Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

"You're not pushing them too hard?"

"They know they'll get a good kick from me if they don't manage the business, Ernest. She's in great form, as you'd expect. She's satisfied with Brennard, says he's standing up well. Actually, that's like getting an Oscar from her…"

"There is the back-up."

"It's our show, Ernest, and if we can manage it on our own then that is how it will be, that's what I've told her. Quite frankly, I hope we piss all over those policemen."

"Safety must come first."

He put the telephone down. Bill was doing the duty watch, and had been late in with all the familiar excuses about roadworks on the Hammersmith flyover… If it went wrong, if it wasn't safety first and it failed, then, by God, oh yes, Hobbes was for the jump, oh yes. .. and for himself, if it went wrong, the Cornish cottage, and the endless damp, and oblivion.

"He's back, Mossie, and I'm chancing my neck telling you."

"Why's that?"

"He's like a mad bull, all strung up. He's not the Jon Jo I knew."

"No reason for me to be feared of him."

"He's talking about touts, he's asking about Patsy Riordan."

"That was settled."

"He's asking whether Patsy Riordan was the real thing."

"What's that to me?"

"He's on the mountain, it's like it's festering in him, that there's a tout.

He won't move till he's satisfied."

"Why's you telling me?"

"This is friend's talk, Mossie. Get yourself the hell out of here if there's things you can't answer. Watch yourself, God knows where he'll come from, but don't be there if you can't take the questions."

"I can answer anything," Mossie said.

He walked back to his car. The O.C. wound his window up and powered away. Nugent climbed back into his car. The Reilly girl was on her Da's tractor behind him, filling the road with the trailer. He waved at her. Old Reilly had always wanted boys and he'd to make do with girls, and they all of them drove the tractor like it was a feckin'

Ferrari. She squeezed the tractor and the trailer away past him. The O.C. had been waiting for him. They all knew when he went to work, what time, and they all knew the route he took. The place in the road was a sharp dip and old Reilly never could bother himself with the hedge trimmer and the thorn and holly grew high on each side. The O.C. had chosen the place to intercept him where he would not be seen, not by a watcher on the mountain. He sat in his car. He felt the fear gathering round him. Tomorrow was the monthly pay day. Five hundred pounds to a Building Society account held in the name of Mossie Nugent.

But if the bitch didn't help him to run then there was nowhere for him to run to.

He drove to the Housing Executive renovation on the west side of Dungannon. The fear in him was a screw, and tightening.

Hobbes' stage.

The Task Co-ordinating Group listened.

He felt the hostility from around the table and relished it.

"He's on the mountain, gentlemen, he's where I said he'd be. It's only patience that's required now. Sooner, hopefully not later, he will call for my Song Bird, and that will lead my operatives forward, with the support of back-up… I don't want any fancy ideas about a military or a police operation onto Altmore. You'd need a flight of helicopters and two brigades of infantry to search that place, and you'd have to step on top of him to find him. We're doing it the right way, gentlemen.

Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, we'll have him. Are there any questions…?"

Rennie said, "He's good, is Jon Jo. You blunder in and corner him and he'll fight like hell. I hope, Mr Hobbes, you've told that to your amateurs. No, I don't have any questions because I have a funeral to be getting to…" * She led him down the stairs of the Five area. He’d slept after his shower, didn't know whether she'd slept. He thought she looked great, whether she'd slept or not. There was the brightness back in her cheeks and the bruise on her eye was going last and there was the lush colour in her hair. He thought she looked great and that it didn't matter, not to him.

They went out through the door. The cold hit them. It was his reflex, to take her arm and steer her round the rainwater puddle. It was what any young man did for any young woman. She looked at him. It was days since he had seen it, the shyness trace.

"You alright, Bren?"

"I'm fine."

"Did you sleep a bit?"

"Sure, seemed like for ever."

Cathy said, "You shouldn't take it hard, Bren…"

"Skin of a rhino, Miss Parker."

"It's just that…"

"It's not worth talking about."

"Are you understanding?"

"Starting to."

"It never works…"

Bren unlocked the car and held the door open for Cathy. "Manual of Office Romance, Security Service Eyes Only (Attention of Field Staff), Page 29, Paragraph 8, Section 3, Sub-Section C: Don't. Full point. Got you, Miss Parker, loud and clear."

She bent down into the car. "It gets in the way," she said.

He leaned over. He kissed her on the cheek. "Can we talk about something else…?"

It was a hotel up the road and beyond the roundabout where Detective Sergeant Joseph Browne had been shot to death. Jimmy had booked the room. The back-up was to be Rennie's men. He thought there would be a team in the car park… He reckoned there would be a second team in the lobby of the hotel, watching the front doors and the corridors off to the bedrooms… He drove into the car park of the hotel. The room was booked, the courier had been sent down to do the check-in and take the key and the key had been given to Bren. He took Cathy's arm again and hurried her across the car park.

They were the couple, good-looking boy and fine-looking woman, hurrying to a hotel bedroom with a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.

The wrist of the O.C. throbbed under the plaster cast.

For four hours he had waited in his car outside the terrace of homes that the Housing Executive were renovating.

On the stroke of one, on St Anne's in Church Street, when the men on the site would have been breaking for their sandwiches and flasks, he had seen Mossie Nugent go to his Cortina, peel off his overalls, and drive away.

He didn't know what he looked for.

He followed, as he had followed him to work.

Lunchtime, and the hotel's parking area was well filled, cars and delivery vans, but he found a space from which he could see Mossie's car.

There were so many explanations. Could have been checking for work. Could have been booking for family lunch. Could have been…

He settled in his car to watch the main doors that had swung shut on Mossie Nugent's back.

She played the bitch. She had the curtains drawn behind her and the young fellow with her was standing across the room's door. He was sat on the bed. She played the bitch because she was above him, looking down on him, and all the time there was the guy behind… He was only the tout, only the paid man…

"You have the bleeper, we can locate the bleeper. Three signals is for when you are on the move, and we can track that. Two signals is when you meet him, have him right there beside you, and we move forward then. It has to be your decision as to when you think it is right for us to close, and that's one longer signal. It may be us that closes or it may be the back-up, depends on the circumstances. When we close, if you see us, you don't give any sign of recognition."

He was scared and she gave him nothing to sustain him. Staccato instructions.

He spoke soft, below the music of the radio that had been tuned in when he went into the hotel bedroom.

"He's a powerful man. He can be the devil."

"You'll be fine, Mossie, and I'll be watching for you. Wear your red jacket."

"If I don't get home, if I'm called from work," head down, sheepish,

"it's at home…"