Controlled Explosions by Claire McGowan

Aidan. She wasn’t going to think about that. She had to try to keep at least one thought straight in her head. And maybe, after everything they’d been through, he might feel the same.
    Bob was sitting in the car outside his house. It was dark, the orange of street lights shining over the little cul-de-sac. Linda asleep in the room upstairs, Ian downstairs in his adapted bed, with the low sides to make it easier to move him. He’d been sent home with an oxygen tank. He was hooked up to it, to life, his chest moving up and down in the dark. Bob’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. He couldn’t go inside, to the smell of sickness and the sound of Ian’s wet breath. He just couldn’t.
    At that time of night, he was back at the station in ten minutes. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Sit at his desk, look through the notes from today, try to make sense of what had happened. Of the farm, and those kids, and Johnson, and PJ … He nodded to the desk sergeant, who was reading a thriller under the desk, and went up to the incident room, expecting it to be empty.
    ‘Sergeant Hamilton!’ Helen Corry was there, along with two men he didn’t recognise, both in suits. They were sitting around her desk, talking in low voices, and jumped as if he’d disturbed them in something illegal.
    ‘What are you doing here, miss?’
    ‘I’m working late. These are some … colleagues from Belfast.’
    ‘Oh.’ Bob stood there. For some reason he was very aware of the gun in his holster.
    Then Corry was up and moving across the room to him. She was still in the suit from earlier, her hair hanging loose. She looked no older than the girl from the farm today. ‘Bob, you shouldn’t be here.’ Her voice was low and urgent. ‘Go now and we’ll say no more. I know you’ve nothing to do with it.’
    ‘With what?’ Bob didn’t bother to lower his voice. The two men were up now, moving in a way that showed they had combat training, their hands shifting to their holsters as well.
    ‘Look, there’s not much time, but if you go …’
    ‘I’m going nowhere.’
    There was a noise. Footsteps in the corridor. The whistle of a tune: ‘The Sash My Father Wore’.
    For a moment Helen Corry looked regretful. ‘I did try,’ she said. ‘Remember I tried to help you.’
    Then the door was opening and Johnson was coming in, dressed in slacks and a shirt like he’d just come from home, papers under his arm. He stopped when he saw them all, Bob and Helen Corry and the strangers. ‘What’s going on?’
    The Corry girl faced him. Her voice was clear, her chin raised. ‘DI Johnson. I’m afraid these men are here from Professional Standards. We need to have a chat with you.’
    ‘Don’t be silly, girl. How dare you call me in for this? I’m going home.’
    ‘No, you aren’t.’ Steel in her voice, for all her youth. ‘We know all about it, Alec. We know it was you.’
    ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
    ‘Peadar O’Keeffe, he didn’t get the addresses out of thin air, or know the parades that were going ahead before they were even announced … did he? Somebody gave him the information. We know it was you.’
    ‘This is ridiculous.’ Johnson made as if to brush past her, then the men were moving, and then something had changed. Bob didn’t know what for a moment. He watched Johnson’s papers fall slowly to the grey office carpet, like the flap of a bird’s wings. Then he saw what Johnson was holding in his hand.
    Afterwards, when they were done with all the interviews and the paperwork and talking to more men in suits in small, hot rooms, Bob would never speak about what happened that night. But he knew in himself: he hadn’t seen the Corry girl blink once. Not even with the gun pointing between her eyes. The other men had theirs drawn too, but it was too late, they were on the wrong side of her, Johnson was too close.
    ‘Let’s not do this, Alec,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s over.’
    ‘And