Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  The kitchen around them was warm and quiet, sunlight glowing in the surface of the granite counters, and gleaming off the tile above them. One might almost think that below them the city too still slept, though the sound of sporadic gunfire in the distance cured one quickly of such imaginings.

  Once Lawrence was occupied with his oats and a small lake of cream, Finbar happily and noisily chewing a soup bone under the table, Pamela turned to Jamie.

  “Why did he send me to you?”

  “Because other than his brother, it appears I’m one of the few people he trusts.”

  “What are we going to do now, Jamie?”

  Jamie shook his head, feeling unutterably fatigued.

  “We are not going to do anything. I have an idea or two, but you’re going to have to trust me to do this alone. Can you do that—trust me?”

  “You know I trust you Jamie.”

  “Yes, I suppose I do know that.”

  “What now? Not just for us,” she indicated the city below, “but for everyone.”

  “I imagine the violence will be fairly bad for the next while,” Jamie replied, “and the government, whether it realizes it or not, is finished, they’ve signed their own death warrant. The road back is closed forever, all we can do now is look ahead and pray.”

  At present, that seemed very little.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Pat

  ON THE FLOOR OF THE GIRDWOOD BARRACKS gymnasium, in the midst of what he estimated was close to two hundred men, Patrick Riordan sat, slightly bruised, and clad only in a hastily grabbed undershirt and grubby jeans. He hadn’t even had time to stick his feet in a pair of shoes.

  He shivered, pulling his arms as tight to his sides as his manacled hands would allow. Internment came as no great surprise to him, but he’d thought he might escape the sweep. Hindsight, however new, made that assumption look very foolish.

  If the government was desperate enough to kidnap unarmed socialists, it was highly unlikely Casey, with his past IRA associations, was going to escape the net.

  They’d been here since early morning, and he guessed it was some time in the afternoon now, heading toward tea time. Not that he was likely to get his tea today.

  Thus far he’d had his particulars taken down, been photographed, and his personal effects, which consisted only of the celtic cross he wore around his neck, removed from him. Then he’d been led down a long corridor and into a small holding room, where he’d been confronted by two Special Branch RUC men who had questioned him extensively about IRA doings (of which he knew nothing), his ties with local Communists (it had taken him a bit to realize they meant the Young Socialists) and then he’d been accused of pretty much every crime from petty vandalism to attempts to blow up the Queen. He’d also been kicked and punched in the stomach, and slapped hard enough across his left ear that it was still ringing.

  He had yet to have so much as a drink of water, which might be a blessing of sorts, because so far no bathroom privileges had been offered to any of the lifted men.

  Next to him, half lying on the floor, was an elderly man who was obviously hard of hearing. He’d been kicked for his inattention to orders roughly a half dozen times.

  “Do ye think they’d allow me to go to the latrine if I asked?”

  Pat turned, slightly startled by the man’s voice.

  “I don’t know. Drawin’ their attention may not be wise.”

  The man let out a small whimper, obviously in a great deal of discomfort.

  “I’ve the weak kidneys—had them since the War,” he said piteously, “I’d not complain otherwise, but I’m like to go all over the floor if they don’t let me to the toilet.”

  Pat gestured to the closest MP, a grommet-faced specimen that he’d have given a wide berth to on the street. However, here he couldn’t be quite so picky.

  “What d’ya want?”

  “This gentleman,” he jerked his head toward the old man, “needs to use the facilities. He’d not ask only it’s got to the point where it’s an emergency.”

  “He can piss his pants for all I care.”

  This bit of speech drew forth a groan from the old man.

  “Christ, can’t ye have a grain of compassion? The man’s in dire agony here.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are? Telling me my business, fucking IRA dog.”

  Pat sighed, there was no use protesting this particular insult.

  “I’m just askin’ ye to show a little mercy to an old man, whose only crime is bein’ Irish at the wrong time an’ in the wrong place. An’ while we’re at it, when are ye goin’ to allow us access to legal representation?” He couldn’t resist this last bit of sarcasm, knowing that seeing a lawyer was about as likely as a trip to the moon at present, but needing to use the one weapon he had—his tongue.

  The soldier gave him an ugly sneer.

  “Listen you stupid fuck, under the Special Powers Act we can keep you here as long as we like. You can’t see anyone. No one knows where you are and we don’t have to charge you with anything to keep you here. If you happen to get shot there won’t even be an inquest. You’re at our mercy, and mercy’s a fickle thing.”

  It was pretty much what he’d expected, yet he could still feel the ice-water turn to shards in his intestines.

  “Please...” it was all the old man could gasp out in his desperation.

  The MP looked at him for a second and Pat could feel the movement before it actually cracked through the air. He got a half yell out just as the butt of the boy’s rifle caught the old man hard in the side of the head. The blow knocked him flat to the floor, his teeth making contact with the filthy cement. The next blow hit him hard in the ribs and the man screamed on an explosion of breath.

  “Jaysus—yer goin’ to kill him—stop it!” Pat yelled horrified into the outburst, even though he knew it wasn’t wise under the circumstances.

  This earned him a sharp smack with the butt of the man’s rifle, but he managed to twist quickly to the side so that it glanced off his shoulder, leaving a burning pain in its wake, but an intact collarbone.

  He could feel his hold on any kind of composure slipping rapidly, as though he’d mentally iced up and couldn’t melt it off with meaningless reassurances. How did you tell yourself you were going to come out of this unscathed when someone was cheerfully beating an old man in front of your eyes?

  The soldier had backed off after hitting Pat, looking slightly disgusted with what he’d just found himself capable of. Pat knew only too well that good men often found they were capable of all manner of unpleasant actions when under pressure, and the constraints of their normal workaday society were loosened. They would all soon learn there was no such thing in Ulster.

  He took a breath, eyes still gauging the tension in the young soldier. The boy flicked one last glance at him. Pat held his look without blinking, not in challenge, but merely standing his little portion of ground.

  Beside him, the old man was curled up on his side in a pool of urine, crying softly to himself. Pat looked away; he couldn’t help him, but he could at least give him the dignity of not staring as the man came unglued.

  The rest of the day was a blur of impressions. At some point they were given a bowl of stew and a piece of bread to eat. Tea was offered, but as there were only a dozen cups to share amongst all of them, he passed on it. Near nightfall he was interrogated again. This time he wasn’t hit, but the screaming his questioner indulged in was almost more painful.

  The light was blurring in his eyes, and sounds were starting to seem as if they had traveled a long tunnel before reaching his ears, when he was finally returned to the gym where the men were all bedding down for the night. There was no way of knowing the time, as everyone had had their watches confiscated under the heading of ‘personal effects’.

  He lay down on the thin blanket, too tired and disoriented to bother pulling its fragile shelter over him. He hurt in a vague numb way, as though his body were a separate entity.
>
  His eyes burned with a thousand pinwheeling shapes when he closed them. Both interrogations had taken place under hot solar bright lights, and his retinas felt seared.

  He wondered where his brother was right now, how Pamela was faring, how long he was going to be held without charges and how many more beatings he might have to endure before they believed that he really didn’t have any special information for them.

  For a single agonizing second his mind lit on Sylvie and the panic in her face as they’d dragged him out into the half-light of dawn that morning.

  His mind swerved away from Sylvie, there lay his break point and he knew he’d have to avoid that to get through what the days ahead of him were likely to hold.

  Pure exhaustion took hold of him and bore him down past worry and pain into the dark embrace of Lethe.

  HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW LONG he’d slept but when he awoke it was purely black and something was moving across his face like the brush of wingtips. He raised his hand to push it off and then realized the something was being pulled down over his head. Hard on the heels of that realization came a pair of hands, rough and bruising, hauling him to his feet.

  He stumbled, earning him a harsh curse from the man, as he tried to peel away the layers of confusion with which sleep had shrouded his conscious mind. The pain was the first thing to come back. He tried to take a breath and felt as though someone had stabbed him hard in the stomach. Cracked ribs, he thought, trying not to panic as the shroud over his head was tightened around his neck like a noose. They’d hooded him, which could mean any number of things, none of them pleasant.

  He heard the grind of the door opening a second later as his captor yanked him towards the rush of air, using the knot end of the noose as a lead. Then there were only impressions, hard, scorching and gone as quickly as they’d come. The feel of night air on his skin, and then a flash that cut through his hood and stung his eyes. Searchlights. And then he heard a noise, heavy in the night, that turned the trickle of ice water in his intestines to a glacier-fed stream. A sound that was both soft and hard at the same time, the dull thunk-slice, thunk-slice of a helicopter’s blades. Were they moving him again? Already he was disoriented, out of time and place, with no notion of how this game might play itself out.

  The tarmac was freezing under his feet as he stumbled along, pushed by a baton poking hard into his back. They were putting him in the helicopter, transporting him God only knew where. The tarmac was scattered with bits of glass, barbed wire, and sharp stones. Every step caused a new puncture in his soles. Batons smacked at the back of his knees, causing him to stumble every other step, without hands to catch him if he fell on his face.

  The entire world was this—pain everywhere, noise, cursing, laughter and hands that wanted to hurt, to maim, to damage, hitting out at him from every direction.

  He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as the helicopter lurched into the air. They didn’t allow him to sit and so he had to stand wide-legged to maintain any sort of purchase on the swaying floor.

  They seemed to be flying in ever widening circles and he thought he caught a whiff of salt air through the oily smell of the hood. He’d tried to gauge the distance roughly in his mind, but panic and flying blind made it next to impossible to even guess how far they’d traveled.

  He thought there were four soldiers, not counting the pilots. Four soldiers for one unarmed Irishman. He’d be flattered if he wasn’t so busy being scared out of his mind.

  “Jump time ya’ fecker,” the voice closest to his ear said.

  “What?”

  “Are ya deaf? I said it’s time to jump.”

  “But I’ll die,” he said, knowing he was stating the obvious, but unable to stop himself from uttering the words.

  “Christ this one’s a thickie—that’s the point ya IRA bastard scum.”

  “You won’t get away with this—ye can’t murder a man an’ not pay for it.”

  That one made them all laugh for a good long time. And with good reason, for he knew only too well what had happened in Cyprus and Palestine and Kenya, not to mention the myriad violations of basic law that were committed every day here in his own country.

  “We’re out over the Irish Sea, ye daft fucker—no one’ll know where to look for ya. Couple hundred feet, hear it’s the same as hitting concrete when ye land—SPLAT!” The soldiers laughed at this apparently funny fact.

  Pat found himself repeating the Act of Contrition over and over to himself. ‘Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you—’ Christ that was an understatement, Pat thought, and if he knew just how he’d offended, he would gladly take it back. ‘And I detest all my sins—’ well the one that had landed him here anyway, ‘because of Your just punishments,’ the just seemed up for strenuous debate at present. The words streamed from rote memory, a form of comfort in the face of incomprehensible actions.

  ‘I firmly resolve... to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin...’

  Though it seemed likely that where he was going there wasn’t going to be much occasion for the committing of sins. Because it was clear that the only place they were intent on transporting him to was directly into his grave.

  He was on the precipice of the helicopter, with the sick feeling in his gut that they were going to push him if he didn’t jump. Damn them if he’d jump though, they were going to have to shove him out the door to kill him.

  Someone put a boot directly in the middle of his stomach and left it there for a moment so he could fully taste the fear that flooded his mouth and then the foot pushed him out into the void. He knew a split second of sheer dropped stomach terror and then he hit the ground hard. His shoulder gave a sickening crunch as he rolled over landing finally on his face on wet asphalt.

  The fall had been one of about five feet. He could still hear the soldiers laughing above him.

  “Fuckin’ paddy, that’ll teach ye, next time we’ll drop you from about a hundred feet higher.”

  He could feel rage, but it was a long way off. The most immediate sensation was relief, that for the moment he was still alive and relatively whole.

  Without time to catch his breath he was yanked to his feet, a soldier on either side of him dragging him along the rubble strewn tarmac.

  They took him into a room and shoved him onto what felt like a mattress, before yanking the hood off his head. He simply lay there, eyes tightly shut, merely grateful that the world had stilled for a moment. They left him there, their voices fading and then abruptly ceasing as a door shut between him and them.

  He lay there quietly and began assessing the damage to his body. Every inch of him throbbed, his feet were cut to shreds, the back of his neck burned where they’d put a cigarette out on him and one eye was swollen completely shut. He could feel blood drying in tight, itchy patches in a variety of places too numerous for his numbed mind to take inventory. And his shoulder, to put it mildly, felt like someone had stabbed it numerous times with a heated knife. He’d no longer any idea how long it had been since they’d dragged him out of his bed and into the street.

  For all his exhaustion, sleep didn’t come easily. Every position hurt; every shift of his muscles pointed out a new area of agony on his body. The mattress reeked of smoke and piss and it was cold and damp in the room. He tried to crack one eye and felt his eyebrow split and gush blood at the mere suggestion. He groaned, blinking to clear the red haze from the tiny slit he’d managed to open up in his eyelid. The shed appeared to be no more than a large culvert cut in half and turned over. The end walls were made of corrugated tin, amplifying the rain that was now falling. An off-kilter rectangle cut in the side, covered over with barbed wire, served as the only window. Even without the barbed wire the hole was too small to even consider as a means of escape. Even if he could squeeze through it, where would he go? He’d no notion of where he was, nor how much time had passed on the helicopter. Fifteen minutes? An hour? A lifetime.

  Where was he? The question beat at the par
t of his brain not numbed nor panicked, a small corner for him to hide in, no bigger than a foxhole, but he’d take what he could get at present. And the larger question, he supposed, was what the hell did his captors propose to do with him now?

  ‘Oh you’ve been reserved for a very special treat.’ The oily voice of the corporal echoed through his head, causing a small surge of adrenaline to charge into his bloodstream, nauseating him as it rushed the hollow pit of his stomach.

  Yet all that had happened, and all that would happen in the coming days, had about it the weighty feeling of inevitability. How could he have expected to remain unscathed in Belfast, as a Catholic man? As a human being, for that matter?

  His father had raised them to hope for the best, but to prepare oneself for the realities of living in a country that had been at war with an enemy, but mostly with itself, for close to a millennium. He would need the lessons of his father through the next weeks and perhaps months.

  He only hoped that whatever lay in store for him, he had the will to survive it.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The Devil and Mr. Jones

  IT WAS A SMALL HOUSE, well kept compared to its neighbors. Walkways swept, flowers neatly trimmed, windows sparkling. Jamie paused, with his hand on the wrought iron gate. Some of his happiest hours had been spent here. It seemed a lifetime ago. In many ways it was.

  The front door, painted a vivid red, opened as he placed a foot on the bottom stair leading up to it. Staring at him with a fierce silver glare was a tiny woman, with a head of hair the color of new pennies. She sat, crook-shouldered, hands laid lightly round the grip of a bat. Minus the armor of her chair she was no more substantial than an eight-year-old child.

  “Joan,” Jamie said, nerves flickering along his hands despite his exhaustion.

  “Remember my name, do ye? Thought it had slipped yer mind completely.” The voice was pure Protestant Belfast, tough as nails and about as subtle as a sharp cuff to the ear. Jamie held to the first step, neither retreating nor advancing.