Controlled Explosions (7 page)

‘With what?’ Bob didn’t bother to lower his voice. The two men were up now, moving in a way that showed they had combat training, their hands shifting to their holsters as well.

‘Look, there’s not much time, but if you go …’

‘I’m going nowhere.’

There was a noise. Footsteps in the corridor. The whistle of a tune: ‘The Sash My Father Wore’.

For a moment Helen Corry looked regretful. ‘I did try,’ she said. ‘Remember I tried to help you.’

Then the door was opening and Johnson was coming in, dressed in slacks and a shirt like he’d just come from home, papers under his arm. He stopped when he saw them all, Bob and Helen Corry and the strangers. ‘What’s going on?’

The Corry girl faced him. Her voice was clear, her chin raised. ‘DI Johnson. I’m afraid these men are here from Professional Standards. We need to have a chat with you.’

‘Don’t be silly, girl. How dare you call me in for this? I’m going home.’

‘No, you aren’t.’ Steel in her voice, for all her youth. ‘We know all about it, Alec. We know it was you.’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Peadar O’Keeffe, he didn’t get the addresses out of thin air, or know the parades that were going ahead before they were even announced … did he? Somebody gave him the information. We know it was you.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ Johnson made as if to brush past her, then the men were moving, and then something had changed. Bob didn’t know what for a moment. He watched Johnson’s papers fall slowly to the grey office carpet, like the flap of a bird’s wings. Then he saw what Johnson was holding in his hand.

Afterwards, when they were done with all the interviews and the paperwork and talking to more men in suits in small, hot rooms, Bob would never speak about what happened that night. But he knew in himself: he hadn’t seen the Corry girl blink once. Not even with the gun pointing between her eyes. The other men had theirs drawn too, but it was too late, they were on the wrong side of her, Johnson was too close.

‘Let’s not do this, Alec,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s over.’

‘And what would you know about it?’ He was shaking. His voice, his hand. The gun. ‘Slip of a girl like you. Coming in here saying we’re doing it all wrong. Lassie, we’ve been doing this job since you were in nappies. Men have died, good men. Blown to bits by your kind. And now you want to destroy us, drag our good name through the mud … People like you, you should be down on your knees thanking the RUC for what we did. We kept you safe in your bed all these years.’

‘But why the bombs, Alec? What good does that do?’ Still she didn’t falter. Even though the gun was so close it almost brushed the skin of her face.

‘Making us cancel our parades. Ask for permission to walk when we’ve been doing it three hundred years. Letting those – those murderers out of jail when we put them there. It isn’t right.’

‘So you thought you’d stir things up a bit.’

‘They’re scum, these people. We’re letting them walk free – bombers, killers. They’d kill you as soon as look at you, and we’re going to let them run the country? It’s treachery, is what it is.’

‘Was that the idea … show everyone the Catholics won’t stop bombing, so we shouldn’t share power with them? Go back to the bad old days?’

‘Well, they won’t! We’re going into government with murderers! You’ll see what’ll happen. There’s a wave of blood about to break over us, lassie, and we’re walking right into it.’

‘But this was you, Alec. You may have used those young kids, but it was all you. People could have been hurt. Officers, and their families. Innocent people. Weans, even. You’re as bad as the IRA.’

There was movement; she’d got to him. Johnson made an angry noise in his throat, stepped closer to her. For a moment, the girl closed her eyes. Bob didn’t know what he was doing until he’d done it. He was standing behind Johnson, so close he could see the strands of white in his old friend’s hair, the lines on his face. They’d both changed. Long, long years of bloodshed behind them. ‘It’s over, Alec,’ he said, his voice rusty. ‘For God’s sake let her go. It’s over.’

Johnson turned slowly, and as he saw the gun Bob was pointing at him, a strange look came over his face. Almost like peace. ‘You made your choice then, Bobby boy.’

‘There is no choice.’ Bob cleared his throat. ‘There’s only backwards, or this. I know that now.’

As the two men grabbed Johnson’s arms and cuffed him, Helen Corry met Bob’s eyes, and he thought he saw something new there. It might have been respect.

The music was loud. Spice Girls, ‘Stop’. Saoirse was over with some girls from school, bopping in a big protective ring. Paula saw him by the bar; went to buy a peach schnapps and lime, her favourite drink.

‘Hiya.’ He had a fag hanging out of his mouth; she breathed in the smell. She had on her Boots 17 silver Disco Queen nail varnish and a short skirt and a shiny top. She’d so much Impulse body spray on it could have knocked out a horse at twenty paces – or so Saoirse had informed her as they were getting ready.

‘Hi.’ She leaned her elbows on the bar, wrinkling her nose at the spilled-beer smell.

‘Your da OK?’

She shrugged. ‘He says he is. His leg’s not good.’

‘Ma wants you to come and stay. She’s worried, with that … with Catriona and all.’

She looked away, embarrassed. Trying not to remember it, the darts of fear in her stomach, the heat rising up from the pavement and the sheen of the gun … but wanting to remember it too, the feel of his arms and his mouth and … ‘I’m OK. I’m going to Saoirse’s for a few days, like. And you … you …’ She couldn’t say it.
You saved me.
If he hadn’t kissed her when he had, held her back for those few seconds, who knew what would have happened.

Aidan couldn’t meet her eyes either. She wondered if he was thinking it too. ‘Fair enough.’

The music changed, just like that. Robbie Williams, ‘Angels’. And it was dark and the lights swirled and it smelled of smoke and perfume and aftershave, and all across the room couples were moving in to each other.

She shut her eyes for a second. ‘I love this song.’

‘Ah no, you don’t.’

‘What? It’s nice!’

‘It’s shite is what it is.’ He paused, stubbing out his cigarette under his foot. ‘Wanna dance?’

She pretended for a minute she was thinking about it, like she might say no. But she couldn’t help smiling. ‘OK.’

I’m dead.

I don’t mind. I want to be dead. Nothing could be worse than staying alive, not like this. But all the same I’m running away.

I can feel the blood between my toes, my feet slipping on the roots and branches. They’ve taken my clothes from me. You’re dead, they say. No one will miss you. You’re evil. The world is better off without you.

And I know they’re right, but I’m running anyway.

I know they will catch me – I’m lost, no idea where I’m going, and after what they’ve done I can hardly stand, but I’m running. In the dark the forest is full of eyes, and branches claw my face like scratching hands. Overhead, the moon is as white as a face with the flesh stripped back.

My own warm blood is splashing on my skin. My heart is bursting in my chest. You have no heart, they told me. You are dead inside. You are scum. Yes, yes, it’s all true, but, but, but. I can hear them nearby in the trees. The high voice of the wee girl. Saying my name. I know they’ll find me, panting and stumbling, but I can’t stop. I am so afraid. I’ve never been afraid like this.

The noise stops. The moon lights up the path ahead, empty, and I run, and as I run I’m thinking one thing:
my baby. Oh my baby.

‘We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.’

Paula’s lilies were wilting already. She shifted on her swollen feet. The bulk of her belly meant the only way she could comfortably stand was with one hip jutted out, leaning on it, and she didn’t think such an insolent pose would cut it before the altar. She’d already seen the priest’s eye travelling over her stomach and then pointedly not looking at it. Catholics – they were good at pretending things that did exist didn’t. And vice versa.

She stared straight ahead, her legs buckling under the cool satin of her dress, glad that its length hid her puffy ankles and enormous underwear.
What am I doing here?
The church smelled of incense, and cold stone, and the slightly rotting sweetness of the flowers.

Across from her, Aidan was also staring rigidly ahead. He was tricked out in a new grey suit, clasping his hands in front of his groin in that position men adopted during moments of gravitas or penalty kick-offs. She wondered if, like her, he was having to stop himself mouthing the too-familiar words of the Mass
. Lord have mercy (Lord have mercy) Christ have mercy (Christ have mercy) Lord have mercy (Lord have mercy).
The phrases found a treacherous echo in her bones. She heard Aidan cough, once, in the still, heavy air of the church. On that warm spring day, it was full of the ghosts of candles, and dust, and long unopened hymn books.
What are we doing here?
She wanted to catch his eye, but was afraid to.

‘Do you have the rings?’ Aidan stepped forward and deposited them on the Bible, two hoops of gold, one large, one tiny. Then he moved back into position, eyes downcast.

‘Repeat after me,’ said the priest. The bride and groom arranged themselves in suitable positions. ‘Patrick Joseph Maguire, will you take Patricia Ann O’Hara to be your lawful wedded wife, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, to have and to hold from this day forth, forsaking all others, as long as you both shall live?’

Paula’s father – PJ – spoke in a rusty voice. ‘I will.’ His bad leg was stiff but he stood up straight in a new black suit bought for the occasion. Paula suspected he was hating it all, but he’d have done anything for the woman standing next to him in an ivory suit from Debenhams, several nests’ worth of dyed feathers attached to her head.

Aidan’s mother, Pat O’Hara, said her vows quick and earnest: ‘I will.’

They would. They were both so sure. How could you be sure? Paula stole a glance at Aidan – what was he now, her stepbrother? – and saw his dark eyes were wreathed in shadows, his hair tinged with grey over the ears. She’d never noticed that before. He saw her watching, and both of them looked away, her belly as big and unavoidable as the lies between them.
Oh Aidan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Then it was done, and Pat and PJ were wed, and they trooped down the aisle like a bride and groom in their twenties. Aidan grasped Paula’s arm without meeting her eyes, escorting her out, because that was what you did. His hand was cool on her hot, fat skin. Everything about her was squeezed. The ridiculous lilac bridesmaid dress, strained over newly discovered breasts, was like a cocoon she might burst from at any moment. Aidan could barely look at her. She didn’t blame him.

They were out now, and posing for photos taken by one of Pat’s friends, who couldn’t work the camera, and Pat was all smiles and tears, kissing Paula with her five layers of lipstick. She’d had her colours done for the wedding, plunging into manicures and spa days and shopping trips like a first-time bride. Paula had tried to play along, because she loved Pat, but it was hard to be excited about a wedding when its very occurrence hinged on the fact that your mother, missing for seventeen years, had been declared legally dead. And maybe she was dead – dead as Pat’s husband, who’d been shot by the IRA in 1986. But maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t.

Maybe
. When you got married you did not say ‘maybe’. You said ‘I will’, you put your feet on the good, solid stone of certainty. ‘Maybe’ was like shifting sand. She wished so much there was something, anything she could be sure of. Whether her mother was alive or dead, for a start.

It was warm outside, and the sunlight played around the old church, which was painted in crumbly lemon-yellow. Paula had made her First Communion here, and they’d also chosen it for her mother’s memorial service back in the nineties – no funeral, of course; nothing to bury. Now Pat’s friends had gathered to throw confetti, twittering women in their Sunday best suits, lilacs and yellows and blues covering crêpey arms, hats pressed out of boxes and set atop tight-curled hair. Many greeted Paula –
hello, pet
– some kissing her cheek, though she barely recognised them. She knew they’d be looking at her vast pregnant belly and bare left hand, and speculating about her and Aidan and what might be going on there. He’d been her boyfriend when she was eighteen and he was nineteen – was he the father of the wean? Honestly, she’d have told them if she knew.

Suddenly it was too much, all of them there, and the kiss of the sun on gravestones, and the sight of a small plaque in the vestibule bearing the name
Margaret Maguire. In loving memory.

‘Maguire?’ It was Aidan, speaking his first words to her all day. In months, in fact, since she’d told him about the baby. She realised she was sagging gently down to the steps, like a deflating balloon. ‘You all right?’