Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

It was what he had wanted to do.

Bloody-minded, opinionated, stubborn, he knew himself to be all of those when he had told his family that he was accepted into the R.U.C., and his father had left the room, and his mother had cried, and his brothers had thrown their abuse at him.

He had made a frightened misery of their lives, and that he had not intended.

He slowed the car. It was a feck-awful place to be hanging about.

They were at the crossroads, where the lanes running between the high hedges met. The relief sighed in D.C. McDonald's teeth. The youth had appeared, had walked round the corner, ambling without a care, his work tools in the bag on his shoulder. He had been told the area around the crossroads was stiff with army; if they were there he couldn't see them. He reversed hard into a side lane, and then as the youth came past him he pulled out again facing the way that he had come.

"Patsy Riordan?"

"Who wants to know?"

D.C. McDonald flashed his card and there was the barrel ol the Sterling to reinforce it.

"It's R.U.C."

The fear glowing.

D.S. Browne saw it.

"So?"

"So get in," McDonald growled.

Joseph Mullins was a detective sergeant and on the force to show there was no discrimination against Catholics in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

"No problem, lad, just get in," he said quietly.

He heard the door close behind him. He pulled away.

He glanced up at his mirror… Down the lane, behind them, a car was stopped.

It was the story that the small boy loved best, the story that had no ending. .. All the time they were moving more troops onto the mountain to hunt Shane Bearnagh. There were men brought from Charlemont with their families to the Altmore barracks, worse even than the dragoons, they were called the 34th Foot. There was no good Irishman that was safe from the English soldiers and the gallowglasses, those were the paid men that came with them. If a man helped Shane, fed him, gave shelter to his wife and his little one, then the roof was burned over that man's head, and his crops were ploughed in, and his cattle were taken.

But for all the suffering there was no resentment, not amongst the decent folk, for what Shane stood for. He embodied the freedom that his people yearned for. The poor people stayed loyal to Shane Bearnagh.

"More troops came, more cavalry. They did everything they could to terrorise the people into telling them where they could find the patriot.

Every day that passed made life more dangerous for Shane. Of course, he could have left. There were many Catholics who had gone abroad into exile and safety, but that was not the way of Shane Bearnagh.

"One day Shane was out walking with his wife, as pretty and fair as any woman on the mountain, and his boy who was a fine wee fellow, and the soldiers on their horses saw them. He told his wife and his son to hide and he ran off across open ground so that the soldiers would follow him. He saved his wife and his son and drew away the dragoons. In his ears he could hear the thunder of their horses' hooves and he could hear them yelling their excitement as if he were a fox they chased. He led them on, across moorland, through forests and all the time they were gaining on him. When they were close to him, when the breath was panting in his lungs, when the leading soldiers were little more than a sabre's cut from him, Shane reached a gorge. A hundred feet below him the mountain river tumbled on sharp rocks.

The sides of the gorge were too steep for him to scramble down. Shane jumped. Jesus was with him, and the Mother of Mary. He jumped the gorge, and the gorge was too wide for the horses of the dragoons to follow, but Shane Bearnagh had jumped it. He was gone into the trees leaving them to curse their anger. If you know where to look, if you go to the gorge, there is said to be the place where you can see, set in a stone, the footprint of Shane Bearnagh's boot, where he leaped from to clear the gorge…"

"Did they ever catch him, Ma?"

It was the story without a finish.

"It's time you was asleep, Kevin."

Ronnie's voice was low, as if the suspicion of being overheard was always with him, even in the heart of a Special Branch section in the core of Lisnasharragh barracks. Bren sat against the back wall, listened. Cathy Parker was in front of Rennie's desk, straight backed on a hard chair, sometimes giving him her attention and sometimes staring vaguely out of the one window. Rennie was talking softly but urgently.

Palsy Riordan had been taken into police custody. First to Dungannon police barracks and then to an interview room at the regional holding centre in Gough barracks, Armagh. He would be held overnight, and interrogated.

Attached by a tangle of wires to Rennie’s desk telephone was a small tape recorder. Next to the desk was a black and white television set and a radio, both on a wheeled table beside which was a computer console. There were two filing cabinets, each with a padlocked bar running top to bottom that prevented their being opened.

The following morning he would be taken back to Dungannon, and released.

"That’s it…" Rennie reached into a desk drawer for his pipe.

" Thank you.'

"coffee?"

"No, thanks."

"Perhaps your colleague would like coffee?"

"He wouldn't, no."

The pipe was filled, lit. "Heh, come off your high horse, Cathy."

"We don't want coffee, thank you."

Rennie leaned further forward, waving away the pipe smoke. No longer the policeman of Special Branch, no longer trying to play the cold man who didn't know emotion. Trying now to play the friend.

"Cathy, you know what you're at? You know what you're into… ?"

"I don't need telling."

"You know what'll happen?"

"I'm not a fool."

Sharp, staccato. "Heh, Cathy, it's a big boys' game out there."

"Don't patronise me."

"That's speeches, Cathy, that's not you."

There was the flush on her face, Bren saw it. She seemed so small to him, and he could see that her eyes blazed back at the big detective, and her chin jutted defiance at him.

More matches, more tobacco smoke.

"I've done what I was asked."

"And I'm grateful."

"I'm not asking for bloody thanks. I want paying in kind."

"What's that mean?"

"I want Song Bird."

She snorted. "Go jump…"

Rennie slammed his fist on the desk and said so softly Bren hardly heard him, "I want Song Bird's name and I want partial control."

She shoved her notepad into her handbag. The bag was formidable, heavy leather, she handled it like a weapon. She pushed herself up out of the chair.

"No way, no bloody way."

"You owe it me…"

Bren watched.

She turned to him, "Come on."

Rennie hissed, "You stay where you bloody are. Parker, you are the biggest pain up my arse. Don't play the arrogant English Miss with me

…"

She smiled. Bren saw the slow spread of the grin across her face, like she loved the hard-edged policeman. "And don't you go getting yourself a coronary, Howard." ‘"I want him."

"Well, get it into that thick Ulster skull that you shan't have him."

"I'll go to Hobbes…"

"Wasting your time."

"I'll cut you off."

Her laugh was a tinkle. "Then I'll do without you."

Rennie was up out of his chair. He was pacing the room, his clenched right fist pounding the palm of his left hand for emphasis. "You can't go on as if you're the only person fighting this war… You have to share the pressure… Go on like this, Cathy, playing the bloody queen and all of us dancing for you, and you won't have a friend left, not a bloody squaddie and not a copper, you'll be alone. .. we're not all dirt, Cathy, we're not every one of us idiots. And you don't have the God-given right to walk into our backyard and piss all over us. If you're alone, Cathy, then you're finished…"