Open Writing

Doors didn't open easily for me that night. Even Tiger's stayed at one-eye width for a good half minute before he decided to let me in.

I was glad to get in, too. Quarry Valley was a big black grave in the hot moonless night, and Tiger's billet - for that's what it was — was clean, masculine, functional.

We drank tea from his tin mugs and he held up his hand to stop me telling him what had happened. He'd heard Brassington panicking about a commotion in Hamburg. He knew Tidy had been sent. That was enough.
He got out his tobacco tin and rolled himself a fag that was thinner than a match, and nipped it between his lips.

Then, yet again, he began to tell me what a good bloke Kentish was. He kept going, overriding my resistance.

'Bright too,' he said, cupping the cigarette in his shovel hand. 'He used to ask me quite a lot about Northern Ireland. He said it was a very interesting study in the transfer of power.'

'Interesting? Who for, except undertakers, glaziers and cartridge manufacturers?'

His bull terrier was jammed up close against his feet. His stick was over the back of his chair.

'No, I've had a lot of time to think about it and there's a lot in what he says. He reckons there's a natural chain of command. Let's see now - the powerful employ the clever and the clever employ the brutal. In Northern Ireland, the powerful had collapsed, and he said that for some strange reason the clever had failed to fill the vacuum. The country had been taken over by the brutal - his words, not mine.'

'Including people like us.'

'I suppose so.'

'But we were brutal and right.'

'Do you think he's right?'

Tiger swung himself up, pivoted around the back of his chair and threw two more tea-bags into our mugs.

'Yes,' I said, surprised at finding myself agreeing with Kentish. 'Look what's happened round here. The old landowners, like Danby, lose their grip, and the clever — wolves like Kentish and Brassington and Walsh — move in. And they employ the brutal - Tidy, and the bike boys.'

Tiger frowned. 'I hadn't thought of it like that,' he said. 'But the theory works here just the same as over there. When you think about it like that, it's nothing to do with politics or religion.'

'It's always the same fight. For who's boss, that's all.'

He stared down into his tea, then spent a minute trying to relight his cigarette.

'He was always keen to talk Belfast, was Kentish,' he went on again. 'He even wanted some of the names of the people.'

'Which people?'

'Oh, the other lot. The Dublin boys. You know, the decision-makers.'

We had them all at our briefings. Names, titles, photographs. Just in case they popped up in the sights some day.

'Why?'

'Dunno. Maybe he liked to spot their names in the papers. You know, like some people do.'

I let the moon-faced alarm clock on the table tick noisily on for a while. Then, as gently as I could, I asked him if he missed women. It was a sensitive area all right. But I felt, sitting there so late over our mugs of tea, that somehow we'd got back a little of our old intimacy. I thought he might want to talk about it.

There was another reason: it was the only way I could think of of steering him round to Striker's girl.

He laid his head back and his brown eyes looked up at the plastic-tiled ceiling and beyond.

'It's funny really,' he said, after thinking for a while. 'Lust is a bit like childhood. Once it's gone you can't remember what it was like. I look at women now -women who I know are really gorgeous, real crackers - and I can't remember what it was all about.'

I didn't think he'd be quite so open about it.

'Never mind, it only gets you into a lot of trouble,' I said.

He shook his head. 'It's not the sex I miss. Like I say, I can't think what that was like and why I wanted it so much. But I do miss the affection. You know, the animal warmth. Holding someone else. It's a bloody funny thing but there's no way you can get to hold a woman unless you give her a roll. You can't get affection all by itself. So that just leaves me and old Pero here.'

He stirred the dog with his foot. It gave a contented grunt and pushed closer up to him. Pretty much like a woman really.

'How's the nine-milli?'

I took it out and handed it to him. He weighed it in his hand, mock-aimed, checked the mag and snapped it back.

'Not jam-packed,' he said, approvingly. 'You're learning, little Joe. Is it better without the grips?'

'Yeah. I can wrap round it more. Better control. What about your old theory then, Tiger? Are guns and women the same?'

Sorrowfully, he replaced it on the table. He nodded.

'Course they are,' he said. 'It's not the mechanics of them. It's the way they set off all the old danger signals inside you. If you don't get jungle drums in your belly, from women or guns, you might as well not bother.'

That was the moment.

'What about Striker? Was he getting the jungle drums for Fiona? I want to see her. Tell me where she is.'

He pushed the gun across the table to me and fixed me with his doe eyes.
'Put that away — and don't try sneaking up on me like that when we're talking — I don't know, Joe. There was talk of him having a judy but she was from away. That's all I know. Come on, I'm chucking you out now.'

In the doorway we paused and looked out into the black. We'd have made a couple of perfect targets if anyone out there was interested.

'Talking of judies, that one of yours is a five-star job all right. I was trying to think what it was about her, then it suddenly struck me. It's the way she walks around. She treads on the earth as though it's something a servant threw down to save her shoes. Know what I mean?'

'I know, Tiger.'

I went then, while the comradeship was still warm between us.
When I got in the car he called out after me.

'Sullivan. That was one of the names I gave Kentish. One of the big Dublin boys, Liam Sullivan.'

But that didn't get me any nearer Fiona.