Soldier E: Sniper Fire in Belfast

by Shaun Clarke

  The only wounded was the driver of the van, his eyes bloodied and blinded by shards of glass from the shattered windscreen, his forehead split open, his nose broken by impact with the steering wheel. He was unconscious, but groaning.

  The other men, including the one across the road, had been torn to shreds by the high-velocity 5.56mm bullets of the M16s. Soaked in blood, with bone gleaming through gristle, they were certainly dead.

  ‘Let’s check the house,’ Martin said.

  Slightly shaken by the terrible wounds inflicted on the dead, but also feeling pure and bright, as if illuminated from within, Danny followed Martin along the gravel driveway to the front of Quinn’s hideaway. Obviously excited, Martin smashed the lock on the door with a single burst from his M16, then led Danny inside.

  The hall was filled with wooden crates containing guns and ammunition. So was the living room. Explosives of every kind were stacked up in the kitchen, and more weapons, ammunition and explosives were found in the back room.

  ‘Some haul!’ Martin said softly.

  At that moment, he was buzzed on his walkie-talkie. When he had turned it on and identified himself, the voice of Dead-eye informed him that he was to remain in the cottage until Sappers – already called up by Dead-eye – arrived to remove the weapons, ammunition and explosives for transfer to Bessbrook. Danny, Dead-eye said, was to stand guard over the crashed removal van until an ambulance, also from Bessbrook, arrived to take away the dead and wounded. A REME team had also been called up to remove the crashed, badly damaged van.

  ‘OK, boss,’ Martin said. ‘We’ve got you. Over and out.’ He switched the walkie-talkie off and grinned at Danny. ‘You get the stiffs and the truck,’ he said, then waved his right hand, indicating the crates piled up all around him in the living room, ‘and I get all this. Let’s do what the man says.’

  Leaving Martin in the relative warmth of the house, Danny stepped out into the biting cold, glanced uneasily at the bloody body lying face up by the fence, then crossed the road to the crashed removal van. The driver was still unconscious, but had mercifully stopped groaning and was now lying with his forehead resting on the steering wheel, which was covered in a mass of congealed blood, some of which had dripped from his blinded eyes. Since there was little he could do for him, Danny left him as he was and went around to stand guard by the side of the van, facing the road leading to Belfast.

  From where he was standing, he could see that Jock had left the OP to join Dead-eye over the bodies of the three dead terrorists, in the dip near the bottom of the hill. Dead-eye had put his Landmaster III away and was talking to Jock while scanning the Belfast road, obviously impatient for the medics, REME team and Sappers to come and clean up the mess. Eventually, they did so – first the ambulance, then the REME breakdown truck and mechanics, and finally the Sappers with their own trucks. The medics removed the dead and the one wounded man, the REME truck removed the crashed van, and the Sappers transferred the weapons, ammunition and explosives from the cottage to their vehicles, then drove back to Bessbrook. When they had all gone, Danny and Martin joined Jock and Dead-eye outside the OP.

  ‘You men did a good job,’ Dead-eye said. ‘I have no complaints.’

  Though swelling with pride, Danny asked quietly: ‘What about the man in the red Ford?’

  ‘I gave the car’s details to Bessbrook and they set up a roadblock and helicopter recce to bring him in. They’ve just told me they caught him.’

  ‘What happens now?’ Martin asked.

  ‘We demolish this OP,’ Dead-eye said, ‘and return to Bessbrook. A chopper will lift us off at three p.m. – precisely one hour from now.’

  ‘A hot bath and a cold beer,’ Jock said. ‘Back to civilization.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ Dead-eye said without humour.

  They packed up their kit, demolished the OP and were lifted off the hill an hour later by a Gazelle. Ten minutes later they were back in Bessbrook, watching their beer being poured in the NAAFI canteen.

  ‘Gimme, gimme!’ Jock said.

  Chapter 13

  Lieutenant Cranfield was wearing a pinstripe suit when he met Margaret Dogherty, coming off the Dublin train at Belfast Central Station. Margaret was wearing a knee-length Wallis overcoat of grey, understated elegance, with high heels emphasizing the curves of her already long legs. Her auburn hair was falling down around her face, which was pale-skinned, smooth and surprisingly delicate, except for a latent hardness, or world weariness. Though only twenty-five, she somehow looked older, though she was still an exceptionally attractive woman.

  ‘Have you come?’ she said to Cranfield, using that oddity of greeting peculiar to the Ulster Irish.

  ‘Yes,’ Cranfield replied. ‘You look wonderful. Let me carry that bag.’

  She handed him the travelling bag, then took his arm and let him lead her out of the busy station.

  ‘That’s a very nice pinstripe,’ Margaret said. ‘Sure it makes you look like some ponce from the Civil Service.’ Her Ulster accent had effectively been erased by five years in London, then another three in Dublin, but she still used certain oddities of the vernacular.

  ‘It makes me feel so respectable,’ Cranfield said, ‘when I’m out of uniform. Besides, I thought you might like it. Having a gentleman on your arm, instead of some rag-and-bone man like Michael O’Leary.’

  Her sideways glance was one of mockery at his arrogance. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He said he had to visit someone in Dublin before we lifted him out. Given the danger to him the longer he remains here, I could only imagine him taking the risk for the woman he loves.’

  Margaret smiled as they left the station, heading for the taxi rank by the pavement. ‘He loves my body,’ she said. ‘He loves what it does to him.’

  ‘He came to it pretty late, my dear, which is why he’s besotted.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘Not with that particular kind of passion. I’m a married man, after all.’

  As they slipped into the back of the black taxi, which Cranfield refused to share with other passengers, as was the local custom, he realized that he hadn’t been home for two months, though it seemed a lot longer than that. Back in Eaton Bishop, nothing would have changed much. His wife Maria would be pottering about in the garden, as she did nearly every day, and his three children, Julia, Tanya and Robert, seven, six and five respectively, would be attending private school in the soothing greenery of Hereford, free of IRA snipers and Army checkpoints. It was a nice, easy life there.

  ‘A married man having his little bit of fun,’ Margaret said as the taxi pulled away from the kerb. ‘Have you no conscience, Randolph?’

  ‘Not really. I have a happy family in Hereford. Being a good father goes a long way with most married women. Maria has few complaints.’

  ‘Does she know you play around?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Does she suspect?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘I don’t know how men can face their wives and kids after being with my kind.’

  ‘It comes with practice, my dear.’

  In fact, Cranfield enjoyed going home – it had a civilizing influence on him – but he only liked it for limited periods, invariably becoming bored and restless if there too long. He was not a man for family life, let alone monogamy, though he’d always been careful to hide that side of himself from his wife. Now, as he sat beside Margaret in the black cab, aware of the heat of her soft thigh against his own, he was free of the slightest trace of guilt, at ease with himself.

  ‘So did O’Leary visit you in Dublin?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes. Sure he wanted me to marry him. Said he was on his way to Australia – that you were fixing it up for him. Said we could begin a new life there, free of the IRA.’

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘No thanks. I had my own life to live, like. I told him he’d get over me in time and find someone better. When that didn’t work, I reminded him th
at I did this for a livin’ and now know nothing else. He left with tears in his eyes.’

  ‘Does he know we put you in his path?’

  ‘Sure he hasn’t a clue.’

  ‘We’re lifting him out a week from now – all the way to Sydney via Bangkok, with a new identity and a healthy pension. Perhaps you should have said yes.’

  ‘I’d have to be skint to consider that. Maybe in my old age.’

  ‘A long time to go yet,’ Cranfield said.

  It did not, however, take long to reach the Europa Hotel. Leaving East Bridge Street, the taxi was soon passing the back of the imposing City Hall and its lovely gardens. Again, Cranfield was struck with how attractive the centre of Belfast would be were it not for the high steel fences and Army checkpoints that blocked off the main shopping precincts.

  To most of the English, Belfast was a dreadful place of slums and bricked-up houses, but these were in the minority and the city was actually very appealing, with its stately Victorian architecture, the pastoral River Lagan, numerous parks and surrounding mountains, green hills and farmlands. If Belfast was sometimes not a pretty sight, it had been scarred by the very people laying claim to it.

  Even as Cranfield was dwelling on this truth, the car turned off Howard Street, down Brunswick, then made a double right through Amelia and into Great Victoria Street. The Europa Hotel was almost immediately on the left, facing the pub where Cranfield had met his Protestant tout, Norman Reid.

  The taxi pulled up in front of the security huts by the electronically controlled gates of the forecourt. Cranfield and Margaret climbed out. When Cranfield had paid the driver and picked up Margaret’s bag, they entered the front door of the security hut. As he checked the contents of Margaret’s bag, the private security guard asked her why she was bringing it into the hotel.

  ‘I’ve just arrived from Dublin,’ she told him, ‘but me and my fiance’ – she grinned at Cranfield – ‘are staying here for the afternoon. You understand, Mister?’

  The security guard didn’t smile. Instead, he zipped up the bag, then briskly, efficiently frisked Cranfield. A security woman did the same to Margaret, then they were waved through the inner door of the hut, out into the courtyard with its well-guarded, wire-fenced car park.

  ‘There’s nothing like this in Dublin,’ Margaret said, shaking her head in amazement. ‘Belfast’s a whole other world.’

  ‘Would you like a drink first?’ Cranfield asked as they entered the lobby of the hotel.

  ‘No. I only have a couple of hours to spare. Let’s have drinks in the room. Have you signed in already?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What a bright wee boy you are!’

  Cranfield collected the key, ordered a bottle of dry white wine to be sent up, waved the bellboy away, and led Margaret into the elevator, then along to their room. Once inside, he went to the window and glanced down on Great Victoria Street, with the Crown Liquor Saloon directly across the road.

  An armoured pig had just stopped to let the soldiers check a parked car. If they couldn’t locate the owner, or if the car was locked, they would assume there was a bomb planted in it and call the Sappers to blow it up. In the event, even as Cranfield was looking down, a harassed businessman rushed out of the Crown and started talking frantically to the soldiers, explaining why the car was parked there. Cranfield glanced left and right along the road, instinctively looking for trouble, then, feeling foolish, turned back to the room.

  Margaret was sitting on the edge of the bed and kicking off her high heels.

  ‘So what are you doing back in Belfast?’ Cranfield asked.

  ‘My mother’s dyin’,’ she replied, ‘so I’ve come to stay until it’s all over.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘You don’t give a damn and neither do I. I can’t stand the old cow. She’s made my life miserable.’

  ‘Still, she’s dying.’

  ‘Ach, we all go sometime.’

  ‘You’re just here until it’s over?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How long do you think it’ll be?’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s the cancer. It could take days or weeks. Sure there’s no way of knowin’.’

  ‘Where do you plan staying?’

  ‘In the family house in Conway Street, where I was born and grew up.’

  ‘That’s off the Falls, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye. One of the places hit hardest when the Troubles began back in sixty-nine.’

  ‘Is it near where O’Leary lives?’

  ‘A couple of streets away.’

  ‘You might bump into him.’

  ‘When did you say he’s leavin’?’

  ‘A week today.’

  ‘I’ll avoid him for as long as I can. If I see him, I’ll say I’m here because of my mum. That’s one truth that should work, since Irishmen, if they don’t respect other women, have a fearful respect for their mothers.’

  The bell on the door rang. When Cranfield asked who it was, a voice said: ‘Room Service.’ The young man who came in was carrying a tray containing a bottle of chilled white wine and two glasses. Cranfield tipped him handsomely, then walked behind him back across the room and locked the door when he left.

  He turned back to Margaret, who had taken off her coat, as well as her shoes, and was unbuttoning her dress down the front.

  ‘Do you enjoy this?’ she asked him as he removed his coat and tie, revealing the holstered Browning beneath. ‘Fucking the woman that poor bastard thinks he loves?’

  ‘I’ll admit, it amuses me,’ Cranfield replied.

  ‘You think he’s a poor dumb paddy. Is that it?’

  ‘There’s a lot of them about.’

  ‘So says the high and mighty, over-educated Englishman. Here to protect the Irish from themselves.’

  ‘With the help of the Irish, don’t forget. At least the Irish like you. What a strange lot you are.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about the Irish,’ Margaret told him. ‘Coming over here to fight your colonial war, you see nothing but bottle-throwing Fenians, ferocious housewives in curlers and kids who’ve known nothing but the violence you helped to create. I was born and raised here and what I see is what you English are destroying. This is a lively, cultured city of the kind that could put most English towns to shame – but you think of it exactly as the Protestant invaders did when they sailed up the Lagan to take over – as a place filled with simple-minded bog-men who can’t count without using their fingers. Well, it isn’t. It’s a place of imagination, which is what you pragmatic English don’t understand. Fuck me, Cranfield, but don’t try to fuck with me, because I won’t play that game. Now take what you paid for.’

  Cranfield had his way with her, enjoying it more because of her anger, feeling, as he strained up her body, that he was fighting another war. It was something he needed, the thrill of conflict, a sense of danger, and he found it in his dealings with this woman who whored for a living and, as a lucrative sideline, risked her life by seducing men in the IRA in order to set them up as patsies for British intelligence, as she had done with O’Leary.

  She did it for money, but also out of vengeance, because, as she had told him, she didn’t have too much time for men in general, let alone the terrorists or so-called freedom fighters on either side. She could do it, she’d told Cranfield, because she despised all such men. Thus she rendered them faceless.

  When Cranfield had asked if she included him in that, she confirmed that she did. This revelation only increased his curiosity and sexual excitement.

  Now, when he had finished and rolled off her sweat-slicked body, he asked what had made her hate men so much and, in particular, his own kind – those who lived and fought in the killing grounds of what had once been her home.

  ‘If you despise men like me so much,’ he said, ‘why do you then betray your own? What made you turn and work for us? It can’t just be the money.’

  Still naked, she turned away to l
ight a cigarette. When he passed her a glass of chilled white wine, she blew smoke in his face.

  ‘When the Troubles first flared up in the Bogside, I was only eighteen and didn’t have a clue what was going on. The Prods came stormin’ down our street, throwing Molotov cocktails and swingin’ wooden stakes with nails embedded in them. They smashed heads and windows, set houses on fire, and drove most of my neighbours from their homes – so I wasn’t in love with them. Then the British Army arrived. It was like Armageddon. They came in to separate the Catholics from the Prods, but instead they made enemies of both. The Falls became a war zone.’

  She inhaled, blew another cloud of smoke, then sipped her wine.

  ‘I was thick as two planks,’ she said. ‘Hardly knew my own name. Thinkin’ that some of the British soldiers were lovely, I fancied that one would fall for me and take me out of this place. I wasn’t the only one, believe me. A lot of us were like that. We’d throw stones during the day and fraternize with them at night, when they were wearin’ their civvies. Of course that was my downfall.’

  She rolled over and swung her legs out of the sheets, to sit on the edge of the bed. The sight of her took Cranfield’s breath away, but he knew enough to keep his hands off her now.

  ‘Once the Army settled in,’ she continued, sounding faraway, ‘the Catholic hard men came out of the woodwork and took over the streets. They also took over our lives, spyin’ on us, demandin’ protection money and punishin’ those seen to go against them – with beatings, kneecappings and executions. At first it was mostly men who were victims, but soon enough they got around to the women. Men always do, don’t they?’

  She inhaled deeply, blew a cloud of smoke, then stubbed out her half-finished cigarette. Shuddering, she had another drink of wine, then placed the glass on her bare thigh.

  ‘Me and my girlfriend, Peggy – she was only seventeen – were caught drinkin’ with some Brits in a pub at the lower end of Grosvenor Street, in what we innocently thought was neutral territory. The two soldiers, sweet lads, were in civvies, but that only made matters worse. They were badly beaten, dragged out of the pub, then had their throats cut with a butcher’s knife. I know this because me and Peggy were dragged out of the pub and forced to look at their dead, bloody bodies. Then we were beaten up as well and sent home black and blue.’