She didn’t add that it was her intention to find out the identity of the AID AN bombers who were terrorising London.
The ten-wheeled, seven-ton dumper truck seemed to fill even the huge secure barn. Its gargantuan steel-ribbed cargo body obscured the overhead fluorescent tubes and cast giant shadows onto the concrete floor. The air of unreality was heightened by the drumming of soft summer rain on the corrugated-tin roof; the four of them and the monster bomb, hidden in the velvet darkness of the warm night, cocooned in light from prying eyes. At the country pub only two hundred metres down the road, the couples and their children out for an evening meal and the locals at the bar had no idea that three thousand pounds of fertiliser mix was being primed.
Leo Muldoon and Liam Doran from Tyrone had been loading the sacks. Now they sat, tired and sweating on empty oil drums drinking lemonade from cans.
McGirl stood back, a dog-end smouldering between his fingers, watching as Clodagh Dougan worked on the wiring connections between the tractor unit and the dumper trailer. His eyes narrowed, fixed on her denim-clad rump as she backed out of the confined space. Her sweater had ridden slightly and he glimpsed the smooth arch of her spine.
She was some woman, he decided, so unlike any other he had ever known. Not just her physical strength — he had immediately been aware of her firm, athletic build — but it was her inner strength seemingly fuelled by some personal hatred that intrigued and excited him. So unlike his common-law wife with whom he lived in Donegal, a waifish, pale-faced girl with the dark eyes of a frightened rabbit. Finola had perpetrated acts of terrorism, too, but almost reluctantly and certainly fearfully.
Not so Clodagh Dougan. She was a woman driven, possessed.
Even after the shock of her father’s death, when she arrived back at the farmhouse with Muldoon, her tears had already dried and he had not seen them again since. It was as though the tragedy had spurred her on and she had urged him to drop the plans that Hugh had laid for a campaign of smaller explosions and go for a big one. Urged him? The thought brought an invisible smile to McGirl’s lips. Urged was hardly the word. Clodagh Dougan had demanded. To hear her speak to him, you would have hardly thought he was Pat McGirl, seasoned commander of the Northern Brigade.
He had been irked by her manner but also beguiled by the passion of her plea and that strange expression in her eyes. Within hours he was in contact with Donny Fitzpatrick, supporting her request to go for an altogether more significant target. A day later, after an extraordinary meeting of the inner caucus of the Army Council, they had received the coded signal to go ahead.
And this was it. Three thousand pounds of it. Almost one and a half tons.
No, McGirl decided, Clodagh Dougan was an enigma. And by Christ he wanted her… He thought again of the folded newspaper in his pocket and wondered how she would react. The prospect intrigued him. He would have to choose his moment.
She dropped down from the tractor unit, landing solidly on her feet and brushed down her rumpled sweater. Almost immediately she saw the curl of smoke and the cigarette butt burning between his fingers. He saw the look of disbelief flash in her eyes as she walked straight across to where he stood.
Her voice was low and angry. ‘Christ, what is this with you, McGirl? Some sort of macho thing? Put it out.’
He reacted with deliberate languor, taunting her, before dropping the stub to the concrete and crushing it underfoot. ‘What’s the matter, Clodie, nerves playing you up?’
She looked closely into his eyes. ‘I can do without the schoolboy bravado. Save it for when you want to show off to your mates back home.’
He raised his hands in surrender, his patronising grin deepening into a mocking smile.
Clodagh ignored him and turned away, calling out to Muldoon and Liam Doran: ‘It’s all set, so don’t touch anything. We leave in one hour. Nine o’clock.’
The men nodded grimly and watched as she left the barn for the car.
‘Some woman,’ Doran murmured.
Muldoon grinned cheerfully. ‘You’d better believe it, Liam. That one has icewater running in her veins, so she does.’
‘Still, wouldn’t mind giving it one,’ Doran admitted ruefully.
‘You?’ McGirl said. ‘She’d eat you for breakfast and I doubt she’d bother to spit out the bones. Now get your mind back on the job. Check over the bikes.’
‘We’ve checked them.’
‘Then check them again.’ McGirl turned and followed Clodagh into the churned mud of the yard, shutting the big doors on the awesome juggernaut bomb.’
She was waiting impatiently at the wheel as he climbed into the passenger seat. Without a word she let out the clutch and began the brief journey back to the rented house. An antagonistic silence hung between them.
When they arrived, she went upstairs to her room and left McGirl alone to make himself a pot of tea and watch the television. There was an old comedy he’d seen a dozen times before; a banal game show. He wasn’t in the mood and turned it off. From the stairs he heard the clank of metal and soft grunts of exertion coming from Clodagh’s room.
On impulse he poured a cup for her and took it up., Her door was ajar. He could see her standing before a full length mirror, staring at her own image in denim jeans and an unfussy black brassiere, legs planted firmly apart as she jerked on the dumbbells, each in turn, her biceps swelling hard to meet the challenge.
So that was why she looked so good. He’d assumed the demand for a set of weights at the house had been for Hughie Dougan to continue the fitness regime he’d followed in the Kesh. He’d been wrong. Judging by the sinuous muscles in her back and shoulders, he guessed she weighed maybe two stone more than she looked.
‘Had your eyeful, McGirl?’ She’d seen him in the mirror.
He nudged the door open with his knee. ‘Couldn’t knock, hands full. Thought you’d like some tea.’
Her expression softened momentarily; she made no attempt to cover herself, he noticed, and he tried to avoid looking at her breasts.
‘Thanks.’ She took one of the cups.
‘Couldn’t help noticing…‘he ventured warily ‘…you look good. ‘Keep yourself in shape.’
‘I try.’
‘Look good enough to be in that stupid TV show. You know, Gladiators. I like strong-looking women.’
She regarded him coolly over the lip of the cup as she drank. ‘Is that your clumsy attempt at a pass?’
He felt his anger flare. Why was she always trying to belittle him? And why, although he hid it well, did he always feel like an awkward, tongue-tied adolescent in her presence?
‘It was meant to be a compliment.’
‘Don’t bother.’
McGirl put down his tea on the dressing table. ‘What is it with you? Is it just me, or do you hate all men?’
Her eyes hardened. ‘Something like that.’
He was frustrated, hunting for the right words. ‘I–I mean, you’re an attractive woman, you must be nearly thirty… But no husband, no boyfriend…’
‘Know all about me, do you?’
‘The security section checks everyone. There’s no man in your life, never has been.’
Was that a pitying smile on her face? ‘It’s what all men think, isn’t it? Spinsters and widow women. Christ, she must be frustrated, begging for it. Either that or she must be a dyke.’
McGirl’s cheeks coloured; somehow that prospect hadn’t crossed his mind at all.
‘Well, I’ll tell you, Pat — ‘ The artificial intimacy of using his first name had the opposite effect, distancing the two of them. ‘- if I’m lonely and frustrated, I do exactly what you do. I jack off, all right?’
She might just as well have smacked him full-square in the face. He blustered: ‘No, Clodie, I didn’t mean that, I wouldn’t…’