by Chris Petit
‘I live by my own rules now,’ she said, ‘and I speak to who I want.’
Her account was simple to the point of baldness. She had first met her husband – ‘Frank’ – when she was at Queen’s and he was a figure around the university, though not a student. He was English and polite, and older, which she found an attraction, and there was a coolness that contrasted with the callowness of the students. He’d kept his hair short, which she liked, at a time when everyone else let theirs grow.
‘He was like a cat.’
Cross sensed a confusion in her as to what the relationship was initially about: why had he chosen her when he could have had the pick of others more beautiful? Becky, flattered because no one had singled her out before, said she felt like she was walking on air.
The picture she painted was one that applied to countless young men: semi-dropouts with a history of travel, gravitating towards places where students hung out. He showed no interest in politics or what was going on in Belfast. Life was too short, he said. After her own republican upbringing, which served politics for breakfast, Becky found this a relief.
‘He was in and out a lot, coming back with dope, which he dealt.’
They’d slept together because Becky wanted to get rid of her virginity and thought his experience would make it easier.
‘It wasn’t a relationship thing. I guess he went to bed with other girls. We were just part of the same scene. We lost touch over the summer and when I got back he wasn’t around at first, and then he was and it started getting serious.’
Lulled by her voice and the sun on his back, Cross listened in a semi-trance, and wondered if she was not indeed a witch.
When she went on to explain what had happened to her in the May of 1974 Cross was struck again by how many events had converged that month – the General Strike, the surfacing of Heatherington, and now the shooting that Becky described.
‘Afterwards we never talked about it and I didn’t want to know. I knew who Francis Breen was through my father, and there was Frank – who’d said he didn’t give a toss for anything except a good time – suddenly able to summon up Mr Breen at the drop of a hat.’
‘Was Breen some kind of connection in his dealing?’ asked Westerby. Becky looked at her, noticing her properly for the first time.
‘That’s what I told myself. I think. I was sick afterwards. It was a bad time and I was desperate that he didn’t leave me. He’d saved my life, you see, and that made me beholden. Frank was why I was alive.’
He was also why she’d nearly been killed, Cross thought.
There was a sad account of her marriage and the feeling that she could not shake off that her life had become a lie, though there was no one she could talk to about it, certainly not her father, who would have said: ‘I told you so.’
‘Why are you telling us this?’ asked Cross clumsily.
‘As a way of telling myself, I suppose. I’ve put too much of my life away in a box, shut it in the dark and forgotten about it. It wasn’t until you called that I saw the extent of it. We live on superstition and whispers in these parts: “There’s Becky Malone, the one that married a Brit and look at the good that did her.” And gradually you become the person they say you are.’
She described the morning of her husband’s death. He had had to go off somewhere early and she remembered waking when he kissed her goodbye.
‘The next thing I was aware of was this almighty bang and I was running around the yard in my nightdress with the car blazing away, and thinking to myself: why, why, why?’
She’d phoned her father, who turned up with other men.
‘I don’t even know where they buried Frank.’
‘The police were never told?’
Becky shook her head and smiled. ‘You ought to know that we mind our own business in these parts.’
Cross hesitated. ‘This is not an easy question, but was there any point after the explosion when you could identify your husband?’
Becky looked at him with clear eyes that held his. ‘I know what you’re saying and the answer is no. By the time the fire was done there was nothing to recognize.’
Cross stood up to leave.
‘It has to have been Frank in the car as far as I’m concerned,’ Becky said slowly. ‘Because if it wasn’t, then what am I to believe?’
‘Was there any suggestion who killed him?’
Breen had come to the farm sometimes, she said, and took her husband off for a day at a time. By then Breen and her father had fallen out, she added. Cross presumed that this was over the splitting of the Officials.
‘Frank’s the past. It doesn’t do to question things too closely, but I suppose it was whatever Francis Breen was up to that got him killed.’
A man at the desk looked at them oddly as they left.
Cross, suddenly nervous, mumbled goodbye to Becky, and left the building feeling exposed.
They had driven about two miles when, against his better instincts, he turned round and drove back.
‘Wait here,’ he said to Westerby. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’
‘I’d rather take my chances in the library, if you don’t mind,’ she said with a tight smile.
Cross laughed at his thoughtlessness. ‘Of course.’
The man at the desk was gone and there was just Becky with a trolley of books.
‘Listen,’ he said quietly. ‘I need to speak to your father. Would he agree, for your sake?’
Becky was afraid of her father, he saw. For the first time he understood the vulnerability she was trying so hard to conceal, and the effort their conversation had cost her. He saw how close she still was to falling to pieces.
‘Tell him Franny Breen’s dead,’ Cross added, looking around. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that a gunman might burst through the door any minute. Since McMahon, he’d grown increasingly afraid.
Becky told him to call her later. They made another hurried departure, and he did not relax until well on the road to Belfast. Westerby slept most of the way.
He telephoned Becky at the library that evening and she spoke to her father who then rang Cross. But Malone had nothing to say apart from accusing Cross of unsettling his daughter.
‘She’s not well and easily upset.’
Malone’s long silences were like granite. Cross wondered what lay behind them.
Cross explained his reasons for talking to Becky and said he was not aware of any distress on her part.
‘Still, you upset her and she’s easily led.’
The only point of the call was a ticking-off, it seemed.
‘I need to talk to someone about Francis Breen,’ said Cross, hoping Malone would bite.
‘Ah, Franny Breen.’
Shame, he suddenly thought, that’s what lay behind those silences.
‘Are you an early riser?’
‘I can be,’ said Cross promptly.
‘Take the road from Armagh to Monaghan and cross into the Republic. Down that road you’ll come to a turning up to Glaslough, a T-junction at Silver Stream. Seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Mine’s a red Datsun Sunny. I take it you’re coming alone.’
It wasn’t a question.
The beautiful summer morning lifted his spirits. There was no traffic on the motorway and he made good time. The jaggedness of Belfast felt a long way away.
Cross arrived at the rendezvous five minutes early. He pulled off the main road like Malone had told him. Malone’s Datsun was already parked but there was no sign of him. It was too fine a morning to worry, decided Cross. The sun was just coming over the tops of the trees.
An elderly man emerged from behind a hedge, pulling up his trousers. The moment appeared more comical than it probably was. For all his good spirits Cross was starting to worry that Malone’s absence was part of a set-up.
Then the man nodded. His face was that of a onceproud lion. He strolled over to the Datsun and leaned inside. Cross realized too late that he was reaching for a shotgun.
‘Spread y
ourself against the car,’ Malone ordered.
Cross cursed. Of all the things to have walked into. He turned round. The other man’s hands frisked him, then the metal of the gun dug into the back of his neck.
‘What did you tell her yesterday?’
Very little, he said. She had done the telling.
‘What did she say about her husband?’
Cross told him, uncomfortably aware that one wrong word and it would be his last. He could hear the tremor in his voice.
‘And is this all you know about the man, or do you know more?’
‘I know more,’ he said carefully.
‘What?’
‘What he did before he met your daughter.’
Malone made Cross turn round. The gun was six inches from his face. If Malone fired it would take his head off altogether. His reserves were ebbing very fast.
‘Did you tell Becky any of this?’
Staring down the black holes of the barrels Cross found it hard to remember what he had said.
‘It’s hard to think with that thing in my face.’
Cross saw the gun jab towards him and heard the terrifying boom of it going off. He was surprised when it didn’t hurt.
He was crouched forward, with his hands clapped to his head, and it took him a long moment to realize that Malone had shoved the gun past him and fired.
‘No one talks to my daughter without my permission. Got that?’
Cross nodded vigorously, guessing what the other man had said. His ears were ringing painfully and he was in no mind to disagree, with the other barrel still loaded.
‘A lot of effort has gone into protecting my daughter and your blundering in is not to her advantage.’
Cross nodded again.
‘It’s all right, you can relax now.’
Cross found it hard, under the circumstances. Malone appeared more at ease. He produced a packet of tobacco and started rolling a cigarette.
‘So Francis is dead?’
Cross nodded.
‘Well, three cheers to that. What happened?’
Cross explained. His voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a tunnel.
‘Like a tramp? That doesn’t sound like Francis. He was always a bit of a natty dresser.’
A couple of cars went by on the main road, the first since Cross’s arrival.
‘Breen came to me – this would be going back to the big strike, so it would have been May ’74 – and he said, “There’s a bit of a problemo.” That was the exact word he used: problemo. Francis always was a cunt with his little airs and graces. Anyway, he told me that my Becky was seeing this Brit – which was worse than death as far as I was concerned – and this Brit was asking to come over. And Francis did not know if he was to be trusted.’
‘Why wasn’t Breen keen?’
‘Because he suspected the lad of being a British asset. It was Breen’s idea to put him in front of a mock firing squad. “That’ll loosen his tongue,” he said.’
‘Did it?’
‘It didn’t. He kept his mouth shut, so we believed his story.’
‘Believed what?’
‘Believed him when he said he’d been conned into working for the loyalists and that his change of heart came about through Becky. Telling you this now it must sound like we were born yesterday. The lad was given a full interrogation lasting several days which convinced everyone except Francis, who wanted him pushed to the limit. And then there was Becky’s pleading, not that she knew what he was being put through. So when it was all over and he hadn’t cracked I was only too happy to believe him, for her sake as much as anything.’
He flicked away the cigarette, which smouldered in the road.
‘I see now it would have been better if I’d been stricter and kept them apart.’
‘What happened?’
‘He married my Becky, against my better judgement, and ended up doing odd jobs for Breen, is what I heard. Breen and I weren’t talking by then. Breen was gone from the party when the split came at the end of that year. He took the boy with him, used him as a trigger.’
‘What about his death?’
‘Becky was the only one there. The car blew up while she was still in bed. There was nothing left of him, she said.’
‘Nothing left of him?’
Malone shook his head.
‘How do you know it was him?’
‘What’s your drift?’
‘That it wasn’t him in the car. He faked his death, I’m certain of it.’
Malone did not look convinced.
‘I think your son-in-law is still alive and he killed Francis Breen,’ Cross added.
‘As far as I’m concerned the remains we dumped in the bog were his. Good riddance. I never saw what she saw in the fellow anyway. Maybe that was her rebellion. Marrying him to spite me. The Malones have always been rebellious and you can’t get much more rebellious than marrying a Brit.’
Malone paused to roll up another cigarette, and added, ‘But the only person she ended hurting was herself.’ He sighed before lighting up. ‘Here’s why it was him.’
He started walking slowly down the road. Cross fell into step beside him.
‘Not long before the boy died Franny Breen called me. As I said, I’d not spoken to him since the split. He said he wanted to meet. I refused until he said it was personal. To do with Becky. So we met and Franny says about Becky’s man: “It seems like I was right about him after all. The fellow’s an asset.”’
Malone walked on, letting the implications sink in.
‘My daughter married to a British spy, can you imagine?’
Again the shadow play, thought Cross. The acting to secret orders.
‘There was a terrible palaver. Breen’s lot had been penetrated and suspicion had fallen on my son-in-law. Imagine how that feels, knowing your only daughter is about to become a widow.’
Malone looked bleakly at Cross.
Cross said, ‘But someone got to him first?’
‘Obviously. Otherwise Breen would have pulled him in and interrogated him in the usual way.’
‘How did you feel when Becky telephoned?’
‘Relief was the main thing, knowing Becky wouldn’t be shamed.’
‘Did you hear that Breen’s wife and children got blown up too, by a bomb that was almost certainly meant for Breen?’
Malone nodded.
‘And what did you think?’
‘That whoever did for Becky’s man went after Breen.’
The neatest solution was of course that it had been Malone who had blown up his son-in-law, then gone on to kill Breen too. Cross filed the thought away.
‘Did you ever think it wasn’t Becky’s man in the car?’
‘Whether it was or wasn’t is not really the point. The point is he isn’t coming back either way, and that’s fine by me.’
Malone stopped and turned to Cross.
‘Becky doesn’t know any of this. As far as she knows this fellow just turned up and fell in love with her. But if, as Breen said, he was a British asset, that meant he coldbloodedly used her for cover. Can you imagine what it’d do to her if she found that out?’
46
‘THESE things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.’
Westerby was reading from that morning’s newspaper.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked Cross. It was the third advertisement in a row, not counting the day before when there was no Sunday edition.
Westerby shrugged helplessly. ‘Why change now?’
‘Are we sure it is him?’
‘The addresses are false like before.’
Cross felt utterly helpless in the face of this altered pattern. ‘From now on any more of these Psalms that are sent in we tell the paper not to run them. Perhaps that’ll tempt him to contact the paper personally.’
Westerby looked unconvinced. �
�He’s making all the moves and he hasn’t made a mistake yet.’
‘Yes, but we’re catching up with him. He has a past and it’s only a matter of time before our paths cross.’
She looked doubtful. ‘We’re not going to catch him by Friday.’
Cross acknowledged the truth of that but didn’t say so. He wondered if he should report to Moffat.
‘Let’s see what happens on Friday,’ he said.
‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘Wait,’ said Cross bleakly.
‘My man surfaced as a mercenary in the 1970s working for the loyalists. He was almost certainly run by the British and was the gunman in the plot to kill Tommy Herron. He then – inexplicably – married into a republican family with contacts with the Officials and later died apparently in a car bombing, though, according to some reports, he is still very much alive.’
Cross looked at Charlie Spencer. They were sitting in the same conservatory as before. He had the feeling that nothing had changed since he was last there. The same patients sat in the background watching the same television programme repeating itself on an endless loop.
They went through the story detail by detail until Charlie Spencer held up his hand.
‘Are you saying your man remained a British agent?’
‘According to his father-in-law. Do you know of any other defections?’
Spencer said that it was not unheard of but both Provisionals and Officials were paranoid about penetration, so any conversions to the republican cause were viewed with great suspicion, especially as the loyalists had such close links with the British. But Spencer did remember a case of the Officials parading a defecting British agent in the early 1970s.
‘But that was a farce. The agent turned out to be a complete fantasist.’
‘What happened?’ asked Cross.
‘I think they lost patience and shot him.’
‘Which would be easier to penetrate, the Provisionals or the Officials?’
‘The Officials every time. More worldly, more corrupt, not as disciplined and, of course, after 1972 they weren’t even fighting the Brits.’
Spencer was tiring fast.
‘What should I do?’ Cross asked.
‘How cold is your trail?’
‘Cold enough.’