October 2004
On a whim, Jimmy twisted the door handle. Much to his surprise and disappointment, it turned and he pushed his way through the door with no issue. He'd be having a talk with her about keeping the doors locked at all times.
He was greeted by the piercing cry of a toddler reverberating throughout the house. The empty kitchen and living room led him to believe it was coming from upstairs. Considering it was after seven, Jimmy figured Catherine was trying to get the boys down for bed.
Rounding banister to hop onto the first step, Jimmy came to a screeching halt. Sitting at the top of the stairs was an extremely defeated Catherine. Her eyes were empty and bloodshot. Black streaks ran down her cheeks from her eyeliner and mascara bleeding.
"Its been like this every night since I brought them back here," she said, sniffling.
Eamonn had fallen into a routine with Darragh. Each night after bath time without fail, Darragh would read to Eamonn before rocking him to sleep. In an attempt to keep life as normal as possible for him, Catherine tried to take Darragh's place. But, being just like his mother, Eamonn lost his mind by having his nightly formula messed with.
Jimmy's heart sank for Catherine. He knew she was doing every in her power to keep the household running smoothly, but there was only so much she could do.
Climbing the stairs, Jimmy stepped around her. She didn't budge. He found Eamonn sitting in the hallway just outside his bedroom. He showed no signs of slowing down his crying anytime soon.
For a moment, Jimmy hesitated unsure about what he should do. The easiest thing would be to turn around and head out, but with Darragh gone, he now felt a push of responsibility to help Catherine care for Eamonn and Sean.
Bending down, Jimmy picked Eamonn up. As he held him, slightly bouncing, there was no magic spark of connection or love between the father and son. As far as Jimmy was concerned, Eamonn was Darragh's. After the night Catherine had broken into his safe and she punched him in the mouth, Jimmy voided himself of any sentiment when it came to his son.
Walking into Eamonn's bedroom and sitting down with him in the rocking chair, Jimmy wasn't doing this because he figured it would be the quickest way back into Catherine's panties. He was doing it because when he looked up the stairs, he saw the little girl he unconditionally adored for over twenty years. Jimmy had promised he would take care of her no matter what happened in his lifetime, and now she needed him more than ever.
For a few minutes, Jimmy rocked with Eamonn, trying to calm him down. Catherine continued to sit on the top step, her head in her hands and just listened. She was drained emotionally and physically. She was starting to question whether or not she was strong enough to care for the boys on her own.
It had been a month and a half since she buried Darragh. Life was nowhere near getting back to normal.
Slowly, Eamonn began to relax. As Jimmy held him and rubbed his back, he rested his head against Jimmy's chest. Memories of doing the same with Catherine when she was only a year or two older, came flooding back to Jimmy. It didn't help that he looked nearly identical to her.
Hearing his whimpers start to die down, Catherine was amazed at how easily Eamonn had conceded to Jimmy. She wondered if on some level Eamonn knew he was in his biological father's arms, rather than with a stranger. Being a shy kid, he hardly let go of either Catherine or Darragh. She was stunned when she heard Jimmy reading from Eamonn's favorite bedtime story.
Standing up, she headed into the bathroom. She took out her contacts, brushed her teeth, and then washed her face. As she uncapped the jar of moisturizer and spread dots of it along her face and neck, Jimmy stood in the doorway.
"He's asleep." His voice was barely above a whisper, afraid that the wrong move would wake either of the boys up.
She put the jar back on the ledge above the sink and began to rub the cream into her skin. "Thank you for doing that. It has been rough getting them back into their routines. I think I stayed at my parent's house for too long."
For the first four weeks after the funeral, Catherine had stayed with Patrick and Olivia. She didn't dare to be back in Andersontown so soon after. For the first handful of days, she struggled tremendously. The ability for her to take care of basic needs had gone out of the window. She didn't shower, didn't eat. Only slept and cried, unable to pull herself out of bed. Then when she finally did, Patrick wished she hadn't, because that began the awful two weeks of her drinking herself into oblivion.
"Don't be too hard on yourself. You were only doing what you thought was best."
"Yeah, because drowning myself in Harp and Tullamore Dew won me mother-of-the-year."
Catherine had a vivid memory of the shameful night that forced her to face reality. After seven hours of being at the pub, she was so drunk it took both Patrick and Jimmy to drag her back to the house. Though not an ounce of her anger was directed towards the organization Darragh had proudly served, the sleeping beast of hatred towards the Union Jack and the people who supported it had reawakened. As Patrick and Jimmy herded a combative Catherine down the Falls Road, she brazenly opened her mouth and belted out a notorious rebel song: "Glory, glory to old Ireland! Glory, glory to this island. Glory to the memory of the men who fought and died, 'No surrender' is the war cry of the Belfast Brigade!"
Patrick was more than understanding that Catherine was wallowing deep in grief. He couldn't even begin to imagine the pain she was in, having lost the love of her life. But, as soon as those words had been sung, he snapped. Jimmy didn't intervene as Patrick covered her mouth with his hand to shut her up. When she took a swing at her father and missed, he wrestled her down onto the grimy sidewalk, honestly telling her how ashamed Darragh would be to see her acting so foolishly.
Just over a week later, Catherine had returned to Andersontown with the boys, ready to take on the challenge of being a single mother.
Jimmy remembered how the grief of his brother's death had affected him. He too had crawled into several bottles of whiskey, but he had prowled the streets of loyalist east Belfast looking for fights.
"It could have been a lot worse. How've you been holding up?" He felt a twinge of guilt for not having reached out to her in the last two weeks. Business had called him to Berlin; one of her favorite cities.
Still trying to make sense of what happened, Catherine found herself teetering between a state of raw anger and utter hopelessness. She answered, "I'll survive. Somehow, I always do."
Truth was, between the boys and work, she hadn't been able to stop and take a breath. She was purposely distracting herself so she wouldn't be constantly reminded of Darragh's absence.
"Has Fi fed ya yet?" she asked, flipping off the light and slipping on her glasses.
As she made her way into the hallway, Jimmy caught a glimpse of the shamrock tattoo on the inside of her forearm. The black "J" that was once shaded into the green ink, had been turned in to a "D."
When she smiled softly, Jimmy noticed something was different. Her face smiled, but all life had been drained from those beautiful eyes. He shook his head and lied, "Nope. You got anything?"
"Aye."
Jimmy followed Catherine downstairs to the kitchen. He was pleased to see the house was clean and in order, a sign that she was wasn't letting her domestic responsibilities slip. By her drastic weight loss since he last saw her, Jimmy was peeved by the clear fact she still wasn't eating. As they walked through the living room, he noticed the pillow and folded blanket on the sofa. He made a mental note to ask her about that.
Catherine gestured for him to sit at the table as she made a bee-line right for the fridge. He watched as she pulled out of a container of stew and scooped a decent portion into a saucepan for reheating.
She took a seat across from his and immediately lit a cigarette.
"You not sleepin' upstairs?" Jimmy stole the cigarette from her and smoked it himself.
Not caring that he wasn't fond of her smoking in front of him, Catherine lit up another one. She stayed quiet for a minute as if debating on whether or not to tell him the truth. So many people were already worried about her, she didn't want to add another person to the list. But at this point, Catherine knew lying wouldn't do her any good.
"Haven't been able to crawl into that bed. The sheets, his clothes, all smell like him still. When Filip left, I thought that was the worst pain I'd ever experience. But with Darragh gone, I'm suffocating—emotionally, physically. I'm miserable." Catherine stopped and took a long drag from her cigarette. "It's the cruelest irony that I was ready to leave him and Ireland. Now I can't leave Belfast, because I can't stomach being far from Milltown."
Jimmy was still processing what she said about leaving Ireland. That wasn't what she had told him the day after Darragh had been killed. "I thought youse were going to Donegal?"
"That was only after I was able to convince him to leave with me. The PSNI and MI5 still have me under surveillance even though I haven't been active for years."
Catherine let her cigarette burn out in the ashtray as she got up to ladle the hot stew into a bowl for Jimmy.
"Where the hell did you plan on going?" There was far too much that had happened in the years they wasted not speaking to one another.
Catherine placed the bowl in front of Jimmy and tucked her ankle behind her knee as she slid back into the chair. The displeasure he felt towards Chibs wasn't going away anytime soon and she worried it would set him off if she told him. She took a chance.
"Charming. Filip was helping me get everything set up."
The very second those words left Catherine, Jimmy's spoonful of stew only made it halfway to his mouth. He dropped it back into the bowl. Catherine felt the familiar anxiety bubble in her gut as he huffed out an aggravated breath, looking up at the ceiling. Her grasp on the Irish language was nowhere near as fluent as Jimmy's, so when he began to bitterly speak, she had no idea what he was saying.
"I didn't do anything wrong," she quickly defended herself. "I was out of the Ra when I contacted him."
Jimmy knew Catherine was well within her rights to contact Chibs when she did. It wasn't her that he had gripes with. "That's not what I'm mad about, a chuisle. This is between me and him-"
"How can I believe a bloody word you say? Especially after ya lied to me about Filip bein' a tout."
"What happened between me and Filip is none of your goddamn business, like I told ya two years ago. You really wanna start this up again? Because I'm awfully curious to know how you know the peelers still have you on their radar."
She decided to drop it. Anything she said past this point, she was afraid Jimmy would pin her as an informant over her relationship with Ian Wright.
The PSNI detective sent flowers to Catherine as a gesture of condolence but didn't dare to attend the republican funeral.
"Sorry I brought it up."
He took his first bite of stew and pulled out an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. He tossed it down on the table in front of her. "Fifteen thousand quid. Wanted to make sure your rent, utilities, and food are covered for the winter."
"I'm not your charity case," she said, sliding the envelope back to him. "I have a full-time job."
Jimmy knew this was how she would react, so he came with a backup plan. "Consider it an advance on your new part-time job then." From the pocket of his trousers, he produced another object. On the table, he placed an unspent rifle cartridge. "You're the only one I trust with the Barrett."
"Absolutely not."
"I saw that look in your eye when you put on Darragh's beret. You may think you're done, but you're not. The only reason ya left in the first place, is because you were angry I pointed out a reality you didn't wanna face."
"You called me a terrorist. A cold-blooded killer." Catherine spoke quietly, blinking back her tears. "I had just killed a gardaí, and as you put it, signed the death warrants of several men. I thought I was a soldier of Ireland."
He didn't realize how much his unfortunate choice of words had affected her. Making her believe that she was anything other than a soldier was never his intention. He thought she had left because she was being her usual bratty self, pissed that he had made her do the work of recruits when she wanted to hang with the big boys. It went deeper than that—he unknowingly forced to her into an existential crisis. He knew just how to remind her of the love she had buried for the cause.
Pushing the stew off to the side, Jimmy lit another smoke. "You are a soldier of Ireland. Do you want the UVF to get away with what they did to Darragh? Or let the peelers get away with how they treated our people during his burial? Your Da was arrested, you had your home ransacked hours after the service. What do ya think should happen with the fella who set off the chain of events that led to this shitstorm?"
Catherine knew Jimmy was manipulating her. Playing her seething hatred for his pleasure. She should have been disgusted with herself for allowing it to work. But all she could think of was how the PSNI and the British army left the UVF alone when they buried Simon Townsend in the same militaristic display. None of them had been raided or arrested. Patrick's three-day detainment still bothered her greatly.
"They all deserve to answer to their maker." Without a word, Jimmy slid a folded slip of paper to her. She picked it up and opened it. The address she recognized as being in the Markets, but it made no sense to her. She asked, "What's this about?"
"We got him. Dessie handed him right over once he resurfaced in south Armagh."
Jimmy watched as the color drained from Catherine's face. Though she had told Jimmy she didn't want any more blood to be shed, this was the news she had been anxiously waiting to hear for the last month and a half. Deep down, she still wanted to see a punishment doled out, feeling as though Darragh deserved his slice of justice.
"This is where he is?"
"Aye. If you're gonna head over, I'd hurry. You know how trigger happy the Casey brothers are."
"Fuck," she groaned in mild frustration. "I can't leave; the boys-"
"I'll watch 'em."
Catherine raised her eyebrows. This was out of character behavior. She was mildly suspicious over why he had been so pleasant to be around. "You sure?"
"I managed with Kerrianne, I think I can handle them for a little bit. Now go before I change my mind."
Jumping up, Catherine dashed out of the kitchen so she could grab her shoes, bag, and a sweatshirt. Jimmy just went back to eating. When she came running back into the kitchen, she was rightfully flustered, only being able to focus on what she was going to say to the man who was the reason Darragh was gone.
After thanking him over and over, and promising she wouldn't be gone long, she bolted out the back door. In his head, Jimmy began counting to see how long it would take for her to come back once she realized she had left the slip of paper with the address on it.
He didn't even get to five before the door swung open. She grabbed the paper and headed out.
Racing up the stairs of a call house in the Markets, Catherine burst through a bedroom door to find Sean and Michael Casey. They were dressed in all black with bloody latex gloves covering their hands. When the brothers heard the door collide with the wall, they spun around to see a version of Catherine they never knew existed.
She appeared collected. Though her mind was a racing wonderland of violent thoughts and her face wore the expression of chilling animosity. All she wanted to do was rip the man who was tied up in the chair to shreds. Not a single word was uttered as she closed the door behind her.
The room smelled of stale sweat and terror. On the floor, a plastic tarp protected the carpet from bloodstains. It crinkled under Catherine's boots as she walked closer to the hooded man. The windows had been covered to keep prying eyes out and she felt the presence of about a dozen souls. It quickly occurred to her what this otherwise empty room was used for—God only knew how many had lost their lives in the very space.
She had no idea who he was, nor did she care. He blubbered out in pain but all she could hear was Eamonn crying out for Darragh. That was enough for Catherine not to feel an ounce of compassion for the man who had undoubtedly spent the last several hours being subjected to cruel IRA torment.
Without having much of a plan, Catherine tore the black hood off his head. He looked up at her with fear in his eyes, as he knew this would be the last night he would ever spend alive. Globs of blood spilled from his mouth as he had several of his teeth pulled. A Glasgow smile was carved into his cheeks. It was Jimmy's signature—he had already been there.
"Oh, God!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. He began to thrash in the chair, pleading. "Please, please don't anything more! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I never meant for anyone to be killed!"
The calmness Catherine possessed didn't sit well with either Michael or Sean. They glanced at one another, trying to figure out what her next move would be.
From the back pocket of her jeans, she pulled out a photograph. Kneeling, she held up the photo of Darragh. In one arm, he held a newborn Sean, and in the other arm was Eamonn.
"You didn't just get one of your comrades killed," she began, looking the Armagh man straight in the eye. "Your deliberate and simpleminded actions ripped a father from his sons. I can handle my misery of no longer being with the man I love. What I can't handle, is listening to my eldest boy weep night after night, not understanding why his da isn't there to rock him to sleep. Do you have children?"
Trembling, the fellow IRA man nodded. He couldn't have been any older than she.
"It's not me or the cause ya should be apologizin' to. It should'a been to the wee ones, because you're never gonna see them again," Catherine spat.
"No! Please-"
Not caring to hear any more of his useless pleas, Catherine reached for a bloody rag on the floor and stuffed it into his mouth. Standing, she held out her right hand and slipped the photo back into her pocket. Michael Casey didn't hesitate to place the Glock pistol in her palm.
As Catherine moved the slide back to make sure a round was chambered, she ignored the throaty, muffled cries. Her mind wandered, making her think about whether or not Darragh had pleaded for mercy during his final moments. The idea of him being alone and petrified as the UVF abused him, only made Catherine angrier.
May be Jimmy was right. Maybe she was nothing more than a cold-killer because as she raised the pistol and took her aim, she felt absolutely nothing. As tears began to stream down his blood-crusted cheeks, Catherine remembered what Darragh's mutilated face and body looked like.
With that image still clear as day in her mind, she pulled the trigger.
She only intended to fire three shots; two in the chest and one to the head. But, she lost control and she pulled that trigger until the magazine was empty. Sixteen spent casings were burning through the plastic tarp when she finished. Not all of the rounds had hit, most of them were lodged in the drywall behind him. She was satisfied, nonetheless.
Sean Casey took the empty pistol from her and immediately began wiping it clean of her fingerprints. Stupidly, she hadn't worn gloves.
"Tag the body so they know it was us, then dump him on the Shankill in front of the UVF's C Company mural," she instructed.
To her, there was no greater dishonor than being disposed of in an enemy stronghold after being taken out by ones own.
As she headed out of the bedroom so she could go wash the gunpowder off her hands, she was stopped.
"Catherine," Michael Casey called her name. She turned around the see Sean smiling as he unscrewed the suppressor off the Glock. They said in unison, "Welcome back."
