A Secret Worth Killing For. Simon Berthon

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, Kieron.’ She grinned. ‘They cultivated you.’

      ‘I’d never have hacked it as a Member of Parliament. Don’t have the discipline.’ He paused. ‘You do.’

      She narrowed her eyes. ‘I only joined the party a couple of years ago.’

      ‘I know. But you’re getting noticed. Appearances on Newsnight and Today, pieces in the Guardian. The go-to lawyer for comment on human rights.’

      ‘It’s nothing more than a sideshow to my work here,’ she protested.

      ‘Listen,’ he said, pointing at the headlines yelling disarray at Westminster, ‘there’s no solution to this but an early election.’

      ‘So?’ she interrupted.

      ‘There’s going to be a vacancy in Lambeth West.’

      ‘What do you mean? Harry Davies is the candidate there.’

      ‘Not for much longer. Few know it but he’s had a stroke. The medics have told him he’s got to take it easy.’

      ‘So?’ she repeated.

      ‘You live there. You’re attractive and articulate. You have a rising profile. Put your bonnet in the ring, my dear.’ He launched his most extravagant smile. ‘And I will do a little moving and shaking in the background.’

      For once, she did not return the smile. She felt a stirring, an echo of youthful ambition that had seemed irretrievable. СКАЧАТЬ