Harry's Game

by Gerald Seymour

  The afternoon had nearly exhausted itself by the time he came to the final group, and the one report in particular that was to take him time. He read it slowly in the bad light of the room, and then went back and reread it looking for the innuendo in the ambiguous message. It was a page and a half long, written in pencil and unsigned by name. There was a number underneath which denoted which volunteer had sent it in. He went through the report of probably only one hundred words for the third time till he was satisfied he had caught its full flavour and meaning. Then he began to weigh its importance.

  Strangers were the traditional enemies in the village-sized Catholic communities of Belfast. The Short Strand, the Markets, the Ardoyne, Divis, Ballymurphy . . . all were self-sufficient, integral units. Small, difficult to penetrate, because unless you belonged you had no business or reason to come. They boasted no wandering, shifting groups, no cuckoos to come and feed off them. Those who were admitted after being burned out or intimidated away from their homes came because there were relatives who would put roofs over their heads. There were no strangers. You were either known or not admitted.

  What concerned Duffryn now was the report on the stranger in the Beachmount and Broadway area. He was said to be looking for a job and getting long-term rates at Delrosa with Mrs Duncan. There was a question about his speech. The scribbled writing of the report had the second name of McEvoy. First name of Harry. Merchant seaman, orphaned and brought up in Portadown. No harm in that and checkable presumably. The interest in the report came later. The flaw in the set-up, the bit that didn’t ring true. Accent, something wrong with the accent. Something that had been noticed as not right. It was put crudely, the reason Duffryn read it so many times to get the flavour of the writer’s opinion:

  ‘Seems to talk OK, then loses us for a moment, or a word, or sometimes in the middle of a word, and then comes back . . . his talk’s like us mostly but it comes and goes . . . it’s not just as if he’d been away as he says. Then all his talk would have gone, but it only happens with odd words.’

  It was enough to cause him anxiety, and it took him half an hour to make out a painstaking report for his superiors setting down all the information he had available on the man called McEvoy. The responsibility would rest higher up the chain of command as to whether or not further action was taken. He would keep up surveillance when he had the manpower.

  There were difficulties of communication in the city and it would be some days before his message could be passed on.

  Private Jones was on board the 15.30 Trident One back to Heathrow. He was out of uniform but conspicuous in his short haircut and neatly pressed flannels. He had been told he would be met by service transport at Heathrow and taken to Northolt where he would be put on the first flight to Berlin and his new posting. It had been impressed on him that he was to speak to no-one of his encounter the previous night. The incident was erased.

  Interrogation was an art of which Howard Rennie had made himself a master, an authority, skilled at drawing out the half-truth and capitalizing on it till the flood-gates of information burst. He knew the various techniques; the bully, the friend, the quiet business-like man across the table – all the approaches that softened the different types of people who sat at the bare table opposite him. The first session with the girl had been a gentle one, polite and paternal. It had taken him nowhere. Before they went into the interview room for the second time Rennie had explained his new tactics to the officer from army intelligence. Rennie would attack, and the Englishman capitalize on it. Two men, each offering a separate tempo, and combining together to confuse the suspect.

  The detective could recognize his own irritability. A bad sign. One that demonstrated the hours he’d put in that week, the sleep he had forfeited. And the girl was playing him up. They’d given her the easy way. If she wanted to play it like the boyos did, then good luck to her. But she was tired now, dazed by the surroundings and the lights, and hungry, having earlier defiantly refused the sandwiches they brought her.

  ‘We’ll start at the beginning again, right? . . . You were at the dance last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you wearing? We’ll have that again.’

  ‘My pink dress.’

  That much was established again by the detective. They’d got that far before. He’d done the talking. The army captain had said nothing as he sat behind the girl. A policewoman was also in the interview room, seated to the side of the desk and taking no part in the questioning. The questions came from the big man, directly opposite Theresa, just across the table.

  ‘Your home in Ballymurphy . . . it’s a hideout?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s used as a hideout. We know that. It’s more we want. But it’s where the boyos lie up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We know it is, you stupid bitch. We know they stay there.’

  ‘Why ask me, then?’ she shouted back.

  ‘It’s used as a hideout?’

  ‘You say you know it is.’

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Not often.’

  ‘How many times in the last month? Ten times?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Five times, would that be about right? In the last month, Theresa?’

  ‘Not as often as that.’

  ‘How about just once, Theresa? That’s the one we’re interested in, just the once.’ It was the officer behind her who spoke. English. Soft voice, different to those RUC bastards. She sat motionless on the wooden chair, hands clenched together round the soaked and stained handkerchief from the cuff in her blouse.

  ‘I think we know one man came.’

  ‘How can I tell you . . . ?’

  ‘We know he came, girl, the one man,’ the big Branch man took over again. ‘One man, there was one man, wasn’t there? Say three weeks ago. For a night or so. One man, yes or no?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Look, girl, one man and we know he was there.’

  Her eyes stayed on her hands. The light was very bright, the tiredness was ebbing over her, swallowing her into itself.

  ‘One man, you stupid cow, there was one man. We know it.’

  No reply. Still the silence. The policewoman fidgeted in her seat.

  ‘You agreed with us that people came, right? Not as many as five, that was agreed. Not as many as ten, we got that far. Now, understand this, we say that one man came about three weeks ago. One man. A big man. He slept in the house, yes or no? Look at me, now.’

  Her head came up slowly now to look at the policeman directly in front of her. Rennie kept talking. It was about to happen, he could sense it. The poor girl had damn all left to offer. One more shove and it would roll out.

  ‘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 bitch 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. S
lept . . . 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 God. 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, ‘Bugger it. I thought we had her. I thought it was all going to flow. I have a horrible feeling the little bitch 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 bastard 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 lock-up garage. Young men with dark glasses 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 shining down on 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 that 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 round of questions Theresa was very dead. Her mouth
was open, and her eyes bulged as if they were trying to escape from the agony of the contortions. The nylon had buried itself deep into her throat, leaving a reddened collar rimming the brown tights. Her feet hung between the side of the bed and the wall, some seven inches above the floor.

  Frost was wakened by the duty officer in intelligence headquarters without explanation. The message was simply that he should be in headquarters, and that ‘all hell is about to break loose’. By the time he 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 classified document 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.