Controlled Explosions by Claire McGowan Page A

what would you know about it?’ He was shaking. His voice, his hand. The gun. ‘Slip of a girl like you. Coming in here saying we’re doing it all wrong. Lassie, we’ve been doing this job since you were in nappies. Men have died, good men. Blown to bits by your kind. And now you want to destroy us, drag our good name through the mud … People like you, you should be down on your knees thanking the RUC for what we did. We kept you safe in your bed all these years.’
    ‘But why the bombs, Alec? What good does that do?’ Still she didn’t falter. Even though the gun was so close it almost brushed the skin of her face.
    ‘Making us cancel our parades. Ask for permission to walk when we’ve been doing it three hundred years. Letting those – those murderers out of jail when we put them there. It isn’t right.’
    ‘So you thought you’d stir things up a bit.’
    ‘They’re scum, these people. We’re letting them walk free – bombers, killers. They’d kill you as soon as look at you, and we’re going to let them run the country? It’s treachery, is what it is.’
    ‘Was that the idea … show everyone the Catholics won’t stop bombing, so we shouldn’t share power with them? Go back to the bad old days?’
    ‘Well, they won’t! We’re going into government with murderers! You’ll see what’ll happen. There’s a wave of blood about to break over us, lassie, and we’re walking right into it.’
    ‘But this was you, Alec. You may have used those young kids, but it was all you. People could have been hurt. Officers, and their families. Innocent people. Weans, even. You’re as bad as the IRA.’
    There was movement; she’d got to him. Johnson made an angry noise in his throat, stepped closer to her. For a moment, the girl closed her eyes. Bob didn’t know what he was doing until he’d done it. He was standing behind Johnson, so close he could see the strands of white in his old friend’s hair, the lines on his face. They’d both changed. Long, long years of bloodshed behind them. ‘It’s over, Alec,’ he said, his voice rusty. ‘For God’s sake let her go. It’s over.’
    Johnson turned slowly, and as he saw the gun Bob was pointing at him, a strange look came over his face. Almost like peace. ‘You made your choice then, Bobby boy.’
    ‘There is no choice.’ Bob cleared his throat. ‘There’s only backwards, or this. I know that now.’
    As the two men grabbed Johnson’s arms and cuffed him, Helen Corry met Bob’s eyes, and he thought he saw something new there. It might have been respect.
    The music was loud. Spice Girls, ‘Stop’. Saoirse was over with some girls from school, bopping in a big protective ring. Paula saw him by the bar; went to buy a peach schnapps and lime, her favourite drink.
    ‘Hiya.’ He had a fag hanging out of his mouth; she breathed in the smell. She had on her Boots 17 silver Disco Queen nail varnish and a short skirt and a shiny top. She’d so much Impulse body spray on it could have knocked out a horse at twenty paces – or so Saoirse had informed her as they were getting ready.
    ‘Hi.’ She leaned her elbows on the bar, wrinkling her nose at the spilled-beer smell.
    ‘Your da OK?’
    She shrugged. ‘He says he is. His leg’s not good.’
    ‘Ma wants you to come and stay. She’s worried, with that … with Catriona and all.’
    She looked away, embarrassed. Trying not to remember it, the darts of fear in her stomach, the heat rising up from the pavement and the sheen of the gun … but wanting to remember it too, the feel of his arms and his mouth and … ‘I’m OK. I’m going to Saoirse’s for a few days, like. And you … you …’ She couldn’t say it.
You saved me.
If he hadn’t kissed her when he had, held her back for those few seconds, who knew what would have happened.
    Aidan couldn’t meet her eyes either. She wondered if he was thinking it too. ‘Fair enough.’
    The music changed, just like that. Robbie Williams,