Pray for Us Sinners by Patrick Taylor

Author:Patrick Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

THIRTY-FOUR

SATURDAY, MARCH 30

Davy closed his front door. He’d time yet before Jimmy came and he’d nothing in the house to offer him. It would be good to see Jim. He hadn’t been over since the pair of them had built that fucking mine. He usually popped in on Saturday, but Davy had been otherwise engaged last Saturday—in a turf pile.

And apart from his trip to Myrtlefield Park on Tuesday, he had barely spoken to another soul since. This Che Guevara “cell” business was good for security, but sometimes Davy missed being able to have a bit of a yarn with other men in the battalion. Like the old days.

Four doors down from his house he limped past Mrs. Cahill as she knelt scrubbing her sandstone step, grey sudsy water dripping across the pavement and into the gutter.

“’Morning, Mr. McCutcheon.”

“’Morning.”

Farther along Conway Street an Inglis bread van surrounded by a knot of housewives was parked beside a lamppost. Huey the driver—known here in the Falls as Shooey—on his weekly round. He’d stopped his vehicle away from the curb to avoid the shards of broken glass from the shattered light above. He’d be selling pan loaves, soda farls, potato cakes, Veda bread, barmbrack. Jim always liked a bit of barmbrack.

Davy walked along the pavement, nodding to a group of five men, one standing with a leg crooked against a red-brick wall, the rest gathered round, smoking, talking, wasting time and their unemployed lives. Young Donal Donnelly, whose dad was in Long Kesh on a possession-of-firearms conviction, hung about at the fringe of the group. Davy heard him trying to cadge a fag. Crooked Leg told Donal to bugger off.

Two boys of five or six ran one after the other, the pursuer screaming in his bird’s voice, “Come back here, you wee shite. I’ll fucking kill you.” He collided with a girl jumping over a skipping rope chanting, “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…” They went down in a tangle of skinned knees, tearing her tartan skirt. She started to howl.

Davy tried to block out the image of another little girl howling. He’d promised Sean four days ago, so he’d better forget about the Hanrahans and concentrate on the next job. Davy hoped Jim might have some ideas about Semtex. Shaped charges? They might as well ask him to build a fucking spaceship.

The steeple of the chapel at the far end of the terrace cast its shadow over the narrow street, and Davy felt a chill as he moved from the sunlight into the shade. He glimpsed a Saracen rumbling along the Falls Road, past the mouth of Conway Street. Two Paras in their red berets stood in the open tailgate, quartering with SLRs. The back of the bread van was open. He joined two women and waited his turn, eavesdropping.

“He never did! The dirty skitter.”

“My husband? He did so. A white pan loaf please, Shooey.”

“My God. He should be put away. That’s diabolic, so it is.”

“Thanks, Shooey. I’ll say so.”

They walked

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