Feel No Pain

by Bailey, RJ

  Pino wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘No. Not recently. Six weeks, two months. But if you find him, do me a favour.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kill him.’

  The cab took us back to town. The driver was being paid enough not to ask any questions, stupid or otherwise. I patted my stomach and groaned.

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘I think it must be twins.’

  ‘Told you it was a daft idea.’

  ‘And I told you they’d clock that gun wasn’t real. We were both wrong. They both worked a treat.’ I attempted a smile.

  The Colt auto that Freddie had brandished was an airgun we’d picked up along the way. It really was hard to tell the difference between it and the genuine article, unless you looked closely. Mind you, even that ‘toy’ could do some damage. I had an old scar on my cheek to prove it.

  ‘Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it?’ said Freddie.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ I fished in my bag and brought out a strip of pills. As instructed, I popped two out of their blisters and swallowed. ‘Going to be a rough twelve hours,’ I said.

  My pet badger was actually a High Porosity Cellulosic Sponge, impregnated with a fancy version of active yeast. It was developed by the Russian FSB for honeytraps – so that the women or men trying to catch their target could drink and stay in control – and you can buy them on the dark web. It’s a high-tech version of the recipe the founder of Samuel Adams brewery used to swear by – consume a mix of yeast and yoghurt before a drinking session, and the theory was that the yeast would process some of the alcohol (into water and carbon dioxide) before absorption. It didn’t work that well, but pass it through a couple of Russian scientists and you have an expanding matrix with acid-stabilised enzymes to break down any alcohol it absorbs. I had swallowed something the size of an old-fashioned gobstopper and it had ‘deployed’ in my stomach. It didn’t work perfectly by any means, but even after all that booze, I was on nodding acquaintance with sobriety as opposed to a coma. The next stage – the one initiated by the tablets I had just taken and the castor oil waiting for me in the bathroom – was the reason it hadn’t yet made it onto the commercial market. The matrix breaking down and passing out of the body was not, by all accounts, pleasant.

  ‘What next?’

  With the airgun pointing at his head, Pino had told me that Matt had come to Ibiza and offered to run the Amsterdam end of things, to make sure the mules Pino recruited in Ibiza got the gear and knew exactly what to do and say if caught. Then Matt had skipped off with the first big delivery of drugs. The fact he had my daughter and my ex-au pair in tow was news to Pino. He’d not seen Jess or Laura with Matt.

  I felt a gurgling inside. I told the driver to step on it. We had rented a villa on the far side of town, where I could suffer in peace, if not, by all reports, in silence, as the matrix in my stomach dissolved.

  ‘Once I get rid of this, you mean?’ I asked, grimacing as a spasm rippled over my abdomen. Feel no pain. What a joke.

  Freddie knew the answer to her question of course. I just think she wanted to hear me say it. During our chat, which turned if not affable, then certainly somewhat civilised, Pino had given me some contacts, to help us pick up any trail left by Matt. It seemed we had common purpose in bringing him to heel.

  I knew, deep down, Freddie thought I was crazy, spending all this time and money chasing phantoms. And pulling stunts like the matrix. On the other hand, she didn’t want to let down a pal. I couldn’t sit at home, waiting for news. I had to be proactive. At least until my money ran out.

  I started to reply to Freddie but the image I had been holding back for the past thirty minutes flashed into my head. My daughter Jess, sitting in a windowless room, playing listlessly with her phone, while men in white suits and masks pressed out tablets by the millions. And I felt that familiar cold rush of hatred. Kill Matt? That was too good for him.

  ‘Yes, once you get rid of that,’ Freddie repeated. ‘Where to?’

  Where else? ‘Amsterdam.’

  ’Feel No Pain’ is set between the end of Safe From Harm and the beginning of Nobody Gets Hurt. High Porosity Cellulosic Sponges do exist, are patented in the USA, and are being readied for commercial use in the weight-control industry. Persistent rumours that the FSB uses them to protect agents from its own poisons/toxins are, as yet, unsubstantiated.

  Read on for an exclusive extract of Nobody Gets Hurt, RJ Bailey’s next Sam Wylde thriller, out now.

  SECURITY INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION REGISTER

  SIA LICENCE NUMBER:

  51774040/SRW

  SURNAME:

  WYLDE

  FIRST NAME:

  SAMANTHA

  MIDDLE NAME:

  RAE

  D.O.B.

  30.06.1981

  HEIGHT:

  1.75m (5’9”)

  WEIGHT:

  62kg (9st 11lb)

  MARITAL/FAMILY STATUS: Widowed. One child.

  DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Bullet wound (entry and exit) above right hip. Scar on left ribcage, beneath breast (8cm). Brown mole on right shoulder.

  EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS: Joined army at 18. Combat Medical Technician, 1st Battalion Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (tours of duty, Iraq and Afghanistan). Early Service Leaver/Medical Discharge (pregnant). Graduated ISS Masterclass Course (2009) with SIA accreditation. European Firearms Licence (Shield Security Associates, Slovakia, 2011), Defensive Driving Certificate (Aegis Security Training, Wales, 2011). AGENCIES: Creative Security Solutions (London), Hippolyte (London), ISS (Zurich).

  LICENSED ACTIVITY: Personal Protection, Close Protection, Defensive Driving.

  ROLE (Front Line/Support): Front Line

  LICENCE EXPIRY DATE: 05.02.2021

  LICENCE STATUS: SUSPENDED

  REFERENCES: Contact SIA

  NOTES: No Russians (personal reasons)

  PROLOGUE

  It started with a cold-blooded murder. An execution, as he called it. I remember the details very clearly. You tend to do that when the man telling you the tale is pointing a shotgun at your stomach. Especially when it is quite obvious that, once story time is over, he will pull the trigger. It concentrates the mind. Anyway, all this happened one night in Northern Ireland. County Tyrone, he said, twenty years ago, in the 1990s. That was the start of all the hurt that was to come.

  It is almost midnight when they bring the treacherous bastard in. Marie Ronan hears the crunch of tyres on thick gravel and looks down at the scuffed pine table, with its collection of timers, from old British World War Two models to the latest Czech electronic number. There are also two revolvers, one of them a Smith & Wesson, the other a battered Webley of some vintage. There is no time to put them away. And no point, if that is the Brits out there. She throws a cloth over the pile, a motley collection that had arrived by ship the previous week, reportedly from Estonia, and fetches the shotgun from the cottage wall.

  She sits, places the gun across her lap, pulls back the twin hammers and waits. The headlamps strobe briefly across the drawn curtains in the centre of the wall. She hears the car halt, the engine die, and a door slam. Silence. Then the whistling.

  It is Anjel. He always was a cunt for the whistling, that Anjel McManus, even though it is always a tune that only he could recognise. Probably some Spanish shit. He has been brought up in Spain – hence the mad name – and he only came to Ireland as a teenager. She eases the shotgun’s hammers back down very gently.

  Within moments, the room is full of bodies, and the oxygen sucked from it. She feels as substantial as a pipe cleaner next to the two burly men who come in first: Anjel, with his jet-black hair and swarthy, rough-hewn face but blessed with the most beautiful eyes; Sean Logan, her younger brother, is behind him, stooped by the low ceiling, his baby face with its incongruously full moustache devoid of its usual grin. He has a cut above his right eye. The third man is hooded with a black plastic bag, slashed across the nostrils. His hands are tied behind his back and his legs sa
g as he walks.

  Bringing up the rear is Ronnie Corrigan. Older than the rest of them – into his forties – he has a rep that stretches back to the Troubles of the early 1970s. He is one of those that Tony Blair calls ‘Men of Violence’.

  Chairs are pulled out and the hooded man is pushed down into one, a belt strapped round him. His head lolls. She can only imagine what is beneath the shiny black plastic.

  ‘Jesus, Anjel, you scared the living daylights out of me.’

  ‘That was my doing,’ says Corrigan, in a low voice that is meant to be soothing, although to her it is laced with something sinister. Or perhaps that is simply because she knows his role in the traditional scheme of things: one of the group known as the Squad, the internal security men, punishers of those who step out of line. ‘My apologies. We had no option.’ He points over his shoulder towards County Armagh, a few miles to the east. ‘Bit of trouble.’

  ‘Can we get a cup of tea, Marie?’ asks Sean.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she fires back.

  He touches the cut on his forehead. ‘Me? Aye. Just need a cuppa.’

  Anjel, who had rented the cottage for her, puts the kettle on, and from beneath the cupboard fetches a half-bottle of whiskey. Marie scoops stubby glasses from the dresser without being asked.

  The hooded man moans.

  ‘What did you bring him here for?’ she hisses at Anjel. ‘I thought we agreed—’

  ‘As Ronnie said. No option.’

  Ronnie Corrigan remains standing and impassive. Marie knows he and his young wife – still in her twenties – have just had a baby daughter, not two weeks old. It doesn’t seem the right time to be congratulating a man on bringing new life into this world, not with what is about to happen.

  ‘We picked him up at a meet with his fucking handler,’ Sean chips in. ‘Some TRU piece of shit. We had to be sure, y’see.’ The TRU is the Tasking Research Unit, the deliberately anodyne name given to one of several organisations that handle planted agents and cultivated informers – commonly known as touts – within the nationalist cause.

  Marie knows without asking that this particular TRU handler is no more.

  ‘What we didn’t know,’ says Anjel, sloshing out the drink, ‘was he’d already given away the place in Monkton. We nearly walked right into it.’

  They all take a glass and automatically raise it in silent toast and drink. Marie is glad of the burn, snapping her back to the reality of her situation. ‘This is not good. Bringing him here. Not if Monkton is blown. What were you thinking? Have you finished yet?’

  It is Corrigan who answers with a shake of his head.

  ‘Barely started.’

  He reaches over and yanks off the makeshift hood.

  Marie gasps at the state of the face, the split lips, the eyes closed by ugly swellings. There is blood matted in the hair on the left-hand side, as if an ear is missing. But that isn’t what causes her stomach to heave. It is that she recognises him, despite all the damage to the face. Jamie Brogan.

  ‘Jesus, Anjel.’

  The prisoner opens one eye a few painful millimetres. It is garishly raw beneath the lid. ‘Marie? Is that you? God love me, Marie—’

  Corrigan backhands him round the head. His neck whiplashes back and forth. ‘Let’s hope so, because nobody here does.’

  ‘Is this official?’ Marie asks. She knows that there is a procedure to be followed, with final permission for any punishment resting with the Army Council. ‘Are youse all on the level?’

  ‘There’s no time for any bollocksy red tape,’ says Corrigan. ‘This is urgent. He’s one of us.’

  He meant a member of the Freedom for Ireland League, which raises money in America for the cause. Which means money for buying guns, be it from Libya, Lithuania or Liberia. Since the ceasefire, the donations had slowed to a trickle. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a sizeable amount in FIL’s war chest.

  Jamie’s voice is a tremulous whine, far removed from the soft baritone that had once whispered in her ear, hoping to distract her with sweet words while he slid a hand up her sweater. ‘I’m innocent, Marie. Swear to God. And I haven’t given them anything. You know me—’

  ‘Anjel—’ she begins.

  ‘Hush now. Is there another room you can wait in?’ Corrigan asks, quietly but firmly.

  ‘Marie, listen, Marie, there’s been a mistake—’

  Corrigan punches the tout so hard that the chair tips over and Jamie Brogan’s skull rings like a bell on the stone floor. ‘Get him up, clear that shite off the table, turn on those cooker rings and get me a kitchen knife.’ When he turns to Marie all semblance of civility has fled from his face. ‘You can watch if you want, it’s all the fuckin’ same to me. Right?’

  She glares at him for a second, but he turns away, dismissing her from his mind.

  ‘You be fuckin’ careful with that shite,’ she says, pointing at the pile of timers. ‘Cause next week you’ll be comin’ around whinging to me for a wee proximity bomb or two. Won’t ye?’

  Anjel takes a step towards her, but Marie grabs her cigarettes and lighter from the table and strides from the oppressive room, out into the cool night air, slamming the door behind her. She walks past the parked Mondeo the men had arrived in, down to the fence. From the dark hills beyond comes the bleating of sheep. She looks up at the sky, sprayed with shimmering stars, innocent witnesses to all this. Marie shivers, wishing she had brought a coat, but there is no way she is going back in there, not yet.

  A long, piercing wail fills the air as she hurries through the gate, down the rutted road, to where the hedgerows swallow her and blot out the sight and sounds of the cottage. There is a loud squelch underfoot and she swears. Cowpat. Should have fetched a coat and a torch. She moves to the edge of the lane and wipes her shoe on the grass beneath the bushes.

  Jamie Brogan. There had been two boys at the time, ‘circling like sharks that smell blood in the water’, her ma used to say. Jamie Brogan and Bobby Ronan. Jamie had been the handsomer, the silver-tongued charmer. Bobby was intense, serious, his great-grandfather one of Michael Collins’s Twelve Apostles – the forerunner of the Squad – so he had family tradition to uphold. Her mother favoured Jamie, not tainted back then by any association with the lads of the IRA. Her ma knew Bobby Ronan was going to be an óglaigh, a volunteer, come what may. It was his destiny.

  Marie moves further into the welcoming gloom and lights a cigarette, the tip unsteady as she holds it to her lips. In the far distance, among the stars, she can see the winking of aircraft lights. They appear to be stationary. Helicopters perhaps, searching for the men now a few hundred yards away in her cottage. Trying to prevent the inevitable.

  It isn’t just Jamie who will suffer. The blight on a tout’s family, the stain, lasted for generations. His ma and da, his lovely old nan, his young sister Mavis, they would all be contaminated by this night.

  How many times had she stepped out with Jamie? Four at the most, and he never did get much further than a bit of tit through a bra. Bobby, though, he didn’t push it, he almost let her make the first move. And, in the end, it was Bobby Ronan she had chosen. And Bobby who had been shot by members of the British Army’s out-of-control Military Reaction Unit six days before their wedding. Assassinated.

  That’s when she had said she would like to help. Wait a while, the men said. You are still grieving. It makes you reckless. Now, she said. I want to do it while it still burns in me. At first they had wanted her for the honeytrappers, young women who flirted with the soldiers at the hotels and invited them back for a party. After beer, crisps and wine, the Lads would arrive, give them a good beating, then lie them face down and shoot them. But she couldn’t do it, because when you got that close they changed from fuckin’ pig-shit Brits into gormless, daft-as-a-brush boys just looking for a wee bit of company. The ones she wanted to hurt, the hard bastards, they weren’t dumb enough to go off with some bit of skirt to an unknown address.

  So they sent her to Americ
a, to Boston, as the young, pretty face of the Freedom for Ireland League.

  It was when she came back, clear-headed, her grief now a cold, hard thing in her, that she had discovered that her dainty hands with their overlong fingers were wonderfully dextrous. That she could thread the smallest needle, twist the tiniest wire, create the most compact of detonators, build the deadliest of bombs.

  She lets out a small scream when she feels something soft brush her neck.

  ‘Steady, Marie. It’s only me,’ Anjel whispers, putting the coat over her shoulders. ‘It’s getting cold now.’

  His breath is clouding the air. She shudders as she realises just how chilled she had become. She gets a whiff of the linseed oil on him from the windows. A glazier is a good job to have if you’re an IRA man. Blow them out. Put them in. Repeat as advised.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Past one.’

  ‘Oh, Anjel.’ She falls against him and he wraps his thick arms around her and pulls her in close. She can smell wool, sweat and whiskey. ‘Is it done?’

  ‘Aye. More or less.’

  She untangles herself and they begin to walk slowly back up the track. She takes his arm. Her and Anjel had done the bold thing two or three times, although they weren’t officially stepping out. But Anjel was from good stock, it would be a grand match. His mother, Caitlin, had been an IRA girl, his father an ETA lawyer/activist. That was freedom fighter royalty, that was. It was why Corrigan had taken him under his wing and green-booked him into the organisation with almost indecent haste.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘About him?’ Marie knows what has to be done to touts. They are carrion, feeding on the carcasses of the dead. But the thought that they could get it wrong appalled her. ‘Jamie—’

  ‘We knew there was a tout, didn’t we? Who else knew about the shipments that the bastards kept intercepting?’ The last four shipments of explosives and weapons had never even made it to Ireland.