Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

It was because he had turned, because he faced up the road and into the estate, that he saw two men jump from the car stopped on the rold.

The frozen moment…

Mossie looked up the road Two men spilling from a car, black overalls, black balaclavas, black short -barrel rifles. Jacko, his back to the men, bent under the weight of the old bedspread, and At Malachy halfway round the car to help him. Mis Byrne piping, What's you wanting,,?"

He turned again, There were two more men, dark dressed, coming up the road, threatening, into the estate, armed.

The first shots.

Nugent wheeling, spinning

The windscreen in front of Devitt frosted, then holed, then disintergrated. Vinny Devitt’s head, gone.

He was holding the pistol out in front of his chest, and the tiny woman heaved the washing basket at him. There was a shirt snagged on his shoulders and a pair of knickers falling from the red material of his anorak. He threw the pistol at Mrs Byrne and ran.

Jacko was on his back, and writhing, and the bedspread that was half across him and the weight of the heavy machine gun pinioned him. He never saw Malachy.

A shot clattered into the masonry above him. He ran past the front of the next house. Another shot. He half tripped on low wire dividing two front gardens, stumbled, regained his balance. The whine of a ricochet going off the pavement and by him. He turned into the path between the houses. His ears were deafened. His eyes were misted. He charged through a dug vegetable garden, slithering. No more shots, not since he had found the cover of the houses. He launched himself at the garden's back fence, battered his way through it. There was open waste ground ahead of him.

Mossie ran as fast as his damaged hip allowed.

He ran for his life and the red anorak billowed from his body.

Bren saw it all from the watchtower.

He was back from the firing slit, behind the sentry. Cathy was beside him, reaching onto her toes for the height she needed and peering through binoculars.

Bren could hear the shots.

It was a tableau in front of him. It was a grandstand view. He felt as though he had been hammered with a fist into the pit of his stomach.

There was just the bile taste in his mouth.

He looked straight through the broken windscreen of the car and he could see the slumped head of the driver. He looked past the offside of the car and he could see the young fellow, jeans and denim jacket, lying still on his stomach. He looked past the near-side of the car and he could see the thrashing arms of the third man He looked past the car and he could see the two soldiers walking easily down the slope of the hill, their weapons at their shoulders No haste, no urgency. And there were two more soldiers jogging up the road to meet them, one circling, _ still jogging, backwards, to cover behind them. But there was no movement, it seemed, anywhere in the estate, not even a door slammed.

One of the soldiers bent over the man on the ground at the nearside of the car, then lifted the cloth beside the man, lifted it away from a heavy machine gun by the look of it. The soldier crouched once more over the man. Bren heard the shot.

The helicopter was already in the air, coming low over the watchtower, deafening the peace.

Bren yelled, "Are you satisfied…?"

Cathy didn't raise her voice. "It was to protect the source."

"Is any source worth that, bloody tell me?"

She lowered the binoculars. She looked him square in the eyes. "The source is worth everything."

The helicopter perched in the grassy patch beside the Killyman Road.

The four soldiers loped towards its open door. The bodies they left behind them.

The fight had gone from him. He swayed on his feet. He felt her hand at his elbow. Cathy steadied him.

"How far will you go to protect the source?"

"As far as it takes," Cathy said.

Through the wall behind the bed head he heard his mother's coughing.

Her chest was worse this winter. At the foot of the bed he heard their little Mary shifting in her sleep.

He lay on his back. He stared up into the blackness. The best years of their lives, his and Siobhan's, had been before the bitch had her nails in him. They were good years in Birmingham. In the same bed, shipped back with all their furniture, he had told his Siobhan that it was necessary for them to return to Ireland. She had cried and submitted. He thought that she had come back with him because she had no other choice. She was hard against him, his arm slipped gently around her shoulder.

"You's alright…?" He had thought she was asleep.

"Course I'm bloody alright."

"You's alive…"

He was alive because he was the bitch's toy thing. And Vinny Devitt, who wasn't, was in the mortuary of the South Tyrone (General) Hospital, with Jacko and Malachy.

"Why didn't they shoot you?"

"I'm precious, because I'm precious to the bitch."

"Did you's think they'd shoot you?"

"I was wearing the red coat."

"You weren't shot because they'd told you what to wear?"

"Why I had to have the red coat."

"You's important to them?"

"It's what the bitch says."

"Will you get more money?"

"I gets one hundred and twenty-five pounds a week. I gets five hundred pounds a month. I gets six thousand pounds a year. That’s what I get..,"

"How long does you get the money?"

"Till I'm no more use to the bitch, till the trap's closed."

"How long's that?"

"For feck's sake, I don't know…"

"You'll be waking Mary. Why was they killed today?"

His mother hacked her cough again. He could hear the fire dying in the sitting room, the last spit of damp wood.

"To protect me."

"Three men…?"

"To keep me alive."

"Keep you alive?"

"So I survive, that's what three men died for, so I live to tout another day."

"Is you frightened, Mossie…?"

Always the fear was with him. The fear crept with him to the bed. The fear stalked him when he pasted wallpaper and painted. The fear bit at him when he went to the meetings with his O.C., and when he went to meetings with his handlers. The fear was with him when he kicked the plastic football on the back grass patch for Francis, and when he dressed Doloures, and when he cuddled Patrick, and when he cut little Mary's food for her. He was never without the fear.

"I don't know how to leave it, the fear…"

"Leave it behind you?"

"I don't know how to."

"Is you more frightened of your own people, or of them?"

"No difference, both bleeding me, and no going back."

"When could you have gone back?"

"Doesn't matter, too long ago…"

Yeah, great, Mossie Nugent could have told the redhead to go feck herself… Could have had his driving ban, and his mortgage- recalled and his bank loan revoked, could have been put on the ferry boat with his exclusion order. No vehicle and couldn't work, bank loan revoked and debt, mortgage called in and bankruptcy, exclusion order served and home to the north where every man knew that the names of those served with the Prevention of terrorism Act exclusion order were slipped to the Proddie murder squads. He'd thought of that scene, over and over. He had thought he was going to get a beating and he'd found himself thanking the bitch. Oh yeah, that was too long ago.

He had gone home, had told Siobhan it was a mistake, all sorted.

Three months later, going down the shop for fags, hadn't recognised her at first, old jeans and scruffy anorak. All she needed was that he drink at a certain pub, that he watch a certain man. Regular meetings, and then the suggestion that he should sell up, take his family home… too late then to go back. Returned to Altmore mountain, bumping into her in Irish Street, and the note passed with her scribbled telephone number, and the money… too late then to go back.