Reginald Hill - Arms and the Women

They had reached the pub.

The landlord greeted them with the wariness all landlords exhibit on spotting the fuzz on the premises, but soon relaxed when he understood the nature of their enquiries. Inured by long experience to disappointment or at best ambiguity, Pascoe was almost taken aback when Billy Soames said instantly, ‘Yeah. Sure. I remember them.’

‘Them?’

‘That’s right. I saw them arrive, two of them got out of the car, the little dark one set off down the road and the other one came in and ordered a pint of Guinness and a bag of crisps. First customer of the day. He sat there reading his paper for maybe three-quarters of an hour, then his mate looked through the door and sort of beckoned like he was in a hurry. And the pop-eyed one got up straightaway and went out.’

‘Pop-eyed? What do you mean?’

‘He had these sort of bulging eyes. Light-coloured hair going a bit thin. About forty. Big scar, newish-looking, along the left side of his head. Pasty complexion, didn’t look like he spent much time in the sun.’

‘And the car? Did you spot the make, Billy?’

‘Merc sports. White.’

‘Oh. Not a blue Golf,’ said Pascoe stupidly.

The landlord gave Pascoe a long-suffering look and said judiciously, ‘Well, it wasn’t blue, it was white, and it wasn’t a Golf, it was a Merc, so I’d have to say no, Peter, unless I’m deceived, it wasn’t a blue Golf. Sorry to be such a disappointment.’

‘You’ve done great,’ Pascoe assured him.

Wield said, ‘Where was he sitting?’

‘Over there. By the window.’

Wield wandered across and picked up a newspaper from the windowsill.

‘Was this the paper he was reading?’

‘Probably.’

Carefully Wield fitted the paper into an evidence bag.

‘Which way did the car go?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Out onto the bypass,’ said the landlord. ‘All this any help to you?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Pascoe, knowing the value of friendly eyes and ears in public houses. ‘Tremendous. Billy, you are a prince among publicans.’

‘I’ll remember that next time I’m being hassled about after-hours drinking.’

‘Anything else you can tell us about the man you served?’

‘Popeye? Not really. Didn’t have much of a crack, got a delivery just after I served him. Except the way he spoke, that is.’

‘And how was that?’

‘Well, drinking the Guinness it didn’t surprise me. He was Irish.’

I’m Popeye the pop-up man…

So called because he’s harder to keep down than Bounce-back Bill Clinton.

Started way back on Bloody Sunday when eleven-year-old schoolboy Patrick Ducannon, uninvolved son of uninvolved parents got shot by the paras.

Registered d.o.a. at Belfast Infirmary, but sat up and asked for his mammy when the priest dropped some hot candle wax on him. (Well, that’s the crack, and why not? No reason the devil and Gaw Sempernel should have all the good stories.)

After that, of course he was involved.

And very unlucky or very lucky depending on how close to him you were standing.

Age twenty: dragged out of an exploded bomb factory in Derry covered with burnt flesh and bleeding offal, most of which turned out to belong to his two fellow ham-fisted bombardiers who in death proved so inseparable they had to be buried in the same grave.

Age twenty-four: shot as he drove a stolen car through a checkpoint. Car crashed through a wall and rolled down a railway embankment. Three passengers killed instantaneously. Popeye crawled out of the wreckage and ran down a tunnel from which he emerged a few moments later pursued by a train. Three days in hospital, three years in jail.

Age twenty-nine: shot, stabbed and beaten by a unit of the UVF as he lay in his bed with his girlfriend. She died four days later. He went to her funeral.

Age thirty-three: retired from active service with the IRA, perhaps because of his reputation for out-living everyone he worked closely with. Became a quartermaster, specializing in the acquisition of cutting-edge weaponry which was put in deep storage against the long promised day of total insurrection.

Kept out of trouble for a while till one winter’s night in Liverpool docks he turned up in the cab of a truck carrying a consignment of arms which we knew had been landed somewhere on the east coast during the previous forty-eight hours.

Straightforward search-and-detain operation went haywire when one of the Provos suddenly reached into his jacket pocket. By the time it was established he was suffering an anxiety asthma attack and was pulling out his inhaler, he was dead, as were two of his companions and even Popeye, naturally the sole survivor, was seriously injured. Worse still (in the Great Gaw’s eyes at least, for he was in charge of the operation), the truck turned out to be carrying only a small part-load of ammo and a few rifles, not the large consignment of state-of-the-art weaponry Gaw had expected.

It must have been cached en route and there was only you left, Pop-up Popeye, who had any idea where.

That got you off the NHS waiting list and into Gaw’s own favourite hospital where you got better care than a royal who was a fully paid up member of BUPA. But it was still a close-run thing. Intensive care for two months, convalescent for another six, offered a deal which you refused so reluctantly that it was hard not to believe your medically supported claim that your injuries had left you seriously amnesiac.

The court, however, was unimpressed by this as a defence against the long list of charges prepared against you.

Sentenced to twelve years.

So Popeye the pop-up man, it looked like the system had done what its trained shooters couldn’t and buried you.

But…

I’m Popeye the pop-up man

Let them hit me as hard as they can

I’ll be here at the finish…

Came the peace process.

Age thirty-seven: released from jail after serving less than two years.

Maybe it was enough.

You and I have a lot in common, Popeye. Members of ruthless and dangerous organizations, we have both had to learn to survive any which way we could.

And we both have unfinished business with Gawain Sempernel. Or rather, I have unfinished business with him while he has unfinished business with you.

He’s going soon. He thinks no one beneath him knows it but you cannot keep a Sibyl and a secret at the same time.

And you, Popeye, are his farewell finger to the envious gods who he believes cannot bear such rival effulgence near their throne. Six months from now he hopes to be clasped to the bosom of our common alma mater, in the holy shrine of a Master’s Lodge, where he will sit with one buttock firmly on the faces of those poor dons whose careers are in his gift, and the other discreetly offered for former colleagues to kiss when they beat a path to his door in search of that advice and expertise only his lost omniscience can offer.

The poor sod has overdosed on Deighton and Le Carré!

So there you are, Popeye. We have both been screwed by Gaw Sempernel.

In fact, you could say that, thanks to him, in our different ways we both know what it is to exist locked up in a cell.

And now, though I am officially the turnkey, we find ourselves cheek by jowl in this cell within a cell that the great comedian Gaw calls Sibyl’s Leaves.

Imprisonment changes people. It gives them time to think.

I think a lot.

Popeye too. What he thought was probably something like – it’s coming to an end. Maybe I can finally get a life which doesn’t involve my old body being full of bullets and surrounded by corpses. I’ve survived the war, surely it can’t be all that hard to survive the peace?