‘What you’d think of me.’
‘Does it matter what I think of you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Your choice,’ she said.
Blake didn’t speak for a long time. When he did it was with difficulty, the words uneven, disjointed. ‘There were two of us. I didn’t know that. I wasn’t told. Neither was she. That’s the system, you see. If one gets blown there’s still another one in place, but you can’t bring him down because you don’t know…’ He lapsed into another long silence.
Lying as she was Claudine was conscious of his breathing becoming shorter. ‘What was her name?’ she prompted, knowing his need.
‘Anne. Her family were from Kildare…’ He grunted, bitterly. ‘I suppose that’s how it started with her and me. Like you, tonight. Frightened, not wanting to be alone after seeing someone killed. We had to take part in operations, of course. Prove ourselves. Our initiation was a bombing in Enniskillen. A British soldier died. We both saw it happen: saw him blown to pieces…’
‘But it became more than fear and sex?’ Claudine prompted again, when he didn’t continue after several minutes. It all had to come out, brutally if necessary. Blown to pieces echoed in her head: briefly she had a mental image of a crimson explosion and a body without a head.
‘We still didn’t know about each other: not properly, I mean. We used to have long conversations about how we’d get married when it was all over – when the cause had been won and there was just one Ireland, I mean – and all the time I knew it would never be possible because of who I really was and she would have been thinking the same because of who she really was, neither of us knowing that we could have got together when we were withdrawn…’
‘What went wrong?’ said Claudine.
‘There was to be another operation on the mainland. The strategy of bombing the City of London, hitting the country’s financial centre, was judged a success so it was decided to keep it up: force a lot of foreign banks to relocate in Frankfurt. My contact was a barman at the Europa Hotel, in Belfast. We used to drink there, Anne and I. She knew him by sight. The Semtex movement into Britain was decided at the last minute: more than a ton. The devastation would have been greater than either Canary Wharf or the Baltic Exchange. I hadn’t used the emergency system before – actually met him away from the hotel – but I had to, for the van carrying the explosive to be identified and followed from its arrival at Holyhead. I made the call from her flat: I went there ahead of her from the planning meeting and decided I couldn’t wait or risk a public kiosk, that Anne’s phone was safer. She must have come in sooner than I thought and heard me, although I didn’t think she had. I didn’t think she was in the house. She must have followed me – can you imagine it, doing her proper job! – and I saw her, just after I passed the details…’
His breathing became even more difficult and Claudine guessed he was crying and was glad for his sake they were in darkness. ‘Don’t stop, not now.’
‘He must have had an English watcher, too: someone compartmented like we all were who saw her and thought he was blown. I never knew. But he was withdrawn: took the information with him. We made a big thing about it in England. Followed the van to London, swept up the entire cell that was going to plant the bombs. The head of the anti-terrorist unit gave a press conference. And the stupid bastard talked about inside information: actually used the word infiltration. There were only ten people who could have known, Anne and I two of them. They had a source inside the Belfast telephone exchange I didn’t know about. They traced the call from Anne’s flat to the Europa bar: the bar from which my man had been withdrawn…’
Claudine waited.
‘I don’t want to go on.’
‘Yes,’ she insisted.
‘They got her.’
‘That’s not it, is it?’
‘That’s enough.’
‘Not for you it isn’t.’
Blake’s voice was flat, as if he was reading words that had been written down. ‘There was what they called a trial: Anne in front of every one of us who’d known about the Semtex shipment. She denied it, of course. Said she didn’t know about a hotel barman, which was true. Never once looked at me… They took her away, after finding her guilty. They decided to torture her, to find out if there were any others… we were all to gang rape her, then she was to be tortured.’
‘You didn’t let them get to her, did you?’
‘She was already naked when I went into the room, spread-eagled on the bed. I went mad. Intentionally. Screamed and shouted that she was a whore and a slut: made myself uncontrollable, which wasn’t difficult, although not for the reasons they all thought. She never said a word to betray me. Only looked directly at me at the very last minute. I shot her dead, before they realized what I was doing.’ Blake moved slightly away from Claudine, who for the first time became aware how wet her cheek was, from his tears. ‘I killed her twice. Once by being careless and then by pulling the trigger. She let it happen, to save me… And they all said what a good and loyal soldier I was: forgave me for spoiling their fun before they could find out if there was any other infiltrator.’
For once in her over-confident life Claudine didn’t know what to say. ‘The proper English trial at which you appeared?’ she groped. ‘They were the men?’
‘Six of them. They all got life. But they’ll be released, of course.’
‘If you and Anne made up two who knew and there were six properly tried, that leaves two missing.’
‘We were to put a bomb in Belfast city centre: our reprisal for the interception of the Semtex and the arrest of the cell in London. We were going to use the sewers: crawl in and crawl out. Devastate the place and kill God knows how many above. It was to be an hour fuse. I shortened it to two minutes. They went into the sewer ahead of me and I shouted down that there was a patrol and I had to close the manhole. It made a crater twenty metres deep and forty metres across.’
‘You were believed, by other people?’ queried Claudine.
‘I didn’t run: knew I couldn’t if it was to be accepted as the sort of mistake they often made. The explosion broke my left leg and right ankle…’
‘Were you trying to die?’
‘The other six hadn’t been sentenced then.’
‘What if they had been?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Peter?’
‘I’d have gone into the tunnel with them.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t. And I’m glad you told me. It’s better…’
‘I haven’t finished. Since then I haven’t been able to do this. Not until tonight.’
Oh God! thought Claudine. They weren’t talking love – love didn’t come into it – but there could be a dependency here.
‘That’s what I meant by using you. Are you angry?’
‘No,’ she said cautiously. ‘But let’s not think about what happened as anything more than it was.’
‘I won’t,’ he said.
He would, she knew.
The first of the early morning cleaners found Mary Beth’s rucksack just inside the school entrance and imagined it had been left there by a pupil the previous day, although it was rare for things to be left lying about. Madame Flahaur recognized it immediately for what it was and fortunately told her secretary to call the police before opening it. The school principal collapsed immediately with severe heart palpitations at the sight of its sole content, a child’s severed toe.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
