Ken rubbed his chin. “There will be an internal inquiry about what happened to you. A post-mortem. It’ll take a few weeks to sort everything out. I imagine you’ll be safe until after that’s concluded but if someone in the Army Council wants you dead I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
I grinned at him. “Like many other people before now, Ken, this person will learn that killing me isn’t so fucking easy.”
We both smiled sadly at this bit of bravado.
Ken opened the front door and stepped back inside. “You didn’t hear any of this from me. OK?”
“OK.”
“Write down your telephone number and if I hear anything I’ll give you a call.”
I gave him my card and walked out to the taxi.
“Where to mate?”
“Dungiven Street.”
Dungiven Street.
A really thorough look under the Beemer for bombs. A big hit on the asthma inhaler from the glove compartment.
“I’m alive,” I said.
The Beemer didn’t understand but growled in sympathy when I put the key in the ignition.
I drove to Waterside Railway Station car park and pulled the Beemer into an empty spot. Early yet. Only a few people around.
I took out the picture I had in my wallet of Michael Tramples Satan by Guido Reni and gave a prayer of thanks to Saint Michael the Archangel, the Patron Saint of Policemen, and then another to Mary the Mother of God, who had had her hands full watching over me for the last few years.
I took out my emergency hip flask filled with a 1967 Balvenie Vintage Cask – a gift from my father on Emma’s birth (we all should have such fathers). Twenty-one-year-old whisky and the removal of the imminence of death: no man on that morning anywhere in Ireland felt as glad to be drawing air as I did then.
I got out of the car and walked to the Waterside Train Station wall, and then, like Elizabeth Smart in her memoir, I sat down and wept. Ten minutes of tears. Ten solid minutes of them. The refrain of “Big Yellow Taxi” playing deep in my hippocampus.
They would have killed me. They really would have done it. And that poor man … that poor stupid geography-teaching man.
“Are you OK, son?” a passing nun asked me when I had just about recovered.
“Thank you, I’m fine, sister,” I said, getting to my feet. “I was just having a wee moment.”
She looked at the hip flask and my crumpled Che T-shirt.
“Are you a married man?” she asked, a little impertinently.
“In a way,” I replied.
“Get away home to your wife then, and stay away from the strong liquor. It is the curse of Ireland, is the strong liquor.”
“Yes, sister.”
Back to the Beemer.
I looked underneath it for bombs, didn’t find any and put the key in the ignition. The big throaty, comforting engine roared into life. I drove cautiously out of Derry and then gunned it on the A6. By the Glenshane Pass I was doing my usual ton and change and I reached 115 mph by Maghera.
When I made it back to Coronation Road it was 8.00 but Beth was still in bed.
I stripped and climbed in beside her.
“Sean?” she said sleepily.
“It’s me.”
“I’m furious with you.”
“Why?”
“Jeanette said you’d be late, but I didn’t think you’d be out all night.”
“Sorry.”
“Where have you been? I was worried sick. I called John McCrabban and he thought you might be on a stake-out.”
“Aye. It was something like that.”
“You have to call me and let me know. Anything could have happened. I was worried, Sean!”
“I know.”
“I’m serious!” she said.
“Next time I will.”
“You better. I was so worried. I called John.”
“You said.”
“Did you have car trouble?”
“No.”
“You stink of petrol.”
“Oh. Yeah. Had a bit of trouble with a jerry can. Might have got some petrol on me. It was a long night.”
“You’ll have to shower.”
“I will. Listen, Beth, I’m just going to shut my eyes for a minute. Let me lie in if I manage to drift off, will you?”
“Do you think you can drift off? It’s a very sunny morning.”
And if she said anything more I didn’t hear it for sleep has always been a friend to lucky men and drowned men and those very lucky men indeed who are pulled living from the sea.
17: THE OLD FILES
I woke at noon plus forty and schlepped myself downstairs for the 1 o’clock news. Can a Mick schlepp? I can, so fuck off.
Beth was in Belfast, Emma at Jollytots. Don’t care what Dr Havercamp said, this was a day for herb. I’ll give him Lawson’s piss if he does a random.
Shed. Moonshine. Resin. Joan Armatrading.
Back inside.
Cold shower. Shave. Shirt. Blue sweater. Sports jacket. Black jeans. DMs. Lucky Che T-shirt lying on the bedroom floor. Still lucky. Pet the cat. Under the Beemer for bombs. Really good look today.
Somebody in the IRA Army Council wants you dead. Why? I’m nobody. On a dead-end investigation. Had to be a reason, dig deep, dig all the way to boiling iron at the centre of the earth.
Along the sea front to Carrick RUC.
Crabbie in the Incident Room, Lawson making coffee, downhearted because there wasn’t any riot duty scheduled for the day.
“Case conference.”
Crabbie and Lawson sat down and I closed the door.
“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room, OK?”