by Declan Burke
‘Sure. Not a problem.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘That’d be great, Tom. Really, really great.’
‘Seriously, don’t worry about it.’
‘Brilliant.’ I could hear faint sounds of traffic in the background at Rachel’s end. She’d obviously stepped outside to make the call.
‘Hey, Rach? I’m expecting a call, so I can’t stay on too long.’
‘No problem. Just let me say hello to Emily.’
‘She’s not here right now.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, she’s not here. She’s with Martin.’
‘Oh, Tom.’
‘It’s complicated, OK?’
‘When is it not?’
‘Let’s not get into it. Not now.’
Silence, and the faint sounds of traffic. ‘Text me Martin’s number, I’ll ring her there.’
‘Will do. Only don’t panic if he doesn’t answer straight away, he’s driving.’
‘Driving where? Tom, what’s going on? Where are you?’
Contrary to popular belief, honesty is rarely the best policy. Lying now, though, would have serious consequences down the line. ‘Donegal,’ I said.
‘Fuck. Tom, seriously?’
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘Marvellous. So now you’re a mind-reader too.’
‘Rachel—’
‘Or wait, maybe you are. Maybe you can already tell that I think you’re a selfish bastard because you had the chance to spend the weekend with your daughter and instead you ran off to Donegal to clear his name and dumped Emily on your ex-girlfriend’s husband.’
‘That’s not what’s going on.’
But she wasn’t listening. ‘Let it go, Tom. The man’s dead. Guilty or innocent, he’s dead. And if you don’t start thinking about the living, and specifically your daughter, then you’re going to wind up having these conversations with her. You know that, right?’
She was wrong, this time at least, but I couldn’t help but admire her priorities. A lesser woman would have been storing up this latest manifestation of my irresponsibility, to place it in front of the judge at the custody hearing, but Rachel’s instinct was to preserve my relationship with Emily. She was doing it for Emily, sure, but it was still good to hear.
Even if she was totally wrong. ‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Rach. This has nothing to do with my father.’
‘I find that hard to believe, Tom.’
‘And I can understand why. But you need to trust me on this one.’
It was my father who had driven the first wedge between us. I’d brought it up, his disgrace, during one of our earliest dates, because I wanted her to hear it from me. To hear his side of it, the version in which he wasn’t stickered with lurid labels: patriot, bagman, traitor. That he’d been nothing more than a civil servant doing his job in the Department of Finance who’d had the bad luck to be seconded, early one September morning in 1969, as financial advisor to an Irish Army intelligence officer who was flying to Berlin later that day. A go-between with a cheque book, he said. There wasn’t even time to go home and pack. The arms, he was informed on the flight, were originating in Split and destined for the newly formed IRA units in the Nationalist areas of Northern Ireland besieged by Loyalist mobs, said arms to be sailed from the eastern Med all the way to north Donegal, and onwards to Derry. All of it organized and overseen by a charismatic and ambitious young cabinet minister who, my father later learned, could teach Pontius Pilate a thing or two about personal hygiene.
The meeting never happened. My father and the young intelligence officer flew home and went their separate ways. The next time they saw one another they were in court, listening to allegations of subversion, criminal negligence and treachery. One particularly inventive theory went under the heading of attempted military coup. When it all fell out, nothing was proven. By then it was long forgotten that my father, and that young intelligence officer, were witnesses for the prosecution. But the shit stuck. My father’s reputation was vindicated in the short term, but when the charismatic young cabinet minister came riding back into power some years later, my father was one of the first to be purged. By then, he said, he was glad to go. By then he was isolated and vilified, a traitor not to his country but to the system, a man who had blown the whistle by testifying in his own defence.
My mother always claimed that the seeds of the cancer were sown then, that the stress of defending his name had poisoned him to the core. Maybe she was right. But there was a more insidious element to it too, the shame of being patronised in public as a minor civil servant, of being dismissed as a dupe, a patsy, a hapless pawn in some great game.
I’d told Rachel all this and she’d listened, fascinated, and then told me she’d never heard of him. And later, when his cancer took hold and my obsession with proving his innocence began to shape my own career, keeping me freelance so that I could devote any spare time to what we called ‘The Project’, she would ask, as patiently as she could muster, how I intended to clear the name of a man who had been publicly vindicated three decades before.
She was right, of course. What I was attempting wasn’t revisionism, to force a reappraisal of the historical facts. What I was trying to do was alter the public’s perception of those facts. A Sisyphean struggle at the best of times but especially, as Rachel frequently pointed out, when the public simply didn’t give a rat’s ass.
I think she’d believed that Emily, when she was born, would change a lot of things. That I’d recalibrate, and realize that I needed to leave behind my old toys and obsessions. That it was the baby that now mattered, not the old man. A reasonable expectation, according to biology and psychology and even the most cursory application of common sense. Except by then he was a widower and a jaundiced stain seeping into his bed sheets. How could I slough him off? How could I not at least go through the motions of pretending that his obsession was mine too?
Rachel understood that, and held on, and held on. What she couldn’t cope with was how, three years after he’d died, I was still refusing to let it go. That I was clinging to the impossible hope of clearing his name as a way of assuaging my guilt for not truly believing it had been possible while he was alive. At first she’d accepted that my novels were an attempt at catharsis, the necessary inventions of unresolved conflicts. But as book followed book, and the book-buying public remained resolutely unimpressed by the increasingly bleak scenarios and downbeat endings, she realized that I’d simply diverted the obsession into a different but equally unrewarding channel.
Eventually, being not only a good mother but a fully functioning human being, she’d decided that Emily needed more than the basics of food and warmth and a roof over her head, and that living month to month at the whim of commissioning editors was a recipe for little more than the heartache of breadline economics. So we separated, and began the slow torture of ripping Emily in half.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Peter was still married, and failing miserably in his bid to get his wife to sign the appropriate papers – the last I’d heard, she was living on an ashram somewhere north of Goa – then she’d have pushed through the divorce a year ago.
‘Sorry, Tom,’ she said, ‘but you ran out of trust tokens a long time ago. Send me Martin’s number. We’ll talk when you’re back in Dublin. And Tom?’
‘What?’
‘You need to think very seriously about what’s best for Emily. My thoughts are that a guy who dumps his daughter on some stranger in the middle of a crisis probably isn’t it.’
‘Martin isn’t a—’
‘He is to me, Tom. More to the point, he is to Emily. Have you even stopped to think about what she’s feeling right now?’
She’s safe, I wanted to say. She’s safe and she’s with a good man she calls Uncle Martin, a solid guy who drove 300 miles to take her out of the dangerous situation I’d dragged her into.
‘There’s a bigger pictur
e, Rach.’
‘For you, maybe. But I’d imagine Emily’s looking at a totally different picture.’
She hung up.
I sat there staring at the phone and wishing I was Martin. Or at least, wishing I was sitting where Martin was right now, motoring for Dublin with Emily in the back seat, cheating at I Spy.
Where did it end? When did I become the man my daughter deserved?
The temptation to stand up and simply walk away was a trembling in my legs. To stroll down to the pier and take the next ferry out, head for home. Gather my little girl up in a hug and tell her I’d never let her go again.
I could do that, sure. Turn my back on Gerard Smyth and Shay Govern, and my own conscience. Just walk away, and wave goodbye to the forty grand that might persuade a judge I was worth taking seriously as a father.
I could do all that, for the sake of a priceless hug and a promise I’d know was a lie.
Or I could dig in, suck it up like Kee advised. Tell Shay Govern the truth, about Gerard Smyth’s story and how he died. About Kee’s investigation and the threat of a double tap to the back of the head.
If he wanted to go on from there, well and good.
If not, I had enough story to tell it myself.
TWENTY
Kee was smart and she threw a fair punch, but she was nowhere as tech-savvy as she seemed to believe. Or maybe watching me dump Smyth’s file into my trash basket was a test, to see if I’d let it lie or if I’d call up my Gmail account as soon as her back was turned, find the attachment Martin had sent me.
I copied the document across on to the hard drive, opened it up and scrolled down to where I’d broken off earlier that morning. Richter bursting out of the house, livid with rage as the villagers gave voice to their defiance in song …
But it is not his manic energy that is terrifying: behind him the second masked man drags the Tommy into the square, the pair of them trailing a stench of sweat and blood and singed flesh and fresh shit. One look at the prisoner, before I turn away with bile surging hot and bitter into my throat, confirms that whatever will follow will be terrible beyond my most perverse imaginings. The Tommy appears alien. His face has been pounded to a bloody concave bruise. Most of his nose has been torn away. The ears too, gone. The mouth a dark maw. Eyebrows ripped out. Strips of flesh razored from his chest and stomach, so that he looks scourged. His left arm dangles from the elbow, whitish shards protruding from the joint.
Richter strides across to the man behind me and shouts an order. The man, his hands shaking, fumbles as he cocks the Schmeisser. Richter snatches the gun away and points it at the church and looses a burst. Pandemonium ensues when chunks of plaster rain down on the children, their screams matched by shouts and oaths from inside the church. When the echo of the harsh chattering dies away, Richter announces that any further singing will result in the immediate slaughter of the children. Then he orders the adults from the church.
When they are out, and harried into a ragged bunch in the centre of the square, Richter sends my masked shadow and me up the steps to ensure no one has tried to hide themselves away. Inside it is a gloomy, cramped space that barely affords standing room, with five or six pews either side of a narrow aisle. The rear wall behind the tiny altar is roughened plaster, the corrugated contours of the cliff face starkly visible. The windows are no more than narrow slits high up beneath the eaves. The only light comes from the sanctuary lamp, a dim flickering that casts a ruddy glow.
We find no one. As we leave, I turn to shut the church doors but as I do so a hand is laid on my arm. The schoolteacher. She meets my eye and where I might have expected to see hatred or terror or pleading there is only calm. She gives the tiniest shake of her head as she exerts a little pressure on my arm, then inclines her head back and down to where the children huddle behind her, and I understand. I leave the church doors open and walk down the steps and go straight to Richter, telling him that it is my duty to inform him of the men’s mood.
‘The men will do as they are told,’ he says. His eyes are caves, unreadable. ‘I advise you to do the same.’
By now he has had the Tommy strapped to a wooden chair and positioned so that he faces the group of adults, or would have were his head not lolling forward on his chest. He is to be executed, of course, in full view of the villagers, as a punishment and a confirmation of the totality of Richter’s power. As a warning, to be spread far and wide, about the consequences of defying the German Reich.
Then I notice that the Tommy’s right hand has been left untied.
Now Richter calls for the mayor to come forward. When he does, Richter informs him of his conditions. Time is becoming increasingly precious, he says. If the village will not give up the spy Morrigan, or otherwise confirm for him the time and place of the U-43’s rendezvous, they will pay the price of one villager executed for every fifteen minutes that passes.
Stunned, the bearded man protests that the villagers know nothing of a spy Morrigan, or anything about the movements of a submarine. Richter tells him that he can inform the villagers of his conditions or allow them to die in ignorance. The man has ten minutes to consider his proposal.
The mayor goes down on his knees, clasps those huge rough hands together and tells him they can tell him nothing because they have nothing to tell.
Richter places the barrel of his Luger against the mayor’s forehead and says that he is interested only in facts.
When the bearded man protests again, Richter cocks the Luger and asks if the mayor has volunteered to be the first victim. At this an older man steps forward from the group, shabbily dressed but with a snow-white beard. He shuffles forward and places his hand on the mayor’s shoulder. When he speaks, the words quiet but curt, the mayor’s head falls forward. Then he gets to his feet and embraces the older man, kisses the top of his head, and walks back to the centre of the square.
Now Richter stands behind the Tommy. He makes a final appeal to the Englishman’s conscience, telling him that the death of civilians will be on his hands if he does not volunteer the whereabouts of Morrigan. As he speaks he is ejecting bullets from the Luger’s magazine. He palms the magazine back into the gun, and tells the Tommy that because he is the one responsible by his presence for creating the situation in which the villagers find themselves, it is only logical that the Tommy, and not any of Richter’s men, should conduct the executions, which will continue until such time as the prisoner or the villagers provide him with the information he requires. For this purpose, and for each villager, the prisoner will be provided with the Luger and a single round. As the Englishman is unable to stand, each islander will kneel before his chair.
All of this is announced aloud, the words ringing out clearly in the deathly silence, but now Richter bends to the Tommy and whispers something in his ear. The words register, and a shadow seems to flit across the dark bruise of the Tommy’s face. There is a barely perceptible slumping, some final reserves of spirit or hope evaporating of their own accord, and then the Tommy’s chin comes down to meet his chest so slowly that I understand it to be a nod, that he is acquiescing to Richter’s proposal. Richter claps the prisoner companionably on the shoulder, checks the Luger and places it in the Englishman’s right hand. Then he speaks to the old man, telling him to kneel.
The old man’s response, though brusque and given in Gaelic, needs little by way of translation.
Enraged, Richter orders the man’s legs be kicked out from beneath him. Then he orders the Tommy to shoot the old man where he lies sprawled on the cobbles.
But the Tommy appears to have slipped into shock, his entire body heaving in gentle, irregular spasms.
Richter beckons to my shadow for the Schmeisser, wrapping the leather sling around his forearm and boring the muzzle into the side of the Tommy’s neck.
Half-blind, his hand shaking, the Luger a tremendous weight, the Tommy raises the pistol until it is pointing at the back of the old man’s head.
But still he does not shoot. Maddene
d by frustration, his face contorted into the delicious agonies of a sadist denied on the brink, Richter rants at the prisoner until phlegm flecks his lips that he will have a massacre on his conscience if he does not pull the trigger.
A sob, and then the sharp crack and the old man’s head explodes.
There is an eruption like that of a coven of banshees. All around the masked men step back a pace or two, some dropping to a knee to adopt a defensive position. Were those soldiers in the villagers’ position, I knew, they would have charged despite the hopelessness of the situation and the futility of the gesture – better to die on your feet than wait to be dragged out and slaughtered like so many animals. But the men are soldiers and the villagers are not; and the men have no children to protect, nothing more infinitely precious than their own lives to give.
Deranged now, Richter forgets about his fifteen-minute period of grace. He tosses the Schmeisser back to my shadow and forces another round into the Luger as he orders another of the group forward. Another old man steps out, tall and no less venerable than his predecessor despite the comically baggy black trousers tucked into knee-high boots. As he crosses the square he makes a point of searching out the eyes of every one of the masked men, or trying to, their faces turning away from his fierce gaze.
He too refuses to bow the knee, and stands towering over the prisoner.
‘Where is the spy?’ Richter demands, and for an answer receives a thick gob of phlegm.
Richter taps the Tommy’s shoulder, directing him to shoot, but before the prisoner can raise his hand there comes the sound of smashing glass from the church.
Afterwards I concluded that it could only have been the sanctuary lamp. But in the moment there is no time to think. A scream is heard from inside a church, a full-blooded woman’s scream, and a second later a tinny chorus of children screaming too. Then, at the high slitted windows, the ragged shadows of flames.
As one, the guns forgotten, the adults surge across the square and up the steps. There they pound on the church doors, the men shouldering and kicking. The doors give but do not give way, and I realize the schoolteacher, anticipating the worst, has barricaded them from the inside.
