by Bailey, RJ
His voice is hard, full of certainty. ‘Marie, he’s given you up. It’s you he’s touted.’
She halts, her arm slipping from his as he takes an extra pace. A terrible iciness spreads over her face. ‘What?’
‘Not by name. So he says. I don’t think he’s lying. He’s past lying now. He’s told them there is a woman bomb-maker who supplies the active service units. That she designed the Manchester bomb. He was stringing them out for the name.’
‘That’s desperate. The Manchester bomb wasn’t mine,’ she says crossly, as if it really mattered. But it would have put Jamie’s standing up with the Brits. And the price he could charge them.
‘Maybe not. But you know how hungry they’ll be now, don’t you? Like fuckin’ wolves.’
‘Aye.’ They begin walking once more. Her brain is spinning, faster than the whirling teacups that Jamie Brogan had taken her on that time when she’d been sick down his best trousers. And, now, the wee bollix of a gobshite . . .
She manoeuvres them round the cowpat, her eyes better adjusted to the dark now, as they emerge from the sunken lane.
‘So what do we do? What do I do, Anjel?’
‘You cash in the money and get out of the country. Run.’
‘What money?’ she asks.
‘Don’t come the maggot with me, Marie Ronan. The FIL money you’ve got stashed.’
She doesn’t contradict him.
‘I’m not stupid, Marie. Every time they pull those arms shipments, the weapons are pieces of shit. Not what we paid for. Something is going on. Someone is feathering their nest.’
There is fear laced through her voice when she speaks. ‘Don’t let Corrigan hear you.’
‘I’m not worried about what you or Corrigan or anyone else is doing. I’m worried about you. They’ll be pulling the prick of every tout they have for this one. And we know they have men on the inside down there. In the Gardai, too. They might even think it’s worth blowing a tout or two for youse.’
She has to agree. It was true that the British Special Forces didn’t have much respect for Irish sovereignty. Well, none at all, in fact. And that they always played the bigger picture, deciding when it was prudent to protect their man or worth letting him ‘have his tea’, as they said, if the prize was big enough. She would be a big enough catch that they’d risk losing a few tiddlers along the way.
They are at the gate, the cottage now in view once more, deceptively serene, the new synthetic slate roof gleaming silver in the moonlight. She hesitates, not wanting to go in, no desire to see what is beyond that door.
‘When?’
‘Well if it was up to me, I’d have you packing your bags right about now.’
She feels a stab of fear. Her heart twitches in her chest, as if it has received an extra jolt of electricity. That could be a euphemism. Would it be easier just to get rid of her? To let young Marie ‘have her tea’? She’s not worth the bother, the heat she’ll bring down. Let her pack, give her tickets, then put her in a car and when she’s just thinking about being somewhere sunny for a change . . .
Anjel reads her mind. ‘Hey, Marie, don’t you go worrying. You’re solid, you are.’
‘Where then? Where will we go?’
‘We?’ he asks with a grin. ‘There’s two of us now, is there?’
‘Don’t joke, Anjel.’
‘We could try Spain.’
She has never been, but she has an image of blue sea and sky, shades brighter that you ever saw in Ireland. A cold beer on a hot beach. But something tells her it isn’t that part of Spain she’d be seeing. ‘The ETA lads?’
‘Aye. It’s what they did with my mother when some cunt shopped her. History repeating is what this is. But they sent her to our friends in ETA, out of harm’s way. It’d do for you, Marie. I still have relatives over there. You’ll be safe.’
‘And you’d visit?’
‘I’ll take you over myself. Settle you in.’
She’d met some of the ETA men, of course, fighting for the freedom of their Basque homeland. Serious, dark, dour men with furrowed brows who seemed to suck all the light from a room. They had listened intently while she had explained new ways to create death. Thanked her when she had finished, like it had been a talk on flower arranging.
‘They’ll appreciate you. And what you can do.’
Anjel reaches out and lets her red hair fall through his fingers, looking into her alabaster face, letting his mood soften enough to allow a little of her pale radiance to touch him. He is standing there, the ugly smell of another man’s blood and piss and singed skin in his nostrils, in front of a rare beauty, and for a few seconds, he almost forgets the horror of what has happened on the pine table. And the terrible thing he has done. Is still doing.
‘Don’t worry. You’re special to all of us, Marie. Neska polita.’
‘Don’t you start talking dirty to me in your secret language, Anjel McManus Garzia.’
‘It means “beautiful girl”. You’d better get used to it. They’ll love you over there.’
‘I don’t know. What do I know about Basques? Look, I still have friends in Boston, in FIL. They’d look after me. You’d visit me there? In America?’
‘Of course.’ A grin flashes in the night. ‘I’m not going to let you go, Marie. You’re the best fuckin’ ride I ever had.’
She laughs despite herself and punches him on the arm and at that moment the cottage windows glow brighter momentarily, and, what seems like minutes later, there comes the flat bark of a handgun. The sequence is repeated two more times.
Anjel snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her close. ‘There,’ he whispers softly into her ear. ‘It’s over.’
But it wasn’t over. It was just the beginning of a cycle of killing that would continue long after peace had been declared and weapons destroyed. That night marked the start of a wave of violence that would eventually sweep me up in its lethal path, depositing me on a lonely mountainside and a meeting with a man intent on committing yet more murder. Including mine.
Also by RJ Bailey
Safe From Harm
Nobody Gets Hurt
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2017
A CBS company
Copyright © RJ Bailey 2017
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of RJ Bailey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-7139-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Feel No Pain
Nobody Gets Hurt Excerpt
Prologue