Once a Pilgrim

by James Deegan

  Adrenal glands pumping, every hair on his body standing on end, but he loved this shit, would have done it for nothing.

  Would have paid to do it.

  He cleared the room to the left, which was some sort of study.

  Past the stairs and on through another door.

  Swept the room with the muzzle of the assault rifle.

  Terracotta floor, big old Rayburn stove, table and chairs.

  The smell of frying.

  Another man, just getting up from his chair, wiping his mouth.

  On the table, half-eaten breakfasts, half-drunk mugs of tea, and an M16.

  Which the guy was reaching for, startled eyes on Carr.

  Mouth open, about to shout a warning.

  Carr couldn’t shoot him just yet – he didn’t want to alert the bozos outside – but he covered the eight feet between himself and the guy in a heartbeat, kicked the table over, sent the M16 clattering to the floor, and clubbed him with the AK, knocking him spark out.

  As he hit the floor, Carr stamped on his face to make sure.

  In the same moment, he was already moving to the far side of the kitchen, where there was another door.

  Which opened as he reached it.

  A young guy, mid-twenties, doing up his trousers.

  A look of surprise on his face.

  Carr gave him something to be surprised about, reaching behind the guy’s head and pulling it forward into his own forehead, which he thrust forward at speed.

  It broke the man’s nose and eye socket, and rendered him unconscious, too.

  Two down, two to go.

  He cleared the toilet, and turned to face the way he’d come in.

  Sweeping the rifle sights across the door and round the rest of the room.

  No other way in or out.

  Window.

  Outside, he saw movement.

  He hit the floor, scrambled against the wall.

  Waited.

  Held his breath and listened.

  He could hear talking outside, the two blokes shouting to each other.

  Have ye seen anything?

  No.

  D’ye think it’s him?

  How the fuck should I know?

  Carr had to stifle a laugh.

  He hadn’t felt this exhilarated, this alive, since he’d left the Regiment.

  The two men outside had moved on, so Carr headed for the stairs.

  Stairs are always tough.

  You’re going up.

  Creaking.

  Narrow.

  He took them quickly.

  Reached the top.

  Three doors.

  Took the left.

  A bedroom.

  Clear.

  Kicked the middle door open.

  A bathroom.

  Clear.

  Then a noise downstairs.

  The two guys, coming back in.

  Bad timing.

  The first one headed straight past the bottom of the stairs into the kitchen.

  Carr heard him shout, ‘What the fuck?’

  Then the second guy appeared and looked up the stairs.

  He shouted something and raised his pistol.

  Bad move.

  Carr shot him in the head, the 7.62mm round painting the wall red.

  The second guy shouted something panicky.

  Stuck his pistol round the wall and fired blind.

  Six or seven shots.

  Carr was forced to jerk back.

  And that’s when he was clubbed on the head from behind.

  117.

  IT WAS VERY fucking hard to get the drop on John Carr – no-one had ever managed it before – but that was what the fifth guy had done.

  A fifth guy.

  Carr had known it was possible – that was why he’d been clearing the upstairs – and it was just a matter of unfortunate timing.

  He’d been forced back by the pistol shots, his attention diverted, and the guy had cleaned his clock from behind, with an iron of all things.

  He came-to in the cow shed, in a steel-tubed chair.

  Naked, legs taped to the chair legs, wrists plasticuffed behind him.

  The mother of all headaches.

  In his concussed state, it took Carr a few moments to find his bearings.

  Three men looking at him.

  Young guy in a red lumberjack shirt. He was the fellow who’d unloaded from the bottom of the stairs.

  Then two blokes with badly busted-up faces – they didn’t look very happy.

  The one he’d stamped on was wearing a pair of Nike trainers and was missing three front teeth.

  The lad he’d headbutted was in a yellow anorak. Big cut on the bridge of his nose, and little wads of bog roll up his nostrils.

  Carr smiled and nodded at him, all friendly-like.

  Then he realised that another man was standing in the doorway to the stone byre – big chin, greedy eyes and a cruel mouth. Long hair, and wearing a denim jacket and jeans.

  Looked like a member of Status fucking Quo, thought Carr. Must have been your man with the iron.

  Status Quo had a mobile phone jammed to his ear. ‘Aye,’ he was saying. ‘He shot Bernard, the fucker. He was about to fucking shoot me and all, but I was too quick for him.’

  Carr burst out laughing. ‘He’s fucking bullshitting you, Pat,’ he called out, loudly.

  One of the busted-up men – Nike Guy – stepped forward and slapped Carr across the side of his face.

  Hard, with a real backlift to it.

  It made his ears ring.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Nike Guy.

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Carr. ‘Have we met before, pal? Yep. By the looks of you, I’d say we have.’

  Slap.

  Ring.

  ‘There’s a big empty chest freezer in the cottage,’ Status Quo was saying, ‘and we’ve put him in there for now. I was going to worry about his missus later. After we’ve sorted out this cunt.’

  There was a pause, while he listened to whatever Pat Casey had to say on the other end.

  ‘We can start now, if you like.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Nah, he’s had a slap or two but that’s it so far.’

  Pause.

  ‘You sure?’ he said. Then, doubtfully, ‘Okay, well, it’s your call. So what time will yous be back?’

  Casey said something.

  ‘Okay,’ said Status Quo. ‘We’ll see yous then.’

  He clicked off the phone and turned to look at Carr.

  ‘Shit drills there, pal,’ said Carr, cheerfully. ‘Casey’s calls will be listened in to. You’re all finished.’

  ‘WhatsApp,’ said Status Quo, equally cheerfully. ‘End-to-end encryption, see? And it’s free of charge, too. Fucking marvellous stuff, technology.’

  He turned to the other men.

  ‘Pat says we’re to leave this fucker be till he gets back. He’s very keen to watch every minute. Well, until he has to go back to Stormont tomorrow.’ He laughed long and hard at that. Then he said, ‘We’re just to get the tools ready.’

  Nike Guy grinned, toothlessly, and spat bloody saliva on to the stone floor of the byre. ‘You’re gonna love this,’ he said to Carr. Then, to the young guy in the red lumberjack shirt, he said, ‘Watch him while we go and sort them out.’

  Lumberjack nodded.

  The other three trooped out, and Carr sat in silence, looking at Lumberjack.

  His mind racing.

  Mostly he was wondering how the fuck he’d allowed himself to get into this position, but then he already knew the answer: if you will go clearing houses full of armed men on your own, this is a risk you run.

  He parked that thought and started trying to work out the pecking order here.

  He assumed the top man was Status Quo – he was clearly the oldest, he’d been on the phone to Casey, and he’d also been skiving off upstairs.

  Had to be the boss.

  Nike was 2IC – he’d dished out the order to Lumberja
ck to stick around and watch Carr.

  Which made him the bottom of the pile, and Yellow Anorak No3.

  Lumberjack looked to be about the same age as Yellow Anorak, maybe even younger.

  Glock in his hand.

  Carr smiled at him.

  ‘That was some pretty good shooting back there,’ he said. ‘For a lad your age.’

  The kid said nothing.

  ‘You nearly fucking got me.’

  Silence.

  ‘That’d have been a notch on your belt, eh?’

  Carr waited a beat, and then said, ‘I see you’re the strong, silent type.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  Carr sat quietly for a few moments. Then he said, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a blanket or something? I’m freezing my baws off here.’

  Lumberjack just stared at him.

  Carr shrugged.

  There was the noise of footsteps, and the three men re-entered the cowshed.

  Status Quo was carrying a black wheel which was paying out an orange extension lead.

  Nike Guy had an electric drill and a Black and Decker Jigsaw.

  Yellow Anorak a car battery and jump leads.

  ‘This looks like fun,’ said Carr, brightly.

  ‘You won’t be laughing in a wee while,’ said Nike Guy, bending down and plugging in the electric drill. He pressed the trigger, and listened to the whine. ‘Not when you’ve had this fucker up your jap’s eye. Mind, I might need a smaller bit.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘He sends one of yours to the morgue, you drill his cock to bits,’ he said, in a passable pastiche of Sean Connery’s speech in The Untouchables.

  More laughter.

  ‘Grand,’ said Status Quo. ‘Well, we’ll just check you cannat go anywhere, and then we’ll go back inside in the warm and leave you wit’ Tomas here.’

  Carr mentally scratched out ‘Lumberjack’ and replaced it in his mind with Tomas.

  ‘Sorry, Tommy,’ said the Quo. ‘But that’s always a young un’s job.’

  ‘Sure, I don’t mind,’ said Tomas Kelly. ‘I’ll happily watch the fucker.’

  Something in the way he said it sounded like false bravado to Carr.

  A weakness?

  Something to work on?

  118.

  CARR SAID NOTHING but just bided his time for a good half hour.

  Professional interrogators, torturers and guards have one golden rule, and it is this: never allow the subject to become ‘human’.

  This had been drummed into Carr on numerous resistance-to-interrogation courses during his career, the point being that if you can make the other guy see you as a person, it’s a lot harder for him to hurt you.

  Tomas was not by any stretch a professional at this game.

  Added to which, he wasn’t a hardened PIRA hand like they’d been in the old days. He couldn’t be – the PIRA didn’t offer its young guns the same opportunities any more.

  What was he?

  Eighteen? Nineteen?

  Sitting there on the concrete floor, knees up, Glock at his feet.

  Skinny little fucker.

  He hadn’t seen much pain, much less dealt it out.

  ‘Tomas,’ said Carr, laying on the Scots accent. ‘I’m John, by the way.’

  Tomas said nothing.

  ‘Or should I say Tommy. Yeah. Listen, Tommy. You know they’re going to torture me here, torture me and kill me?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘They already killed another guy. Guy called Mick. Mick was a great bloke. Scouser, but Irish parents. You’d have liked him. You know he had a wife and two daughters?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Aye. Lovely girls, both of them. The youngest would be about your age. She gets married next month. Her dad’ll no’ be there, o’ course. They buried him last week. Poor bastard. The funeral was very sad. Everyone was in floods o’ tears, me included.’

  As he spoke, Carr watched the young guard. He wouldn’t meet his captive’s eye.

  ‘Are you close to your ma and pa, Tommy?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to yous.’

  ‘No, I understand that. I understand that. You’re going to have to watch those guys drill through my knees in a few hours. You seem a decent young guy, so it cannae be pleasant for you.’

  Silence.

  Then, ‘Mick was close to his daughters, Tommy, but they still killed him.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the cottage. ‘Your man Pat Casey had him killed over nothing.’

  ‘He was a British soldier.’

  ‘Aye, he was. Years ago. Just now he was a delivery driver for Parcelforce.’ Carr chuckled and shook his head. ‘And what the fuck? A British soldier? What is this, Tommy, the nineteen fucking seventies? The British arenae even over here the now. We’re all supposed to be fucking pals, I thought.’

  ‘You were a soldier as well.’

  ‘Aye. Mind, I fucking hated it. Hated it, Tom. I only joined up because I was fucking unemployed. See, there was fuck-all to do round my way back when I was your age, and my dad, he says tae me, you get yoursel’ a job, me and your mum arenae keepin’ yous forever. So I admit it, I joined the Army. But it was the worst thing I ever done. All the top brass is English, right? Course they are. They hate the Scots just as much as they hate the Irish, like. And the Welsh. It’s us Celts against they English bastards, Tommy, I’ll tell ye that.’

  ‘You shoulda done something else.’

  ‘I did, Tommy. I was only in five years, and got out soon as I could. Then I worked on the oil rigs, like. Couple of my best mates on the rigs was from Belfast, as it goes. You might know them, there was a fella called Gerry…’

  ‘They said you was in the SAS.’

  ‘They what?’ said Carr, guffawing. ‘The SA fucking S? Mate, I couldnae fucking march straight, let alone join that lot.’

  Carr looked at the grey stone wall of the cowshed, and then at the concrete floor.

  For a moment he imagined it being hosed down after… after…

  He shook the thought off.

  All this chat about the Army probably wasn’t helping, so he changed tack.

  ‘See, my mum, she had cancer. I watched her die, like. Which was rough.’ He paused a beat. ‘And I don’t suppose I’ll ever see my dad again, like. Not after today.’

  At least that was true: his father had been dead twenty years.

  ‘You should have thought of that,’ said Tomas, ‘before…’

  ‘Before what? I havenae done nothing, Tommy. That’s the crazy thing.’

  ‘You just fucking killed Bernard.’

  Ah. That was problematic.

  Carr had been hoping to sweep that under the carpet.

  ‘See, was he no’ trying tae fucking’ kill me?’ he said. ‘I come over here just tae fucking talk to Pat, and it all goes wrong like that. It wisnae mah fault. That’s not very fair, Tommy.’

  There was a long silence.

  Carr concentrated on looking as weak and helpless as he could – which wasn’t easy, he spent a fair bit of time in the gym – and watched Tomas surreptitiously.

  The young Irishman stealing the occasional look of his own, out of the corner of his eye.

  Carr was just about to try another gambit, when Nike Guy walked in.

  ‘How’re we doing?’ he said, looking at Carr and grinning.

  ‘Fine,’ said Tomas.

  ‘Good. Listen, me and the other boys’re just going to nip up to the Heifer for a pint.’ He winked at Carr. ‘It’s gonna be a long night.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Tomas.

  ‘Let’s just check his bindings,’ said Nike Guy, and he got behind Carr and yanked his arms upwards.

  It came close to dislocating Carr’s shoulders, and he couldn’t help but yelp.

  ‘Yeah, they seem tight enough,’ said Nike. ‘Wouldn’t want him getting away.’

  He turned back to Tomas.

  ‘Right, you’ve my mobile number, and you’ve Jacky’s
number, and you’ve the number of the bar. McKilty’s under instructions to keep well away, so he’s off ploughin’ or fucking scatterin’ or whatever farmers do. And the local polis has been warned off, and all. So you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Nike Guy turned back and crouched down in front of Carr. He opened his mouth; two of the teeth were completely missing, and one was a ragged stump. ‘See these, big man,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna do this to you tonight, only I’m doing it to all o’ your teeth, and I’m doin’ it with pliers.’

  And with a cackle he was gone.

  Carr waited for the sound of a vehicle, and then he waited for it to recede.

  Then he said, ‘Listen, Tommy, can you do me one wee favour? Let me make one phone call?’ In for a penny, in for a pound, and Tomas didn’t strike him as a rocket scientist. ‘I want to ring my wife and say goodbye to her. My wife and my boy.’

  ‘I cannat let you do that.’

  ‘Sure, you can. He’s the same age as you, my boy. Even looks a bit like you. You don’t need to untie me. Just hold the phone to my ear.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please, Tommy. Just one call. One minute.’

  ‘I said fucking no.’

  Carr didn’t push it any further.

  Try another tack.

  ‘So how long you been in the RA, then?’

  No reply.

  ‘I’ve got to be honest, Tommy, I always had a lot of respect for the RA. The Army did, generally. Very professional guys. Not like the Arabs and all that lot.’

  ‘How would you know?’ said Tomas, sharply. ‘I thought you was out the Army after five years? There was no Arab terrorism then.’

  Not as dull as he looked.

  ‘Och, I’m talking about the PLO. Before your time.’

  Tomas nodded. ‘The Palestinians? Good people.’

  Again, Carr was wrong-footed, and had forgotten the long links between the IRA and the various Palestine interest groups.

  But it gave him an ‘in’.

  ‘Aye, you’re dead right,’ he said. ‘Great people. They just want their homeland, you know? Just like you guys. Us Scots are the same. It’s always the fucking English, isn’t it?’

  There was a long pause.

  Then Tomas said, ‘Aye.’

  A breakthrough.

  ‘Have you ever been, Tommy?’ said Carr.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Palestine.’

  ‘No.’