“Right, well I’ll say goodbye then, Sean. Another team will be along in a few hours to take you out of here. The big lad here will be watching you until they come. His instructions are very clear: if you cry out or move from that chair he’ll shoot you on the spot. If you try to bribe him or try to talk your way out of it or ask for a glass of water or open your mouth at all he’ll shoot on the spot. That’s clear, isn’t it?”
“Very clear.”
“Good. Come on, lads.”
Everyone left the room except for the Big Lad. I could hear him breathing and turning the pages of a newspaper. I waited for a count of two hundred after they’d gone before I tried speaking to him.
“What are you reading?” I attempted.
“Sport.”
“Oh yeah? I’m a big Hugh McIlvanney fan myself.”
“Not that. Roy of the Rovers.”
I wanted to connect with the Big Lad but I wasn’t exactly a regular reader of Roy of the Rovers.
“Haven’t read it for a while. Is Ben Galloway still Roy’s manager?”
“Ben Galloway?”
“Yeah, sort of a Bill Shankly figure?”
“Bill Shankly?”
“The Liverpool manager?”
“Are you a Liverpool fan?” he asked.
“Yeah, are you?”
The Big Lad got up from his chair and leaned real close to my head. “I’m Man United. Fucking hate Liverpool. And I fucking hate you, Duffy.”
He banged the jerry can off the side off my head. “You want this petrol all over your fucking face?”
“No.”
“One more word out of you and it’s human torch time. Get me?”
“Aye. I get you.”
Several hours later a different five-man team took me from the Big Lad and threw me in the boot of a big Volvo Estate.
There was much discussion and some argument and finally they got going and drove me way out into the middle of nowhere into the yellow dark, the red dark, and the deep blue dark …
16: OUT HERE IN THE WOODS
I had fallen and I couldn’t breathe and they were going to shoot me. All I had to do was close my eyes and await the nothingness. How easy that would be.
And I was so tired after all these years of this.
Being a peeler.
Being a peeler in the police force with the highest mortality rate in the world. Hated by all sides. Your life on the line every day. It was no surprise that it was ending this way. In a shallow grave in the woods. Killed by half-baked, unprofessional PIRA volunteers: a geography teacher, a stupid young man and a silly girl.
Close my eyes, check out, leave them all behind …
But Emma.
Emma’s face.
And Beth.
Open my eyes. Hoist myself up onto my knees. In front of me black soil and under it a line of chalk and under that …
“You have to give me a moment to make my contrition!” I demanded.
“What did you say?” the woman asked.
“You have to give me a moment to make my contrition. And then you can shoot me in a State of Grace,” I said, breathing deep, clearing my lungs and clasping my hands together in prayer.
“He’s a Catholic?” the woman asked, shocked.
“Didn’t you know?” Tommy said.
“No. I thought he was a Prod.”
“He’s the lowest form of life there is that walks this earth. A Catholic RUC man,” Tommy snarled.
“Allow me to make my peace, for God’s sake,” I said.
Hard-to-read expressions behind balaclavas, but she seemed upset and the other kid wasn’t too happy either.
“Please! I’m from Derry, like you. Please. You have to give me a chance to make my peace,” I said, breathing in hard again, clearing my lungs and shuffling closer to the chalky ground.
“No, pal. There’s going to be no last-minute confession, no contrition, no State of Grace for you,” Tommy said and raised the revolver.
“What would Dr Martin say about that?” I attempted, naming the headmaster of St Malachy’s where Tommy could have been a teacher.
The revolver twitched. Tommy’s eyes widened under the mask.
A lucky guess.
The woman looked at Tommy and then back at me.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“We know all about you Tommy, who you work for, we’ve been watching all of you,” I said.
“You’ve been watching us?” the woman said, aghast.
“What else does he know?” the young man asked.
“He doesn’t know fucking anything!” Tommy said. “He’s just playing for time.”
I put my hands together in prayer. They were still sore from the handcuffs but I’d been uncuffed for almost ten minutes now and the blood had returned to my fingertips. “It’s too late for me, I can see that,” I began. “But you’se are all going to go down for killing me. For certain. Now if you don’t mind I’m just going to compose myself: actiones nostras, quaesumus Domine, aspirando praeveni et adiuvando prosequere: ut cuncta nosta oratio et operatio a te semper incipiat et per ta coepta finiatur …”
The woman was looking at me, appalled, she would have been even more appalled if she knew that this was the prayer before action, not the prayer before death.
I leaned forward towards the big piece of flint lying there in the chalk.
Strange stuff, flint. No one really knows how it’s made or where it comes from. Without it the Neolithic revolution in the British Isles wouldn’t have happened. No hand axes, no spears. No Newgrange, no Stonehenge.
Flint.
The young man took the .45 from her and walked towards me. He pointed it at my head.