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I gave the British 23 Poolbeg Street. I met Waldner at the cemetery. He listened to me with his back to the wall, his eyes on the graves. He had a bunch of flowers that he asked me to put on Henry Joy McCracken’s grave.

Number 23 was an occasional hiding place, almost a ruin, used to store arms and money. Four months previously, we had cleaned it out. The street was too busy, the house too exposed. Kids were getting in through a broken window and smoking on the sly. Two of our lads intervened one evening just as a youth was searching the chimney flue. He had found a gun and some ammunition. He dropped his load and scarpered.

Waldner was looking at me. He was wearing a smile I didn’t care for.

—Number 23 Poolbeg Street?

I said yes. Poolbeg, at the bottom of the Falls Road. He nodded, recognizing it. He took me by the arm. We walked across the graves, like two old companions. He told me the story of Damian Bray, a fifteen-year-old who smoked hash in the same neighbourhood, and sold it as well, to make some pocket money. He and two older friends would get the stuff from Dublin, then play leapfrog over the border with their little bars sewn into their parkas.

—Oh, we’re not talking much, you know. Eight ounces here, a pound there. It could be useful.

He stopped in front of McCracken’s grave. He handed me the bouquet.

—One day, we arrested Bray. He was so scared he vomited.

I put the flowers down, one knee on the ground.

—A very decent family, the Brays. Father in Long Kesh, brother in the IRA. True Republicans, except for him. He was one of those kids who’d write ‘IRA = Peelers’ on walls, you know the type?

I knew.

—So we gave him an ultimatum. We didn’t give a damn about his toking. Likewise his petty trafficking. But we told him that if he wanted to leave the interrogation uncharged, he’d have to give us something in exchange. A little like you, you see?

The agent had started his slow walk again.

—And you know what? He slipped us an address. I’m sure you know the one.

I kept quiet.

—He’d been looking for a corner to stash his gear and he’d come across a gun. The IRA had caught him by surprise and he’d run away. It’s mad how much these brats hate you lot!

—What are telling me here?

—I’m telling you that by taking the law into its own hands in the ghettos, the IRA has made itself solid enemies of the louts. With us they get a judge, with you it’s a bullet in the kneecap. So, in fact, the Brits are the lesser evil for them.

—Why are you telling me all this?

—Why? Because after the young lad’s confessions, we placed Number 23 under surveillance, Tyrone. We saw your guys empty it out several months ago. And since then, there’s nothing there. Nothing. A desert.

He stopped beside the gate.

—You wouldn’t by any chance be taking the mickey out of us?

—Twenty-three was never under surveillance. You’re lying. Nobody has been arrested!

—Who would we arrest? The three Fianna and the poor fucker who did the cleaning? We want to hit the IRA, not make little heroes for you on the cheap!

He slid an envelope into my pocket. I didn’t protest.

—Later, Meehan. Call when you want.

He took a few steps, then turned around.

—By the way, Mickey talked. And you know what? He gave us the name of the next screw on the list, the location of the operation, everything.

He was watching me.

—And also ... I’m sorry, but he also gave us your name. And that of your bomb-maker. You know? The one who shouldn’t have been there during your meeting.

The rain started to wash the sky. He lifted his collar.

—In any case, you were right to make him leave. You have to make people follow the rules, that’s the boss’s job.

Martin Hurson died on 13 July 1981, aged twenty-five, after forty-six days of hunger striking. Kevin Lynch went on 1 August, also aged twenty-five, on his seventy-first day. And Kieran Doherty went the next day, at twenty-six, on his seventy-third day of fasting.

As for Frank ‘Mickey’ Devlin, he was tortured for five days in the Castlereagh detention centre. He was deprived of sleep and made to stand naked for hours facing the wall, arms outstretched. He was beaten, electrocuted, choked, burned with cigarettes and smothered with damp cloths. Between interrogations he was thrown blindfolded into a soundproofed room. Those who have been subjected to sensory isolation say that even their cries were muted. Europe had described these treatments as ‘inhumane and degrading’. Waldner didn’t give a damn. In his view it was necessary to make the Republicans own up. Before another shot was fired, before another bomb exploded, before another Popeye should die somewhere in the city.

Did I understand?

—Imagine I’m your prisoner, Meehan. Your best friend is in our hands. Our men want to hit him. I know where and when. What do you do with me?

I understood.

The ghetto was distraught over Mickey’s arrest. His wife came to visit Sheila. They were both crying. I made them tea and left.

—Imprisoned is better than dead, I murmured to my wife when I came back.

I didn’t like the look she gave me. She was searching for the signs that I’d been drinking, but I hadn’t. Just two pints, in a bar that wasn’t my local. I didn’t want to have to face the despondency and the sorrow.

The British had arrested Mickey on 3 August after a punishment he had meted out to a rapist. The lad was a habitual offender who had been barred from the Divis Flats area for months. He had attacked a woman on her way home, hit her in the face and tried to drag her into the bushes. He was drunk, stumbling. She escaped and ran to the Sinn Féin office to lodge a complaint and give a description of her assailant.

The IRA had descended on his parents’ place during the night. He had secretly gone back to live in their house. He was sleeping off his beer, stretched out fully clothed on his childhood bed. Our men were wearing balaclavas. The mother intervened, shouting; the father took up a chair to defend his son.

—Don’t touch the parents! Mickey had ordered.

Two of our guys dragged the delinquent down the stairs. I was standing well back in the street. I wasn’t in charge of the operation. I didn’t like these punishments. We were an army, not the law. Our role was to chase out the British, not to give louts a hiding. But our people demanded safety on our streets.

Mickey was waiting at the door with two others. The mother pounced on him and lifted his mask. He pushed her off and she fell to the ground, pointing her finger.

—It’s Frank Devlin! I know you, Frank Devlin!

She was screeching.

Lights were being switched on all over the place. The guy was brought in a car to the little square beside his victim’s street. He tried to defend himself. Mickey smacked him violently in the temple with the butt of his gun. He tied him to a lamp post by the neck and the belly, his chest bare. A woman arrived, running, handed a sign that read ‘Rapist’ to one of our guys and then left as quickly as she’d come. The IRA hung the sign around his neck. His chest was smeared with cold tar. He seemed to be unconscious, his head dangling back. There were shadows at the windows, ghosts on the footpath, silhouettes on the steps of open doorways.

—Our country is at war! roared Mickey so he’d be heard by the street.

An
óglach
cocked his gun. The crack of metal in the silence. On the first floor of a house, a man put his fingers in his ears.

—We will not tolerate any attack against our community. Nor any violence against the women who are part of it!

The soldier shot twice. Not in the knees, but in the thighs. We had decided that the convicted man would walk again. He let out a long cry. His head fell back down.

—IRA! IRA! chanted a distant voice.

A combatant collected the burning cartridges with gloved hands and we withdrew.

The rapist’s parents were detested in the community. The postman would purposefully forget them, their bottle of milk would be smashed against their door in the mornings. The bars would refuse to serve the father, the bingo players would leave the mother sitting by herself at a table. They were the bad family of the street. They no longer had anything to lose. So they lodged a complaint with the RUC. And they gave them Mickey.

The mood of the city was black and forlorn as a raven. The sky, the expressions, everything smacked of sadness. Sadness for Mickey, for his wife. And I was sad, too. For the first time, I was disgusted to feel the effects of the practised British duplicity. Wherever I went, the conversations, the faces and the silences brought home the horror of Mickey’s torture over and over. But also, besides all that, the disappointing fact that Mickey hadn’t toughed it out. The British had let it be known that he’d talked. Their press had a field day with it. Waldner was protecting me. The handler was protecting me. They had diverted suspicion. Frank Devlin was arrested one month after I pronounced his name. An eternity. I hadn’t betrayed. I was exhausted. I treated myself to a respite. A last illusion of innocence.

In the third envelope, received on 5 August, were two plane tickets to Paris and an advance of £350 to pay for my first trip. I was to meet ‘Honoré’ at the riverboat wharf. I’d only seen him once, during that first visit to France with Sheila and the handlers playing the couple. He was a true Englishman, not even a gruff Protestant from our parts. He looked at me the way you look at a traitor. He didn’t shake my hand. He stayed the time it took to drink a beer, his eyes on my pink triangle. He wasn’t any more cordial with the MI5 agent or the RUC man. He was young, thirty-five at most. All he knew of Belfast was from flying over the city in a helicopter. He observed me, studied me. He told me he was interested in Sinn Féin, not the IRA. Our party, not our army. With his chin, he nodded at the other two, saying that bombs were their department.