‘It’s a bad place this for strangers these days, Harry. It would be rather worse if the boyos find your story isn’t quite so pat as it should be. If they find you’re rather more of a handful than they took you for, then it could be a very bad place. We’re not all stupid here, you know. I’m not stupid. It didn’t take the world to put eight and eight together after Saturday night, or ten and ten, or whatever you thought too much for an “eejit” Mick girl who’s an easy lay. It wasn’t much I said to you. Just a little bit of chat. But there’s half the British army round the wee girl’s house for Sunday lunch. What did they find to talk to her about? God knows. Do you know, Harry? It was enough for the poor wee bitch to hang herself, God rest her. I mean, you weren’t exactly covering your tracks, were you, Harry?’
The eyes that drove into him were still bright and relaxed, looking for his reaction. As he listened she grew in strength and boldness. She would close for the kill. She would make the point. Sure of her ground, she began to goad him.
‘There had to be something odd about you. Obvious. No family. But you come right back into the centre of Belfast. But you’ve no friends. No-one knows you. People might have gone to a quiet place on the outskirts if they just wanted to come back and work. You’ve not come to fight, not for the Provos. They don’t go to war from a guest house. The voice worried me, till Theresa died. I thought about it and worked it out then. The accent. It’s good now. Very polished. You’re quite Belfast, but you didn’t use to be. So I don’t reckon your chances, Harry, not when the Provos get a hold of you. There is some who can talk their way out of it, but I don’t reckon you’ve a chance. Not unless you run.’
Harry knew he should kill her. He looked fascinated at the soft skin, and the delicate line that searched down on either side of the little mound in her throat, saw the suspicion of a vein beneath the gentle surface. But there was no fear there, no terror in her face, no expectation of death.
They’d chosen Harry as a hard man, as a professional, able to do what was necessary, to go to the limits for his own survival. He could kill a man either in heat or from cold logic, and if the man’s eyes betrayed his fear that would make it easier, remove the complications.
The endless strands of black hair were playing across her face, taken past her eyes, encircling her mouth… and the warmth of her body close to him…
There had not been women who had to die in Aden. He was now in an area beyond his experience. Harry had heard it said once that to kill in close combat you had to act instinctively, there were no second chances, the will to cause death evaporates quickly, and does not come again except to the psychopath.
His hands were numbed and useless in the big gloves, and the moment had passed. He looked out on to the moorlands where the spears of sunlight played down from the cloud gaps. He had hesitated, and that would be enough. The buzzard still hovered high above him, and she was still talking.
She was tall, but not strong, he thought. She wouldn’t be able to fight him off. He could kill her now. While she yapped on. It would be a long time before they found her. Could be the spring. She’d struggle a bit but she had no chance. But she knew he wouldn’t. He could see that. There was no fear in her. A moment had come earlier when he might have put his hands to her. It was gone now.
‘If I went to the bookies more often,’ she went on, ‘I’d say you were a real slow horse. I’d say not to put any money on you reaching the finish. I mean it, Harry. I’m not just trying to frighten you, or anything daft. That’s the way it is. If I was in your shoes I’d be carrying spare knickers in my pocket. Well, don’t just sit there. Say something, Harry.’
‘There’s not much to say, is there? What would you like to hear me say? If you go off to Portadown and see people there, they’ll tell you who I am. Yes, I’ve been away a long time. That’s why the accent was strange. I’m acclimatized. The girl — I can’t explain that. How could I? I’ve no idea about it.’
He could not have explained why he had gone back on the resolution he’d made so few minutes earlier not to get involved in a charade of deception. There was no conviction, no belief, and he communicated it to the girl.
‘Balls,’ she said. She smiled at him and turned away to put her head back into the roughness of his coat. ‘That won’t do, Harry. I don’t believe you, neither do you. You’re not a good enough liar. Whoever recruited you, and for whatever, did a poor job there.’
‘Let it go, then. Forget it, drop it.’ Pathetic. Was that all he had to say to the girl?
‘Who are you, Harry? What did you come here for? When you touted on young Theresa it was after I mentioned the man that did the killing in London. Is that why you’re here? You’re not just run-of-the-mill intelligence. There’s more than that, I hope. I’d want to think my feller was a wee bit special. What’s the handle? The Man who Tracked the Most Wanted Man in Britain?’ She snorted with amusement.
‘But seriously, Harry, is that what you are? A little bit special? The Danby killing?’
She gave him time now. He was not ready. As an afterthought she said, ‘You don’t have to worry, you know. I won’t split on you or anything like that. It’s the national characteristic… the Ulster Catholics, we don’t inform. But they don’t take well to spies here, Harry. If they find you, God help you. And you’ll need him.’
Harry started to move.
‘There’s not very much to say. What do you expect me to say? Confess, dramatic revelations? Shout you down? Walk away and leave you? Strangle you? What the hell do you want me to say?’
He got up out of the ditch and moved back towards the summit of the hill, where the wind took him and fought him, coming in crude rushes that caused him to hesitate and sometimes give ground. The rain had intensified while they had been in the ditch and now it lashed across his body. He looked only at his feet, head hunched forward, with his anorak hood up as he stumbled across the gorse and the heather, slipping and falling because he would not give the attention to the ground in front of him. He’d gone a hundred and fifty yards from her when she caught him and thrust her arm into his. They went together down the hill to the car, hurrying along the worn-out shape of the path.
They ran the last few yards to the car. She stood shaking by the passenger door as he looked for the keys. It was raining hard now and once they were inside he switched on the heater. The water ran down the windows in wide streams, and they were as cocooned and private as they had been on the hill.
‘What are you going to do if you find him?’ she said.
‘Are we serious now, or sparring still?’
‘Serious now. Really serious. What will you do?’
‘I’ll kill him. Take him out. He’s not for capturing. We pretend he is, and they mount the thing on that assumption. But he’s dead if we get close enough to him.’
‘Just like that.’
‘Not just like that. I’ve got to find him first. I thought we had him after the dance. It hasn’t moved from there. Up a bit of a blind alley now. Perhaps that’s just talk about killing him. It should happen that way, but likely it won’t. He’ll be picked up, and it’ll have sod-all to do with me.’
‘Is that what you came for? Because a man kills a politico in England, then they send for you, and you come over here?’
‘That’s what I came for.’
‘There’s a thousand and more have died here since it all started. And you come because of one of them. He was… wait for it, I’m working it out… yes, he was a tenth of one per cent of all the people that have died here. That’s not a bad statistic, is it? A tenth of a per cent. He wasn’t mourned here, you know. No-one gave a damn. Pompous bugger. Always on the box telling us how well he was doing flushing out the gunmen from off our backs. Why was he so special? They didn’t send the big team over when they shot the Senator in Strabane, or the UDR man who had all the land down the road in Derry. So why have you come?’