I Hear the Sirens in the Street

until his escape he’d been doing ten years for conspiracy to cause explosions.
    I hadn’t thought of Dermot in a long time but in the weeks that followed the break-out we learned that he had been one of the masterminds behind the escape plan. Dermot had figured out a way of smuggling guns into the prison and it was his idea to take prison officers hostage and dress in their uniforms so the guard towers wouldn’t be alerted.
    Dermot got to South Tyrone and over the border into the Irish Republic. We later learned from MI6 that he and an elite IRA team had been spotted at a terrorist training camp in Libya. But even on that miserable Thursday morning on the eastern shores of Lough Neagh, with the mist rising off the water and the rain drizzling from the grey September sky, I knew with the chilly certainty of a fairy story that our paths would cross again.