Safe House (9 page)

There were seven of them, homeless men who hoarded newspapers and cardboard to help them keep warm through the night. They were behind the shopping center, in a covered loading bay lighted by a dim overhead bulb. Two appeared to be asleep, wrapped in ragged sleeping bags. The others had old bedding of different kinds, laid out on sheets of cardboard. One man turned his back on the others and swigged liquor from a secret bottle.

Liam sat a short distance from them and leaned his back against the loading bay doors. One of the men shuffled over and offered him a large cardboard box that, according to the printing on the outside, had contained a washing machine. He thanked the man, who showed him how to curl the sides of the cardboard over him and tie them together with twine. “Maytag overcoat,” the man said, chuckling.

A heavy weariness penetrated through to his bones. He should be safe here for a while, he thought, and he had company for the night, unlike the scary night spent alone in the Ludlow family sepulcher. Having other people around seemed to make it seem safer. He rummaged through his backpack, found his gray wool hat and pulled it down over his head. Then he pushed himself down inside the cardboard overcoat, the dry side of his backpack under his head, closed his eyes and, in spite of his damp jeans, dropped into an uneasy sleep.

…everyone has his price…

He woke with a start. A filthy, bearded-bearded rat of a man, smelling as if he had just crawled out of the sewer, was kneeling beside him, stroking his head and murmuring words in his ear. Terrified, he sat up quickly and kicked out with his feet. “Get off!”

The man fell backward onto his behind and scrambled away on all fours.

He tried to get back to sleep but it was useless. He was too cold and damp. And it wasn't so safe here after all. He lay in the darkness, eyes wide open, waiting for the daylight.

His mind went back over his incredibly narrow escape from the so-called safe house. The Mole had almost got him. If he hadn't crept downstairs to satisfy his hunger he would be dead by now for sure, with a bullet through his head or a knife through his heart. Which reminded that he was still hungry. And that Grogan! Taking a bribe! Judas! The Mole, being a policeman, must have found a way to discover the address of the safe house and make Grogan an offer he couldn't refuse. Trustworthy: That was the word Inspector Osborne had used for Grogan and his wife. And Catholics too.

Everyone had his price.

Liam and his da are walking together along the street on their way to a football match. It's Sunday, it's sunny, and the Ballymurphy Warriors are playing the Boxhill Centurions.

A man approaches. He opens his dirty raincoat. Liam stares. There are dozens of watches attached to the man's body. “I got digitals and regulars,” the man says. “I got real silver pocket tickers and I got ladies' cocktail…”

“No thanks,” says Dan Fogarty, pushing past the man.

“Real cheap,” says the man. “Digitals for only…”

“No thanks,” says Dan Fogarty again, walking on.

The man shrugs and goes away.

“Stolen, most likely,” says Liam's da. “We will have no dealings with a thief.”

Liam says nothing. He has never owned a watch. It would be good to have a watch. The watches were cheap. Why not buy one if you have the cash?

“Always be a man,” says his da. “A man sticks to his principles; he does what is right. Sometimes it's a temptation to tell a lie, or steal, or cheat, or buy stolen property because it's cheap, or any number of things. People will try to persuade you to do something you know is wrong. They will try to buy you with money, or promise you fame or favor. Some would sell their souls for a bottle of wine. They say that everyone has his price. They say that everyone can be bought. Well, don't you believe it, son. Make yourself strong so no one can buy you. Maintain strong principles. That's what it means to be a man.” He grinned and tousled Liam's hair. “You understand?”

“I think so.”

“The Irish poet says it best: ‘There's no need to fear the wind if your stack of hay is well tied.'”

“Stack of hay?”

“Your principles, son. Your beliefs.”

“Heavy stuff, Da.”

“I know, Liam. But my job is to love you and take care of you and help you become the best man you can possibly be.”

It looked like the Mole had found Fergus Grogan's price, right enough.

But why would the Mole need to bribe Grogan when all he needed to do was attack the safe house the same way he and his partner had attacked Liam's house to kill his mum and his da? Attack and kill, wasn't that the Mole's way? So maybe it was Grogan, after all, who had contacted the Mole. Or maybe it was Protestant Inspector Osborne who set the Mole onto him. Liam gave up: He would never figure it out; he would never know. But Grogan was a traitor, that's was for sure, and a murderer, no better than the Mole.

He thought about what Delia Cassidy had said about the IRA killing the people in Omagh. Catholics were supposed to be the good guys, weren't they? The saints and heroes. Ireland the home of the brave. He had grown up with his friends believing the Prods were the bad guys. One thing Liam understood was that his da was right: There was good and bad on both sides. The Prods he had met at the circus were good guys. Catholic Grogan was a bad guy. And the Catholic IRA people who exploded the Omagh bomb, killing twenty-nine, not counting the unborn twins, and crippling about three hundred others, were also bad guys.

The Mole was a Prod. A very bad guy. Liam had to get the Mole before the Mole got him. But how? Should he call Inspector Osborne and tell him the Mole was a policeman—one of his own men? And that Grogan was not to be trusted? But what if Inspector Osborne was one of the bad guys too? It was Osborne who had sent him to the safe house wasn't it? And what about the police driver who had taken him to the safe house? Probably a Prod. Maybe they were all in it together. Who could be trusted?

A shivering started in his shoulders and moved to his jaw and teeth. He crawled out of his Maytag overcoat, grabbed his backpack, and hurried off into a thin drizzle of rain. Where could he go? If only he cold get out of the city to a place where the Mole would not find him. Maybe he could smuggle himself onto an Ulsterbus. It wouldn't matter which town. He headed for the bus station, keeping away from open areas where the Mole might spot him, certain that the Land Rover couldn't be very far away.

…violent protests in Ardoyne…

He hunkered down in the deserted bus station. The rain had stopped. Soon it would be daylight.

Maybe he should go to the police for protection once again, to Inspector Osborne. He had seemed okay when they talked in his office, seemed genuinely concerned about his safety. But now that he knew the Mole was a policeman… But then again…And what if…

He felt drowsy. He tried to figure out how to board a bus, one leaving for the south of Ireland, preferably Dublin, anywhere far from Belfast where the Mole could not find him. The four pounds in his wallet would not be enough to buy a ticket. He would have to smuggle himself onto the bus. He was scared that the Mole would find him first.

He had spent a large part of his life being scared.

He remembered how scared he was going to school when he was six and the family lived in north Belfast. At that time, there were violent protests in Ardoyne, a Protestant area. Catholics—mothers and their small children—had always passed through the Protestant estate to get to the Holy Cross Catholic Primary School, but now the Protestants wanted it to stop. “Stay out of our neighborhood!” they yelled.

Liam's mum escorted him to and from the school every day. The protests grew angrier, becoming so loud and violent that the Catholic women and children came to depend on the protection of a security forces bodyguard—army and police— carrying shields and wearing black riot gear as they acted as a buffer between the Catholics and the Protestant protesters.

“Hold my hand tight,” his mum says as they join the other Catholic women and children and begin walking toward Holy Cross School.

The angry Protestants stand outside their houses, waiting. When the Catholics and their bodyguard approach the houses, the Protestant women begin screaming, blowing whistles, hooting air horns, banging bin lids on the pavement.

The din is frightful.

Some of the Protestant children begin throwing stones at the Catholics. Their parents do nothing to stop them. The security forces bodyguard does its best to protect the Catholic children with their shields.

“Don't be scared,” Liam's mum says. “And don't look at them. Keep your eyes fixed straight ahead. Be brave.”

But he isn't brave; he is scared. This early morning torture has been going on too long. He cannot understand why the Prods are so angry. His mum tried to explain it to him before they set out, on their first day. “It's a Protestant loyalist area,” she told him. “But Catholics have always used this route to the school. It's too far to go around the other way. Suddenly the Prods have decided we can't walk through their streets any longer. But we have a right to walk wherever we wish. We can't let them see we're afraid.”

They walk on. The din becomes louder. His mum gives a cry. A stone has hit her on the face. Liam can see the blood leap to her cheek, but she doesn't stop, just holds his hand tighter and marches on with the other women and children through the gauntlet of hate.

His mum and his da discuss it later that evening.

His mum says, “Four Catholic women found death threats in their mailboxes. Just for taking their children to school through their street! The Protestants have all gone mad. Death threats! And attacking wee children on their way to school! What next, I wonder? Yesterday, someone threw a blast bomb at the police escort. The noise was deafening. The Catholic women pushed their children to the ground and covered them with their bodies thinking they were about to be killed. The wee children were crying and screaming with fright.”

Liam sticks out his chest proudly. “I didn't cry or scream.”

“I'll come with you tomorrow,” his da says. “Liam can walk between us.”

His mum says, “And you should hear the horns and whistles! And the bin lids banging on the pavement.”

“The bin lids are plastic nowadays,” his da says as he gently washes his mum's swollen cheek with alcohol and affixes a Band-Aid. “Those Protestant women today were imitating the old ‘hen patrols' of the seventies, when Catholic women drummed their metal bin lids on the pavements to warn of police and army soldiers in the neighborhood. Do you remember? I was only a wee lad myself, but I remember the noise could be heard for miles around. I'm unlikely ever to forget those jungle drums. It was wild. ‘Louder than the clang of a thousand trumpets,' wrote the great Irish poet Hughie Houlihan. There now! How does that feel?” He stands back.

Liam's mum touches her swollen cheek with her fingertips.

His da kisses the top of her head. “You're a brave and lovely-looking woman, sure enough.”

“Ah, go on with you,” says his mum, trying not to smile. Liam was only six. But he remembered it very well. He also remembered a time later when he was eight; they had moved to Ballymurphy, and he is asking his da about grandparents.

“Is this my grandma and my granddad?”

He is frowning over a framed photograph on the chest of drawers in his mum and da's room. His da is trying to take an afternoon nap. His mum is downstairs working in the kitchen.

His da opens one eye. “It is,” he says.

“They're the da and mum of you, isn't that right, Da?”

“No, not me, son. They're the mum and da of your mum. That's who they are. They're your mother's parents. Which means they are your grandparents.”

“Where are they? Why don't they come to see me?”

“Ah, they're both gone, Liam darlin'. Your grandmam, God rest her soul, died of a fever many years ago. And your granddad didn't last long after that, may they rest in peace.”

“Granddad is a very tall man in the picture. I can't see the top of his hat.”

“He was a tall man right enough.”

“Where's the picture of the da and mum of you then, Da?”

“There isn't one. I grew up in foster homes.”

“What's foster homes?”

“Places where people take care of kids who have no mum and da to take care of them.”

Liam puzzles over this for a long time. Then he asks, “Didn't you have a mum and da, Da?”

“No, son, I didn't.”

He puzzles even longer over this, still staring at the picture in its metal frame.

His da says, “I'm taking a nap now, son.”

“Da?”

“What?”

“My granddad was tall. Does that mean I'll be tall too?”

“There's an old Irish saying, son: You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your granddad was.”

Silence as Liam thinks this over. Then: “Da, you never go to church like me and Mum. Does that mean you've got no religion?”

“When you do good you feel good; when you do bad you feel bad. That's all the religion your father ever needed. I learned that from a famous Irishman named Abraham Lincoln. Now buzz off and let me take a nap.”

And later, when he is ten:

“‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'”

“Another old Irish saying, Da?”

“It is.”

They are starting their dinner.

“Say grace, please Liam,” says his mum.

“For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful.”

“Good boy. Help yourselves to the veggies.” His mum passes him a bowl.

Liam digs in. “What does it mean?” He passes the veggies to his da.

His da takes the bowl. “What does what mean?”

“That eye stuff.”

His da says, “It's in the Bible. And the Koran. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. It means you strike back if someone strikes you. It means if a man takes a life then he must lose a life. Vengeance. Revenge. You understand?”