A Secret Worth Killing For. Simon Berthon

joking? That’s bad taste . . .’

      ‘It’s not a joke, Maire. Pack your things, your da’s coming to fetch you.’

      An hour later she finds herself walking past the front desk and out to the car park. It’s a journey of utter unreality. Maybe it’s some kind of trap. But there, in the flesh, is her da. Stephen has been allowed through the gates and security barriers and is waiting. As she nears the car, he gets out and hugs her. They drive in silence, no questions asked, no answers given. When they arrive home, it’s the same, her mother waiting quietly for her.

      ‘Welcome home, love.’ It’s all she says.

      That evening, Martin comes for tea, the entrance as nonchalant as ever, the chitchat light and jokey. In front of her parents, no reference is made to the last three days. As they’re clearing the plates, she catches Martin nodding at them. They retreat to the kitchen to wash up. He closes the door behind them.

      ‘You’ll get your scholarship at Trinity, you’re that smart,’ he begins. ‘Working-class Catholic girl from the North – just what they need to move with the times. But you’ll leave this city and head down to Dublin now. I got friends who’ll put you up till we find you something permanent. Only a couple of months now. Maybe you can take some time abroad. I’ll see if I can raise some money.’

      ‘Did you know, Martin?’ she asks.

      ‘Know what?’ He sounds sharp, hard even. It’s unlike him.

      ‘Joseph said you approved it. I mean using me.’

      He shakes his head slowly, closing his eyes and rubbing them with his hands. ‘Jesus, Maire, you should know me better. I’m not even going to discuss that.’

      ‘Well, he said you would.’

      ‘He said that?’

      ‘Yes.’ Her brother says nothing. ‘And the plan itself? Seducing him? Shooting him?’

      ‘Don’t go there. It’s past now.’

      ‘Joseph told me it was just to interrogate him.’

      ‘Fuck’s sake, Maire, you’re not that naïve.’

      She wants to cry but mustn’t let herself. ‘I believed him, Martin. He promised. He said it was propaganda. To show they could run a Special Branch man out of town.’

      ‘He said that?’

      ‘Yes. Several times over.’

      ‘OK.’ He shakes his head and looks away from her. ‘Look here, Maire, I’m not going to piss on Joseph. He’s important in the movement. You can’t expect me to do that.’

      ‘I wanna see him. Ask him myself.’

      ‘That won’t be possible.’ His eyes pierce her in that way she knows he won’t be contradicted. She looks down, silent. ‘You’re not to see him again, Maire. There’s to be no contact ever again. From you or from him.’

      She feels tears welling and tries to suppress them. There’s no point in arguing. Instead she asks the obvious question. ‘Why did they let me go?’

      ‘You’re small fry, they’ve bigger fish. Maybe they didn’t have enough on you. Maybe they wanna see where you’ll lead them. Use you as bait against your own side. That’s why you gotta leave. That’s a reason you can never see Joseph again.’ He pauses. ‘Not the only one, mind.’ She feels herself crushed. ‘And there’s another thing, Maire. Some will say they only let you go ’cos you grassed. Another reason you gotta go.’

      ‘Jesus, Martin, you should know me better than that.’ She grimaces. ‘Christ, that’s what you just said, isn’t it?’ He doesn’t answer – there’s nothing more to say. Her destiny, for now, is out of her hands. ‘OK, when?’

      ‘Tomorrow.’

      ‘Tomorrow!’

      ‘That’s right. You better start packing.’ Her brother grasps her shoulders and speaks with a searing passion. ‘You were never meant for this, Maire. You’re the lawyer. Maybe politics one day. You’re the ballot, not the bullet. Never forget that.’

      The next morning, her father drives her to Victoria Bus Station to catch the express coach to Dublin. She’s been given an address and fifty pounds. She’s never felt so alone.

      A few days later, Martin visits her in Dublin. It’s been arranged that she’ll live with a Mrs Bridget Ryan, whose daughter, Bernadette, is serving time for possessing explosives. As a contribution to her board and lodging, Maire will help look after Bernadette’s three children. The husband’s no good – he was once in the movement but forced out because of his drinking. The arrangement will last the full three years of Maire’s degree.

      ‘You can call it your prison if you want,’ says Martin, ‘but it’ll give you a better chance than the real thing. Now, you, work hard. Don’t socialize. Don’t look for friends. No boyfriends. Trust no one. Get your degree. And then get the fuck out of this island and make something of your life.’

      As she watches him disappear, Maire begins to understand the worst of what she’s done. It’s not about being used, or luring a Brit peeler to his death, or shaming her parents, or losing Joseph.

      It’s that she made an error. A huge, life-changing, potentially life-destroying error. If she’s managed to get away with it, if she’s been given a second chance, she promises herself one thing.

      She will never again make such an error. Not ever.

CHAPTER 3

      Twenty-six years later, UK General Election night, Friday, 5 May. 2.41 a.m.

      ‘I, the Acting Returning Officer for the constituency of Lambeth West, hereby give notice that the total number of votes given for each candidate was as follows . . .’

      Anne-Marie Gallagher squinted down at an army of flashlights, TV cameras and microphones. The next five minutes would shape the next five years of her life. Yet, until one day and one conversation three months before, what now lay before her would have seemed unreachable.

      ‘They’re imploding,’ cried out her head of chambers, Kieron Carnegie, flicking through the newspapers. ‘Those smug idiots are imploding. Split from top to bottom.’

      ‘There there, Kieron, we don’t want you imploding too.’ She spoke with a hint of Celtic tinge too polished to place.

      He rounded on her. ‘But it’s our chance. This time, even after the last mess, we might actually get back into office.’

      She observed him fondly – still, in his early sixties, a craggily attractive man with a rich voice and greying blond hair hanging down to his collar. He had a reputation as a Lothario of the law but had never tried it on with her. From the day she joined Audax, her body language had said no to affairs.

      For his part, Carnegie still saw the smart, pretty, petite twenty-three-year-old with the quick brain and spiky wit who had brightened his office the moment she’d stepped into it twenty-two years earlier. The same straight, dark-brown hair that settled in a bob above the join of her neck and shoulders. The same fringe falling over her forehead like wisps of fresh grass. The elegant little nose. The small mouth and curve of her lips. The tiny gap between the whiteness of her front two teeth. The same aura of untouchability.

      ‘I have an idea.’

      ‘Oh?’ She went on instant alert; Carnegie’s ideas could be dangerous.

      ‘I never personally wanted to enter politics.’

      ‘You’ve always cultivated the party’s leaders.’

      ‘Me cultivate the leaders?’ His eyebrows jumped in horror.

      ‘Sorry,