‘Tip-off about what, a family party?’
His men bustled past, shouldering their way through the people gathered at the front door. ‘Hidden arms and explosives.’
‘This is harassment.’
‘This is crime-prevention,’ the officer retorted.
An army patrol vehicle had now pulled up at the end of the street to provide any backup that might be required. High above, almost invisible in the cloud, an observation helicopter hovered.
‘You know my da got out today, don’t you?’
The sergeant’s face was deadpan. ‘Someone might have mentioned it. So this will be a good opportunity to pay my respects.’ He turned abruptly and followed his men inside.
Within minutes the gathering had broken up, the guests returning to their homes.
Hugh Dougan appeared at the door with Caitlin, shielding his eyes against the sun that was breaking through the cloud to gild the surrounding hills.
He found himself standing next to Killy Tierney. In a low voice he said: ‘One day the movement will need me. And when that day comes, I’ll be waiting for the call.’
Tierney just smiled, polite.
‘Time to be going,’ Clodagh said.
He glanced back through the window at the RUC policemen riffling through the cupboards and drawers of Uncle Tommy’s furniture.
Eighteen years and nothing had changed. Absolutely nothing.
‘I can never forgive you for what you did, Da. Never!’ Clodagh’s voice rose above the hushed conversation in the crowded dining room of the Sligo guesthouse. Heads turned, mouths gaped. Cutlery poised above the plates of meat and two veg.
Caitlin could not believe her ears, had no idea her sister felt this way.
‘Your actions brought shame on our family,’ Clodagh continued, her words intense with suppressed anger. ‘It killed our ma and destroyed our lives, ruined Cait’s and my childhood! Damn you and your cause, I want no part of it. None, do you hear!’ She shoved back her chair and stood up while her father just looked at her, stunned, and said nothing. ‘We came here out of a sense of duty to you, but God only knows why! There’s nothing left between us. Nothing. You destroyed it all!’
She threw down her napkin, turned on her heel and stalked from the dining room.
Slowly, very slowly, a murmur of whispered conversation rose to fill the shocked vacuum of silence, speculation and rumour abounding amongst their fellow diners.
Even now, as Caitlin lay on her bed, she could hardly believe what had happened earlier that evening. Could not believe that Clodagh had stormed out and taken their car, accelerating away angrily up the gravel drive. It was late when her sister returned, almost two when Caitlin heard the door slam. Not that her father would have known, not after the drink he had consumed that night, morose and silent in the guesthouse bar.
Still Caitlin could not sleep. The luminous hands of her watch told her it was now four o’clock and outside she could hear the first birds heralding the pre-dawn light.
Climbing out of the unfamiliar bed, she pulled on her dressing gown and drew aside the curtain. Below her she could see the dark figure swaggering towards the orange Datsun, still parked where Clodagh had left it on her return.
‘Da!’ she cried, but he could not hear and she could only watch helplessly as the engine started and the car weaved drunkenly up ‘the drive and away.
She was still awake half-an-hour later when she heard the dull distant thud of the explosion.
Although it was late afternoon the blackened wreckage was still smouldering when the Irish Special Branch detective took his visitor from Belfast to the scene of the accident.
‘Just took the bend too fast,’ the detective explained. ‘It’s steep, you see. Went smack into the dry-stone wall. One hell of an explosion.’
‘A fitting way for him to go,’ Don Trenchard said.
‘Hugh Dougan — yes, I gather he’d only been out of prison a week. As soon as we realised who he was we thought your people would like to be informed. Some of us really do believe in cross-border cooperation, you know.’
‘We’re grateful for that.’ He watched the crane of the recovery vehicle begin to lift the wreckage. ‘And you say his daughters have identified the body?’
A sombre nod of the head. ‘Not that there was much to identify. At least there was a signet and a wedding ring.’ He held out his palm, in it a clear plastic bag containing a plain gold band and a ring featuring the interlaced Celtic birds from the Book of Kells. ‘If it was suicide, he made a good job of it.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Too much booze, an accident, suicide, sure who knows? Apparently there was a terrible Holy Mother of a row with the daughters last night — a lot of witnesses at the guesthouse. They say the oldest daughter virtually disowned him.’
Trenchard sniffed the air. Despite the thin summer drizzle that was beginning to fall, he could still detect the cloying sweet odour of human remains amid the more pungent stench of burnt rubber and fabric. He was all too familiar with the smell in the aftermath of past bombings back in the north.
He said coldly: ‘Then the murdering bastard will be no great loss to anyone.’
It was six months later, on a chill and damp December morning, that the body of Sean Shevlin was fished out of the River liffey in Dublin from under O’Connell Bridge.
The fifty-two-year-old senior civil servant had been missing for three days. When he did not arrive home on the first night of his disappearance his wife was not unduly concerned. Shevlin had been working exceptionally long hours for several months, evidently involved in a series of high-powered meetings at Leinster House, about which he had told her little. But then he had always prided himself on his discretion and ability to keep the secrets of high office to himself.
She had become used to dinners spoiled in the oven, his late evening phone calls apologising for conferences that had overrun. Sometimes, to her surprise, he would be calling from another town or city, or a country house miles off the beaten track. Sometimes from another country, from Belfast, Liverpool or London.
She was mildly irritated that first night when the telephone didn’t ring as she expected. But she only began to sense alarm the next morning when his office rang asking where he was. Then at noon a plain-clothes officer of the Garda arrived at her front door.
Sean Shevlin’s car had been found abandoned in the car park of the Royal Dublin Golf Course on North Bull Island. According to witnesses, her husband had last been seen at lunch time the previous day talking to three unknown men outside the clubhouse; he had left with them in their car.
There was no mention of his disappearance in the newspapers or on television. For that his wife was grateful, but she considered it mildly unusual because he was an important and well-known establishment figure.
When his corpse was retrieved, the same officer returned to break the sad news with carefully chosen words of sympathy. Her husband had apparently committed suicide; he had lately been under great pressure of work. Eventually the coroner would confirm the cause of death. But no mention was made of how Sean Shevlin had managed to shoot himself in the back of his head, or why he should have torn out his own toenails before he did so.
‘As the detective left the grieving widow, three men drove north out of Dublin towards County Leitrim. They were members of the All Ireland Philately Society which met irregularly at different venues around the country to exchange rare stamps. This day they were to meet in the back room of a run-down motel.
Two members had already arrived, made a discreet security check of the surrounding countryside and electronically swept the bare and cheerless meeting room for listening devices. They were armed with automatic pistols and only opened the door on hearing the password ‘Penny Black’.