The Cold, Cold Ground

checked myself in the mirror. There were a couple of holes in my leather jacket from the glass table, a few cuts and bruises but hopefully nothing that would attract too much attention.
    I opened the filing cabinet and took the big spool of tape from the MI5 machine and put it in my rucksack. This would be my insurance from the blowback.
    I closed the front door and walked down the valley, back into Campo to the bus station. At 6 a.m. a van dropped off the morning papers outside the cafeteria. I looked at the headlines. The big news was from Egypt: President Sadat had been assassinated in Cairo. The story came with pictures. Men with machine guns firing into a crowd.
    Finally the bus pulled in on ice tyres. It had set out early from St Moritz and was nearly full.
    The driver was cautious and I arrived at Milan Airport with only minutes to make my plane.
    The flight was uneventful. I bought Laura a bottle of Chanel in the duty free. We touched down at Prestwick Airport outside Glasgow just after 11.
    I knew that if I really hoofed it I could catch the noon ferry from Stranraer to Larne …
    The crossing was rough, the North Channel a mess of chuddering green sea and white-storm surf. I had a smoke, buttoned my duffle-coat hood and went to stare at the cauldron-like wake over the rear deck rail.
    I watched Scotland slowly fade behind me.
    I watched Ireland loom ahead.
    This was the only acceptable place to be in these barren lands.On that grey stretch of sea between the two of them.
    It was raining in Larne.
    It was always raining in Larne.
    I caught the train, got off at Barn Halt, said a brief Ave for Lucy, grabbed a six-pack of Harp from the off licence and a fish supper from the chippie. I strolled up Victoria Road eating the chips in the rain. On Coronation Road there were few cars and only a couple of kids kicking a ball around. A man was walking the streets with a handheld megaphone proclaiming the imminent return of the Messiah.
    “Are you ready for Christ’s return, son?” he asked me.
    “In about twenty minutes I will be,” I replied.
    #113.
    I opened the gate, walked up the path, put the key in the lock, went upstairs, lit the new paraffin heater, stripped out of my wet clothes.
    I poured myself a pint-glass vodka gimlet and listened to Ghost in the Machine , the brand new album by The Police. Classic case of three good tracks and eight fillers.
    I called Laura in Straid and she asked how I was doing and I said I was doing just fine. I drank the six-pack and the vodka and by 8 o’clock I was a long way gone. I went to bed singing rebel songs.
    The next morning, early, there was a knock at the door.
    Big guys. Plain Clothes. Special Branch/MI5/Army Intelligence. Something like that. One with a ginger moustache, the other with a black moustache.
    “Are you Sean Duffy?” Ginger asked.
    “Could be,” I said cagily.
    Ginger pulled out a silenced 9mm and shoved it in my face. I took a step backwards. His mate followed him into the hall and closed the door behind him.
    “First things first. Where’s the tape?” Ginger said.
    “What tape?”
    Ginger pointed the revolver at my right kneecap.
    “We’ll shoot you in both knees, both ankles and both elbows. Then we’ll go to work with the blowtorch. Why don’t you save us all some trouble?”
    “In my rucksack. It’s still in my rucksack in the kitchen.”
    Ginger’s mate went and got it.
    “Ok. Now we’d like you to come with us,” Ginger said.
    “Let me get my kit on,” I said.
    They watched while I got changed and they led me outside not to a Land Rover but to an unmarked Ford Capri – which was a bit of a bad sign.
    A tight squeeze too. A driver. Them two boys. Me.
    We drove through Carrick, Greenisland, Newtownabbey, Belfast.
    After Italy I saw the city anew.
    A fallen world. A lost place.
    Ruined factories. Burnt-out pubs. Abandoned social clubs. Shops with bomb-proof grilles. Check points. Search gates. Armoured police stations.
    Smashed cars. Cars on bricks.
    Stray dogs. Sectarian graffiti. Murals of men in masks.
    Bricked-up houses. Fire-bombed houses. Houses without eyes.
    Broken windows, broken mirrors.
    Children playing on the rubbish heaps and bombsites, dreaming themselves away from here to anywhere else.
    The smell of peat and diesel and fifty thousand umbilical cords of black smoke uniting grey city and grey sky.
    We drove to the top of Knockagh Mountain.
    There was no one else around.
    No one for miles.
    “Get out,” Ginger