Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

She walked in the rain up the lane spattered with tractor mud to the house of the man who had twice in the last three months called at her home for Patsy.

The Quartermaster took her to the back of his garage.

"It's not my business, Mrs Riordan, and you're making trouble for yourself by coming here. It's the business of the Organisation, and I don't know anything about that. You'd best be asking them, Mrs Riordan, but don't be asking me where you'd find them. Not a clue.

Mrs Riordan, I wouldn't have the first idea. I'll tell you this though, if your boy's clean then he'll come to no harm."

The wind blew her coat hard around her as she came to the farmhouse far up the mountain slope.

Attracta Donnelly was in her barns and shovelling manure off the concrete and her brat was sweeping what she missed.

‘’You’ve an impertinence, Mrs Riordan, coming to me. What am i supposed to do? If your son's a tout, good riddance. Touts have destroyed fine men from here. There'll be no snivelling for the death of a tout in this house You want to complain, well don't complain to me.

Get yourself down to Dungannon barracks and make a complaint to the Chief Inspector there, the 'Branch bastard, complain to him about the entrapment of good young boys to spy against their own community. I don't know what you think I could do, and I don't know where you'd the idea that I was someone to speak to. The people I mix with, Mrs Riordan, are patriots, they'd sooner die than inform on their own. Good evening to you…"

She sat in her wet shoes in the priest's office.

He had made her tea and she held the cup in both hands to control her shaking, and the cake he had brought her went untouched.

"I talk very frankly to you, Mrs Riordan. I speak in the knowledge that you will hold what I say in confidence. I am a person of convenience here. I baptise the children, I marry the adults, I bury the dead. That is what is required of me, to be a functionary. I venture to say that I have no influence in those areas of wickedness that afflict our society. I can stand in my pulpit and I can demand, or I can appeal, for your Patsy to be released. I would not be heeded. I would be ignored. It hurts me to say it to you, but I am as helpless as you are. The men who hold your Patsy would have no fear of God's wrath. They surround themselves with armour that is ignorance and hatred. And, Mrs Riordan, I have to tell you what you know already, that this community holds powerful feelings against those persuaded by the police to inform against the men of violence. I can only pray, I can only urge you to pray…"

She did not know what else she could do. Mrs Riordan walked home.

She was not to know of the friend of the priest, who had grown up with him in a village in Antrim and who now worked high in the civil service administration at Stormont Castle, and who had the ear of the Assistant Under-Secretary, the Security Co-ordinator. She could not know that the priest would telephone his friend.

She could only go home to make her man's tea, to wait, and to pray.

The civil servant, the school friend of the priest, stood beside the Assistant Under Secretary, the Security Co-ordinator. He heard the blustering anger as the Englishman shouted at the phone link to the Chief Constable

"… There is a rule of law in this province, I don’t care what Five says. I don't give a brass farthing for the realpolitik of Mr Hobbes, or how he justifies his his sordid, dishonourable operations. I hold you accountable for the finding and rescue of that boy…"

"Patsy, I'm your friend

The voice in his ear.

"… I want to help you, Patsy

Hunger was in him, and tiredness, and, overwhelming all, fear.

"… Listen to what I'm saying, Patsy

There was the smell of cooking from downstairs.

"… You have half an hour, Patsy. You've that time to think on it.

In half an hour I'll give you paper and a pen and you will write out all your contacts and all the money they've given you, and all the operations that you've told them about. If you write everything down then we will take you to a press conference and you will read out the statement, and then you will be free to go…"

The breath beside his ear was of stale tobacco.

"… If you keep on with your lies, after half an hour, then you'll be given over to other men. We haven't treated you badly, Patsy, fair's fair, you'd see that. It'll be different if you get handed over to other men. They're animals, Patsy. There'd be cigarettes on you, there'd be electricity. I wouldn't want to reckon what they'd do to you, Patsy.

You've a half an hour to think on it…"

"Wait,"

‘’You going to talk? That's being sensible."

"Ask Mossie…?’’

‘’Ask Mossie what?’’

‘’Mossie ‘ll tell you I worked to Mossie. l's no tout, Mossie’ll know I’s no tout. Go to Mossie, ask Mossie, Mossie’ll speak for me…Mossie’s a grand man, he'll tell you I's no tout..’

The voice was murmured close to him. ‘’It was Mossie that named you.’’

A soft footfall slithering away on the carpet. He was left sitting on the chair and he thought his bladder would burst and his bowels would break.

There were a few times when he was told everything, and a few times when he was told nothing. Most often Colonel Johnny was given a partial truth.

He played host in his office to the Chief Superintendent from Division, and to Howard Rennie from Belfast and the Branch. He worked most days hand in glove with the Chief Superintendent from Division, but he had met Rennie only on a previous tour when he had served in the Intelligence section at H.Q. Northern Ireland. He thought that the Chief Superintendent from Division was present for form's sake. It was Rennie that he listened to. He remembered Rennie as a cheerful and no-nonsense man, and he was taken aback by the coldness of the Special Branch officer.

"… Against our better judgment, certain orders were given in the last forty-eight hours – the background is unimportant now – a boy called Riordan was arrested, questioned, released. I now realise that was an error of professional judgment, and I take no pride in my change of heart. Your intelligence and ours indicates a hunt on the mountain for an informer. Your most recent intelligence and ours indicates that the Riordan boy has been abducted by a P.I.R.A. security unit. He most certainly faces torture, and he most probably faces death. There is no way that Riordan is an informer, he is at worst a low-level courier. I now acknowledge that what we did was wrong, tactically and morally. I want that boy found before he is tortured. In Belfast a wasp's nest has been stirred up, and results are demanded. I need that mountain searched clean and I want that boy found alive."

He gave orders for the movements of his duty company and his stand-by company. In the outer office his adjutant was calling up R.A.F.

Aldergrove for helicopter support… Faint hearts abroad, he thought.. . Her hand would be there, he had no doubt of that, Cathy's hand.

Touts, informers, traitors, out on the mountain, that was Cathy's territory. Colonel Johnny was weak with words, but good at listening and evaluating. It was what an upbringing on the Scottish moorlands had given him, that words of justification were usually the cover for the half-truth. There were few words said on those high heathered hills that were of value. "Methinks he doth protest too much." The day a policeman, a Branch man, talked of morality, well… He thought it was pique, he thought Howard Rennie might have been crossed.

Cathy was out on the mountain. Her radio signal, her coded call sign announcing her presence had been logged in Communications.

"Five minutes, Patsy… A confession, signed. A press conference and you go free… Or… you get handed to the other men. Which is it to be? There's five minutes of a half hour left, Patsy…"