Part 21 (2/2)
”Oh, yes, but we can't talk here. Monsignor Murphy is at a dinner tonight. We'll use the sacristy.”
It was warm and enclosed in there, a desk and a couple of chairs, a laptop, religious vestments hanging from the rails, registers of all kinds-marriages, deaths-and a church smell to everything that would never go away.
She leaned against the wall by the window, arms folded, and he sat opposite. ”Tell me about yourself,” she said.
”I'm using an alias at the moment: Daniel Grimshaw.”
”A sound Yorks.h.i.+re name that suits your voice.”
”My mother was a Coogan from Crossmaglen, and I was a volunteer with the PIRA.”
”So was I, and proud of it.”
”I know. Liam told me about your sleeper cell and how he activated you in 1991. Twelve explosions that resonated in the West End of London for months.”
Her face was glowing. ”Great days, they were.”
”Then you went back to waiting? Did that bother you?”
”It's what sleepers do, Daniel, wait to strike again.”
”And hopefully for the big one. Back then, Liam asked me that if he activated you again, would I be your controller, and I said yes. Liam died, of course, from a heart attack, but I'm here now.”
She nodded gravely. ”G.o.d rest Liam's soul. He was a good man.”
”Were your cell members disappointed not to have a role in the 1996 bombings?”
”Yes, but at least we had the satisfaction of seeing the British suffer such a great defeat. It's strange, but seeing you like this brings your last visit vividly back to me. We always met weekly in the chapel at Hope of Mary. The day you gave me Liam's message, I called a special meeting and gave them the good news.”
”And how did they take it?”
”Excitement. Awe. We knelt and recited our own special prayer together.”
” ' Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, we who are ourselves alone'?” Daniel said.
She was amazed. ”But how do you know that?”
”I just do, as I know the names of those men-Barry, Flynn, Pool, Costello, who changed to Docherty, Cochran, and Murray. A h.e.l.l of a long time ago. I wouldn't imagine they're still round?”
”Until two years ago, they all attended our weekly meeting, but unfortunately Barry and Flynn had a severe brush with the law. They were both too handy with a gun. Finally, an armed robbery they took part in went sour. They would have probably gotten seven years if caught, but I used a certain influence I have, obtained false American pa.s.sports for them and other necessary doc.u.mentation, and packed them off to the States.”
”And you stay in touch?”
”On a regular basis. We have a Hope of Mary Hospice and Refuge in New York, too. They are both security men there.”
”And the remaining four?”
”We meet as we've always done, united by prayer and a common commitment to the PIRA. I was recruited at London University, the others in various ways. Liam Coogan used to arrange trips to training camps in the west of Ireland. The IRA version of a holiday, he used to say. We did that many times over the years. Bonded, you might say.”
”But really only got to do your work with that twelve-bomb jolly in Mayfair in 1991. Was it enough?”
”It always is, if your resolve is strong and you are committed.”
”But you need more than that, I think, some deep-seated reason, perhaps some great wrong that urges you on.”
”That's true. Take Henry Pool. He's a self-employed private-hire driver. Like you, he had an English father and Irish mother, but her father was murdered by English Black and Tans in 1921 when she was only six months old and her mother fled here to Kilburn. It was a strong motive for him to not exactly care for the English.”
”I shouldn't imagine his mother would ever let him forget it.”
”Is there something wrong with that?” she asked.
”Not at all. For a ten-year-old child to see her father gunned down by masked intruders in front of her and her mother would, I imagine, be a memory that would last forever.”
Her face was surprisingly calm. ”So you know about that? Exactly who are you, Daniel, this half Irishman who claims to have been a member of the Provisional IRA? You not only sound Yorks.h.i.+re, you look like some prosperous businessman. What on earth would ever have made you join?”
So he told her all about Rosaleen Coogan.
Afterwards, she sat down on the other side of the desk from him, her face like stone, her eyes burning, and it was obvious that she accepted the truth of what he had told her. on the other side of the desk from him, her face like stone, her eyes burning, and it was obvious that she accepted the truth of what he had told her.
”Those foul creatures. G.o.d's curse on them for what they did to that poor girl.”
”Some kind of curse on me ever since,” Daniel told her. ”I've killed a number of times for the Provos and other times for myself.” He stood up, put his foot on the chair, and hitched his trousers up, revealing the ankle holster. ”The way of the gun has become rather permanent in my life.”
”But you don't regret what you did, you can't!” She banged on the desk with her clenched fist. ”d.a.m.n all of them.”
And now she was really upset, and Daniel said, ”Take it easy. It's not always good for us to let the past intrude.”
”You don't understand. It's brought it all back to me. The night the men with guns smashed their way in and murdered my father. They forced themselves on my mother, two of them. It was only my age saved me.”
Holley, aghast at the horror of it, could only say, ”I'm so sorry, girl.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. ”What I need is a drink, and I don't think it a sin in the circ.u.mstances to raid Monsignor Murphy's cupboard in search of Communion wine.” She found a bottle and two coffee cups and poured a generous measure into each. She handed one to him and drank deeply herself. ”Now, tell me everything properly, who you are really and what you're doing here.”
”There's a man named General Charles Ferguson who runs a special security outfit for the Prime Minister. His right-hand man is Sean Dillon, once a top enforcer for the PIRA, and a good one. In 1991, he was in a Serb prison when Ferguson turned up and made him an offer he couldn't refuse: to join him or face a firing squad.”
”So Dillon chose the traitor's path?”
”You could put it that way.”
She poured more wine for both of them. ”There's no other way of putting it. Tell me more-everything.”
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