Controlled Explosions (4 page)

God, get a grip, Paula
. He was only being nice.

She was packing her files and pencil case for the exam when she felt something in the bottom of her school bag, a hard lump. It was cold against her fingers as she pulled it out, held it up in the morning light of her bedroom.

It was gold-coloured, shiny, heavy, pointing in at the end. It looked like …

‘Dad?’ She was standing in the kitchen, holding the thing hidden in her hand. The feel of it seemed to leach into her, the coldness of metal and hard stares.

‘Aye?’ He was rushing about like every morning, late, trying to put the washing on and iron shirts and find a tie and make her eat breakfast.

‘There’s a girl at school.’ She didn’t mention the bullet. She thought that’s what it was, anyway. Someone had put a bullet in her school bag. It made her heart race, a sick feeling in her stomach.

‘Aye?’ PJ was trying to read the instructions on the washing machine. Nearly five years since her mother had gone, and he still hadn’t figured out how to wash jumpers so that they didn’t shrink. He was wearing his work suit, the tie thrown back over his shoulder. She wondered again how he’d cope when she went to university – and how to tell him the only places she’d looked at were in England. Not Belfast, like all her friends. Just … away.

‘She’s been saying things.’

‘Um-hum?’ His head was in the fridge now. ‘Pet, would you get milk on your way home? I’m swamped, we’re up to our eyeballs at the station.’

Parade season was always busy, and she knew they’d had a problem with someone bombing the routes of ones that were allowed ahead. ‘I’ve my Sociology mock today.’

‘Oh right so. We should have something nice for dinner …’ She could see the wheels of his brain turning. ‘Or I could take you out at the weekend when you’re all finished … eh …’ She could see he was about to say they’d invite Pat, since PJ would have no idea where to go to eat in the town, and then she’d have to sit there with Aidan when maybe that same night they’d be at the disco and …

‘I’ll get something in the shops,’ she said quickly.

‘OK, pet,’ he said gratefully. ‘Take the cash out of my wallet there. What were you saying before then? Some girl giving you grief?’ he asked, shutting the fridge door.

She could feel the bullet in her hand behind her back, heavy as bad news. ‘Nothing, Dad. It’s OK.’

Bob made it into the station just in time that morning. Johnson was in the incident room, which was now empty. He looked at his watch pointedly. ‘The car’s out back. You better get your skates on, the lads are ready to go.’

‘Sorry, sir.’ It was still strange to call him that, the boy with the nervous swallow who’d started alongside Bob thirty years ago. ‘There was an emergency at home.’

‘This whole summer’s an emergency.’ Johnson looked out the windows. ‘Whole bloody town’s a mess. Whole bloody country.’

‘Alec …’ He didn’t know he was going to ask it until he did. ‘All this talk of a list.’

Johnson didn’t turn around. ‘You shouldn’t listen to talk, Sergeant.’

‘It’s just I need to know what will happen. I’ve Ian and Linda to think of. Things … things are not too good.’

A pause. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Sergeant. You should of course always say if family matters are likely to impede you in the performance of your duties.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Because this is a major operation and we’re very short-handed, and I’m sure DC Maguire would jump at the chance to lead it by himself.’

‘There’s no need for that.’ Bob matched the same official tone. As if they’d never been friends. As if he hadn’t come across Alec sobbing in the kit room on the day they’d cleaned Robinson’s remains off the station windows. ‘I’m ready now.’

‘Good. You should get a move on then.’

‘Yes. Sir.’

The question had not been answered, Bob noted. Though perhaps that was a kind of answer in itself.

‘Yo, P!’ Saoirse was bearing down on her across the school lobby. She was red-faced from the heat, and she’d tied her jumper round her waist and rolled up the sleeves of her pink school shirt. Her glasses were smudgy and her dark hair falling out of its ponytail. ‘P! Hold up!’

Paula stopped walking. ‘Hiya.’

‘Right, tell me
everything
.’

‘I told you on the phone.’ The Aidan stuff from yesterday didn’t feel so exciting now she’d found that bullet. It seemed to have lodged itself in her stomach, hard and cold.

‘Tell me again! This is big, big news! He asked you out?’

‘Well, sort of. Not really. He said he’d maybe see me in Magnum’s.’

‘Right, so we have to go. I mean,
duh
.’

‘Would we get in, though?’

‘We can try. As long as you’ve your provisional. I’ll see if Jennifer and that lot want to go too. Mammy thinks she’s a good influence – she’s no idea they all smoke out the back every lunchtime.’

‘OK.’

‘What’s up?’ Saoirse stared at Paula in bafflement – the sun was out, it was the last week of school before the summer holidays, and a cute boy had as good as declared his love for her. What was there to be worried about? ‘You’re not upset about Bitchface Catriona? She’s not even in today. Carmel told me she didn’t show up for her English mock. She’s gonna get kicked out, I reckon.’

‘I know. It’s OK. I’ve got Sociology now, anyway, I better go.’

‘OK. Do you want my lucky pen?’

‘No, I’m grand, thanks.’

‘Good luck. Mammy’s collecting me, I have to go to the optician’s. I’ll ask her can I go out Saturday. You can stay at mine. This is going to be soooo cool!’

‘Yeah. Bye.’

Paula watched her friend run out to her mum’s old Toyota, flapping with her blazer and bag and violin case, off home to her nice family. There was no way she could understand any of this. Sometimes Paula felt like she was on a little island, where she could hear and see her friends doing normal teenage stuff, fancying boys and listening to Steps and getting their driving licences, while she was stuck there. She swallowed, hard, but the lump would not go away.

‘That it? The white one?’

‘Aye.’ It had to be, there was nothing else for miles. Bob had a bad feeling, itching in the middle of his shoulder blades. It was too quiet out here. Only the fields, stretching on either side of the narrow country road. There was grass down the middle of it and a stink of silage in the air, rotting and sweet. Sometimes you’d hear a bellow from a cow, that was it. The car bumped over the potholes, drawing slowly up to the farmhouse, rattling over the cattle grid and up the long concrete driveway. Plenty of time for whoever was there to see them coming.

PJ was shifting uneasily in his car seat, his hand clasped on his gun. He was certain the local IRA had taken his wife away, probably killed her, and here they were at the farm of one of the worst of them, their former chief bomb maker. Red Hugh. Bob was trying not to think about the man’s mad eyes. He was locked up in the Maze, he wasn’t here. If Bob was honest with himself, deep down inside he was glad to have PJ at his side again, the only person he ever really thought of as his partner. They’d worked well together, despite all their differences. Until what happened.

‘Everyone ready?’ They hadn’t taken the riot squad – every officer with extreme situation training was out on the streets, trying to stop the town from burning to the ground. This was just one farmhouse, white paint peeling from its walls, no curtains in the windows, a collection of muddy outbuildings. There was no sign of any livestock. So it was just Bob, PJ, and a uniformed officer, no more than twenty-five. Bob didn’t know all their names any more. He hadn’t even the heart to ask. Everything was changing. ‘As far as we know it’s just Red Hugh’s missus and two weans here. So go easy. Might be nothing to find.’ He’d seen PJ’s hand twitch to his gun. The air felt heavy and charged. Bob had been in the RUC long enough to know that this was the kind of day when things went wrong.

They parked in the front yard. The stink of silage was stronger here; it seemed to lie low and pressing over the house. Bob shielded his eyes. The light was dazzling. He motioned to the officer to get in position on the other side of the door and moved in front of PJ, who was at his shoulder, itching to get in. Bob was the sergeant; it was his job to lead. He knocked at the peeling door. ‘Open up! RUC.’

Not for much longer. The RUC wouldn’t be anything. A footnote in a bloody history.

No answer. A gate swung in some unfelt breeze, creaking.

‘We should—’ PJ was speaking when there was a commotion from the back of the house. A door slammed. Then the officer was running, and Bob and PJ followed, drawing their weapons. Bob wondered if that would change too. If, like other police forces in the UK, they’d have to fight criminals and murderers with only rubber truncheons as defence. His gun in his hand felt cool despite the heat, its weight keeping him anchored.

At the back of the farm a steep hill sloped down to a shed. Someone was running away from them, a figure disappearing in a blur of heat haze. ‘Stop!’ PJ was shouting. ‘You there! Come back here! Stop!’ It should have been Bob shouting. He was the one in charge. But he couldn’t seem to move.

The young officer had separated off already, going down the side of the hill towards the farm buildings there. ‘Sir!’ He shouted up from the open door of the nearest shed – its paint was red, peeling off in spots like the skin of a burn victim. Like a woman Bob had helped after a fire bomb once. When was that? 1973? The IRA again.

‘Sir? Sir!’

Bob was rooted to the spot. There was the constable at the shed door, going inside, seeing what was there. There was the person running away – it looked like a man. There was PJ following, running towards him as he ran away. The three of them and Bob standing on the hill, still not moving.

‘Sir! You need to see this!’ The constable was out of the shed again, waving his arms. Bob stood there for a minute more. The sun was blinding on the barn roof.
Everything was burning.

He walked down the hill. Carefully, didn’t want to fall. Time seemed to have slowed. One, two, three …

‘
Sir!
’

It was so hot. It was never hot like this in Northern Ireland. The kind of day to go to the beach, drive around in a convertible car with the top down, jump into swimming pools. Shame she lived in Ballyterrin, not California. Paula regretted this intensely. Instead she had to spend the afternoon in the gym with its smell of rubber mats and sweat, doing her Sociology paper. Afterwards, rather than getting the bus home, she walked across town, feeling the heat beat down on her. She carried her blazer over her bag, the sleeves of her shirt rolled up. She stopped in a shop and bought an ice-pop, cola flavour, sucking up the cold sweetness, squeezing the tube then letting the melted bit at the bottom run into her mouth. Before she got to the boys’ school she stopped again and sprayed herself with Impulse O2, hoping it would cover the sweat that was running down between her shoulders and under her bra. She waited on the wall outside, aware of the boys passing, loud and shoving each other, throwing bits of paper, their eyes crawling over her. She pretended to read
Mansfield Park
, which she was doing for her English A-level.

‘It’s not a library!’ one boy shouted. Laughing. She ignored him.

Aidan came out last, on his own. A fag already in his mouth, sleeves up, tie loose, hair a mess. He stopped in front of her, and she could see he was aware of the other boys looking, all of them seeing her and seeing him stop to talk to her. ‘You’re brave.’

She put the book away, slowly. ‘You said if something happened. You said to get you here.’

‘Aye?’

‘It happened. There was something in my bag when I got home.’

‘What’s that?’ He looked worried, as if she might show him a tampon or something. She’d almost do it, for the laugh. Except she couldn’t imagine laughing right now.

The bullet was in the pocket of her bag, where her dad would be sure never to look in a million years. Aidan weighed it in his hand. ‘Four calibre.’

‘Is it?’

He laughed. ‘I haven’t a baldy, Maguire.’

Maguire. He’d never called her that before. She liked it. ‘I think maybe Catriona … I think it was her. It wasn’t there before.’

‘Come on,’ he said, shrugging his bag over his shoulder. The fag dangled from his lip, and she wondered how it didn’t fall. ‘I’ll walk you home in case they’re there.’

The ground was dry under his feet and Bob was not as fit as he’d been ten years ago, five years ago. He was panting when he reached the door of the shed; could already smell the place, something else squirming under the farmyard stink of silage and animals.

Inside was too much to look at all at once. A bench with papers all over it, wires, what looked like little clocks. Bags of Semtex, crumbling like white cheese. Along one back wall, a chest freezer. The smell was coming from there.

The constable looked at Bob for a nod. He closed his eyes. ‘Open it, son.’

The young officer wrenched open the lid and the smell rolled out, so thick you could almost see it in the air. An evil yellow smell. ‘Jesus,’ said the officer. Bob said nothing. He took a step towards it, one more. He looked at what was inside. The officer had gone pale. ‘What’ll we do?’

‘Follow procedure, Constable. Just follow procedure.’

Bob went outside. His partner, ex-partner, had appeared at the brow of the hill, still running, shouting, ‘Lost him. He’s only a wean. Not even twenty, I’d say. He’ll be back.’

Bob called up to him. ‘DC Maguire. Could you radio the station and say we’ve found remains?’

PJ froze on the hill. His shadow lengthened out in front of him. ‘There’s a body?’

Too late, Bob realised his mistake.

PJ was moving down. ‘How old is it? How old a body?’

‘Not long,’ shouted the officer from inside the shed, his voice strained. ‘There’s flies … God – she’s … she’s rotting.’

‘She?’ said PJ.

If it hadn’t been so hot, if the sun wasn’t dazzling in his eyes, Bob might have been faster to stop him. ‘DC Maguire … PJ –
no
…’

Too late. Always too late. His partner – his ex-partner – was running down the hill, his legs windmilling under him on the parched earth.