Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  “Shame about the Falklands,” he grunted.

  Buddy nodded. “Yeah.”

  The old man looked at him for a moment, a look of frank curiosity, then he limped around the van and returned with a shoe box. On the outside, in black stencil, it read “Plimsolls, white, size ten”.

  “Detonators,” Harry said briefly, giving the box to Buddy. Buddy took it.

  “What about the transmitter?” he said.

  “That’s in there too. I’ve left you a note about the frequency.”

  Buddy looked in the box. It was quite heavy. “OK,” he said, “thanks.”

  The old man grunted, reaching for the explosives, transferring the gear out of the van, piling it neatly on the quayside. “Pleasure,” he said, nodding at the yacht, “I just hope the fucking thing gets you there.”

  *

  It was dark by the time Connolly found a telephone.

  He’d slipped out of the house after tea, an hour before nightfall, leaving Jude with a huge fire and the company of an old television. The reception, so far west, was appalling, but she said it was better than nothing. Her attempts to talk to the people who looked after her had finally collapsed. Both of them thought her days were numbered, and one of them, the woman, had asked her cautiously about a priest. Jude had smiled at her, and said no thanks, she was trying to give them up. There’d been a silence, and the woman had stared at her, uncomprehending, and then crossed herself quickly, and left.

  Now, Connolly hurried down the mountain, following the road, trying to remember from his journey up in Scullen’s Mercedes how close the next house might be. They’d certainly passed a place, he knew that. He remembered kids in the road and an old horse, tethered to a tree, curls of smoke from a stubby chimney. Whether the house would have a telephone, he didn’t know, but even if it didn’t he could maybe hitch a lift, on down the valley, back towards the coast. Sooner or later, he was bound to find a phone. And then he’d start to put things right.

  He plunged on, through the windy darkness. It was squally now, sudden pockets of wind, and even up here he could taste the sea in the occasional showers of rain that came sideways at him, out of the night. Soon, he lost track of time. The road wound on. Sometimes trees, and shelter, and a sudden silence as the wind dropped. Sometimes a glimpse of the stars as the clouds parted, and a little moonlight spilled through. Finally, miles later, he saw a light. He slowed, then stopped, making out the shape of a low cottage, off to the left. There was the sound of running water again. A dog began to bark.

  Connolly approached the cottage. There was a low stone wall. He felt along it in the darkness. It felt mossy and wet. He found a hole where a gate had once been. He stepped through it, hearing his feet squelch in the mud, the rain dripping from the trees, the dog going mad round the back. He knocked on the door. He could hear music inside from a radio. The door opened. A big man stood there. He peered at Connolly.

  “Yes?” he said.

  Connolly introduced himself. He said he was a visitor. He said he had a sick friend up the road. He said he needed to phone for help. Under the circumstances, there seemed nothing much wrong with the truth. The man at the door stood aside and invited him in. The cottage smelled of damp and lamb fat. He pointed to a telephone on a pile of old newspapers on the floor.

  “Sure,” he said, “you’re welcome.”

  Connolly smiled. “Thanks,” he said, “only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where are we? What’s the place called?”

  The man looked at him, pure wonderment. “You don’t know?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Well now …” he frowned, “there’s a road up from the coast. You go to Waterville. That’s the town. And then you take the road in towards Lissatinnig Bridge. Then you turn right, by the signpost, up the hill. Keep the wind at your back. Glannadin’s the place. You want Glannadin …”

  Connolly thanked him. He picked up the telephone, watching the man retreat into another room. There were kids around. He could hear them. He dialled the operator, and asked for Mairead’s number in Belfast. The door to the other room was still open. He heard the line connecting. The burr-burr of the phone ringing at the other end. Then Mairead, Mairead’s voice, clear as a bell.

  “Hallo?” she said cautiously.

  Connolly smiled, imagining the scene up in Andersonstown, Liam sprawled on the floor, Bronagh poking the dog, Mairead pulling the door shut on it all, bending to the phone. He asked her how she was. She paused for a moment, long enough to place his voice, then she said she was fine. She sounded cautious, not the Mairead he’d left three days back, and he knew at once that she must have seen him in Great Victoria Street, the car, Charlie, the gun, and known it was him. He hesitated a moment, wondering whether to go into it all, to explain why, and how, and what next, but he knew that was a week-long conversation, and that here and now there were more urgent things to do. A woman was dying. She needed help. And only Mairead could deliver.

  “Do you have a pen?” he asked.

  “No.” A pause. “Yes.”

  “Write this down.” He closed his eyes, remembering the man’s instructions. “Waterville,” he said, “County Kerry. Find it on the map. Then take a road inland. Up into the mountains. You’re looking for Glannadin. The house is white. Two storeys. There are pine trees across the road. It’s miles from anywhere …”

  He paused for a moment, giving her time to write the names down, then he told her that she had to drive down, bring a van of some kind, borrow one, hire one. It was all a bit complicated, but he wouldn’t bother her unless it was important. Would she do it? Could she do it? He bent to the phone, waiting for an answer. There was someone else in the room with her, a male voice. He could hear the murmur of conversation. He frowned, knowing what a problem he’d set her, how she hated driving, wondering whether she could dump the kids. She’d every right to tell him no, to remember those three terrible seconds outside the travel agents, and simply put the phone down, severing the conversation, the relationship, for ever. He waited, hearing the wind stirring the trees outside. Then there was a clatter on the line as she picked the phone up again.

  “Waterville,” she said carefully, “a place called Glannadin.”

  “That’s it.”

  “You’re alone up there?”

  “No.”

  “There are others?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. Connolly could see a child’s face at the door along the hall. Then Mairead came back.

  “OK,” she said briefly.

  Connolly smiled, and turned his back on the half-open door.

  “I love you,” he said.

  He hesitated, waiting for a response, the old affirmation, but nothing happened and after a while he realized she’d gone.

  Buddy Little spent the evening in Portsmouth.

  He went from pub to pub in a long zig-zag that took him from the Victory Gate to the city centre. It was an old route, a route he’d taken a hundred times before, a pint here, a pint there, pubs full of sailors, music, the laughter louder and more frantic than usual. He occupied corner after corner, stool after stool, the small stocky bloke with his glass full of Guinness and his elbow on the bar. In one or two pubs, he got talking, conversations of his own making, conversations with strangers, young skates off to war. They blustered about the headlines, the invasion, the Argies, and what a dose or two of high explosive would do to Galtieri’s boys. They made it sound like a football match, a fixture they couldn’t afford to miss. They said they were well tooled up, the best gear in the world. They said it would be a doddle.

  Buddy listened to it all, understanding it, this blind primitive bloodlust, patriotism in the raw. But he knew the realities better than the kids. He knew that war, any war, meant slaughter. He knew that soon the music would stop, and that some of these blokes would be shipped back early, zipped into body bags, ready for collection. He knew that families would be left without d
ads, that wives and girlfriends would have to trade in their man for a line of his own on some war memorial or other. But none of that mattered, because the call had come, and the blood was up, and the fleet was ready, and the flags were snapping in the wind.

  It was a big feeling, this feeling of Buddy’s, a lump in the chest feeling, and when the singing began, and the arms linked, he joined in. Everyone was part of it. Everyone was in there. Someone started “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”, the obvious taunt, and Buddy sang along, not knowing the words, swaying on his bar stool, moist eyed, choked. The song ended in a torrent of cheers, glasses raised, an ocean of sweaty faces, and when Buddy lifted a hand, and mopped his own eyes, he realized that he, too, was crying.

  A bit later, a woman appeared at his elbow, local accent, heavy make-up, and Buddy knew at once that she was a whore. She leaned into him, pissed out of her head, her face tilted up.

  “You off too?” she kept saying. “You off too?”

  Buddy just looked at her, too muddled to answer, and she reached up to him, and pulled his face down to hers, and said it was free tonight, a special night, something to take away with him, something to keep him warm. He gave her a kiss, and told her no thank you, and good luck, and she gazed drunkenly after him as he made his way through the crowd to the door.

  Outside, round the corner, someone was being sick in the street. He was bending over the gutter, spewing all over the cobblestones. Buddy went up to him, put his arms round his shoulders, comforting him. A face looked up. He was a kid. He must have been eighteen. Buddy looked at him.

  “It’ll be OK,” he said, “honestly.”

  The kid shook his head, and began to lurch off into the darkness, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “I’m going to fucking die,” he said. “I know it.”

  Buddy drove home. By Southampton, he’d decided that he couldn’t go through with it. No way. The thing had been a fantasy from the start. However good a diver he might be, however great the gear was, he just couldn’t do it. Not here. Not now. Not to them.

  He pulled off the motorway at the New Forest exit, and followed the road home. He half expected the girl to be there, his minder, but when he turned in at the gate, the house was dark. He parked the Jaguar, and looked for her car. It wasn’t there. He fumbled for his keys and let himself in. The place smelled of polish. He frowned, finding the lights. He looked round. The girl must have cleaned up, he thought. She must have spent the evening here, giving the place a proper going over, Kraut efficiency, Kraut standards.

  He reached for the phone, meaning to ring her, tell her about his decision, call the thing off, but then he saw the door to the living room open. He walked down the hall, switched on the lights. Jude’s bed had gone. Just disappeared. He looked round. Her clothes had gone, too, tidied up, stored away, sensibly pushed to the edges of this home of his. He felt the blood rising again, the choke in his throat. His house. His woman.

  He went through to the kitchen. Everything had been rearranged, Jude’s jars of beans, her photographs, the old letters he’d clothespegged together, the ones he’d written when he was still out there, out on the rigs, and paradise came in three weekly doses, largely horizontal, whenever the mood caught them, sometimes here, in the kitchen, on the rush mat floor.

  Buddy sank onto the kitchen stool and closed his eyes. He felt dizzy. He felt slightly sick. Miles away, he heard the phone begin to ring. He let it go for a full half minute, and when it didn’t stop he went back into the hall. He picked it up. It was Eva.

  “You OK?” he heard her say.

  He looked at the phone. “You had no right,” he said thickly.

  “Back in one piece?”

  “You had no right,” he said again. “My house. My wife.”

  He looked at the phone again, held it at arm’s length, hearing her voice, a jumble of nothing. Then he put the phone down, cutting her off. Jude, he thought. For Jude.

  BOOK FOUR

  TWENTY-TWO

  Miller flew to Belfast the same evening. He took with him a sheaf of maps of south-west Ireland, on extended loan from a small office in the basement of an address in Curzon Street. To acquire the maps, he’d had to complete the standard withdrawal form. Under “Reason For Loan”, he’d written – in terse capitals – “Reconnaissance”.

  The flight landed late. Despite a phone call from Heathrow, there was no one to meet him at Aldergrove. He waited the standard ten minutes, then hired a Group One Metro, from the Europcar desk. He gave the girl at the counter his driving licence and watched her transfer the details onto the booking form. On the plane, sitting in a row by himself, he’d studied the maps. He’d found the road up from Waterville. It led inland, away from the coast, up into the mountains. The map was large scale, updated in 1968. Tiny black squares denoted houses. A mile or two from the coast, the black squares got fewer and fewer. On the phone to the Irish girl, Connolly had said at least ten miles. That had been the phrase. At least ten miles. He’d blocked the distance out on the map, using the side of his biro. Ten miles inland, the black squares were practically non-existent. In a five-mile radius, he had a choice of four. Only one of them could be white, two storeys, with pine trees across the road. There, God willing, they’d strike lucky.

  He picked up his licence, and put it in his pocket, waiting for the car keys. Twenty-four hours in Whitehall had taught him a great deal. Nineteenth, as he’d suspected, was under the cosh. Even in Army circles, they’d been less than popular – an over-protected species – but now it was plain that they were facing a powerful alliance of enemies. The RUC had long wanted them reined in. MI5, undistracted for once by the feud with MI6, regarded them as unaccountable, and therefore inherently dangerous. Special Branch told all and sundry they were “cowboys”. Even the SAS, once a reliable source of nourishment, were beginning to have second thoughts. Miller pocketed the keys to the hire car, and walked across the concourse towards the main exits. Maybe, after all, Qualitech hadn’t been such a great idea. Maybe there’d been cleverer ways of acquiring Prime Ministerial credit. Like keeping his head down, and doing his job, and waiting like the rest of them for the inevitable headlines. One day, Scullen would get to her. He knew it. One day he’d get to her. And then it would be too late.

  He drove south, to the barracks at Bessbrook. He turned the car in at the gate and told the Duty Sergeant to sort it out with the hire company. He walked the quarter of a mile to Nineteenth’s makeshift HQ. They’d been here for six months now, far longer than any other posting, and he believed that operationally it had begun to show. They’d got sloppy. They’d trusted assumptions, instead of facts. They’d made a virtue of short cuts, and they’d paid the price. First Dublin. Now Charlie. Dublin, just, they’d get away with. Over the last twenty-four hours, he’d knocked at the right doors, sat at the right desks, thrown a big, heavy fire blanket over the worst of the damage. It would smoulder on for a while. There’d be a wisp or two of smoke and the usual smell of burning but that would be all. Charlie, though, was different. Charlie was personal.

  It was nearly midnight when he finally got the men together. Including himself, there were four of them, the Dublin squad minus Charlie. He closed the door in the upstairs briefing room and drew the curtains. Thompson, the Cockney, had taken Charlie’s place in the pecking order. The other two were Camps and Venner. Camps was a big man, spare, lean, dark. He had a wife in Cardiff, and another woman in Wiltshire whom he occasionally described as “rough”. She had a child by him, and he wrote to her weekly, enclosing money. Venner was an ex-truck driver from Cornwall. His family ran fishing smacks out of Newlyn, and he’d joined the Army to get away. He was small, and broad, and tight with his money. He was the toughest man Miller had ever met. He had a real talent for violence.

  Miller spread the maps on the floor. Thompson was the first to ask the obvious question. “So what’s it like,” he said, “back home?”

  Miller looked at them. The Government had yet to declare wa
r on Argentina, but the invasion had made hostilities a virtual certainty. Action, when it came, would be very different from the kind of war they fought in Northern Ireland, and these blokes quite fancied being part of it. Thompson asked them again. What had he left? Back in London?

  “Chaos,” he said.

  Thompson grinned. “Bit sudden,” he said, “isn’t it?”

  Miller nodded. The Falklands situation had been a godsend. It had blown up in days and caught everyone by surprise. Most of Whitehall, still digesting the latest round of defence cuts, had suddenly been ordered to tool up for a shooting war, eight thousand miles from home. As a result, the military machine was totally preoccupied. The priorities were ships, helicopters, artillery support, heavy lift. The last thing on anyone’s mind were the ethics of a spot of private enterprise in the mountains of south-west Ireland. Miller reached forward and tapped the map. He’d chinagraphed the road from the coast in red.

  “I’ve found the guy that did Charlie,” he said. “His name’s Connolly. He’s holed up in a farmhouse … round here.”

  Thompson looked at him. Never shy, he’d become a kind of spokesman for the group. Now, he needed persuading.

  “No offence,” he sniffed, “but who says?”

  “I do.”

  “Kosher?”

  “Definitely.”

  “That’s what you said about Dublin.”

  Miller looked at him. “No,” he said quietly, “that’s what Charlie said about Dublin.”

  There was a brief silence. Miller offered no more information. Thompson looked at him again, checking, then shrugged.

  “OK,” he said.

  Miller glanced at the other two.

  “OK with you?” he said.