Читать книгу Once A Pilgrim - James Deegan - Страница 26

14.

A LITTLE OVER A MILE due west, the Paras and their RUC attachment had plotted up in Clonard Street.

But whatever it was that had forced them to stay out later than expected, it hadn’t reached the Clonards.

They’d been in place for approximately fifteen minutes, but the area was as quiet as the grave.

So far they’d only had to deal with five or six cars.

Some had turned into Clonard Street and then into Odessa, blatantly avoiding the checkpoint, and, as he and John Carr stood beside the open door of Parry’s vehicle, a red Renault Trafic van did just that.

‘Doesn’t necessarily mean fuck all,’ said the corporal, out of the side of his mouth, from the vehicle commander’s seat. ‘All sorts of reasons people don’t want to get fucked about, boss. Might just want to get home quicker.’

Not for the first time that day, de Vere reflected on an unfortunate fact about the work they were doing.

Yes, they were making life harder for bad men. But they were making life harder for good men, too.

‘Not too static, boss,’ said Carr, and wandered off to the side of the road.

Stamping his feet in his boots to get some blood back into them, de Vere crossed to the opposite pavement, and took a moment to look around himself. He could just about make out his men in various doorways up and down the street, rifles at the ready, covering the VCP and the approaches. The dark made him uneasy: even now, a man might be hidden in some shadow with an Armalite into his shoulder.

But he knew that he was going to have to live with it.

Back in the middle of the road, the two RUC officers were leaning against their vehicle, their weapons held very casually, smoking.

Carr wandered over and nodded in the direction of the coppers.

‘They’ll probably get it if it’s coming, boss,’ he said, quietly. ‘Look at that one tabbing away. The end of his fag’s standing out like a bulldog’s bollocks, right in the middle of his swede. Plus their drills are shit. Standing out in the open, not moving around.’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose you cannae blame them, in a way. Same shit, day in, day out, year after year. Maybe anyone’d get complacent. Got to take your hat off to them, really. When they go home at night this disnae stop.’

Carr walked on, and de Vere watched the RUC men. It was true: the tips of their cigarettes were like bright red bullseyes in the dark street. He knew that many of the PIRA players regarded the local police as the true, traitorous enemy, the Brits being not much more than an inconvenience who would fuck off once the local opposition was scattered and broken.

Rather them than me, he thought, and immediately felt ashamed of himself.

Shaking that off, he stifled a yawn. He ached for the comfort, if you could call it that, of his room in Whiterock.

A hot shower, something to eat. His bed.

Maybe they’d finish before too long?

It was very quiet. He hoped so.

Not that it had been all that bad a day. The nervousness he’d felt that morning was gone.

Carr had been right: it was getting easier.

Good man, Carr.

The sort of man the British Army lived and died on.