Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  Ingle shook his head. Nothing there, he thought. Just another lunatic from West Belfast auditioning for the Clint Eastwood role. But what was interesting was the witness who hadn’t come forward. Two or three people on the street had talked about a woman in a white coat. Youngish girl, black curly hair. She’d been by the car when the firing started. Indeed, one witness said she was about to get inside the fucking thing. Knew the driver. Bloke had waved to her. Just before half his head blew away. Fine. Good lead. Maybe the girl was even the pick-up. But where on earth had she gone?

  Ingle didn’t know, and in one sense it wasn’t his business to find out. The RUC, the local force, were charged with the investigation. They’d do the necessary. They’d do the door-to-doors, and take the car to pieces, and re-examine the recent surveillance analyses, looking for patterns, and repeats, and re-entries, trying to put a name, or some shred of motivation behind the man in the white Ford. They’d be in charge of the job, and the investigation would develop at a pace of their choosing.

  But there was another matter that bothered Ingle, and he was beginning to wonder whether the RUC knew about it. Since his meeting with Connolly, Ingle had looked yet again at the Qualitech job. He’d acquired the files from London, and the closer he examined the evidence, the more he was convinced that the job – the threat – had been totally synthetic. A lookalike IRA bomb, plausibly hidden, dramatically revealed, headlines everywhere, much credit. The fact that the IRA themselves had disowned the device Ingle had at first discounted. But now, he’d begun to have second thoughts. The Provos, after all, had a consistent – if somewhat chilling – reputation for putting the record straight. Post facto, you could trust their communiqués. If it was their bomb, they generally said so, no matter how ghastly the consequences. If it wasn’t theirs, then they simply said nothing. On this occasion, though, two unusual things had happened. Firstly, they’d actually denied that it had anything to do with them. Secondly, the bomb itself hadn’t gone off. The Prime Minister had thus been granted a stay of execution. And those around her were duly grateful.

  To Ingle, that only had one explanation. Whoever had planted the bomb had never intended the thing to ever go off. On the contrary, it was planted with the sole purpose of generating useful credit, of putting the frighteners on Downing Street, and perhaps obtaining some extra leverage. Look, they would have said. Look what we’ve found. Look how close you’ve come to getting killed. Look how dangerous these men can be. And look at how good our sources must be if we – and we alone – have saved your precious life.

  We? Ingle leaned back in the chair and pushed the telex away for a moment. The Qualitech job had been broken by Nineteenth. They’d found it. They’d taken the credit. And a week or so later, when the shit hit the fan in Dublin, it was fucking obvious why. They’d wanted yet another extension to their licence. Not just a trip across the border. A nut job in some cowshed or other, or a stake-out in some hedge. But the real thing, off in the motors, all tooled up, down to the home of the black stuff for a spot of real mischief. That was something he admired, an appetite for real risks, and talking to the man Miller on the phone in the middle of the night – far too pissed for his own good – he’d tried to pop a bob or two in their collection box, warning him to get his act together before the suits did it for him.

  Miller, of course, had said nothing either way, but then he wouldn’t. The boys from Nineteenth had long ago burned their bridges to the rest of the intelligence community. They trusted nobody. They were just too smart and too paranoid for their own good, and once they had faith in the Dublin address, once they’d OKed the source, they’d never stoop to cross-checks. For one thing, consultation might have blown their operation. Even worse, it might mean having to share the glory – and these boys were far too greedy for that.

  Ingle smiled, staring at the bulletin board across the room. Greed. Glory. That, in a sense, said it all. Nineteenth had become an army within an army. Unaccountable. Out of control. And now, here, in this city, things were going horribly wrong for them. That’s why it had made sense to confide his early suspicions about Qualitech to London. And that’s why he now had to do something about the girl in the white coat.

  He pulled the Paddington Green telex towards him again. It was black and white. The gun that had killed Leeson, killed Charlie McGrew. The common link was Connolly. Ingle, far too down to earth to ignore mundane factors like coincidence, reached for his mac. The boy was staying up in Andersonstown. He had the address. It was time for a chat.

  Half an hour later, Ingle stepped out of his pool car and tapped on the door of Mairead’s house. The lights were off downstairs, and when he opened the letter box and peered through, he couldn’t hear the telly. He knocked again, but nothing happened. He stepped across the tiny apron of worn turf and began to pick his way round the side of the house when he noticed a roll of paper stuffed in a milk bottle. He bent down and picked it up. Under the street lamp on the pavement, it read, “No more milk, thanks. Thanks for everything. Cheque in the post.”

  Ingle frowned, and looked at the house again. It was obviously empty. Mairead, and her children, and maybe Connolly, had gone. He stepped next door and rang the bell. A dog barked. A door opened inside. Then another. He heard voices, and finally the front door opened and a woman of about fifty peered out. Her hair was in curlers. She was wearing slippers. It had just begun to rain.

  Ingle introduced himself as a friend of Derek’s next door. He’d come over from England. Derek had promised him a bed. Where was he? The woman shook her head.

  “Gone,” she said.

  “Gone where?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  The woman peered at him some more, weighing him up, the long hair, the flat white face. Finally, she invited him in, out of the rain, long enough to explain that Mairead had gone off, the kids too, with a van full of furniture, and not so much as a goodbye. The van had come early, big thing, grey. There’d been men in the van, and they’d carried stuff out of the house, and the whole family had been away before even the milkman called. Speaking personally, she’d been insulted. She’d told the rest of the street not to bother with the woman. Nor the milkman, either. Easy come, easy go, she’d said.

  Now, to Ingle, she said it again. No offence, mind, but taking up with the English boy when those friends of her husband’s had been so good to her. Is that any way for a girl to carry on? On an estate like this? Is it? Ingle, stepping back into the rain, said it wasn’t. One foot still in the door, he mentioned his English friend.

  “Derek?” he said. “He go too?”

  The woman looked at him. “No,” she said, “no, he didn’t.”

  Ingle nodded, and frowned, taking his time. “This girlfriend of his …” he said, “didn’t have a white raincoat, did she?”

  The woman looked at him narrowly, knowing at once that he wasn’t a friend at all, but someone else, someone official, someone finding out things.

  “Why?” she said.

  Ingle shrugged. “Just wondered.”

  The woman looked at him for a long time. Rain began to drip down Ingle’s face. Then she nodded. “Yes,” she said shortly. “Smart thing. Brand new. He bought it for her. She wore it all the time.”

  “Who bought it for her?”

  The woman frowned at him, impatient now to end the conversation. “That so-called friend of yours.” She began to shut the door. “Derek.”

  The first thing Connolly noticed about Jude was the smell.

  He’d driven up into the mountains with Scullen and McParland, away from the coast. They’d followed the course of a river, winding higher and higher, through pockets of forest, up towards the high passes with astonishing views back towards the sea. The roads grew narrower and narrower, the surface pocked with holes, wild sheep looking down from the rocks, and even with the windows up, the car was cold without the heater. Connolly had never known that Europe could be so wild, so remote. It was a forgotten place, miles from anywhere, a place you�
��d go for silence, and the taste of the wind.

  At length, they’d come to a farmhouse in a narrow valley. The sides of the valley were steep and rocky, almost a perfect “U”, and the house was without sunshine most of the day. It was stone built, solid, with big thick walls and a newish slate roof. The woodwork around the windows had recently been repainted. There was smoke from the chimney, shredded by the wind, and a huge, slow dog, blind in one eye.

  They parked the car. Scullen got out. He wrapped his coat around him and walked straight into the house. Connolly hesitated a moment, hearing the sound of water, looking around for its source, spotting the endless streams tumbling from the mountainside, splinters of sunshine against the yellows and browns of the rocks. He shivered, wishing he had a coat. The air was cold and damp. He followed Scullen into the house. There was a small hall inside the door, flagstones, a low table. There were coats hung on pegs, and doors off the hall. Scullen was already in the room to the left. Connolly could hear his voice. He went in.

  The room was big, low ceilinged, stone walls, good quality furniture. Someone had been redecorating recently. The paintwork was new, and the curtains, too. One end of the room was dominated by an open fireplace. Beside the fireplace was a wheelchair. In the wheelchair, sat a woman. She was huddled in a blanket. Her skin was very pale. She smelled of dead meat.

  Scullen looked up, seeing Connolly. He stepped back from the fireplace, offering the simplest of introductions.

  “Derek Connolly,” he said, “Judith Little.”

  Connolly mumbled a greeting. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. Her skin was almost translucent. Forget the rest of her – the wheelchair, the blanket – and she had the face of a saint. She looked almost ethereal. She belonged in a stained-glass window, a strange luminous presence, scored for a small choir and one of the softer requiems. She smiled at him. He smiled back, slightly unnerved.

  Scullen nodded at them both and made for the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, “you’ll be staying here.” He glanced back towards the fireplace. “Company for Judith.”

  A ghost of a smile shadowed his face, and then he was gone, a tall cadaverous figure, clad in black, closing the front door. Connolly heard his footsteps outside. Then the purr of the Mercedes engine, slowly receding as it bumped away, back down towards the coast.

  Connolly circled the wheelchair, looking for warmth from the small fire. The place was freezing. He stirred the single log with his foot. Smoke curled upwards. There was a silence in the room, and Connolly suddenly realized what it was about the woman. Her body never moved. Only her head. He looked at her. She was still smiling, twin dimples, bringing her face to life.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  Connolly thought about the question for a moment or two. In all truth, he wasn’t sure. He decided to keep it simple.

  “An academic,” he said. “From Belfast.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  He looked at her again. Closer, the smell was overpowering.

  “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I am.”

  “Then you’ll know about my husband.” She paused. “And me.”

  Connolly shook his head. “No,” he said, “I know nothing. They’re strange people.”

  “They?”

  He looked at her again. The smile had gone. He shrugged.

  “We,” he said.

  There was a long silence, and as he looked around the room again, properly, taking in the rows and rows of books, and the small writing desk, and the tiny gilt icons, and the mawkish painting of the Crucifixion on the wall, Connolly realized that the house must belong to Scullen. The man fitted in here, like a piece of furniture. He was made for the place, its atmosphere of scholarship and piety, its inadequate heating, its sense of permanent chill. It was a house for an ascetic. Full of rectitude. Full of shadows.

  The woman coughed, a small dry sound, and Connolly looked round at her, expecting the usual reflex action, the hand to the mouth, but there was nothing, not a hint of movement. Then the woman began to tell him what had happened to her, the flight over, the prospect of an operation, the journey out from Dublin, then her husband abruptly gone, guns everywhere, not the whisper of an explanation. Connolly listened to her, following the story, and then he asked about the operation, what was wrong with her, and she told him about the accident, way back now, three months ago, and her paralysis, and what the doctors had said, and the dangers she faced now, here, a million miles from anywhere. There were two others in the house, she said. A woman in her forties who cooked and cleaned, and a younger man who was supposed to be medically qualified. Connolly looked up.

  “Is he?” he said.

  Jude looked at the fire. “Yes,” she said, “I think he is. But it won’t make any difference.”

  There was another silence. Then the woman began to explain about the care she needed, the two-hourly adjustments to her body, shifting the weight in the chair, the regular bowel and bladder routines, the scrupulous hygiene, the need to keep herself warm. She recited it like a list, the faintest American accent, totally objective, not a shred of self-pity or complaint, simply a page or two from some maintenance manual. The list came to an end. Connolly was appalled.

  “There’s a smell,” he said, “can you smell it?”

  She nodded. “Me,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “An ulcer. It starts as discoloration. Patches of red skin. Tiniest thing. Then it becomes a kind of sore. Then the stuff around it goes black and dies. They call that an ulcer. That’s what you can smell. The black stuff …”

  “Where is it?”

  She smiled. “I don’t really know,” she said.

  “You don’t know.”

  “No.” She paused. “He does a lot around my bum. The left buttock. That kind of area. I’ve asked him enough times, but he’s determined not to tell me. He just says it’s OK. I think he’s worried. I don’t think he knows what to do.”

  “What can he do?”

  “Not much. You just need constant nursing. Real care. It’s a tough one.”

  “So how long …” Connolly frowned, “how long will it take? To get better?”

  She looked at the fire for a moment. “I told him three months,” she said, “maybe four. With hospital care.”

  “Told who?”

  “Padraig. The man you came in with.” She paused. “He’s had some specialist here. From Dublin. He thinks he should get me into hospital. I told him not to bother.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Connolly stared at her. “So what’s going to happen?” he said. “Here? You?” He nodded vaguely at her body under the blanket. “That?”

  She thought about the question for a while. Then she looked up.

  “It’ll get worse,” she said. “It’ll get deeper, and there’ll be more dead flesh, and in the end it’ll kill me …” She paused. “It’s called gangrene. It’s pretty quick, once it really gets a hold …”

  Connolly blinked, unable to relate what she was saying to her tone of voice. What she was saying was grotesque. A bit of her was dying. Soon it would kill the rest of her. Yet she appeared totally unconcerned, just another of life’s little trials.

  “You don’t mind?” he said.

  “Not at all,” she smiled. “Apart from the smell.”

  Miller met the man from Downing Street in a small fourth-floor office in the Ministry of Defence.

  They’d agreed lunch on the phone, but a later conversation had cancelled it. Whitehall was in chaos, he’d said. The Argies were thirty hours or so from hitting the beach and the place was thick with headless chickens. At best, they might manage a sandwich. At worst, they’d have to sort the thing out by phone.

  In the event, though, the man from Downing Street found time to cross Whitehall, and toss his sandwiches and his briefcase on the desk, and accept Miller’s offer of coffee. Miller knew him as Davidson, slight, pale face, rimless glasses, younger than he looked. Amo
ngst other duties, he helped bridge the gap between the Joint Intelligence Committee, the security clearing house, and the Prime Minister’s private office. The civil servant whom Miller had previously met was the senior official responsible for the JIC. Miller had originally requested a meeting with him, but under the circumstances it had been judged impossible.

  “He’s in orbit,” Davidson explained, settling into the chair and reaching for his sandwiches. “We’ve got a war on our hands. It’s a nasty surprise.”

  Miller nodded, spooning powdered creamer into the coffees. “I bet,” he said drily.

  He stirred the coffee and passed it over the desk. Davidson glanced at his watch. “I’ve got ten minutes,” he warned, “then it’s back to the bunker.”

  Miller sipped at his own coffee, taking his time. He’d known for a couple of days that Nineteenth’s very survival was at stake. For the past month, they’d suffered defeat after defeat, a succession of disasters. First the Dublin débâcle, the failure to nail Scullen. Then the rumours about Qualitech. And finally, Charlie, a very public humiliation. Now, above all, Nineteenth needed help. Problem was, Miller had no friends to call on, no credit left. Nineteenth had elected to fight a solitary war, and now they were in danger of being wiped out. He looked up. Attack, they’d always taught him at Hereford. If in doubt, attack.

  “The Prime Minister,” he said carefully, “is in grave danger.”

  Davidson nodded. “I understand you’ve already made that point,” he said thinly, “some time ago.”

  “I meant it then,” Miller said, “and I mean it now.”

  Davidson reached for another sandwich. “Evidence?” he said.

  Miller hesitated. “They’ve been playing with us, and vice versa. Frankly, we could have done better. It happens that we didn’t. In fact we lost a man. As you know.”