Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

He was numbed by the anger he felt.

At the roadblock 200 yards short of the bungalow Bren showed his I.D. and was waved through. He gazed into the camouflage- creamed faces of the soldiers and the smooth-shaven faces of the policemen as if from them he might read an explanation for Cathy’s summons, which had told him nothing, and the blanked- off expressions gave him no clue. He drove on until he was just short of the bungalow's garden and there he was waved down and signalled to park against the hedgerow.

He climbed out. He could feel the ache where his shoulder was bruised from the recoil of the automatic rifle.

In front of the bungalow was the old Cortina estate. It was slewed across the road in front of the low iron gates and the driver's door was wide open. The dust sheet was where it always was, hiding the tools of Mossie's trade. He looked into the car, through the open front door, and he saw the keys in the ignition and the frosted dew on the seat. He understood. Bren could make the picture in his mind. The car pulling up at the gate, engine on, leaving the door open as he went to pull back the gates. Coming back from the pints in Dungannon that he had been told to take, coming back after the destruction of Jon Jo Donnelly, and the men waiting for him and seizing him

A policeman stepped aside.

Cathy was standing in the porch He felt the filth on his body. She would have gone back to her home, after it was over, and she would have showered and slept, and. she was in clean jeans and he could see the collar of a pretty blouse over her sweater and she had a leather jacket to her hips that he had not seen before, and her hair was mostly hidden by a scarf. Her car wasn't in the lane and he assumed that she had come from the barracks by helicopter. Her calm refuelled his anger.

"Roads slippy, were they.-'"

Did he care how the roads were'

So matter of fact, and then in the same low, even voice, she said:

"When Mossie got home, they were waiting for him. They must have rumbled him already, wouldn’t have been enough time to have mourned it in response to what happened last night."

"Is Siobhan alright?"

"… T'here's footsteps all round in the mud on the verge and there's two sets of tyre marks from when they were parked up and waiting…"

"How's Siobhan?"

Cathy looked into his face. He couldn't read her. She said nothing.

She led him through the hall and towards the kitchen. He stepped over children's toys, a plastic machine gun and a half- clothed doll. He went by a framed photograph of John Paul the Second. His shoulder brushed a line of coats hanging from hooks and there was a red anorak that was paint-stained and gone at the elbow. It was turning in his mind, what he would say to Siobhan, how he would face her, whether he would abide by the creed of the handler that there should be no emotional attachment to players… He went into the kitchen after Cathy.

They were round the table, the children and their grandmother.

The children were in their night clothes and their grandmother was dressed. The washing-up from last night's supper had not been done.

Cathy said, "Mrs Nugent, this is a colleague of mine. Would you tell him, please, about Siobhan."

He felt the cold settle on him, run in his body.

The children's grandmother looked up from the table. She lit a cigarette. The ashtray was half-filled in front of her. The smoke wafted into the face of the baby child that sat on her lap. "God's truth, I had her as a loveless woman who made a misery of him. I'm not proud of it, but I'd no time for her, but she fought for him… She'd been all jumpy, all restless. She said there had been shooting on the mountain. She'd been to the Donnelly woman's house. The Donnelly woman's brat had been here, blethering some gibberish about cameras and journeymen tailors and touts. Siobhan had taken him home, and she stayed up to talk with the Donnelly woman and then there was shooting high on Altmore.

She'd been waiting for Mossie to be home, as if she knew there was danger. She was in the kitchen when we saw Mossie's car lights. She'd gone to the front door. What I saw was first from the kitchen. She had the door open. I could see past her. There was men around my Mossie.

He was out of the car and they was trying to carry him off. I never liked her, and I've shame for it. She shouted, "You take him and you take me

…" That's what she shouted first. They had a gun turned at her and she went off down the path. I saw her kick the leg of the man with the gun.

I saw my Mossie's face. I've never seen such fear in my son. She kicked that one man with the gun and she tried to hit another of them, and Mossie was struggling like it was for his life. She shouted at them,

"You're not having him…" She fought for my Mossie. She kicked them and punched them all the time until they'd beaten the fight from her.

Mossie, there was a moment he had a hand free of them, he tried to push her away… They took the both of them…"

Cathy's hand dropped, only for a moment, onto the shoulder ol the grandmother of the children. "Thank you, Mrs Nugent," she said.

Bren tried to capture, indelibly, the remnant of this family. He nodded his thanks to the old lady, he gazed, through tears welling in his eyes, at the three silent children, staring hollow-eyed at him. He blundered out into the hall. His hands found the steep rail of the steps to the loft. He held it for support. The roar of a helicopter gathered over the house.

He went to the front doorway. There were ropes and a chain snaking, swinging, down from the helicopter and the policemen and soldiers were running the chain and the ropes under the chassis of the old Cortina estate. They wanted the evidence out quickly. They wanted to be gone, the soldiers and the policemen. The slopes of Altmore mountain were that sort of place. The one car had been allowed forward. Bren watched. It was parked close to where the uncut hedge bent under the downdraft of the rotors. He saw the priest, a big man and walking well, and never bothering to look up at the hovering helicopter, never sparing a glance at the men with the ropes and the chain. The priest came up the front path and to the door. He stood in front of bren and challenged him to move aside. There was contempt for him in the priest's eyes, and blame. He stepped aside. He wondered what the priest would say to the mother of a tout and to the children of a tout.

Mossie's car swayed beneath the helicopter. The helicopter banked away.

Below it, the opened door of the Cortina estate, Mossie's door, flapped.

Cathy shouted, "There's two bodies down on the border. They're not identified yet, but it's a man's and a woman's."

He wanted to be away from her.

Bren walked halfway down the front path. There were weeds in the flower beds and the winter debris on the grass. He turned, "Cathy.. ."

She came to him, she stood in front of him. She looked into his eyes.

The scarf on her head had slipped from the beauty of the red gold of her hair.

Bren said, "We should never have let him…"

"It was his best chance."

"I suppose you'd say that getting Donnelly made it worthwhile."

"Nothing makes losing Song Bird worthwhile.’’

"I'm going home."

It had grown in him through the night hours, alone in his flat. He had steeled himself to the dicision. Perhaps he hoped that she might fight him…

Cathy shrugged, "I'm sorry, I mean that…You had what it takes."

"I had nothing, and I am going because there is nothing for me to to contribute. You don't think you'll be staying…?’’

"I'm not going anywhere."

He flared. "Switch on, Cathy, I'm here because a tout was lost and a lost tout talks. Our guy compromised. I was sent as the the fast solution stop-gap. Mossie’s lost, Mossie'll have talked or they wouldn't have killed him They'll have bled him dry before they murdered him. Don’t you understand it, compromised..?’’