Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

All of them quiet in the car when Vinny drove back onto the road that ran down the mountain from Altmore.

One of them had a beard that covered his throat. One of them had long greased hair onto his shoulders. One of them looked to be from the Pacific islands, perhaps Fijian. One of them was the cardboard city man. They all knew Cathy.

Bren watched from the colonel's office. It was her world and not his.

There was no tension in the room The colonel had gone because it was not his world either The plan was on the colonel’s desk with the coffee cups and the plate of biscuits and the ashtray that was already filled.

She hadn't talked about it in the car, just told him to drive to Dungannon, said what time they were expected, allowed him to get on with the job of reaching the barracks on her schedule.

They were planning a killing. That was their world and Cathy was a part of it. The world was Cathy and the calm light of her eyes, and it was four men wearing bulky black overalls and woollen caps that were folded up and could be pulled down for balaclavas.

No fuss and no hurry. Time to pour more coffee.

Bren knew they had been in the Colonel's office for hours because the room was fogged with cigarette smoke. On the floor, discarded amongst the big olive green back-packs, was the all-in anthology of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, open now at Act Two, Scene Two, King Lear.

Bren saw that she was not interrupted. She was part of their territory, as if by right… Bren wondered if it were just because she was a woman, or how it was that she had earned the respect of those hard men. Hard? Of course they were bloody hard. They were going out killing with no more fuss than Bren managed when he was off down to Mr Manjrekar's corner store With his weekend shopping list. He wondered whether Mr Willkins had the least notion of what was planned that morning, and whether Hobbes sat beside a telephone and waited for news.

He just wanted to be a part of her world, and share the light and warmth as did these four men.

Cathy said, ‘’..He’s wearing the red coat, that's what we agreed. He’d bloody better well better he wearing it. He's a dozy slob, but i think he took it on board. So just don't spoil my day, there's good darlings, just don't forget that it's a red coat, and if, God help us, they turn up in Pink Panther suits, my man is heavy, he’s big, he’s late thirties, going bald at the back, and he limps. And we don’t shoot limping grouse, do we? not out of season, anyway, eh, David?’’

Nothing flamboyant, not theatrical, None of the leadership crap, and nothing that was an excuse for feminine softness. She was amongst her own.

Cathy said quietly, "Good luck."

The semi-detached and whitewashed houses climbed the hill to the west of the Killyman Road. The barracks on the far hill, across the road, across the rough ground, behind the steel perimeter fence, dominated the estate. Smoke from living-room fires pushed from the chimneys. A child played in the road in front of his house with a tricycle. A doctor hurried back to his car. A baby, tightly blanketed in its pram, bawled with healthy lungs. A woman put down her heavy shopping bag, reached for her house keys. A young man walked to the newsagents for cigarettes, went slowly because he had time to kill and no work to go to. The estate ignored the soldiers who looked down at them from the watch- towers of the barracks, didn't speak to the soldiers when they patrolled through the back streets.

Mrs Byrne hung out her washing and didn't think much of the chances of it drying.

It was the Donnelly woman at the door.

Siobhan forced the smile, and she took the eggs. She said that it was so kind of her to think of them for fresh eggs again, they tasted so much better, didn't they, than the eggs from the shops. She enquired, caringly, whether the house was repaired. She told her that her Mossie had been busy, so busy, that was why he hadn't been round to help her with the house repairs.

Siobhan didn't ask her inside. She took the eggs on the doorstep. She was alone in the house and it was the way she wanted it. Grandma was gone walking Mary in the pushchair. Too great a confusion for Siobhan Nugent to invite her neighbour in for a cup of tea and a gossip about whose daughter was pregnant, whose son had found work, whose father was taken sick, whose uncle had gone bankrupt… Too great a confusion because of her husband… She closed the door.

She went back inside Too great a confusion for her. Her Mossie a tout, and her Mossie was gone today without explanation. After she had come back from the school, Siobhan had listened to every news bulletin on the B.B.C… coming close to one o'clock. One day it was going to be on the radio…

There were two in the ditch on the east side of the Killyman Road, where the brambles grew across the banks, hiding them. There were two in the car parked between two blocks of garages at the top of the estate.

All the men could see the front door of Mrs Byrne's house, in the first row of houses that faced the barracks.

No chat, no cigarettes.

They were readied, the guns were armed.

Mossie Nugent's mother's cousin lived in the second line of house's. It was the sort of estate that he thought Siobhan might have wanted to live on, if they had not been so far down the I lousing Executive list, if they had not had to live with his mother.

Vinny Devitt was driving… They had come the long way, down to Edendork, then back towards Dungannon on the country road that would bring them to Killyman Road about opposite the road into the estate. Jacko not able to stop talking, yapping louder and faster the closer they came to the estate. Malachy breathing harder, like he'd a blockage. Vinny missing two gear changes, as if he were first time on a driving test. Mossie shared the back seat with Jacko and the 50-calibre that was wrapped in the old bedspread, pink flowers on yellow…

Devitt, driving like the little arsehole he was, turning into the estate.

Pretty quiet 'cos it was lunchtime. Lunchtime in the officers' mess across the Killyinan Road and up the hill.

Mossie pulled the snub barrelled pistol from his pocket, held it against is chest. His hands sweated inside the thin rubber gloves.

‘’You right, Malachy? Vinny?"

Jacko quiet, Malachy heaving breath. Vinny Devitt pulling on the brake.

A dozen paces from the car to Mrs Byrne’s front door. Number 17.

Mossie felt his flesh shiver inside the quilting of the anorak. He climbed out. He walked, stiff-legged, from the car to the door of Mrs Byrne's. On the pavement, outside her door by the young cherry tree, he looked right and he looked left, and he saw no one. It was lunchtime. He held the pistol hidden inside the anorak. He looked behind him. Three white faces in the car staring back at him… Shit, and there was a car coming down the road, maybe 100 yards away, should be in and out of sight by the time it got level. Remembering what the bitch had said to him. Didn't know when, didn't know from where. Trying to remember each last word the bitch had said to him…

He rang the bell. Christ, and he wantei d to piss. They had both doors part open behind him, ready to come running when he bullocked inside, and he could see Jacko's legs half out and the jutted tip of the old bedspread, pink flowers on yellow. Wait till the car is past, you daft buggers Taking her time, Mrs goddamn Byrne. He tucked the pistol further into his anorak and turned his back on the road. He’d bundle her back in. His job, to watch Mrs goddamn Byrne, while Devitt stayed in the car, while Jacko and Malachy put the 50 -calibre up in the front bedroom.

"Who's wanting me?"

He spun She was a tiny woman, nothing to her, at the side of the house, holding a big plastic basket of washing.