‘Why shouldn’t you? I don’t want anything from you.’
‘Who told you, then?’
‘I don’t think either of us expects me to tell you that.’
‘When?’
‘I found out a couple of days ago. I’m led to believe that Mikey Sullivan plans to do something in the next couple of weeks or so.’
‘My people will look after me.’
‘I’m glad you’re so sure of that. I’m not quite so confident.’
This was the difficult part. He couldn’t tell Francis O’Neill that it had been Joe Geraghty who had authorized the leaking of the information to Mikey Sullivan. A sop; a trade to rein Mikey in and cease his continuing involvement with the dissident groups. He would have his moment with Francis and retire, that seemed to be the theory. A shaky theory in Richard’s view.
Francis was clearly thinking. ‘So what am I supposed to do? Up sticks again and move away?’
Richard raised his hands in denial of ownership of the consequences. ‘I don’t know. That’s up to you. But I didn’t want it on my conscience. I felt it right to warn you.’
Richard watched Francis calculating what the angle was. He glared like an irate, poor poker player. They were approaching the truly tricky phase of this visit.
‘So that’s it,’ he said with a rising inflection that was not quite a question. ‘You’ve said your piece and now you can go.’
‘I thought you might need a bit of help on your way.’ Richard put an envelope on the table. ‘There’s 10,000 euros there. It should get you started.’
He stared.
The door to the kitchen opened. Richard had never met Bridget O’Neill before but there she stood, looking at him. Francis did not turn at first but finally did as Richard gazed at her.
‘Christ,’ said Francis.
He hadn’t suspected, but now he knew.
‘You’re Richard, then,’ she said quietly.
‘That’s right.’ Richard strained to remain outwardly relaxed, though he had become tense and prepared. He was not armed and this could go terribly wrong.
‘Christ,’ said Francis again.
‘You’re sure?’ Richard said, redundantly, to Bridget.
‘Yes,’ she said, and continued to look at him.
‘You’re ready, then?’
‘I was told not to pack –’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He said it as gently as he could in the circumstances. ‘We should be going.’
‘I’m ready, yes,’ she said, and began the short walk between the kitchen and where he now stood at the door to the hall.
Richard watched Francis intently for a sign that he might grab her. But she negotiated the journey without hindrance and passed Richard on her way to the front door, where she waited. No handbag, no belongings. He glanced back at Francis, who seemed to regard him calmly enough. Then he heard the scrape of the chair. Francis was standing. Bridget looked back in horror. His face was red, his fists were clenching and unclenching. This was it.
At Richard’s signal Bridget opened the front door. They walked out together, running the gauntlet of the eyes of the young men who had gathered. This was not the kind of place you happened upon and strangers were not common here. They walked down the front path towards the car. Richard let Bridget in the passenger’s side and unlocked his own door. They fastened their seat belts and he pulled away slowly. At the next junction he turned the car around carefully and they passed the group of boys again. The boys watched intently as they made their sedate progress down the hill. A minute or so later they were buzzed by a moped ridden by a boy with no helmet who couldn’t have been much older than thirteen. He grinned and gesticulated as he weaved across the road in front of them. Richard thought better of putting his foot down hard on the accelerator. They inched their way off the estate and towards town and evidently the moped rider became bored.
Once out of town he accelerated fast. They were pushing 120 kilometres an hour along these single-carriageway roads. He wanted to get away and enjoyed the concentration of it. He and Bridget had not exchanged further words until this moment.
‘Glad that’s over and done with,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, in some doubt, it seemed.
The only way she’d been able to walk that small but infinite distance across the room was by imagining she was holding her child’s hand. He was a sweet wee thing – she’d decided he was a boy, with Francis’s cheeky smile but her mild nature. She took him by the hand and led him – or did he lead her? – slowly across that room, that matter of metres as wide as an ocean. As she sensed Francis behind her, she flinched inwardly but took strength from her boy’s grasp – his small, soft, trusting hand in hers – and felt a duty to protect. It’s all right, she murmured inside her head, to him. Sarah would be waiting somewhere, so she’d said on the phone. But Francis has met Richard, which is why he’ll come, and he’s got something else to talk to Francis about. Don’t worry, I’ll be close by, she’d said. It’ll be all right.
Epilogue
It is all in the past, a past that seems to Sarah sometimes distant and sometimes as immediate as the last minute. Much of the time it’s as if it never happened.
She lives now in the Peak District, not so far from where she grew up. The small inheritance from her parents has enabled her to retire modestly on an actuarially reduced pension. She does not pine for her old work although she misses her colleagues. It is the newspaper that has brought it back so suddenly.
Francis O’Neill vanished shortly after Richard’s warning. He left no trace, always had been a canny operator, and she hopes he might have evaded Mikey Sullivan and be leading some sort of life now.
She’d met Richard and Bridget at a roadhouse on the way to Cork, where they’d changed cars. There had been no time for emotional reunions, time was tight for their flight. They’d spent a few days together and then the machine had kicked in with its systems and processes. She’d seen Bridget periodically afterwards but with decreasing frequency.
Now Bridget is somewhere out there in the world, safe, with a new home, a new name and sufficient money to live comfortably. Sarah has never asked for any of the details, but for a time received regular reports that she was well. Now, since Sarah has left, she no longer hears anything. It is right this way. She does her best not to wonder.
She picks up the paper again and looks at the article about the newly appointed minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Joseph Geraghty, MLA. It is a shock after all this time. Joe smiles in the accompanying picture, photogenic and media-friendly as ever, and over his shoulder she can make out his ever-present chief of staff, peering shyly. Seeing Joe Geraghty is not what has shocked her, he is frequently in the public eye after all.
It was 1987 when they first met. She was only twenty-nine herself, among the first women unleashed on to an unsuspecting IRA. ‘Those of the fairer sex,’ Charles had said, ‘should in my view be protected from these people. But my view is by the by.’ Thankfully it had been, much like Charles.
She’d set her sights on him early on. Something about him that she gleaned from the early reporting, a flavour of this boy. She knew it was superficial and potentially dangerously misleading, but she’d liked the photo of him on file: a chubby boy with a hesitant smile. Never been arrested, but known to be one of Gentleman Joe’s boys.
Their first meeting was the most delicate of pulls. She made sure the RUC team that accompanied her could at least pretend to be gentle souls and he acquiesced well enough. She had little time: the police wanted to wrap up the checkpoint as quickly as they could. She kept it simple and direct but, she hoped, not brusque as they sat together in the rear of the Transit van.
‘I’m not police, though you’ll have guessed that. And I don’t expect you to say anything. Probably better if you don’t in fact. You need to keep your head clear. I’ve not told these guys anything about what I’m going to say. But they’re not stupid. The point is that I trust them, wit
h my life. Whatever you may think, these are good people.’
He opened his mouth.
‘No, I don’t want to debate it because we don’t have time. Perhaps some other time. I know you don’t like violence. I know you think all of this is getting your people nowhere. And you’re right on that score. I know you’re desperately unhappy and afraid. I know you can’t see a way out.’
He did not refute these unsupported assertions. It was a start.
‘This is your way out,’ she said.
She deliberately didn’t give him a telephone number. She said she would see him again sometime. He hadn’t uttered a word.
There were follow-ups, with the same crew, over the next few weeks. He spoke to her. He did not glare at her in silence or trot out the drilled responses. Finally she ventured the idea of meeting somewhere else, somewhere he would have to turn up of his own volition. He agreed. It was that simple. It was that simple when it worked.
She remembers waiting for him in the car park. There was anxiety enough in the period beforehand but none was necessary once the agreed time arrived. He was punctual, always was throughout their relationship, and appeared as if from nowhere. She knew then he was right for this. He valued professionalism; it was part of what underscored the relationship.
His other motivations became clearer later. At first the exchanges were transactional: he passed information, she tested it with questions and then logged it. No money changed hands. It was tacit both that this would have been too dangerous and money was not what had drawn Kenny into this relationship in the first place.
Kenny had elderly parents and a younger brother with cerebral palsy whom he adored. They provided his anchor and a large part of his reason for speaking to Sarah. Soon their sessions together became hours during which he would speak, very possibly for the first time, about young Danny. He would be in tears, enmeshed in the IRA, fearful that one day he would be locked up or dead and unable to care or provide for his brother. He no longer wanted to be part of it, yet was captured in its embrace and Gentleman Joe’s particular tyranny. Joe Geraghty paid lip service to Kenny’s needs, soothing him gently with promises to keep him out of the firing line, but they were only words, Kenny knew.
So they shaped a future together, Sarah and Kenny. Kenny would insist to Joe that he no longer take a front-line role in operations but would offer other support. He would claim, with justification, that he needed to take time out to look after Danny and could not offer the instant and total commitment that active service required.
According to Kenny, Joe said with a smile, ‘Going soft on me, Kenny, are ye? It’ll not do, I can tell you. It’ll not do. But I’ll think on. I could do with some more help myself. I’ll think about it, Kenny. But I’m not happy.’
‘Stick to what you’ve said, Kenny,’ said Sarah. ‘He’ll come round.’
‘You don’t know him. He’s an evil bastard.’
‘I know that much. But if you give in to him now he’ll own you for ever.’
‘He does already.’
‘No, he doesn’t. This is your chance to take your life back. Hold your nerve. If he insists, we’ll have to think again. But hold your nerve, Kenny.’
He looked at her and she saw belief in his eyes.
He did. Eventually Joe had given in. The shooting in which Colm Hawley had died and Kenny was injured was a factor. Kenny became Joe’s right-hand man, dealing with the practical annoyances of his life. Over time he made himself indispensable as Joe’s responsibilities increased. He refused to become directly involved in Joe’s security inquiries, ostensibly because of his family commitments but in fact because of the legal complexities in which Sarah had schooled him. By dint of his functionary role he became a key agent. He told her about Joe’s view of the future. ‘Francis O’Neill’s the boy to watch,’ he said one night in 1988. ‘Joe’s told him to stay in South Armagh because he’s got big plans for him. And Francis is an animal.’
Later, he described Joe’s intent to secure his own future. ‘Got to back both horses, Kenny,’ he’d said. ‘Got to back all the fecking horses in this race. You stick with me, Kenny. One word out of turn, one wrong smile to one of the other Army Council boys, and I’ll crucify you. You belong to me, never forget that.’
Kenny and Francis had been inducted into the Belfast Brigade at around the same time. He seemed not to realize that tears were running down his cheeks as he told the story. ‘He’s a brutal man, Gentleman Joe. It’s ironic, that title. Everyone knows Joe. You’ll be in your bed and he’ll pounce suddenly in the middle of the night. He’ll stroke your face or he’ll drag you out by your hair. Possibly both. You learn not to sleep, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t know whether it’s to make you his, or whether he’s just like that, but the fear just stays with you, always. Francis is just as afraid of him as I am. I hate the bastard.’
Kenny told her of Francis’s planned trip to Singapore, which Joe Geraghty had confided to him. He told her too late – he’d been at home with Danny – of the taking of Liam O’Neill. He warned her that Francis O’Neill had been entrusted with a spectacular near London, but he had none of the details. She had to go elsewhere for that: to Bridget O’Neill. He’d been primed to whisk Bridget away if Joe Geraghty decided she should be interrogated by Jimmy Lafferty’s boys. He related Joe’s perspective on his secret discussions with a spook called Richard Mercer. His last piece of intelligence, long after he’d retired, was to tell Sarah that Joe Geraghty had told Mikey Sullivan the O’Neills’ whereabouts.
In 2002 it ended, amicably, when Kenny’s father died. Sarah, somewhat equivocally, offered Kenny the chance to leave, together with his mother and Danny. It did not surprise her that he declined. Like her, he knew that they would cut too much of a striking profile in their new lives. Joe and the boys would find them if they wanted to. So he’d stuck with it and was still sticking with it now. Some money – not too much – found its way circuitously into his bank account each year courtesy of an obscure index-linked investment putatively connected to an insurance on his father’s life; and that was now the extent of it.
Apart, that is, from the day in 2016, just before she retired herself, when they’d met at his request. It had been strange to see him in London, in the lobby of a five-star hotel over coffee. He was there on some kind of political business.
‘Can’t you screw the bastard? Get rid of him?’
‘What do you mean?’ she’d said.
‘You’ve got enough on him. You could ruin him, surely?’
‘I’ve got to consider where it’d leave you, Kenny.’
‘I’m past worrying about that. He’s still the same bastard, you know. He should be destroyed.’
‘Why don’t you just move on? Resign and do your own thing. Forget about him. You could do something else. It’s not as if you’re trapped any more. He can’t do anything to you.’
‘Can’t you see? Of course I am. Regardless of what he can or can’t do. I’m stuck, until he’s brought down.’
‘I can’t do that to you, Kenny. You know it’d all come out.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Besides …’
‘Yeah. Thought you’d say that. Can’t afford to disrupt the process.’
‘Well? Are you saying we can?’
It had been amicable enough, considering the circumstances. The old warmth had come flooding back, never expressed in word or action – to do so would have been to destroy it. He’d known before the meeting what she’d say. He’d simply had to try. And there he still was.
On each anniversary of that first stop near Belfast airport she drinks a quiet toast to him, and to Bridget too. Usually it’s just a raised mug of tea. Sometimes, though, she is taken back there by a news item, back to that strange world that was once so familiar and normal. Another act of violence, apparently random but in fact in the name of another of those ideologies that see death as a means to an end: a bomb in a marketplace, a man with a machete in a
street or a truck zigzagging along a pavement. Different than it was, of course, but it reminds her of those dark, anxious days. She thinks of Bridget and Francis, both of them alone out there somewhere and, she hopes, free of the fight.
Acknowledgements
These acknowledgements include those who, over the past three years or so, have helped bring my novels to publication and make me feel that I’m on the way to earning the title ‘writer’.
Many thanks to the whole team at Viking, for whom brilliant is not an overblown term. Poppy North, Annie Hollands, Stephenie Naulls, Lesley Levene, Keith Taylor, Katy Loftus, Patricia McVeigh and Isabel Wall, plus undoubtedly countless others whose names I don’t know, have been so good at their individual jobs but also work superbly together. And the huge added bonus is that they’re such nice people. A special mention must go to my editor, Mary Mount, who has without doubt made this book a much better one than if I’d been left to my own devices. She’s shown patience, unerring judgement and friendship in navigating us to our current position. I’m flattered by her confidence in me.
Likewise for the exceptional Curtis Brown team, and likewise I’ll risk naming names. I’m extremely grateful to Catherine Cho, Kirsten Foster, Kate Cooper, Alice Lutyens, Eva Papastratis, Camilla Young, Jess Coleman and Nadia Mokdad for their forbearance and skill. The mastermind of this effort is my friend and agent Jonny Geller, who has shown such faith in me and such enthusiasm, and has kept me going when I have (more than once, more than ten times) doubted myself. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jonny, who works with such a blend of charm and integrity.
I should, though they may not want me to, mention my former employers. Despite possibly feeling uncomfortable – I simply don’t know – about my deciding to write, and about this novel in particular, they have shown real grace in their dealings with me over it and no obstructiveness. We may disagree over some things, but that disagreement is civilized.
Finally, though this is not in the normal manner of book acknowledgements, I must show recognition of the suffering of the people of the islands of Ireland and Great Britain before, during and after the period euphemistically known as the Troubles (and it isn’t, as many people seem to believe, over yet): the innocent victims and the guilty; the stupid boneheads and the very clever; the brave and the brutally, unscrupulously devious. I do not write with a ‘message’ in mind – I’m far more interested in how so-called ordinary individuals somehow become extraordinary – but if there is one thing that we can take from our centuries-old experience in these islands it is the (in all but the smallest number of cases) utter futility of political violence, which seems at times to be calculated to defeat its own ends. It is the (not so) ordinary people who suffer from the perverse, vaunting ambition of their leaders, and it is they who should count.
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