Northern Spy

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?”
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