So that’s it, you smug bastard, Harrison thought as he offered his hand. ‘I’d like to say how much I’m going to miss you.’
Pritchard’s hooded eyes smouldered back resentfully, unsure how to take the words.
But Harrison only grinned and turned away just as a car pulled up beyond the cordon and he recognised Don Trenchard at the wheel.
‘I understand double congratulations are in order, Tom?’ he said, as he was escorted in by Corporal Marsh. ‘A bun in the oven and a bomb in the bag.’
Harrison laughed, now beginning to enjoy the steady release of tension that was fast becoming a flood of euphoria. ‘Make it a treble, I’ve just heard that Al’s leaving us.’
But Trenchard was clearly in a hurry. ‘Listen, Tom, just popped by on my way to XMG. The Regiment have pulled in a Provo unit crossing the border. One of them was that name I gave you. Hughie Dougan. Probably responsible for that thing you’ve just defused. Thought you’d like to know.’
The news was almost uncanny. The man who had just tried to kill him was already sitting in a cell at Crossmaglen while he had been dismantling the device. ‘I’ll see if I can’t save you a nice set of fingerprints for the trial.’
As Trenchard drove away, Harrison joined Corporal Marsh to be helped in the removal of his bombsuit.
‘By the way, Tom,’ the SATO said. ‘I’ve just had the results of the Pre-Ops course. Three got by on a seventy-five per cent pass, so I can relieve you at the end of the week. How would that suit?’
The perfect end to a perfect task. That Friday — ten years earlier — just couldn’t come damn quick enough.
1
‘Don’t kiss him.’
The rusted orange Datsun slowed at the junction before (turning right out of Harry’s Road towards the Maze Prison set in rural isolation on the outskirts of Hillsborough in the province of Northern Ireland.
‘I don’t understand,’ Caitlin Dougan murmured.
‘You don’t have to,’ her older sister Clodagh replied evenly, changing gear. ‘It’s what our DA wants.’
Caitlin stared out of the passenger window, glimpsing the green steel security fence through the roadside shrubbery.
She was apprehensive, confused and hurt. In all her nineteen years she had never once been permitted to visit her father, who had first been sent down three months before she was born.
The first time she saw him was when he was released in 1983. She was nine years old and they had been strangers. Even now she remembered vividly how she had pulled away as he tried to hug her to him. The hurt and the tears in his eyes.
And then he was gone again, doing a runner to the south and resuming his work for the Provies. Just six months later he was rearrested and sentenced for a further nine years. Again he refused to let her visit.
It had been his wish apparently, but she had never understood why. To her it seemed the only real proof of his existence were the faded black-and-white prints in the family album. A tall, handsome young man with black hair and a charming smile. Not the middle-aged man, the stranger who had hugged her. As she grew up she felt increasingly rejected by his continued refusal to allow her to visit. At one stage she even denied that he was her father to her school friends, only to become a laughing stock because they all knew the truth.
Their parents had told them that Caitlin’s father was a feted freedom fighter of the Provisional IRA in its struggle against the British occupation. A local hero whose exploits had entered the boozy ballads sung in the pubs and clubs of west Belfast. Hughie Dougan was a champion of the cause, and she was the daughter he had never wanted to see.
She sighed. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Clodagh half smiled, applying the brakes as they approached the security ramp in the road. ‘Everything our da says and does makes sense. Hasn’t it been his way of protecting you all these years?’
‘That’s easy for you to say. You’re the one he sees, the one he’s always seen. You’re the one he cares about.’
Clodagh glanced sideways. How easy it was to forget that her baby sister was ten years her junior. So young and naive, having been sent away to the quiet backwater town of Magherafelt to stay with relatives after their mother died, educated at the Rainey Endowed with its tradition of religious integration. Caitlin Dougan was an innocent, having been allowed to grow up relatively unaffected and untainted by the turmoil of the troubles just as her father had intended.
‘Believe me, Da loves you,’ she reassured. ‘Sure didn’t he send you a card every birthday and Christmas.’
‘But no letters.’
‘Think on, Cait. What could he write to you about? Life at the Kesh?’
Her younger sister stared straight ahead, still sullen. ‘And now he doesn’t want me to kiss him.’
‘Either of us, not just you. He has his reasons.’ She gestured forward to the video cameras poised on gantries above the road by the entrance of the prison. ‘Remember, Cait, the bastards are always watching.’
She signalled, slowed and pulled into the small lay-by in front of the gates. ‘One more thing, wee sister, don’t tell him about that. Not yet.’
Caitlin glanced down at her seat belt where it emphasised the slight swell of her belly. Three months gone and fathered by a good-looking young Protestant lad who was a reservist in the Royal Irish Regiment, formerly the UDR. ‘You think our da will be mad at me?’
Clodagh smiled uncertainly. ‘Just give him a little time, eh?’
The gates swung open to admit them to the car park that was already full with families waiting to collect relatives due for release. Despite the oppressive presence of the razor-wired security fence and the watch-towers, there was almost a carnival atmosphere amongst those who waited. Much banter and jokes with strangers. For most it was a day of optimism, of a new start and better things to come.
Caitlin watched her sister pace beside their car, hands clasped behind the neat waist of her beige linen business suit as she kicked gently at the dust with the points of her high-heeled shoes. How smart and self-assured Clodagh looked, she thought. A university graduate like herself and now a research scientist with one of Ulster’s leading manufacturers of electronic components. A career that she too had hoped to follow before the news of the baby. Still, not bad for two girls from the Catholic ghettos of the Lower Falls.
He was the last to come out through the security turnstile gate.
Caitlin saw immediately that it wasn’t her father. A tall, thin man of about the right age, but his shoulders were stooped and his curling grey hair had receded to show the polished skin of his crown. The grey suit was crumpled, limp with age and sported wide lapels that had been all the fashion in the 1970s.,His shirt was frayed at the open collar and he clutched a pathetic leather suitcase of the type that had been issued to servicemen in the Second World War.
The man paused to look around at the unfamiliar surroundings, momentarily closing his eyes. He drew a deep, deep breath.
‘Da,’ Clodagh said.
The eyes opened again and Caitlin could see how dark and alert they were beneath the black beetle brows that were now feathered with silver. She suppressed the small gasp of recognition in her throat. His eyes were the only clue, the only feature she could recognise from the family snaps and her memory of ten years before.
He dropped the case by his feet and reached forward with arms outstretched to embrace her sister. But, as his lips went to brush her cheek, Clodagh stepped back suddenly as though irritated by the display of emotion.
Caitlin thought she caught the quick, knowing wink in her father’s eye before his attention turned to her.
‘Cait.’ His voice was thick.