Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

There was another shot dead

And he died with a gun in his hand,

But it didn't say why

Billy Reld had to die…

He died to free Ireland."

Billv Reid, volunteer was shot dead 15th May 1971, and there was a Billy Reid Commemoration each year, and a Billy Reid Memorial Band. There would be a Jon Jo Donnelly flute and pipe band, for Jon Jo Donnelly dead.

Just not possible, most of what the list called for. Secret Intelliigence Service, Century House. Security Service, Curzon Street. Ministry of Defence, main building. Just not possible for Jon Jo. Director General, G.C.H.Q., Cheltenham. Chief of the General Staff. Oh, yes, certainly.

Should be able to manage that. Shouldn't be more than a twenty-four-hour guard twelve deep for one of those. Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Head of the Civil Service. Possible for an arsehole sitting in Dublin and writing cow shit…

Alone in his room in the house in northeast London, the unlovely, uncomforting room. Attracta was in his mind, and his boy.

He stood up, turned out the light and opened the curtain. He saw her, and he thought she was white-faced and too proud to weep as the home they had made together was wrecked. He saw that she held little Kevin against her body. It was what he had brought upon her. The smashing of her home.

Jon Jo worked at the list, to find what was possible.

It was Bren's second day in the office. The office was an offshoot of the Department of the Environment. He had been allocated a room on the second floor at the back of a new building that was called Progress House. Room 2/63/B was protected by a Chubb lock in addition to a Yale lock. Hobbes had introduced him to a manager, explained that Mr Brennard was the new representative of Audit and Cash Flow Control from London. Any file he wished to see, it would be provided. The manager was plainly anxious to have nothing to do with him. He gave him one swift look, hostility and nervousness mingled, and closed the door on him. For the second day, Bren had studied the new Downpatrick sewage scheme and the proposed extension of the dual carriageway out of Strabane, and the proposed revision of the salary structure for clerical workers at the Department's main office.

His room was a model of Civil Service Spartan. His table, his chair, and two more chairs under the Venetian blind which was drawn down over the window. There was a map of Northern Ireland all over one wall, a calendar beside the door, above a hip high wall safe. On a shelf behind his chair were three telephones, one black, one green, and one white. Song Bird's line, the switchboard's line, and the third one, which was purring at him.

"Yes?"

"Me, out the main door, turn left, 150 yards or so, same side, a bus stop. I'll pick you up in twenty minutes, the Astra."

Bren took the Browning pistol from the safe and tucked it into the back of his waist. He took his anorak from the hook on the door.

He sat again in his chair. Every five minutes he checked his watch. It was what he wanted, more than anything he knew, to be with Cathy Parker.

Twenty minutes after her call, to the minute, she drew up at the bus stop. He smiled his surprise at her. She looked terrific.

He shouted, "Where's my red coat?" It had been on the hook beside the front door the night before, it was not there now.

His mother was close to him, getting the older children ready for school. She eyed him. Must have been needling her, sensing there was crisis between the two of them and not knowing the cause of it.

Siobhan called, "It's dirty."

"I wants it."

"It's for the wash."

"Shit, woman, I want my red coat."

He saw Francis, his satchel over his shoulders, back away from him, and Doloures watched him with a coldness because she was her mother's child and schooled to despise obscenity.

Siobhan came out of the kitchen. She carried a crumpled red anorak, and there were dirt stains on it and paint smears.

"There's your coat, if it's important to you to look like: tinker

…"

"It is."

It was past the time he was usually gone when he was going to work, so she would have known that he was ducking out, and he'd said that he wasn't taking the kids to school.. She threw him the coat to catch.

Siobhan flounced past him and threw on her own winter coat, and she picked up little Mary and pushed Francis and Doloures and Patrick out through the door, slammed it after her. His mother went into the kitchen. He leaned against the wall in the hallway and the emotion boiled in him. He heard Siobhan's car starting up, reluctantly, outside.

He didn't know whether he would see the kids again, and he hadn't said goodbye to them.

Fear and helplessness welled in him. He was trapped by the bitch. He could remember the first time…

They had been four years in England. Francis was born, and Doloures. Patrick was started. A good little business going, a fresh start, and more on the black than shown to the Revenue. A painter/decorator business in Acocks Green in Birmingham. Doing his own thing and also called in by the big builders, plenty of work and the past buried. Coming back late, drink taken, and waved down by the feckin' coppers. Blood test, urine test, three times over. He had a bank loan on the van and a mortgage on their brick-built home, two bedrooms and a back garden and perfect.

He could work out what had happened. They'd a Paddy in the cells, and they'd pumped his name into the computer. Booked him on Drunk in Charge, then held him on the Prevention of terrorism. All spilled out by the computer. 1974, five years, possession of a Luger pistol and Thompson sub-machine gun, Belfast Crown Court. 1979, three years, conspiracy to cause. explosions, Dublin Special Criminal Court. Less than frank, they’d said with the building society. Less than honest, they'd told him with the bank. Big trouble… He was looking at a driving ban, the calling in of his mortgage, the winding up of his loan, plus an exclusion order. She'd come to the cell, the third day. Very quiet, just business, none of the swagger and bully of the detectives.

She’d worn a navy suit. She'd had a typed-up exclusion order and the drunk in charge paperwork in her hand. She had stood in front of him, torn them both up, and gone to the lavatory and flushed them away. He could remember it still, the way that he had feckin’ dribbled his thanks to her. He’d eat from the bitch’s hand, then, now. They had walked out of the police station and left behind the detectives and the desk sergeant, and she'd looked at the lot of them as if they were beneath her contempt. In a cafe down the road, over two cups of tea that she paid for, she had told him she would be in touch, said she'd see him. A small smile on her face, like she'd know where to find him.

Vinny drove.

Jacko from Pomeroy was in the passenger seat, and Malachy from Coalisland was in the back with Mossie.

Vinny thought it downright daft to wear a bright red coat, the sort that couldn't help but be noticed. But he was only Vinny Devitt, the driver, and Mossie Nugent was the big cat… Not for Vinny to ask why.

They went up the mountain first, to the derelict barn that was screened by a conifer plantation. No talking in the car, the talking would be when it was over, time then for the laughter and the cheering and the unzipped excitement.

At the barn they collected the gun from the O.C. and the Quartermaster. It was for Jacko, and Malachy would feed the belt. Easy enough for Vinny to see that Jacko and Malachy knew the weapon, bloody great heavy thing… It was the first that Vinny knew of the plan, and Jacko and Malachy. They were talked through it by the O.C.

There was an old bedspread in the barn, pink flowers on yellow, and they wrapped the 50-calibre in it and carried it back to linear.