In the big ‘V’ of the arms, reaching to the barrel of the revolver, was the contorted shape of Frank, still stretching for the Luger. Harry steadied as the man lurched back into the rear seat with the gun in his hand, and fired his first shot. The left side of the rear window disintegrated, and Frank jolted as the bullet hit him in the throat. The effort of getting at the Luger had denied him a clear look at Harry. Bewilderment was spread over his face as he subsided onto the back seat with a rivulet of crimson flooding down onto the collar of his shirt. Not in itself a fatal shot, but it would become one if Frank did not get immediate hospital treatment. He was out of Harry’s sight now. The Englishman stood stock-still, looking for the next target. Come out, you bastards. Show yourselves. Where’s the bloody man we want? Which of you has the next gun? Who shoots next? Steady, Harry boy. You’re like a big lamp-post up there, you berk, right in the open. Get some cover.
Harry knelt on the pavement.
‘Come out with your hands above your heads. Any attempt to escape and I’ll shoot.’
Good control, Harry, dominate the buggers.
Downs whispered to Duffryn as they huddled on the reverse side of the car.
‘Make a run down the hill. He’ll not hit you with a hand gun. But for God’s sake run – and now!’
He pulled Duffryn past him and shoved him out into the open and away from the sanctuary of the car. Downs shouted after him, ‘Run, you little bastard, and weave . . .’
Duffryn, in deep terror, bolted from the cover. Out of control and conscious only of the empty space around him he sprinted down the street in the direction of Delrosa. His intention was to shift direction from right to left and to change his speed at the same time. The effect was to slow him down and make him the easier target. Harry fired four times. By the time he pulled the trigger for the second time he had sensed that he was after a man who had never faced this type of situation before. He heard Duffryn sob out as he ran, pleading, merging with his shout as the third shot caught him between the shoulder blades. Duffryn cannoned forward into the lamp-post, leant spread-eagled against it for a few seconds, and then slid down to become a shapeless mass at its base. The fourth bullet, unnecessary, jolted into his sluggish body. Duffryn would live; neither of the hitting bullets had found a critical resting place.
Now that he was down and stationary the confusion ebbed, and clarity came to the young intelligence officer. The enemy would kill him. No doubt – certainty. It seemed not to matter. There was hurt but not so much as Duffryn had expected. He was puzzled he could barely picture the face of the Englishman who had shot him. The clothes he could see, and the gun resting between the hands and the kick as it rocked back when Frank was shot. But there had been no face. The gun obscured it. He had not even seen his enemy. He never would now.
The moment that Duffryn had run Downs eased open the front door of the Escort, forced himself upwards into the driving seat and started the engine. The four shots that Harry had fired at the decoy – the hare with the job of distracting him – had given Downs sufficient time to get the car rolling in the direction of the Falls.
Harry swung the revolver round tracking his attention away from the fallen boy to the moving car. He saw Downs’s head low over the wheel before it swung lower still, below the dashboard. That was the moment he fired, knowing instinctively as he did so that he was going too high. The bullet struck the angle of the roof of the car, exited and thudded into the wall of the house opposite. Count your shots, they always drilled that. He had done, and he was out, chamber empty, finished, exhausted. Three more cartridges in the picnic bag, down at the bottom below the plastic food box and the coffee flask. Frantically he broke the gun and pushed the used cases out so that they clattered and shone on the pavement. He slid in the three replacements, copper-plated ends and grey snubnosed tips.
Downs was out in the traffic of the Falls, desperate to avoid the cars round him, but unable to escape from the conformity of the Catholic route into town. As a reflex Harry ran after him, revolver still in hand. He saw cars shy away from him as he came out into the traffic lanes, heard the grind of gears and scraping of brakes as men tried to put space between him and themselves. It was as though he had some plague or disease and could kill by contact. His man was edging away when Harry worked out the equation. Nine cars back was a Cortina Estate, crawling with the others and unwilling to come past the man waving his revolver. Harry ran to the passenger door. It was unlocked. As he looked into the driver’s eyes he shouted at him.
‘This is loaded. You’re to follow that car. The white Escort in front and follow it close. For your own safety don’t bugger about. I’m army, but that won’t help you if you mess me.’
Donal McKeogh, aged twenty-seven, a plastics salesman living outside Dungannon, forty miles down the motorway, gave a mechanical, numbed response. The car trickled forward, its driver’s mind still blank. Harry saw the Escort drawing away.
‘Don’t mess me, you clever bugger,’ he screamed at the face a few inches away, and to reinforce the effect of his intentions fired a single shot through the roof of the car. McKeogh surged forward towards the Springfield Road lights. The message was understood now, and would not need repeating. He might have seen me coming out into the traffic, reckoned Harry, but he’s unlikely to have seen which car is following him. Little chance of that. McKeogh swerving through on the inside, crossing the double lines in the centre and drawing angry shouts from other drivers, had closed the gap to five cars by the time they reached the lights.
Two bullets remained in the Smith & Wesson.
It had taken Billy Downs little time to work out where he was going. The failure to kill the Englishman dictated the decision. He was going home. Blown, finished, out.
He was tired. Needing a corner to sleep away the stabbing pains and biting disappointments of the last few hours, he needed quiet, and silence. Away from the guns, and the firing, and the blood. Above all he wanted to get away from the noise of the weapons that blasted out close to his ears, screwing up his guts with tension, then releasing them like an unplugged bladder, flat and winded.
Away from it all, and the only place he could go was home. To his wife. To his children. To his house. To Ypres Avenue. The logic and will power and control that had caused him to be chosen for London were drained from him. No emotion, no sensitivity left. Even the slight bubbling coughs of Frank in the back seat could not disturb him.
Failure. Failure from the man considered so valuable that only the most important work was earmarked for him. Failure from the élitist. More important, failure against the enemy who was working to kill, eliminate, exterminate, execute him. The words kept tempo with the throbbing of the arm wound. Christ, how it hurt. A bad, dangerous pain that dug at him, then went, but came again with renewed force, chewing at his strength and resolve.
The Armalite was still in the car, untouched under his seat, but useless now. It had no further part to play. The Armalite days were over, they didn’t settle things. It was over. Concluded, done with, half a lifetime ago.
Driving was hard. He had to stretch his left arm to the gear handle every few seconds, and even the movement from the second to third aggravated the injury. He mapped out a route for himself. Down to Divis, then across the top fringe of town to Unity flats, and then on to Carlyle Circus. Could park there, on the roundabout. It was a walk to the Ardoyne then, and the car and Frank would be close to the Mater, their own people’s hospital. Frank would be found quickly there, and would get the treatment he needed. There were no roadblocks and he moved with the traffic, Frank too low down to be seen and the bullet holes failing to draw people into involvement.
It was nine minutes to the Circus where the Crumlin and the Antrim Road came together, and where cars could be left unattended. He drove on to the space and stopped the car. To get out he had to lever himself up with his right hand, then he looked behind and into the back. Frank was very white, with much of his blood pooled beside his face on the plastic
seating. In his eyes was just enough light to signal recognition.
‘Don’t worry, Frank boy. You’re close to the Mater. You’ll be there in five minutes. I’m going to call them. I’m going now, and don’t worry. God bless. It’s all OK, you’ll be safe. A few minutes, that’s all.’
Frank could say nothing.
Downs left the engine running and the driver’s door open as he ran away from the car. It was enough to ensure that someone would look inside. The broken window would clinch it. The Armalite was still under the driver’s seat, and the Luger lay beneath Frank’s body. He ran up the Crumlin, Mater hospital on his right, huge and red and cleansed, giving way to the prison. High walls, coils of barbed wire, reinforced stone sentry towers and, dominating it all, the great gatehouse. Downs went on by them, and past the soldiers on guard duty, and the policemen guarding the courthouse opposite with their flak jackets and Stirlings. None spared him a glance as he ran.
The sprint gave way to a jog, then to little more than a stumble as he neared the safety of the Ardoyne at the top of the long hill. The weight of his legs seemed to pin him back as he forced his feet forward, separating himself from the chaos and disaster behind him. His breath came in great sobs and gulps as he struggled to keep up momentum. The only demand he made of himself now was to get to his home, to his wife, and bury himself in her warmth. The Circus and the hospital and the prison were far behind down the road when he reached the iron sheeting that divided Shankill from the Ardoyne, where he had stood the previous afternoon waiting for the lift that took him to Rennie’s home. God rot that bastard copper and his bloody children. That was where it had all collapsed. The child in the way, smack in the way, never a clear sight at the copper, only the kid’s head. Panting and wrenching for air, he slowed up to walk the last few yards.
They were right. He’d lost his nerve. Billy Downs, the one selected by the Chief of Staff, had slipped it because of a child’s head.
And then, this morning . . . Frank with his voice shot out, and the young bugger they’d sent him, down on the pavement, shredded. And you, you clever sod, you told him to run to make room for yourself, and he did, and he bloody bought it.
In the race across the city McKeogh had several times fallen back in the traffic stream, losing completely the sight of the white Escort before spotting it again far to the front manœuvring among the lorries and vans and cars. Then Harry screamed and threatened McKeogh, and the salesman would speed up. He doubted his hijacker was a member of the British army but was undecided whether he was IRA or UVF. That he would be killed if he didn’t follow the bellowed instructions, he was certain. As they came out of the town and reached the Circus the Escort was gone. Four major routes come together there, including the Crumlin leading up to the Ardoyne and the Antrim Road running up to the nearer, equally hard-line, New Lodge. New Lodge offered the quicker refuge, and Harry aimed his arm that way, as McKeogh swung round the Circus and then up the wide road. They drove a mile and fast up beyond the scorched entrance to the ghetto before Harry indicated they should turn back.
‘Try the Crumlin, it has to be that way.’
‘He could have got away from us and still be in this road. If he went up the Crumlin he’ll be out of the city by now, up in Ligoniel, halfway to the airport,’ said McKeogh.
‘I know where he can be. Just drive and close your attention on that,’ Harry snapped back. He would be lucky now to find him again. He knew that, but didn’t need any bloody driver telling him. Neither saw the Escort still parked among the other cars on the Circus, and they turned up the long haul of the Crumlin. Harry was forward in his seat now, peering right and left as McKeogh swept up the road. At the top he shouted. The exultation of a master of hounds throwing off the frustration of a lost quarry.
‘There he is, at the tin wall.’
McKeogh slowed the car in against the near pavement.
‘Who is he?’ he said.
Harry looked at him, didn’t reply and bolted from the car. He ran across the road and disappeared from McKeogh’s view through the gap in the silver corrugated fence. Downs had a start of less than a hundred yards.
Talk of the initial shooting straddled the city. The first officer into the road was taken by a lance-corporal to meet the tear-swamped Mrs Duncan. Between gulps and pauses to blow her nose she told the immediate story that formed the basis of the situation report.
‘He’d just left for work, Mr McEvoy, and I heard the shooting, and I ran to the door. Up the end of the street was Mr McEvoy with a gun, and one man seemed to run down the street towards this end, and he was shot. Mr McEvoy just aimed and shot him. Then another man got into the car and started to drive away, and Mr McEvoy fired at him too, and I don’t know whether he was hit or not. It was so fast. Then Mr McEvoy ran into the road waving and shouting at people in cars. Then I came indoors.’
‘Who is this Mr McEvoy?’ the bemused subaltern asked automatically.
‘He’s my lodger, been here three weeks. Quiet as a mouse, and a gentleman, a real proper man. Never spoke to anyone, and then there he was crouched behind his gun and shooting it over and over.’
The ambulance took Duffryn to hospital, and bulletins later in the day spoke of his condition as ‘critical’.
Frost, still in the 39 Brigade Operations Room at Lisburn, saw the reports coming in over the teletype. In rapid succession he spoke to the GOC, the Brigade commander in Londonderry – in order that the Secretary of State could be briefed when he arrived there – and finally to Davidson in London. In each case the message was substantially the same.
‘At first sight it looks as though they mounted some sort of ambush for McEvoy this morning. There was a balls-up on the job, and our fellow ended up shooting at least one of theirs. He’s in hospital injured. Another chap escaped in a car, and when last seen McEvoy was standing out in the Falls trying the old tack of waving down a spot of transport, civilian, for hot pursuit. It gets a bit more droll each stage. He’d holed up in a small guest house just off the Falls in the Broadway section. So he’s on the loose again, and it’s my wager that by lunchtime the place will be buzzing a bit.’
Four minutes later the teletype was chattering again. A shot-up car had been discovered in Carlyle Circus, and a man had been taken from the back with serious gunshot wounds.
‘This McEvoy, he’s one of ours,’ said Frost to the major from his department who stood beside him.
‘Working for us?’ said the other man in astonishment. The clerks and corporals and duty officers strained to listen.
‘Not as simple. Working for our side, but not working for us, not for this department. It’s involved and complicated and a cock-up. The guts are that the Prime Minister wanted an outsider with good cover and uncompromised, to move in and operate while controlled from London. He had a specific task, to locate the man that killed Danby. I think he did it and all the trimmings as well. It’s a boy called Billy Downs, from the Ardoyne. The place is watched now, and we did a raid this morning but that was negative. But the whole thing went sour. This man, McEvoy, had little faith in his controller and not much more in us. Can’t blame him for that. The talk I’ve had with his controller shows him as stupid as they come. So we had a ludicrous situation, lunatic, with McEvoy phoning his controller and passing over information but not saying where he could be contacted. In between his weekly messages not a word from him. Revolutionary tactics, OK. Then it leaked to the opposition – how they got hold of it I don’t know – complete secrecy was supposed to be the strength of the whole enterprise, and the Provos still heard about it. There was the bit in the papers this morning, that was the tip of it.’
The major nodded. He’d seen the cutting already, snipped out and noted.
Frost went on.
‘Well, it seems the boyos went for McEvoy this morning to try to get him on the way to a job he’d picked up. He’s cool enough, this lad. There’s been quite a shoot-out. McEvoy shot at least one of them. Maybe more, there’s another half sti
ff turned up beside the Mater in a car with guns in it. It may be something to do with it. Could well be.’
One of the desk sergeants came towards the colonel pushing a telephone trolley across the floor of the ops room, a light set in the handle flashing brilliantly.
‘Call for you, sir.’
Frost took the phone, identified himself, and listened rather more than a minute. Then he thanked the caller, asked him quietly not to move anything, and said he would be on his way.
‘There’s been shooting in Ypres Avenue, that’s Billy Downs’s street. Looks a bit like High Noon apparently, bodies and plenty all over the place.’ Frost rattled it out, hard and composed. ‘I think I’ll go down there, so hold the fort, please. And call RUC HQ, Special Branch. Ask for Rennie, Howard Rennie. He might want to come up there. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to get there. But if there’s any word of McEvoy let me know right away.’
And he was gone before the major could stand on any of his dignity and complain about being kept in the dark. That Frost traditionally kept things close to his chest was small consolation. Suddenly the operations room was alive. It was seldom the staff on the first floor of headquarters were able to feel the tension of street-level operations. Frost had brought them into it, though at the expense of his famous discretion. The sergeant brought the trolley over once more.
‘It’s a call for Colonel Frost, sir. They say it’s London and personal and urgent. A Mr Davidson. The colonel called him a few minutes ago. Will you take it?’
The major took the phone. ‘It’s his deputy here.’ He waited while the question was framed at the other end, then went on, ‘We have another wounded man, and a shooting in Downs’s street in the Ardoyne. Bodies but no names to match them with is the order of the morning so far. You’ll have to wait half an hour or so, and then we might have the answers. Sorry, old chap, but that’s the way it is.’
Harry's Game Page 28
