Return to Killybegs

17

Since my release from the Kesh, the IRA had decided to put me into retirement. I was too visible, too well known. The Army Council asked me to behave as a political activist. I participated in peaceful protests, joined the marches beneath pictures of the hunger strikers. I would walk alongside the crowds, my wreath in hand. For the commemoration of the Easter Rising, I didn’t march in the black uniform of our soldiers, but in the rows of prisoners’ families. In the eyes of everyone, I was a veteran of the blanket protest, a veteran of the dirty protest. A former combatant.

One day, when I was drinking with Sheila in the Thomas Ashe, a British soldier approached our table and asked me my name. His officer came over to me, smiling.

— Let it go. Meehan’s retired at the moment.

And Sheila put her hand on mine.

— Let whatever happens happen, the MI5 agent had told me.

I didn’t influence anything. I didn’t provoke anything. I let events unfold. I told myself that perhaps having accepted treason would satisfy them. I was an agent in their eyes. But I hadn’t betrayed. Not yet. I hadn’t said anything, done anything, denounced anyone. Just that Parisian conversation that they took for a pact. I had a crazy idea. I hoped that it would all stop there. That they’d never ask me for anything, ever.

Prison had changed me. That’s what people murmured behind my back. Before the dirty protest, I used to drink. I’d empty my pint glasses same as anyone else on this island. But since I’d got out, I’d taken to the drink. It wasn’t the same thing. I knew some army mates like that. They’d drink on the sly, farther and farther from their ghetto. They’d get other people to order their vodka, they’d send a youth to the off-licence and let him keep the change. They’d miss meetings, forget orders. As soon as they became a security liability, the party would let them go. Then they’d pour their drinks down the drain, they’d make promises. They’d wear Pioneer pins on their lapels to be recognized as teetotallers. They’d drink soft drinks with the look of a drowned man on their faces. And they’d often go back on the drink again.

I had pains in my stomach, my joints, my head. Every morning, I limped when I got out of bed before being able to walk normally. I shook. Beer was my water, vodka my alcohol. I had bought myself a green leather and metal flask, calculating how much it could hold.

Twice, the owner of the Thomas Ashe had discreetly asked me to leave. On the third time, I called the bar to witness. This bastard was throwing out Danny Finley’s friend. I tore off the tablecloth covering the big sandwich table. I threw it over my shoulders like a prison blanket. I shouted from the middle of broken saucers and scattered bread. Didn’t that remind them of anything? Really? Would they like me to shit on the ground to jog their memories? Some IRA guys intervened. Everyone was going to calm down. It was in the street we were waging war, not in our pubs. I left the bar. And I came back the following day to apologize.

The IRA had advised me to do so. Waldner had ordered me to.

Even before I became a traitor, I was becoming troublesome. The MI5 agent wondered whether I might not be doing that just to be rejected by my community. To render myself out of order, useless. He reminded me that nothing had changed. I had killed Danny, Jack was in prison and Sheila was still vulnerable. I had to quit the rowdiness. It was an order. So I made myself drink less, and less again. Then to drink like before, when I felt like it.

But I knew that I was no longer in control.

Bobby Sands died on 5 May 1981, after sixty-six days of hunger strike. As he lay there dying slowly, he was elected an MP in Westminster, but that wasn’t enough. Francis Hughes died on 12 May, aged twenty-five, after fifty-nine days’ hunger strike. Patsy O’Hara and Ray McCreesh both died on 21 May, at twenty-three and twenty-four years of age, after sixty-one days’ hunger strike.

On 22 June, when the IRA Belfast Brigade decided to shoot down a Long Kesh warder, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine were about to die.

There was a black shroud over the whole city. The IRA had a duty to react.

Frank ‘Mickey’ Devlin had joined us upstairs in a brick house in the Divis Flats area. There were three of us sitting on the floor in the small bedroom.

Mickey tapped me on the back, pleased to see me again. He nearly got out a pen to tease me, but didn’t bother in the end. Catching sight of the crucifix, he crossed himself. And then he gave the pope a wink.

On coming in, he had asked our hostess for some tea. She knocked on the door and Jim O’Leary opened it to take the tray.

— The street is quiet, she said.

Then she left again without a sound.

— Tea, Tyrone? Jim asked.

— Tea, I replied.

Mickey took a few photos from under his shirt. Five snapshots taken from a distance. He lined them up on the carpet like a game of cards.

I went to pull the curtains and turn on the light.

The others were bent over the documents.

— Weird-looking guy, Jim said.

— His name’s Ray Gleeson. He lives close to Cliftonville, in a mixed estate.

— A Catholic? Jim asked.

— Yeah. He’s fifty-three. He’s been working for the prison service since 1962 and in the Kesh for the past four.

Jim handed me a photo.

— A friend of yours, Tyrone?

Popeye.

My screw. In civilian clothes. An oversized suit, a shapeless shirt, his bald head, his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

I went over to the bedside lamp, using the darkness as a pretext, turning my back to them. Popeye. My heart was pounding, my head, an anxious drumming that everyone must surely hear.

— Do you know him?

— No, I replied.

I bent down. I looked at the other images. Popeye inspecting the underside of his car as a precaution, Popeye walking in the city centre, Popeye stopped at a red light.

— Why him? I asked.

The question slipped out. A crazy question. I stopped breathing.

Mickey looked at me strangely. Without knowing it, he helped me bail myself out.

— Why a Catholic, you mean?

— Yeah. Why a Catholic.

Jim shrugged vaguely. He answered that the mixed neighbourhood would make the getaway easier.

The younger guy spoke. I barely knew him. He had a know-it-all air I didn’t like. He told me that hunger strikes were our priority and that the IRA should respond on this terrain.

I looked at him. I smiled coldly.

— Terry? It’s Terry, isn’t it? You’re not by any chance in the process of explaining the situation in prison to me, are you?

He froze, surprised by my aggression.

— You want to teach us military tactics? Is that it?

— Calm down, Tyrone, murmured Mickey.

He put away the photos, his eyes on me.

— A screw is a screw. Who gives a fuck what religion he is?

I nodded. I needed to calm down. He was right.

— If your friends are looking at you strangely, it’s fucked, Meehan. That means you’ve said too much, or maybe not enough. If you get pissed off instead of laughing or laugh instead of getting pissed off, they’re going to have doubts. And doubts are lethal, Waldner had warned.

So I put on my Tyrone manner again, cursing the lukewarm tea.

— On Thursday, he starts work at eleven. It’s quiet in his area. He’s always done the same thing. He pulls off, arrives at the Clifton crossroads, and puts his seatbelt on while waiting for the light to turn green. We can get him there, Terry said.

— He doesn’t take any precautions, doesn’t change his route?

Terry smiled at me.

— Other than looking under his car, no. He does nothing.

— You’ll do it next Thursday? Jim asked.

— The sooner the better, I replied.

I’d taken control of my emotions once more. Mickey looked at me, nodding. Jim glanced at him from the corner of his eye. I could sense their relief. The old Tyrone Meehan had come back to them.

— Who’ll be on the job?

— Me, Terry, three guys from Divis, and a girl on a bike to collect the guns, Mickey replied.

— Jim?

O’Leary shook his head.

— You know me, Tyrone. I handle the powder better than the gun.

— Explain your presence here, so.

I was using my commanding tone of voice again.

— Procedure hadn’t been finalized. We had thought at first of booby-trapping his car, but as he checks it every morning…

I cut Jim off, my hand raised. I imagined the red-haired cop and the MI5 agent witnessing the scene. It was the first time my imagination had summoned them.

Curt tone.

— Mickey? Next time, you settle that in advance. This is a military briefing, not a public debate.

Mickey nodded. He got the point loud and clear. Jim stood up.

— The less you know…, he said as he left the room.

Jim O’Leary was a bomb-maker. ‘Mallory’, as he was called in the movement. He was a soldier, uninterested in politics. He considered that in every circumstance, the gun should command the party. He was against secret negotiation, dialogue, compromise. ‘Brits out!’ Like my father, those two words were the sum total of his agenda. He didn’t dream of peace in Ireland but of routing the British. He wanted to fight them, send them packing, humiliate them and, only then, negotiate the terms of their defeat.

Jim was a technician. Secretive, patient, hard-working, he spent his days and weeks developing increasingly efficient explosives. His creations were tailored to the job, booby-trapping cars, doormats, letters. A mine intended to blow up armoured vehicles while they were driving through the countryside was not designed in the same way as a bomb planted in a town, along the route of a foot patrol. The milk bottles sitting peacefully outside houses were a threat to the enemy, as were Belfast’s electricity poles, gas meters at leg height, even the smallest crack in a wall. The British were tearing down our flags? He would booby-trap the flag poles.

Jim O’Leary was wary of military explosives that came from Hungary or Czechoslovakia. He was a peasant. He preferred the crude contraptions used in our campaigns. A big bag of weed killer, sugar, acid, a little of Ireland’s earth, soap flakes to infect the wounds, bolts, nails, and the job was done.

He didn’t have any qualms. No regrets, ever. But he followed one rule dictated by our command: no civilian victims. The IRA gave half an hour’s warning before detonating a bomb. Sometimes, though, that wasn’t enough. I was sitting with him one day in a Republican pub. A passer-by had just been killed on the street in broad daylight by one of our devices. The television was showing the images in a loop. The IRA had warned the police, but they hadn’t evacuated the street.

— Fucking Brits! cursed a young lad, putting his glass down.

— It’s the bomb that killed him, not the Brits, Jim spat back.

The youth wasn’t from the area. He was mouthing off the way someone does when they want to be accepted.

— Without the Brits, there wouldn’t have been any bomb, asshole! the stranger retorted.

— Wrong. Without the guy who made the bomb, there wouldn’t have been any bomb.

— The IRA doesn’t like being lectured! the stranger snapped back.

He got down from his barstool. He wanted Jim to explain himself. He didn’t get within ten metres. Two of our boys stopped him. One of them took him by the neck, made him sit down again, the other spoke into his ear, indicating Jim with a nod of his chin. Jim was drinking calmly, his eyes locked on the young man’s. The kid discovered who he was facing. He was turning white as a sheet, his mouth hanging open, his large body sagged.

When the operation was risky for civilians, Jim would remain until after the explosion. Once, he had cancelled a detonation because of a wedding. The patrol and the newly-weds passed a few metres from the remote-controlled bomb, the soldiers were sheltered by the cheerful bridal party of long dresses and suit jackets. Another time, with an IRA woman, he went back to find a bomb on the first floor of a Protestant den, where some Loyalist leaders were supposed to be gathering. Their meeting had been cancelled. He recovered the packet of Semtex that was hidden in the toilets. He was stopped outside. Eleven years in prison.

— You’re a killer, Jim O’Leary, the priest had said to him on his wedding day.

— You take care of my Mass, I’ll take care of your country, he had replied.

Since that day, in support of her man, Cathy had never again taken Communion.

When Fiona Phelan got on the bus, I followed her on board. She sat down the back, I took the seat next to her. She was surprised. The vehicle was almost empty. She gripped her bag on her knees. I stuck out my hand.

— Tyrone Meehan, I was with Aidan in a cell in Long Kesh.

Her face changed. The blood returned to it, along with her smile. She took my hand as though I was her son.

— Tyrone Meehan? You frightened me, I’m sorry.

She took a better look at me.

— What are you doing in Strabane?

She wanted me to come to her house, see her son, her husband. She was as moved as if it were a romantic encounter. I had to go back to Belfast that same night. I was getting off at the next stop.

— Don’t tell anyone you saw me.

— Even my husband?

— Not even him, no. Nobody. I’m sorry about this.

She was worried. The alarm that comes naturally to nationalist women up here.

— What’s going on?

Her hands in mine.

— Nothing. All is well. I just wanted to know if you’d received a message from your son towards the end of last year.

She looked at me, astonished. A message? The message! The one and only. She opened her bag, her red wallet. Carefully, she took out the words her son had written, protected in a plastic cover. She smiled sadly.

— Still, tearing the Bible… you shouldn’t do that.

How had she got the note? Around Christmas, a man rang at the iron gate and she had looked at him through the window. He was outside, something small in his hand. He signalled to her and then threw it over the gate. Then she had shouted.

— My other son went tearing out, my husband right behind him. I thought it was a Loyalist, a bomb. The guy shot off down the street.

On the grass was a wee silvery seal on a keyring with a zip on its belly. Her son picked it up with the poker. Then he bent over, took up the toy and opened it.

— When the paper fell into his hand, he squeezed his fist closed to hide it. And then he threw a worried glance at the street.

He had spent eight years in Crumlin prison. He let out a joyful cry when he recognized the note.

— He closed the door, slid the bolt, the chain, pulled the curtains. Then he asked me to hold out my hand.

— News from our Aidan, my son said. And that wee devil was laughing to see me cry.

And the man, the one who threw the toy, had she seen him?

— Yes. Very clearly, thanks to the street lamp. He was short, not too young, and bald. I even remember having said to myself that if he wished us ill, he would have hidden under a cap.

Popeye had kept his word.

— Meehan?

— Don’t speak, Popeye, don’t ask me anything. The IRA is going to kill you on Thursday.

— What are you talking about, Meehan?

He was repeating my name as though announcing an astonishing event. I knew he’d be there, at the fête of the Belfast Docks kennel club. Popeye had a brown and white fox terrier. The IRA had considered staging the operation right here, bombing his car at the Fountain Tavern, but the crowd was too dense. There were women, children, dogs. To shoot Ray Gleeson on his way to prison was to kill a screw. Jim O’Leary had backed out.

I repeated the threat to Popeye. He had been located, spied on, followed, photographed. It was to be Thursday.

— I’m going to have to report you to the police, Meehan.

I looked at him. He could do what he liked. He had the face of the woman attacked by the birds on that Hitchcock poster. He placed his hand on my arm.

— Why did you come to tell me this?

I looked at him. Popeye, his dog, this Sunday crowd. The announcements over the microphone, the dancehall music, the smell of kennels. I was betraying. I had just betrayed. I shook him off, shrugged helplessly. Why? For me. Certainly. To protect myself. A woman bumped into me, her poodle beribboned in the colours of the British flag. She apologized, smiled at me, said hello to Popeye. I didn’t belong here and yet it was my place as traitor.

I ran as far as the bus stop. I was panicking. This wasn’t my neighbourhood. All over the walls were frescoes painted in homage to Loyalist paramilitaries. The street curbs were painted blue, white and red. I was in their space. In the enemy’s sanctuary. I dreaded bumping into one of their men. Someone who would have engraved my face in his hateful memory. Worse again, one of my own. An IRA unit in operation.

— Hang on… surely that’s not Meehan, over on the footpath there?

To be seen here would have been the beginning of my end. But Popeye had done this. He had slipped into the heart of Strabane’s nationalist area to deliver Aidan’s letter, so I was carrying my message to the heart of his home. He thanked me without understanding what was going on. I recognized his expression. It was that of a prisoner.

On the morning of 8 July 1981 I was smoothly detained and taken in for questioning at a checkpoint on Castle Street, which leads from the Falls Road to the city centre. In front of the double chicanes, barriers and concrete blocks that were obstructing the road, the police were checking the Catholics. Women and children lined up to the left, men to the right, several dozen people waiting to raise their arms to be searched. In their sentry box, soldiers had their weapons pointed at the crowd, eyes to the gun sights of their assault rifles. They were tense. The death of Joe McDonnell at five that morning had enraged our localities. He was the eldest of the hunger strikers, dead aged thirty, after sixty-one days of fasting. When I got to the sentry box I threw everything I had in my pockets on the table. The peeler asked me my name, my address, where I was coming from and where I was going. Procedure. His colleague called headquarters.

— Spelled: M.E.E.H.A.N. Tyrone, like the county.

I was told to follow them. In the crowd, some youths chanted out a slogan for me. I was alone in the armoured vehicle with the uniforms. Not a word, not an insult, not a blow. I wasn’t even handcuffed. The vehicle went back up the Falls Road, as far as the Glen Road RUC station opposite Milltown Cemetery.

Waldner was waiting for me in an office, along with the red-haired handler. No table, just our three chairs.

— Cigarette, Tenor? Waldner offered.

— My name is Meehan.

— Meehan is for the clueless lad who brought you in here. But for us, you are Tenor.

The two men sat down. Waldner was embarrassed. I met the RUC man’s eye and he reassured me with a wink.

— So here it is, Tenor. The reason you’re here is for a reminder of the rules.

I looked at the cigarette between my fingers.

— What you did for the screw was courageous. But it’s not what we want from you.

— You’re not a policeman, Tenor, Dominik continued. It’s not up to you to impose law and order in Northern Ireland.

— Law and order is our job, added the agent.

— What should I have done?

Waldner lit up.

— That’s the spirit!

— Leave him to die?

— But he’s going to die, this Popeye of yours!

I stiffened. I’d never uttered that nickname in front of them.

— And do you know why your Popeye will die? Because the people who want him dead are still here.

The redhead leaned towards me.

— We have relocated him and his wife. He’s safe now. But what will that serve? The IRA will choose another one and hit him whenever.

— If it’s not Popeye, it’ll be Olive Oil, Waldner smiled.

He handed me another cigarette from his fingertips, the way it was done in Belfast, rather than offering the packet.

— So if your friends are going to do it again, you let them at it. You simply tell us who is to be assassinated, when, where and how. We’ll look after the rest.

— The why doesn’t interest you?

The agent looked at me, fists tight, a hint of scorn in his eyes.

— Don’t play that game.

— No arrests! That was our agreement.

— These guys are as dangerous for you now as they are for us, the handler threw at me.

— I haven’t told you anything, or given you anything. I have nothing to fear!

Waldner got up. He grabbed my lapels with both hands.

— You’ve nothing to fear? Are you fucking thick or what, Paddy? You’re a British agent, with a code name and a handling officer. You’re dead, Meehan.

— Calm down, Stephen! I think he’s got the point, the redhead said.

The agent released me. He smoothed my jacket.

— Sorry, Tenor. We’re working crazy hours at the moment.

— Too damned many, added the other.

They got up. Waldner put a hand on my shoulder. He murmured.

— We want something on one of your guys. We think he’s co-ordinating an escape from Crumlin from the outside.

— Haven’t heard a thing about it.

— Don’t answer immediately, you have plenty of time.

— It’s not a question of time. I don’t know anything.

— You’ll think over it again. We know that Frank Devlin is fixing something and we want to know what.

— Mickey?

It slipped out. I was stunned. Lack of vigilance, the mistake of a novice. They had got me in a tired state. I wanted to rip my tongue out with my teeth. My lips were trembling.

— Devlin is Mickey? Waldner asked.

The handler slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand. He was beaming. The agent looked at me, smiling.

— Popeye, Mickey, you have some fucking imagination…

— I don’t understand.

His face hardened. Lips stony.

— You don’t understand? Well, let me explain it to you. We know that a certain Mickey was on to Popeye, that he was staking out locations, that he took photos. But nobody had made the connection between Devlin and him.

— Devlin, fuck! He was under our nose! Right under our nose, the handler repeated.

— Don’t touch Frank, for fuck’s sake! I was in Crumlin with him, he’s a friend…

— A friend? What do you mean, ‘friend’? You’ve changed friends, Tenor. We’re your friends now! the RUC man replied.

Then he looked at his watch.

— End of discussion.

— No arrests, I murmured again.

It was no longer defiant, it was a plea. In my head I was howling. My mouth was dry and I felt a desperate urge to piss. I was devastated, immensely sad. My reason was no longer functioning. I searched for a sentence, a word. I couldn’t even find an expression to serve as a response. When I arrived at the door, the handler slid an envelope into my pocket. I started.

— We’re not buying you. It’s to get home in a taxi, three times nothing.

— Your incidental expenses, if you like, smiled the agent.

He stuck out his hand to me. I ignored him. I headed for the sentry box.

— By the way, Tenor?

I turned around. The handler came towards me, his hand out.

— I’m sorry about Joe McDonnell’s death.

I was fragile, hyper-sensitive. In the stairwell, I felt old tears brimming. My stomach hurt. My teeth were chattering. I was so cold.

Then I took his hand. And the other man’s. And I squeezed them both.

I passed the Thomas Ashe on the way back. I’d decided to blow the £30 in the envelope. I drank two pints first, sitting at an afternoon table. Apart from three doleful faces, the club was empty. The voice on the television, a game of hurling, the dull cracking of pool balls from the next room. Then I stopped into the Busy Bee and Hanlon’s. A shot of vodka each time, standing at the bar like a man in a hurry. I bought drinks without toasting. I paid for two pints for a friend, another for a stranger. I hoped the word would spread.

— Tyrone Meehan’s pockets are full of money!

— Where’d you get all the dough, Meehan?

— Crisp notes? Not like the rags they slip us at the dole office!

They’d given me £30. The last of Judas’s thirty silver pieces. They’d done it on purpose, I was sure of it. I had decided to get myself caught. Or to die. I could throw myself from the top of the Albert Bridge over the Lagan: I don’t know how to swim. Or I could top myself in a car, it didn’t matter which direction, rushing towards a cliff in the dark. Or then again I could drink so much that my heart would eventually give up beating.

I saw myself in the mirror over the bar. I had kept my cap on, like a sheep breeder celebrating a sale. I was thinking of dying? Pathetic peasant. The poor have no time to think of that. I looked at my drooping eyes, that thatch of grey hair, those ears, those wrinkles ploughing through my skin. I looked at my crumpled jacket collar, my open shirt, the threadbare tweed of my clothes. I looked at my defeat. Leaning forward, I suddenly saw the great Padraig Meehan in the mirror. And all that space surrounding him, that silence at his approach, that respect, that embarrassment. I remembered the wood, the brass, the warmth and the golden darkness of Mullin’s. My father was there, returned within me. He was smiling like an imbecile, lifting my glass to toast his reflection. He was pretending to be sober. He was staggering. It was hard to watch. He had given up on his war, on Spain, on the Republic, on life. He had walked out on our winter roads, stones and earth in his pockets. He had wanted to die in the sea but he had died in the ditch. He had summoned the seagulls, the gardaí chased off the crows. He had nothing left, was neither father nor fighter. He was nothing but a pile of rags covered in ice.

Then I gave up the idea of dying. And of living, too. I would be elsewhere, between heaven and earth. I’d give them all grief! The Brits, the IRA, all those men who gave out orders! I could no longer stand this war, these heroes, this stifling community. I was tired. Tired of fighting, of marching, of prison; tired of secrecy and of silence; tired of prayers repeated since childhood; tired of hatred, of anger and of fear; tired of our grey skin, of the holes in our shoes; tired of our raincoats that were wet on the inside. My brother Seánie was roaring in my ears. I repeated word for word the arguments he had given me when he called it a day. What has the Republic ever done for me? The handsome ones, the great ones, the genuine ones, the Tom Williamses and the Danny Finleys, they had all died along with our youth! Buried with our history books, Connolly, Pearse and all those men in ties and round collars! We were mimics, imitators of glory. We replayed the old songs incessantly. We were made of soul, flesh and bricks, and were up against heartless steel. We were going to lose. We had lost. I had lost. And I wouldn’t offer Ireland another life.

— Kevin? Will you serve me a last one before closing your damned iron curtain?

I went to bed drunk and feverish. When I awoke, I had decided to divert them from Mickey. I would give them a piece of information. An unimportant one, but a piece of information. Maybe I’d throw them off that way and save him. I had to do my job as a traitor. Before the day was out, I would have crossed the line. It was like taking the oath to the Republic. No turning back on this road. I had started down it and I would lose myself along the way. It was too late for questions and doubts. And too late for answers.Jack had been out of solitary confinement for a week now. He had rejoined his friends and his cell. A present from Master Waldner to Tenor, his traitor. And me, I had thanked him.

— You’re a nice guy, the red-haired handler said to me on the way back from Paris.

That was it. Maybe a bastard is a nice guy who has given up.

I gave the British 23 Poolbeg Street. I met Waldner at the cemetery. He listened to me with his back to the wall, his eyes on the graves. He had a bunch of flowers that he asked me to put on Henry Joy McCracken’s grave.

Number 23 was an occasional hiding place, almost a ruin, used to store arms and money. Four months previously, we had cleaned it out. The street was too busy, the house too exposed. Kids were getting in through a broken window and smoking on the sly. Two of our lads intervened one evening just as a youth was searching the chimney flue. He had found a gun and some ammunition. He dropped his load and scarpered.

Waldner was looking at me. He was wearing a smile I didn’t care for.

— Number 23 Poolbeg Street?

I said yes. Poolbeg, at the bottom of the Falls Road. He nodded, recognizing it. He took me by the arm. We walked across the graves, like two old companions. He told me the story of Damian Bray, a fifteen-year-old who smoked hash in the same neighbourhood, and sold it as well, to make some pocket money. He and two older friends would get the stuff from Dublin, then play leapfrog over the border with their little bars sewn into their parkas.

— Oh, we’re not talking much, you know. Eight ounces here, a pound there. It could be useful.

He stopped in front of McCracken’s grave. He handed me the bouquet.

— One day, we arrested Bray. He was so scared he vomited.

I put the flowers down, one knee on the ground.

— A very decent family, the Brays. Father in Long Kesh, brother in the IRA. True Republicans, except for him. He was one of those kids who’d write ‘IRA = Peelers’ on walls, you know the type?

I knew.

— So we gave him an ultimatum. We didn’t give a damn about his toking. Likewise his petty trafficking. But we told him that if he wanted to leave the interrogation uncharged, he’d have to give us something in exchange. A little like you, you see?

The agent had started his slow walk again.

— And you know what? He slipped us an address. I’m sure you know the one.

I kept quiet.

— He’d been looking for a corner to stash his gear and he’d come across a gun. The IRA had caught him by surprise and he’d run away. It’s mad how much these brats hate you lot!

— What are telling me here?

— I’m telling you that by taking the law into its own hands in the ghettos, the IRA has made itself solid enemies of the louts. With us they get a judge, with you it’s a bullet in the kneecap. So, in fact, the Brits are the lesser evil for them.

— Why are you telling me all this?

— Why? Because after the young lad’s confessions, we placed Number 23 under surveillance, Tyrone. We saw your guys empty it out several months ago. And since then, there’s nothing there. Nothing. A desert.

He stopped beside the gate.

— You wouldn’t by any chance be taking the mickey out of us?

— Twenty-three was never under surveillance. You’re lying. Nobody has been arrested!

— Who would we arrest? The three Fianna and the poor fucker who did the cleaning? We want to hit the IRA, not make little heroes for you on the cheap!

He slid an envelope into my pocket. I didn’t protest.

— Later, Meehan. Call when you want.

He took a few steps, then turned around.

— By the way, Mickey talked. And you know what? He gave us the name of the next screw on the list, the location of the operation, everything.

He was watching me.

— And also… I’m sorry, but he also gave us your name. And that of your bomb-maker. You know? The one who shouldn’t have been there during your meeting.

The rain started to wash the sky. He lifted his collar.

— In any case, you were right to make him leave. You have to make people follow the rules, that’s the boss’s job.

Martin Hurson died on 13 July 1981, aged twenty-five, after forty-six days of hunger striking. Kevin Lynch went on 1 August, also aged twenty-five, on his seventy-first day. And Kieran Doherty went the next day, at twenty-six, on his seventy-third day of fasting.

As for Frank ‘Mickey’ Devlin, he was tortured for five days in the Castlereagh detention centre. He was deprived of sleep and made to stand naked for hours facing the wall, arms outstretched. He was beaten, electrocuted, choked, burned with cigarettes and smothered with damp cloths. Between interrogations he was thrown blindfolded into a soundproofed room. Those who have been subjected to sensory isolation say that even their cries were muted. Europe had described these treatments as ‘inhumane and degrading’. Waldner didn’t give a damn. In his view it was necessary to make the Republicans own up. Before another shot was fired, before another bomb exploded, before another Popeye should die somewhere in the city.

Did I understand?

— Imagine I’m your prisoner, Meehan. Your best friend is in our hands. Our men want to hit him. I know where and when. What do you do with me?

I understood.

The ghetto was distraught over Mickey’s arrest. His wife came to visit Sheila. They were both crying. I made them tea and left.

— Imprisoned is better than dead, I murmured to my wife when I came back.

I didn’t like the look she gave me. She was searching for the signs that I’d been drinking, but I hadn’t. Just two pints, in a bar that wasn’t my local. I didn’t want to have to face the despondency and the sorrow.

The British had arrested Mickey on 3 August after a punishment he had meted out to a rapist. The lad was a habitual offender who had been barred from the Divis Flats area for months. He had attacked a woman on her way home, hit her in the face and tried to drag her into the bushes. He was drunk, stumbling. She escaped and ran to the Sinn Féin office to lodge a complaint and give a description of her assailant.

The IRA had descended on his parents’ place during the night. He had secretly gone back to live in their house. He was sleeping off his beer, stretched out fully clothed on his childhood bed. Our men were wearing balaclavas. The mother intervened, shouting; the father took up a chair to defend his son.

— Don’t touch the parents! Mickey had ordered.

Two of our guys dragged the delinquent down the stairs. I was standing well back in the street. I wasn’t in charge of the operation. I didn’t like these punishments. We were an army, not the law. Our role was to chase out the British, not to give louts a hiding. But our people demanded safety on our streets.

Mickey was waiting at the door with two others. The mother pounced on him and lifted his mask. He pushed her off and she fell to the ground, pointing her finger.

— It’s Frank Devlin! I know you, Frank Devlin!

She was screeching.

Lights were being switched on all over the place. The guy was brought in a car to the little square beside his victim’s street. He tried to defend himself. Mickey smacked him violently in the temple with the butt of his gun. He tied him to a lamp post by the neck and the belly, his chest bare. A woman arrived, running, handed a sign that read ‘Rapist’ to one of our guys and then left as quickly as she’d come. The IRA hung the sign around his neck. His chest was smeared with cold tar. He seemed to be unconscious, his head dangling back. There were shadows at the windows, ghosts on the footpath, silhouettes on the steps of open doorways.

— Our country is at war! roared Mickey so he’d be heard by the street.

An óglach cocked his gun. The crack of metal in the silence. On the first floor of a house, a man put his fingers in his ears.

— We will not tolerate any attack against our community. Nor any violence against the women who are part of it!

The soldier shot twice. Not in the knees, but in the thighs. We had decided that the convicted man would walk again. He let out a long cry. His head fell back down.

— IRA! IRA! chanted a distant voice.

A combatant collected the burning cartridges with gloved hands and we withdrew.

The rapist’s parents were detested in the community. The postman would purposefully forget them, their bottle of milk would be smashed against their door in the mornings. The bars would refuse to serve the father, the bingo players would leave the mother sitting by herself at a table. They were the bad family of the street. They no longer had anything to lose. So they lodged a complaint with the RUC. And they gave them Mickey.

The mood of the city was black and forlorn as a raven. The sky, the expressions, everything smacked of sadness. Sadness for Mickey, for his wife. And I was sad, too. For the first time, I was disgusted to feel the effects of the practised British duplicity. Wherever I went, the conversations, the faces and the silences brought home the horror of Mickey’s torture over and over. But also, besides all that, the disappointing fact that Mickey hadn’t toughed it out. The British had let it be known that he’d talked. Their press had a field day with it. Waldner was protecting me. The handler was protecting me. They had diverted suspicion. Frank Devlin was arrested one month after I pronounced his name. An eternity. I hadn’t betrayed. I was exhausted. I treated myself to a respite. A last illusion of innocence.

In the third envelope, received on 5 August, were two plane tickets to Paris and an advance of £350 to pay for my first trip. I was to meet ‘Honoré’ at the riverboat wharf. I’d only seen him once, during that first visit to France with Sheila and the handlers playing the couple. He was a true Englishman, not even a gruff Protestant from our parts. He looked at me the way you look at a traitor. He didn’t shake my hand. He stayed the time it took to drink a beer, his eyes on my pink triangle. He wasn’t any more cordial with the MI5 agent or the RUC man. He was young, thirty-five at most. All he knew of Belfast was from flying over the city in a helicopter. He observed me, studied me. He told me he was interested in Sinn Féin, not the IRA. Our party, not our army. With his chin, he nodded at the other two, saying that bombs were their department.

— I don’t know much about politics, I told him.

— You know who thinks what in your movement. Which leaders are slowing down or in the process of gaining power. You know that, Tenor?

I shrugged. Yeah, sure. That I knew.

— Because that’s what interests me, you see. And since I find it a little difficult to attend your meetings…

Then he left the table, saluting us with his rolled-up newspaper to his temple.

I didn’t like him. I felt he was forcing his way into my story. The handler and the agent used to almost reassure me. We shared a common story now. They knew my ways, I knew their manners. We all knew where we stood. Not that there was understanding, but neither was there hatred. One day, the handler told me that he would oppose my ideas to the death, but that he respected them. As he gave me my tickets for Paris, Waldner admitted he would have liked to have met me in another place and time. Were they lying? Both of them? Probably. Those words may well have been intended to dull me, possibly pulled from their official handling manual. I didn’t give a damn. I was a prisoner, condemned to lies for life, and these two keepers of mine didn’t add humiliation to my loneliness.

Honoré wasn’t part of this story, he wasn’t even the same kind of enemy. He was a sheep stealer who takes advantage of an open gate. He was going to come along after the others and press me like a fruit. He had the pallor of a civil servant. He had ink on his hands, not blood. I could picture him under his desk lamp, drawing out flow charts with his mouth half-open and his tongue sticking out. For him, our country was a chart, our combat a statistic. We weren’t men and women but laboratory rats. The handler had us in his rifle sight, whereas Honoré observed us under a microscope. He called me Tenor. I hoped that he didn’t know anything about me, or Danny, or the existence of Jack and Sheila. That I remained anonymous. A synonym for traitor. A code name.

He was certainly going to make me hate Paris.