by Shaun Clarke
Picked up a third time, he was placed on a hard wooden chair. His arms were pulled roughly, painfully, over the back of the chair, then his wrists and shoulders were strapped to it. His ankles were tied to the legs of the chair – luckily, the ropes were just above the ankles, well below the holstered gun and knife, which were not detected – then the youths stepped away to smirk at him.
A man who had been sitting in an armchair in front of the open fire, stood up, walked forward and stopped in front of him.
The man had a head of healthy grey hair and a hard, angry face.
‘Who’s this?’ he asked Mick Treacy while looking at Cranfield.
Mick handed the man Cranfield’s ID. The man studied it at length, first thoughtfully, then incredulously, finally with a thin, cruel smile. He leaned down to Cranfield, studied him intently, then slapped his face with his own ID and said: ‘Lieutenant Cranfield of the fucking SAS! Sure isn’t this a pleasant wee surprise! And you look just like yer picture.’
‘What picture?’ Cranfield asked, getting his senses back and desperate to hear the sound of his own voice, which might help calm his growing fears. ‘You mean on the ID?’
Again the man slapped Cranfield’s face with the ID, saying: ‘No, I don’t mean this shit. Sure we had yer photo taken by some of our own boyos and I’ve had many a good gander at it. I’d recognize you, Lieutenant, with yer feet stickin’ out of a barrel. Sure it’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘You’re Michael Quinn,’ Cranfield said, trying to keep his voice steady.
‘The one an’ only,’ Quinn replied. He studied Cranfield’s ID, nearly threw it into the fire, changed his mind and carefully put it back into Cranfield’s jacket pocket. ‘By the time we finish with you they won’t recognize you, so you might as well have some identification.’ He straightened up to grin first at Mick Treacy, then at the assembled youths. ‘So what’ya think of the brave SAS lieutenant?’
One of them spat in Cranfield’s face and said: ‘Whoever had this bastard would drown nothin’.’
‘A mother’s love is blind,’ Mick Treacy informed him. ‘You’ll learn that when yer older.’
Some of the youths laughed nervously. Michael Quinn just smiled. It was a smile that made Cranfield feel more frightened that he’d imagined he could be.
It’s not real, he thought desperately. Stay calm. Don’t make any mistakes. It all depends on what you say or don’t say, so don’t let them trick you. Don’t panic. Don’t break.
‘So what where ya doin’ in my pub?’ Quinn asked. ‘Apart from havin’ the Guinness. Lookin’ for me, were you?’ When Cranfield didn’t immediately reply, Quinn slapped him viciously with the back of his hand, then said, ‘Well, were you?’
‘Yes,’ Cranfield said.
Quinn straightened up, looking pleased. ‘Why?’
Cranfield found it hard to breathe. ‘I think you know why,’ he replied.
‘Gonna put a British bullet into my head. Was that what you were plannin’?’ When Cranfield didn’t reply, Quinn slapped him again and said, ‘Well, was it?’
‘Yes,’ Cranfield said.
‘Now why would ya want to be doin’ that? Was it because of O’Leary?’
‘My name is Randolph Cranfield,’ Cranfield said. ‘My rank is …’
Quinn’s hand pressed over his mouth and pushed his head back until the wood of the hard chair was chopping painfully into his neck.
‘When we want your name, rank, serial number and date of birth we’ll ask for it,’ Quinn said. Removing his hand, he continued: ‘It was O’Leary. Sure don’t I know that, Lieutenant? You came to get me for what I did to that weak, treacherous shite. Well, O’Leary’s dead and buried, Lieutenant, an’ he sang like a bird. That’s why him and his whore were killed – along with a bunch of other shites. He was a tout, a turncoat, your wee Fred, so he had to be put down.’
‘You could have just killed him,’ Cranfield said. ‘You didn’t have to …’
Quinn’s fist smashed into his face, making his head explode with pain. When he recovered, he found it difficult to breathe and felt blood on his face. Quinn had broken his nose.
‘Of course we had to,’ Quinn said. ‘He had a mouth like a torn pocket. Every time he opened his mouth he took a wrong step. What was wrong was right for us and he sang like a canary. He gave us a lot of important names and made our hearts leap for joy. Now what about Margaret Dogherty?’
‘My name is …’
Quinn pressed the palm of his hand against Cranfield’s broken nose and squeezed until even Cranfield couldn’t hold back the tears nor prevent himself screaming. When Quinn thought he’d had enough, he removed his hand and smiled a thin smile. ‘You and her were thick, were you?’
‘We shared a bed a few times,’ Cranfield acknowledged, though he found breathing difficult.
‘You’ll be sharin’ a fucking grave with her soon,’ Quinn responded, ‘though you won’t be goin’ as quick as she did. Twelve bullets she had in ‘er. From the guns of two men. She went quicker than the clap of a duck’s wing. You should be so lucky.’
‘Fuck you,’ Cranfield said.
Quinn punched him so hard that the chair went over backwards and the back of his head smashed into the floor. Pains darted across his forehead, exploded behind his nose, spread out across the back of his head, and shot down from his shoulder blades to his pinioned arms. He was temporarily blinded – by tears as well as pain – when someone pushed the chair upright again, returning him to the sitting position, where his breathing was anguished.
‘I don’t think he’s feeling too well,’ Mick Treacy said.
‘Ach, he’ll be all right when he’s better,’ Quinn replied. ‘Sure he belongs to the SAS. A quare bunch of boys they are.’ He leaned forward, no longer smiling, and stared directly into Cranfield’s weeping eyes. ‘We don’t want yer fucking name, rank, serial number or date of birth. What we want is a lot of information about you and your friends in British Intelligence. We ask. You answer. Is that understood?’
‘My name is …’
The pain was excruciating, exploding from his genitals, almost too much to bear yet becoming even worse when Quinn squeezed his testicles even harder. Cranfield screamed without thinking. He almost came off the chair, but was held down by the ropes. He would have lifted the chair off the floor, but one of the youths held him down. When Quinn released him, letting the pain subside a little, he could not stop the shaking of his body nor stem the pouring of sweat.
‘What do you expect?’ Quinn asked rhetorically. ‘You want mercy, Lieutenant? Yer thinkin’ I can’t be that bad and won’t go any further? Well, don’t kid yourself, you ijit. I’ll do more than you can imagine. I’ve lost two childern and a lot of friends to the Brits an’ been tortured myself. First Crumlin Road jail. Then fucking Long Kesh. The Brits have their own wee ways in there – and none of ’em pleasant. Mercy, Lieutenant? Sure I’m not interested. I could have stayed sane in Long Kesh if I’d had children to think about, but my childern were killed by British bullets in what was classed as an accident. Of course I still had a wife. We used to live in Conway Street. We were there in sixty-nine when the Prods wrecked the place while the RUC looked the other way. Our house was fire-bombed. My children were in hysterics. A Prod with a baseball bat that had nails stickin’ out of it smashed my missus over the head an’ ran off down the street. My missus died that day. She became someone else. She was so crazed, she terrified the kids an’ they had to take ’er away. Then the British Army took over, searched our houses, controlled our streets. They swore at our women, fired rubber bullets at our children, and treated us as if we were animals, only fit for the slaughterin’. One day, when they weren’t firin’ rubber bullets, they fired at my kids, killin’ both of them outright. They said it was an accident, the bastards, an’ left it at that. But I didn’t. I won’t. So don’t ask me for mercy. You came here to put a bullet through my head, but instead you’ll just talk. You know the Irish, don’t you? We all l
ike to talk – a good bit of crack to pass the time – so start talkin’, Lieutenant. If you don’t, we have our own wee ways. Now here’s the first question …’
‘My name is …’
There is pain and there is pain, some of which is beyond describing. What Cranfield endured over the next few hours was beyond comprehension. He heard his own screaming, reverberating through his head. It wasn’t a sound that he recognized as his own, but it opened doors that led into hell. There were punches and kicks. Sharpened blades cut through to bone. The first gunshot, which filled the room like thunder, took his kneecap away.
‘God,’ Cranfield gasped, licking his tears from his upper lip as they dripped from his dazed eyes down his cheeks. ‘My name is …’
He lost a second kneecap. The gun’s roaring, which was deafening, did not drown out his screaming, which seemed to reverberate through his head to leave it ringing and spinning. At some point he vomited. He then dry-retched for some time. His stomach was in knots and his heart was racing, waiting for the next torment.
He smelt it before he felt it. Burning flesh and bodily hair. They stubbed their cigarettes out on his chest, against his nipples, in his ears, then a cigarette lighter was ignited and held under his nostrils.
Pain became his whole world.
It’s not real, he thought, trying to stop himself from shivering, trying to choke back his vomit, determined in some buried cell of himself to hold on to his dignity. Bear in mind that nothing is real, that nothing can break you. Just don’t make a mistake.
‘My name is …’
Finally, he was on the floor, rolling about on the tiles, not feeling the cold because he was burning, immunized by the pain to the hardness, floating out of himself. There is pain and there is pain, he now knew, but there was none he had not felt.
‘Sure I’ll give you this,’ Quinn said, standing over him and kicking his broken ribs with no great deal of hope, ‘you’re one tough, tight-lipped, determined bastard. A man has to admire that.’
‘So what now?’ Mick Treacy asked.
‘Do you think this bag of shit and piss will talk?’
‘He’s beyond talkin’, Michael.’
‘Then let’s take ’im out and put an end to ‘im an’ we’ll still come out winners.’
‘Achay, that’s the ticket! Let’s make fertilizer out of the shite an’ help Ireland’s green grass grow.’
‘Hood ’im,’ Quinn said.
A hood was slipped over Cranfield’s head and tightened around his neck with a cord, making him feel claustrophobic and totally blind. A spasm of terror whipped through him, then passed away again.
Breathe deeply and evenly, he thought. You’re not going to choke. They’re just trying to panic you.
They picked him off the floor, forgetting about his smashed kneecaps. When he screamed and started falling again, they cursed and let him fall, then caught him by the shoulders and dragged him backwards across the brightly lit room. Someone opened the front door, letting freezing air rush in, then they dragged him across the dark courtyard and threw him back into the van. When he hit the tyres, tools and ropes, practically bouncing off the former, his smashed knees exploded with more pain and his broken ribs screamed – or he screamed – or some animal screamed.
That wasn’t me, he decided.
‘Don’t vomit,’ Mick Treacy said helpfully, ‘or you’ll just choke t’ death. Sure it’s real messy, that is.’
The van kicked into life and trundled off the forecourt. It bounced a little, then turned on to the narrow road that led into the countryside. The journey, which seemed to take for ever, took only a few minutes. The van stopped in a lay-by at the foot of a gentle hill. The wind moaned through the trees.
‘Sure this is as good as any place,’ Mick said in his amiable way. ‘Let’s drag the sack of spuds out.’
‘Right,’ Quinn said, ‘let’s do that.’
They dragged Cranfield to the rear of the van, then just rolled him off the edge. He hit the ground with a thud and let his scream wipe out the pain, then he felt the ground under his stomach and thighs as they dragged him across a stretch of sharp stones and eventually on to wet grass. It was easier on the grass, less painful, though cold, and he knew that he was being dragged uphill, out into the windy field. When they’d dragged him another ten yards or so, they released him again. He fell face down in the grass, then rolled on to his back.
‘Sit up,’ Quinn said.
Cranfield took a deep breath, tried to sit up, but fell back. A youth cursed and grabbed him by the shoulders and propped him upright. Cranfield was finding it hard to breathe, but he clung to his dignity.
‘I don’t need the hood,’ he said.
There was silence for a moment, as if they were deciding, then eventually the cord around his throat was loosened and the hood was tugged off.
He saw Quinn’s healthy head of grey hair and his hard, angry face. Behind him were the amiable Mick Treacy and two of the youths. All of them were holding Webley pistols. All were aiming at him. The wind was howling across the dark field and there were stars in the cloudy sky.
‘That’s the only kind of mercy you’ll get,’ Michael Quinn told him. ‘Do you have any last words?’
Cranfield thought of his wife and children, his many years in the army, his more admirable days with the SAS and all it had taught him. He hadn’t completely failed. He’d just made a few mistakes. As Lampton and Ricketts had said, he’d big-timed too many times; but for all that, he’d done a good job and had only one left to do. He didn’t know that it was possible to do it now, but he would certainly try.
‘Fuck off,’ he said.
Quinn kicked him in the ribs and cracked his head with his pistol, making him fall back and roll a few feet back down the hill, deeper into the darkness.
‘Fuckin’ British shite!’ Quinn said, then started forward.
Cranfield rolled farther away and tugged his trouser leg up. He grabbed the Browning, jerked it out of its holster, and rolled on to his back to aim it two-handed at Quinn as he advanced with his pistol raised.
Quinn stopped, eyes widening, and started aiming his pistol, even as Cranfield fired his first shots in a precise double tap.
Quinn was stopped dead in his tracks, jolting as if electrocuted. He jerked back as if tugged on a string and thudded into the earth.
Even before Quinn hit the ground, Cranfield was swinging the handgun elsewhere, managing to put a burst into Mick Treacy before the two youths returned his fire.
He saw Treacy step backwards, a surprised look on his face, then the bullets from the Webleys smashed his chest and made his insides explode.
He saw stars between the clouds, then the stars, then a big star, then a white light.
Cranfield died in that radiance.
Chapter 17
The news came into Bessbrook just after Cranfield’s men had left the base for a raid on a housing estate in the Falls.
Captain Dubois had been informed by the ‘green slime’ that a couple of IRA men were being hidden in the estate and preparing to snipe on a British Army foot patrol. Short of his own soldiers, he had hauled the SAS troop out of their bashas at first light and told them to prepare for an assault. They were on the road within ten minutes, but without Lieutenant Cranfield, who hadn’t been seen since storming out of Dubois’ office the previous afternoon.
When the telephone rang, Dubois, wondering where Cranfield had gone this time, though certainly suspecting what he was up to, was watching the armoured pig containing the SAS troops leaving its parking bay below. He turned away from the window, picked up the phone, and listened to the person speaking on the other end of the line, first with disbelief, then with growing awareness, and finally with a look of deep thoughtfulness.
‘And you’re sure one of the dead men was Quinn?’
‘Yes,’ his caller, an RUC officer, said. ‘The bodies were brought back and positively identified.’
‘Excellent,’ Dubois said. ‘Th
ank you.’
He put the phone down and returned to the window just as the armoured pig left through the guarded gates of the compound, heading for Belfast.
‘Well, well,’ Dubois whispered to himself, ‘he actually did it. It worked!’ Returning to his desk, he picked up the phone, dialled HQ Lisburn, and used a code-name to get his MI5 associate. When the agent came on the line, Dubois said: ‘It worked. The price was high, but he succeeded. Michael Quinn and his PIRA friend, Mick Treacy, were both found dead this morning in a field in south Armagh, shot fatally with 9mm bullets. A total of thirteen shots. Cranfield took them out before being mortally wounded. His own killers are unknown.’
Dubois stopped speaking to listen to the response. When the agent congratulated him, he smiled and hung up, clasped his fingers beneath his chin, pursed his lips for a moment, then smiled again and pressed the button on his intercom.
‘It’s going to be a nice day,’ he told his secretary. ‘I’ll have tea and biscuits now.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.
Pleased, Dubois released the intercom button and leaned back in his chair.
’A very nice day!’ he whispered.
Sitting between his mates in the cramped rear of the armoured pig taking them along the Ml, secure in his body armour, checking his Heckler & Koch MP5 and adjusting his respirator, Ricketts glanced out the back and saw the sun rising over the soft, green hills on both sides of the motorway. He also saw the Gazelles coming down on the overt OPs, bringing resups and replacement troops, before lifting off the men who had been there all night or, in certain cases, for many days and nights. Ricketts still found it hard to believe that those lovely hills were a killing ground and that of all the places he had fought in, this was the worst. Luckily, he was fighting it with some good mates, which made all the difference.
