As a little girl, Aoife had too many notions to be truly lonely. She often lay awake in bed, imagining the lives of the people who moved past her house in the night – the headlights sweeping the wall, the clack of trains on the Waterford rail line, planes sighing overhead.
Reading books or watching TV, she measured herself against the characters they showed her. Could she be those people? She thought that she could.
Later, in her teenage years, she learned how to arrange a life that her parents didn’t know about. She hid burner phones, permanently on silent, and had a second, secret bicycle that she kept in a hedge, a hundred yards down the road, and that she would use to attend urgent discos and parties, sneaking out of her window when her parents were asleep. She never made a sound, and they never caught her. She had as many friends as she wanted, boyfriends too. Her parents, expecting some pushback against their controls, began to believe she was a little too passive. A bit boring, maybe.
Aoife came to understand that she had a talent for deception. At the age of seventeen, when she was filling out her college application, it occurred to her that she could apply to study theatre. The idea made her dizzy. But her parents had other plans. She did well at school, despite being the youngest girl in her year, but she didn’t work hard enough to get into medicine, or veterinary science. Engineering was for boys. There was only one other respectable, ladylike option: Aoife would have to do law.
During freshers’ week she joined the college players, and thus fell in with the drama-school crowd. She helped with the sets, took small parts in productions. She didn’t tell her parents, or invite them to her plays.
In Aoife’s third year of college, there was to be a performance of the latest play by a respected writer-director, and the drama department brought in the playwright herself to oversee the production. Casting wasn’t restricted to drama-school students. Aoife put down her name.
The director was impressed by Aoife’s audition. But she didn’t give Aoife a part in the play.
You’re too realistic, the director told her. It’s like you’re not acting at all. This is theatre. It has to be a little bit showy. You have a real talent, but up on stage, acting like that, you’d just disappear.
As a law student, Aoife liked to spend time in the courts around Dublin, to observe their theatrics. Towards the end of her final year of college, while classes were out, she spent a few days in the Criminal Courts of Justice, watching a murder trial. The defendant, a vacant young man with short, spiky hair, was accused of fatally stabbing his best friend outside a pub. It was the defendant’s case that he had done it by accident, while trying to defend himself against a stranger with a knife who had chased him outside. The defendant said that his best friend had come between him and this stranger, whose existence was never confirmed, and that in his attempt to defend himself he had stabbed his friend by mistake with a broken beer bottle.
The defendant’s lawyers argued that the killing was accidental and that their client should have been charged with manslaughter, at worst. The prosecution said that the killing had been deliberate, that jealousy over a young woman, the partner of the dead man and mother of his child, had led to lethal violence.
The third party in this triangle came to court every day. She was a quiet, gentle-faced young woman, who dressed as if she were attending someone else’s wedding. She sat there, always alone, gazing fondly at the defendant. When called as a witness, she admitted that she had been living with the victim, but was secretly in love with the man who had killed him. She begged the jury to forgive his crime of passion, so they could be together at last. It must have been an accident, she said. He was a loving soul who would never hurt anyone.
He cried in the dock as she told her story. She was crying too.
The verdict came in: guilty of murder. Aoife, watching the killer’s surprise and dismay, lost sight of the young woman. But five minutes later she found her outside, smoking a cigarette, waiting for a taxi on Conyngham Road. Aoife was dressed like a lawyer or a legal clerk, in a dark skirt and jacket, blouse and plain shoes, and she decided to approach the young woman. It would be like a rehearsal for her next role.
Moving to the curb, pretending to also look for a taxi, she glanced at the young woman, who was smoking fiercely in the other direction.
That was very sad, what happened in there.
The young woman dropped her cigarette, ground it under a white kitten heel, and turned to stare at her.
You mean, the lad who just got done for murder?
Yes.
He’s a cunt. I hope he dies in jail.
Aoife, shocked, stood her ground.
But you said you were in love with him!
I did say that, yeah. And the dozy bastard thought I meant it. So did the jury. But I don’t want that scumbag near me or the child.
It took a moment for Aoife to put it together.
You stitched him up . . . You wrecked his defence.
He killed my fella because he thought he had a chance with me. No fucking way.
Aoife thought about that.
So why did he believe he had a chance with you? Was there something between the two of you once, that your boyfriend didn’t know about?
The young woman studied Aoife, came to a decision.
You’re not a lawyer. A brief walks away as soon as it’s over – win, lose or draw – to put in for their money.
Your child . . . Was the defendant the real father?
Fuck off.
A taxi took her away.
Aoife watched the people come and go through the doors of the courthouse. She admired the precision of the young woman’s performance. The trial had lasted two weeks, a parade of mumbling policemen, timid eyewitnesses, paid medical experts, fawning solicitors, and – lording it over them all – the judge and the barristers, strutting and declaiming in fake Anglo-Irish accents. Only one member of this cast had shown no sign that they were acting. It hadn’t been Aoife.
Aoife realised she would not be a lawyer. She would not conveyance property or litigate claims. She wouldn’t be a barrister, and spend the rest of her life congratulating herself and her colleagues on second-rate performances.
She needed a greater challenge, higher stakes. The following day, reading the online job ads, she saw that the police force in Northern Ireland was accepting recruits from south of the border. Because of historical imbalances, there would be positive discrimination for people like her, women from nominally Catholic backgrounds.
She had recently discovered the novels of Eoin McNamee, set in troubled Northern Ireland, in which renegade seekers of truth are haunted and broken, doomed to death – or worse, survival – as witnesses to endless and echoing pain. She tried to push them from her mind as she looked at the job ad, to pretend that this was a sober, cold-blooded calculation. She wouldn’t want to admit she was looking for romance.
The Troubles were over, pretty much – for the time being at least – and England had not yet gone mad. The border was quiet. But the police in Northern Ireland, though reformed since the old days, were still targets for terrorist splinter groups. If you worked for the police, and these gunmen knew where you lived, they could kill you. That hadn’t changed since the Troubles. If she applied, and was accepted, she would have to live furtively, across the northern border, where she wasn’t known. She would carry a concealed weapon, and check under her car with a mirror on a stick. And she could tell no one back home what her job was. Her parents least of all.
*
Once again, Aoife had chosen badly. She didn’t belong in a police force. It wasn’t so much that she was a woman, a southerner and a nominal Catholic in a mainly male, Ulster and Protestant force. It was more that she disliked the discipline, and was easily bored. She had thought her new job would show her dark secrets. Instead, it gave her the Lisburn Road at closing time, and teenagers on towpaths, wre
cked on Bucky and spice. Now, even these low adventures would be taken from her; her superiors had noticed that she had a law degree. Barely out of training, she was taken off real police work, fast-tracked for promotion. She would be streamed into management, starting with a stint in the press office. It would be good for the service to have someone like her to put in the shop window.
Aoife reckoned that if she’d wanted to work in PR she wouldn’t have joined a police force. There were easier ways to make money than that. And she definitely didn’t want to be put on display.
Anyway, she was tired of the legend she’d created for her parents, the one in which she was a civil servant in London, which explained the UK burner phone she used as a cut-out. Whenever they called her on that number, it went straight to voicemail. She checked that voicemail from her other phones.
It was time to move on, to get serious with her life. Law might not be so bad. Or she could join a circus. Aoife wrote out her resignation, took it into work.
The press office was in the force’s HQ on the outskirts of Belfast. She worked in uniform, in an office, with eight other constables, all very nice, who talked about rugby and field hockey, and reality shows that she didn’t watch. She had taken up smoking, just to have a good reason for going outside. From then on, she would always associate cigarettes with boredom.
Time for one last smoke, then she’d hand in her letter and give up for good.
The designated smoking area was in a ground-floor porch at the rear of the main building. There were two other people down there, one of whom she’d seen about before. He was an older man, thin, with wiry grey hair and slow, tired eyes. He smelled faintly of whiskey. There, she thought, is my McNamee knight errant.
The other one was younger, tall and good-looking, with a habit of shifting his weight from one foot to the other, like a boxer loosening up. They were dressed in civilian clothes – jeans, casual jackets – like middle-aged dads on their way to a match. When she arrived, they were talking. When they saw her, they stopped. She lit up and looked the other way.
Nice day for it, said the younger of the two.
He had a London accent.
It is, surely.
For reasons unknown to herself, she said it in the Belfast accent. She was pretty fluent. She had a gift.
You work here, do you?
You mean, do I come here often?
She indicated her uniform.
What gave it away?
The cockney laughed.
I’m only trying to make conversation. I’m Cass. Who are you?
Aoife.
Aoife? I don’t know that name. Is it spelled E–E–F–A?
What do you care how I spell it? Are we going to be pen pals now?
The older man spoke.
Where are you from, constable?
He had an Ulster accent, a very soft one. Glens of Antrim, somewhere like that.
County Kildare.
A Free Stater? Are you telling me so? I’d have sworn, from your accent, you were Lagan born and bred. Except you hit that vowel in now a little too hard.
The end is nigh, she said.
She had finished her cigarette. Time to go. The older man spoke again.
Who’s your CO?
Why?
Because I might want to borrow you.
Who are you, so?
My name is McDonnell. And you know who we are.
Aoife was playing a nurse now, with nurse’s scrubs and rubber-
soled shoes. She lived with a few other young men and women – nurses and teachers – in a rented apartment in County Armagh. The building stood at the entrance to a housing estate, with views of the street and the first row of houses. But the blinds at the front were drawn at all times. Nurses work night shifts. Neighbours noticed how the tenants of that flat came and went at all hours, singly or in pairs. Their faces were constantly changing – young people on temporary contracts, badly paid, no security, who can’t stay in the one place for long.
Aoife’s briefing had consisted of a drive-by in a Vauxhall with McDonnell and Cass. They showed her the house across the road from the apartment.
That’s it. Number eleven.
They kept going, turned the corner. Cass handed her a photograph. It was an elderly man, his face imploded from years of bad living. He stood in the door of a bookmaker’s, smoking.
James Brennan, said McDonnell. Also goes by the Irish, Séamus Ó Braonáin. Or, behind his back, Jimmy O’Braindeath. And that’s his friends talking. He was never the liveliest company, poor Jimmy.
Who is he?
He’s a bomb-maker, said Cass. Provisional IRA. Did ten years in the Maze.
The Provos are on ceasefire, said Aoife. There hasn’t been a big bombing for twenty years.
Thank Jimmy for that.
He’s an informer?
McDonnell shook his head.
We tried to turn him, back in the old days, when I was in the RUC Special Branch. Nothing doing. He’s a staunch soldier of the republic. But he works for MI5, now. He just doesn’t know it.
They drove slowly around the town, the windows down, so they could smoke and talk without being overheard.
The dissident republicans want the Troubles back, said
McDonnell. They miss the fun and the money. They can do shootings and pipe bombs, and drug dealing and theft and extortion. Diesel laundering, all of that. But they don’t know how to make proper bombs anymore. That art is lost to them. Jimmy, on the other hand, is an old-school Provisional craftsman.
But he only works for cash now, said Cass. One of his grandkids needs a drug the NHS won’t pay for. Some arsehole in America bought the patent and jacked up the price.
What happens to the bombs he makes?
We watch Jimmy’s house to find out who’s coming to see him. That way, we know who to lift. Nip it in the bud.
If you lift everyone who comes to see him, won’t that give it
away?
We make it look like the info comes from other dissidents. Which sometimes gets them shot, which is a terrible shame. But eventually, yeah, they’ll think that Jimmy is touting them up.
They’ll kill him, Aoife said.
Consider the alternative. Command wires in culverts. Tilt switches under cars.
They pulled up behind the apartment building. Cass handed Aoife a key.
The machines are all set – the bugs and the taps and the cameras. All monitored remotely from Cheltenham. You just have to sit with the blinds drawn and watch the house and the street. Look for the stuff the machines can’t pick up.
She got out of the car. McDonnell called after her.
Are you not armed?
She raised her arms and turned a circle in her scrubs.
Where would I hide it?
We’ll get you a wee ankle gun, so. If they figure out that Jimmy is watched, they might come looking for the watchers.
The landlord had set up the bare little flat for maximum profit, regulations be damned. There were two sets of double bunks in each of the two bedrooms, and two more in the living room. Twelve bed spaces in all, and one small kitchen and bathroom. The gas and electricity worked off coin-operated meters that charged the tenants twice as much as the suppliers charged the landlord. When the watchers ran out of coins, which was often, they had to sit in the dark. A sign in every room, put up by the landlord, warned that smoking would lead to loss of deposit. But Aoife smoked anyway. She reckoned that MI5 could afford to lose the money. Plus, they could hardly expect her to smoke outside, could they? And she needed to smoke: if Aoife had thought the press office was boring, nothing had prepared her for life on a stake-out. She had picked the wrong option again.
Business was slow for Jimmy O’Braindeath. His wife had died and he lived alone. In Aoife’s first month, working five shifts a week, no o
ne came to see him except his daughter and his grandkids. There were four of them: a nine-year-old, two toddlers and a baby in a pram.
Jimmy went out once a day to visit the shops and the bookmaker. He went on foot. Having placed his bets, he’d walk slowly home again, stopping every fifty yards or so, leaning on walls to get back his breath.
His timing was erratic. If he was out when she called, his daughter would let herself into the house. When he came home the children would mob him, spilling out of the hallway into the garden. He kept sweets for them in his pockets. When the children were visiting, he smoked outside.
By rights, there should have been two people on duty at all times, but budgets were low. Aoife was alone, on the fifth week of her secondment, when the blue Ford Focus turned into the estate.
She watched it drive past, turn into a dead end. A minute later it came out again, continued along the street, disappeared from her view. There was nothing unusual in that. People got lost in these housing estates, turned into cul-de-sacs, backtracked.
Aoife went into the kitchen, filled the kettle, put it on the gas ring, went back to her window.
The Ford had returned in her absence. It was pulled over to the curb, just past her window, directly across from number eleven. It was now facing towards the estate’s only exit.
Jimmy was out at the bookies. He’d been gone for a while now.
Aoife leaned forward. From this angle, looking downwards, she could only see the passenger, not the driver. He wore a hooded tracksuit. She couldn’t see his face; he was looking away from her, towards number eleven. She could tell that he was plump, and his hair was oily and very short. She picked up the camera and shot a few frames. The long lens showed her the spots on his neck.
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