Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

  Brennan allowed as how he did, but . . . “What happens if it’s the right man?”

  “We’ll take things as they come,” said Francis.

  They drove along the Newtownards Road and then turned into a side street, pulled over, and turned off the engine and the lights. “All right now, Mick,” said Francis. “Our man is going to try and lure Craig out of the bar with a promise of a bonnie wee lass who’s going to bestow unspeakable pleasures on him in the back seat of this lovemobile. When he opens the door, Mick, you grab him, get one hand over his mouth, the other over his eyes. We can’t be sitting here in public view with balaclavas on, so we want him hauled in, his eyes covered. Our contact out there will shut the door. I’ll lean over and shove this hood down over his head and push him out of sight before he can register our faces, and away we go.”

  What in the hell had Brennan got himself in for? How many crimes, how many sins, was he going to be party to before he got out of Belfast? Brennan’s misgivings were not lost on Cathal, who looked at him in the rear-view mirror and said, “Keep in mind, Brennan, that this is almost certainly the hateful wee bastard who tried to take Ronan’s life.”

  “Go round the block,” Francis said to Cathal. “We can’t be seen sitting out here.”

  Cathal started the car up and drove at normal speed down the street and around a corner. They made this and other journeys for the next ten minutes until Mick whispered. “They’re out. There they are.”

  The car pulled up beside two young men who were lighting up smokes a few feet away from the window of a bar. One of the men was short, wiry, and nervy-looking. The other was tall and fit and had his eyes on the car. He laughed and said something to the smaller fellow and moved towards the rear passenger-side door. The wiry lad looked apprehensive, until his companion gave him a shove and whispered something in his ear, yanking the door open as he did so. Mick reached out and circled his arm around the man’s head at the level of his eyes and pulled him inside. There was a muffled cry as Mick covered the fellow’s mouth. The man outside slammed the door shut and took off at a clip. Francis leaned over from the front seat and tried to get a black hood onto the captive’s head, but the captive was surprisingly strong for his size, and he kicked out at Mick and bashed the side window with his fist. Mick took hold of the hood and got it on him, but the captured man lurched out of his grasp and tried to lift the hood. Brennan partially rose from his seat and grabbed the man’s two arms, wrenching them behind his back. The man cried out in pain. Brennan held him until Mick got a good grip on him, shoving him down to the floor and holding him there.

  By this time, Cathal had manoeuvred the car through a number of twists and turns, and it looked to Brennan as if they were heading to north Belfast. Francis spoke down to the man pinned across the floor of the back seat. “Willie John Craig. Tell us now, how much did that pimp take off you for the wee hoor you were planning to meet in the back seat here?”

  What? Brennan wondered. Of all things . . .

  “What hoor? I didn’t give him nothing. He just asked me for a fag, so I lit one up for him. Let me the fuck out of here!”

  Ah. Just a question to get him talking. And, yes, Brennan realized with a shiver, this was the same voice he had heard as he knelt to tend to Ronan. No room for doubt. He caught Cathal’s eye in the rear-view and nodded his head.

  Cathal reached over to the stereo and put on a little mood music, the Wolfe Tones’ rousing version of “Rifles of the IRA.”

  “Where are youse taking me?” The voice was raspy, damaged, and terrified. “I didn’t do nothing. Let me out!”

  “Don’t be wasting your breath,” Mick said to him. “You’ll be needin’ it later.”

  “You’re going to regret this. They’ll be out looking for me.”

  “Well, they won’t find you. Not where you’re going.”

  “What do youse want?”

  Craig’s fear was palpable. You could smell it off him. Little wonder.

  Francis turned and addressed Brennan without using his name. “We’ll be dropping you off before we have our meeting with this fella.”

  No, Brennan was not going to leave them to it, not going to beg off and pretend he didn’t know someone was going to face interrogation at the hands of the IRA. God knows Brennan did not want any part of it, but to weasel out of it would not absolve him of responsibility now that he had knowledge of the plan and had in fact become a party to it.

  “No.”

  “Yes, we’ll take you to —”

  “I said no.”

  Francis gave him a long look, caught Cathal’s eye, and shrugged, and he said no more on the subject.

  They were soon out in the country. Brennan did not know where. Wind whistled through the trees, and clouds scudded past a pale half-moon. Cathal turned into a rutted road, and the car rattled along until it came to a house that sat in dark isolation. There was a barn in an advanced state of dilapidation. What was going to happen here?

  Nobody said a word, but Francis got out of the car and waited for Mick to haul the prisoner out into the farmyard. The two of them hustled him up to the door. It was unlocked. Cathal and Brennan followed the other three inside. Brennan looked out the kitchen window and spotted another car sitting at the side of the house. He heard something moving below them, in the basement. Another sound, of a chair being moved. Whoever it was, he was making no effort to stay under the radar.

  The hooded man, by this time, was trembling. Mick opened a drawer and took out a length of rope, which he used to tie Craig’s hands behind his back.

  “Down the stairs with you,” said Francis. “We’ve some questions for you.”

  There was a whimper of fear from their captive. Cathal grasped one arm, Francis the other, and they manoeuvred him down a set of stairs.

  Mick reached over and closed the door. “Me and you will wait upstairs,” he said to Brennan.

  “What are they going to do?” Brennan demanded to know.

  And, he wondered, why is the muscle — Mick the boxer — staying up here? Why is it Cathal and Francis who will be handling the interrogation? Who else is down there?

  “Come on upstairs with me now, Brennan,” Mick said. Brennan hesitated, looking at the basement door. Mick shook his head. “Come on now.”

  Brennan followed him along a short hallway and then up to the second floor. Mick led him into a room that had a sofa, two armchairs, a phone on a table, and a television set. Mick switched on the TV and found a replay of a hurling match played earlier that day between Wexford and Waterford.

  “Look in the press there, Brennan. There should be a bottle inside.”

  Brennan went over to a cabinet set above the table and opened the door. There were bottles of Jameson and Powers whiskey and a package of plastic cups. He poured himself a Jameson and looked questioningly at Mick. “A drop of the Powers for me.” He filled a glass for the man and handed it to him. They both sat facing the hurling match.

  Brennan was jolted in his chair by the sound of a shout two floors down. Mick affected to ignore it and addressed the TV screen. “Have ye lost the plot entirely there, Griffin?”

  “What are they going to do to that man, Mick?”

  “Not what that man was going to do to Ronan.”

  The hurling match ground on, punctuated by the occasional raised voices from the basement of the farmhouse. Brennan tried to imagine the finely dressed Francis and the gentlemanly Cathal interrogating a suspect; he did not want to dwell on the image. Brennan and his companion had been watching the hurling for just over twenty minutes when Brennan heard a mechanical whirring sound from below. He could not place it. Some kind of machinery. Then he heard an ungodly scream. He bolted from his seat.

  “Brennan, sut dyne.”

  “What’s going on? The man is screaming.”

  “They’re throwing a scare into him, I expect
. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry about?! A scream of sheer terror and the sound of a . . .” He had it then. An electric drill. Sweet suffering Jesus! Surely they’re not . . . Then came a scream of agony, the like of which Brennan had never heard in his life. “I’m going down there! This has to stop!”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Brennan.”

  Brennan got up and Mick jumped up and blocked him. “I said I’m going down there. I will not be party to the torture of a man, no matter what he’s done.”

  “Sit down on that fucking chair, Brennan. You had your chance to be let out of the car. Now you’re here, and you’re here for the duration.”

  “Fuck you! Get out of my way.” He grabbed Mick by the shoulders and made to shove him aside, but Mick broke free, reached into his pocket, and Brennan was suddenly looking into the barrel of a gun.

  The house erupted in screams of pain and the sounds of someone retching. Brennan thought he was going to be sick on the floor, just from the sound of it. He could hear the whirring of the drill again, on and off, on and off. The sounds of thumping and screeches that sounded more animal than human. This is what we are reduced to in the face of hideous pain.

  “Get that gun out of my face. I’m going down there and putting a stop to that. What kind of men are you?”

  Mick lifted the gun with both hands and pointed it at Brennan. “If you step outside this room, Father Burke, I will have no choice but to use this to make sure you can’t move. There is nothing you can do to save that murdering Orange bastard downstairs.”

  Brennan understood. There was nothing he could do to help the victim. He could make a pointless, meaningless gesture of defiance here and be gravely wounded or die a pointless death. It would do nothing to change the unspeakable events unfolding in the basement of the house. If he thought he could make a difference, he would defy his captor and try to leave. But it would make no difference at all. There was nothing he could do. Now he knew why the muscle was assigned to stay with him. He felt like a hollow man sitting there, a man without substance.

  Then he was jolted by the sound of a gunshot; it reverberated throughout the house. It was followed by a crashing sound and then utter stillness. Brennan glared at the man opposite him; Mick avoided his eyes.

  A few minutes later, Brennan heard footsteps on the stairs. Cathal entered the room looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He took the seat facing Brennan and Mick and lit up a cigarette. He offered the pack to Brennan, who didn’t acknowledge him.

  “What did he say?” Mick asked Cathal.

  “Good soldier that he was, he refused to give us anything. He insisted he wasn’t anywhere near the Banned Flag on the night of March the eighteenth. And suggested that maybe we should be looking out our own back window for whoever tried to kill the peacemaker and the peace process. I took issue with that and told him our back garden was clean. And that we hadn’t just gone out looking for Loyalist pricks at random, that we knew it was him and that things would go a lot easier for him if he just admitted it now, rather than admitting it later — which he inevitably would — after a whole lot of aggravation. He tried to keep up the defiance but he was looking a little shaky at this point.”

  As well he might, Brennan thought.

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the way a grown man screams when the whirring point of an electric drill penetrates a part of his body.”

  “For the love of God! How can you live with yourself?”

  “Brennan, he’s the bastard who pulled the trigger on Ronan and that poor young barman, Jimmy. Either of them could have been left dead or crippled for life. Now, as I was saying, even the sound of a power drill coming towards you is enough to give you the squitters in your brand new kacks. But when it grinds into your flesh —”

  “God forgive you! Because I certainly —”

  Cathal spoke over him. “The sounds of a man suffering that kind of horrendous pain are torture enough. It’s torture even to hear it. He no longer sounds like a human being. He is reduced to the state of a mindless animal, bellowing and screaming and crying for his mammy and retching and boaking up all over himself.”

  “Are you enjoying this, Cathal? How could you do that to a person, no matter who he is, no matter what he’s done?”

  Brennan thought he himself was going to boak up all over the place. The scene he had just heard described was so horrible, so brutish, that he could not believe he was sitting in the same room as a man who could blithely commit such an atrocity upon another human being. He made no effort to hide his revulsion.

  “We had him well terrorized. And he gave us what we wanted.”

  Who would not, under such duress?

  “He admitted being the gunman.”

  Mick asked, “Who tipped him off that Ronan was in the Banned Flag that night?”

  “He told us the UDA have a fella watching that part of the Falls Road.”

  “They’ve the entire British Army watching it!”

  “Well, they’ve a man of their own on the job, as well.”

  “Who?”

  “He doesn’t know. Under the circumstances, I think he’d have coughed up the name if he had it. We’ll find the wee spy ourselves. He operates out of one of the buildings with a view of the Flag. Rings his masters in the Shankill if anyone of interest comes by.”

  “They’ll pull the fella out of there now.”

  “We’ll be checking into that. Now the other main point of interest was the motive for the hit on Ronan. Wait till Ronan hears this.”

  “What?” Mick demanded.

  “The man who ordered the execution of Ronan Burke was one of his fellow peacemakers, one of his colleagues round the table during the talks.”

  “Who?”

  “Our witness claimed he didn’t know which one, Old Saint Nick or John the Baptist. But something he let slip later in the conversation points to it being the Baptist.”

  Brennan broke his silence then, in spite of himself. In spite of his question giving legitimacy to the way the information was obtained. “So, it was to derail the peace process after all. They sit at the table with Ronan and say they want the violence to stop, and behind the scenes they’re planning to take him out and abort the whole process.”

  “No, that wasn’t it.”

  “No? What do you mean?”

  “It was about Dublin and Monaghan.”

  “Jesus!”

  “They were desperate to stop anything that might force the hand of the peelers and open the whole thing up again. Somehow they got wind of the fact that there’s been some movement with this, and they know that with Ronan’s personality and popularity behind it, it might not go away this time. And here’s what was especially intriguing about the information Craig gave up. In his words, ‘It wasn’t supposed to . . . He’s not a mass murderer, him a minister in the church! He said it himself: he never thought there was going to be all those people killed!’ We happen to know it was John the Baptist who, in what he thought was a private conversation, said that.”

  “So,” Brennan said, seeking clarification, “this Craig was quoting a minister of the church . . . and the man said he had never expected all those deaths to come from the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. In other words, he knew in advance about the plan to send car bombs into those two cities in the Irish Republic.”

  “Yeah.”

  “God almighty. Ronan always said there was collusion with the security forces. Now we’ve got churchmen in on it.”

  “You got it.”

  “So,” Brennan said, bringing himself back to the present, “you’ve succeeded in extracting this information from young Craig. Now, what are you going to do with the body?”

  “Body?” Cathal laughed. “We’ll be releasing him into the wild.”

  “I can’t find anything humorous in this
, Cathal or whatever your real name is.”

  “Rest easy, Father. We’ll be releasing him unharmed.”

  Brennan rocketed out of his seat and stood over Cathal. “Unharmed! You just told us you tortured the man with an electric drill!”

  “I may have left you with that impression. But in fact, aside from some initial pushing and shoving, we didn’t lay a hand on him, let alone go at him with a drill or any other such implement.”

  “But you just described the torture of a fellow human being. Whatever he had done, if you lower yourself to that level, then you are no better than —”

  “Ah, but I am better than that, Father. There’s no denying that some of our people have done ferocious things to punish or extract information about traitors in our ranks, but nothing like that has ever been done by my men or by me. As for young Craig, we’ve allowed him to live. Live in fear, for definite, because he knows we can come for him any time. But we do not want a murder that could be traced back to us, so we’re letting him go. He has served our purposes. And —” he held up a hand to ward off whatever Brennan was about to say next “— we did not harm him at all during the interrogation. What I referred to in my description of the events in this house tonight was the sound of someone screaming. And that’s what our boy was subjected to. We told Craig we had picked up one of his fellow paramilitaries, and we had him in an adjoining room, and he was giving us a lot of very interesting information. And sure enough we did have a lad in the adjoining room, a dedicated young Republican. And that young fellow should be given an award for his performance. He could have a career on stage or screen. He had an electric drill in there with him, and he turned it on, so Craig could hear it. Then our performer began screaming and crying, and making the most terrifying sounds you could ever imagine coming from man or animal. Several long minutes of listening to that was enough to make our witness tell us everything we wanted to know. Hell, I was ready to tell him anything he’d want to know about our side. I wouldn’t have been able to hold out against that level of terror myself. So, as they say in the films, nobody was harmed in the filming of these scenes.”