I squeezed my eyes shut tight, terrified. I couldn’t think. It felt like I was being water-boarded again – my brain being watered down. I tried to swim free. A memory of being curled up in a car, sleepy, with an old brown blanket draped over me, popped into my head. I must have been less than ten, my Auntie Grace was driving me some place. This was long before the MS. She was very active back then. We’d often go for long drives – just the two of us. They were good days, times worth remembering. It was a happy memory, safe. Nothing like this.
30
I was soon lying painfully on the car park gravel – in the dirt, in the dark. I was freezing. I had short sleeves and much of my body was still wet. I seemed to have a horrible outer layer of the water mixed with cooled sweat and blood. They had removed my bonds and left me crumpled on the ground, standing over me, smoking. I half thought to ask them if I could use a toilet, but I knew what the answer was likely to be. My bladder felt full and like it was pushing out against my stomach. I had already wet myself several times anyway. It didn’t matter much. My dignity was long gone.
When we had arrived and driven through the gates, we’d been stopped first by a security guard. He looked like he’d been expecting us and briefly spoke to Danny, money changed hands through the window. Then we drove on, I was scared shitless. When we had pulled into the car park, it was silent, empty. Security lights eerily lit up the hillside next to the visitor centre.
What were we doing here? This was very wrong. They were going to kill me.
A thought arrived and resonated with me strongly – ‘At least my Dad wouldn’t have to know about my painful death.’ What an odd fucking thought to bring me some comfort. But it did. It was like death was now the most likely outcome and the idea that he wouldn’t be hurt by it brought me some comfort. I felt the love I had for him stronger and more tangible than I ever had done before. At least he was spared this.
My Dad had already had to suffer one horrific effect during ‘The Troubles.’ He had never talked to be me about it, but my Granny told me once when I was a teenager, a few years before she passed. My Dad had been friends with a member of a show band during the seventies. Apparently he was a Southern Catholic, while my Dad was a Prod from The North, but neither of them gave a shite. Show bands had been a very popular phenomenon throughout Ireland since the fifties. They performed the hits of the day, along with a mix of country and traditional music. My Dad had gone to see them play one night, as he often had, down near Newry. He had gone straight home to Belfast afterwards and the band had commenced their return journey to Dublin.
Just short of the border, in the middle of the night, they were pulled over by UDR soldiers. The soldiers attempted to plant a bomb on their bus, while the band were made to line up at the side. Suddenly, the bomb detonated accidentally, blowing up two of the soldiers. Then the remaining soldiers opened fire from their machine guns on the band. There was no reason for it, just total savagery to attack a group of musicians on their way home. Just another example of the terrible tit for tat of that period, which I’m lucky enough not to have lived through. Two out of the five from the band survived, albeit with appalling injuries. My Dad’s friend was one of the dead. Both my parents had been marked deeply by those awful thirty years of conflict. Sometimes I forgot that.
I added a few more cuts to my body, bending my knees up and working myself into a kneeling position. I squinted as a second set of headlights shone up from the gates down the hill. Moments later a silver Audi crawled slowly up the hill and noisily scraped over the gravel, coming to a halt beside us. The engine switched off, the quiet and ominous atmosphere returning. The driver wound the window down. It was Sammy.
“Well Vicky, this really is your last chance.”
The next thing I knew and I was being frogmarched up a small incline, barely able to see anything, my feet scrambled along the crooked path, working its way up one of the hills. Sammy led the way with a torch in one hand and cigarette in the other. Carlos and Danny had one of my shoulders each. Danny’s face was now hard set and I smelled drink on his breath. Maybe he had swigged a little Dutch courage after he’d pulled up. I felt exhausted. We would have made a bizarre looking group, even more so while on the side of a fucking volcano. They half dragged me, I sort of allowed them to take the weight. All I wanted was to sleep. I was almost too tired to be scared. But not quite. Maybe as a means of distraction I kept trying to make sense of what was going on. Their faces passed through my mind’s eye – the black backdrop of the mountain behind.
Ivan, Richard, Sammy – what was it all about?
What was I meant to have stolen? Why do they think it was me?
Did Richard tell them it was?
…Richard. He must have told them that I had stolen from them before.
But why? I didn’t understand why. Why risk his getting caught?
What the fuck is going on?
All I did know was that Richard had definitely screwed me over.
“Hold her down just there,” said Sammy resolutely and I was roughly brought back to the present.
“Get the fuck off
