be caught. And then, into all this, she comes.
The birds are busy at this hour: pigeons, crows, and gulls scavenge for scraps on the roads and pavements, and their hungry cries cut through the quiet. The air is mild. The sky above is showing grey, but it is high enough to offer hope.
I arrive at the engineering works, where all is quiet. The security guard in the small redbrick building by the entrance barely looks up from his novel as I pass through the pedestrian gate. I give a salute which the guard returns with a wave. At least once every month I make an exceptionally early arrival at the works, and at least once every month I stay exceptionally late. Familiarity as a disguise, the Chief has taught me, is as deadly as the greatest camouflage, and as I walk through the entrance and away from the guard I am already thinking of the gun.
I began with a .303. It was an old gun â an old Lee Enfield. It needed a lot of oiling and looking after, but it shot straight. Delaney kept me on that gun for three years. Then, one at a time, he brought me through the Armalite, the Kalashnikov, and the Heckler & Koch. I spent a year on each, and I have taken them all into action. I keep a Glock 17 as well, but it is a different gun for a different kind of action. It was only a year ago when, at last, I got what I was waiting for.
I move on between the tall buildings of the works, and I enter the machine workshop through double doors. The building is wide and long, and its high walls support a multi-pitched roof. Around me are relics of a former purpose: overhead are pulleys and apparatus for belt-driven machinery, and rail-tracks are buried in the floor. I cross the workshop, passing the time-clock near the clerkâs office. I am careful not to punch in or out other than standard hours. I walk to the south-east corner, where a large, separate unit is contained behind high, block walls that offer no windows to the rest of the machine shop. This former store for components is now the carpentry workshop â âCarpentry Cornerâ, the men of the factory call it. I take a set of keys from the pocket of the Dunn & Co, and I open the lock of the steel door. I enter the workshop, trigger the switch for the low lights over the workbenches, and relock the door behind me. I settle at my workstation.
Only two workers are employed in the carpentry workshop â Jack Quigley and me. Jack is in his fifties, and has worked here for thirty years. He is a gentle soul. Jack isnât a carpenter at all; he trained as a fitter, and worked across the yard in the assembly plant. But fifteen years ago the carpenter died and the position needed filling. Jack enjoyed woodwork as a hobby, and built bird tables and dog kennels in his back shed at home. This was common knowledge â Jack supplied dog kennels to half of Dundalk. So when the vacancy arose, Jack was moved. Jack refers to it as the day of his great promotion, though technically that isnât so. Carpentry is incidental to the product of the engineering works â the demand for woodwork is restricted to odd jobs, and the making of frames and packing cases for shipping. Much of our labour in the workshop involves doing odd-jobs and making nixers for management and fellow workers. Mostly, we remain unbothered. It is perfect.
With just the two of us employed in the large workshop, each has an expansive space. I built my own in the first six months of my first year, and I took the whole south wall. I built a new dry-wall against the whitewashed brick, and on this I created shelves, racks, and tool-boards. Against this wall I built a large, square table, and two heavy benches. It took me six months. In the second six months I built my tool-chest. In fact, I built two, making one as a gift for Jack. The tool-chests are impressive pieces of work â over one metre in length, and half-a-metre high and wide. I modified an American design Iâd found in a textbook, making the
The birds are busy at this hour: pigeons, crows, and gulls scavenge for scraps on the roads and pavements, and their hungry cries cut through the quiet. The air is mild. The sky above is showing grey, but it is high enough to offer hope.
I arrive at the engineering works, where all is quiet. The security guard in the small redbrick building by the entrance barely looks up from his novel as I pass through the pedestrian gate. I give a salute which the guard returns with a wave. At least once every month I make an exceptionally early arrival at the works, and at least once every month I stay exceptionally late. Familiarity as a disguise, the Chief has taught me, is as deadly as the greatest camouflage, and as I walk through the entrance and away from the guard I am already thinking of the gun.
I began with a .303. It was an old gun â an old Lee Enfield. It needed a lot of oiling and looking after, but it shot straight. Delaney kept me on that gun for three years. Then, one at a time, he brought me through the Armalite, the Kalashnikov, and the Heckler & Koch. I spent a year on each, and I have taken them all into action. I keep a Glock 17 as well, but it is a different gun for a different kind of action. It was only a year ago when, at last, I got what I was waiting for.
I move on between the tall buildings of the works, and I enter the machine workshop through double doors. The building is wide and long, and its high walls support a multi-pitched roof. Around me are relics of a former purpose: overhead are pulleys and apparatus for belt-driven machinery, and rail-tracks are buried in the floor. I cross the workshop, passing the time-clock near the clerkâs office. I am careful not to punch in or out other than standard hours. I walk to the south-east corner, where a large, separate unit is contained behind high, block walls that offer no windows to the rest of the machine shop. This former store for components is now the carpentry workshop â âCarpentry Cornerâ, the men of the factory call it. I take a set of keys from the pocket of the Dunn & Co, and I open the lock of the steel door. I enter the workshop, trigger the switch for the low lights over the workbenches, and relock the door behind me. I settle at my workstation.
Only two workers are employed in the carpentry workshop â Jack Quigley and me. Jack is in his fifties, and has worked here for thirty years. He is a gentle soul. Jack isnât a carpenter at all; he trained as a fitter, and worked across the yard in the assembly plant. But fifteen years ago the carpenter died and the position needed filling. Jack enjoyed woodwork as a hobby, and built bird tables and dog kennels in his back shed at home. This was common knowledge â Jack supplied dog kennels to half of Dundalk. So when the vacancy arose, Jack was moved. Jack refers to it as the day of his great promotion, though technically that isnât so. Carpentry is incidental to the product of the engineering works â the demand for woodwork is restricted to odd jobs, and the making of frames and packing cases for shipping. Much of our labour in the workshop involves doing odd-jobs and making nixers for management and fellow workers. Mostly, we remain unbothered. It is perfect.
With just the two of us employed in the large workshop, each has an expansive space. I built my own in the first six months of my first year, and I took the whole south wall. I built a new dry-wall against the whitewashed brick, and on this I created shelves, racks, and tool-boards. Against this wall I built a large, square table, and two heavy benches. It took me six months. In the second six months I built my tool-chest. In fact, I built two, making one as a gift for Jack. The tool-chests are impressive pieces of work â over one metre in length, and half-a-metre high and wide. I modified an American design Iâd found in a textbook, making the
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