Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

"How long did they have him?"

"You tell me, Jon Jo, you've been listening to the talk."

"What did they do to him?"

The voice so threatening, so quiet. He strained to hear. "How the feck do I know? I wasn't there."

"What do you think they did to him?"

"Roughed him a bit…"

"That what you think they do to touts, Mossie? Gone soft in security, have they? Just roughed him?"

The voice circled him. The voice to the left of him and then behind him and then to the right of him. He no longer turned to face it. He stood his ground. His finger was on the bleeper-box button. More shit scared than he had ever been. He didn't know whether they were out there, whether they were close, or whether they were drinking feckin' coffee in feckin' Belfast. He had only her word.

"I'd have said they went heavy on him, Mossie."

"Why don't you ask them as was there?"

"If they'd gone heavy on him, Mossie, what'd he have done?"

"I don't know, Jon Jo, and…"

"You don't know much, Mossie. What would you have done?"

"I'm not a tout, I can't say…"

"Let's say they're hurting you, Mossie. The pain's bad and they're telling you that's for starters. The pain's going to be worse, it's only the beginning. Then they tell you that if you cough it, if you tell them what you know, then, perhaps, it's going to be settled. That's what they do, Mossie. They give it you hard and they give it you soft, but the harder gets worse till you're crying louder for the soft. What I'm saying, when the hurting's bad they offer you a way out. You agree with me, you'd want to take the way out?"

"It's not for me to say."

Close to him, right behind him. Mossie half jumping. The fist against his shoulder, then the barrel of the weapon cold against his skin.

"He'd talk, Mossie, don't you reckon so? He'd be messing his pants and he'd be talking. Isn't that what you'd be doing, Mossie?"

"I don't…"

"But he didn't. There was no confession from Patsy Riordan."

The muzzle of the gun was off his neck. The fist was away from his shoulder. His stomach was falling, his knees were quivering. He should never have come, and he didn't know whether she, the bitch, was close.

"Perhaps he didn't confess because he'd nothing to confess to. You're a clever man, Mossie, that make sense to you? What you looking for, Mossie? I'm here, I'm in front of you. I'm not behind you… Are you looking for your friends, Mossie?"

"That's just daft talk."

"Have you got some problem, Mossie?"

"Damn right. You's my problem. All your smart talk is my problem. .. I've had this shit. I don't need you telling me about the Riordan boy.

I told the man from security. I was clean, clear."

The soft voice in darkness. "It's what I heard."

"Well, hear this, too, Jon Jo. We've been fighting over here, perhaps you didn't read our papers when you were in England. We have a hard war here. We've got more on our plates than stupid feckin' tossers of English policemen. We've got the real war here, not the war against women and kids…"

"I heard. I heard you were doing well… And I heard there was funerals."

"Wars go hard. Here we fight, we don't hide."

"That's what I don't believe about you, Mossie. I think you hide a lot.

If I roughed you a bit, Mossie, if I slapped you round a bit, would you slip some of what you hide?"

He was gone. He knew he was gone.

He waited for the blow, the punch, the gun barrel. It was in his mind, when the bitch had come to the police cell and torn up the charge sheet, and he waited for the fist. He thought of the meetings with her, the lay-bys and the car parks and the quarry off the Armagh road, and he waited for the boot. He had run from the soldiers, and the Devitt boy and Jacko and Malachy had been on the pavement and the gutter behind him, and the red anorak he had worn had streamed in the wind.

He waited. He didn't know whether Jon Jo circled him, whether he was behind him or in front of him.

"What's touts for, Mossie?"

He sobbed the words. "For killing, touts is for killing."

Behind him, savage cold. "Take your hands out of your pockets, Mossie…"

His finger drifted on the button. There was no strength in him. He could feel the button. He had neither the strength nor the trust to press the button.

"… Take your hands out of your pockets, Mossie, and put them on the top of your head…"

Mossie did as he was told. He always did.

"… Kneel down, Mossie…"

He knelt and the wet was on his knees, and the tears were on his face, and the box cut into his groin, and the gun's muzzle was against the nape of his neck.

"How long have you been touting, Mossie?"

He could see, but he could not hear. Bren could see through the image intensifier on the Heckler and Koch. He was too far back to hear. He had seen Jon Jo Donnelly circling Song Bird, now he could see Song Bird kneeling and the grey-green form of the target above him. The cross-hairs were on the target. The voices were a murmur, mixed with the wind and the rain's fall and the stream's clatter, too indistinct for him to him to hear. It was for Cathy to do it… For Christ's sake, woman, do it… Time spiralling, the opportunity spilling down the drain. He didn't know why she didn't shoot. He lay on his stomach.

The trees were around him. The kneeling figure and the standing figure, sharp in the lens at fifty paces in the clearing, close to the road and the bridge.

How much bloody longer did she want?

Her voice.

The hissed urgency.

‘’I’m blocked, bastard trees, can't aim, I've only 20 per cent target…’’

He had is finger inside the trigger guard. His thumb eased the safety. He had the butt against his shoulder. He had the scope against his eye. So clear in front of him. He could see the face of the target… His finger rested on the trigger. Where were the boys? When it was their work, where were they? "Do it…"

Jon Jo heard what he said.

Mossie said, through the tears, "It's what they made me. They made me a tout…"

He had the weapon's barrel hard against Mossie Nugent's neck. The questions, they'd been easy. The answer came so feckin' hard.

"… You don't know what it's like when they've trapped you. You wouldn't know, Jon Jo. You's trapped, and they's the claws in you.

You's can never back away."

The answer came so hard to him. The answer was harder than anything that he had known. Mossie Nugent, snivelling, blubbering bastard, had been calling at his Attracta's. He was gone now anyhow, but the answers made it right. The answers came from a man grovelling, and he was crying for mercy.

"It's your own friends. What meant anything to you? Did you take their money, Mossie…?"

"Don't kill me… I'll go and never come back."

The cold came again to Jon Jo. "Would you tout on me?"

"I's trapped, don't you see?"

"You'd tout on me?"

"Oh, Jesus. It was you special that they wanted."

He heard the plea in the voice. It was the cry for forgiveness. He had not heard a cry from two schoolgirls, nor from a schoolboy buying a ticket at a railway station.

The pistol shook in the grip of his hands. He understood. Stay- ing too long. Shouldn't have come, shouldn't have stayed. Should have been in the caves by now. Should have been gone.

"I'll not hurt you, Mossie. I'll…"

He would shoot and he would run. The barrel was at the bone of the neck…

Jon Jo felt himself lifted. He was careering back. The gale punch had whipped him. He tried to hold his feet, and fell, and he tried to stand again and he slipped. No sound around him, and no movement. Tried to crawl and had no strength. And the pain had come, exploding in him.

Bren lay on his stomach. The slammed weight of the recoil had hit his shoulder. The blast of the noise had killed his ears. He followed the target through the haze of the image intensifier. His target stood again, fell again, and crawled. Bren could not move. She was at his ear.