Free The Contract by Gerald Seymour

morning and afternoon, and the stern-lipped warders with the keys and chains and trun- cheons? The whisky helped the memories to run, and with the clock chimes Johnny's attention to the jokes and anecdotes became weaker, was replaced. What did these men know of trial for murder?
    Nothing, Johnny, but that's not their fault. And they were doing their best to make him forget. But they knew ... of course they bloody knew.
    The court of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. A high and red-painted ceiling, ornate moulding, hanging lights, a garish wallpaper, layers of scrubbed duck green paint over the dock and the benches for the lawyers and the journalists and the public. The Lord Chief Justice, without hostility or kindness, asking and probing, writing his answers with a creaking pen. Counsel for the prosecution,
    the disbelief at his raised eyebrows and the voice that carried the quiet, incisive questions. The father of the girl and her brothers, all in a line, all hunched and staring at Johnny, their eyes never leaving him, all loathing him for the irreplaceable loss that he had brought to their home. Carter and Pierce and Smithson knew of it. Mawby would have read the file, read of the accusation and the defence before he sent his minions to bring Johnny to London. To bring the poor fool who would do what he was told so that he might regain his stature as a free man.
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    Pathetic and snivelling they seemed to him now, his court- room explanations.
    'It's different when you're sitting here, things don't happen the way you've put it, not when you're on the ground . . .'
    ' It happened very quickly. It's not like being sat in a cinema and watching it on a screen . . .'
    'Yes I did think at the time that the person I fired on was holding a gun.
    I thought that my life was endangered, my life and those of the men who were with me . . .'
    ' I was confronting an armed terrorist, that's all I thought. . .'
    And the deathly hush of disbelief. Always the unforgiving silence in the court and the wait for the Lord Chief Justice to look up from his ledger and for Counsel to frame his next question. A desperate quiet focused on the man who sat in the low witness box in a clean shirt and plain tie and a sports jacket.

    Counsel turning the screw, driving it deeper. 'The suggestion I put to you, Captain Donoghue, is that you believed your military rank and the special nature of your duties put you above the law. I suggest that you wilfully ignored the standard procedure of issuing a challenge before opening fire. I suggest that you were prepared to shoot dead any person, terrorist or civilian who approached the cache.'
    'It wasn't like that. ..'
    What was it like, Johnny? Johnny still and damp in the bracken and under the bramble of the hedge, and the figure bending at the fox hole, the flicker of the plastic fertiliser sack as it was drawn clear, the bag pushed back into the hole. The figure rising short and lightweight onto the feet and then the gun presented to him . . . not a gun, Johnny, a col-lapsible umbrella. One shot from the Armalite, half a scream and a tumbling shape. Got the fucking pig, the corporal behind him said. Radio for Quick Reaction Force. Land- Rover in the lane within ten minutes, and a voice calling from a farm house in the hill, calling a girl's name in panic and desperate fear.
    Pierce drawled through his story, acting out the parts with his eyes and his hands. '. .. he liked the Grammar School boys best, reckoned he stood a better chance of buggering them, because they weren't part of the scene at Trinity, they'd be frightened of getting packed off home. He was a cheeky old turnip. One chap came along to read an essay when he'd a late date afterwards at the Nurses' Home, he was smothered in after shave and talc. The old fellow went quite bananas, hardly gave the lad time to get his script out of the bag . . .'
    Maeve O'Connor shot through the right breast, stone dead. Johnny heaving his guts into the hedge.