‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to be clear with you. You carry on fucking us around and I will take you into the bathroom, tie you up in the bath, cut your wrists and watch your blood drain down the plughole. Then I’ll carve you up and fillet you and take out your giblets and put the whole bloody lot in that bin out the back.’
He looked enquiringly.
‘OK,’ said Karl. ‘I get the message.’
Francis pressed harder into his face, fingernails digging into the flesh. ‘Get the message? Get the message? What do you mean: get the fucking message? I’m not sending out messages. Just do what I say.’
‘All right.’
‘Now where’s that tea, Antony?’ said Francis.
She knew that she had been told to phone only in an emergency. To her, this counted.
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
‘Why?’ asked Sarah. ‘Do you know something?’
‘No. He must be doing something. Is he all right?’
‘We talked about this. Your not knowing certain things protects you. Your mind’s not full of detail you have to forget …’
‘I know, I know. But is he …?’
‘I’ll tell you as soon as I can if anything important happens. I will do what’s best for you. I will look after you. I know it must be difficult, all on your own, but the less we’re in contact at the moment the better.’
‘Did you get them to come to the house? Did you set us up?’
‘No.’
‘Those men, those vile men. Do they know?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Are these the people you deal with, though?’
‘Normally not directly. There’s no chance they could find out anything about you from me.’
‘I’m worried about him.’
‘I know. Try not to be.’
‘Can you guarantee no harm will come to him?’
‘It all depends on him. We’re both trying to make sure of that.’
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘I don’t know. I know it’s difficult. You have to accept everything on trust. There’s nothing I can say to comfort you. I’m doing my best to achieve what we both agreed and I’m good at my job. But there are so many variables. We talked about this. Public safety has to come first. You just have to hang on in there. Neither of us has any option. This is the most difficult time, the waiting. Just stick with it.’
‘I need to meet.’
‘All right. Thursday?’
Variables. What variables? She believed what Sarah was saying. But so much of this was beyond Sarah’s control. Way beyond. She’d been clear that Francis would be in danger, but much less danger than when he was going about his business without them being aware of it. That part was unconvincing now. Francis was a clever man, he didn’t take risks unnecessarily. He’d done it for years without getting caught.
But then. Those people, when he did what he did. Is that really what you want? Sarah had said. Of course it wasn’t.
Poor Francis, she thought. Holed up somewhere. Unaware of any of this, unaware anything was wrong, of what would happen to him. She could no longer find any liking in herself for him, but that was not the point. Not the point at all. Poor Francis. She would tell Sarah. No more. Too late. But no more.
Antony drove. Jonjo sat in the front passenger seat. From the back Francis kept a watchful eye on the road, perilous at the best of times with its three lanes and lumbering trucks inducing dangerous overtaking manoeuvres, and on Antony’s driving. Foot passengers had disembarked first so they’d avoided being caught up in the slow convoy of lorries spewing out of the ferry on to the roads. It was moderately quiet, even for an out-of-season Tuesday.
‘Run me through it,’ he said to Jonjo.
‘No issues. Straightforward as you could want. Got meself a bacon buttie at Larne and sat and read the paper.’
‘Security this end?’
‘Nothing. Wasn’t stopped.’
‘How about landside?’
‘Didn’t seem to be much. Sleepy old Cairnryan. How’s it all looking?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Francis in a tone that he hoped would convey something different to Jonjo. They would need to speak, but not in front of Antony. ‘What about the other side?’
‘No problems. They’re just putting the thing together.’
‘Got it all mixed, then?’
‘Yeah. And I’ve got some good boys on it over there. All I’ll need to do is connect up the wires and set the fucker.’
‘Still on for Thursday?’
‘As planned. Same truck. Same reg. Same mobile phone. And we pick them up at Charnock Richard?’
‘Right. They’ve got their instructions?’
‘Aye. They wait in the cafeteria until they see me. No contact. Then they go. We watch them down the M6 and then we meet up at Frankley. You tell them where they’re to park up. Is it secure?’
‘It’ll do. How long do you need?’
‘Hour or two should do it.’
‘All right. Then you and Antony make your way back.’
Francis could see Antony’s face in the driver’s mirror. He looked hurt. ‘No worries, Antony,’ he said. ‘You’re a good lad. You’ll get plenty of chances. We’ll be five up anyway without youse two. Too many cooks and so on.’
‘Right, Francis.’
‘Well, then. Time for a bit of dinner.’
They pulled in at the next service station and found a table. Francis said, ‘Listen, Antony, why don’t you go and get us our dinner now? We could do without them hearing too many Irish voices. Just the one’s enough. I’ll be having the all-day breakfast …’ He looked at Jonjo.
‘The same. And tea. Cheers, Antony.’
‘Aye, yes, tea.’ He handed Antony two ten-pound notes and watched him as he walked off meekly to join the long queue.
‘He’s a good enough lad,’ said Francis.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Crock o’shite. God knows if it was up to me I wouldn’t choose these bastards. I don’t know what Joe and them are up to. Boys and amateurs. And you and me and Peter stuck in the middle. What are the truck crew like?’
‘Fecking mad. The driver’s sound enough but the other eejit’s a mad bastard. Gerry McCluskey. You know the boy?’
‘Know of him. Lives down Silverbridge way?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Thieving heavy plant, that’s what he does, isn’t it?’
‘Aye. What we’re doing cuddling up to the likes of him I don’t know.’
‘Needs must, Jonjo, I suppose. He knows England. He’s got contacts. We’ve so many boys inside just now.’
‘Well, he’s cracked. His cousin it is, driving the truck. Quiet lad. But Gerry. Real gobshite.’
‘We’ve a fucking Englishman down in Birmingham.’
‘Englishman? Jesus.’
‘Aye. He’s waiting there with Peter. If Peter doesn’t do him in before we get there, that is. Member of some ultra-left-wing group. Ex-soldier from the British Army who saw the light. He’s vouched for back home. Done some training with the boys, so they say. Karl, he calls himself. Found out the other day his real name’s Derek. But that doesn’t sound right for a revolutionary, so he calls himself Karl, after Karl Marx.’
‘Jeez.’
‘Heard anything about Mikey?’
‘They’re still holding him in Castlereagh, I was told.’
‘We could have done with him here. Antony’s an all-right kid but …’
‘Yeah.’
‘… and Peter’s just a fucking hothead. With your two clowns coming over tomorrow, looks like we’re going to have a full house. You and me are going to have to hold this together.’
‘Aye.’
They looked at Antony, who was nearing the cash register eventually. He smiled back nervously and waved.
‘Fuck me,’ said Jonjo.
‘Yeah,’ said Francis.
Bridget and Sarah sat in th
e two low leather chairs set by the wide picture window for the purpose of looking out on to the Irish Sea, blue and inviting on a day like this under a wide sky. Sarah had acquired this comfortable bungalow on the coast near Downpatrick. Riffing extensively on her Irish heritage, she’d told the neighbours she was a businesswoman looking for a place with seclusion and privacy as a refuge from her manic professional life. The elderly man next door had looked at her enquiringly and she’d said that, no, she’d not been put off by the Troubles. Friends had told her it was all exaggerated, that aside from the flashpoints Northern Ireland was one of the safest and most restful places within easy distance of London. That was how she’d found it, bought this place for a song and now viewed it as home, coming here as often as possible. She was Irish at heart after all, if not by accent.
The reasoning was thin, to say the least. Sarah and Bridget had been using this place for their meetings for some months now.
Before this new arrangement, Bridget had gone to each meeting with Sarah with a mixture of anticipation of the contact and dread of the arrival and departure. She knew a chance meeting on the way there or back could result in her death; still worse was the gnawing thought that she might have been recognized without her knowledge by someone connected with Francis or the Provos. The feeling of peril had accumulated. It was getting easier because of this place and because she now had a cover story, the fictional but unspecified medical condition that she had placed in the other wives’ minds.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Sarah.
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s to be expected. It’s tough, especially now.’
‘I just want to undo all of this.’
‘What?’
‘Everything. You and me. Me doing this. All those wrongs Francis did me. Marrying him. Ever meeting him. That’s the problem. I just want everything not to have happened.’
Sarah did not reply.
‘I mean, I know I can’t. But, you know …’
‘We have to deal with life as it is.’
‘That’s what I can’t do.’
‘You’re wrong. You’re such a level-headed person. You’ve coped with so much over the years.’
‘When I was a small girl in infants school, I was shy. I was in class one morning and wanted to go to the toilet but couldn’t say. I sat there and sat there and wet my pants in the end. The teacher told me what a stupid little girl I was, in front of the class. She was right, and there was nothing I could do. Everybody knew, and there was nothing I could do. I feel like that now, just like that. And soon everyone will know.’
‘It’s not like that. You’re doing what’s right. However wrong it may feel. Whatever happens from now on. And yes, I would say that, wouldn’t I? It’s what I’m trained to say. But it’s true.’
‘Right for whom?’
‘Right for everybody. You. Those whose suffering you help prevent. Even for Francis.’
‘How do you know Francis is going to kill anyone?’
‘You know what he does.’
‘They only kill enemy combatants. In self-defence.’
‘A policeman, an MP, a ten-year-old boy who happens to be standing next to a rubbish bin?’
‘All right. Of course not. But who’s to blame for that? Are you saying Francis is? He’s only fighting back.’
‘I know the history. I know the slogans. I know the charge sheet off by heart, like all good Irish children. I have my own views. But I look at this and think: my opinions are irrelevant. I have to do what I can to stop it. I can’t decide the big picture, I’m not powerful enough or clever enough to do that. So I’ll do whatever I can.’
‘That’s just a speech you’ve learned off by heart. I can’t square this.’
‘You don’t have to. Not at the moment. It’s in motion. There’s nothing you or I can do to stop it.’
‘I could go to them. I could tell them what’s happened. Get them to get him back.’
‘I doubt they could. But you wouldn’t do that anyway. Think of the consequences for yourself.’
‘Perhaps I deserve it. Perhaps it’s what I want. Perhaps I need to stop thinking about the consequences for me.’
Even as she spoke the words she knew she was lying. Sarah must know too. She looked at the sea, down there, so far away, silent through the double glazing.
As she walked from the bus stop out of the village, Bridget thought she now understood her folly. It had begun in her teens, when she’d allowed herself to be charmed by Francis O’Neill. Perhaps that had been the point at which all of this had been set in motion, with an ineluctable unravelling that would destroy her and Francis too. She was a stupid woman, feckless and impulsive. Sarah, whom she’d regarded almost as a saviour, was in the end just someone to talk to. And not really that when it came down to it. After all, she was a Brit. Bridget deserved this; but then again it was too late to be thinking any of this. She was beyond, Francis was beyond.
She approached the cottage and became aware of a figure standing outside, smoking a cigarette behind his crooked, shielding hand. Her first instinct was to turn and scuttle back the way she had come, but it would be futile; he had seen her and there would be others lying in wait.
It was Stevie from the garage. He waved, and it seemed an age before she reached him.
‘Hello, Bridget,’ he said.
‘Hello, Stevie,’ she replied.
‘You was out.’
‘Yes. I had to go the shops, see.’
He looked at her. She carried only her handbag. ‘Had to get a new battery for me watch. It stopped yesterday …’ Don’t explain too much, she told herself. Don’t get drawn in.
‘And is it all right now?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Anne-Marie was looking for you earlier on. She dropped by.’
‘I’d probably already gone out.’
‘It was this morning.’
‘And?’
‘Anyways, I was looking for Francis. Got a car in he might be interested in.’
‘Francis isn’t here.’
‘Away, is he?’
She looked at him and he looked down, acknowledging, it seemed to her, that this was not an appropriate question. Or had it been a test?
‘Well, I’ll tell him,’ she said tersely. ‘Thanks for coming by.’
‘Aye, I’ll see him when I see him, then,’ he said, and went to his car.
As she unlocked the front door she stopped herself from looking round to see if he was watching her.
The night before, everything became calm. Life was simplified, distilled. The talking was done, the planning: all that was left was execution. It was familiar. It was happening to him again. The struggle had become secondary, then somehow irrelevant; what was important was the call to action. Others had disappeared from view, apart from the small assembled crew.
He felt tired, beyond exhaustion. Nervousness was no longer a factor, though he knew that, in the febrile oscillation between doing and waiting the next morning, sweat and anxiety would rise again. And then thirty minutes or so before the final act and flight, inevitably that equally familiar but different wave of fatigue would envelop him before rather than after the last exertion and fruition, which would evaporate suddenly in the clarity of the moment.
Everything was in place. The lorry was parked in the overnight truck stop, Jonjo in the sleeping section of the cab guarding it. Francis had half considered leaving the vehicle on its own. If the security forces were to detect it there was little Jonjo would be able to do on his own to prevent the inevitable. The risks of this operation were not negligible, and Francis did not want to lose Jonjo, of all his people. But if the truck was stolen by common criminals, all hell would be let loose. As it was, Jonjo would be on hand to do his stuff at the crack of dawn.
Antony slept in the other bed in this room. Peter and Karl, a tentative truce holding, were in the other bedroom and the two jokers who had brought the truck over had their sleeping bags in t
he lounge, which reeked of beer and takeaways. It was quiet, apart from the rumble of traffic along the A41 and the steady rhythm of Antony’s snoring. The innocence and ignorance of the young, to be able to sleep on command on a night such as this. Francis would find his own thin sleep, but it would take its time to arrive.
At three twenty-two in the morning he was instantly alert. He was not even aware of waking, so sudden was the transition between the states of sleep and consciousness. He looked at the digital clock and felt under the bed for the revolver he carried with him. Antony snored on.
Francis slid quickly out of the bed, crept across the room and stood behind the door. He wondered whether the others too had heard the sound of voices, or indeed if he had imagined it. As he orientated himself in full wakefulness, he tried to compute what he had heard. The click of a door. Voices, not urgent, insistent or for that matter making any apparent effort to remain unheard. Cheerful if anything. Carefully, he turned the door handle which had a propensity to click. He twisted it until he could inch the door open on to the dark narrow corridor from which all the doors of the flat opened. There was a figure standing in the darkness already. Peter. Karl peered around the edge of the door. Francis gestured him impatiently to go back into the bedroom.
Francis and Peter could hear giggling from the living room. They edged towards the door under which light shone and waited there a moment.
Gerry and Kevin, the truck driver, were sprawled across the armchairs while another figure lay asleep on the sofa.
‘What’s going on here, boys?’ said Francis.
‘Got caught in a lock-in,’ answered Gerry.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yeah. Irish pub. So no worries.’
‘And who’s this one?’
‘That’s Pat.’
‘Pat?’
‘Yeah. He does the ferry run too. He’s a good old boy. From Kerry. Known him years. Sound as a pound.’
‘And what’s Pat doing here?’
‘He was going to sleep in his rig. But we thought …’
‘You thought. Had a few yourselves, lads?’
‘One or two. Not much nightlife in Silverbridge,’ said Gerry.
‘Or Dundalk,’ added Kevin, with a laugh. He swigged from a bottle.
A Traitor in the Family Page 18
