by Chris Petit
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for the sky to fall in. What is it you want to know?’
‘Francis Breen.’
He lowered his head and fiddled with his cup. ‘There’s nothing to say about Francis Breen.’
Rintoul agreed that he had worked for Breen and remembered him well and knew of his disappearance, but beyond that he would say nothing. Westerby sighed. What was it about Breen that turned everyone as silent as the grave?
‘Francis Breen is dead,’ she said. ‘So anything you say now doesn’t matter.’
Rintoul looked up. ‘Is he? Then I’m glad, but it still doesn’t alter anything.’
‘Did you know that he was a member of the IRA?’
Rintoul looked at her for a long time, smiling oddly, then placed his hands over his eyes, his ears and his mouth.
‘Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing,’ said Westerby.
‘If you want to spell it out,’ said Rintoul with another strained smile. ‘More tea?’
He seemed reluctant to let her leave in spite of having nothing to say. She wondered when he had last had human company.
‘Is there anyone you know who might talk to me about Francis Breen?’
‘I dare say his wife might have a thing or two to say, if she were still alive.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think you should let the dead rest. Breen, Mrs Breen, the children – they’re gone now.’
‘There’s a difference between being dead and being murdered. Murder always leaves questions.’
Rintoul shrugged and stood up to show her out. She allowed time at the front door for him to change his mind, but he just stood with his hands in the pockets of his shapeless grey trousers and stared at the floor. She left a card with her number in case he thought of anything.
His flat had its own steps down the side of the house and Westerby could still see him standing by his open door as she got into the car. Had he killed Breen? she suddenly wondered. He’d have had nothing to lose. Rintoul was dying, she was sure of that. Whether he would have had the strength to slaughter Breen’s animals was another matter. He didn’t strike her as having the energy to start roaming the countryside in search of anyone, unless – and the thought drew her up short – he had known where Breen was all the time.
As she got into the car Rintoul started down the steps as though he had just thought of something. She waited.
‘Could you give me a lift to the shops?’
It was not a question Westerby had expected.
‘You’ll need a coat.’
Rintoul was wearing only a shirt, a white one in need of a wash, she noticed with a domestic eye.
‘I don’t feel the cold.’
Westerby agreed to take him and said she would wait and run him back again if he wasn’t long. Rintoul looked surprised by the offer. She wondered why she was behaving like the welfare services. Stringing him along, she supposed, in the hope that he might talk.
Afterwards she agreed to another cup of tea.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘If you stick around long enough I’ll decide to get it off my chest.’
She smiled, beaten by his perception.
‘There’s only one person who knows more about a man than his accountant and that’s his confessor, if you’re a Catholic, that is.’
‘Does that mean you know about Breen’s dirty laundry?’
They sat at the kitchen table again. His hands had gone bluish in spite of saying that he didn’t feel the cold.
‘I’m telling you this where I might not tell someone else, maybe because you’re the first woman who has been here in a long time. Oh, don’t worry, this is not conditional. There are no strings attached, though I would be very happy if you came round once in a while for a chat.’
Rintoul sat for a long time without speaking. He seemed embarrassed. Westerby was left with the strange but distinct feeling that her own life had been spent in pointless waiting. Waiting for what, she did not know. Waiting for the wrong thing, probably.
‘Since the doctors told me, I promised myself that I wouldn’t hide or pretend or not say what I thought, and here I am doing it again. There is a condition. You can refuse, of course, and I’ll forget I ever said it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Westerby looked up at him sharply. His Adam’s apple bobbed awkwardly as he swallowed.
‘Take off your top and I’ll tell you what you want.’
Westerby gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, mister.’
She was even more astonished when he joined in with her laughter. Now his proposition was out in the open, he seemed relaxed. She realized that she should have left already.
‘You can trust me. That’s all I’m asking.’
Westerby shook her head in disbelief. ‘All?’
‘Don’t be embarrassed. If you don’t want to, don’t. I’ll tell you anyway. I’m past caring. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you as an officer of the law.’
The last remark struck them as ridiculous and set them off laughing again. Westerby was suddenly reminded of a forgotten incident from her childhood. She had been seven and had agreed to undress for two boys if they waited that evening beneath her window. She had, standing on the ledge every time she removed a piece of clothing. It had been summer and hot, she remembered, and had not taken long as she was not wearing much. She remembered how unashamed and powerful she had felt. The memory reminded her of a sense of daring since lost.
She watched herself in some disbelief as she started to take off her jacket. She told herself that there was something essentially innocent about the process, like that time from her childhood, though a nagging part of her wondered at her motives. Was it just compassion for a sick man, combined with an impatience at her usual staidness, or a harder ambition to do with Rintoul giving her what she wanted?
She unbuttoned her blouse while Rintoul began to tell her what she needed to know, then took off her brassière and sat with them on her lap, pretending she was posing as an artist’s model. She felt less self-conscious than she thought she would until becoming aware of the marks the brassière had left on her skin. She decided her body looked unattractively pale and wondered if Rintoul was disappointed. He appeared more embarrassed than she was, and glanced up only occasionally. She decided she must be mad. Think of it as succour to the dying, she told herself, hanging on to every word Rintoul said.
‘Most of the time I worked for Breen I laundered his money and cooked his books, and made it my business not to know any more. Oh, for sure Breen was in deep with one lot or another, and again I didn’t ask. The Provisionals, I assumed. Anyway, he was friendly enough and took a liking to me and probably told me more about himself than he did most people, but never about his business, always about himself. I thought he was a shit, frankly. He could charm the birds off the trees but he didn’t give a fuck about anyone. It was like talking to a mirror. You were only there as a reflection of his vanity.’
Westerby drove up the Malone Road afterwards not sure whether to berate or congratulate herself.
She phoned Cross to pass on what she had learned, wondering what his reaction would be if he knew how she had got her information. Cross was a bit of a stuffed shirt, though less of a pain than most officers. At least he treated her like she had a mind of her own, capable of putting two thoughts together.
‘You remember Breen was away on the morning his wife died,’ she said.
‘At some hotel.’
‘With a woman.’
She hoped Cross would ask who the woman was so she could deliver her trump, but he didn’t, spoiling the effect.
‘The woman was his sister-in-law.’
‘Say again,’ said Cross.
‘The woman was Bernadette Breen’s sister. Breen was having an affair with his wife’s sister.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘I’m trying to find out.’
Cross wondered how Breen had felt on le
arning that his family had been blown up while he had been cavorting with his dead wife’s sister.
30
South Armagh, May 1974
‘HOW serious are you about this, son?’ Breen asked, his humour better than when he had last seen him.
‘Dead serious,’ replied Candlestick.
‘One or the other, you can’t have both.’
He was slow to get Breen’s little joke.
Breen left a few minutes later and after that Candlestick saw only the masked man who brought food to the locked attic where he was being kept alone.
He had no idea where they were. His watch and shoes had been removed. His foot was less painful since the doctor had dug out the bullet and patched him up. He told him a couple of bones were chipped and apart from that he was lucky.
‘Kimo sabe,’ he said when the masked man next came, and thought he detected the slightest of laughs.
On the night of the second day two masked men came carrying guns and hooded and handcuffed him and led him to a van. It banged emptily as he was thrown in the back and wrapped in what felt like a heavy rug that prevented any movement.
He calculated they drove for an hour before he was taken out. His disorientated senses told him he was in deep countryside, but when he was taken into a strange metallic space he could not say where he was. The whoosh of rotor blades made him wonder if there was a helicopter nearby.
The next thing he knew he was lying on the ground, his head ringing.
‘Stand up, cunt.’
He tried and was kicked down again. Boots thudded into his body. He was then hauled to his feet and spreadeagled against the wall. He knew from his SAS training that this pre-interrogation position soon became excruciating. In Castlereagh IRA men had been made to stand like that for sixteen hours. He knew too that any movement was likely to be rewarded with a blow to the kidneys. He now recognized what he had thought was the whirr of helicopter blades as white noise.
He risked testing the situation by moving. Nothing happened. No one hit him. He removed his hood. The space was empty. It looked like a metal shipment container, lit by a solitary bulb and furnished with a mattress, blanket and an empty plastic bucket.
He alternated brisk press-ups and sit-ups with periods of trance-like stillness, until he achieved a state where time and noise no longer mattered. He listed ways in which he could be more troubled. At least he was dry. His captors’ methods did not extend to heat control or noise variation. He countered the noise by imagining that he was on a long flight. Nor did they switch the electricity on and off to confuse him further.
Nobody came and he was given nothing. From the state of his beard he guessed that he was in the container for two days. In that time the noise didn’t stop once.
Eventually he was given food – a pallid stew out of a tin – and allowed to slop out. He was taken hooded from the container, clutching his bucket, and directed where to throw it. He felt cool air on his hands, and even through the hood he was aware of its sweetness after the fetid stillness of the container.
Sometimes he was put against the wall with the hood over his head and punched until he vomited up the food he had just been given. Sometimes he was tied to a chair. His interrogators overlooked his wounded foot, which was a mercy. Like their crude punches, their questions were unimaginative and undeviating, accusing him over and over of being a British agent in league with Baker. They wanted to know who had controlled them and the nature of their operations. Candlestick repeated that he was an army deserter who had fallen in with Baker.
He varied his resistance. After several sessions he deliberately broke down and confessed that he had been conned by Baker and threatened with exposure as a deserter. He had acted as a mercenary, until he saw what Baker was getting into.
‘I want to talk to Breen,’ he said.
They ignored him and went over his history in Belfast to the point of exhaustion. He stuck to a version of events until he believed it himself. He named Bunty and Eddoes and all the rest of them. Breen he said had impressed him more than any of the loyalists and had contributed to his change of heart, especially after he had been told by Herron to shoot a waiter he realized later was an innocent Catholic.
They shifted their line of questioning to his relationship with Becky, what he felt for her and what they talked about. He knew she was the weakest link in his story and treated it with some puzzlement, saying that it had not been his intention to get involved.
Candlestick felt sorry for his interrogators. The more he stuck to his story the more sluggish their questioning and beatings became.
‘Tell Breen I’ll only talk to him from now on,’ he told them at the end of one session.
‘We’re the ones asking the questions, mister.’
‘And I’m only talking if you bring news of Becky.’
The next time they came his silence provoked one of his interrogators to lose his temper and to throw at him what he took a second or two to realize was his own shit. Screaming obscenities all the while, the man kicked him until his ribs cracked and the other one had to drag him away.
‘Christ, Seamus!’
A name, Candlestick thought.
After they had gone he lay down, covered in his own excrement, nursing his damaged ribs. He had seen them off but he was not sure how much more he could stand.
‘You’re more trouble than you’re worth,’ was Breen’s line. ‘What use are you to us?’
‘For a start I know how the army mind works, and with my accent I can go places you can’t.’
‘Since when did you become an idealist, anyway?’
‘Under the circumstances I can’t afford not to be,’ said Candlestick, spreading his hands.
Breen threw back his head and laughed. ‘Such a cool baby.’
Their session was being conducted alone in the curtained kitchen of the main farmhouse. Candlestick had been allowed to remove his hood.
‘Just what is that you’re after?’ asked Breen.
‘I need someone to take me in, you know that. I can’t go back to England because of the army. I can’t go back to the UDA.’
‘Why don’t you just fuck off to Tangiers?’
‘There’s the girl.’
‘There’s always another girl. What’s the big deal about this one?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Well,’ said Breen, ‘at least you’re not trying any of that romantic crap on me. Look, I’ll be straight. You’ve got everybody’s knickers in a twist. Your information is of limited value. My pals say you’re a British asset.’
Candlestick shook his head and smiled.
‘What do you want me to do to prove I’m not?’
‘Frankly, the matter is out of my hands. You’ll face a Court of Inquiry.’
They took him to a barn where three men, all masked, sat behind a table. Candlestick didn’t think that Breen was among them. The general charge amounted to conspiring with the British army to murder Roman Catholics, with particular reference to the shooting of the waiter on Tommy Herron’s instructions. It became increasingly clear that there were no mitigating circumstances.
Candlestick made a short speech saying that he had seen the error of his ways. In his opinion his growing belief in the justification of the republican cause was reason enough to spare him, as he could be of value to it. His death would serve no one.
He thought of Becky while his judges conferred. There was something between them, he thought; on his part a desire to see her protected, a feeling new to him. He felt sorry for her, again an unfamiliar feeling. He wondered what their future would have been like.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion. He could hardly find it in himself to feel angry or afraid. He was offered a priest, and refused.
The almost soporific formality of the trial was replaced by abrupt urgency. There was to be no appeal or reconsideration, he realized, as masked guards hustled him to his feet. He felt his first real stab of panic as they pulled the hood o
ver his head and bound his hands. He struggled in vain, silently cursing Davenport. They spun him round until he was giddy, then dragged him tottering from the building. He was aware of moving from concrete to grass, climbing a short slope, and going through a gate.
‘Mind the cow shite,’ said one of them, pulling him aside. ‘We don’t want to be spoiling good shoes.’
The significance of the remark was brought home to him when he was told to remove his shoes. This was the way they shot informers. He wondered what would happen to the shoes.
His heart beat too fast. His mouth tasted rusty and his bowels turned as liquid as his mouth was dry. He hoped they would get it over with quickly.
‘Tell us that it’s the Brits you’re working for and you’ll be spared,’ one of them whispered temptingly.
Candlestick shook his head, alone as he ever would be, panting now, open mouthed, counting down. They would shoot him whatever. Ninety-five. Ninety-four. He wondered how far he would get before they shot him. He remembered the birds flying away from the trees after he had killed Tommy Herron. It had been autumn then. He tried to recall Becky’s fluttering heart under his chest and the feel of her ribcage, but the image would not materialize in the dead black of the hood. He could feel its coarse material each time he breathed in. Seventy-seven. Seventy-six. His breathing became a rapid whimper. Something hit him in the back and he recoiled in fright. It was only a shove, he realized, to push him forward on to his knees. Damp earth seeped through his trousers. Fifty-seven, fifty-six. He was gabbling now, going too fast, close to grovelling.
‘Take the hood off,’ he said. ‘I don’t want the hood.’
They surprised him by obliging. He knelt, blinking in the grey light, taking in the feminine curve of the field’s horizon, the trees coming to full leaf. He counted slower now, feeling the sweat on his face dry in the coolness. For a second or two he felt himself in a pool of calm, just long enough to draw strength.
He recognized Seamus in spite of his mask and saw the revolver in his hand. Seamus was nervous.