Sheila drew from her pocket the two letters the soldiers had given her to mail to their families. If she were stopped at a roadblock and the Royal Ulster Constabulary found the letters … She opened the window and threw her pistol out, then let the letters sail into the wind.
Sheila Malone jumped out of her bed. She could hear motors in the street and the sounds of boots against the cobbles. Residents of the block were shouting from windows, and trash-can lids were being beaten to sound the alarm. As she began pulling her slacks on under her nightdress her bedroom door crashed open, and two soldiers rushed in without a word. A shaft of light from the hall made her cover her eyes. The red-bereted paratroopers pushed her against the wall and ripped the slacks from around her legs. One of them raised her nightdress over her head, and then ran his hands over her body, searching for a weapon. She spun and swung her fists at him. “Get your filthy hands …”
One of the soldiers punched her in the stomach, and she doubled over and lay on the floor, her nightdress gathered up around her breasts.
The second soldier bent down, grabbed her long hair, and dragged her to her feet. He spoke for the first time. “Sheila Malone, all I’m required to tell you is that you are being arrested under the Special Powers Act. If you make one fucking sound when we take you out to the trucks, we’ll beat you to a pulp.”
The two soldiers pushed her into the hall, down the stairs, and into the street, which was filled with shouting people. Everything passed in a blur as she was half-carried to the intersection where the trucks were parked. Voices called insults at the British soldiers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary who were assisting them. A boy’s voice shouted, “Fuck the Queen.” Women and children were crying, and dogs were barking. She saw a young priest trying to calm a group of people. An unconscious man, his head bloodied, was dragged past her. The soldiers picked her up and threw her into the back of a small truck filled with a dozen other prisoners. An RUC guard stood at the front of the truck, fondling a large truncheon. “Lie down, bitch, and shut your mouth.”
She lay down by the tailgate and listened to her own breathing in the totally silent truck. After a few minutes the gates of the truck closed and it pulled away.
The guard shouted above the noise of the convoy. “The Pope is a fucking queer.”
Sheila Malone lay against the tailgate, trying to calm herself. In the dark truck some men slept or were unconscious; a few were weeping. The guard kept up an anti-Catholic tirade until the truck stopped and the tailgate swung open, revealing a large, floodlit enclosure surrounded by barbed wire and machine-gun towers. Long Kesh, known to the Catholics of Northern Ireland as Dachau.
A soldier shouted into the truck, “Clear out! Quick! Move it!”
A few men scrambled over and around Sheila, and she heard the sounds of blows, shouts, and cries as the men left the truck. A voice cried out, “Take it easy, I’m an old man.” A young boy clad in pajamas crawled over her and tumbled to the ground. The RUC guard was kicking everyone toward the tailgate now, like a trash man sweeping the floor of his truck clean at the dump. Someone pulled her out by her legs, and she fell on the soft, wet earth. She tried to stand but was knocked down.
“Crawl! Crawl, you bastards!”
She picked up her head and saw two lines of paratrooper boots. She crawled as quickly as she could between the gauntlet as blows fell on her back and buttocks. A few of the men made obscene remarks as she passed by on her hands and knees, but the blows were light and the obscenities were shouted by boyish, embarrassed voices, which somehow made it all the more obscene.
At the end of the gauntlet two soldiers picked her up and pushed her into a long Nissen hut. An officer with a swagger stick pointed to an open door, and the soldiers pushed her onto the floor of a small room and shut the door as they left. She looked up from where she lay in the center of the tiny cubicle.
A matron stood behind a camp table. “Strip. Come on, you little tramp. Stand up and take them off.”
Within minutes she was stripped and searched and was wearing a gray prison dress and prison underwear. She could hear blows being struck outside the small cubicle and cries and shouts as the harvest of the sweep was processed— transformed from sleeping civilians into gray, terrified internees.
Sheila Malone had no doubt that a good number of them were guilty of some kind of anti-British or antigovernment activity. A few were actually IRA. A smaller number might even be arsonists or bombers … or murderers like herself. There was a fifty-fifty chance of getting out of internment within ninety days if you didn’t crack and confess to something. But if they had something on you—something as serious as murder … Before she could gather her thoughts and begin to formulate what she was going to say, someone placed a hood over her head and she was pushed through a door that closed behind her.
A voice shouted directly in her ear, and she jumped. “I said, spell your name, bitch!”
She tried to spell it but found to her surprise that she could not. Someone laughed.
Another voice shouted, “Stupid cunt!”
A third voice screamed in her other ear. “So, you shot two of our boys, did you?”
There it was. They knew. She felt her legs begin to shake.
“Answer me, you little murdering cunt!”
“N-n-no.”
“
She felt something poke her in the back of the head and heard the sound of a pistol cocking. The hammer fell home and made a loud, metallic thud. She jumped and someone laughed again. “Next time it won’t be empty, bitch.”
She felt sweat gather on her brow and soak the black hood.
“All right. Pull up your dress. That’s right. All the way!”
She pulled her skirt up and stood motionless as someone pulled her pants down to her ankles.
After an hour of pain, insults, humiliation, and leering laughter, the three interrogators seemed to get bored. She was certain now that they were just fishing, and she could almost picture being released at dawn.
“Fix yourself up.”
She let her aching arms fall and bent over to pull up her pants. Before she straightened up she heard the three men leave the room as two other people entered. The hood was pulled from her head, and the bright lights half-blinded her. The man who had taken the hood moved to the side and sat in a chair just out of range of her vision. She focused her eyes straight ahead.
A young British army officer, a major, sat in a chair behind a small camp desk in the center of the windowless room. “Sit down, Miss Malone.”
She walked stiffly toward a stool in front of the desk and sat slowly. Her buttocks hurt so much that she would almost rather have remained standing. She choked down a sob and steadied her breathing.
“Yes, you can have a bed as soon as we finish this.” The major smiled. “My name is Martin. Bartholomew Martin.”
“Yes … I’ve heard of you.”
“Really? Good things, I trust.”
She leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “Listen Major Martin, I was beaten and sexually abused.”
He shuffled some papers. “We’ll discuss all of that as soon as we finish with this.” He picked out one sheet of paper. “Here it is. A search of your room has uncovered a pistol and a satchel of gelignite. Enough to blow up the whole block.” He looked at her. “That’s a dreadful thing to keep in your aunt’s home. I’m afraid she may be in trouble now as well.”
“There was no gun or explosives in my room, and you know it.”
He drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. “Whether they were there or not is hardly the point, Miss Malone. The point is that my report
She didn’t answer.
“All right,” said the major. “That’s not important. What is important,” he continued as he stared into her eyes, “are the murders of Sergeant Thomas Shelby and Private Alan Harding.”
She stared back at his eyes and displayed no emotion, but her stomach heaved. They had her, and she was fairly certain she knew how they had gotten her.
