Northern Spy(6)

“No.” Marian drives a secondhand Polo, with an evil-eye charm hanging from the rearview mirror. Nonsense, obviously, but you can’t blame her, her ambulance has been at the scene of enough road accidents, she has spent hours crouching on broken glass at the edge of a motorway.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” I say, my ears still ringing.

“When did your sister join the IRA?” he asks.

“She’s not in the IRA.”

The detective tips his head to the side. Past the window, thunderclouds ripple behind the council blocks. Slow traffic moves along the Westlink.

“She participated in an armed robbery this afternoon,” he says. “The IRA has claimed it.”

“Marian’s not a member of the IRA.”

“It can come as a shock,” he says, “to learn that someone you love has joined. It can seem completely out of character.”

“I’m not in shock,” I say, aware of how unconvincing this sounds, aware that my face and throat are sticky with tears, that the collar of my dress is damp.

“Why was Marian with those men at the service station?”

“They must have forced her to go with them.” He doesn’t respond, and I say, “The IRA makes people do things for them all the time.”

“Marian was carrying a gun,” says the detective. “If that were the case, why would they give her a gun?”

”You know that’s common. They force lads to carry out punishment shootings for them.”

“As part of their recruitment,” he says. “Is Marian being recruited?”

“No, of course not. They must have threatened her.”

“She could have asked for help. She was surrounded by other people during the robbery.”

“There were two men with her and both of them had guns. What do you make of her chances?”

The detective considers me in silence. Outside, one of the construction cranes starts to rotate against the heavy sky. “Are you saying your sister has been abducted? Do you want to file a missing persons report?”

“I’m saying she has been coerced.”

“Marian may have kept her decision to join to herself.”

“She tells me everything,” I say, and the detective looks sorry for me.

I think of Marian’s flat, of the cake of soap next to her sink, the food and boxes of herbal tea in her cupboards, the string of prayer flags at the window, the paramedic’s uniform hanging in her closet, the boots lined up by the door.

“Marian’s not a terrorist. If she’s playing along, it’s only so they won’t hurt her. She’s not one of them.”

The detective sighs, then says, “Do you want a tea?” I nod, and soon he returns with two small plastic cups.

“Thanks.” I tear open a packet of sugar, and the act seems uncanny, doing something so ordinary while my sister is missing. The detective wears a wedding ring. I wonder if he has children, or siblings.

“Where did you and your sister grow up?” he asks over the rim of his cup.

“Andersonstown.”

“That’s a fairly deprived area, isn’t it?”

“There are worse places.” My cousins from Ballymurphy teased us for being posh. The houses on our council estate were only about a foot wider than the ones on theirs, but still.

“High rates of alcoholism,” says the detective. “High unemployment.”

He doesn’t understand, he’s not from our community. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, everyone on our estate came outside, and we joined hands in a circle the length of the street and sang “Auld Lang Syne” together. After my father left, our neighbors gave us some money to hold us over. My mother still lives there, and she has done the same for them when they have their own lean stretches. No one has to ask.

“What religion is your family?” he asks.

“I’m agnostic,” I say.

“And the others?” he asks patiently.

“Catholic,” I say, which he already knew, of course, from our names, from where we grew up, in a republican stronghold. The police won’t enter Andersonstown without full riot gear.

“Are any of your family in the IRA?” he asks.

“No.”

“No one at all?”

“Our great-grandfather was a member.” He joined the IRA in West Cork, and fought in a flying column. Traveling across the island, sleeping under hedgerows, running ambushes on police stations. They were, he said, the happiest years of his life.

“Did Marian romanticize his past?” he asks.

“No,” I say, though when we were little, we both did. Our great-grandfather sleeping out on Caher moor under a Neolithic stone table, or piloting a boat around Mizen Head, or hiding from soldiers on an island in Bantry Bay.

“So you and Marian are from a republican family?” he asks.

“Our parents aren’t political.”

My mother was always polite to the British soldiers, even though as teenagers, two of her brothers were beaten up by soldiers, spat on and kicked until they both had broken ribs. She never shouted at the soldiers, like some women on our road did, or threw rocks at their patrols. I understand now that she was trying to protect us.

“What about their parents?”