Rosaleen cried out, and Daniel closed in on the man holding the revolver, grabbing for it with one hand and, in the struggle, tearing off the hood, revealing Green. Daniel shoved him away, still trying to wrench the weapon from Green's grasp, but another man had run around the van and grabbed him from behind.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Daniel shouted as he struggled, but Green, laughing madly, cried, "I'll tell you what we're doing, you fugger. We're Red Hand Commandos, and we're going to teach you and that Fenian bitch some manners."
Behind him, Green struggled to force Rosaleen into the back of the van, and Daniel heard it and her cry of despair, and then Green reversed his grip on the gun and struck Daniel a heavy blow across the side of the head, and that was the end of it.
Daniel came to in subdued darkness, his head throbbing and matted with blood, and discovered that he was in the back of the van, street light filtering in from the windscreen. He tried to sit up and found that his wrists had been tied in front of him with some rough cord. Raising his hands, he could see that the knot was large and had obviously been done in a hurry. He had no difficulty in getting his teeth into it and was free in a couple of minutes.
Heavy rain drummed on the roof, and he slid to the rear and pushed open the doors with his feet, aware of the van's tool kit to one side. He opened it and found a tire iron. He hefted it in his hand for a moment, then got out.
He was in a cobbled courtyard, a wide gate behind him standing open, a streetlight beyond showing old and towering warehouses. He turned and found a four-story building. A light over a large painted sign revealed "Bagley Ironworks, White Lane, Belfast." The whole place looked old and decrepit, but there was a dim light inside, and he went up some stone steps and pushed the door open.
There were workbenches, a jumble of machinery, hoists hanging from above, rain drifting in, and a woman crying, then begging and pleading. He stood there frozen. Then she screamed, and somebody shouted, "Be quiet, you bitch," and there was the sound of a heavy blow.
As he started upstairs, the tire iron ready in his hand, he heard a sudden, desperate cry. "No, please, not that."
"Shut your gob" was followed by sustained blows, and a voice saying, "Stop it, you bugger, you'll kill her."
Daniel reached the top of the stairs and found the door half open. Green was sitting at a table, an open whiskey bottle beside him, fiddling with the Smith amp; Wesson. A door was open behind him, and suddenly it seemed very quiet.
A voice said, "Jesus, you fool, you have killed her."
Green turned to the open door. Daniel lurched forward and smashed him across the skull with the tire iron, then picked up the revolver just as Graham appeared in the doorway and shot him in the heart at point-blank range. As Graham was hurled backwards, Daniel took two quick paces forward and shot the next man he saw in the back of the head as the man started to turn.
The fourth man was old and wizened and shaking in terror. "For pity's sake, don't, I never laid a finger on her."
"Then why's your belt undone and your fly open, you lying bastard?" Daniel stepped close and put a bullet between the old man's eyes.
The sight of Rosaleen now was something that would stay with him always and change his life forever, make him a different man, for dead she was, beyond any doubt, and lying on what was presumably some janitor's bed. He found an old rug to cover her broken and defiled body.
He went back into the other room and he heard a moan. Green was stirring, and, almost without thinking about it, Daniel shot him in the head. He picked up the open bottle of whiskey, raised it, swallowed some down, and emptied the rest of it over Green's corpse.
"You Prod bastard, Green," he said. "Well, I'm a Prod bastard, too."
Looking around, he realized the place must have been an office of sorts in its day. There was a wall phone by the far door, and he went and tried it and, by some miracle, it still worked, so he did the obvious thing and called Liam.
Liam called back surprisingly quickly, for once. "Now then, Daniel, how are things going with you and Rosaleen?"
And Daniel told him.
He was sitting at the table, clutching the revolver, the blood oozing from the side of his skull, when Liam arrived almost an hour later, patted Daniel on the shoulder, and went straight into the janitor's room. When he came out, the look on his face was terrible to see.
There were half a dozen hard-looking men with him and two paramedics in green. Liam kicked Green's corpse, and said, "Get rid of this rubbish and his pals. Round the back in the river will do." He eased the gun from Daniel's grip. "I'll have that now, son."
"I couldn't save her, Liam."
"You did your best. I'd say four kills is a remarkable number for a beginner."
"And you're an expert, so you would know?"
"That's right, cousin. I've been with the Provisional IRA since the beginning. Red Hand Commandos are Protestants closely linked to the UVF. We'll make them pay."
"Nobody can make them pay for what they did to her."
"I know, son, I know." Behind him, two men brought Rosaleen out in a black body bag, supervised by a paramedic.
"What is this?" Daniel asked.
"We have an ambulance below. The police don't stop ambulances at night. We're going to take you to a convent down in the country, where the nuns are a nursing order and good friends of ours."
The other paramedic came forward and examined his head. "That's not good at all. We've got to do something about that and fast." He called to a couple of men. "Just take him down."
Which was really the end of it, because although Daniel remembered being on a stretcher in the ambulance across from the black bag, he couldn't recall a single thing about the journey afterwards.
St. Mary's Priory, it was called, and the Mother Superior, a Sister Bridget Blaney, was a qualified surgeon, for they were Little Sisters of Pity, a nursing order whose help was there for all who needed it, and, in troubled times, that was bound to include the IRA.
Coming to his senses, Daniel found himself coming out of an anesthetic in a recovery room. Sister Bridget herself, still wearing scrubs over her habit, was smiling gently, Liam anxious behind her.
"You'll be fine, Daniel," she said. "The faintest of cracks on the side of your forehead. Fifteen stitches will give you an interesting scar, but what you need is a solid week's rest in bed. Liam has told me of the circumstances here."
"Everything?" Daniel said weakly. "Rosaleen?"
"God rest that child's soul, for I knew her well. She is in heaven now, and I shall pray for her, and so must you."
He smiled weakly. "I'm not baptized in the faith, Sister, my father wouldn't have it, but my mother is a good Catholic and a matron at a hospital in Leeds."
"Well, I'm sure she mentions you in her daily prayers, and I will, too."
"Even though I'm a Protestant?"
"Even that," she said cheerfully. "But you must rest now, and Liam has to leave to take Rosaleen home to Crossmaglen and her family, so say your good-byes."
She went out, and Liam said, "Now, do as she says and take it easy. I'll be back."
Daniel said, "Just tell me one thing. You and Provos…"
"What about it?"
"You're not just another volunteer, you're bigger fish than that?"
Liam took his right hand and held it tight. "After what you did for my beloved sister, I count you closer than any brother. No secrets between us ever, so, yes, I am."
Daniel nodded weakly. "I understand Eamon de Valera's father was Spanish, and it was his mother who was Irish. It's the same for me, if you think of it, except my father was Yorkshire."