Kiss the Bullet

by Catherine Deveney

She watches every flicker on his face as she talks. His tiger stained eyes watch her back, absorbing her. He says nothing.

  “He said … Pearson said … that you had been involved.”

  Still he says nothing.

  “So were you?”

  She holds her breath.

  One lie, he thinks, one small lie is all it would take.

  “Were you?”

  “That’s obviously not a question I would be advised to answer,” he says and though his voice remains unapologetic, there is sadness in it. “You must know that nobody was ever convicted for that operation.”

  “Were you there?” she repeats.

  “Yes Danni,” he says quietly, not dropping his gaze. “I was there.”

  She turns from him, the beating wings inside her stilling, the fledgling bird shot in a flurry of blood and feathers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  He does not tell her, when she turns from him, that he had argued with Pearson about Glasgow.

  “Why Scotland?” Johnny had said, his irritation obvious. Pearson always wanted to build empires. Even when it came to death.

  Pearson had eyed him with a kind of venom. “There are no limits to the fight, Johnny,” he said softly.

  “Pearson, you’re beginning to enjoy the scrap so much you’re forgetting what the fuckin’ fight’s about.”

  Johnny scraped back his chair on the linoleum and looked round at the bare walls, streaked with dirt. In the corner of the ceiling, a black ball of spider had rolled itself up, the broken strands of fine grey web draped round it. Where the hell was this place, anyway? A safe house, Pearson had said, as their car lumbered up a pitted track. There could be no pattern to cell meetings, Johnny accepted that. But he had become increasingly uneasy lately. It wouldn’t surprise him if one of these days a bullet blasted his brains out when he arrived at one of Pearson’s ‘safe’ locations.

  Across the table, Pearson never took his eyes off Johnny’s face.

  “Oh fuck off, Pearson,” Johnny said, kicking out viciously at the leg of the table as he spoke. Pearson’s attempts to intimidate him, to exert control, always riled him. The table shook on wobbly legs. Why did Pearson always want to be puppet master?

  He could feel the uneasy ripple run through the others seated at the table. Five of them, he thought. Big Joe Devine on his right, his seventeen-stone frame wedged into a too-small wooden armed chair that dug into the wall of fat beneath his checked flannel shirt. Peter MacBride, a quiet, watchful man who worked as a labourer on building sites, on his left. Pearson opposite. And wee Seamy, wide-eyed and stuck to Pearson’s side. Five of them whose lives depended on each other’s silence. Yet how many did he trust? Only MacBride.

  Devine coughed, shifting in his seat so that it creaked.

  “Oh c’mon,” MacBride said impatiently. “Let’s talk properly about this.”

  It’s freezing in here, Johnny thought in the silence that followed. He buttoned his long black coat over, re-tied his scarf round his neck.

  “Scotland isn’t what we’re about,” he said.

  “What are we about, Johnny?” Pearson said. His voice held a whisper of mockery.

  “I tell you what we’re not about. We’re not about killing innocent civilians. We’re not about taking the fight onto neutral streets. We fight the British army. We fight the police. We fight the British government.”

  It wasn’t that he was against violence. This was a legitimate war. He had been involved in IRA operations at army barracks and RUC stations and he knew what he was doing. But he always argued against operations that he felt put civilians at too great a risk. The minute you lost your regret about the necessity of violence, the minute death became just business, your soul was lost. You weren’t an IRA man, you were a thug. You were Pearson.

  A picture of his grandmother’s house in Donegal sprang into Johnny’s mind, the dark basement that harboured its secrets for a generation. Guns shipped in from America via France. Explosives. Violence was part of his story. It was part of Ireland’s story. He accepted that. As a child, when Mary Seonaid had wanted to read him fairy tales at bedtime, he had urged her to leave the book down and tell her own. The night four IRA men were sent to defend a meeting of the Catholic Working Men’s Club at a private house in Dublin. He knew every word of it. They had surrounded the house, two in the lane that ran down the back of the street, two at the front. The armoured cars of the Black and Tans had swept silently into the street shortly after.

  The night was dark, Mary Seonaid said in that low voice of hers, a voice that seemed like it had been dragged down an octave over the years by hardship. Johnny watched her face intently. The volunteers were shooting at shadows that moved from the armoured cars, she said. Sparks flew from the ground: bullets jumping from the pavements and lighting up the darkness, like shooting stars lighting a midnight sky. Johnny was enthralled.

  An adventure story it was, full of bravery and daring. The four men who took on the might of the black and tans. Only three of them survived, but four of the black and tans were shot dead and the meeting of the Catholic Working Men’s Club dispersed safely into the night. But Mary Seonaid also created tales out of the nights when ambushes of the police and army had been cancelled because civilians were in the way. It was a question of discipline.

  Johnny looked round the table.

  “Do you want to give us that talk of yours about the gentlemen of the early IRA, Johnny?” said Pearson.

  Johnny ignored him and looked at Devine.

  “One bomb over there is worth five here and we all know it,” said Devine.

  “How do the people of Glasgow fit into this? You’re probably related to half of them.”

  “Maybe that’s the point,” retorted Devine.

  “Related?” Pearson said. “If the queen visited Scotland, half of them would be out with their fuckin’ flags. They don’t give a shit what’s happening over here. People need to be taught to give a shit.”

  “What do you give a shit about, Pearson?” Johnny said.

  “What’s the target in Glasgow?” asked McBride.

  “We’re not aiming for civilian deaths,” said Pearson. “It’s a warning.”

  “Where?”

  “Just off Argyle Street.”

  “Argyle Street! How the fuck do you avoid casualties in the city’s main shopping street?” said Johnny.

  “Johnny, this has been passed by the Chief of Staff,” said Pearson evenly.

  “Did he pass last week’s warehouse job an’ all?”

  Pearson sat back, putting his hands behind his head.

  Devine and MacBride exchanged a glance.

  “What robbery?” said MacBride.

  “Quarter of a million pounds of alcohol and tobacco,” said Johnny.

  Wee Seamy laughed nervously. “Jeez,” he said, and looked at Pearson.

  “What’s your point, Johnny?” The light from the bare light bulb above Pearson’s head was shining on his bald head, glinting off his gold rings.

  “I’m just wondering what the split is. How much the IRA gets and how much you do.”

  “The finances of the unit are none of your concern.”

  “It’s not the unit’s finances I’m thinking of,” said Johnny. “It’s what’s siphoned off into your own fat bank account I’m thinking of.”

  “What’s going on?” said Devine.

  Pearson shrugged.

  “Sorry, you know how it is. There are things I can’t talk about.”

  “I’ll fuckin’ bet,” said Johnny quietly.

  “You know,” said Pearson. “you’re beginning to worry me, Johnny. I’m not sure about your commitment any more.”

  “Pearson …” said McBride.

  Johnny sat forward in his chair, hands in his pockets still.

  “Go on, Pearson,” he said.

  “No, shut up …” said MacBride,.

  “I don’t know what side you’re working for any more,” said Pearson softly.

&
nbsp; “Pearson, shut up,” repeated MacBride.

  “No,” said Devine. “I want to hear …”

  “Did you hear that even the Chief of Staff’s driver turned out to be a British agent?” said Pearson. “They’re everywhere.”

  There was a second’s silence before Johnny moved, a second’s stillness. He could feel it inside him, the bit of himself that he couldn’t control, roaring like a thunderous wave inside his head. The momentum of that wave lifted him so fast his chair toppled sideways to the floor as he moved across the table, grabbing Pearson by the throat, lifting him from his seat. That a shit like Pearson should question him …

  “Christ!” said Devine, making a lunge for Johnny and pulling him backwards.

  MacBride wrapped his arms round Johnny’s chest, pinning his arms to his side.

  “Johnny, sit down. Come on, sit down,” he said quietly.

  Johnny couldn’t bear it, the feeling of being hemmed in, held down.

  “Let go, Peter.”

  Tentatively, MacBride dropped his arms.

  “We’re not leaving it at that,” Devine said. “We’re not leaving here until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  Johnny shook his head. Pearson knew what he was fucking doing. Feeding the IRA beast, the paranoia that burned inside them all. Who was legit. Who you could trust. The fear destroyed you if you let it.

  Devine looked at Johnny.

  “So what’s goin’ on?”

  Johnny leaned across the table.

  “Careless fuckin’ talk, Pearson,” he spat.

  “Johnny,” said Devine, “if there’s any truth in it you know what’s going to happen here. I am going to break every bone in your body with a brick, before I blast enough bullets in it to make it sink to the bottom of the Lagan.”

  He was standing stock still, poised to spring. If Johnny was an informer, Devine knew everyone in this room was finished. Pearson sat back, arms folded, watching.

  “Christ, Joe,” said MacBride. “Johnny’s credentials are better than any of us.”

  “Aye,” said Devine, “and them’s the ones they go for.” He hovered over the table, forehead shiny under the light, looking in edgy anticipation round the table. Despite the cold, Devine’s bulk had begun to sweat lightly.

  He leant over Johnny’s chair.

  “Which road do you want closed, Johnny?” he said in his ear.

  Johnny looked straight ahead, only the muscle in his cheek moving.

  “Which road? When we dump your body.”

  “You’ve got nothing to fear from me,” Johnny said and stood up.

  “You’re going nowhere.” Devine was in front of him in a second, faces inches apart.

  “You know the rules,” he said. Any breaches of the code, whether desertion or betrayal, must be dealt with on the spot. Green book.”

  “I’m not having any kangaroo court.”

  “You’ve got no choice.”

  Johnny looked across at Pearson. He had barely reacted in the last few minutes, was watching quietly. Only Johnny knew him well enough to sense the satisfaction rise like a vapour from him as Devine spoke.

  “You need to prove yourself, Johnny,” said Pearson.

  “I want to see him do Glasgow,” said Devine, looking at Pearson and jerking his head at Johnny. “Alone. And if for any reason, it doesn’t go ahead – any reason – I’ll take it as a sign that he has friends in the wrong places.” He turned to Johnny. “And then you can choose your road, Johnny, because believe me – I’ll take you out.”

  Johnny couldn’t get rid of the smell under his nose for days. It was there when he went to sleep, when he woke, when he ate. The damp, fusty smell of fertiliser combined with diesel. It was Devine who was the explosives expert in the cell but he insisted Johnny get involved this time. Later, Johnny realised that insistence had Pearson’s hallmark all over it. Pearson knew how Johnny’s mind worked, how the guilt would come to destroy him.

  They travelled south to buy fertiliser because the fertiliser pellets in the north were coated in plastic to prevent them being ground. They barely spoke in either direction but Devine wouldn’t let him out of his sight. Johnny couldn’t bring himself to ask questions. He would not give Devine authority, make himself apprentice, but simply did as he was asked, mechanically. In the next few days, he went through two coffee grinders reducing the pellets to powder. The fertiliser simply rotted the inner mechanism. And the dust … his clothes were permanently covered in fine pink dust. It stained him.

  His mind was elsewhere. When he wasn’t grinding fertiliser, he was organising the logistics, getting hold of a car from one of his garage contacts, fitting false number plates, creating a concealed section in the boot. They all had their areas of expertise and that was his. Not explosives. He had to move fast when the bomb was completed, Devine told him. Fertiliser was highly sensitive. If it got damp it wouldn’t go off at all and it would remain potent for only around a week. He was to take the car on the ferry to Stranraer and drive the long, tortuous road to Glasgow. By the time he got safely off the ferry, he needed that drive to calm himself.

  In his hotel the night before the bombing, he pored over maps of the city centre yet again, trying to bring the nervous excitement, the sick fear, the shivering, sweat-inducing anticipation, under control. He had looked at himself in the mirror as he cleaned his teeth and seen his own hand tremble, like it was separate from the rest of him. And his mind trembled too, shuddering to release the energy inside him, the surfeit of thought and confused emotion.

  The next morning, he spoke to Devine briefly to go over the technical details.

  “You are certain this will be a small, contained explosion?” he asked Devine.

  “It’s idiot proof,” Devine insisted. “The only thing you have to do is set the timer and get the hell out of there.”

  The end of hope, Danni thinks as she turns from him, a surge of the old bitterness rising in her. But what’s bitterness but misshapen sadness? Sadness that takes root and grows twisted inside you, that branches into spaces where it should never be.

  Everything has stilled inside her: a kind of defeat. She feels drained. Just days ago she would have been convulsed by her hatred. And yes, she feels it still but she is also still sitting here, still listening. Still compelled to ask why, to find reason. Why is that? She rests her head back against the seat and closes her eyes against the light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  He dreams about it still, though less often. The terrible transformation from abstract concept to concrete nightmare. The smell of pain hanging like a vapour above a river of blood, a vapour that he absorbed and never managed to eradicate afterwards. You think you understand something fully, the reality, the implications, until it happens and suddenly you realise that you saw nothing. You saw as much as a blind child stumbling in the darkness. Some realities can never be prepared for.

  He knew things sometimes went wrong. You did not join the IRA to play tiddlywinks. He used to think it was like drilling in a road; there was always the possibility of accidentally hitting a water main, sending the water spraying everywhere. But that had been only a metaphorical explanation in his own head. He couldn’t believe it when the real mains burst in the explosion and the water and the blood mingled.

  He had been a street away when the car bomb exploded, sweating in his haste to move quickly from the scene. He felt the boom, the vibration, and in the split second before he realised the enormity of it, there had been a momentary surge of elation that what he had helped make was successful. Then he realised this was no warning, no symbol. He was aware of a wall of noise in the distance and a corresponding silence in the street where he was, a pause in activity, a slow-motion stupor before everyone started to run. He couldn’t help himself. He moved with the crowd back towards the explosion and stood at the top of the street, watching as the fountain of water shot spectacularly into the air. It was like a sick ballet set to a sound track of screams. Water and fire, element aga
inst element, and bodies everywhere he looked. It was when the first screams died out and the low crying started that he ran, banging into passers by as he went, pushing them to one side in his need to be out of that place.

  He had jumped on a train and in a small town in the north of England, phoned Pearson at a pre-arranged number.

  “You bastards,” Johnny said, leaning his head against the glass of the box. “You fucking bastards.”

  “Fertiliser bombs are always the hardest to control,” Pearson said. “Don’t try and tell me you didn’t know that, Johnny.”

  “You planned that,” said Johnny. “You and Devine.”

  “You made it,” Pearson said, his voice suddenly dropping venomously. “Don’t try and wash you hands of it now. Don’t try and make out you’re not part of it. Take the glory, Johnny. You’re part of history. But just remember. Your hands are as dirty as the rest of us now.”

  It was true, Johnny thought, smashing the receiver down, When everything had gone up, when the inferno came, and the smoke and the screaming and the running and the vapour of pain, everything he was went up with it. He lost a part of himself that day that never came back.

  There is an echo of that pain now as he looks at Danni’s wide, brown eyes. He saw the way she held her breath while she waited for him to answer the question. He wanted to answer differently. For her. For him. For all the wasted years. He wanted to lie and for it not to be a lie.

  It would have been possible. How could she have ever known? His word against Pearson’s. And something tells him that had he lied, she would have accepted his lie gratefully, that she would never have done anything to expose it. Because had he lied, there would have been a future. He knows that, though he is not sure she does.

  But it was inconceivable. He cannot ameliorate his part. He will not bleat that he didn’t mean it. What was he doing there if he didn’t mean it? Nor will he say sorry. The word sorry seems somehow insulting.

  He disappeared for a while afterwards. For his own safety. For the cell’s. In the rented caravan on England’s south coast he read every report. Listened to every news bulletin. Faced the enormity of what had happened. Of all of it, of the tales of tragedy and courage and heroism and self sacrifice that emerge in every tragedy, there was one detail he found harder to face than the others. A three-year-old child had died with his father. He could list the names of the six people who died that day, their ages, their occupations. The fact that one had been a single parent (what happened to her child, Johnny wondered repeatedly), that another had died just two days before her wedding. But the three-year-old was just a child who had not yet lived, who had no details to give, who took up only a few lines next to the long paragraphs of the other victims, and the blankness of his existence, the fact that it was all still to write, was the most unbearable thing of all,