyard to his parked Q car.

  He was about to open the door when a young man stood up, where he had been kneeling at the other side, and aimed a Webley pistol held with both hands.

  ‘Bobby Duncan, my arse,’ he said.

  Before Cranfield could think of what to do, he heard the scuffle of many feet behind him. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw the youths from the pub hurrying towards him – at least six or seven of them. Cranfield just had time to return his gaze to the youth aiming the pistol at him – long unwashed hair, fashionable ‘designer’ stubble, hollow cheeks, eyes shadowed; wearing a black leather jacket and blue denims – then the other youths rushed up to surround him. One of them pushed him in the face. Another flung him forward face first against the car, brutally punched his spinal column, kicked his ankles apart and snarled: ‘Open those fuckin’ legs, you English cunt!’

  Cranfield did as he was told. The first youth frisked him, running his hands over his shoulders, down his chest, across his stomach, around his waist, up his spine, then back around his body to reach in and pull out his wallet.

  ‘No weapon,’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ amazin’! Let’s see what we have here. Hey, you, turn aroun’!’

  Before Cranfield could do so, someone grabbed him by the hair, jerked his head back, slapped his face, then grabbed his shoulder, spun him around and slammed him backwards into the car, letting him see all their faces. They were definitely the youths he had seen inside the pub – deprived, not too bright, clearly desperate for self-esteem – and all of them shared the same smirk of combined hatred and nervousness.

  One of them, the one who’d reached Cranfield first, was examining his wallet.

  ‘I don’t fuckin’ believe it,’ he exclaimed, turning over Cranfield’s false ID, credit cards and varied papers to examine them thoroughly. ‘This bastard is genuine!’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ a more mature, familiar voice said. ‘He’s just a Brit tryin’ t’ be clever. Let’s check his car.’

  Glancing over the shoulder of the youth with his wallet, Cranfield saw the amiable Mick Treacy. Returning Cranfield’s stare, he said: ‘You think I’m a fuckin ijit, you British turd? Good night, indeed! Who says “good night” around here? You were good, Mister, at playin’ an Ulsterman, but not that fuckin’ good. OK, lads, get ‘is car keys.’

  ‘In my right trouser pocket,’ Cranfield said, since he had nothing to lose.

  ‘Well, isn’t he a quare wee lad?’ Mick said sarcastically as one of the youths jammed his hand into Cranfield’s pocket and pulled out his keys. ‘So helpful an’ all! They breed the wee uns like that in the Falls Road – as polite as the English. Right, Jim-boy, search the car.’

  The youth with the Webley pistol walked around the car, grabbed Michael by the shoulder, dragged him off a few feet, and slammed him backwards into the trunk of a tree. Then he placed the barrel of the pistol against his forehead, right above the bridge of the nose.

  ‘One fuckin’ move and you get it. Not one tremor, cunt.’

  Cranfield remained against the tree, trying to keep his breathing steady, but unable to stop the racing of his heart as the youths searched his Q car. They did it thoroughly, with growing excitement, as if doing even that turned them on and encouraged their violence. One opened the glove compartment, another searched through the back, two more checked the cluttered boot, one looked under the bonnet. Finding nothing, they became frustrated, smashing windows, slashing the seats, until finally, to Cranfield’s despair, one of them ripped the rubber mat away and saw the ID beneath it.

  He picked the ID up. After examining it with the aid of a pencil torch, he walked across to Mick and handed it to him.

  ‘Fucking British Army,’ he said. ‘You were right again, Mick.’

  ‘Mmmmm,’ Mick said, examining the ID, then looking directly at Cranfield and offering a slight smile. ‘Sure the Troubles could be on yer doorstep and you wouldn’t even be knowin’ it,’ he repeated sardonically. ‘Isn’t that the truth, Lieutenant Cranfield? Now we have the proof of it. After Michael Quinn, were ya?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cranfield said.

  ‘Well, let’s not disappoint ya.’

  When Mick nodded at the gang of youths, they closed in on Cranfield, some grinning like idiots, others breathing deeply, all of them excited to be given something worthwhile to do. They punched him and kicked him, head-butted him, spat on him, tore his clothes, tugged at his hair and trampled on his toes. When he started f
alling, they held him up; when they had him upright, they punched him down; and when finally he could stand up no longer, they used their boots on him.

  At first Cranfield felt sharp pain – each single blow, every kick – then the jolting, individual bolts of pain spread out through him to become a generalized agony that throbbed throughout his whole being. When he finally collapsed, stretched out on grass and gravel, where they kicked the hell out of him, his nausea overwhelmed the pain and made him throw up.

  ‘God!’ a youth said in disgust, then kicked Cranfield as punishment. ‘Puked over m’boots! Take that you filthy English bastard!’ Cranfield was kicked again and rolled over to look up at the stars, his head filled with a dreadful, tightening pain as his vision blurred badly.

  ‘Right, lads, that’s enough,’ the amiable Mick Treacy said. ‘Let’s get him into the van … Jim-boy, you’ve still got his keys?’

  ‘Yeah, Mick.’

  ‘Then drive his car away to where we can best make use of it later on. Sure this git won’t be needin’ it.’

  Only dimly aware of what was happening, Cranfield was thrown into the back of the van, landing in a mess of tyres, tools and rope, then followed in by most of the youths. Mick Treacy sat up front beside the youth who had examined Cranfield’s wallet and was now their driver.

  ‘Quickly now,’ Treacy told him.

  The journey did not take long. Slowly getting his senses back, feeling battered and bruised, Cranfield reasoned that the safe house hiding Quinn was indeed only two miles away. Certainly, after rattling and bouncing over what was obviously a crude, country track, the van finally arrived at its destination and ground to a halt.

  When the back doors were opened, most of the youths climbed out. Cranfield was picked up by the two remaining, dragged halfway out, then thrown off the back of the van. Hitting the ground, he almost cried out with the pain, but managed to stifle it. He was picked up again, punched two or three times, then dragged across grassy earth, on to a strip of gravel, and finally through the front door of a small cottage, into a warm, brightly lit room.