Present Danger

1

Aidan Murphy was woken by a loud knocking on the door. He lay still, trying to decide whether he had a hangover or was just tired. There was another, louder knock. He rolled over and looked at the clock radio. 10:31. Why didn’t his mother answer the door? The knocking turned into a hammering and someone was yelling his name.

He climbed out of bed, grabbed a T-shirt and underpants off the floor and went slowly downstairs. Two men were outside. The older one was Malone. The other he didn’t know. Heavy-set, with dark stubble and swarthy skin, he looked Spanish.

‘Boss wants to see you,’ said Malone flatly.

‘What, now?’ Aidan was confused. He was due at work at three –couldn’t it wait until then?

‘Yeah, now,’ Malone growled. The dark man said nothing.

Aidan shrugged. ‘I’ll get dressed,’ he said, and went back upstairs to his bedroom. The second man stayed by the open door while Malone stood at the foot of the stairs, positioned where he could keep an eye on the door to Aidan’s bedroom.

What’s this about then? Aidan wondered, catching sight of his scrawny chest in the mirror. He felt a flicker of alarm. Stay calm, he told himself; you’ve done nothing wrong.

He threw on a shirt, a fresh one from the drawer, neatly ironed by his mother. There were benefits to living at home, even when you were twenty-three years old. He finished dressing, ran a comb through his hair, then grabbed a jacket and went downstairs.

He followed the stranger to a red Vauxhall Vectra with racing tyres, parked in front of the house. He didn’t like the way Malone walked close behind him. It reminded him too much of the time when as a kid he was arrested by the police for shoplifting. The two men got into the front seats, Malone driving. Aidan relaxed – if he was in trouble one of them would have sat in the back with him.

Malone pulled out sharply and they sped down the monotonous terrace of red brick houses, heading towards the city centre. Neither man spoke, and to break the silence, Aidan asked, ‘Did you see Celtic on the box?’ Malone shook his head, and the other man didn’t even do that. Sod them, thought Aidan, and he sat back silently with folded arms and looked out of the window.

They turned into Divis Street, past the flats where his father had died, shot in a stairwell by British soldiers. He’d been an IRA sniper, and he’d died doing his job. Aidan had wanted to follow his father into the Provos, to avenge his death by killing British soldiers, but they were on ceasefire now, so instead he’d found The Fraternity. Or they’d found him.

Dermot O’Reilly had recommended him – old Dermot, who had been interned in the Maze with Aidan’s father; Dermot, who had been tried twice on arms charges yet somehow had avoided another stretch in prison. There was no questioning his nationalist credentials, and when he’d said that The Fraternity wasn’t what it said it was, giving Aidan a wink, Aidan understood his meaning at once.

The Fraternity purported to be a ‘political consultancy’, which Aidan took as code for carrying on the fight. It put up a good enough phoney front, with smart new offices in the centre of town, and an Irish-American who called himself Piggott at its head, a strange man who had more degrees than you could shake a stick at.

Aidan soon learned that The Fraternity’s money-making business had nothing to do with consultancy, but everything to do with supplying: drugs, guns, even women. However much he tried to gild it, his own job was courier: he delivered packages to pubs, restaurants, bookmakers and sometimes private homes. From the bits and pieces he’d overheard from other members of The Fraternity, Aidan knew that he carried cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, crystal meth and occasionally a gun, and on his return journeys, lots of cash in large, sealed, padded book bags, which he never, ever looked inside.

None of this had bothered him at first, since O’Reilly assured him these commercial transactions were funding other business – carrying on the war against Ireland’s enemies. But Aidan never got near to the real business, and he knew that his father, who like all good IRA men passionately disapproved of drugs, would have skinned him alive if he’d known what Aidan was up to. It must have been a great thing to have had a cause to die for.

They approached the usual turn to the office off Castle Street, but Malone drove straight on. ‘What’s going on?’ asked Aidan, unable to disguise the fear in his voice.

‘Relax kid,’ said Malone with a glance in his rear-view mirror. ‘We’ve got a bit of a drive. Sit back and enjoy it. They say the sun will be out soon.’

Some hope. It stayed grey and gloomy as they headed south on the dual carriageway. Where were they going? Aidan decided not to ask – he was pretty sure Malone would only tell him ‘wait and see’ – and then he remembered two of his colleagues mentioning that Piggott had a place down on the coast in County Down. One had been there to collect a shipment of ‘stuff’. It was an odd place for a Republican activist, if that’s what he was, for it was Protestant country; but perhaps chosen just because of that. It would be the last place the security people would expect to find him.

Aidan wasn’t scared. Why should he be? He’d done nothing wrong. Helping with the distribution of the goods, he had no responsibility other than to follow orders. Which he had been doing faithfully and without complaint. Well, almost. It was true he’d made it clear to some of his friends and associates that he wasn’t happy with The Fraternity. He’d told them it was all money-making and no action as far as he could see. But he’d been careful to whom he complained, just a few close mates in the back room of Paddy O’Brien’s pub. Dermot O’Reilly was sometimes there, but he could be trusted. O’Reilly couldn’t believe the war was over either. No, Aidan told himself now, even if he had opened his mouth, he’d been talking to friends who thought like he did.

Suddenly in the distance ahead he saw the Irish Sea, rocky outcrops and slits of sandy beach, the Mourne Mountains miles to their right, heavy and dark. They drove along the coast for several miles, through a grey stone village on a wide bay, its long street practically deserted, its ice-cream hut shut up for the winter.

At the end of the village the car slowed and turned sharply down a narrow track that skirted the bay. The tide was out, revealing a vast expanse of sand dune pockmarked by marram grass, the wet sand gleaming in the grey light. They crossed a narrow bridge and came up to a closed five-bar gate. Malone pressed a button on an electronic device he held in his hand and the gate creaked open, allowing them in to pass directly in front of a small, high-gabled Victorian house, the gatehouse to an estate that ran up the gentle slope of land away from the sea. Past the house, the road turned into a track and Malone drove slowly, his eyes intent on his rear-view mirror. Instinctively, Aidan looked behind him. There was no one following.

A quarter of a mile further on, through another gate and a small copse of trees, the track ended in front of a large stone house. The car stopped with a sudden crunch of tyres against gravel. Malone led the way to the front door. An elderly woman wearing an apron tied around her waist let them in, keeping her head down and her eyes averted as they walked into a large hall.

Malone said, ‘Wait here,’ and Aidan stood with the Spaniard while Malone went through a doorway to one side. When he returned a minute later he gestured towards the back of the house.

‘Come on,’ he said, leading them down a hall, through a large kitchen with a massive Aga at one end. In the short hall behind the kitchen, he flicked a light switch and they followed him down a steep flight of stairs.

They were in a cellar, a damp empty room with exposed brick walls and a rough concrete floor. It was dark, almost dungeonlike, and Aidan began to feel apprehensive again. Fastened to one wall was a metal cabinet, which Malone opened with a key. He pulled down a switch and immediately with a high-pitched whirring noise the far wall of the cellar slowly moved to one side, revealing a room behind it.

This room was furnished comfortably, almost lavishly. The floor was carpeted in sisal, topped by a few small oriental rugs, and at the far end sat a mahogany partner’s desk, with a greenshaded desk lamp on one corner. Ceiling-to-floor bookcases held old leather-bound volumes and on the other walls hung landscape paintings.

The room could be the study of a wealthy, bookish man, but if that’s what it was, thought Aidan, why go to such effort to hide its existence?

‘Sit down,’ said Malone, pointing to a wooden chair that faced the partner’s desk. He sounded tense.

As Aidan sat down he heard steps on the stairs from the kitchen, then on the hard floor of the cellar behind him. Someone came into the room, and Aidan watched as the tall, thin figure of Seamus Piggott walked around the desk and sat down in the leather chair behind it.

‘Hello, Mr Piggott,’ said Aidan, managing a weak smile. He had spoken to the man only once, when he had first been taken on by The Fraternity, but he’d seen him several times when he’d been in the Belfast office on errands – to collect what he’d been told to call ‘materials’, or to return the padded envelopes of cash.

Piggott, with his rimless glasses and short cropped hair, looked like a professor and Aidan knew he was meant to be a brain box, a brilliant scientist, an aerospace engineer who when he was young back in the States had designed hand-held rockets, which the IRA had used to try to bring down British Army helicopters. But they said he was weird, too clever to be normal, and the way he was staring now – coldly, almost analytically, with an air of complete detachment – made Aidan understand why.

‘Are you happy in your work, Aidan?’ he said, his voice soft and almost toneless.

What was this about? Aidan didn’t believe that Piggott was interested in his job satisfaction. But he nodded vigorously nonetheless. ‘Yes. I am, Mr Piggott.’

Piggott continued to stare at him, and for a moment Aidan wondered if his answer had been heard. Then Piggott said, ‘Because as CEO of this organisation I need to feel my staff is fully on board.’

‘I am on board, Mr Piggott. I’m treated very well.’ Aidan was scared now and his mouth was dry.

Piggott nodded. ‘That’s what I’d have thought. Yet you’ve been heard complaining.’

‘Me?’ asked Aidan. Oh Christ, he thought, thinking of his indiscretions in Paddy O’Brien’s. Who on earth could have shopped him?

‘I won’t waste a lot of time on you, Aidan. You are a very small part of my operation, but even from you I require complete unquestioning loyalty and I haven’t had it. You’ve been complaining,’ he repeated. Piggott leaned forward in his chair, flipping a pencil onto the desk. ‘Why?’

Why what? Aidan almost asked, though he knew full well. And rather than trying to explain or deny it, he found himself saying, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Piggott.’

‘Sorry,’ said Piggott, his lips pursed as he nodded his head. There was something in this display of understanding Aidan didn’t trust. ‘Sorry’s a good place to start,’ Piggott added mildly, then his voice grew cold. ‘But it’s not where things end.’ And for the first time he took his eyes off Aidan and nodded sharply at the two other men.

As Aidan turned his head towards the Spaniard next to him, he felt Malone’s hand suddenly grip his arm. ‘Don’t—’ he started to protest, but now his other arm was gripped as well. The dark man grunted, looming over him.

‘What?’ Aidan asked, unable to keep the fear from his voice.

‘Give him your hand,’ said Malone.

And as Aidan raised his left hand from the arm of the chair, he found it gripped by the Spaniard’s hand. It felt as if his fingers were in a vice that was starting to turn. As the pressure grew Aidan gasped. ‘Stop—’

But the grip kept tightening. Aidan tried to pull his hand away but he couldn’t. As the pressure on his fingers increased, Aidan gave a cry, and then he felt and heard his third finger crunch as one of the bones broke.

Agonising pain filled his hand. The Spaniard let go at last, and the hand flopped like a rag onto the chair arm.

Tears welled up in Aidan’s eyes and he could barely breathe. He looked down at his fingers, red and compressed from the strength of the Spaniard’s grip. He tried to move them one by one. His third finger wouldn’t move.

Aidan leaned back in his chair, trying not to be sick. For a moment, the room was completely silent, then he heard the noise of a child, sniffling and sobbing. He realised he was making the sounds. Lifting his head up, he blinked to clear his eyes of tears, and found Piggott staring at him from across the desk. The man nodded, as if in a lab, satisfied that his experiment had proved successful.

Piggott stood up, brushing the sleeve of his jacket, as if to rid it of an unwanted piece of fluff. Without looking again at Aidan he came out from behind the desk and walked towards the open wall into the cellar. As his footsteps rang out on the concrete floor, he called back to Malone and the Spaniard, ‘Before you take him back to Belfast, break another one. We don’t want him to think that was just an accident.’