Once A Pilgrim. James Deegan

backbone.

      They’d been doing VCPs for four hours now, give or take, and had pulled over plenty of cars. Sometimes the vehicles were searched, and sometimes the drivers just got spoken to for a few moments and then waved on. Carr could see that the apparent randomness of it was confusing de Vere, but at least he had the honesty and good sense to realise that he was out of his depth. Credit to him, he was doing his best human sponge act, trying to soak up the signs and tells and little indicators that Carr, Parry and the police officers were working on.

      Their vehicle was in the middle of the current checkpoint, pushed out into the opposite side of the road to create a chicane between the police Hotspur to the front and Mick Parry’s Land Rover to the rear.

      The traffic was light, and in a lull Carr turned to look at de Vere.

      ‘Alright, then, boss?’ he said, surprising the officer. ‘Coping, are we?’

      ‘Just about, corporal,’ said de Vere, gripping his SA80 a little tighter. ‘Thank you.’

      ‘We got shot at down here last week,’ said Carr, casually. He nodded at a distant block of flats. ‘Fella with an Armalite had a pop from over there.’

      De Vere followed his gaze.

      ‘Missed the top of Keogh’s head by three or four inches,’ said Carr, deadpan. ‘Now, someone as tall as you…’

      De Vere looked at him, careful to stand at his full height.

      ‘I don’t…’ he started to say, but Carr cut him off.

      ‘Customer coming, boss,’ said Carr. ‘We havenae time to stand here gossiping.’

      An old purple Morris Marina up ahead was being flagged down by the RUC, and its driver was pulling over as directed – a sensible move, with the eyes and rifles of several stony-faced members of the 3 Para multiple trained on him. Enough people had been shot for driving through checkpoints that you had to be off your face on drugs or drink, or deeply stupid, or a member of PIRA with weapons on board and no other options, to try it.

      Carr waited until the car had come to a halt and the driver had switched off the engine and was showing his hands.

      He looked at de Vere. ‘This one’s an old hand, boss,’ he said. ‘Conor Gilfillan. Bomb-maker. He’ll have nothing on him, but we should fuck him about a bit. You can have a word. Off you go.’

      De Vere swallowed hard. ‘Right-ho,’ he said, and walked over to the Marina, making a wind-your-window-down motion with his hand.

      He leaned in and looked at Gilfillan, a weaselly-faced little man with piggy eyes and several day’s growth.

      ‘Can I ask where you’re going please, sir?’ said de Vere. ‘And I’d like to have a look in your boot if I may?’

      Gilfillan stared at him with ill-disguised contempt. ‘Sure, this is a free country, is it not?’ he said. ‘What fucking business is it of yours where I’m going?’

      Carr leaned in past de Vere and rammed his gloved hand between Gilfillan’s legs.

      Grabbed his balls, and squeezed.

      Hard.

      ‘Answer the officer’s question, you RA cunt,’ he said, applying yet more pressure.

      The bomb-maker’s eyes were almost popping out of his head, and both his hands were on Carr’s wrist, trying in vain to pull him away.

      ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Fuck.’

      Half an hour later, a chastened Gilfillan was finally allowed on his way, after apologising to Guy de Vere for his rudeness and watching the Paras conduct a thorough but fruitless search of his vehicle.

      ‘Never mind May I look in your boot please, sir, boss,’ said Carr, phlegmatically, as he watched the Marina disappear. ‘That’s how you handle cunts like him. You’re never going to make a friend of the fucker, so why bother trying?’

      De Vere nodded.

      Just then, a woman pushing a toddler in a buggy walked past.

      She didn’t break stride, or look at them, but out of the corner of her mouth she said, ‘You look after yourselves, lads. It’s a good job you’re doing.’

      Carr watched the young second lieutenant follow her with his eyes, and then the look of surprise which came over his face.

      ‘What?’ said Carr, eyebrows raised. ‘You think they all hate us?’

      ‘No,’ said de Vere. ‘Obviously not, but…’

      ‘We get a lot of that,’ said Carr, turning to look down the road, eyes sweeping for threats. ‘Most people here are no different to most people anywhere. They just want to live their lives, and they know us and the RUC’s the only thing stopping a massacre.’

      ‘Would it be that bad?’

      Carr looked at him with a face which said, Are you serious?

      ‘It’d be a bloodbath, boss,’ he said. ‘There’s not many of the bastards, but they’re some of the most evil people you’ll ever meet. On both sides.’ He paused, narrowing his eyes for a few moments at an old Ford Granada which was approaching, and then relaxing. ‘But don’t you worry. You’ll find all this out for yourself.’

8.

      MIDDAY. SICK SEAN and Gerard were sitting around the Casey family kitchen table with Ciaran O’Brien, a thickset man who smelt of sweat and old beer.

      The third team member, O’Brien was another hardened Republican from a long line of hardened Republicans stretching back to the 1600s, the Eleven Years’ War, and beyond.

      It was a way of life for some people.

      The three of them spoke in hushed voices, as if the breadbin might be bugged.

      Which, actually, it might be. You literally never knew, until the fuckers kicked the door in one day and dragged you away.

      The hard work, the reconnaissance and the planning, had been done.

      The weapons had been removed from the cache in Milltown Cemetery off the Falls by the hide custodian the previous night. He’d stripped, oiled and reassembled them, and moved them into a temporary location in the Poleglass, over Derriaghy way.

      The final weapons-move to the forming-up point – McKill’s, a well-known Republican bar on the Suffolk Road, out on the south-western outskirts of the city – would not take place until just before the Active Service Unit arrived to collect them. The less time the guns were in play, the better. To be caught with them was effectively a death sentence: many a good man had been killed by those murdering Brit bastards, even when he’d known the game was up and was trying to surrender.

      They’d collect their vehicle at McKill’s, too. A red Ford Sierra – the most common car, and the most common colour of that car, in the city. Stolen to order three weeks earlier, hidden away and fitted with ringer plates that went to an identical vehicle, so that it would at least pass any casual check by the peelers.

      If any of them got a little more nosey, all bets were off.

      Gerard Casey couldn’t sit still.

      He stood up and went out into the back garden to smoke the last of his twenty Red Band.

      ‘That’s a filthy habit,’ said Sick Sean, after him. ‘It’ll kill you.’

      He burst out laughing, but he was half serious: Sean Casey was a muscle nut gym monkey who lived on grilled chicken, salad, and handfuls of parabolin, winstrol, halotestin, and whatever other anabolic steroids he could get his hands on. Plus an occasional amphet sharpener.

      ‘Is he gonna be alright?’ said Ciaran O’Brien. ‘Your wee man?’

      He