FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (2 page)

Meanwhile, I have to hide meself in the middle of a crowd of boneheaded eejits. They’re glued to the special coverage of the miraculous rescue of the vice-president of the Clonmel-based American pharmaceutical facility.

The TV reporter is standing outside Clonmel garda barracks, speaking into the camera: “Kidnapped executive Truman Pearce was found staggering around Marlfield Road on the outskirts of Clonmel. Having been dumped there by his captors, who were fleeing the pursuing joint Garda and Army Rangers Task Force, he was dazed and shocked, but otherwise unharmed. The brave captive believed that he was in the hands of Northern Ireland paramilitaries, but the leader of the kidnapping gang had been identified as a commander in the Provisional IRA, which led to the involvement of the Army’s special forces. It is believed that the Gardaí received intelligence from the American CIA which led to the location of the kidnappers’ hideout. There were early reports of a fatality amongst the highly trained Garda Tactical Unit, but no one was available to confirm or deny these reports.”

I’m expecting my mug shot to appear on the TV above the bar any minute, but God bless the soccer. A couple of English holiday-makers asked the barman to switch over to see the results of the Arsenal v Chelsea match on the other channel.…

It’s getting precious near closing time; I don’t think I can drink another Club Orange. Thanks be to Jaysus, the man I need to meet just came in the door and signalled the barman for a pint. Spotting me in the bar, Kieran Murray gave me the nod from where he stood in the snug.

Ignoring him, I walked out of the bar and headed for the
Julia C
, a ninety foot trawler bobbing alongside the quay. I slipped into a urine-soaked phone box set against the Harbour Master’s Office and tapped out a twelve digit number. Then I waited.

A man with an unmistakable Derry accent answered the phone at the other end. Using a gibberish code we’d taught ourselves when we were chatting up Swedish students in Brighton, I told Mac where I’m heading. He said a passport will be delivered to the safe house within thirty-six hours, and he promised to talk to the Army Council to see what they have to say about the kidnapping fuck-up. Before he hung up, Mac told me that they’re already looking for the informer who gave away our location…and my identity.

Jaysus, whenever I talk to Mac – with his strong Derry accent – I can’t help thinking about all we’ve been through since we met that first time at the Ardoyne barricades. It was 15th August, 1969, the day the Royalist B-Specials attacked the homes of the Roman Catholic families in Belfast’s Nationalist ghetto. It took fired-up students like me, and apprentices like Mac – armed with old shotguns, stones and bottles – to ward off the marauding forces of the British Crown.

It’s gas that I’m heading to Britain now – to avoid being caught by our own police. At least I’ll be getting there if Kieran Murray ever finishes his pint and gets down to his trawler.…

“Finn son, you’ve got yourself inta some heap of shite, so ya have. They have that old newspaper photograph of you and Mac at that feckin’ peace march in Dundalk plastered all over the television. But don’t fret fellah, the tide is just right and we’ll be gone from here in a twinkle. Let’s get aboard and fuck off outa here. Make yourself useful will ya, and lift the line off that bollard there.” Kieran leapt aboard his trawler and flung open the wheelhouse door. “Get ya below Finn. No point in advertising I’ve a passenger aboard,” he whispered.

Like all lifelong trawler men, Kieran Murray keeps his boat spick ’n’ span. Every nook and cranny is hosed and scrubbed down after he lands his catch, so not a whiff of fish do I detect. I know Kieran lands plenty of fish, prawns and razor fish from the sandbanks around the Isle of Wight. This is why I thought of him when I was deciding the best way to get to England; it’s only a short ferry ride from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. Anyway, if rumour has it right, Kieran usually catches a few large turbot not seen by the Harbour Master – to cover the cost of diesel.

I hear Kieran above my head. He’s muttering about having to collect his good-for-nothing nephews off Newport Quay before he can start on the prawns.

“Stick the kettle on Finn! We’re five miles off the coast now…there’s no one paying us any mind!” he yelled down.

I made two mugs of strong tea and carried them up to the wheelhouse.

“So Finn, what’s the plan, if you don’t mind me asking like?”

“I’ll leave you at Newport and take the Steam Packet to Liverpool. I can catch my breath in a safe house there, and then I’ll see where the devil takes me. Thanks for this Kieran. Sorry I couldn’t give you any warning, but you know the way it is.”

“Aye Finn, don’t I just! Why you left Trinity and got yourself mixed up in all this, God only knows. But I’ll say this about ya Finn Flynn, for an Englishman, ya make a hell of an Irishman! I’ll drop ya at the Newport Quay, no problem. Now get yourself below and catch whatever sleep ya can, you’re probably going ta need it.”

I’d forgot about the day my mother brought Kieran to meet me in the Buttery at Trinity College. His visit was by way of a wee celebration to commemorate my tenth year as a member of
Fianna Éireann
– the Republican youth movement. Of course he knows the whole story about my parents and my birth on English soil. Kieran fought alongside my father in the old IRA, right up to the time my father was shot dead by the Brits during the last IRA campaign in England.

In spite of my strange surroundings, and the pounding of the waves against the side of the trawler, I drifted off to sleep. I only surfaced when Kieran shouted down below.

“Wake ya Finn, lively now, before my cretin nephews get here! I wouldn’t trust them to see ya! Ya never know with the likes of them!”

I scrambled up on deck and jumped down to the quay. Without a goodbye, or as much as a wave, I slipped into the shadows.

Next stop, the safe house…then, God only knows.

ENGLAND

Getting to the
safe house in Croxteth, Liverpool is like travelling through an urban war zone. The taxi driver only agreed to drop me outside Croxteth Hall.

“This monstrosity was the home of the Earls of Sefton. Right posh it was then, but look at the
state
of the estate now.” The taxi driver sniggered at his double meaning of the word state as he pointed at the ornate red-brick edifice. “I’ll drop you here…it doesn’t do to take a motor like this in there, so it doesn’t. Around here they'd have the wheels off me car before I have the handbrake pulled, so they would. That’ll be six pounds two and six, what with the luggage. I take Irish money like, but I have to charge a bit extra, what with the exchange rate an’ all! All right Mick?”

Feck him
, I said to meself, leaving me a half kilometre short of my destination. I paid him every penny of the fare, plus his ten per cent exchange fee, in Irish florins – no tip. He zoomed off in his shiny new Vauxhall Victor estate car, leaving me stranded on the side of the road outside one of the roughest public housing estates in Europe.

The safe house I’m heading for is a three-bed, two-reception terrace with a downstairs toilet kind of place, probably built in the 1930s. It’s nondescript, ordinary-looking and perfect for a safe house.

I’m a good bit over six feet in height and I weigh in at two hundred forty pounds, but that didn’t discourage a gang of little shites from fronting up to me demanding money. None of them looks over fifteen years of age, and they haven’t a decent pair of shoulders between them.

“Give us yer odds mister, go on. Give ’em to us before we effing take ’em from yous!”

“Tell me you support Man U, and you can have all me odds, me change, the lot. Go on,” I whispered real quiet, slowly like, emphasizing every word. That seemed to do the trick.

“Fuck off ya Irish twat! Keep your fuckin’ money you dozy big git!”

They swaggered off down the road yelling, “They’ll never walk alone…Liverpool FC. We’ll see yous in the Kop…Liverpool FC. Man U, the slimy wankers!”

I knocked hard on number fifty-five. The paint-chipped door was flung open by a serious, almost aggressive-looking girl with sharp blue eyes and flaming red hair.

“Yeah, and who are you?” she asked, with a disarming smile and an undisguised Mayo accent.

“I’m Finn, from home. Here on the Chief's order. OK?”

No response. To fill the silence I lied to her.

“There'll be no heat brought on yous by my presence here. God willing, I'll be gone in twenty-four hours, tops.”

Her smile is gone.

“I’m Mary, Mary McManus. And you Finn, you have a family name?”

A male voice yelled from inside the house. “Jaysus Mary, bring the man through will ya? I told ya I spotted him coming down the road….I said it was him now, didn’t I? They’ll never believe it, so they won’t.”

Mary took me by the hand and led me into a small living-room where two young lads, probably no more than eighteen or nineteen years of age, are sitting on an old couch. I remember the couch well – the springs are shot in it. I stayed here back in 1972, when Mac, meself and two Donegal lads were detailed to meet a consignment of Semtex arriving in a ship from Vancouver, Canada. The house hasn’t changed much.

“You’re a bit of a legend with us new volunteers, so you are,” said the lad who was doing the yelling. His voice is much quieter now, which pleases me greatly. “Sit yourself down there,” he smiled, pointing at a comfortable-looking armchair I’d not seen before. “Fuck a duck! Finn feckin’ Flynn! Jaysus!” he said, poking the lad seated beside him.

I’m embarrassed at the adulation from these lads. They evidently have the guts to join an ASU, and are likely to be killed, tortured or imprisoned for life. And I’ve just lied to them – lied because I’ve no idea if I’ll be gone in twenty-four hours. I haven’t even a notion where to go to next. All I have is thirty quid in my pocket and an order to disappear in a hurry…because the guards have my nickname.

I took my leave of the lads and climbed up the creaking stairs – left so to act as a last-minute warning in case anyone, like the police or Special Branch, tries to creep up to the bedrooms undetected. The two lads are using the front bedroom and the girl is in the box room. That leaves the back bedroom for me.

“There’s a chippy van down the road! You want a single and a bitta cod?!” the lads yelled up the stairs.

“I’ve feck all money!” I yelled back. Another small lie – the thirty pounds in my pocket could be more than they have between them.

“Don’t bother your head! We can afford a few fish and chips for a man like yourself!” they called back.

And that’s what I got, along with a pile of buttered bread and a mug of tea.

After refilling my mug, the youngest of the three put down the teapot. “Can I ask you something Mister Flynn? Is it right that you’re descended from Fionn mac Cumhaill, is it?” he asked, with a shy kind of grin.

“You’ve the right build and hair for him, so you have,” chipped in Mary.

“So they tell me. Some professor in Trinity College traced me back to himself, the mad fecker from the third century,” I smiled.

“He was a right one for the Nordic women, isn’t that so?” gibed Mary, with a daring look directed straight at me.

I reached across the table and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Jaysus, why didn’t I think of that meself?! You’re after giving me the answer. I’ll have to see if I can reach her. You’re brilliant Mary, feckin’ brilliant!” I announced, with as much joy as I could muster.

Of course they haven’t a clue what I’m on about – and I’m not about to tell them. I’ve just remembered Anna, the Swedish girl I had a fling with back in Brighton. I don’t really know why, but I’ve a feeling she’ll come to the rescue and give me a bed until things settle down. I decided there and then that I’ll head across the road to the Stand Farm Pub and make a few long-distance calls in the morning…after I get my delivery from Mac.

———

I’ve rung Mac and Anna, and I’m headed to Lime Street Station with my new passport. My plan is to quietly catch a train to Harwich, and then I’ll jump on a ferry to Gothenburg in southern Sweden.

The station is swarming with police; I do not need this. There are cops – mounted on enormous horses – with serious-looking batons by their sides, and dog handlers with vicious German shepherd dogs straining at their leads. The steel-helmeted riot police are wearing anti-stab vests, and brandishing clear plastic shields that protect them from head to toe.

“Are you catching a train?” a stern-faced sergeant asked me.

“Yeah, hoping to. I’m trying to get to Harwich, sergeant.”

“Catching a ferry are we, sir?”

“Yes, to Holland,” I lied.

“Follow me. The Man U supporters are due in any minute. They’re playing Liverpool FC and there’ll be hell to pay,” yelled the sergeant while clearing a path for me.

It’s a funny auld world. I’m probably the most wanted man in Ireland, and here is a British police sergeant helping me on my way.

Seeing the phone kiosks on the platform reminds me to ring Mac.

“Mac, I’ve talked to Anna. I’m meeting her in Stockholm tomorrow.”