Northern Spy(7)

I shrug. My granny was unconcerned by the bomb scares during the Troubles. I remember her arguing once with a security guard trying to evacuate a shop, saying, “Hang on, I’m just getting my sausage rolls.”

The detective leans back in his chair. If he asks about my uncles, I’ll have to tell him the truth. My uncles go to Rebel Sunday at the Rock bar, they sing “Go Home British Soldiers,” “The Ballad of Joe McDonnell,” “Come Out Ye Black and Tans.” It never goes beyond that, though, beyond getting trolleyed and shouting rebel songs.

“Does Marian consider herself a British or Irish citizen?”

“Irish.”

“How does she think a united Ireland will be achieved?”

“Democratically. She thinks there will be a border poll. But Marian’s not political,” I say. I had to remind her to vote last year. When I mention the guests on our program, she rarely knows who they are.

Above the road, the neon sign for Elliott’s bar blinks red. People are standing outside, holding pints in the humid air before the storm breaks. I blow on my tea, not wanting to leave this room. Any news about Marian will come here first. I’d sleep here, if they’d let me.

“Why do you think people join the IRA?” asks the detective.

“Because they’re fanatics,” I say. “Or they’re bored. Or lonely.”

He rotates his pen on the table. “We want to bring your sister back,” he says. “She can explain what happened herself, she can tell us if she was coerced, but we need to find her first, right?”

I nod. I need to be polite to him. Marian and I have to work in unison now, without seeing what the other one is doing—her from the inside and me from out here, like we’re picking a lock from either side of the door.

He says, “We have Marian’s address as Eighty-seven Adelaide Avenue, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Any other residences?”

“No, but she wasn’t home this week, she’d rented a cottage on the north coast.”

I tell him the name of the rental agency. All I know about the location is that a waterfall is nearby. Marian said she’d hiked down to the end of the headland, below the cottage, and when she turned around, a waterfall was twisting over the top of the cliff. I want the detective to see this, Marian standing alone on a spit of land in hiking boots and a rainproof jacket, watching water pour into the sea.

“Did anyone go on the trip with her?”

“No.”

“Have you spoken to her since she left?”

I open our messages and hand him my phone. He scrolls up, reading our texts, pausing at the picture she sent yesterday morning from Ursa Minor of two cream horns. I can’t bear to look at it, to think of her sitting in a bakery, working through her pastries, not realizing what was about to happen.

“Are you certain she went alone?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Who took this picture, then?” he asks, turning the phone toward me, at the photo of Marian laughing on the rope bridge.

“I don’t know. She must have asked another tourist.”

“Has Marian made any other trips recently?”

“No.”

“Does she have travel documents in any other names?”

“Of course not.”

I remember how distressed she was after the Victoria Square attack in April, how pinched her face looked. Marian was off duty during the attack, but still ran to help. The IRA had planted an incendiary device, which went off prematurely, when the complex was full of shoppers. Hours later, when she appeared at my house, her jeans were stiff with blood from the knee to the ankle. She said, “When is it going to stop?”

I slowly lift my head to look at the detective. “Is she working for you? Is she an informer?”

“No.”

“Would you know?”

“I’d know.”

Detective inspector. How many ranks are there above him? Fenton checks his watch. I look down at the traffic on the Westlink, where the cars have slowed almost to a standstill as the sky opens, releasing the downpour.

“Does Marian visit extremist websites?” he asks.

“No.”

News broadcasts sometimes show IRA videos, though. She may have seen those. Men with ski masks over their faces, setting out their demands, or sitting at a table in silence, assembling a bomb.

The detective seems to think Marian has been groomed. That someone has been taking her away on trips, sending her extremist material to read. I know what they say, the recruiters. Come where you are needed. Come where you are loved.

“Does Marian have access to any industrial chemicals?”

“No. Look, this is absurd.”

“We only want to find her,” he says, which anyone from here would know isn’t true. The police don’t search for a terrorist the same way they search for a missing person. Let’s say they find a house and send in a special operations team. The team will have different instructions for a raid than an extraction, they will behave differently if someone inside the house needs to be protected.

“She’s pregnant,” I say.

The detective takes in a breath. I wait for a moment, like I’m silently checking Marian’s response. This was the first tug on the lock, this lie.