We drive out to Wicklow separately, and Marian parks beside some hedgerows to wait for me. We spent hours last night talking, until we’d made a plan. Behind the bungalow, the electric pylons are humming. I can nearly feel the electricity crackling through their wires. Above the pylons are dark clouds, damp stains against the black sky. When I step inside the bungalow, Royce is at the card table, shoveling down a military ready meal. “Which battalion tonight?” I ask.
“Austrian infantry. Beef bourguignon and white chocolate tart. It’s not their finest work, if we’re being honest,” he says. “Want some?”
“No, you’re all right.”
Royce says, “Oh, we’re looking into lifting that painting, by your one.”
“Agnes Martin,” I say, and he nods. “What will you do with it?”
“Use it to bargain down one of the lads’ sentences,” says Royce.
“My handler’s ready,” I say. “When do you want to meet him?”
“What changed?” asks Royce.
“He needs money. I think he’ll work with you, for enough cash,” I say, none of which is true. “He’s in debt.”
“Drugs?” asks Royce. “Gambling?”
“Fantasy,” I say, and Royce raises his eyebrows. “Handlers don’t get paid much, they’re only on a civil servant’s salary. But he joined for the lifestyle, he wants to look the part. He has an expensive watch, expensive car, expensive mortgage. It’s how he thinks of himself. He’ll leak some secrets before giving that up.”
“What a tosser,” says Royce. He scrapes up some beef, almost black from the wine sauce. “I’m wondering, Tessa,” he says. “How did you get him to tell you about his money troubles?”
I shrug. “He trusts me. And I’m a good listener.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. He’s just lonely,” says Royce, though I bet Eamonn has plenty of friends, at home in east Belfast, I bet that’s part of his problem, that he’s drowning in them. That’s how paramilitaries work, isn’t it.
Royce says, “Did you fuck him?”
Heat rushes up the back of my neck. “No.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Royce, lifting his fork. “I knew you’d ride him. Why do you think I chose you for this? Because I could tell one thing about you, Tessa. You were lonely.”
I don’t want to start crying in front of him, but the back of my throat is already softening with tears. Behind Royce’s shape, the lace curtains cover the windows. They look so delicate, their pattern cut with holes, but I still can’t see the view outside, they’re enough to block it out entirely.
“We would have asked Marian instead of you,” says Royce. “But she’s happily married, isn’t she?”
“Fuck you,” I whisper.
“Why are you angry at me?” says Royce. “You’re the one who rode him. That was your shout, not mine. You could have kept your dignity, you know. Does he know you’re our whore? No? Well, look, he’s about to find out. Here, do you want this white chocolate?” asks Royce, and I’m shaking my head when he lurches over the table. My head jerks away from him, but it’s too late. He punches me in the mouth, and blood bursts between my teeth.
I’m leaning forward, spitting up blood, when he takes my hair in his fist and wrenches my head back. “Why was a cop at the Gravediggers?” he asks.
“What?”
“A cop was there asking questions,” he says. The detective must have somehow tracked me to the pub.
“I didn’t tell anyone about you, I swear. Nothing about you. That detective thinks I’m in the IRA.”
“You stupid bitch,” says Royce.
Marian should be here, she told me she’d bugged this room, she should be running in for me, but all I can hear is a ringing, like I’m hearing the electric pylons through the walls. The white chocolate is in front of me, a smooth layer of fondant untouched by my blood. I sit at the table, shaking hard enough to make my chair rattle against the floor.
I need to get a message to Marian. I need to tell her that Finn can never, ever know about this, he can never know his mam was murdered by the IRA. If he finds out, it will warp his entire life, it will make him scared and furious, it will make him think he should seek revenge. I’d rather anything else, I’d rather Tom and Briony raise him like she’s his mother and I never existed.
“Don’t tell Finn,” I say.
“What’re you talking about?” says Royce.
“I’m not talking to you,” I say. Royce looks at me, then laughs. “No one’s listening to you, Tessa. No one’s coming to help you.”
My mind goes white as Royce rings someone on his phone. “We’re going to need a cleaner,” he says. “Not yet, though, give me an hour.”
I can hear myself keening. Royce draws his chair up beside mine and presses a gun to my head. It’s only a handgun, but it feels very long somehow, like a stick extending all the way to Royce’s shoulder. “Did you tell the cops about me?” he asks. He is growing impatient, the gun barrel pressing harder against my skull.
“No.” I breathe out. I think, Finn.
Royce releases the gun from my head slightly, strands of hair slipping under the barrel. “No,” I say again. “I told no one.”
At that moment light burns into the bungalow, through the holes in the lace curtains. It’s Marian. She is outside on the dark drive, shining her headlights straight into this room.
Royce stands and moves to check the window. I picture the property from above, the dark countryside, the mountains, the car’s headlights pouring onto the bungalow. I can feel myself coming apart, dispersing through the room, and then every bit of me slams back into my body. I hear my voice say, “Sit down.”
Royce snorts, shaking his head. The headlights are pointing into the room, catching on the bones in his face. I lift my hands, watching them move in the headlights, and fold them on the table. Again, I say, “Sit down.”
Royce looks at me like I’m out of my mind. We can hear the engine switch off outside, the creak of a car door opening, someone stepping onto the gravel. He won’t be able to see Marian’s face. She’s standing behind the beam of the headlights, in the deep country darkness.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” says Royce. “You told the cop to come here.” He points the gun at me, and I look past its barrel at his face.
“If you do that,” I say, “you’ll be shot, too.”
“I’m not scared to die,” he says.
“No, you’re not scared to die a hero,” I say. “But that’s not what will happen. You’ll die a tout.”
He laughs. “Wise up.”
I start to recite the words off. I know them by heart. “ ‘Dear mam, I know I’ve let you down but I’m trying to make it better. I’m talking with the peelers about what I can do to help.’ ”
Royce stares at me. I say, “Sit the fuck down.”
He lowers himself onto a chair. The headlights show a column of dust turning in the bungalow. We are both sitting in the middle of it, the dust spinning around us.
“You wrote to your mam after you were arrested,” I say. “You told her you’d offered to inform.”
Royce shrugs. “I was just telling her what she wanted to hear. I never meant it.”
“Who’s going to believe that?” I say, turning my hand, like I’m considering my nails. “The thing is,” I say to Royce, with my sister’s headlights flooding toward me across the room, “you’re the one who has been abducted here. Not me.”
Royce searches my face. In this light, his eyes look nearly colorless.
“The cops refused your offer. They wouldn’t touch you,” I say. “It wasn’t worth it to them. They didn’t want you to be released without charge, not after what you’d tried. Your mam gave all of your letters to my mam.” I am aware of Royce listening, of the light bristling through the holes in the lace curtains. “If you shoot me, everyone will find out about you. And who’s going to defend you anyway? I know what they call you in the IRA. They call you the Undertaker. Do you think that’s a compliment?”
Royce’s face drops. For a moment, I can see the young boy, lifting his face for my mam to rub sun cream on it, smiling shyly when she complimented him on his manners, wanting to be liked.
“If those letters are released, everyone will make fun of you. Is that what you want?”
Finally Royce lowers his gun. He lifts the white chocolate and bites hard into it. When he finishes chewing, he says, “Get out.”
I can feel the headlights arcing over my arms and neck and hair as I stand from the chair, planes of light slicing over my skin. He could still shoot me, I think, trying to keep my balance. But Royce is motionless at the table. I tug on the latch and then I am stumbling over the doorstep, and the night sky is bursting above me.
I run down the beam of the headlights and climb into the car, and feel it accelerating, fast, down the drive, the gravel spraying under its tires, and turning onto the laneway. I am hyperventilating now, huge dry sobs racking my chest. Marian says, “It’s all right, it’s over now, you’re safe.”