by Alan Veale
His mood lifted immediately at the upbeat rhythm of Walk of Life filling the cab. Accelerating along the narrow lane at a faster pace than his earlier journey, he was eager to shrug off the memory of masks and knives, bikes and bombs.
His approach was observed half a mile away by a man lying prone under a hedgerow. This time he had more than a gram of mercury to rely upon. The dancing headlights of the Land Rover stayed in his peripheral vision as he returned to look through the scope attached to an L96 sniper rifle. His concentration was absolute, judging speed and distance while allowing for light interference in the night vision attachment. Aiming for a spot on a straight stretch he had picked out earlier, ten inches above the tarmac, he followed the vehicle’s path out of the bend and sent a double tap into Faulkner’s offside front tyre. Scrambling out of the path of the stricken vehicle, he had one last glimpse of the Irishman struggling to keep a straight course. Then the Land Rover seemed to bounce into the air before crashing onto its side. Mercury finally forged a connection. Half a pound of Semtex detonated with a force that knocked the sniper off his feet before he rolled over and sat up to admire his handiwork.
Job done. Eventually.
Parsifal spat on the ground. ‘Better luck in the next life, Paddy.’
Four
Brendan had never removed his underpants in front of a stranger before. He knew this man wasn’t really his uncle. But like the teachers at his new school he seemed friendly enough, so what the heck? It still didn’t feel right, but then a lot of things in his life had been like that. Ma and Da breaking up had been wrong for a start. And everything that had happened since had been a let-down. Sharing a house with three girls was definitely shite. Even if one of them was his Ma. His sisters always had to spoil things, especially Emma. But he’d never let her see him without his underpants. Now he stood at the sink naked from the waist down, rinsing the stained item under the tap like the man had told him, and for a moment he wondered if the tea towel was big enough to wrap around his middle.
‘That should do now, Brendan.’ The voice seemed close behind him. ‘Just squeeze out the water and put them next to your trousers.’
Brendan’s superior knowledge immediately surfaced. They’re not trousers. They’re pants! But he kept his thoughts to himself and did as he was told. Then he turned to face the man in the suit. He was rewarded with a dazzling smile, white teeth framed by thin lips. Peter Gris was standing above him, arms spread in a welcoming gesture.
‘You’re a fine-looking boy. A son to be proud of. Let’s get to know one another better.’
*
A shortwave radio crackled into life with a single word. ‘Amfortas.’
The agent glanced up from the file he had been reading on Patrick Faulkner’s desk and pressed the button to transmit. ‘Parsifal.’
‘Update, please.’
Parsifal fingered a blue folder. ‘Grail located as described. Checking for potential copies.’ There was silence for a couple of seconds before the response came.
‘Diary? Address book?’ The amplified voice sounded nervous.
‘Roger that. No trace evidence so far.’ Parsifal was turning over Faulkner’s sparse home study for anything which might merit his attention. His eyes fell on a framed photo of the dead man in which he was sitting with a boy of around seven on his lap. Happier times. ‘Anything yet from the boy?’
‘Negative. Unless you can find a mention of DBD.’
‘D-B-D?’ Parsifal repeated, careful to enunciate the letters.
‘Correct. Anything?’
‘I’ll get back to you. Out.’
Parsifal closed the connection and immediately changed the shortwave frequency for security. He sat back in Faulkner’s chair to consider the possible significance of the three letters. Ireland was full of organisations, many of them militant, using short identifiers: the UVF, the UDC, the INLA, several others. If a new one had sprung up, he would have heard about it. Who might adopt ‘DBD’? Militants tended to stick to well-recognised territories, so a new group in Portadown was unlikely. The letters almost certainly had another significance. He returned his attention to the file in the blue folder his employer had been so keen for him to retrieve.
*
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’
Brendan did not have an honest reply. On the one hand the cold wet tea towel had been soothingly applied around his lower parts. The problem lay in it not being his own hand doing the application.
‘We don’t want to hold you up from getting back to mother. Marion, isn’t it?’ Peter Gris dropped the tea towel but left his own hands in place. ‘So, we’ll let everything dry off and then it’s back to bed for you, my boy.’
Brendan clenched his teeth, clutching the side of the sink unit for support. Silky smooth hands were caressing his private parts as the man’s musky warm breath brushed against his neck and ears.
‘Tell me about DBD.’
The question was almost a welcome distraction. It came immediately after a physical shock when he felt pressure between his buttocks. Was that the man’s thumb?
‘What… what about it?’
‘Your father. When he left you here. Said something to you. “DBD”, he said. What did he mean?’ Regular small thrusts, exploring, testing, terrifying.
‘Please stop it! I don’t like this.’
‘No, Brendan! Not now. Tell me everything. Good boy. Who or what is DBD?’ A deeper thrust. Pain like he’d never known. ‘Ahh… no crying now. Just be good. DBD. Tell me!’
Another thrust.
Screaming now, Brendan gave the man his answer. ‘Death Before Dishonour!’
*
In the car on the way home Brendan suffered even more. Years before he had tripped crossing the road and gashed his knee on the kerb. It had hurt like hell and there had been so much blood. He had cried with the shock and the pain and hobbled back to his Ma and Da. Now it was worse. The physical pain below was bad enough, but now his brain was under attack from the words thrown at him by the man in the suit and the soldier at his side. Even worse was the prospect of facing his Ma. They’d said it was just man’s stuff, and not to say anything to her. They’d said she might be in big trouble if he talked to anyone. Could he risk that? And Da wouldn’t be there. Da was probably in the pub with his drinking pals. It would just be the girls. He thought about their sniggering faces and the fire began to return to his belly. He held back the dam of tears building behind his eyes as the car pulled up outside his house.
‘Wait there.’
The soldier dressed in civvies got out of the driver’s seat and went up the path. Brendan braced himself. Ma wouldn’t be happy woken in the middle of the night. There was no way he could tell her what had really happened. Not now. Whatever he said or did he was going to be in big trouble with his Ma, his Da, or the man in the suit. No way out of it.
The passenger door flew open and suddenly he was wrapped in his mother’s arms. The dam gave way and her yielding softness soaked up his tears. Soothing words had no effect on the soreness of his body, but he was surprised and pleased that she held him so close, and didn't ask him anything awkward beyond ‘Are you alright?’ He found it easier just to sniffle and nod, and even the sight of his sisters in their pyjamas at the top of the stairs was somehow welcoming. From a distance he heard his Ma scold them and send them back to bed. He felt comforted by the closeness of his mother’s breasts, her embrace pinning him there as if she wanted him to suckle like a baby.
But then he heard something pass between her and the soldier, before heavy feet began climbing the stairs. Creaks above him in a bedroom. His bedroom! The soldier was looking at his things. Why?
Did he know what he was looking for?
Brendan felt secure on his mother’s lap, legs dangling almost to the floor. But the protective armour she provided would not be enough. His defences were down. Now the enemy were on the rampage, grasping for victory. He had tried to fight, but if they found what he’d been given to
hide, all would be lost. So much for DBD. How could he ever face his Da?
‘All clear, Mrs Faulkner.’
The soldier was back. Brendan’s mother eased him gently off her lap and stood close, her hand firm on his shoulder.
‘No ammunition then?’
‘Nothing.’ The soldier smiled and switched his attention to Brendan. ‘You were quite right, Brendan. We didn’t find anything. But if you come across any more stuff like that you have to hand it over to us. Okay? You understand me?’
Brendan nodded. He got the message.
The soldier was smiling at his mother again. ‘Sorry, Mrs Faulkner. We have to check out all reports like this. Live ammunition in the wrong hands… boys, eh?’
Brendan stopped listening. He didn’t care about the lie. All that mattered was his Ma didn’t have to know what the man had done to his body. And his Da’s secret must still be safe. Hidden from the bloody Brits, and that included the enemy soldier who now retreated, quietly closing the door behind him.
Five
‘Daddy’s dead.’
Brendan had just woken to find his sister standing next to his bed. She was still in her Danger Mouse pyjamas, large eyes alert with the importance of her news. He stared back at her, his brain still fighting the demons of his nightmares, sensing a new onslaught of nonsense from a sibling he had little time for.
But the silent house spoke loudest.
It was past eight o’clock. Past the time when school beckoned, the air alive with the outfall of breakfast banter and clashing crockery. Could he have slept through his mother’s daily appeal for peace among her brood?
Aware of a seismic shift in his world, Brendan swung his legs out of bed and took Emma’s hand, leading her down the stairs to check the source of his sister’s news. Marion Faulkner occupied the same chair as last night, Emily sobbing on her lap. Her eyes hidden behind a mask of shock, she stretched a hand towards the pair, drawing them in to her protective fold.
*
‘Okay. What do we know?’
Knowledge was their business. The two men carried nominal military ranks of captain and major, the latter dispensing with his code name Parsifal. Their role in Northern Ireland was covert intelligence. Now they sat in an interview room in Mahon Road Barracks, a table littered with papers, notepads and pencils between them.
‘All contacts secure and accounted for, sir. No further copies.’
‘I agree. With one possible exception: the boy.’
The captain’s expression did not alter. ‘With respect, sir. I was as thorough as I could be in the time I had. It was a very sensitive situation.’
‘Agreed. But there’s one thing about the boy we didn’t know then. If Faulkner gave him a copy of the file to look after he’d have put it inside something, wouldn’t he? He’s not going to say “Here boy! Here’s a secret document I want you to keep safe, so put it under your mattress with your girly mags.” We know the boy had his eleventh birthday on the twenty-first of August. He was close to his father, so what did Faulkner give him for his birthday? Again, tell me what you saw. Was there anything that stood out as being new?’
The captain closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. ‘The newest thing was probably one of those coloured cube toys… so that’s not it. A large water pistol, but it was transparent plastic. The only thing I can think of was… but no, it wasn’t new.’
‘No?’
‘There were scratches and old sticky labels on it. A telescope.’
*
Funerals were shite. For all his youth Brendan had experienced too many of them—two to be precise. Last year it had been his grandfather, shot dead by two masked men, and now his Da, blown up by a bomb. As the eldest child he had pride of place, walking in the wake of the hearse holding his sisters’ hands. On any other day such an act would have seemed unthinkable. Now it was the right thing to do. His duty as the man in the family. The girls held tissues to occasionally dab at their faces; Brendan held his resolve to keep tears at bay. His mother trailed behind, one arm linked with his Auntie Helen in support, sharing their private grief.
It was one of those days when the weather hovered between gloom and anger. An overcast sky spoke of spitting rain, and still heavier downpours had been forecast. A chill wind gusted in Brendan’s face as the pitiful procession turned into Garvaghy Road and the church came into view. A sprinkling of sombre-faced citizens gathered on each side, some clapping briefly as the hearse glided past. He noted a cluster of his friends from school, assembled under discreet supervision into a neat row by the church gates. The press were there too, poking their cameras and microphones past a temporary barrier erected by police officers mourning one of their own. Brendan could see at least a dozen of them now, doffing their hats in respect, strengthening his pride with that small gesture.
Two men stood among a group outside the entrance to the church. Shrouded in long black raincoats, hands thrust into pockets, they watched the Faulkner family approach. Brendan recognised the shorter of the two first: the soldier who had brought him home that night, who had searched his bedroom, who had lied about ammunition to his Ma. For a moment even his Da was forgotten while the blood seemed to freeze in his legs. His memory once more assaulted by a stranger named Peter, the Englishman in a suit. Then his senses took a further battering as he looked to the soldier’s left and met the eyes he found there. Now he remembered a knife at his throat. Now he recalled a figure unmasked and his Da spitting on the ground. Now his pants were in danger again.
‘Brendan? It’s okay. Just go on in.’ His mother’s voice and a gentle hand on his shoulder helped restore normality. They followed the priest into the sanctuary of holy ground, distanced from the crowd of strangers. ‘Thank you all for coming.’
The resilience of youth should never be underestimated, and Brendan shoved the pomp of religious ceremony to a remote corner of his brain. No way was he going to let show emotion to them. But afterwards, as the coffin bearing his Da took one path and he took another, he couldn’t wait for the seclusion of his bedroom.
There he sat in his Sunday clothes, his thoughts in knots and shoulders hunched. Staring across the room at the last present his Da had given him. That had been a special day. He could hear his voice inside his head, tried to copy it, spoke the same words out loud: Keep it safe, son. Remember DBD! There’s a secret inside. Don’t open it up. We’ll do it together at Christmas, I promise.
It didn’t sound the same. And now they would never open it together. Christmas? Forget it.
Brendan hadn’t seen those men again, but felt sure they had been looking for him. Were they after his Da’s secret? Why had one of them searched his room? Why was he with the masked man like they were friends? A man who had threatened him and his Da with a knife. Did he have anything to do with the murder? The questions piled up but the answers didn’t show. At least they distracted him from thinking about the other thing.
He could hear Emma and Emily downstairs with Ma and Auntie Helen. Girl talk. Who needed it? True, Emma had been a lot better since last week, but sometimes a man just wanted time for himself. To focus.
Through a lens.
He’d never used the telescope, but his Da had. He’d had it for years—a long white metal tube with an oddly angular black and chrome fitting at the other. It swivelled on a U-shaped bracket attached to a small tripod, which his Da said was great for looking at the moon and planets. But it had to be dark for that. Something which only happened after his bedtime.
Still daylight now but it was raining hard, and even he knew the chances of seeing the moon through a rainstorm was as likely as Father Dennis becoming Pope. So what was a guy to do? Check out the secret. He jumped off his bed to lift the telescope off the chest of drawers. It was nearly level with his chin so he grabbed it by the tripod attachment, pulling the whole assembly towards him. The sudden movement caused the telescope to swing and, to Brendan’s horror, one end dropped off.
He stood in shock. It hadn�
��t been loose before. Now the black-framed lens stared vacantly back from the carpet, and he was left clutching one more broken toy. He held up the open tube to see inside. Nothing. Whatever secret it had held was gone.
Downstairs in the front room, his mother and auntie occupied the sofa in a protective huddle with the girls. They’d turned on the television to see if the funeral would feature on the BBC’s Good Evening Ulster programme. Thumps and bangs from the bedroom above were not unusual, but something aroused Emma’s curiosity. She slipped away from the shelter of her auntie’s arm, reaching the bottom of the stairs just as Brendan did the same.
‘What you doing?’
‘Clearing out rubbish.’ He turned away towards the back door. But his sister’s quick eyes had already taken in the tears on his cheek, as well as the object he was carrying.
‘Daddy gave you that.’
‘Yeah, but it’s rubbish. It’s broke.’ He sniffed loudly, juggling the metal assembly into a better position to work the door handle with a free hand.
Emma followed her brother outside into the rain as he headed for the nearest bin. ‘Why’s it broke?’
‘Because those bastard Brits stole my Da’s secret. That’s why! And I bet they killed him too.’
‘You shouldn’t say bastard. It’s naughty.’
Brendan lifted the lid and thrust the bits of broken telescope into an assortment of soiled jars, cardboard and unrinsed plastic awaiting local authority disposal. Damp hair plastering his brow, he stared into the mess that reflected his whole life, oblivious to the further intrusion moistening his collar. Aware of his sister’s eyes on this personal act, he retrieved the black-framed lens and offered it up for inspection.
