A Life for a Life

It was late a few nights later, and Miceál was having trouble keeping his eyes open as he sat slouched at the desk, filing away a few last pieces of paper. Smyth had left a while ago, to Miceál's fury, locking his office door behind him.

"Michael?"

Miceál jumped as someone put their head around the door: Garry Phillips, who happened to be Miceál's next target. Diarmuid had been told and so Ciaran and his active service unit would probably have known for several days, so it was only a matter of time.

"Yeah?"

"You leaving anytime soon?"

"Aye, coming now. Why?"

"You need a lift back? Frank's offered us both a lift."

"Cheers, that'd be great." Miceál was genuinely grateful – recently his appearance had attracted the attention of a number of young men who were clearly in the UVF. They had taken to standing outside the pub whenever Miceál was coming back from a late shift and trying to recruit him. Diarmuid had been deeply concerned about this and warned him to stay away from them.

Everyone in the building was nervous about travelling alone now. Miceál pretended to be just as terrified and curious as the rest of them about the spate of recent attacks, but he was more concerned about them finding out about his connections. So far, though, everyone was more worried about surviving than whom was actually tipping the IRA off.

The IRA usually killed only one of them at a time, even if both were targets. Miceál didn't quite know why they did this, but Ciaran had said something along the lines of because they had to strike in Protestant areas, they couldn't hang about for too long. Miceál saw where he was coming from: one single gunshot and everyone's heads turned, and with the pubs brimming with armed UVF men and a police headquarters nearby, Miceál didn't quite fancy being an IRA man in the middle of it all. Well, an obvious IRA man, he reminded himself. He was an IRA man, and he couldn't get more "in the middle of it" if he had consciously tried.

He went outside and got in the back of the car, Frank in the driver's seat and Garry as his front-seat passenger. Miceál was lad for the lift – it looked as though his "friends" were out.

"Just dropping Garry off first, Mike," Frank said as they turned down the street. "He just lives on a street off Millfield so it shouldn't be long."

"No problem." Miceál nodded, automatically storing the words "Garry" and "Millfield" into his mental database.

Millfield was a lonely stretch of road that the Shankill and the Falls Roads both opened up onto, and all of its roads led to the city centre. It wasn’t a very built-up area, with no actually houses on it. Just car parks as waste ground, and so Miceál was surprised to see people standing at the end of the road.

The car stopped briefly and Garry got out, and then Miceál realised what was going on as the men at the end of the street suddenly ran towards them.

Frank called out, but by then it was too late, and Miceál instinctively ducked as gunshots ripped through the still night air. He heard Garry cry out in pain, but it was cut short after what was clearly a final fatal aimed shot to the head.

Then there were the distinctive sounds of the car doors being pulled open, and both Miceál and Frank were pulled out of the car and pushed onto the pavement, on their knees. Miceál stole a glance upwards to see if he could recognise whoever had them, but he didn't recognise them, and they clearly didn't recognise him.

Miceál's heart skipped a beat. How was he going to talk his way out of this one without being compromised?

"What are your names?" one of them demanded roughly.

"F – Frank Sturgeon," Frank muttered, stammering in fear.

"Michael Craig." Miceál mumbled, sounding just as afraid, but glancing up to see if, at least, they recognised the name. There was a flicker of recognition in the eyes of one of them, and Miceál though that the eyes looked rather like Fearghus's.

"What do youse do? Do youse work at the police station like the other one? Do you?"

"I'm a secretary," Miceál said, trying to sound as though he was afraid, as though he was pleading.

"For who?"

"Chris Smyth. I'm not a peeler, I swear to God I'm not,"

"What about you?" Frank looked up, and the fear in his eyes must have given him away, because they didn't wait for him to reply. Instead, they pulled him to the floor and roughly searched his pockets, holding him down the whole while.

"Got it,"

Miceál didn’t see what Fearghus had got (for it was definitely Fearghus's voice he was hearing), but he imagined it was some sort of identification.

"Kill him." came the order, just like that.

There were several gunshots, and then there was a silence, until one of them came over to Miceál and lifted his face by his chin, looking into it closely.

"Blimey, Miceál," Fearghus muttered quietly. "Be careful! We almost had you there!"

"This is going to look so suspicious," Miceál hissed back. "I'm the only survivor, this is going to look bad!"

"Just be careful, all right? You're only a secretary, anyway. They'll not think we'll bother with you."

"I think Smyth's getting suspicious of me."

"Well. I guess, then … yes, probably –"

"What?" Miceál demanded. "What are you going to do?"

"Sorry, Miceál," was all Fearghus said, and he then brought the butt of his gun down, hard, on the back of Miceál's head, who let out a brief yell and slumped forward onto the floor, dazed.

"What the –" he said, but his voice trailed off as his vision blurred slightly. Fearghus's face swam into hazy view.

"Lie here until the police come. Claim we attacked you."

"Youse bloody did," Miceál managed to inject a few ounces of anger into his voice.

"Lie through your teeth if you have to. Good luck." Miceál attempted to stick his middle finger up at Fearghus, but he hadn't the energy, and so it came to be that he lay there for about an hour and a half until a passing taxi driver, who, upon noticing what appeared to be three bodies lying by the roadside, called the police.