To Adele
Spinks lay in darkness in the boot of a car eating a cheese sandwich, his chewing and swallowing amplified in the confined, metallic space. He was scruffy, long-haired, unshaven and malodorous. He paused to pick his nose, an enjoyable habit he did not necessarily reserve for private moments such as this, and rolled it until it was dry enough to flick off. He took another bite of the sandwich and continued to chew thoughtfully, blinking in the darkness.
This was the second time he had spent the day in the boot of a car and it was, so far at least, nowhere near as memorable as the first. That was four months earlier, in the middle of summer, and one of the most horrifying days in his twenty-nine years. He was not a particularly large man but whoever had chosen the car that day had given scant thought to his size altogether; they had concentrated solely on the objective and not at all on Spinks’s comfort. They could be forgiven to some extent since the whole affair was a hitherto untried experiment and all too hurriedly executed, and Spinks had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into. He had felt claustrophobic the second the boot was slammed shut and everything went pitch black. It was only when the car trundled through the security chicane and over the sleeping policemen at the main gate to the camp that it occurred to him he should have put something spongy on the bare metal floor to lie on.
The twenty or so mile drive, mostly along country roads, was painful in the dark and cramped space and he spread himself like a starfish in an effort to stop rolling about, but that grew tiring after a while. He imagined all kinds of horrors in the event of a collision, specifically a rear-ender. When the journey ended he thought the worst was over but it had only just begun. What almost killed Spinks was as much a surprise to him as it was to everyone else involved.
His task had been to video the main gate of the Crossmaglen Rangers’ Gaelic Football Club on a bright Sunday afternoon as the team prepared to play Dromintree. Crossmaglen is a small town virtually encircled by the border with most of its roads heading directly into the Republic, and certain IRA members of interest who resided in the South were rumoured to be attending the match. It had been a very hot day and the sun’s rays gradually warmed the car’s metal skin. By early afternoon the inside was like an oven. Spinks later compared it to a prison sweatbox, only his was much smaller, completely without ventilation and prisoners were at least spared a battering journey inside the box over miles of bad road prior to their being baked. He almost passed out with the combination of heat and deteriorating air quality. No one realised how much he had suffered until the car was driven away on completion of the job and the boot opened. Spinks was lying there, dehydrated and hyperventilating, but nevertheless, to his credit, he had stoically completed his task.
On this occasion it was a much bigger boot and he had tailored in an old mattress sponge to lie on. He could roll from one shoulder on to the other if he shuffled around although he still could not stretch out his legs. But more importantly it was now autumn. The previous experience had taught him that one could dress against the cold inside a freezer but there was nothing one could do to keep cool inside a baking oven.
Spinks’s excessive body odour was due to the fact he hardly ever washed himself and his clothes even less. He claimed his lack of hygiene was a necessary part of the job. ‘If you’re gonna be one of ’em, go all the way’ was his excuse. It was true that many of the rural indigenous types they operated against made personal cleanliness a low priority, but Spinks was quite alone in his level of dedication. The rewards for his extreme standards for ‘blending in’ were tasks such as this one, the important criterion as far as his colleagues were concerned was that he worked alone.
He placed an eye in the thin shaft of daylight coming through a small hole in the clear plastic cover of the reverse light where the bulb and socket had been removed. He checked his watch by its tiny light. Six hours he had been here already. The driver had dropped off the vehicle in the middle of the night to avoid being seen, knowing nothing would happen till late morning. It was all part of the necessary security measures, but lying in darkness, with nothing to focus on other than keeping as still and quiet as possible, made it difficult for Spinks to stay awake. He found various ways to amuse himself but these were limited. Farting was one of his pastimes - silent ones of course. He would hold them in for as long as he could, building up their pressure, then expelling them as slowly as possible, without a pause, timing how long he could stretch out the evacuation. Lying in his own stink afterwards was a strange source of amusement to him. He maintained it was unhealthy to hold in farts anyway, even in company, and admitted to enjoying the smell. He believed everyone liked the smell of their own farts and only complained about other people’s.
He stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and checked through the spy-hole. He felt around in the darkness for his water bottle as he munched. It did not appear to be where he had placed it by his shoulder. He found his MPK5 short-barrelled sub-machine-gun, with its magazine loaded and ready to fire. Beside it was the stun grenade he always liked to carry. The grenade was not standard issue but having seen them demonstrated by the SAS during a room assault entry while in training he stole one thinking it might be a useful piece of equipment to carry. His 9mm Browning semi-automatic pistol rested under the beam of daylight so that he would know where to grab it if he saw trouble coming.
He extended his search for the water bottle towards his feet and felt it in the lower corner. It must have bounced there during the drive. He strained in the confined space, stretching as best he could, his face pressing hard up against the lid of the boot, until his fingertips finally took hold of the bottle. He pulled it to his chest and took a short breather after the effort. He was overweight and out of shape, which did not bother him in the slightest. When he wasn’t on an assignment Spinks stayed in his pit of a caravan listening to Country and Western CDs or sleeping, and if he was not there he could be found in the cookhouse fixing a snack or in the small bar the detachment ran for themselves in their secret camp, sipping on a pint of bitter, which he liked to share with the detachment’s alcoholic Labrador, Jenkins.
Before unscrewing the top of the water bottle he took a few seconds to estimate how full his bladder was. His last piss was before climbing inside the boot, over six hours ago. He could sense a little pressure there. A drink might put his bladder over the top. Peeing his pants was not a major issue for Spinks. It would not be the first time he lay in his own urine for hours on end. There was something he found pleasant about the sensation of warm pee spreading around his crotch area. He took a good swig, dribbling on himself in the awkward position, and swilled his mouth to rinse the sandwich down. As he swallowed he placed an eye back into the beam of light to look outside once again and what he saw nearly made him choke. He dropped the bottle, letting the water spill, and scrambled to find the communication prestel that hung out of his sleeve on its wire. He had to summon every effort to stifle a cough so he could whisper into the collar of his jacket where the tiny microphone was stitched.
‘Four two Charlie,’ he begun, but had to stop to clear his throat again. ‘Four two Charlie, he’s coming out. I say again, O’Farroll is coming out.’
Spinks kept his eye to the hole with unblinking concentration. From where he was parked he was perfectly positioned to see the front door of the church and the people coming out of it. The church was a solitary, squat, grey construction on the edge of a quiet country road a good mile from the nearest town. All the buildings in this undulating, rambling part of County Tyrone a few miles west of Lough Neagh were grey, or so they seemed. Even the rich countryside that surrounded them had a grey tint. Perhaps it was the dark skies. It rained a lot this time of year.
The church didn’t look big enough to hold more than fifty people but then not that many turned out on Sunday mornings these days.Two men in warm three-quarter-length business coats over their Sunday best suits walked out of the entrance, past the tilted, unreadable gravestones and through an opening in the squat stone wall that ran along the side of the road. They stopped to chat while the rest of the congregation, mostly older people, headed to their cars parked on the grass verges.
