‘Don. Don Trenchard, that’s my real name. Straight up, no lies. And what I was doing then, when I was on the campus, was just my job. In fact it was my first assignment. I was young, really keen.’
Her eyes blazed. ‘Keen enough to shaft me — in every sense of the word!’
‘What I hadn’t bargained on was falling in love with you.’
Sitting there in the semilight, ten years on, in a besieged and derelict Edwardian brewery — talking to this man who now seemed a total stranger — she couldn’t even find the words to express her anger, her confusion.
He smiled the smile she remembered. That slightly amused and patronising smile he used when she would earnestly explain her Republican beliefs over coffee in the university canteen. ‘I told you you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘I don’t.’ Acid.
‘Well, in fact, only I can know the truth about this. And I did. I did fall in love with you. I didn’t mean to, didn’t want to. But I did.’ He held his bound hands in front of him, interlaced his fingers. Tried to remember how it had been. ‘Remember those talks we had? In the canteen, in the park. In our digs. Over a bottle of Blackbush until two in the morning. Discussing politics and Irish history. You giving your views and me trying to talk you round. The arguments we had, the laughs.’
For a moment her face seemed to soften, the pupils dilating hazily. ‘I remember.’
‘I’ll tell you something. Something strange. Something I didn’t even realise myself at the time. In fact not until some five or so years later. By then I’d got sick of it all. The endless cycle of killing and violence. The dirty tricks on all sides — I knew all about them, because I was in it mys.elf up to my neck.’ He paused. ‘I often thought about you, wondered. Remembered the things you’d said. Then suddenly, one day, I realised you had been right. No matter what the army and RUC did — from internment or the so-called shoot-to-kill policy — nothing would crush the IRA. It just kept coming back for more. For them it was just a continuation of their forefathers’ fight against the Black and Tans before partition.’
A frown fractured the smooth skin of her forehead. ‘You expect me to believe I converted you to the cause?’
‘I’ve no reason to lie to you. It wasn’t an immediate thing.’
‘But you’re obviously still with them. With British Intelligence or something. Still with dirty tricks.’
‘Yes, but then it’s my career. Too late to become an accountant or a solicitor now. But I do my bit to help if I can. Like when I recognised your father’s Celtic ring at the mortuary, I realised he was dead. But if that had been known — that the old master bomber had returned from the dead only to be killed. by his own bomb — it would have seemed like a victory to the
‘Ś British Government. They’d have been able to turn it into a far greater propaganda coup than they did. And I didn’t want that.’, ‘No?’
‘I was on the inside track, Glodie. I could see how scared they were of AID AN, the pressure the campaign was creating, how close you were to succeeding… I knew how the talks were going, but without the IRA they were doomed to fail whatever was agreed. We’d seen it all before. And I didn’t want that. While I couldn’t condone the death and injuries your bombings caused, more than anything I wanted peace over the water. Just one more push and you could do it, I sensed that. And I was right. The Blackwall Tunnel bomb was the turning point. That’s why I said nothing.’
‘And did nothing,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Not quite. The Prods had found out the truth about you and your father and I put my neck on the line in an attempt to suppress it.’
‘Yes?’ Not believing.
‘They tortured and murdered Killy Tierney.’
The blood drained from her face. ‘Holy Mother.’
‘I’m sorry. I tried to stop it. I was too late. And when MI5 knew your identity, I leaked it to the press to give you warning.’
She was off guard now, her long black hair hanging limply over her face as she looked down at her hands, holding the gun between her knees. In a hoarse voice, she asked: ‘And what about me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You said you often thought about me, wondered what had happened to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you did nothing. You’re in intelligence. Surely it would have been the easiest thing in the world to find out.’
His smile was crooked, unsure. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to. I actually took steps to avoid it. I knew I’d betrayed you. Betrayed your trust. And in that way I’d betrayed myself. I felt guilt — or maybe it was shame.’ She was looking at him now, her eyes clear and candid. Somehow she seemed different from when he’d first walked into this awful place. Younger, almost vulnerable. As he remembered her, the earnest student. ‘You could tell me now. What did happen to you?’
‘I can’t believe you don’t know.’
‘I only know what I see now. Someone hard and bitter.’
Her eyes narrowed, the vulnerability gone. ‘And you know who made me like that?’
‘Your father?’
She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Sweet Mother of God, no. Da believed in what he did, that he was fighting for me, like I’m fighting for a future for Caitlin and her wee child. No, Don, it was you who made me like that. If ever I had cause to hate the Brits, it was you. You made me betray my own father without me even knowing it at the time. Sending him back to the Kesh for another nine years. How d’you think that made me feel?’
‘If I could turn back the clock…’
‘Oh, God, I wish. Because there was more to it than that — if you’d bothered to find. out. If you really regretted what you did to me, at least you could run away. I couldn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You left me with child.’
He stared, his mouth dropping open.
She laughed, the note brittle. ‘Oh, you won’t find that in your intelligence files. I was utterly ashamed, horrified. A Catholic girl made pregnant by a British spy. It would have been like giving birth to the Devil himself, to have had your child. But the abortion had to be secret and on the cheap, had to be on a student grant. So it was a back-street job.’
‘I see.’ Chastened.
‘No, you don’t. Because now I can’t have children, you fucking bastard!’ She stood up suddenly, her anger and grief returning. ‘So I’m pleased with your conversion to the cause in your own sweet time. But it hasn’t cost you anything, no pain and no suffering. Nothing!’
He looked up at her. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Clodie. I volunteered to walk in here. No one asked me to. It’s time to pay the price.’
Her eyes were wide, the whites glistening with unshed tears.
‘Christ!’
The door opened abruptly. ‘Something wrong?’ McGirl asked sharply.
Clodagh shook her head, unable to speak.
‘Let them go, Clodie,’ Trenchard urged. ‘I’m of as much value to them as Tom Harrison, probably more so.’
‘Don’t listen,’ McGirl said.
The woman sniffed, wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t understand, Pat. We’ll keep him and release the others.’
‘You don’t believe that nonsense about a deal!’
She looked one more time at Trenchard. ‘It doesn’t much matter — but, anyway, I think perhaps I do.’
Making her decision, she pushed past McGirl and strode towards the adjoining door, sliding back the bolts. Three faces turned towards her, pale and drawn in the dim light.
‘You okay, Tom?’ Trenchard asked. ‘Pippa and Archie?’
Harrison squinted into the light. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I’m your substitute.’
Clodagh bent to unlock his handcuffs. ‘Be quiet, all of you.’