by Mike Coony
“It was like this Anna…you remember when we were together in Brighton I told you that I’d been studying in Trinity College in Dublin, but I’d dropped out?”
“Yes, so…?”
“Well it wasn’t exactly like that. I was in Trinity, but I left because of the Troubles. Aping the Civil Rights marches in America, the Nationalist communities in Northern Ireland decided to have their own marches against the Unionists who’d treated them like third-class citizens for fifty years. The B-Specials…the Royalist bully boys in uniform…attacked the Nationalists, ignited fires in the roofs of their homes with phosphorus-filled tracer bullets, and dragged pregnant women out of their beds in the middle of the night. And it made me, and hundreds more like me, mad as hell. Then there was Operation Motorman, when the Brits stormed the no-go areas in Derry. They destroyed the barricades that were built to keep them out, and they murdered two unarmed young lads during the operation. They’d also brought in internment, and they were locking up anyone they fancied in concentration camps. So I volunteered to join the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and they taught me many things…including how to deal with the likes of your man tonight.”
“So when we met in Brighton you were already a rebel soldier? And was Mac?” asked Ingrid.
“And that’s why you couldn’t come here to see me in Sweden, like you promised? Is that why Finn?” asked Anna, with a wistful look in her eyes I’ve not seen before.
“Correct. Mac is a volunteer like me, and we had to get back to the action. The IRA needed to keep the young lads joining up…let them see we hadn’t given up the fight. Myself and Mac hit a few British Army patrols and rescued a volunteer being tortured in a police barracks by MI5, the British intelligence service. So, sorry love, we were kept a bit busy. But I always found time to take a peek at my photograph of you. Look, here it is. It’s a bit crumpled now, but I keep it with me all the time. A bit soft for a fighting man, eh? Still, it got me through some bad days, looking forward to seeing you again. And here I am, up to my neck in trouble again.”
The girls are having an excited conversation in Swedish – they usually speak English when I’m around. I can’t really make out what they’re saying, but Anna just gave Ingrid a hug and handed her the telephone.
“Yes. Yes. Call him now, go on,” said Anna.
Anna came and sat beside me. She kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand while we listened to Ingrid make the call. She’s not speaking Swedish, but whatever it is, it’s not that dissimilar. I heard Anna’s name and understood Irlænderen which is one of the Scandinavian names for an Irishman, but I can’t remember which one.
“OK, that’s it all fixed. Just one more call to make. Cross fingers that my good-for-nothing brother is still with his fiancée in Östermalm. He’ll have to drive you to Erick’s place right away. I think someone in the disco thought she recognised Anna, and the police could be here any minute you know,” announced Ingrid. She dialled another number, spoke rapidly in Swedish and hung up. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’ll go with you Finn, and introduce you to Erick. He’s a good friend, and you can stay in the spare room of his apartment. He attends the university in Uppsala. OK, you two better do your loving now, there’s not much time. We’ve got to hide a terrorist!”
Anna didn’t need to be told twice. She pulled me up from the settee and into her bedroom. Before we knew it Ingrid was tapping on the door to tell us her brother Hjalmar is downstairs waiting, and he isn’t happy.
Hjalmar pulled himself out of a silver Volvo estate car and told Ingrid to get in the back. Hjalmar’s another Mac – he’s a giant. He put his arm around me and walked me a few metres away from the car. “So, you’re Finn, the Irish terrorist and saver of my sister’s honour. I am pleased to meet you Finn. I tell Ingrid otherwise, but it’s my pleasure to drive you to Uppsala, or anywhere else you need to go. OK, let’s hit the road!” he said, speaking English with an American accent.
Hjalmar’s good behind the wheel; he drives like a rally driver – no better than that. Even though we’re travelling head-on into a blizzard, the forty-five kilometre journey takes less than twenty minutes. It crosses my mind how useful Hjalmar would be to us at home…as a getaway driver if nothing else.
We pulled up outside a three-storey, timber-clad building. Ingrid was sleeping in the back seat, but she woke up as Hjalmar parked the car. She told us to wait while she goes in to give Erick a shake.
Hjalmar asked me what it’s like to shoot someone, to kill them. Thankfully, Ingrid reappeared at the front door of the building and beckoned us inside before I told him that it makes me sick to my stomach every time I shoot someone dead…even people trying to kill me.
As I suspected from Ingrid’s earlier telephone conversation, Erick is Danish. He seems to have been woken from a sleep; he’s wearing fleecy pyjama pants and there’s a college scarf wrapped around his neck.
“Hi, hi everybody…yes, welcome…welcome Irishman. Bed in there,” Erick announced, pointing to a room off the rear of the lounge we’re standing in. “Coffee there,” he said, motioning towards a kitchenette, as the Americans call them. Then, muttering something in Danish, Erick returned whence he’d come.
It seems either too late or too early for coffee. So with promises to see me tomorrow, no, later today, Hjalmar corrected himself, he and Ingrid left.
I collapsed on the comfortable single divan bed in the room allocated to me and slept until midday.
4
UPPSALA and HELSINGBORG, SWEDEN & SPAIN
It feels strange waking up in unfamiliar surroundings, and I’m famished. I checked the fridge for something to eat – empty. I checked the cupboards, or presses as we like to call them, for something to eat – nothing.
Thank God Anna had the presence of mind to remember that I’m broke. She slipped a fifty kronor note in the pocket of my jacket as we hugged and kissed goodbye outside her place in Telefonplan…it’s all the money I have.
I’d left my jacket draped over a chair in the lounge before going to bed. As I was rooting around the pockets for my money I found a latchkey. I tried it in the front door and it turns. I’m free to leave the flat and explore, so I’ll go out for a bit of a wander.
I bought en frankfurter serveras på en bädd av mosade potatisar, med förankring av senap och ketchup (a frankfurter served on a bed of mashed potatoes, with lashings of mustard and ketchup) and gobbled it down while finding my bearings. I’m staying pretty close to Erick’s apartment building; it will be dark soon, and I don’t want to risk getting lost.
———
Erick’s driving me crazy. He staggered into the apartment last night, pissed as a fart, and insisted on practising his English on me. Thanks be to Jaysus Anna and Ingrid will be here tonight; I might get a bit of peace and quiet.
Good as gold, the girls turned up around seven o’clock. They’re laden with packets of instant food and tins of cabbage, along with jars of frankfurters and loaves of bread. They also have copies of the Svenska Dagbladet and Expressen newspapers.
“You’re famous Finn,” laughed Ingrid, as she showed me a two-column article with a picture of the entrance to the club where I’d floored the Icelander.
Anna opened the other tabloid, and on page three there’s a banner headline – ‘BRUTALA ANGREPP I NATTKLUBB’. Ingrid seems anxious, almost excited, to translate. “BRUTAL ATTACK IN NIGHT CLUB!” she exclaimed.
Anna read the article and gave me the gist of it. There’s no mention of the Icelander assaulting Ingrid; he maintains that he was attacked by a crazy man who beat and stomped him for no reason. And the police claim to be following ‘a definite line of enquiry.’
Luckily, the description of me in the newspapers fits any ‘thirty-something-year-old man with fair hair, a beard, barrel chest and heavily muscled arms.’ I didn’t speak to the Icelander, so he’s no way of knowing I’m a foreigner. Still, what Ingrid said that night – about someone in the club recognising Anna – has me worried.
&nbs
p; Ingrid told us she was taking off for a couple of hours, to call on her momma and poppa. Anna and I didn’t waste the time on our own….
Anna turned to me in the small bed. “Shitty shit Finn, your timing stinks you know, really stinks. I’m going to Helsingborg in two days to visit my mother before I go to America for that shitty training course. I love you so much….I could kill you, you bastard, you lovely bastard!”
“Why don’t I go to Helsingborg with you, eh?” I suggested to Anna. I’m not all that keen on my current accommodation, to tell the truth, and Helsingborg is farther away from Stockholm than Uppsala is.
“Yes….No….Yes. Wait, let me think. Wouldn’t it be great? I’ll show you where I was born a baby. A baby waiting to meet you! I must make a telephone call. Move big man, I have to get to the telephone.” Anna managed to say all this while searching for her knickers, putting her bra back on and getting dressed – as she balanced astride me on a single divan bed.
When I joined her in the lounge she was just hanging up the phone.
“That’s it, all fixed. But I might have to stay one night with Mamma, or until she’s gone to bed anyway. I’ll be back to you in ten minutes and we can sleep the whole night, if that’s what you want to do. Go on Finn…tell me I’m a genius,” she said.
“OK, you’re a genius. Why?”
“Because we’re going to stay in Agneta Scholl’s studio…it’s only around the corner from Mamma’s house. Agneta’s my school teacher friend, and she’s going on holiday to Africa to find silly butterflies. Isn’t it great?”
When Ingrid returned we took the bus from Uppsala to Stockholm. And in two days Anna I will take a train from Stockholm to Helsingborg…to stay in Agneta’s studio.
———
Ingrid phoned Anna’s mother’s house and left a message that she’ll be arriving in Helsingborg at midday; Anna’s mother called Agneta’s studio to let Anna know. The news didn’t go down too well with me. I’m enjoying meself with Anna whenever she can get away from her mother, which is most of the time since her mother has a new boyfriend and three’s a crowd.
We met Ingrid at the railway station, and she’s dragging an XXXL Nike sports bag beside her. I offered to carry it, but no way. She just wants to get a taxi to the studio apartment real quick like.
Ingrid lugged the large bag into the middle of the small studio; it seems to be taking up half the floor space. She took off her snow boots, hat, scarf, small hiker’s rucksack and anorak before settling down on the floor and partially unzipping the bag. She pulled out a folded up copy of the Expressen and handed it to Anna, who’s trying to serve coffee without tripping over the bag.
Ingrid set her coffee mug on the table and unzipped the bag all the way. She began lifting out bundles of currency, most of which I don’t recognise. But I’ve no problem identifying all the packets of US dollars, Swiss and French francs, and English pounds still inside the bag. Ingrid stuffed the notes I don’t recognise into her rucksack and then pointed to the sports bag, which is still almost full.
“Okay Finn, that’s for you or your cause. It’s up to you.”
“Shite!” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. There’s more money in that bag than I’d got from robbing three banks in Wicklow. “You can’t be serious Ingrid. That’s a shiteload of money. And where’d you get it anyway? Anna, come on, tell me she’s havin’ me on….Jaysus!”
“Och Ingrid, vad har du gjort?” asked Anna, pointing at the bag.
Ingrid retrieved her anorak, hat and boots and began to dress. “I’ve been taking home money every night for weeks now. I just started doing it when that awful manager kept slipping off for sex and leaving me to do his job. He leaves me to count up all the different currencies, double-check everything, put the money in the strongroom downstairs and lock-up everywhere before I go home. He never checks anything; his head is in his trousers. The skallig oäkting can’t wait to get with that häxa from the coffee bar next door to the bank. Read that newspaper in your hand Finn. You have to get out of here snabb och livlig – quickly! And that money will help.”
The two girls had a rapid exchange in Swedish. Anna grabbed Ingrid, kissed her on both cheeks and looked over her shoulder at me with what I’d call a resigned grin.
Ingrid tied her scarf around her neck and swung the little rucksack full of unrecognisable currency on to her back. Then she reached out and shook my hand. It was a crazy formal gesture; I jumped up and hugged her.
“Thanks Ingrid…and I’ll be investing this for you and your children to come,” I whispered in her ear. Then I gave her a squeeze and she was gone.
We stuffed the sports bag under the couch and sat down. Anna translated the article from the front page of the Expressen; as she was talking I was looking at three photographs of the Icelander leaving hospital. There’s a wire cage around his jaw – like a muzzle for a savage dog – to stop him moving it, I suppose.
“Oh Finn, that Icelander is an ambulance driver who claims he was attacked for no reason while relaxing after work in the discotheque. And according to reliable sources the police confirmed they’ll be making an arrest shortly,” she moaned. “They write a lot of bullshit in this paper Finn, but they’d never make up stuff like this, love. Ingrid believes it, that’s why she brought all this money for you. She feels shitty that you’re only in trouble because you were helping her.”
“Never mind about me getting arrested! Lifting two hundred grand, or more, from her employer…they’ll lock her up and throw away the key! Why’d she do such a mad thing?”
“There are a lot of bad things going on in Ingrid’s life. She has a parent problem, that’s the real reason she’s been staying with me in Telefonplan. I can’t say more. She’ll be OK…I promise. But we have to get you out of here, right now.”
Saying goodbye to Anna is just about the saddest thing I’ve had to do. I promised I’ll contact her the minute she gets back from America, and that we’ll be together again soon, very soon. The look in her eyes – the longing to believe that what I’m telling her is the truth – is breaking my heart. And of course I’m lying, again. Jaysus, I haven’t a clue what I’m about to do with meself, or where I’ll be in twenty-four hours, never mind in a month’s time. We hugged and kissed and she held on to my hand until the very last second. The crew was ready to pull up the gangway when I leapt aboard the ferry bound for Helsingør, Denmark.
I took a bus to Copenhagen and grabbed a no-show-last-minute seat on a flight to Spain’s Costa Blanca. I’m the last passenger boarding, and the limp-wristed check in fellah offered to carry my bag on board and stow it with the crew’s gear. “You’re a darling dear, a darling,” I simpered in a fake, effeminate English accent. “But shall I be able to get access to it before we land?”
“But of course, it’ll be just inside the little blue curtain beside the galley. I’ll talk to my friend Fredrik, he’s the director of cabin services tonight, and he’ll give you leave to root through your bag whenever you want. Now, you must hurry through Immigration.”
———
If there were any Customs and Immigration officers at Alicante Airport I didn’t see them. I walked right out of the airport and into a taxi.
After a twenty minute drive along the coast, my taxi pulled in at Gran Hotel Sol Y Mar. The driver claims it’s very nice accommodation…and his nephew works at reception. He jumped out of the taxi, ran into the hotel and returned two minutes later. He grabbed my bag and introduced me to a smart young man in a white shirt and black trousers. I paid the taxi off with Swedish kronor and followed the young man into the hotel.
The room is good, and it has a direct telephone line. I rang Mac at the safe house in London’s Sussex Gardens. Using our gibberish code, I told him what I have with me…and the trouble I might be in.
“Relax boss. I’ll speak to himself, but I won’t mention what ya have there with ya, as he might get his own ideas. And it just so happens, following a recent favour I did for a wee bad man, I might be
able to help ya on the other matter. Stay where ya are. I’ll be over ta ya quicker than shite off a shovel.”
I’ve no idea how long it takes shite to fall off a shovel, but Mac turned up within twelve hours. He’s been busy.
———
For some time I’ve had an idea germinating in the recesses of my mind to flood some parts of England and Scotland with heroin. I’m going to do what some of the bastard Unionist gangs have been doing to the Catholic kids in the piss-poor estates in Belfast and Derry.
My plan doesn’t include Wales, mind you. I’ve a soft spot for the Welsh; they were always nice to me and my mam when we travelled through Fishguard Harbour on our way home to Ireland. PIRA never plants bombs in Wales, and we even leave the SAS alone on the Brecon Beacons when they’re bollixed tired from their training…apart from giving them the odd kicking in the pubs around their headquarters in nearby Hereford. And we could have ‘done for them proper, see’ – as a Taffy would put it. Anyway, Wales is not where I want the heroin to end up.
———
Mac assures me I can entrust a bag full of money to the two fellahs who turned up at the hotel after he made a phone call to London. All I know is that I’m paying the money I got from Ingrid to two evil-looking Asian men to get heroin for me.
They counted all the different currencies – it’s the equivalent of two hundred thousand US dollars – and placed the sports bag in the boot of their Swiss-registered Mercedes. The name General Khin Da was written in squiggly writing on a hotel napkin and handed to Mac before they drove away.
I’ve never had anything to do with buying drugs, so I didn’t question giving a fortune to two strangers – only to watch them scribble a name on a piece of tissue paper and drive away with a fucking great big bag full of money. Mac says their boss will stand over them…at least to get the money to the people who will send the drugs.