God, she thought, he means every word.
‘We’re nearly there,’ the driver announced suddenly.
She peered out of the window, but all she could see was the dim outline of hedgerows and flat farmland beneath the fleeting nightclouds. All she knew was that they’d started travelling west and she’d seen a signpost for Ballymacrevan some way back. Otherwise they could have been anywhere.
Their car slowed and turned off the road without signalling; the suspension bucked and jarred, the headlamps showing the overgrown brambles on each side of the narrow farm track. Ahead another car appeared, tucked into a field gate lay-by with its lights off. Their car pulled alongside and stopped.
‘Wait here,’ Spike ordered and climbed out. Now she could see that he was talking to another man who was dressed in black and carried a walkie-talkie radio.
After a few moments Spike returned. ‘Our taig friend has just left. He lives and spends most of his time in the west Belfast heartland. Rarely makes excursions, so it’s been difficult for us to get to him. But his aunt lives on this farm and she’s been poorly. A priest is calling every day, so she’s not expected to last.’ He added matter-of-factly: ‘Her misfortune is our good luck. We’ve a man up watching the house.’
‘Here it comes,’ the driver said.
She turned and saw it then, the telltale beams bouncing over the hedgetop, obscured by a bend in the track. Then it turned into the straight, the brilliance of the car lights suddenly blinding. It kept on coming, the driver unaware of what was waiting.
‘NOW!’ Spike shouted.
Their driver accelerated hard, turning the wheel so that the saloon slewed across the track. Brakes screeched, loose shale ringing against metal as the oncoming driver attempted to stop, the car sliding to a halt just inches from the blocking vehicle.
She glimpsed two white shocked faces in the windscreen. One male and one female, she thought. Saw their panic as the engine revved and screeched and the gears crunched as the startled driver attempted to engage reverse. But he had left it too late. Dark figures had appeared, wrenching open the doors and waving guns.
The woman screamed, hysterical, flailing her arms against the man at her door.
‘Shit, there’s a wee child in the back!’ the man called.
Then Spike was out and on his feet. ‘Bring the man. One of you stay with the mother and the child for half-an-hour until we’re clear.’
Already the victim had been dragged away, a black plastic bin liner pulled over his head and his hands secured behind his back with freezer ties. Before Casey had a chance to protest at the man’s treatment, he had been bundled into the other car and it had begun to move.
Spike returned and slammed the door. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Fucken IRA.’ She noticed his voice had lost its calm, excited by the action. ‘Sorry, I’m forgetting my manners.’
‘You’re sure he’s IRA?’
Spike allowed his ghostly smile to make an appearance. ‘D’you believe all that crap in the press? That our gunmen go out to kill innocent Catholics?’
‘I don’t know.’ *
‘Well, sure they’re all innocent. Then a couple o’years later, when the dust settles, you find their names at Milltown Cemetery on the Provos’ roll of honour.’
‘And that poor man?’
‘That poor man is a Sinn Fein councillor in Andersonstown. He’s also a member of the Provos’ security section. Vetting new members and old-timers coming out of the Maze. If anyone knows who your bomber is, he does.’
‘How do you know?’
‘We’ve got our sources.’
‘And what’s his name?’
‘KillyTierney.’
It was half-an-hour before they pulled off the road and drove up an incline of cracked and weed-infested concrete. The two cars stopped outside a boarded-up, single-storey building that had once been a transport cafe.
Muffled cries of protest were uttered as Tierney was dragged towards the door, his voice silenced by a hard fist aimed at his kidneys.
‘I want no part of this,’ Casey protested as Spike ushered her in.
‘Shut up and just listen!’
Once inside, the door was closed and the area lit by a paraffin lamp. It was a frightening and macabre sight, the men in black standing around the lone seated figure with his head bowed. On the floor broken glass and dog faeces, on the walls an ice-cream poster with a smiling maiden on an exotic desert island. No one moved.
What were they waiting for?
Then the back door creaked open and the big man stepped in, his loafers crunching on the glass. Immediately she recognised the massive form in the outsize grey suit and mustard-coloured polo that caught in the folds of flesh around his neck. The huge padded shoulders made King Billy’s head with its thatch of pure white hair seem ridiculously small.
Spike stepped forward and unceremoniously stripped the bin liner from Tierney’s head. A narrow pale face and wide frightened eyes stared at his tormentors in the shadows. His wire-framed spectacles fell to the floor, to be crunched slowly and deliberately underfoot by a smiling gunman.
‘What do you want?’ The words were croaked, scarcely audible.
‘We ask the questions.’ It was King Billy. ‘And you have a simple choice. To answer them the easy way or the hard way.’
Tierney glared at the blur of faces. ‘I’ll say nothing!’ he said defiantly.
King Billy chose not to hear. ‘Your name is Kilian Tierney. Aged forty-three. Married with one child. You have served time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for riotous behaviour and again later for firearms charges…?’ He allowed the words to hang in the air and cocked his head to one side. ‘I hear nothing.’
‘Because I’m saying nothing!’ Tierney spat.
There was an uneasy shuffling movement amongst the onlookers.
‘There is no right to silence here,’ King Billy said with slow menace.
‘Please!’ Casey cried.
Spike grabbed her arm, his fingers like steel claws in her bicep. ‘Shut it,’ he hissed.
‘You are a councillor for Sinn Fein,’ the Orangeman continued, ‘and you are also a member of a proscribed organisation, namely the Provisional IRA.’
Silence.
‘Please confirm.’ For the first time he glanced in Casey’s direction. ‘We must be sure we have the right man.’
Tierney’s mouth was clamped shut, his eyes so wide they looked in danger of falling from their sockets.
She wasn’t prepared for what happened next, hadn’t seen the man step out of the shadows. From the corner of her eye she saw it fall, wincing involuntarily as the sledgehammer head slammed into Tierney’s bent right knee. His entire body jerked as though struck by a bolt of lightning. His cry, wrenched from deep within him and forced out through the constriction of his throat like an explosion, rang around the derelict building in a prolonged and ragged echo.
He tried to nurse the shattered joint as the blood bubbled up through the material of his trousers, but his hands were still tied behind him, so he was reduced to squirming on his seat in his agony and frustration, half falling in the process.
Rough hands straightened him. Then they all noticed the putrid stench. ‘Oh, fuck, he’s shit himself.’
Casey had turned her head away, still held fast by Spike’s iron grip. Now she heard King Billy’s voice again. ‘You’ve a nice wife and a nice wee lad, Killy. Don’t make yourself a total cripple for them. Just tell us what we want to know and we will leave you in peace. We’ll even telephone an ambulance. You’ll be in the Victoria before you know it.’
Tierney was sobbing, his head hung low, his knee a bloody pulp.
‘Now, please confirm your identity.’
His head nodded, the hair dishevelled. Tears dripped onto his trousers, onto the floor.