Jonathan Lee - High Dive

‘You were right. I’m not interested. After La Mon you’re mad to go that route. Tourists, restaurants, hotels. What about the Council directive? That stuff’s a PR disaster.’

‘I knew a woman in PR once. She was nice despite it.’

‘You’re away in the head to be thinking along these lines.’

‘This particular plan, it changes everything. It’s the end of everything, Dan. After this job, give it ten years, there’ll be peace.’

Dan laughed.

‘You have things to learn,’ Dawson said. Dan was surprised to see he’d hurt him. ‘A stiffing is all about timing. Get it wrong and you’re out on your ear.’

‘Who’s getting stiffed, then?’

‘An assassination of a political figure. It works, but only when they’re already at a low, you know? That’s why the Kennedy thing made him into a dead god. He’d never been at a low enough ebb. When a leader’s shown their cruel side, and there’s a significant pool of haters within the moderates, and said leader has already made herself into a monster, even within half of her own country … Watching soldiers starve. Being brutal to the poor. Ignoring the north and the west …’

‘You can’t seriously be talking about this.’

‘I’m always seriously talking. Haven’t I told you before? Greatest tragedy of my life is people think I’m joking.’ He bent down to remove a bit of soil from his shoe. ‘The conference. The hotel the Cabinet will be staying in.’

‘The whole?’ Dan said. ‘Come on, the whole Cabinet?’

Dawson smiled. ‘If you want more, you’ll have to come in for a meeting. The warehouse tomorrow.’

‘The losses.’

‘Legitimate targets. One or two staff, perhaps, but if they’re hosting our targets they’re legitimate too.’

‘Staff are collateral damage, at best. Don’t kid yourself.’

‘You’ll be surprised how contagious kidding yourself is. Every one of them is part of the political elite.’

‘Maids, cleaners?’

‘Serving the elite, then. The point is, Dan, you change, with one blast —’

‘Timed in the night, to limit losses?’

‘You change everything.’ Dawson sighed and looked around him, lowered his voice even further. ‘Whitelaw’s Deputy PM. He, in the first instance, assumes power. We’ll need to talk about this in the warehouse.’ He glanced again at the fence.

He couldn’t really be suggesting this. He couldn’t really be serious. ‘If he lives, you mean. And she … because we’re talking about her , aren’t we? She might not, you know.’

‘No, she might be a vegetable instead.’

‘And Whitelaw.’

‘Whitelaw’s weak. Voices on the line suggest he won’t be in the hotel on the night, anyway. So he takes power. And it doesn’t take him long to see, with his experience of us to date, that he needs to put in process a free Ireland.’

‘Alternatively —’

‘Alternatively? Alternatively this conversation is coming to an end. But alternatively he hands over to Tebbit. That would be trouble. But, much more likely, Heseltine. Heseltine’s always hated Thatcher. Urged more moderation upon her, behind the scenes. He knows she made a bad play with Bobby Sands. Most of the Cabinet are looking for a way out. You don’t let a man martyr himself in front of the camera. With Heseltine as PM it’s the same end result.’

‘Which is?’

‘We get our country back.’

Bobby Sands on hunger strike, waist all withered, the awful embroidery of his ribcage.

‘It’s not my place, Dawson, but it’s huge. I mean, as a statement. Think about it before you —’

‘You’re right,’ Dawson said. ‘It’s not your place.’

‘But come on, what if —’

‘If we don’t eliminate them all? We say that was never the intention. We wanted to show the mainland’s not secure. It’s almost more effective. A symbol’s a symbol. A lot of thought by bigger brains than yours has gone into all this, and I have somewhere I need to be. This isn’t going to fail, Dan.’

Vigilante attacks. The contagious spread of surveillance. Dan could see ways for it to fail. ‘To take out the Prime Minister, though. Come on.’

‘With her in place there’ll be no peace, Dan. You’re acting like this hasn’t been talked about before.’

‘There’s a difference between talk and action.’

‘Not when one follows the other, same sentence, same breath. With her in place … She thinks she’s the queen of us, Dan. Queen of our land, governing from a distance, quoting fucking Victoria. Even my mammy wouldn’t quote from a queen, Dan, and she named me from a book called Mosquito . Thatcher might govern in her own tight circle but she’s no right to power here, none at all. She’s queen of nothing, and we’ll treat her with the same respect she’s granted us. Let her taste a little bit of equality. Let us take our freedom back. If you were in on this operation, Dan, you’d be the luckiest man alive. Go down in history. The guy who made sure no more civil rights men got finished — with a bullet, with a stone. It’d be the last job you’d ever do.’

‘Because I’d be locked up in the fucking Maze, that’s why.’

‘Possibly. Though you seem to be one of those buoyant little jobbies who resists the flush. If anyone’s getting scooped it’s probably Patrick. He knows he’s owed the prestige. Men get tired. He’ll take his dog to the far side of the fair, same as you want to do.’

He took his asthma inhaler out again and inhaled. Held the air in his mouth for a good few seconds and then opened his lips, relaxed.

‘Explore it.’

‘What was that, Danny? Did the individualist speak? I was sucking at my can.’

‘Explore whether he needs a second man.’

Dawson smiled. Ancient Jones’s TV blared. ‘ Certain toothed whales ,’ Attenborough’s voice said, ‘ can generate 20,000 watts of melodic song. It’s a song that can be heard for many miles .’

‘Been reading a book about Leonardo,’ Dawson said. ‘Your scythe got me thinking on it. You know how he sold some of his more obscure sculptures?’

‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

‘He sold them by telling people they couldn’t have them. By saying they were already sold.’ He shook the asthma inhaler and took another puff. ‘We’ve all a lot to learn from artists.’

YOU CHOOSE THE parts of the story to tell. It’s the only way you can make it yours. Eight days before Brighton there was news. Loyalists had bombed a meat-packing warehouse on the Springfield Road, a building that had stood in the shade of Greater Shankill. Dawson said they should go and inspect the damage. ‘See what we can do.’

Dust and a scorched plastic bag. Flies buzzing and alighting on the ribs of pigs. There was a thick smell of iron in the air and people were rummaging through debris, side glances from gaunt faces; some meat already packaged was able to be saved. After a point you had to look away, turn inward, but inwardness had its problems too. His thoughts went to the call he’d received from his brother Connor last night. One of those conversations that consists of a single question approached from different angles: What have you got yourself mixed up in, Dan? It was dark how far information could spread, its liquid capacity to escape you. There was a night as a boy when Connor had pissed himself. Dan remembered laughing.

They were sitting on large metal storage cylinders. Dawson today wore jeans and a T-shirt, his arms and neck thin, the neckline too baggy, a portion of his hairless chest revealed. The change of costume made him a child. He played with a bottle cap as he talked. He pulled three Polaroids from an envelope.