Harry's Game Part 8

'You don't think we sent out all those troops and pigs just for one girl if we don't have it cast iron why we want to talk to her. Give us a bit of common. Now the man. Take your time. Yes or no?'

'Yes." It was barely audible, her lips framing the word with a fractional fluttering of the chin. The army man behind her could not hear the answer it was so softly spoken. He read it instead on the face of the detective as he sighed with relief.

'Say it again," Rennie said. Rub it in, make the girl hear herself coughing, squealing. That keeps the tap flowing. Once they start keep up the momentum.

'Yes.'

The detective's face lost some of its hostility. He leaned forward on the table. "What was his name? What did you call the man?"

She laughed. Too loud, hysterically.

'What are you trying to do to me? You trying to get me done in? Don't you know I can't... I couldn't anyway, I don't know it,'

'We "want his name." Cut the softness. The crisis of the interrogation. She has to go on from here. But the little b.i.t.c.h was sticking.

'I don't know his name. He was hardly there. He just came and went. It was only about six hours, in the middle of the night.'

'He was in your house. Slept ... where did he sleep? ... in the back room? ... yes, we know that. He's on the run, and you don't know his name? Don't you know anything about him? Come on, Theresa, better than that.'

'I don't know. I don't know. I tell you I just don't ... that's honest to G.o.d. He came in and went upstairs. He was gone before morning. We didn't see him again. We weren't told anything. There was no need for us to know his name, and when he came we didn't talk to him. That's the truth.'

Behind the girl, and out of her sight, the army officer put up his hand for Rennie to hold his questions a moment. His voice was mellow, more reasonable and understanding to the exhausted girl in the chair four feet in front of him.

'But your father, Theresa, he'd know that man's name. We don't want to bring him in. We know what happened that night, up in this man's room. We know all about that. We'd have to mention it.

They'd all know at home. How would your Dad stand up to all this, at his age? There's your brother. You must think of him as well. It's a long time he's been in the Maze ... it would go well for him.'

'I don't know. I don't. You have to believe me. He never said his name. It's because he wasn't known that he came, don't you see that? It was safe that way. Dad doesn't know who he was. None of us did.'

'You know why we want him?" the detective clipped back in, swinging her attention back into the light of the room away from the peace she found in the shadows round the soldier.

'I know.'

'You're sure. You know what he did?'

'I know.'

'Did he tell you what he'd done?'

'No.'

'How did you know?'

'It was obvious. I've never seen a man like it. He had a hand like an old man's. It was all tied up. Like a claw. I can't say how he was ... it was horrible.'

'What was his name? We want his name.'

'You'll get me killed for what I've said. So help me, Mother of Jesus, he never said his name.'

The inspector pulled a photokit picture of the man from a brown envelope, and flipped it across the table to the girl. She looked at it briefly and nodded. Then she pushed it back to him.

'Take her down," he said to the policewoman. The two went out of the interview room and away towards the station's cells. He went on, 'b.u.g.g.e.r it. I thought we had her. I thought it was all going to flow. I have a horrible feeling the little b.i.t.c.h is telling the truth. We'll have another go at her in two or three hours or so, but I don't think she knows any more than she's said. It makes sense. A strange house, strange people. They're alerted someone is coming. They stick their noses into the box, and he's a bed for the night. Come on. Let's get a nap for a bit. and then one last bash at her.'

After they had gone Theresa sat a long time in her cell. She was alone now, as the policewoman had left her. In her own eyes the position was very clear. The army had pulled her into the station to question her about the man who had stayed at the house, the man she had gone to in the middle of the night. The man who had killed in London, was on the run, hunted, and in bed couldn't screw. They had pulled her in because they thought something she knew was the key to their finding the man, arresting him, charging him, sentencing him, and locking him away to become a folk hero in the ghetto, however many years he rotted in a cell like this one. If she was not vital to their case then, as they said themselves, would they have sent the troops and the pigs to collect her? When he was arrested and charged and all Ballymurphy knew she had spent two days in the station being questioned ... what would they say? Who would listen when she denied she had ever known his name? Who would walk away satisfied when she said she had given no information that in any way led to his capture? Who would believe her?

In the legend they'd weave her name would figure. She went back again over all that she could remember of what she had said to that b.a.s.t.a.r.d copper. The one who shouted in the front. Nothing, she'd said nothing that helped them. She'd looked at the photograph, but they knew that he was the man. All they needed was his name, and they didn't know that, and she hadn't told them. But how had they learned of the night? She had told girls, some, a few, not many. Would they betray her? Her friends in a chatter in the bog or over coffee break at the mill, would they tout to the military?

So who was going to believe her now?

She had heard what the IRA did to informers. All Ballymurphy knew. It was part of the folklore, not just there, but all over the city where the Provos operated. The vengeance of the young men against their own people who betrayed them was vicious and complete. There'd been a girl, left at a lamp post. Tarred and feathered, they'd called it. Black paint and the feathers from a stinking old eiderdown. Hair cut off. She'd talked to a soldier. Not loved him--not cuddled or kissed him. Just talked to him, standing with him outside the barracks in the shadows. A boy who lived on the street they'd shot him through the kneecaps. He hadn't even been an informer. "Thief was the word on the card they hung round the gatepost where they left him. Provo justice. She hadn't known him, just knew his face. She remembered him on the hospital crutches when he was discharged. Ostracized and frightened. They killed girls, she knew that, and men whom they reckoned were informers. They shot them and dumped their bodies, sometimes rigged with wires and batteries. Making a stiff into a bomb hoax. Then they lay a long time in the ditch waiting for the bomb disposal man to work his way through his overnight list and come and declare the body harmless. And all the reporters and photographers were there.

It was very easy to imagine. A kangaroo court in a lockup garage. Young men with dark gla.s.ses at a table. Hurricane lamp for illumination. Arms tied behind her. Shouting her innocence, and who listens? Pulled from the garage, and the sweet smelliness of the hood going over her head, and bundled into a car for the drive to the dumping ground and the single shot.

She wanted to scream, but there was no sound. She quivered on the bed, silhouetted against the light biscuit-coloured regulation blanket with the barred-over light bulb s.h.i.+ning down on to her. If she had screamed at that moment she would probably have lived. The policewoman would have come and sat with her till the next interrogation. But in her terror she had no voice.

She knew they would come again and talk to her, perhaps in another hour, perhaps longer. They had taken her watch and she had no sense of time now. When they came again they would ask her if she had ever seen the man on any other occasion. They would ask that over and over again, however many times she maintained she'd not set eyes on him since the night at her house. They would go on asking that question till they had their answer. They would know when she was lying, especially the quiet one behind her, the Englishman. She was tired, so tired, and slipping away. Could she keep up her denials? They would know and she would say. Before morning they would know about the dance, how the man had been there with his wife. They had taken him away. So why did they still need the name? Confusion and complicated argument swayed and tossed through the girl. They had taken him but they didn't know him. Perhaps they had not made the connection, and then what she might say in her exhaustion would weave the net round him. Betray him. Play the Judas. If she told the English officer it would be treachery to her own. The pigs would be out for him, pulling him into another police station, and she would wear the brand. Tout. Informer. Despised.

She looked round the brick and tile walls of the cell till she came to the heavy metal bar attached to the cell window that moved backwards and forwards a distance of two inches to allow ventilation to the cell. As it was winter and the window tight shut, the bar protruded from the fitting. She estimated that if she stood on her bed and stretched up she could reach the bar. Very deliberately she sat up on the bed. She moved her skirt up over her hips and began to peel down the thick warm tights she was wearing.

When the policewoman came to her cell to wake her for the next rou nd of questions Theresa was very dead. Her mouth was open, and icr eyes bulged as if they were trying to escape from the agony of lie contortions. The nylon had buried itself deep into her throat, caving a reddened collar r.i.m.m.i.n.g the brown tights. Her feet hung ictween the side of the bed and the wall, some seven inches above he floor.

i;rost was wakened by the duty officer in intelligence headquarters without explanation. The message was simply that he should be in icadquarters, and that "all h.e.l.l is about to break loose." By the time ic reached the building there was a report from the police station waiting for him. It covered only one sheet, was slashed to a minimum and was signed by his own man who had been present at the interrogation.

Theresa ... was interrogated twice while in police custody in the presence of myself, Detective Inspector Howard Rennie, Detective Sergeant Herbert McDonald and Policewoman Gwen Myerscough. During questioning she identified the photokit picture of a man wanted in connection with the Danby killing as a man who had stayed in her father's house around three weeks ago. After the second session of questions she was returned to her cell. She was found later hanging in the cell, and was dead by the time medical attention reached her.

Signed, Fairclough, Arthur. Capt., Intelligence Corps.

No marks for grammar, thought Frost, as he read it through.

'Where's Fairclough?" he snapped at the duty officer.

'On his way back here, sir." It was a time for short direct answers when the big man was in this sort of mood.

'How long?'

'Should be here in about ten minutes, sir." Then the sparks will come. Poor old Fairclough, thought the duty officer. Rather him than me.

The colonel went to the filing cabinet behind his desk and unlocked the top drawer, pulling it out on its metal runners and rummaging around for his dog-eared Ministry of Defence extension numbers book. It was a cla.s.sified doc.u.ment and also listed the home telephone numbers of senior staff at the Ministry, military and civilian. He found the number of the Permanent Under Secretary that Davidson worked to, and dialled the Surrey area code and then the six digits.

'My name's Frost. Army intelligence in Lisburn. It's a h.e.l.l of an hour but something has come up which you should be aware of. This is not a secure line, but I'll tell you what I can. We were pa.s.sed some information from a section of yours about a girl. That was yesterday morning. She was brought in yesterday afternoon and questioned twice. You know what about. She knew the man we want, identified the picture, and said he'd stayed in her house within the last month. Found her about three-quarters of an hour ago hanging in her cell. Very dead. That's all I have. But I wouldn't care to be in your man's shoes when the opposition find out about all this. Thought you ought to know. Sounds a bit of a c.o.c.k-up to me. Cheers.'

The Permanent Under Secretary had thanked him for the call and rung off.

Frost locked away his directory and pocketed the keys as Fair clough came in a fraction behind his knock.

'Let's have it, Arthur.'

'We got it out of her that the man stayed at her old man's place. She said they weren't given his name, and that she never knew his name. I think she was levelling with us. We left her for a couple of hours and when they came to get her out to bring her back up she'd strung herself up with her stockings. One thing should be straight, sir. She was treated quite correctly. She wasn't touched, and there was a policewoman present the whole time.'

'Right. Put it all down on paper, and soon. I want our version on this out fast. The information from London, on which we pulled her in. It seems to have stood up? It was real stuff?'

'No doubt about that. She'd been with him, all right. No doubt.'

Fairclough went out of the colonel's office to type his report. Frost was back on the phone to army public relations, another bedside telephone waking the early morning sleeper-in. He suggested that when the press inquiries started coming the men on the information desk should treat this very much as a police matter involving a girl picked up by the army for routine interrogation. He then called the head of Special Branch, first at his home where he was told he was already at Knock Road headquarters, and then at his office there. His own people had briefed him. With the slight diplomacy that he timid command he made the same sugggestion about press desk uMtment as he had made to his own people.

"You want our people to take the can?" said the policeman. 'Inevitable, isn't it? Your police station, your interrogation. Don't how we can end up with it.' 'Your b.l.o.o.d.y info set the, thing up.'

'And good stuff it was too. There should be an inquiry at that d.a.m.ned station as to how it happened.'

'The Chief Constable in his wisdom had made that point. I think we should meet for a talk about the next move, if there is one, or this rail will be dead in no time.' "I'll call you back," said Frost, and rang off. Half-c.o.c.k operation and the poor sod, whatever his name is, puts it right under our noses. And we drop it. Poor devil. And on top of thit we let the girl kill herself, which puts a noose round his neck and a bag over his head. We've done him well today. Desertion's the 'cast he's justified in doing.

Harry heard about the girl, with the rest of the province, on the early morning radio news bulletin. It was second story after the European economic Community all-night talks. The item was brief and without explanation.

'In Belfast a girl has died after being taken to a police station in the Falls Road area. She was found early this morning hanging in her cell and was dead by the time she reached hospital. Police named her as nineteen-year-old Theresa McCorrigan from Ballymurphy. An investigation is being carried out to find what happened. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights a.s.sociation have issued a statement calling for a full and independent inquiry into the death. They allege how armoured cars and troops were used yesterday afternoon to arrest the dead girl from her home.'

Harry switched off the radio. He felt numb. No more playing about. No more kindergarten. These were the powers of the forces at work. A simple, ordinary, decent girl. Wants to get screwed by a bloke who cannot make it. Tells the girls in the loo about it, bit of a giggle, have a laugh together. Thirty hours later she's so terrified that she puts something round her neck and steps off. Throttled. A bit randy, and talks too much ... and now she's dead. Harry remembered her. Across the far side of the club: in with the toughies and the big kids near the bar. Rolling a little. Too much gin, and not enough chips to soak it up.

He was the cause of the fear. He was responsible for the agony of the girl, before she slung whatever it was underneath her chin, and swung off into the void. Had she even been questioned by then, he wondered? Had she been able to say anything? Or was it all a lot of boasting?

They all listen to those bulletins, Harry reflected, every last one of them, catching up on the night's disasters, funding themselves with conversation for the day. Josephine would be no different. She would hear it, making her face up, having her breakfast, was.h.i.+ng her smalls, but the transistor would be on somewhere in her home. She'd hear it, and she'd put it together. Was she that fast, that clever? Had to be, it was there on a plate, and what then?

Harry would have to wait to find out. She wasn't doing teas this week, had a different s.h.i.+ft at work. He'd have to wait till the weekend and their next date. Have to sit it out, Harry boy, and sweat it out, and see how bright she is, and if she is bright what she's going to do about it.

He went down the staircase, across the hall, and out on to the street. He heard Mrs Duncan calling after him about his breakfast, and ignored her as he kept on going up the pavement and turned left towards Andersonstown. It took him a good hundred yards to swallow the emotion and regain control. As he walked he set out the position, making in his mind a chess board of his job. p.a.w.ns, that's where she rated, and p.a.w.ns were expendable. Bishops and knights hurt more but they could also be lost. He and the man he was hunting were the queens of his game. The superstars, and second only to the kings, who were sacred and inviolate. If, as the queens were moved round the board, the p.a.w.ns toppled over, then that was the nature of the game he and the man played. There was no time to lament the loss of p.a.w.ns.

The old theme song. It had been different in Aden. There had been no involvement there. Nothing personal. A clear enemy, all that was on the board was black or white but definite. Now all the squares were grey, and the figures too. Even the two queens. There would be a problem for an outsider in picking one set of pieces from another.

ELEVEN.

Within four hours of the first broadcast of Theresa's death a soldier had been killed and heavy rioting had broken out in the Ballymurphy, Whiterock, Turf Lodge and New Barnsley estates.

The soldier had died when he was. .h.i.t by a burst of shots fired at close range from a Thompson sub-machine gun. He was last man in a patrol in Ballymurphy, and the gunman was apparently operating from the top floor of an empty council house. Some of the photographers who had gathered outside Theresa's house to get a picture of her parents and collect a holiday snapshot of the girl herself ran in the direction of the shooting. The fleetest managed a few hurried frames as the soldiers lifted the body of their colleague into the back of a Saracen.

In the Falls and Springfield Roads, groups of youths had hijacked buses, driven them into the middle of the street, and set fire to them. After that the army moved in. Armoured cars and Land Rovers were pelted with milk bottles and rocks by the crowds who had gathered on the pavements. The army responded by driving at them, firing volleys of rubber bullets from mountings beside the driver. At one building site a barricade of rocks and oil drums had been a.s.sembled by the time the Saracens arrived. They'd crashed into the flimsy wall, fracturing it and scattering the drums crazily across the street, when a lone youth, at the controls of a brilliant yellow excavator-digger machine, charged back defiantly. The troops, who had been advancing behind the cover of the armoured cars, fell back as the mechanical dinosaur accelerated down a slight hill towards the toad-like armoured cars. A few feet from the impact the youth jumped clear, leaving his runaway digger to collide head on with the Saracens. The armoured cars, acting in strange concert for things so large, edged it against a wall, where it spent its force revving in demented futility.

The stoning went on a long time. Unit commanders made it clear in their situation reports to Brigade headquarters at Lisburn that they detected a genuine anger among people. Those who over the last months had shown disinclination to abuse and pelt the military were back with a vengeance. There were rumours, they said, sweeping the Catholic areas, that the girl who had killed herself in the police station had been tortured to a degree that she could stand no more, and that she had then killed herself. Provisional sympathisers were on the move off the main roads where the army patrolled, and behind the crowds, giving instructions.

Theresa's parents were on lunchtime television, maintaining that their daughter had never belonged to any Republican organization. They described graphically how she had been taken from the lunch table the previous day. The army press desk received scores of calls, and stalled by saying this was a police matter, that the army were not involved, and pointing out that the girl had died in a police station. At police headquarters the hara.s.sed man on the receiving end told reporters that an investigation was still going on, and that the officers who were carrying out that investigation had not called back yet.

Both at army headquarters and amongst the Secretariat that administered the Secretary of State's office at Stormont Castle there was a realization that something rather better by way of explanation was going to have to come out before the day was over.

Faced with crises the Prime Minister had a well-tried formula to fall back upon. Identify the problem. Focus all attention on it. Solve it, and then leave it alone. When he finally concentrated on any one subject his aides found he had enormous capacity to wrestle with whatever political abscess was causing the pain. But they also found that once he thought the situation dealt with then his interest faded as fast as it had risen. Northern Ireland, comparatively quiet for months, was now on the shelved list. It teetered close to what a politician had once called the "acceptable level of violence'. So the transcripts of the lunchtime news bulletins that were brought to him he resented as an intrusion. Violence back again. Streets closed. Casualties. The distasteful death of a young girl in the police cell. It was his habit to be direct.

From the back room office overlooking the Downing Street gardens, insipid in the November light, too many leaves left around, he called the army commander in Lisburn. Without any interruption he listened to a rundown of the morning's events, and made no comment either when the General launched into the background of the girl's arrest. He was told for the first time of the intelligence reports at had been fed in from London, of her questioning, what little she inid admitted to knowing, and then of the finding of the body.

'Is this the first we've had from our chap?'

'First that I've heard of. Certainly we've received nothing else we ould act on.'

'And it was good stuff, accurate. Something we hadn't had before, right?'

'The information was factual. It didn't take us as far as we'd hoped it might at first. I understand, though, that this is the first positive line we've had on to the fellow we're looking for.'

'Seems we set a bit of a trap, and it's rather missed its target. We'll have to decide whether our chap's had as much out of the pot as he's going to get. Problem is at what stage to get him out, whether we've compromised him already." He was enjoying this, just like the way it was in the war. SOE and all that. The General cut across the line.

'It's not so easy, Prime Minister. It's faintly ridiculous, but I'm told his controllers don't know where he is, don't even know where to get in touch with him. You appreciate that this chap is not being controlled from here. Your instructions were interpreted very strictly on this point. It's London's responsibility. He calls in, they don't call him. But my advice would be that he stays. For the moment, at least. When you begin this sort of thing you stick with it. There's no out, in midstream, because it's a bit too hot. He'll have to finish it, or dry up completely.'

The Prime Minister came back, "We've no reason to believe yet that he's been compromised? But it would be difficult, very difficult, if he were to be identified in this context.'

'Those were the sort of questions I a.s.sume had been answered before the instruction was given to launch this operation, Prime Minister.'

The sarcasm bit down the line.

The Prime Minister banged the phone down, then immediately flipped the console b.u.t.ton on his desk and asked abruptly for the Secretary of State in Stormont Castle. After forty-one years in politics he could see the storm clouds gathering long before they were upon him. He knew the time had come to pull in some sail, and close down the hatches. The combination of an agent working to the Prime Minister's orders and a teenage girl hanging herself in a cell were better ingredients than most for a political scandal of major proportions. He must start to plan his defensive lines if the worst should happen and the chap they'd sent over should be discovered. That b.l.o.o.d.y General, not much time to run over there, and his next appointment already confirmed. Entrenched, which was why he was so free with the advice. But all the same, in spite of his eminence, it must have hurt him to admit that this was the best information they'd had so far ... and for all that they'd loused it up.

'He won't have liked it. One bright thing today," and then he turned his attention to the search for a fail-safe system. Call the Under Secretary, the man in charge of this incredible non-communication set-up. In the event of catastrophe no statement till the civil servant had cleared it, and get that away to Lisburn. No acknowledgement for the agent, of course, if all goes wrong ... deny all knowledge of the mission.

The Secretary of State was on the line. The Prime Minister wasted no time on pleasantries.

'I've been hearing about the troubles today, and the girl. Difficult situation. I thought we were weak at lunchtime, too defensive. We need to be a lot more positive. I've a suggestion to make. It's only a suggestion, mind you, and you should bounce it off your security people and see how they react. But I think you should say something like this--get a note of it and I'll read over what I've drafted. Along these lines, now. That the girl was a known a.s.sociate of the man we are hunting in connection with the killing of Danby. That she was brought in quite correctly for questioning, and had been spoken to briefly before being left in the cells for the night. You must emphasize that she was not touched. Leak it that you're prepared to offer an independent post mortem from one of the hospitals, if you think that'll help. But my thought is to bring it back to Danby. By the by, his memorial service is at St Paul's this week. You'll be there, I hope. It'll all be in the public gaze again. We'll be all right if we play a bit bold, and attack. Worst thing we can do is to get on the defensive.'

The linking of the killing of the British Cabinet Minister with the death of the teenager in the Falls Road police station was splashed across the last edition of the Belfast Telegraph, and extensively reported on later television and radio news bulletins. The few men in the city who knew of Harry's existence were uncertain what effect the disclosure would have on the agent's work and safety. They acknowledged an immediate lifting of the pressure on their public relations set-up for more information concerning the circ.u.mstances of the death.

Harry was not the only man in the city with p.a.w.ns on the chequer board.

The sc.r.a.p merchant would take Harry on to his payroll. He'd obviously liked the look of him. He said he had a brother at sea, and asked Harry if he could start there and then. There was not a word about National Insurance cards or stamps, and twenty pounds a week was offered as pay. Harry was told he'd need to spend a month or so in the yard to see the way the place was run. There was to be expansion, more lorries. When they came, if it all worked out, there would be a driving job, and more money.

On his first morning Harry prowled round the mountains of burned and rusted cars. These were the stock in trade of the sc.r.a.p man, heap upon heap of rough, angled metal.

Harry said to the neat dapper little man who was his new boss, "Is this what the business is? Just cars? You've enough of them.'

'No problems with the supplies of that. You must have seen it, though you've been away. Terrible driving here. If you take the numbers of cars, they say, and work it out against a percentage of all the people that own them, and the number of accidents... then it's worse than anywhere else in the whole of England or Ireland. Maniacs they are here. The boyos down the road do the rest. We'll have a dozen wrecks in tomorrow morning. There'll be a double decker, as well, like as not, but they're b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to cut up.'

He smiled. Small, chirpy, long silk scarf round his neck, choker style, hat flat on his head. They're all the same, thought Harry, likeable rogues.

The sc.r.a.p merchant went on, "It's an ill wind. Sc.r.a.p men, builders, glaziers ... we're all minting it. Shouldn't say so, but that's how it is. The military dump the cars that are burned out, up there on the open ground. We send a truck up and pull them down here. Not formal, you know. Just an understanding. They want them off the street and know if they put them there I'll s.h.i.+ft them. We'll have a few more today, and all.'

He looked up at Harry, with the brightness evacuating his eyes. 'People are powerful angry about this girl. You'll find that. They get killed in hundreds here. Most of the time it doesn't mean a d.a.m.n, however big the procession. But this girl has got them steamed again.'

Harry said, "It's a terrible thing pulling a girl like that out of her house.'

'Poor wee thing. She must have been awful scared of something to want to do that to herself. Mother of Jesus rest her. Still, no politics in this yard, and no troubles. Those are the rules of the yard, Harry boy. No politics, and that way we get some work done.'