Controlled Explosions

by Claire McGowan

  Blood. There’d been a lot more of it on the lower windows of the station. They’d had to get in a wee man with a squeegee, who did the job with a fag hanging out of his mouth, not a bother on him. Bob had called his son after his dead sergeant – it felt like the very least he could do. He thought about Robinson every day, even without that. Every time he turned the key in his own car, that half-second where you held your breath, waiting for it all to be over. Hoping at least it would be quick.

  ‘So we’ll investigate Red Hugh’s farm then? See if the materials are still there?’ The Corry girl was upright, alert. She might be a mother but to Bob’s mind she could still be in school, putting her hand up for the teacher.

  ‘Yes.’ Johnson was doing his best not to look at her. ‘Miss Corry, in this station we wait until people have finished before we give our views.’

  She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Do we also wait until the whole town knows what we’re about to do?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘There’s been no physical evidence at any of the bomb sites, no prints or DNA, just clear signs that link them to someone who can’t have done it. Am I right?’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘It all seems too neat. Someone knows what we’ll be looking for and that we’ll make the connection to Red Hugh. Sir.’

  The silence that fell on the conference room was heavy. It was the kind of silence that came from ten forty-plus men looking at one girl barely out of her twenties. Bob thought of the rumours she’d brought with her from Belfast – that the Corry girl was there to check up on them all, some kind of Professional Standards review. That she took her orders right from the top. He hadn’t believed it. The girl wasn’t much more than a wean.

  She didn’t seem to mind the silence. ‘I think we should go to the farm soon. Today, ideally. Tomorrow morning at the latest.’

  Johnson paused. Bob could see the grey in the hair cut neatly around his collar. He was pushing fifty, both of them were. Did Bob look old too? They’d both be out when everything changed, most likely. Letting weans and women run the place. ‘The farm is dead set on the border, so we need to set up liaison with that lot first. It won’t be today.’

  ‘An Garda Siochána?’ The Corry girl rolled off the Irish name of the Southern police force. Definitely Catholic. Had to be. ‘I can set that up for you.’

  ‘Oh you can, can you?’

  ‘Of course. It’s no bother.’ She didn’t even ask if she could go out to the farm – and why would she want to, a wet-behind-the-ears girl? It was easy enough to criticise when you were safe in the office, not out in the field afraid someone would shoot the head off your shoulders any minute. Would this be the way now, taking orders from people behind desks, who’d never chased after a wee gobshite with a grenade in his hand, never carried the coffin of yet another colleague shot in the head or blown up? Who’d never washed their friend’s blood off their car windows, scrubbing and scrubbing with a sponge, then throwing the sponge and everything you were wearing into the bin, then hosing down your driveway, then selling the car anyway because you couldn’t stand to see it outside your house.

  She stood up and put on her suit jacket, flipping her yellow ponytail out behind her so it swung like a scythe. ‘I’ll get on to that now, sir.’

  It was amazing how you could use the word to someone while still managing to convey you had no respect for them at all. The girl walked out of the room, clacking on the heels of her shoes, and all the men in the room looked after her, but she didn’t turn around.

  Paula was tall for seventeen, nearly five foot ten already, but there were four of them, and only one of her.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said, trying to look hard. What were they even doing in her street? Catriona lived out in the country somewhere with the mud and the cows and the mad Provos. But there she was, standing in the road as Paula got home from school, with her little minions Mary and Brid. A boy was sitting on next door’s wall, smoking.

  Catriona blocked her way. ‘Going home to tout on us too? Guess it runs in the family.’

  She tried to walk past them, head bowed, but they were everywhere. Her house was only three along. If she could run … They were just girls, three of them in the same maroon uniform as her, socks pushed down as far as they’d go, skirts rolled up, sports tops zipped over their blazers – none of it official school uniform. Paula was pretty sure Mary and Brid wouldn’t be passing their A-levels – they were both thick as the pigshit they shovelled on their farms – but Catriona was smart. Smart and mean.

  The boy was older, maybe nineteen, wearing jeans and Army boots. He had acne down the side of his face. She didn’t know who he was.

  ‘Your ma was a tout,’ Catriona repeated. ‘That’s why she snuffed it, isn’t it? Couldn’t keep her mouth shut.’

  ‘She’s not—’

  ‘Is she not? Then did she just go off and leave you? No surprise really. And where’s your da? Off harassing his own people? He’s a fucking traitor too. Him and your dead ma.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ The tears in Paula’s eyes were stinging. ‘She might be dead, I don’t know! I don’t know anything and neither do you, you stupid cow. At least I’m going to pass my A-levels. At least I’m getting out of this fucking stupid town. You’ll be stuck here forever, milking the cows and signing on the dole.’

  ‘Bitch.’

  She hadn’t thought they’d actually hurt her – though words could hurt enough, and she’d never believed that crap about them being gentler than sticks and stones – but suddenly there was a scuffle, and Catriona’s chipped nails were scratching at Paula’s face, and she could smell the girl’s BO and bubblegum, and she was fighting back with no plan, just instinct, slapping and pulling, grabbing at Catriona’s hair and making a noise like an angry cat.

  ‘Fuck off! Fuck off!’

  ‘Hey, hey, come on now!’ Someone was pulling her back. She couldn’t see for a moment from the hair in her eyes, just feel someone’s hands on her waist. Then – it was Aidan O’Hara. What was he doing here? She pulled away, breathing hard.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘None of your effing business.’ Catriona was panting, straightening her clothes. ‘Guess all you touts stick together.’

  Aidan didn’t say anything about that, but he stood very still. ‘Her da’s a cop, you know. You better piss off or you’ll get a record. Silly wee bitch.’

  The other girls were juking off down the road, but Catriona was still shouting, standing her ground. Her dyed blond hair had fallen out of its tight bun and her eyes behind their seven coats of mascara were wild. The boy got down off the wall, held her by the arm. He hadn’t said a word during the whole thing. She was screeching, ‘Whole fucking family are traitors. And your da too, O’Hara. I know who you are. Your da got what was coming to him, and so will hers.’

  ‘Come on, feck’s sake.’ The boy bundled Catriona off down the street, with a last slitted-eye look at Paula that made her feel sick.

  ‘You know him?’ said Aidan, looking after them.

  ‘N-no.’ She was trying to blink back the angry tears in her eyes.

  ‘Peadar O’Keeffe is the name. Nasty wee fecker. Year above me in school.’

  Catriona’s brother, then. The whole family must be out to get her.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ She couldn’t meet his eye. Though his mother and hers had been best friends, Aidan never talked to Paula if he could help it. ‘What’re you even here for?’ She saw he’d parked his Clio, a present from his adoring mammy for his eighteenth birthday, outside the door of her house.

  ‘Ma sent me – you know.’ He waved his hand in frustration at the plastic container under his arm. Pat O’Hara had been sending food ever since Paula’s mother disappeared five years ago. As if that was the main thing missing from their lives – Irish stew and lasagne. ‘Said your da’d be busy with all these riots, so maybe youse’d need dinner.’

  ‘Oh. Right so.
Yeah, em … bring it in.’

  They trudged to the door, keeping a foot of distance between them. Aidan was in the grey uniform of St Luke’s, the boys’ school, his tie loose, blazer over his shoulder. He’d be going off to university in a few months – he’d applied to Dublin, she knew. Pat kept Paula up to date with his life, and she’d see him out and about the odd time, but they’d never been friends. Sometimes that was the way of it, when you knew each other from when you were wee kids. The last time Aidan had spoken this much to her was at her mother’s memorial service.

  Don’t think about that.

  She put her key in the lock, trying not to let him see that every day she came home and opened the door, it happened again for her a little bit. Every single day. As if one day it would be different. Maybe – no, of course not. Her mother hadn’t been there on that last day in 1993 or any other day since. And she wouldn’t be here today.

  Paula put the food container in the fridge. It looked like some kind of stew, too hot for the weather. Aidan stood leaning against the counter, flicking his curtains haircut. She could smell his aftershave – Lynx Africa – and cigarettes too. Of course he smoked, all the cool boys did. She thought about bolting upstairs and bucking on some more Impulse O2. ‘Eh … do you want some tea, or – like, coffee or something?’

  ‘Don’t drink it.’

  Neither did she. There was a total of one coffee shop in town, and it was the kind of place that served it in little metal pots with leaking lids.

  She looked in the fridge. ‘Juice?’ Her dad wouldn’t buy minerals. Her mum hadn’t allowed it. Think of your teeth, Paula. They were both still trying to keep to Margaret’s rules, long after she was gone.

  ‘OK.’

  She poured him a glass of Kia Ora and one for herself, and they stood drinking them in silence. It was a hot day and she felt sweat trickling down her back, under her pink shirt and plain M&S bra. Paula had been buying her own bras since she was thirteen – her mother had gone before she’d even needed to wear one. It was Pat who’d taken her that first time, hugely embarrassed but hugely kind. Pat, Aidan’s mother. Oh God. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him. He wouldn’t be interested in any of the crap she talked to Saoirse about, mostly TV and which boys they fancied. Neither of them had said anything for a minute. Two minutes. Paula started to panic, opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

  Aidan cleared his throat. ‘Eh … you going to Magnum’s Saturday?’

  ‘Dunno. Maybe.’ She was officially too young to get into Magnum PI’s, the local disco, but they usually turned a blind eye if you were seventeen and had a provisional driving licence.

  ‘It’s shite, but like it’s the only place round here.’

  ‘Yeah, God, it’s awful, isn’t it?’ She loved Magnum’s. She loved the cheap sugary cocktails, she loved the music, S Club 7 and Steps and Spice Girls, and she loved dancing with her friends in a big circle, too loud for anyone to ask her about her missing ma or her cop da, too dark for anyone to recognise her as that wee Maguire girl, you know, the one whose mother …

  ‘Might see you there then.’

  She breathed in, hard. ‘Yeah, might do.’ God, he was practically asking her out.

  Aidan was moving now, rearranging his hair again. ‘You don’t have a mobile, do you?’

  ‘Nah.’ Some people at school were getting them now, but not her yet. PJ wasn’t keen on the idea or the expense.

  ‘Well. If anything happens … get me at school or something.’ His school finished ten minutes later than hers. They did it to keep the girls and boys apart, which didn’t work at all. ‘You know … if they give you shit again.’

  ‘OK. See you.’

  He didn’t look at her as he went out the door, jiggling his car keys in his school trouser pocket. ‘See ya.’

  OH MY GOD. She was ringing Saoirse right now, before Neighbours came on.

  ‘Sergeant Hamilton, I’m sorry—’

  ‘What is it?’ Bob didn’t turn around from where he stood, gazing out of the high windows of the incident room at the town below. In the afternoon sun, it looked like it was still on fire, though the riot had been broken up for now and the device made safe. That’s what they called it. Making safe. As if such a thing was possible.

  ‘Sir—’

  The admin girl was trying to get his attention. Aoife or something her name was. Why could none of them spell their names right? Let them go and live in Eire if they wanted, with too many letters in the words and not enough money, the potholed roads full of donkeys and unlicensed drivers. It was a mystery to Bob. You gave people benefits and free dentists and roads and hospitals and all they did was complain. You sent your soldiers, your sons, in to protect them, and they blew them up in the street. And now what? You let the terrorists out of prison, while the police officers who’d bled and died to keep the peace … you fired them. Bob wasn’t stupid. He knew all about the list.

  The List. That was the word going round the place, whispered through the walls, gusting under the bottoms of doors, lurking in the car park. The list of officers who’d be put out when the Policing bill went through. A condition of the Good Friday Agreement. They’d been weighed, the RUC, and found wanting. Up there with parades and prisoners, an abomination, a part of the peace process that the other side had demanded gone before they would stop their shooting and bombing. And it had been agreed. They were going to scrap the uniform, the staff, even the name. All those dead officers, killed by cowards in the dark – this was how you rewarded them. You swept them under the carpet of history. You made them shameful.

  ‘Sergeant Hamilton!’

  ‘What is it, Miss Riordan?’ He wouldn’t say her Christian name. His mouth couldn’t mould to those letters. ‘I’m busy here. We’re going out on an operation first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘But you’re wanted on the phone.’

  ‘I’m busy.’ Busy watching his town burn.

  ‘It’s your wife, sir. There’s been … I really think you should come.’

  Everything was burning.

  ‘Linda?’ She never rang him at work. Never. She knew better, none of these personal calls in work time that the younger officers were always getting.

  ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have bothered you except—’

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  ‘Bob, I’m up at the place. I …’ She didn’t want to ask but he could hear it in her voice. ‘I know you’re busy, but—’

  ‘Is it Ian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Bob …’

  ‘I’m coming. Just wait there for me.’ He wrenched open the door to the incident room. ‘DC Maguire?’

  PJ was at a desk, waiting for the phone call to say they were authorised to go out in the morning. ‘Aye, sir?’ He was always polite. You could never accuse him of being insubordinate, not in his words or his actions or anything concrete. Bob just wished things were different. So much bad blood there. Robinson, and Bob getting the sergeant job over PJ’s head, and everything that happened in 1993, that terrible year. No wonder he couldn’t meet PJ’s eyes.

  ‘I need to get away. Can you take over?’

  PJ had a wee girl of Ian’s age. Seventeen. Bob remembered the daughter – terrible height for a girl, and all that red hair. She’d be going to university next year, off out of the town like all the kids did. Whereas Ian …

  ‘You’re away?’ PJ was surprised.

  ‘Aye. Can you handle things here?’

  ‘Well, aye, sure I can handle them, but—’

  ‘Right so.’ Bob was aware he was moving quickly, gathering his jacket and wallet and radio. It didn’t come naturally to him, to be quick. Important things took time, but sometimes there wasn’t any. His car was in its parking space and he was trotting over to it so fast he almost forgot to check. But you had to, whatever the emergency was. Remember what happened to Robinson. Remember the blood on the windows. He got down and peered under it, then stood up,
breathing hard. Had to keep breathing, drive slow. No sense in having an accident. He started the engine and nosed his car into the heavy lunchtime traffic.

  As he drove, slow, so slow, he found he was thinking of the woman. Her red hair, her pale face. Bob didn’t like to think of Margaret Maguire if he could help it. It hadn’t been good, that time, for any of them. He’d done his best, but sometimes the fact was people were better off not being found – maybe because they didn’t want to be, or maybe because finding them would be worse than losing them. The case was filed away in some drawer now, thank God, but PJ wouldn’t let it rest. And Bob could see the looks PJ gave him. So full of blame. Sometimes Bob would have liked to shout at him – you think you knew her, but you didn’t, you didn’t know her at all – but he never would. Not in a million years. He’d take the blame, and it was no more than he deserved.

  People thought policing was about finding the truth. Bob could have told them it was often in fact about managing the truth, keeping it damped down so it didn’t rise up and burn the place to the ground. Fire-fighting. His job was closer to that than people knew.

  He didn’t know why he was thinking about these things. It passed the drive, he supposed. Stopped him thinking about what he’d find at the end. Anyway, he was there now and parking, shocking prices they charged these days. He could claim it back as police business – some would do that, but not him. The rules mattered. He hadn’t even asked Linda what ward they were on. His feet took him there anyway. Acute medicine. So many years trailing up to the hospital, ever since the day in 1980, a summer’s day, hot and clear as butter, and he wasn’t meant to be there – you didn’t go, in those days – but suddenly the station phone was ringing and they were saying, is that Mr Hamilton, and he wanted to tell them it’s DC, but he didn’t, and they were saying, could you come please, come now, there’s been some complications with the birth.

  Complications. He’d always thought of it that way after. Ian wasn’t well. Ian had complications.