This remark sent me into something of a tailspin.
He was letting me know where he was going to go next and he wouldn’t do that if he was going to let me live at the end of it.
I sat on the dusty living-room sofa while Martin anxiously looked at his watch and tried to get the radio station he wanted on my Walkman. When he took off his balaclava I could see that he was a bit of an ugly spud—red hair, a shock of teeth pointing in all directions, a prominent broken nose, hollow cheeks, blue-white chip-butty skin. I didn’t recognize him from any of the mugshots of the Maze escapers so he must have been someone new, someone not on the books. You didn’t need to be Henry Higgins to figure out that his West Belfast hardman accent meant that he was trouble.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just go, like now?” Martin said, looking at his watch again.
Clearly whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon. Tonight possibly. Something big. A real show to impress the folks back home and Irish America . . .
Dermot came back into the living room two minutes later with three cups of tea.
“Only powdered milk, I’m afraid, Sean,” he said, handing me a Mickey Mouse mug. “Milk, one sugar, that’s right, isn’t it?”
Unless someone had been in touch with him about my tea habits his memory had gone all the way back to the sixth-form study when as Head Boy and Deputy Head Boy we’d made tea and biscuits for the other prefects every lunchtime. Fifteen years ago in that heady school year of 1968/69 when the whole world seemed to be on the verge of some great spiritual change.
Spiritual shitstorm more like.
“Ta,” I said, and sipped the tea.
He sat facing me on the opposite sofa. “So the MI5 were in here looking for us, eh?”
“Yeah, and the SAS.”
“The SAS too.” Dermot whistled.
“And Special Branch.”
“How did youse find out about this place?”
“An anonymous tip to the confidential telephone.”
He nodded. “And how long have you been out in that van, if I may enquire?”
“About ten days.”
He sipped his tea and narrowed his eyes.
“That’s a lot of faith in an anonymous tip.”
“Well, we were clutching at straws, really. We had no idea where you were,” I said.
“I wonder who Mister Anonymous was?” Dermot asked semi-rhetorically.
“I have no idea.”
“You’re still an RUC detective, aren’t you, Sean?”
“Uh, it’s a little bit complicated.”
“That sounds intriguing.”
“I was drummed out of the police by Internal Affairs. They said I ran some guy over in a Land Rover.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“It wasn’t me. I was fitted up for it. And there were other things. Insubordination. Disobedience of a direct order.”
“You were always such a good boy in school.”
“Be that as it may. I pissed off the Chief Constable and I was a convenient fall guy.”
“So what are you now if you’re not RUC?”
“I was taken back on a temporary basis. MI5 got the RUC to take me back and put me in Special Branch.”
“Why?”
“To help look for you.”
He nodded sagely and folded his gloved hands under his chin. “I see, so it was all about me, then, was it?”
“What was?”
“You noseying around my family and friends, asking questions about Lizzie Fitzpatrick’s death.”
“Oh, that? Initially that was about you, but then I got sidetracked. I didn’t like the fact that everyone was willing to let Lizzie’s death become a cold case.”
“And did you find out who killed her in the end?”
“No. Not yet.”
He sipped more of his tea. “I’m not sure I believe you, Sean.”
“Well, it’s the truth. If I’d had more time, more resources, maybe I would have been able to come up with something.”
“Resources. Ha! Look at me and Marty here, we have nothing and yet we’re about to change the world!”
“That’s right!” Marty said.
“Well, we have my knowledge of chemistry, of course! Never much use for it in school but now you should see what I can do! For instance, did you know that in a decomposition reaction the result is usually exothermic. You’re probably wondering what a decomposition reaction is, aren’t you, Sean?” he said, and gave me a friendly tap under the chin.
“Yes, Dermot.”
“Well, decomposition reactions occur in materials such as trinitrotoluene (TNT) and nitroglycerine. The molecules of these materials contain oxygen. When the molecule decomposes, the products are combustion gases, which are produced at extremely high temperatures, generating resulting high pressures at the reaction zone. Fascinating, no?”
“Extremely. Is it OK if I ask you a question, Dermot?”
“Perhaps.”
“How did you get the bomb into Brighton, through all that police security, I mean?”
His eyes widened and Marty stopped messing around with my Walkman. Both men looked at me in horror.
“Say that again,” Dermot commanded.
“I was just curious how you got the bomb into Brighton. I mean, the place is swarming with peelers. How could you risk getting it through a roadblock?”
“What bomb do you mean, Sean? Specifically.”
“The truck bomb that you’re going to blow up outside the Conservative Party conference.”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
Martin laughed.
“You’re a good guesser, Sean, I’ll give you that much, but you haven’t quite got it right, have you?” he said.
“It’s too much of a coincidence. Why else would you be down here near Brighton when there are, no doubt, safe houses all over the country?”
Dermot grinned and nodded. “But let’s talk about you, Sean. I never figured you for a traitor.”
“Traitor how?”
“Working for the Castle.”
“The police, you mean?”
“Aye, the fucking SS RUC. How’d that come about? Was it the money? I’ve heard you get paid quite a bit.”
He was bristling now, ready for a fight, but I wasn’t going to take the bait.
“The money? Is that what they tell you? I’m living in a council house in Carrickfergus and my car certainly isn’t a Toyota Celica Supra!”
Of course, I didn’t tell him that I owned the house and my car was a BMW—that would have diluted the message.
“So why did you join the black bastards, Sean?”
“I wanted to put a stop to this madness. To hunt down nutters from both sides and put them away where they can’t do any more harm.”
He sipped more of his tea and grew thoughtful.
“I remember a rather different Sean Duffy who came to see me in Derry in 1972 begging me to take him into the Provisionals. A Sean Duffy that I turned away with tears in his eyes because he was doing his doctorate at Queen’s University. I told the soppy wee shit that the movement needs thinkers! Do you recall that Sean Duffy?”
“I do. It was right after Bloody Sunday. I’m sure you had every man in Derry knocking down your door that weekend.”
“That I did, Sean. That I did. But I remembered you. With your long hair and your beard and your sheepskin jacket and your university scarf. And I remember that look on your face when I said no . . . Is that what this is all about? Is that why you joined the fucking peelers? To get back at me?”
It was a fair point. Dermot, who’d been Head Boy, Dermot, who’d captained the hurling team, Dermot, who’d always been on top of the latest music, the latest trends, Dermot, who always got the girls, always impressed the boys . . .
“You think too much of yourself, mate. Until I was recruited to get on your trail your name never crossed my consciousness. When I made detective you were already in jail, weren’t you? And
who are you, anyway? You’re nobody in the big scheme of things. What have you done since you escaped from the Maze? Written a few poems in the Benghazi Hilton? Cooked up a few wee plots and schemes? But what have you actually done?”
Martin could contain himself no longer. “You’ll see what he’s done very fucking soon, mate! You’ll see! Lee Harvey fucking Oswald will be a fucking footnote.”
So it was Thatcher.
I was right.
And if not a truck bomb? What?
A Carlos the Jackal-style machine-gun attack? No. Too many cops and soldiers.
What, then?
A lone gunman in the conference hall?
How could they possibly get a rifle through the metal detectors?
I raced through schemes and came up empty.
“What’s going on in that noggin of yours, Sean?” Dermot asked.
I grinned and shook my head. “I can’t figure it out, Dermot. I’m baffled. How are you going to get near enough to get her?”
Dermot lit himself a cigarette and offered me one. I nodded and he lit it and handed it over.
“It’s your turn, Sean,” he said. “What have you got on me?”
“Me personally?”
“You, the MI5, the RUC.”
I drew in the tobacco smoke. There was no angle to be had in giving Dermot any bullshit. He’d see right through that in an instant.
“They’ve got a whole team on you, Dermot,” I said, flattering him. “They seem to think that you’re the leader of all the cells that trained in Libya. That you’re some kind of kingpin. I told them that all the cells would be operating independently once they hit the UK but I don’t know if they really listened to that.”
“What intel have they got on me?”
“Well, we know Gaddafi had you arrested and kept you in a cell for three months. MI5 or maybe MI6 got a hold of the journal you were writing there. We read that looking for clues but you were too clever to leave any clues there . . .”
Dermot smiled. He liked having his ego stroked just as much as the next man.
“What else have you got?”
“That’s it. Of course, they’ve been wire-tapping the phones. Your ma, your sisters, your mates. Annie’s ma and da. Your aunts and uncles. All your bloody friends and neighbors. But you never called any of them, did you?”
“Of course not!”
“There was a rumor that you were in Germany. Most of them still believe that one.”
“Germany? What the hell would I be doing in Germany?”
“They seem to think you’re going to attack a British base there.”
He shrugged. “Aye. That’s not a bad idea. But that’s more the Red Army Faction’s turf, you know?”
“Well, that’s all we have. A waste of thousands of man-hours.”
Martin laughed. “We’ve got you running in circles!”
“We had nothing at all until we got the anonymous call about this safe house. And even that was beginning to look like a hoax until, well . . .”
“You have no idea who called this place in?” Dermot asked.
“Search me. It was the confidential telephone and you know they don’t tape those calls. Policy.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Before he could ask me whether I was, maybe, lying about the anonymous nature of the information I quickly asked: “Have you got any enemies within the movement? Someone jealous of your position?”
Dermot rubbed his chin. “Maybe. We’ll have to have a wee think about that, won’t we? Was it a man or a woman who left the tip?”
“A man.”
“Hmmm, I wonder.”
Martin examined his watch again. “We should fucking top this guy and head on, don’t you think, Dermot? If this place is blown it’s going to be crawling with bloody peelers in a couple of hours, isn’t it?”
Dermot nodded. “Yeah, Marty, me old mucker, I suppose you’re right. It wouldn’t do for me to ignore my own rules, would it?”
“No, it bloody wouldn’t.”
Dermot passed Martin his teacup. “Wash these out thoroughly and put them back on the shelf.”
“What for?” Martin said.
“If you would broaden your reading from Penthouse to New Scientist magazine, Marty, me old china plate, you’d know that there’s this thing called DNA evidence. If you so much as spit in the wrong place these days the police can track you down and nail you.”
“It’s not quite as accurate as all that,” I suggested.
“Better safe than sorry, eh, Sean?”
I nodded weakly.
Martin took my teacup and went into the kitchen.
Dermot eyed me in a bored, abstracted way. Rather the way an old cat does a much-toyed mouse.
“So you don’t really know anything, do you, Sean?” he surmised.
“I know you’re going to try and attack Thatcher.”
“But you don’t know when and you don’t know how and that’s the key thing, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“I could leave you here and you’d have no idea where we were going to go next, would you?”
“You already told him London!” Marty shouted from the kitchen.
“Aye, but where in London?” I said. “And maybe it’s a double bluff.”
I began to have a glimmer of hope. Was it possible that he was going to let me live? Tie me and gag me until it was too late for me to do anything about it? It might be just his thing. Cloak an act of sadism in an act of mercy—by allowing me to live while others died, my failure would be manifest. I’d have to go the rest of my long days knowing that he’d bested me. The great Dermot McCann outfoxes the not-so-great Sean Duffy once again.
“I really have no clue where you’re going next, Dermot,” I said.
He looked at his watch. “Well, this has been very interesting. And fun. And there’s so much more I’d like to ask you, but as my rambunctious young colleague keeps reminding me, we must be away. Tick, tock, tick, tock.”
Realization flooded over me. “I think I get it,” I said.
He smiled. “What do you get?”
“A time bomb. That’s it, isn’t it? Planted weeks ago. No, months ago. In the hotel? Right?”
Dermot laughed again. “You’re too clever for your own good, Sean. Martin! Get in here!” Martin came back into the living room and stood next to me, ready to do the necessary when his boss gave the order.
“I told you he was a tricky customer, didn’t I?”
“That you did, boss.”
“When is the bomb going off, Dermot? Is it tonight?”
No reaction.
“It is tonight, isn’t it? When? How long have they got?”
Dermot raised the Glock and pointed it at me.
“How long?”
“They’ve got a bit longer than you, mate, that’s for sure.”
I was suddenly terrified. I didn’t want to die. Not here, not like this.
“No. Dermot, don’t! Please, I’m sorry,” I said, pathetically. I’m sorry for joining the wrong side. I’m sorry for fucking your ex-wife. I’m sorry about everything . . .
“Sorry?”
“Maybe you made the right choice and maybe I made the wrong one. We were both doing what we thought was right, weren’t we? Are you going to kill me because of that?”
Dermot sighed and looked at Martin. “Did you know that in India there’s a priest who spends his entire life counting the integers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. You know why he does that?”
“No idea, Dermot,” Martin said.
“Do you know why, Sean?”
“No.”
“He’s doing it to make sure they’re all there. Do you understand, Sean?”
Yeah, I understand. You’re fucking nuts, pal.
“Not really, Dermot,” I said.
“You have to be meticulous. You have to count the integers. There are half a dozen reasons why I have to kill you, Sean. Being a traitor is certainly high on the list,
but denying British Intelligence even a single clue as to who planted the device in Brighton has got to be a more pressing consideration. Is binn béal ina thost. You’re a canny lad, Sean boy, surely you can see that I can’t possibly let you live?”
“We were friends, Dermot.”
“And if our positions were reversed would you let me go or would you do your duty and—”
I sprang to my feet, hooked my right leg around Martin’s calf, and toppled him backward with my right elbow. As he went down I fell on him, and as his face smashed into the hardwood floor, I made sure my elbow crashed down on his temple. A bullet whistled past me and another round thudded into the floor inches from me. I flipped the unconscious Martin over and grabbed his 9mm. Another bullet whizzing past centimeters away.
I scrambled into the kitchen, adjusted the semi-automatic in my handcuffed wrists, shot out the living-room light, and sent another round into the bulb directly above me in the kitchen as I dived under a table and Dermot shot twice into the space where I had been.
I put the gun down to flip the kitchen table over.
It landed on the linoleum floor with an almighty crash.
“Everything OK in there, Sean?” Dermot yelled from the living room.
I crouched behind the table and picked up the gun again.
“It’s an impasse, Sean. You’re in there and I’m in here. How are we going to resolve this little stalemate?”
Always the talker, always the big mouth. I grabbed a teacup from the sink and threw it toward the sound of his voice. It crashed somewhere near him and, furious, he shot into the kitchen twice.
I shot back three times at the muzzle flash of his 9mm.
Silence.
Five seconds.
Ten.
“Dermot?”
“Ugh.”
“Dermot, are you hit?”
“Ugh.”
I walked into the living room, turned on a side lamp, and saw him sprawled face down on the living-room floor. He was still holding the 9mm.
I stood on his wrist and kicked the gun away from him.
I rolled him over. It was a stomach wound, a bad one, gut shot.
I knelt beside him and took his hand. “When is the bomb going to go off, Dermot?”
“Is that you, Sean?” he said.
“Aye, it’s me, Dermot.”
“How did it come to this?” he groaned.
In the Morning I'll Be Gone Page 27