Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

The small woman called out. "Mister, you's filmin' things that aren't happenin'…"

"Reconstruction, Madam, gives added poignancy to tragedy."

He started to heave the harness from his shoulders. He laid the cameras back onto the rear seat of the Mustang. The little blighters were all round him, giggling.

"Shouldn't you be showing more respect, Mister?"

"Casualties of war, Madam, yesterday's grief and today's statistics…

Bugger off, you little bastards…"

The kids fled. He heard the life of their laughter as they went. It was only when he sat back into the Mustang that he appreciated the fuckers had let out the air in his rear right tyre. By the time he had Jacked up the car, and changed the wheel, and jacked down the car, the woman had gone, and the pavement and the gutter had been scrubbed clean.

Not a blood stain to be seen.

Well, Perry Forster would have said, perhaps as he filled in so expertly his expenses sheets, "We all have to earn a crust, and the tools of my trade are old blood on the pavement."

It was the last funeral of the day, Vinny Devitt's. Mossie went. He was far back in the procession of men and women and children who walked from the Devitt house to the church. A piper led them Mossie had stayed away from the funerals of Jacko and Malachy.

Both of their families had told the Provisionals, given it to them straight and then slammed the family front door on them, that they wanted no part in a stunt. No tricolour flag, no black beret, no black gloves on either coffin.

Devitt's was a funeral with full honours. There had been shots fired in the night by masked men close to the Devitt home. In the middle of the afternoon, when the rain clouds masked the crest of the mountain, the piper led the procession the mile to the church. A narrow lane was the route. The piper's lament was blotted out by the drone of the helicopter above, and there was a phalanx of police in front of the piper and following up the mourners, and more police walking sober-faced beside the procession so that the Altmore people were hemmed in by the men in their visored helmets, who carried the riot sticks.

It was a good turn-out.

The man from Belfast Sinn Fein, over the open grave, spoke of a hero and of the certainty of ultimate victory.

Twice Mossie met the eyes of the O.C. inside the church and across the grave, cold and bitter. What Mossie had heard, Gerry Brannigan's boy had gone, run for the safety of the Republic, gone after saying that East Tyrone Brigade was as secure as a feckin' sieve.

He thought the tout hunt would start as the last shovel of dirt covered the coffin, and he had been guaranteed that he was protected.

It was the aftermath of a killing, not the planning of it.

The Assistant Under-Secretary stayed away from the Task Co-ordinating Group. The colonel, Army Intelligence, took the chair, his right by rota.

First business from the major, a cache on the Limavady road out of Londonderry that had been watched for twelve days now without result

– how much longer could manpower be deployed? A report by the Assistant Chief Constable on a police approach to a North Antrim volunteer – early days but promising. An inquest, led by Rennie, into the appearance of an Andersonstown "bad boy" at a Sinn Fein news conference where the little bastard had squealed that he had been approached, offered money, and gone straight to his solicitor and then the Provos – damage limitation, and the lesson was that the handlers had moved too fast. A query from the colonel, the increasing quantity of "traces" on a south County Down man, presumably rising in the Organisation – questioning whether it would be a suitable time to pull him into Gough Barracks, Armagh, and let the Southern Region crime squad fellows have him for seven days and three sessions a day.

Agreed.

Last item before coffee, and Hobbes broke his silence.

"Dungannon, I thought, was good."

The major said, "It was first-class information, made it pretty straightforward.'

The colonel said, "A good example of what can be achieved when we all pull together."

The Assistant Chief Constable said, "Invaluable source, your Song Bird, would there were more like him, but I'd say we got away with it by the skin of our teeth. Parading their weapon was critical. But I'm getting it on the grapevine that one of the team got clean away."

The major said softly: "A householder was right behind the target. It was very responsible fire control…"

Rennie spluttered on his pipe.

Hobbes smiled. "Yes, Howard."

The smoke clouded Howard Rennie. He let them wait. He coughed from the depth of his throat. "If the safety of Song Bird, whose identity Mr Hobbes is unwilling to share, has been preserved then the shooting was justified. If the risk to Song Bird has been increased, then the operation was a disaster. Time, gentlemen, will tell us whether self-satisfaction is in order."

Hobbes bit at his lip. "Thank you, Howard, I'll minute that."

He put the milk bottle down onto Mrs Byrne's kitchen table. The petrol was amber in the clear bottle. He put the box of matches beside the bottle.

The O.C. said, "It's a nice kitchen, missus."

She told him what she had seen.

She talked because of the threat to her kitchen of scattered petrol and a thrown match. And she talked to the O.C. because her nephew's wife's brother was on remand in the Crumlin Road gaol, and because her neighbour's cousin had been under psychiatric treatment for two years in Belfast after four days in the Castlereagh holding centre. And she talked because she had seen three young men cut down by the soldiers, no warning shout, no chance to surrender, not even a priest allowed near them for an hour. She talked.

"You're sure on that, missus…?"

"Jesus was looking for him. He went by Mrs Hylton's door, half fell on her fence, then by Mrs Smyth's door, then he went down the side of Mrs Smyth's, I don't know how they missed him, God is my witness, one of them was not ten feet from him. I thought he was dead, all fast I was praying for him. Bright coat he had but it was like they didn't see him. Definite, he had Jesus watching for him, and he'd a bad leg and he didn't run that quick. It was just butchery, what was done to the rest of them…"

There was a washing basket, filled, beside her kitchen door. Mrs Byrne rummaged in the bottom of it, and there was her grin that was a little bit of mischief, and she handed the O.C. the short-barrelled pistol that had been thrown at her.

"And they didn't see that either, the soldiers…"

He apologised to her, and meant it, and he took away with him his matches and the milk bottle that was filled with petrol.

The O.C. went back to his home, to write letters for hand delivery, to send a message for a meeting.

There was the stinging blow of the fist against Mossie's cheek.

The O.C. snarled in his face, "There's three men dead."

"You've no call to be accusing me." Tears welling in his eyes.

"They let you run."

"Who told you?"

"I was told."

"Who?"

"The woman, she sees it all." "You's taking her word, not my word?"

"She says they let you run."

"Is you blaming me for running?"

"Why'd they let you run?"

"To prove myself, what do I have to do? Have to get myself feckin' stiffed?" Mossie yelled back at him.

"She says…"

"Been sneaking round her, have you? Shame, that's what you should have."

"What she says was.."

"And you wouldn't feckin' know what happened, 'cause you weren't there, 'cause you're never there, too feckin' important to be…"

The O.C. had him by the throat. The O.C. was smaller than Mossie and reaching up to snatch at the flesh under his chin.

The barb sunk home. The hatred, and the hesitancy. "O.C. s is never operational, every bastard knows that."