Country

by Michael Hughes

  Backed the car up to the doors of the old van. Opened them up. Opened the boot.

  Your man was weeping like a woman.

  ‘Away to fuck out of that and in the back of the van. Call yourself a soldier.’

  Dog hopped in too, shut the doors over. The wee light on. He could hear the fella breathing like a bull. Calm now. Calmer, anyway. But still snivelling.

  ‘Fuck sake. Here’s a tissue. Clean yourself up. Have a bit of self-respect.’

  ‘Thank you, thanks. Sorry. Sorry.’

  ‘What’s that smell? Have you shat yourself?’

  ‘I think I have. Adrenaline. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. I can pick ’em.’

  But your man started babbling.

  ‘Look here. I want no trouble. The thing is, I’m finished with the army, okay? I can’t take it, and that’s the truth. This sort of business. You bloody people. I’ve already resigned my commission. This was supposed to be my last tour. Do you understand? All I want is to go home, take over my father’s business. He’s bloody rich.’ He let that sit for a minute. ‘Do you understand me? I mean properly wealthy.’

  ‘He’ll have to be, to get you out of this one.’

  And now he was all biz, hopping up and down.

  ‘Yes! Yes he is! How much do you want? I’m serious! I’ll arrange it right now. Right now. A cheque, made out to you, personally. No, that’s bullshit. Sorry. Sorry. Listen. Okay. Let me think, just let me think for a second, okay? Okay?’

  Dog let him think.

  ‘Right. Listen. I can have cash here tomorrow. Just one signature, one phone call, and they’ll transfer as much as you like. No one’ll ever know. An offshore account set up in your name. I don’t care what you do with it. I mean thousands. Tens of thousands. Name your price.’

  ‘A hundred grand.’

  ‘It’s yours! It’s yours! Take me tonight, no, wait, keep me here tonight, take me straight to the bank tomorrow, wear a suit, I’ll explain you’re a business partner, up to Belfast, Bangor, somewhere no one knows you. Or we can take the ferry to Scotland, and you leave me behind when we’ve finished. Anywhere. I’ll have the money, in cash, in your hands by noon tomorrow. One hundred thousand pounds. That’s a promise. You have my word. You have my solemn word. On my mother’s grave. Bring a bloody big bag, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you for real?’

  ‘It’s only money. For Christ’s sake. It’s only money. This is my life we’re talking about. This is my life. Take the lot. Take the lot. It’s yours.’

  He was tempted. Fuck it, why not? If the Brit really was on his way out, then he wasn’t even a soldier any more, kind of. They were off-limits when they’d left the forces. We have to be better than them, he thought, or else what are we fighting for? He was no savage, he was a soldier too. He felt it deep. Not often he did, but he did tonight. The man was unarmed. It should be a fair fight.

  He heard a car pull up. Then a wee rap at the van door. He knew the rhythm. Tap tap tap tap, ta-tap tap tap tap, tap tap, ta-tap tap tap. Match of the Day. His big brother, their way of knowing each other since they were boys. They’d whistle it, or hum it, or tap it like now, to let the other know it was him.

  Dog opened the door a crack.

  ‘Get in, quick.’

  The door was pulled open wide. He could smell Pig before he saw him. The stench of sows off him. Smuggling. A border run. Switching tags.

  ‘The fuck are you playing at, you prick? I’ve been looking you half the night.’

  ‘This here Brit. Just sorting out a wee matter.’

  Pig shut the door behind him nice and easy, took in the scene.

  ‘Fuck me, you landed one. Fair play to you, boy.’

  ‘Better than that. He’s going to set us up, me and you. Rich da. We let him run on, and it’s fifty grand. Two of us split it down the middle, say nothing to nobody.’

  Dog glared at the Brit, dared him to squeak. The man was agog, but he kept schtum.

  ‘Well, aren’t we the lucky pair. And here, what happens the Brit?’

  ‘Say we interrogated him and then he got away. What difference? Say any old shite. Say nothing at all, pretend it never happened. He’s not armed, he’s on his way home. He seen nothing. He knows who we are anyway, there’s nothing new there. We’re just having a yarn. He says any different, we can always sort him out again, sort his family out.’

  ‘Listen, Dog. Listen here a minute. Did any of them ever let you run on?’

  ‘But if he stumps up the cash. Fair’s fair.’

  ‘Fair? God give me strength. And I suppose they treated you fair when you were in Gough Barracks, did they? Stroked your head and gave you tea and buns? Or did they not beat the tar out of you with steel toecaps, and then piss in your face, and then throw a plastic bag full of the squaddie you’d booby-trapped into the cell with you for the night? Because that’s what they fucking did with me.’

  ‘Aye, I know, but the money.’

  ‘Don’t be a sap. What do you want with money? What are you short of? Have you debts I don’t know about? But no matter if you do. You need money, then you make it or you take it, same as the rest of us.’

  ‘Even so. It’s not right to just empty him.’

  ‘I tell you this. And listen to me now, so you learn something for once. If that there man was a woman, nine months pregnant with a wean that would grow up to be a soldier, I’d say the fucking same. A bullet in the belly would be good enough for her. Sit and wait for the ba to come out and then stave in the tiny wee skull with a half-brick, sooner than let another Brit grow up thinking it’s his duty to come here and walk all over my country like he owns it. Any Irishman who’d do different has no fucking pride. And most of them do have no fucking pride, more shame to them. But not my own brother. Not my own wee brother. The only good Brit in this here county, while it’s under the union jackboot, is a dead Brit. You know it and I know it. So let’s make extra fucking sure this one is a good Brit.’

  Dog pushed the man back and stepped away. No point arguing with Pig when he was in this kind of form. He gave the fella a wee shrug. Tried my best, but what can you do?

  ‘If you’re trying to scare me, it’s fucking working,’ says the man. ‘Christ. Anything you want, both of you. Name your price.’

  Pig stuck his short in the man’s nose and banged off a round. Then another. Then another.

  ‘I hate that smug superior sneering noise out of their fat English gobs.’

  An awful mess. The whole front of his head was gone. Lumps of white jelly dropping out. Dog picked half a lip off his jumper. It was fucking disgusting. He hated this part.

  Pig scraped red gunk out of the end of his barrel.

  ‘Meat,’ he says. ‘We’re all just meat. Do you ever think that?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Naw, you never think nothing, do you? It’s as well I’m here to do your thinking for you. Come on.’

  ‘What do we do with the van?’

  ‘Drive it down to the quarry and torch it.’

  ‘With him in it?’

  ‘The fuck do I care? Think for yourself for once in your life. Get rid of the forensics but make sure they know it was us. Or dump him at the cross-roads with a dummy device, so everybody has a good squizz before they can get mopping him up. Now come on and clean yourself before it’s light. You look like a fucking knacker.’

  35

  One night the next week, when he was back on his feet, Dog told Diamond McDaid the story, up at the Ships. All except the fifty-grand part. He needed somebody to say it was the right thing to do, and Diamond was a safe bet. The cruellest cunt he knew.

  Diamond gave a wee whistle after.

  ‘It can be a hard call, right enough. I mind the like of that happened me one time.’

  And Dog pulled in his chair. He needed a break from this shite going round his head all day. Rare enough too for Diamond to come out with a good yarn.

  ‘This is years ago. I got called in to do a
Brit they’d finished interrogating,’ says Diamond. ‘Just a squaddie, but still. The boy who was supposed to do it got lifted on his way up. Wait now till I tell you. And this is to go no further. I mean that.

  ‘They left me alone with him. Said he hadn’t run. Put up a decent fight. Told them nothing, even after a fucking good hiding. I was to finish him off.

  ‘Boys, but he was in a bad way. Tied wrists and ankles. Half his teeth gone. I didn’t look too close at his fingers, but I’d say he wouldn’t be biting his nails any time soon. A lot of fag burns. Keks down, and his ballbag swelled up to twice the size. Bad.

  ‘But he was smiling. Some kiddo.

  ‘How are you doing there, says I. Just to break the ice, you know. I’ve had worse Saturday nights, says he. And I had to laugh. Turns out he was Scotch. From Glasgow, he told me. A Rangers man. Better than that, he told me he had the top on under his uniform. Away or that, says I. But I had a look, and right enough, there it was. I wear it for luck, says he. I had to fucking laugh again. And he did this time and all.

  ‘He was all right. Some of them are, if you get them on their own.

  ‘I told him I was a Celtic man, and he says, no fucking shite. We had to laugh again. The bhoys and the huns, with our own wee derby. And looks like it’s your day, he says. Hampden in the Sun all over again.

  ‘I was made up. Couldn’t stop grinning. Do you know what he meant? Not a Celtic fan? Call yourself Ra. Fuck sake. Seven Past Niven. Mean nothing? Well wait till you hear.

  ‘This was donkey’s ago. Fifty-seven or fifty-eight, I forget just now. The League Cup final. The Rangers were riding high in them days and the Celts couldn’t get near them. We had good players, mind. A few great ones. Sean Fallon, from Sligo. Billy McPhail. Neilly Mochan, the Smiler. But the manager was no damn good. The board were picking the team, and chopping and changing every turn round, depending on who the chairman liked the look of.

  ‘But that day. It was lovely weather, and everybody was in great form, my granda says. He was over working in Glasgow, and he was mad for the Hoops, like my da, like myself. He’d tell you great stories about them days. You’d nearly feel like you’d been there yourself. Up on the red tram, number nine, with the players riding alongside. You’d see them all coming out on the pitch then, and you’d tell each other who you’d seen doing what. You’d run through the other side too, which one was a pushover, which one you’d need to watch out for. You didn’t want to miss a thing, for at home they’d want every detail told and told again. Valentine, the new lad for the Blues, nobody knew what to think about him.

  ‘And the sun was out. October, but it was like a holiday. Something clicked that day. Two before half time, and five more after. A massacre. Seven to one. Sammy Wilson opened the account. A hat-trick for McPhail in the second half, all on the head. Valentine, the new lad, he had a bad day. Dick Beattie our goalie with his seven fingers in the air. A bit of a character.

  ‘My granda said it was the happiest he’d ever been in his life. Just to knock the budgie off its perch. He was over with a crowd from Belfast working on the docks. He said it made him proud to be Irish that day.

  ‘But listen till you hear, now. My granda said him and his mates near got a hiding from a crowd of young Blues, but a couple of old-timers chased them, and told the lads well done for the game, fair fucks to youse. And him and his mates ended up drinking that night with a whole bunch of Rangers fans, and they bought every pint, and said he was a sound lad. They swapped oul yarns about matches and derbys and who’d been at what game, and which players they fancied and which they couldn’t wait to see the back of.

  ‘And wait till you hear. The Brit, the Scotchie, he says then that his granda was at that game and all. Would you believe that? What are the chances? And the Celts deserved every goal and more besides, his granda said. A die-hard Rangers man, but any time he talked about that day, he said he had to hand it to the Celts, that was one of the best ninety minutes of football he’d ever seen in his life. Any time any of his mates laid in too hard with the banter, he’d speak up for the Hoops in that cup final. Do you ever hear the like? A die-hard Rangers man. Even the penalty right in the dying moments. Something to see. He said his granda couldn’t help smiling at work the next week, seeing Catholic mates of his so happy, at this wee uplift give to half the town when things were tough. He knew the Rangers weren’t beat, they’d come back up again, so we could spare the one win, he said. But what a win. Seven to one. Straight up.

  ‘And wait till you hear. The Brit told me his granda went drinking with a wee gang of Celtic fans that night. Maybe it was my granda and his granda having a pint, what do you think about that? And when the old timers chased the young bucks and took him drinking with a crowd of huns and bought him pints all night, maybe that was his granda among them. Imagine that.

  ‘And now here was the two of us.

  ‘Listen to me, says I. Am I fuck plugging you. You have your colours on, and I might as well tell you, I have mine on and all. Look there. And I showed him my top, under my jumper. I never go out on a job without it. I swear there was a fucking tear in my eye, and that hadn’t happened this years. For anything.

  ‘Give me that shield off your shirt, says I, and I’ll give you mine here. I’ll pin on your Rangers crest next time I’m out and you wear the Celtic one under your kit and we’ll see which brings who good luck. If your granda might have saved my granda from getting a hiding, and bought him pints after losing a derby, then you’re a sound man as far as I’m concerned. Get away to fuck out of this and we’ll say no more about it.

  ‘And wait till you hear what he said. Wait till you fucking hear.

  ‘Will you not get in trouble?

  ‘Some kiddo. I tell you what.

  ‘Don’t you worry your wee head about that, says I. Just count your blessings it fell out the way it did. Away on now before I change my mind.

  ‘So there you are. That’s what happened me. Some fucking crack, eh? Just goes to show, you never do know. Best not to think too hard about it.

  ‘I’ve to head on here, but I’ll say this before I go. Thinking gets you nowhere in this game. That’s my opinion, anyway. Crack on with the job, and leave the brain-work to the higher-ups. Good luck, now. Keep her country.’

  Henry

  36

  When you hear some of the stories, you can see plain that the old times were not a bit different than today. This here was always a handy spot to billet an army. First was the old plantation castle, near four hundred year old, but only the bare stony walls of that were left. Around the back of there had been the RIC station a hundred years ago, and then they put up a whole tin city for Yanks waiting to take on the Nazis. Because of this land at the rear, and because it was so close to the border, they took the place up when the whole thing kicked off as one of the big bases, and built it up over the twenty-odd years.

  The ruin itself was Castle William, and the base often got called the same. If you didn’t know it already, big letters bolted to the front of the old castle told you, for there was a sort of a tourist trail took you past this way, though few enough ever came. Some said the name was because King Billy stayed there around the time of the Battle of the Boyne, or it was named in his honour when he became the King of England. Others said it was because a man called Fitzwilliam had it built, but the Fitz had been dropped over time. You could take all these yarns with a pinch of salt, but at the same time, nobody would dispute that every story had some wee bit of truth at the back of it. Take your pick, or come up with your own.

  A few years back some lads coming home from the Glenallen tried to wreck the sign, feeling affronted I suppose that the place was known only as a British garrison, as if that was a great thing, but they got no further than pulling down the W before they got fed up or somebody chased them. From that day on the sign said Castle Illiam, and the young fellas around the town had started calling the base itself Illiam, just for the crack, and to wind up the peelers and the soldiers. It kin
d of caught on for a while there.

  Not a one of the locals had ever been inside. It was the biggest building anywhere near, you couldn’t miss it, it hung over the whole country around, but the inside of it was a big black nothing to them. They didn’t know the name of a single one of the men who lived there.

  37

  Now we’re getting to it. Wait till you hear. This one individual in particular. The only man the squad were afeard of, though they never knew his name till after. Only what he’d done. Henry Morrow. A captain in the SAS. An exceptional individual, everybody said so. One of a kind. They were lucky to have him, down here in the back of beyond.

  He’d had his first taste of action in the Falklands, when he was fresh into 2 Para, straight out of training. Savage bastards they were, raring to fight, gumming to kill. And kill they did. Young Henry was up there with the worst of them. Five Argentines himself at Goose Green. No mercy. He was full of the fight, champing at the bit. He was a machine. He was fearless. The best of the best. He’d found his people.

  He was well decorated, and the brass took note. Nudged him towards Special Forces, along with a fair number of his comrades. The SAS was bulging with Paras in them days, with their old NCOs training them up in Hereford, for there were few enough about who had experience of that kind of action. And you never knew where it would blow up next.

  Except you did. Northern Ireland was a guaranteed stop, and Henry had been over and back a few times now, doing full-year tours round the border. The SAS was a different kettle of fish. They could be savage, for sure, but they weren’t mad for it, like the Paras. They were all about stealth, and cunning. Finding the smart way to do what you needed to do, and do it quietly. Invisible. Tough, yes, none tougher. But clever with it. He’d spent endless hours waiting in close observation for Ra men who never showed up, eating dry rations, shitting in bags, and it taught him the value of patience. He learned there was more than one way to skin a cat. There was so much to learn.