Casey winced. ‘Please.’
It was raining outside and the tall windows were beginning to fog with condensation, the suffocating warmth of the hospital almost overwhelming. ‘All those victims are still out there somewhere. A teenage boy blinded, tapping with his stick. The once pretty girl with a disfigured face and no legs, wondering how her husband can still bear to make love to her. They’re all there still, struggling to get through what’s left of their lives. Forgotten by a world which cannot bear to witness their torment.’
It was still in the quiet of the staff room, stuffy and claustrophobic. He was talking about Gwen and the years of plastic surgery and skin grafting that lay ahead. Casey shifted uneasily, thinking of the Seven Dials bomb that had so nearly caught her and Candy. They had almost become the people Wallace was talking about. Hoarsely she said: ‘I think we really must leave.’
‘Of course.’ Wallace snapped out of his deep thought, and walked with them down the lofty corridor to the entrance. ‘I made a point of boning up on Irish history when I was in Belfast. Read a lot, wanted to understand something of what it was all about, what the Provos were fighting about. And, you know, I could see their historical grievances and what they claim is the justification of their cause.’ He stopped by the doors to shake hands. ‘Then I asked myself, does it really justify the killing, the maiming and the wanton destruction?’
Harrison said: ‘If I hadn’t reached the same conclusion, I’m not sure I could do my job.’
They walked back to Casey’s Mini Cooper without speaking. She was experiencing a wretched sense of hopelessness and sorrow and thought Harrison was feeling something similar. He rarely appeared angry but now, as she saw the grim set of his jaw, she sensed that he was raging inside.
As they climbed into the car he said: ‘I need a drink.’
She started the engine. ‘That makes two of us.’
He stared out of the rain-streaked windows, not seeing the pedestrians scurrying with their umbrellas tilted against the rain. ‘You know, it’s only just come home to me. Seeing Les like that, seeing what’s happened to him, what they’ve done to him. Knowing that no one can turn back the clock.’
‘You’ve known him for a long time.’
‘As long as I’d known Jock. We were inseparable once. In Ulster the IRA managed to pick off some ATOs — often deliberately, like that business the other night. But never the three of us. We led a charmed life. Until now. Jock dead and Les crippled. There’s only me left.’
‘What d’you mean?’
But he didn’t know what he meant. Anger was blinding him, the rage of it burning in his head. Seeing Les like that, seeing Doreen cut him dead in the hospital corridor, while somewhere, probably only miles from London, the bombers called AIDAN were sniggering at their victory, laughing at the press coverage of Appleyard being blown up and a Wheelbarrow destroyed. Licking their wounds at two of their own being blown up, but knowing there would be plenty of volunteers to replace them. Unemployed youngsters fed on the cruelty of Irish history, casting the blame for what they did on everyone but themselves. ‘Look what they’ve made us do. Look at us, do we not bleed, do we not weep?’ The battle that didn’t end in 1921 with partition and the Irish Free State, and never would until the Brits were out and the border torn down. The subject of a thousand rebel songs, then as now.
The own goal was what Trenchard said John Nash of MI5 wanted. Harrison had wanted it too and that was what they’d got. But it was a hollow victory. And, as Doreen had rightly pointed out, it had been he who had called the tune but Les who paid the price. And for what? The snub to PIRA had been overshadowed by their own loss, the political point hardly scored, and the public hardly reassured. And the Provos had two more martyrs to add to the glorious memory of Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers and the others who had gone before and since.
Casey pulled in at a drab roadside pub. Lunch time had passed; the place empty and dusty, with crisp crumbs on the worn carpet and the ashtrays overflowing. The barman absently served a pint of bitter and a half of lager, his attention on the horse race being shown on the television behind the bar.
‘I’ve been thinking/ Casey said as they sat down on the torn windowseat, ‘if I hadn’t run that article, maybe Les wouldn’t be like he is today.’
‘Don’t blame yourself.’ His response was automatic. ‘As you said yourself, I didn’t plant the bomb. And neither did you.’
She stared down at the fizzing liquid in her glass. ‘How can anyone do a thing like that?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I’d like to. I’d like to know who could do such evil. To know what drives them.’
‘Don’t waste your time.’
She picked up the glass, sampled the contents and found she suddenly had no taste for it. ‘You’re still blaming yourself, though, Tom, aren’t you?’
He took the small briar from his pocket, stuffed the bowl with tobacco. ‘Perhaps.’
‘But you didn’t run the story, Tom, I did. It was my decision.’
He turned to face her, his brown eyes intense and fathomless, moist with unshed tears. ‘You were setup, Casey. DonTrenchard and I set you up on orders from MI5. You were on a roll with the bombing stories. They saw you were hungry for success. They even pulled in Sir George to give you a fright, to prime you up to cooperate.’
Casey didn’t understand. ‘I had no problem running the story. It was just your view of the situation and the public had a right to know.’
‘It went a little deeper than that. Having examined the devices AIDAN was using, it was decided that if they got any more complicated, there was a good chance that the terrorists would score an own goal.’
She was stunned, speechless for several long seconds. Slowly she said: ‘Am I following this correctly? You deliberately manipulated me so that those two bombers died?’
He nodded, clearly unhappy with his confession. ‘We couldn’t be certain it would work, but we knew the bomb maker was technically untidy. Despite the cleverness of the antihandling ideas, the workmanship was a bit shoddy, poor soldering and bad connections. We knew that the more complicated they made them, the greater the chance they’d finally set off a device by accident. As it was, that wasn’t exactly how it happened. It appears someone set off a separate booby trap. But nevertheless it was undoubtedly a direct or indirect result of that article.’
She stared at him. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this, Tom.’
He shrugged. ‘There is a precedent, according to Nash. A similar ploy was used in Northern Ireland during the early seventies — press reports that led the terrorists to overcomplicate their bombs with the same result.’
‘That same ploy resulted in Les getting blown up, is that right?’ she demanded.
‘It’s possible, but we might never know for sure. It was either an X-ray-sensitive switch or Les just ran out of time. It all depends what fragments the forensic boys can piece together.’ He stared down at his own beer, also untouched. ‘I guess it doesn’t help to say I’m sorry. That I wish I hadn’t gone along with it.’
‘It doesn’t help Les.’ Cold. ‘God, I’d heard you Brits could be devious…’
‘Sometimes you have to be when you’re dealing with devious bastards like AIDAN.’
‘And me, Tom? Was screwing me all part of your devious ploy? To prime me up, as you called it? Was that MI5’s idea or yours?’
Anger flashed in his eyes. ‘C’mon, Casey, it wasn’t like that and you know it. I wouldn’t be telling you this now if I didn’t care about you.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You bastard, Tom. You don’t care about me. You just care about your own guilty conscience. You’ve put blood on my hands — not just the blood of those terrorists but also Les’s blood. I don’t think I can forgive you for that.’