that he was being kept from her.
“Is he out of bounds?”
Bunty cradled the back of his head with his hands, sucked a morsel from his front teeth, and nodded once.
“Says who? British Intelligence?”
Bunty raised an eyebrow.
Paddy shook her head at the table: it was so obvious now. Consecutive editors had turned the Knox story back; no one outside the police knew a thing about his activities and she couldn’t find a policeman with a bad word to say, and they had a bad word about everyone. It was a sure sign that he was being kept clean. And then Kevin’s admission to hospital being wiped off whichever record while they fixed the body just so, the deserted office and Knox’s arrogant assurances about what was and wasn’t the case.
She’d interviewed Patrick Meehan many times about his brushes with British Intelligence and what always struck her was how commonplace it all sounded. A room set aside in a police station. Stone-faced men with Oxbridge accents and just the right coat from the right tailor’s, unimaginative and protectionist, unashamed of their agenda. They called them spooks but they sounded like irritable bank managers. Knox had that commonplace look. She remembered him in Babbity’s, recalled him sliding around at a hundred press functions.
“If,” Bunty paused dramatically, “if you can get anything on him, which I doubt, I’ll go with it.”
“You’ll publish it?”
He sucked his teeth again, enjoying himself. “Yes.”
Any senior editor who OK’d a story that threatened national security could get sacked by the proprietor, or worse.
“Bunty, you could get the bullet for it.”
“I could get the bullet anyway. They could sack me tomorrow for not selling enough advertising.”
She leaned forward. “What do you think? Why are Intelligence protecting McBree?”
He thought for a moment, slowly brushing bread crumbs from his shirtfront. “It’s one of two things. Either McBree’s still loyal to his cause but is working with them. He could be a bridge, helping negotiations in Northern Ireland. Or else, and if this is the case you better buy a gun: they’ve got something on him and McBree’s a double agent.”
He looked her in the eye and they both drew breath.
“Fucking hell.”
Bunty nodded slowly. “Quite so: fucking hell.”
Traipsing downstairs to her car, she thought about McBree working for the British government. He wouldn’t just be spying for them, telling them what was going on inside the Republican movement in Northern Ireland. He’d be too valuable an asset to use so lightly. If McBree was working for the government they’d be getting him to mold and shape decisions in their favor. And if he was working for them he’d kill to stop anyone finding out. He’d have to. If his own side found out he’d be a dead man.
She walked over to the car and looked back at the bright door of the bar, saw McGrade smiling benignly as he poured a pint, heard the chat and a drunkard’s laugh. A man passed inside and she thought for a moment it was someone she knew a long time ago, a union official who got a kicking the night her first boss, Farquarson, was sacked. But that was a long time ago in another garden.
III
She knew before she reached the door that something bad had happened. The light was wrong; it was too bright in the close and warm air was filtering down from up above, from her house, her open door. The wood around the lock had been shattered from a rough kick and the door hung open into the hallway.
She ran up the final steps and found the hall in a mess. The boxes of Dub’s records had been tipped over, some of them stamped on maliciously, the broken bits kicked around the floor. Terry’s trunk had been opened and upended, the binbags of his papers emptied. In the living room the mess was even worse. The bookcases had been ransacked, cushions ripped off the settee and chair, and the screen of the telly was kicked in.
“Hey, you.” Dub came out of the kitchen. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.”
Paddy threw her hands up, shocked into silence.
“I know. The police came and looked around, made some notes, but I can’t really tell what was taken. They didn’t nick anything, just broke stuff. Left the records, the radio, didn’t even take the telly-look, just kicked it in. My watch was in the bathroom, they didn’t even take that.”
She brushed past him into her bedroom. Her underwear was all over the place, the sheets on her bed had been dragged onto the floor, and a dark wet stain was drying in the middle of her mattress.
“Piss. Consider yourself lucky, they said, some of them do a shit. They get excited and it loosens their bowels.”
She slumped in the doorway, staring at the mess.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” She didn’t so Dub stroked her hair awkwardly. They were rarely affectionate to each other when the lights were on. His hand found a rhythm, some way between boyfriend intimacy and supportive friend.
She looked up at him. “What did they say?”
“The police? Neds. They asked the neighbors and one of them saw a wee guy in a tracksuit heading down the stairs.”
“A black tracksuit?”
He was surprised that she knew. “Yeah. Black tracksuit.”
She took hold of his arm. “You need to come with me. It’s not safe here.”
“I’m not scared of a vandal.”
“He’s more than that. He’s a lot more than that. Get your coat.”
They pulled the door over to make it look secure, fitting the splintered wood back in around the useless lock.
Dub looked at it. “Paddy, that won’t fool anyone who wants to steal something.”
“They don’t want to steal anything,” she said. “They’re trying to scare me.”
IV
A tin of white paint had been thrown over the windows of the Shammy since she had been there last, probably by a Loyalist. A rudimentary effort had been made to wash it off, smearing the white over the shop front, mixing it with the street dust already gathered on the walls, making it look like a slightly dirty protest. Irish flags hung in the high-up windows.
She turned the engine off and Dub looked at her. “You’re not going in there?”
“Wait here,” she said, getting out of the car.
He was on the pavement next to her. “Don’t go in. Those places are mental.”
But she shook his hand off. “I’ve been in before.”
She left him standing in a quandary by the car, watching after her, afraid to let her go but worried about leaving the car unguarded in such a rough area.
She pushed the black-painted doors open and walked into a wall of smoke and chat. There were hardly any women, but it looked no rougher than the Press Bar in the olden days. The clothes were cheaper, the chat less conversational, just drunk men slurring at each other. Music was playing in the background, a high, tinny Irish tune played on pipes, an old song about the green of the homeland and Brits shooting at children.
She glared along the lineup at the bar, checking each of the leathers, but didn’t see Donaldson. The barman recognized her though, half watching her as he wiped the bar with a stained cloth. She looked around the tables tucked to the side of the door. Red-faced men looked up at her from a crowd grouped around an ashtray. Two of
