A Secret Worth Killing For

CHAPTER 2

The next day, Sunday, she stays at home in her room.

‘Coming to Mass, Maire?’ her mother yells up.

She peers down from the landing and addresses the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sorry, Ma, still a bit off colour. You and Da go on.’ She wonders why they persist.

She spends the day in her room with the local radio on. All is quiet and she feels an overwhelming relief. By evening she decides she’s calm enough to appear for tea. She comes downstairs, where her father’s watching the six o’clock television news in the living room.

‘Jeez, Maire, have a look at this.’

The screen shows the taped-off street, and the flashing lamps of police cars and an ambulance beyond. Nausea rises, this time from her midriff. She’s missed the newsreader’s introduction and a local reporter is taking up the story. ‘It seems the male victim was lured to this flat off Botanic Avenue and then set upon by attackers waiting inside. It appears that some sort of fight may have broken out, during which the man was shot dead. It’s not known at this point who the victim was or whether the attack was a purely criminal one or had a political or paramilitary connection.’

‘What the hell was going on there?’ Stephen exclaims. The news gives way to the Sunday sporting action and he buries himself in the newspaper. Another day, another shooting.

She wants to retreat to her room but forces herself to stay with her da until the end of the weather forecast. She looks into the kitchen. The smells of cooking repel her.

‘Sorry, Ma, still off the food. Must be a bug or something I ate.’

Rosa watches as she goes back up the stairs. Something unusual is going on with her daughter but she knows better than to press. It will all come out in due course, or just go away.

Maire wants to go out, to run for miles, to lose herself in exhaustion. Anything to stop thoughts. But the summer nights are short and she’s afraid of the daylight. By 10 p.m. she can stand it no longer and leaves the house without a goodbye or see you later. ‘Must be something to do with Joseph,’ Rosa mutters to Stephen.

She paces the streets for an hour, taking deep breaths, willing herself to restore the calm she’s now lost. Did they, or rather Joseph, deceive her and always intend to kill? Perhaps the policeman was carrying a gun – though, if he was, he kept it well hidden – and managed to grab it as they entered. But she heard no shots as she walked away. It surely means they must have taken control of him.

Joseph gave her his word. He used the word ‘promise’. Was it a lie? Or was he lied to? She has a horrible vision of her brother as the mastermind. Surely that can’t be. More than betrayal, what she now feels is a sickening combination of terror and her own foolishness – the knowledge that she allowed herself to be deceived. She clings on to the hope that something went wrong in the flat – that he brought his death upon himself. That, in some sense, he deserved it. She wonders who will miss him and tries to banish the thought.

Without planning it, she finds herself near Joseph’s street – he still lives with his family and they’ve used a friend’s place to sleep together. Unable to stop herself, she approaches the house. At the last minute she delays, watching for movement through any gaps in the curtains. She sees none, but some ground-floor lights are still on and she rings the bell.

Joseph’s mother answers. ‘Maire, you’re looking in late.’

‘Sorry, Mrs Kennedy.’

‘It’s OK, love, come in.’

‘I was just looking for Joseph.’

‘Haven’t seen him today, love. You know how it is with him. Always in and out.’

‘OK, Mrs Kennedy, never mind. Thanks anyway. I’d better be away.’

The next day is worse. Silence. Alone. She’s been hung out to dry. She tells herself again that this is what it must be like. Despite the falseness she feels ever surer of, she craves to see Joseph. Perhaps he really does have an explanation and it can still be all right between them. She listens out for Martin’s footsteps and one of his cheery entrances into the house. It doesn’t matter what’s said, she simply needs someone who knows to talk to.

At lunchtime, the noose tightens. ‘The victim was Inspector Peter Halliburton, who was on secondment to local police from London’s Metropolitan Police Special Branch. Mr Halliburton, aged thirty-six, was married and had two children of six and eight. There has still been no claim of responsibility for his killing,’ announces the radio news.

She thinks of him lying on the bed, his zip undone, his penis bared, a young man, husband, father, in the dying moments of his short life. She tries to justify it. He shouldn’t have come with her. He betrayed his marriage and those children. He was a representative of the occupying forces. The words and excuses taste of sulphur.

Her one good fortune is that on Monday both her parents are out and she can stay in her room without need for explanations. In the late afternoon, shortly before her mother is due home, she goes out, propelled once again by some automatic, subconscious navigation in the direction of Joseph’s home. She steels herself to ring the bell. No answer. She knocks on the door. No answer. She backs away to look up at the first floor. The curtains in Joseph’s room are drawn. Either he’s still away or deliberately avoiding her. The question jumps at her. Could they have arrested him? Are they holding him, forcing him to implicate her? Surely his mother would have known. Surely Joseph is too smart.

Early the next morning, 5.45, it happens. A violent beating on the front door, the sound of her father descending the stairs to answer it. She peeps behind a curtain of her bedroom window to see two armed police jeeps to the right and left and a police saloon, its roof light silently revolving. She hardly has time to take it in before two uniformed police enter her room with neither words nor knocking.

‘Get dressed,’ says one.

The second speaks more formally.

‘Maire McCartney?’

‘Yes.’ She tells herself to resist the tears.

‘I have a warrant to arrest you on a charge of conspiracy to murder Peter Halliburton on the night of Saturday the twenty-third of July. You have the right to stay silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law . . .’

Even as she dresses herself, and they pull her hands in front of her to apply handcuffs, it’s as if it were happening to another person. It belongs to a parallel universe. The person she really is could never have degraded herself to this.

The walk down the stairs and out of the front door freezes her into self-loathing. Her mother and father watch, their eyes aflame with humiliation. She’s unable to speak, only to shake her head. Once inside the police car, she lacerates herself for being too weak to leave them words of hope.

They take her to Castlereagh, a journey that is a badge of honour for anger-fuelled young men, a spiral into blackness for her. How do they know it was she? They must have soon worked out that the victim had been lured. Were her shoes still in the room, showing that a woman took him there? Could Joseph and friends have been so careless? Did they suspect Joseph and make the connection to her? Perhaps they’re just operating on that hunch and have no hard evidence.

She slumps in a cell for hours, allowed only to brush her teeth and visit the toilet. She’s escorted to a bleak room where a woman in a white coat takes her fingerprints and a swab from her throat. She’s brought food but her sense of time begins to fade. All she knows is that, when she’s taken to an interview room, occasional shafts of light show that it is not yet night.

Two men in suits arrive, a recording machine is switched on. They introduce themselves but she doesn’t catch their names. Again, she feels distant and disconnected. Her real self is floating on the ceiling above, looking disdainfully at the grotesque spectacle beneath.

‘We know you were with him,’ they say.

‘I’ve nothing to say,’ she says. It’s all she says that evening, again and again. At least Joseph told her to do that if anything went wrong.

‘Your brother’s a Provo, your boyfriend’s a Provo. You were with him in that bedroom. You leave, a few minutes later he’s shot dead by a gang of your friends. You’re going down, Maire. You’ve ruined your life, your career, dishonoured your ma and da. Think about it as the long night passes.’

As they foresaw, darkness brings change. The unreality, the distancing recedes. She’s in a black tunnel with no light at the end. She knows she must not allow desperation to block her thoughts, but it’s hard to not keep seeing the puzzled, frightened expressions of her ma and da as she was led away. The hopes they had for her, the trust in their golden girl – all blown apart. Whatever happens now, there will always be a before and an after in her life.

She needs a life raft, a narrative that gives her a chance of survival. She tries to peer into that night from the other end of a telescope. To live it from his point of view. To imagine that he’s not a foolish man, but a bad man. Or a man made bad by alcohol and opportunity. She doesn’t like forcing her mind to work it through – but this is no time to be nice.

The next morning, she asks for a solicitor. They tell her all in good time. She tries to insist on her rights, they ignore her. Perhaps her request accelerates their reappearance for she’s back in the interview room within twenty minutes of making it. Their tone has hardened.

‘You’ve no way out, Maire,’ says the first man.

‘Your fingerprints are all over the room,’ says the second.

‘Christ, there’s even your saliva in his pubic hair.’

‘You filthy little slut, Maire. You really want that to come up in court? You want your ma and da to hear you were sucking the dick of some poor bastard you were setting up to be shot?’

She’s ready for them. ‘You’ve nothing. Sure I was with him. Sure he “picked me up”. Not me, him. Sure he insisted on coming home with me. But he was drunk, became violent. He was trying to rape me, so I ran. What the hell would you have done?’

‘Just at the very moment your good friend Joseph and his mates happen to arrive to murder him. What a coincidence, Maire. What a fluke of timing.’

‘I dunno anything ’bout that. You’ve no evidence to say that. I was in a bar, he picked me up. I was fool enough to go with him.’ Even if she’s not kidding herself, maybe she can somehow dent their certainty. She forces on, trying to convey confidence not desperation. ‘That’s my only crime. Maybe there was some eejits following him. So what? Nothing to do with me. He’s a bad man who tried to attack me. Look at the size of me – what chance would I have had? Now I wanna solicitor.’

‘You can have a solicitor, Maire. Won’t do you any good. There’s only one way out. You tell us everything you know about Joseph Kennedy and his friends – it’s OK, it’ll just be between youse and us, no one else’ll ever know – and maybe we’ll cut you some slack.’

‘It’s your life, Maire. Your future. Think about it,’ says the second man. They leave the room and she is escorted back to her cell, the barred door clanging shut behind her, the bare walls closing in on her life.

Later that day, she sees a solicitor and offers the same account she’s given her interrogators. They were right; the solicitor tells her the evidence, the coincidence of timing are stacked against her. The rape allegation gives her a chance, but only a small one. She’s come up with it late and there’s not even any bruising.

Maire knows only one thing for certain. It looks like they don’t have anything on Joseph. If she grasses – tells them Joseph did it – and his friends find out, she’s dead. There’s no greater sin than to turn informer. Not even Martin could save her – probably wouldn’t even want to. The story always has the same ending. A lonely grave in some anonymous damp patch of field.

The next day, another spell in the interview room, this time with her solicitor present. Her interrogators arrive together and say nothing. Instead they produce a pair of shoes from a bag, the shoes she wore on the night, and hand them to her.

‘We’ve cleaned them for you, Maire,’ says one. ‘You can have them back after the trial if your prison governor allows it.’

‘Careless of your friends to leave them behind,’ says the other. They walk out with a mocking grin.

‘Might be best to own up, Maire,’ says the solicitor later. ‘Say you knew nothing about the plan to kill him. We’d go for aiding and abetting an abduction. You might get away with five years. You’d only serve half.’

Her third night in the cell is the worst. All exits are closed and it seems a one-way street to conviction and branding as a criminal. If she confesses, the full dirtiness of what she’s done need not be revealed. Her ma and da can be spared that shame. After more than two decades of the ‘war’, her community will understand her getting caught up in it. Though what a pity, they’ll say, that clever little Maire McCartney, with the whole world at her fingertips, chose to spoil everything.

What if there’s not even that deal without their piece of flesh? Everything she knows about Joseph. The names of his friends. She feels a shiver of terror.

By the night’s end, she’s come to one conclusion. She’s not a committed warrior willing to spend a lifetime in prison for the ‘cause’. She doesn’t know where it will lead – but it’s time to negotiate and see what cards she’s got left to play.

A woman police officer arrives with breakfast.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ says Maire. ‘I wanna speak to my solicitor.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ says the woman.

‘Whaddya mean? I’ve made a decision. I need to see her.’

‘No, you don’t. You’re leaving.’

‘What?’

‘I said you’re leaving. Seems like you’re a lucky girl.’

‘You joking? That’s bad taste . . .’

‘It’s not a joke, Maire. Pack your things, your da’s coming to fetch you.’

An hour later she finds herself walking past the front desk and out to the car park. It’s a journey of utter unreality. Maybe it’s some kind of trap. But there, in the flesh, is her da. Stephen has been allowed through the gates and security barriers and is waiting. As she nears the car, he gets out and hugs her. They drive in silence, no questions asked, no answers given. When they arrive home, it’s the same, her mother waiting quietly for her.

‘Welcome home, love.’ It’s all she says.

That evening, Martin comes for tea, the entrance as nonchalant as ever, the chitchat light and jokey. In front of her parents, no reference is made to the last three days. As they’re clearing the plates, she catches Martin nodding at them. They retreat to the kitchen to wash up. He closes the door behind them.

‘You’ll get your scholarship at Trinity, you’re that smart,’ he begins. ‘Working-class Catholic girl from the North – just what they need to move with the times. But you’ll leave this city and head down to Dublin now. I got friends who’ll put you up till we find you something permanent. Only a couple of months now. Maybe you can take some time abroad. I’ll see if I can raise some money.’

‘Did you know, Martin?’ she asks.

‘Know what?’ He sounds sharp, hard even. It’s unlike him.

‘Joseph said you approved it. I mean using me.’

He shakes his head slowly, closing his eyes and rubbing them with his hands. ‘Jesus, Maire, you should know me better. I’m not even going to discuss that.’

‘Well, he said you would.’

‘He said that?’

‘Yes.’ Her brother says nothing. ‘And the plan itself? Seducing him? Shooting him?’

‘Don’t go there. It’s past now.’

‘Joseph told me it was just to interrogate him.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Maire, you’re not that naïve.’

She wants to cry but mustn’t let herself. ‘I believed him, Martin. He promised. He said it was propaganda. To show they could run a Special Branch man out of town.’

‘He said that?’

‘Yes. Several times over.’

‘OK.’ He shakes his head and looks away from her. ‘Look here, Maire, I’m not going to piss on Joseph. He’s important in the movement. You can’t expect me to do that.’

‘I wanna see him. Ask him myself.’

‘That won’t be possible.’ His eyes pierce her in that way she knows he won’t be contradicted. She looks down, silent. ‘You’re not to see him again, Maire. There’s to be no contact ever again. From you or from him.’

She feels tears welling and tries to suppress them. There’s no point in arguing. Instead she asks the obvious question. ‘Why did they let me go?’

‘You’re small fry, they’ve bigger fish. Maybe they didn’t have enough on you. Maybe they wanna see where you’ll lead them. Use you as bait against your own side. That’s why you gotta leave. That’s a reason you can never see Joseph again.’ He pauses. ‘Not the only one, mind.’ She feels herself crushed. ‘And there’s another thing, Maire. Some will say they only let you go ’cos you grassed. Another reason you gotta go.’

‘Jesus, Martin, you should know me better than that.’ She grimaces. ‘Christ, that’s what you just said, isn’t it?’ He doesn’t answer – there’s nothing more to say. Her destiny, for now, is out of her hands. ‘OK, when?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow!’

‘That’s right. You better start packing.’ Her brother grasps her shoulders and speaks with a searing passion. ‘You were never meant for this, Maire. You’re the lawyer. Maybe politics one day. You’re the ballot, not the bullet. Never forget that.’

The next morning, her father drives her to Victoria Bus Station to catch the express coach to Dublin. She’s been given an address and fifty pounds. She’s never felt so alone.

A few days later, Martin visits her in Dublin. It’s been arranged that she’ll live with a Mrs Bridget Ryan, whose daughter, Bernadette, is serving time for possessing explosives. As a contribution to her board and lodging, Maire will help look after Bernadette’s three children. The husband’s no good – he was once in the movement but forced out because of his drinking. The arrangement will last the full three years of Maire’s degree.

‘You can call it your prison if you want,’ says Martin, ‘but it’ll give you a better chance than the real thing. Now, you, work hard. Don’t socialize. Don’t look for friends. No boyfriends. Trust no one. Get your degree. And then get the fuck out of this island and make something of your life.’

As she watches him disappear, Maire begins to understand the worst of what she’s done. It’s not about being used, or luring a Brit peeler to his death, or shaming her parents, or losing Joseph.

It’s that she made an error. A huge, life-changing, potentially life-destroying error. If she’s managed to get away with it, if she’s been given a second chance, she promises herself one thing.

She will never again make such an error. Not ever.

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