‘What’ll I say?’
‘Don’t worry. They won’t expect you to say anything. It’s for completeness’ sake as much as anything. Just tell them exactly what you’d say if you and I weren’t in contact.’
‘I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘Well, then. These people won’t know anything about you and me. I’ve no idea who they’ll be. Except in all likelihood they’ll be from the Met, not the RUC.’
‘Will I have to give evidence?’
‘No. If the judge says we have to reveal your identity, we’ll drop the case.’
‘And Francis will be released?’
‘Yes.’
‘Won’t they know there’s a tout?’
‘Cases can get dropped for all kinds of reasons. But it won’t come to that. Anyway, you’ll be away from there by the time the case comes up in court.’
‘When can I leave?’
‘Now, if you want.’
‘No, not yet. But when? Where will I go? What will I do? Who will I be?’ She saw the uncertainty of it all. Suddenly that new, enticing life away from this seemed even more terrifying than just staying put. ‘I need more time.’
She had no idea what she would do with more time. Probably drive herself completely insane. She would be no clearer in her head in ten minutes or ten days or ten months from now. But she could not bear the decision, not yet.
‘All right. But there’s not much of it. Don’t close me out. Let me help you through this. Don’t go flaky on me, Bridget. You need to make a move very soon. It’s a big decision to stay.’
‘It’s a big decision to go.’
Sarah would return to her little flat and fret about Bridget. She would not sleep. Should she have been more forceful, dragged her out of the house and into the back of a van, taken her to a place of greater safety? Bridget clearly did not know her own mind, but nor for that matter did Sarah.
Maybe Charles had been right back then in that case conference when he was handing management of the section over to Richard. He’d spoken as if she wasn’t in the room. ‘Need to get this one handed over pronto to someone else. Can’t see much potential, but the woman won’t know she’s on the books until she’s been handed on. And it’ll be easier for a man to exert the necessary discipline.’
He’d looked at Sarah as if challenging her, and she’d looked away. Strange how she could be assertive in the field but found it impossible in the office. Its frames of reference, its set-up, its language were all masculine.
‘Don’t worry,’ Richard had said when they’d left the room. ‘Before too long we’ll be able to ignore him. Not worth wasting our breath. You and I know how good you are. Charles wouldn’t know a good source if it sat in his lap. There’s no point arguing with him. It’s your judgement that’s important.’
‘Water off a duck’s back,’ she’d said, and not meant it.
Maybe Richard had been right. Maybe Charles had been.
Things had changed at work when she and her husband divorced. Before, the job had been just that: a job with a difference, requiring a heightened commitment, but a job. Increasingly, though, it was as if she had taken a lover, those furtive telephone calls with colleagues, those sneaked weekend assignations with her workstation while she pretended she was meeting a girlfriend for lunch and shopping, those feigned transport delays while she perfected a submission.
After her divorce it turned into an obsessive marriage. She worked late each evening, despite her casual banter in the office she felt each setback and challenge deeply, she dreamt of her agents – her people, as she insisted on calling them in her head. When she met colleagues for a drink she had to be careful not to talk about the office the whole time, yet conversations seemed invariably to circle back there.
Tonight she would return home late and make a quick bowl of pasta, taking her meal, with a glass of white wine, into the living room. She would sit unlistening and unseeing in front of the television. In her mind she would run through the frames of the slow-motion train crash she had set in motion. Then she would go to bed and watch the ceiling.
Which one of them had it been? His money was on the Englishman Karl. He’d discounted Jonjo and Antony for the moment. It could well be one of the two clowns, Gerry and Kevin. Peter? Probably not but you couldn’t reject the notion completely. He’d been even more like a cat on hot bricks than normal, from the very off.
Steady on. Hadn’t something simply happened along the way to compromise them? Some stupid mistake or some random occurrence?
He turned in his bed. It was these thoughts, not the noise and light that an institution generates even into the middle of the night, that kept him awake. Not the echoes of distant doors slamming, the coughs of patrolling screws in the corridors, the shadows moving under the doors. Not the smell, of male sweat and shit and piss, intermingled with boiled vegetables and fried food. They were nothing. He had it easy here. This was not hard yacker. It wasn’t like the H-Blocks. He was segregated from other prisoners and his high-security status afforded him other comforts too, including a palatial remand cell. His guards were scrupulously polite and correct. Instructions from on high, no doubt; Harriet King would leap on any possible evidence of maltreatment. His meals were hot, edible and regular. Back in the Maze you had the literal fear of death. Here Ms King was your guardian angel. Almost.
No. It had all been too neat. There had been no chance involved. One of those fuckers was a tout.
Another day, another series of interviews. No comment no comment no comment. Grin. No comment. Cup of tea, Ms King? Mr O’Neill? No comment. They were allowing the forty-eight hours to tick away. Did you …? No comment. Were you or were you not …? No comment. What did you …? No comment. Where were you …? No comment.
Finally, then. The time of arrest had been given as eleven fifty-two a.m. DCI Spence came into the room, took off his blue pinstriped jacket and placed it carefully on the back of the spare chair on the other side of the table, then sat down. He rolled up his sleeves as his sergeant, who had been conducting the interviews in his absence, recorded his entrance for the benefit of the tape.
‘The time is now,’ he said, looking at the clock on the wall, ‘eleven forty-four. I hereby charge you under the Explosive Substances Act 1883 with conspiring to cause an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property, or making or having under your control an explosive substance with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property. You are under no obligation to say anything but anything you do say will be written down and may be used in evidence. Do you have anything to say?’
Bridget was taken to see Francis by a junior member of his defence team. She was silent and obedient as Jonty navigated her solicitously through the procedures at Belmarsh. She was barely aware of what was going on and suddenly there she was in a large, gloomy strip-lit room that seemed somehow like a cafeteria. It was modern – the prison had only recently been built. The walls were brilliant white and it was carpeted. The tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. A window the length of the far wall looked out on to the London hinterlands and there was a smell of boiled cabbage. The tables, except for one, were unoccupied and apart from Bridget and three guards there was only one person there: Francis.
His jaw was set and he looked grim. He looked up at her and she felt tears forming. She coughed and resisted the urge to rush to him. He sat before a table beneath which he continuously wrung his hands.
‘All right?’ he said.
‘All right,’ she replied.
‘Will you not sit down, then?’ he said, and she obeyed him.
She looked at him. He had maybe two or three days’ stubble and now he was doing his best to look cheerful, of all things. Would he know it had been her? Would he be able to see through it all? Would she betray herself somehow? The fear daggered through her again. He levelled his eyes at her and instead of suspicion she saw the fearful boy within. His eyes seemed to beg.
They ha
d little to exchange but platitudes. So they exchanged platitudes. Perhaps buried deep beneath the clichés, even beneath the intent, invisible to both of them, lay meaning. It could be here that she found trace memories of the young brash boy she’d known, that one she’d fallen for.
It was as they were nearing the end of visiting time that she said it, carelessly. ‘I’ll stand by you. However long it takes. You know that.’
He looked at her.
‘I will,’ she insisted. The peculiar thing was that as she said it she believed it.
The weather in Downpatrick was miserable today. Sheeting rain hammered against the large picture window. Not that they were looking at the view as they sipped their tea, hands cupped around their mugs. The radiators ticked quietly as they warmed.
‘The police interview,’ said Sarah, ‘was it terrible?’
‘No. They were on their best behaviour. An Englishwoman and a man. They phoned me the evening before and told me what they planned to do. I turned up at the station with the lawyer and they just sat me down. They were only going through the motions. They didn’t expect me to say anything. The lawyer told me to say “no comment” to everything anyway. They were polite enough. They gave me a lift home afterwards and the search had been done while I was being interviewed. They left everything neat and tidy.’
‘And you’ve seen him?’
‘Yes. Went over to London and all that.’
‘And how was that?’
‘It was … all right.’
‘So –’
‘Excuse me, Sarah,’ said Bridget quietly. ‘That’s not what I need to talk about. It was all right. That’s all. Nothing came out of it. Nothing to spoil what we’ve been doing. Satisfied?’
Sarah looked at her.
‘But – I’ve made my decision. This is over. I’ll be staying. I can’t do this. I can’t come away to wherever and whatever, knowing no one, leaving everything behind. I’m just too scared. I know you think it’s the wrong decision but I’ve made it.’
‘Go on,’ said Sarah.
‘It isn’t like I love Francis. I did once. Oh, we loved each other. But love doesn’t come into it. We’re husband and wife and that’s how you lead your life round here. You make your bed and you lie in it. For better or for worse. Anything else is just fantasy. So this has to stop.’
‘But what’s just happened –’
‘What’s just happened just proves it. Everything’s changed. He needs me now.’
‘But –’
‘I know. What they say he did makes me sick. What he is makes me sick. When he puts his hands on me I feel sick. But I have to be loyal. Make up for … Though I never can.’
‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Bridget. He’s the guilty one. You weren’t planning to set off a bomb. You owe him nothing. You don’t have to wait. You’ve every right to make a new life.’
‘But I haven’t. I can’t escape. This is where I grew up. This is me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not whatever you’re inventing for me.’
‘I’m not inventing anything. You need to think of your safety.’
‘You said it would probably be all right. It’d blow over in all likelihood.’
‘I said the chances were it’d be all right. But they’re unpredictable. You have to be aware of the risks.’
‘I’ll take my chances. Perhaps I deserve to be found out. Perhaps I need to be punished.’
‘Of course you don’t. You’ve done a good thing. You know that.’
‘It doesn’t feel good. And I’ve done it, good or bad, and now I’m to pay the price.’
‘You’re not going to tell him, are you? Or them?’
‘Maybe I should. But I don’t think I’m that brave. No, my price will be paid in the years and days and hours I’m waiting. Waiting for him to come out and them to find out.’
‘Punishing yourself, you mean?’
‘If you like.’
‘For doing the right thing?’
‘It’s not that simple, though, is it?’
‘It is from where I’m standing,’ said Sarah.
‘I saw him there, in the prison. He was that young boy again, proud and brash but behind it all just a wee kid, needing me to protect him.’
‘He doesn’t require protection. It’s just the little-boy-lost thing. All men pull it at some point. He doesn’t deserve you. You’ve got to think of yourself, Bridget.’
‘No. We’ve finished. You’ve got what you wanted and you can forget about me now.’
‘I won’t forget about you. You’ve got to realize how ridiculous you’re being.’
‘Ridiculous, am I?’
‘Well, yes. I’ve always been honest with you. So yes, ridiculous is the right word. Understandably so, I’ll admit. It’s tough. But look at it rationally. If you were doing the wrong thing in talking to me – which I don’t accept for a second – you’ve done it now. Francis has been caught and there’s nothing you can do about that. You do him no good at all by staying and you do yourself no good either. You want to leave and by staying you put yourself in a dangerous place. Very dangerous: you could be committing suicide.’
‘Maybe that’s what I want to do.’
‘I don’t believe that either. You think we were so wrong?’
‘No, not wrong,’ said Bridget. ‘It wasn’t wrong. It was … wrong for me. It’s my fault. I have only myself to blame.’
‘And staying will put it right?’
‘I don’t know. But it feels like the only way.’
In unison, they took another sip of tea.
‘I shudder to think of it,’ said Bridget. ‘The risks I’ve been taking.’
‘I’ve looked after you with as much care as I could.’
‘I know.’
Sarah paused. ‘This is where I’m supposed to say: OK, Bridget, it’s fine. Your choice, you’re a grown woman. No hard feelings. No one’s fault. You’ve been incredible.’
She looked at Bridget until her gaze was returned, before continuing. ‘But no. You stupid bitch. You stupid bloody bitch. Don’t be so perverse. So selfish. What is this crap: I’ve got to be there for him? This is my penance? I’ve got to play the little woman, more like. I’ve got to melt because Francis O’ bloody Neill flutters his eyelashes and puts on a pained expression. I ignore everything he’s done to me in the blink of an eye. I’ve got to play the classic downtrodden beaten wife because, actually, that’s what I am. It doesn’t wash.’
‘You’re upset.’
‘Upset? I’m fucking furious. And terrified. About what may happen to you.’
‘You said –’
‘I know what I said. And it’s all very true. In my business we look at risk. We manage risks down to acceptable levels. And the risks of them detecting you are, what, very low? Negligible? Perhaps not that low. But the level of acceptable risk in some situations is zero. I’ve half a mind to slap you, Bridget O’Neill.’
‘I’m sorry I’ve let you down.’
‘It’s not about me, I keep telling you. It’s not about Francis. It’s about you. I’m serious when I say I’ve a mind to slap you. To overpower you and take you back to London.’
‘You can’t.’
‘No. I can’t. I’m held hostage by someone who’d started taking possession of her life but then thought better of it. It’s too difficult after all.’
‘Staying’s difficult.’
‘You said it. That’s why it’s so absurd. You’re actively deciding to do not only the wrong thing but the thing that’s most difficult and dangerous too.’
‘That’s your view of it.’
‘Contradict me, then. Tell me I’ve got it all so fucking wrong.’
‘You’re not wrong, as such …’
‘As such. I know you’re under stress. I know you’re confused. I know I should be apologizing for my unprofessional behaviour and take you through the rational arguments for and against. But bloody hell, Bridget. Just ignore that fog in your head and do what I say.’
‘No,’ said Bridget. ‘I’ve made my mind up. I’m going now.’
The thought shot through him like a bolt, like a dose of the shits, making him feel weak. His knees bent involuntarily and he wanted to throw up. He knew.
Joe. It had to be Joe. The boys back home were always talking about Joe’s manoeuvring and politics. All rumours, Francis had thought, all talk. Until now. In spite of his gentility, Joe was a warrior. Cold in that way. The touch of his slender fingers belied his special brutality. Francis had felt that ferocity as a boy, alternating with gentleness. With Liam, no doubt the pulling of the trigger had been preceded by a soft caress.
That cold-blooded ruthlessness would have been useful in negotiation. The sacrifice of a few for the greater good. The bigger picture. It had been that man Mercer who’d said that one day Francis would be expendable. Perhaps he’d been right. Perhaps, after Liam, Francis had outlived his usefulness. Perhaps Joe thought he’d lost his nerve, become brittle and biddable. Reached the end of the road. So he’d given him up as part of some crazy trade that somehow he could rationalize. Joe’s mind was like that. Byzantine. Dark and full of hidden places. It was all too possible. Would that be flushed out in Harriet King’s little disclosure exercise?
Francis sat in the little room with her as she burrowed in her pile of papers, the condensed summary of the many cartons of documents, tapes and videos that had been delivered to her office by the CPS.
‘Help me, Francis. Help me,’ she murmured as she looked. ‘Somewhere in here … Somewhere. They’ve done a good job. But somewhere. There has to be something.’
‘Don’t they have to give you all the evidence they collected?’
‘Up to a point. You know all about public interest immunity and ex parte hearings, though, I imagine. The English courts are as much a minefield for us as the Northern Ireland ones.’
‘So we’re buggered.’
‘Not necessarily. Sometimes they’re sloppy. It just takes one small mistake and their whole case can unravel. But not here, it would seem. Not yet, at least. Help me, Francis.’
‘They reckon they’ve got plenty of evidence without bringing their tout to the witness box.’
A Traitor in the Family Page 21