Sometimes she turned her eyes away from the hole and its debris, but then her imagination took over and besieged her more fearfully than the reality. Nightmarishly she could see the stunted column of lead striking the softness of the skin, could feel the splitting and carving of the tissues and wonder at the sensation of the fragments making their uninterrupted passage in the void beneath the flesh. And he had said it would all happen again. Had told her that they would come. Policemen with rifles, more bullets, bursting through the door, kicking their way across the tiny floor-space, brushing aside the white-wood and wicker chair on which she had laid his stained jacket and shirt and undervest. And what would he do when they came? His rifle was half under his legs, still held close to the trigger guard by the left hand. So small, and beside its shallow length the grenades, miniaturized. They didn't have the scale and size for her to believe in them as killing weapons. Too sparse, too insignificant. But when they came, when the police came, he would try to fire, try to pull the absurd circular pin on the grenade. And they would shoot. They would be quicker, organized, without pity. Then there would be the profusion of holes, beating formations in his chest, slicing through the rib cage that showed clear as he lay in his sleep. When they came it would be to kill, not to capture. Norah knew that.
Even had she not been so tired she could not have analysed her feelings for Ciaran McCoy. 'Love' was the magazine word, written in stories with windswept hills and boys who were dark and tidy, and girls with wasp waists and unbuttoned blouses and long hair. Infatuation she understood, read of it in the agony columns, real enough, able to match it with her own emotions; the boy last year who worked under Father at the factory. Temporary and heartrending, nice to cry over. But McCoy, this was something unique for her and surpassing her understanding. She could not envisage herself in love with a man capable of such horror as the strangulation of the policewoman whose picture the television had shown, not in love with the man of the hateful, animal-wild eyes imprinted in her mind from the newspaper picture. Yet she had lain with him in the grass of the park, and taken him in her arms, and pressed his head against her breasts, and said his name, and felt the warmth and the pain of him deep between her legs. And he was to die. Snuffed out.
Shot dead by the guns of men in uniform.
Norah reached down to the floor, to the square of carpet that covered the centre of the room inside the vinyl surround, and felt under her bed for her shoes, careful not to disturb his sleep. All her shoes were under the bed; the room was too small to provide the adequate cupboard space she required. Two pairs were there, her evening going-out ones, and the flats for work in the supermarket.
Further under were the back numbers of the magazines that came on Thursday mornings and that caused her to linger in bed and be late for breakfast and run for the bus.
She straightened, gently and slowly, taking time till she could ease out the pillow that had nestled in the small of her back. Together they were sufficient. First the magazines, then the shoes, then the pillow. With one hand she steadied his sleeping head while she wormed as far back toward the wall as her body had room to move, and then there was the space for her to build the counterfeit lap.
The height was the same, and when she eased his head on to the softness of the pillow his eyes stayed tight shut, and there was only the forced and erratic breathing.
She was not betraying him, she told herself, only offering him salvation. This way he would survive. Go out of her life, that was inevitable, but survive. On her window-sill were the keys to the outside doors he had brought upstairs with him. It was easy for her to select the one that opened the front door.
Past three she saw on her watch when she stepped out on to the landing of the house and went barefoot, and on her toes, without sound towards the staircase. At the head of the stairs she stopped to listen to the light noises of the house. McCoy's breathing, audible, painful. Fainter movements from the rooms where her parents lay.
Pray God he doesn't wake, she said to herself, and eased on to the first step.
Famy had gone over the wall and into the park. Once inside he ran till his legs would carry him no further. Fast, hard and direct toward the south-west, sprinting so that many times he had plunged without warning into bushes, stumbled in the grassed-over drains. His hands were cut, and there were tears round the knees of his trousers. The rifle made it difficult, clutched as a talisman, with only one hand free to protect him when he pitched forward. But McCoy had made the sacrifice. McCoy had stayed behind to win him the distance he now sought to put between himself and the pursuit. No idea how many hours' start he would have, whether the hunt had in fact already begun, whether it would come at dawn or not for a full day. But the Irishman had sacrificed himself, probably given his life to gain him the ground he now swept over. It clinched his motivation, and when his legs sagged under him he rested only for the muscles to tighten, the control to be regained, before starting once more.
When the brickwork of the park wall swung away from the direction he sought, exhausting its usefulness, he looked for escape in the streets and roads outside. It took great effort for him to force his way up on to the summit of its height, and he toppled rather than jumped on to the ground on the far side. Soon he was out of the cover of the trees and under street lights, passed by late traffic, and running by houses where lights still shone and from which came the flicker, blue-grey on the wallpapers, of television sets. When he came to the river he walked along the bank, anxious lest he should miss the bridge marked on his pocket-book map. But when he had found it he quickened his step. There would be no more such barriers for him now, the map showed that, just a network of streets and roads and gardens stretching across his path, separating him from the great open space of flattened concrete that was the airport and from which David Sokarev would fly.
He knew his way, was unerring in tracking his route.
Every ninety-five seconds a jet-powered passenger air liner roared above him on its descent to the tarmac, red and green belly lights flashing the message to the Arab far beneath that he was on his course.
EIGHTEEN
It was the policeman crouched in the shadows of the doorway directly opposite Number 25 who first heard the faint sound of the bolt being withdrawn behind the door across the road. He stiffened into an aim position, his FN
rifle at his shoulder, barrel pointed across at the floodlit porch, and talking all the time into the radio clipped to his tunic. Within seconds of his first message he could hear the scraping of activity around him, others alerted, more marksmen preparing themselves. The superintendent's voice was relayed to him over the miniature loudspeaker set into the same instrument. Disembodied and unreal came the instruction, if the men come out, shoot. Only if their hands are up and they are obviously not armed do you hold your fire. If they have hostages with them, shoot.
Under no circumstances are they to reach the darkness, either of them.'
All right for him to say that, the policeman thought, all right if you're down in the control vehicle. The door edged open, two inches at first, time for the constable to ease off the safety clip on the right side of the rifle, an inch or so above the magazine. He was sweating, could feel the moisture on his hands. He'd only ever fired in practice, and the last time eight months before. Then the door swung fully back on its hinges, but the light from the beam down the road came at such an acute angle that the hallway was only a black rectangle of darkness. He strained without success to see into it. They'll come in a rush, he told himself, all together, the parents and the girl in front, the men behind. And his orders were to shoot.
God help us all, he thought, lips bitten tightly, hands shaking, causing the sight on the end of the barrel to waver in gentle helpless meanders. In normal times he drove a squad car; a marksman's role was something he had never taken on before. Only his eyesight, that was superb, qualified him for the shooting position he occupied twenty short paces from the doorway.
His finger tightened ar
ound the trigger, and then he saw the girl come from the shadow and hesitate on the step.
There was a surge of relief through him. At least the bastards were not right behind her. It would give him a chance to miss her, perhaps hit them. Very quietly, little more than an aside, he broadcast her progress along the four yards of paved path to the front wicket gate. Here again she stopped, and the fifteen rifles that had covered her as she walked forward traversed their aim back to the dark recess of the doorway.
A hundred yards away and watching now through binoculars the superintendent called into his microphone,
'Tell her to get into the middle of the road, and keep the bloody door covered.'
The constable stretched up, straightening his legs against the stiffness that had long crippled his knee joints. The girl wouldn't have seen him yet, wouldn't have seen any of them, would be bewildered by the silence and the emptiness of the street.
'Keep walking,' he said, more staccato than he would have wanted. Nerves, he put it down to. 'Come out into the street, hands high. Out in the middle.'
Still the girl seemed unaware of his presence, simply obeyed the commands. She came to the centre of the road, and the constable could see her glazed eyes, could see the bloodstains, too, on the white of her blouse, the scattered hair strands, and the uncertain steps. Like a sleepwalker, he thought, like someone learning to walk again in a hospital. 'Walk down the road, and slowly. There's a rope across it about a hundred yards down. They'll meet you there. And don't run.' The girl veered to her right, and began to walk, and the policeman's concentration returned to the open doorway, rifle grip marginally relaxed, waiting.
When she reached the rope a host of hands greeted her.
Under her shoulders lest she should faint, hands of comfort around her back. She felt weakness till two detectives frisked her, and she was alive again, backing away from the fingers that ran down her body, circling her waist, on the inside and outside of her legs. 'Just formality,' said the voice behind her, but close and reassuring, and then there was one arm around her, strong, protective. She made no effort to stem the flow of tears that wracked her as they led her to the control van. They helped her up the steps, and the superintendent muttered to his men, 'Keep it very gentle. When she starts to talk I want it coming easily.
Rush it now and we'll screw it for all time.' He was old enough in the business of interrogation to know that hasty, capsulated and impatient questioning could cause the girl to freeze, make the progress endlessly slow and confusing.
They gave her a chair, and the superintendent said, it's Norah, isn't it?'
She nodded, blank agreement.
'Tell us what's happening, Norah, in your own words.'
She smeared her arm across her upper face, diverting the tears, snuffled, and started to talk. Her voice was very low and the policeman and the SAS captain who had crowded into the van had to stretch forward to hear.
'He said you'd attack, and when you came in you'd be shooting. You'll kill, I know you'll kill him. You'll murder him in there.' The faces of her listeners were impassive, showing no reaction. 'I couldn't see him die, not like that.
He's hurt, there's a terrible wound, blood . . . and he got me to clean it. He's sleeping now, he was when I left him
.. . I made a pile for his head so that he wouldn't know I'd gone. He needs help, needs a hospital. I thought if I let you in you'd take him alive, you wouldn't shoot him.'
Behind her a detective whispered, half to himself but not subdued, 'Little cow. Little bitch.' She seemed not to hear.
'The door's open. He's up the stairs, in the small room at the front. It's my room. He's on the bed there. Asleep.
He doesn't know I've come. He'd kill me . . . ' The tears came again and her head sank forward on the smallness of her chest.
The army captain leaned close, one question to ask,
'What sort of guns does he have? Where are they?'
'There's a rifle, a little one. It's in his hand, and there are some grenade things. They're beside the rifle, that's all he has.'
'Norah, listen, because this is very important if we are to help this man' - the superintendent spoke softly, paternal, a voice to be trusted — 'you have to tell us where in the house is the other man. The one on your bed is the Irishman, where is the other one, the Arab?'
She looked into the face that was very near to her, tired and haggard eyes, stubble beginning to show, white collar fringed with grime. So he knew what he was up to, the man McCoy. She wanted to scream with laughter. It was as he'd said it would be. Buying time for his friend, and how much purchased? How many hours? Four, five perhaps? And they didn't know. Tricked by a man with one good arm and half his chest shot out. All these coppers, and McCoy had done them. But there was no hysteria, too exhausted for that. Only a slow smile that rimmed the bottom of the young fresh cheeks almost of sympathy.
'He's been gone a long time,' she said. 'He went right at the start. Just ran through the house. There's only Ciaran . . . '
'Bloody hell,' said the superintendent, kindness evaporating from his mouth.
'We'll go and get the bastard.' The captain said it over his shoulder, already half out of the van.
The superintendent sat back in his chair. 'And you haven't come to tell us this to save your father and mother, haven't mentioned them. Nor to help the troops who were going to break in, less than an hour from now, and risk their bloody lives. Not on your list, right? Only thing that matters is that Ciaran gets his bloody treatment. Straight in on the National Health. Makes you want to puke.'
She was satisfied with herself now. They saw the defiance come to her, chin jutting out.
'So where's the Arab?' Different tone, harsher, games completed.
'He didn't say. Just ran through the house. Went through the back. Hours ago.' The last spat out with relish.
'Where to, for Christ's sake?'
'I said, he didn't say. Ciaran said the whole thing was to win him time.'
'And how long have you known him, this McCoy?'
'Two weeks.'
'And you knew what he'd done?'
'I knew.' And she smiled again. Pretty smile, the superintendent thought, pretty face. Just as they all are when they meet their McCoys. Screwed her, and screwed her life. Par for the course. He climbed out of the van to begin formulating his plans for the manhunt that would not get operational till first light, still more than ninety minutes away.
The split board that Norah's father had so long meant to repair betrayed to Ciaran McCoy the approach up the stairs of the SAS sergeant. The creaking whine when the soldier eased his weight on to the divided wood broke through the thin sleep, causing him to sit up sharply, a reflex before the agony jolted him down. He was aware of the rifle immediately, nestling in his hand and pressed to his thigh, but when he motioned his shoulders seeking the shape and familiarity of the girl he realized she had gone.
He took his hand from the butt of the rifle and felt the pillow and the shoes and the magazines. Confirmation if he had needed it. There was a whisper from the stairs, a hiss for quiet, then the drumming of feet, the moment of assault. For a fraction of time he had capability to make the decision that would determine whether he raised his gun and armed the grenades, or whether he submitted . . .
but his mind was incapable of clear thought, and his instinctive reactions too dulled. When the sergeant came through the door, finger poised on the trigger of the Sterling sub-machine-gun, McCoy lay where he had slept, gun barrel prone on the bedspread and offering no threat.
That he lived through those three seconds as the SAS man acclimatized himself to the light of the room was dependent on the soldier's training and expertise, and his knowledge of when it was necessary to shoot, when not. He assimilated the atmosphere of the room, saw the crumpled figure, the barrel that pointed nowhere, the hand removed from the immediate proximity of the grenades. And then there were others crowding into the bedroom, three, four and five more, standing high over McCo
y. The light was switched on. One pulled the gun from his hand, removed the bullet from the breach, scooped up the grenades. They ran their hands over McCoy's trousers, checking him for more weapons and lifted him without violence from the bedclothes before ripping back the pale blue sheets. When they laid him down again it was on the hard-coiled springs of the bed.
Ciaran watched them as they worked quickly and with thoroughness round the room, no words spoken, acknowledgement that each knew what was expected of him. End of the road, Ciaran boy, but not the end his imagination had ever entertained when he played his war games. He'd thought they'd shoot. Flattering himself. Couldn't take the great Ciaran alive, without a whimper, without the mighty bang-out. Too big just to finish up this way. Deceived himself. Unimportant, though, and he didn't care. Get so tired, such exhaustion, that you don't give a damn what happens. Glad in a way that it's over. Whichever way, with the living or the dead, unimportant, just the relief that it's completed. And the Arab had had his start, had his opportunity. And he must go through it all again, the poor bastard. And on his own. And you're out of it, Ciaran boy, clear and finished and safe.
The captain bent over him.
'Get the doctor up here.' Me said it without emotion, matter of fact. 'Pity the bloody thing wasn't six inches across. Would have saved us all a load of trouble.'
Through the door McCoy could hear the voices of Norah's parents, frightened, gabbled and seeking the reassurance of the soldiers. There were feet on the staircase, a diffusion of voices, orders being given, and then the arrival of the doctor.
'Make a habit of this caper?' The doctor had his hand on McCoy's pulse, but his eyes, puckered with the distress of an old man, wandered from the wounds to the already healed scar in McCoy's side.
'I don't mind shifting him,' said the superintendent. 'But I don't want him under anaesthetic yet. He's some talking to do before we get that far. We'll chat him in the ambulance and when they're cleaning him up.'
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