PLIERS McCoubrey pulled the zip of his black North Face puffer up over his chin until the cold metal touched his bottom lip; he pushed his shoulders upwards and inwards until they were nearly touching his ears and strode on through the gathering graveyard gloom.
A milky moon played hide and seek behind dark, scudding clouds and an unseen owl ooh-oohed from the blackly looming silhouette of the church spire. This was a place that Pliers knew like the back of his self-tattooed hand – a place where he had roamed and played as a child and buried friends and family as a man; but as a low, smoky mist wrapped itself around the crooked headstones and a moaning wind rustled the last dry leaves on the churchyard elms, he felt as though he were somewhere strange, unknown and unknowable.
His phone shivered in the pocket of his relaxed fit jeans and as Pliers took it out and raised it to his squinting eyes, the warm light of the screen revealed the careworn face of a man whose decades fighting the enemies of Ulster had carved a dread story. But behind the hardness and the lines of his 66 years, 50 of them on the union ramparts, a boyish enthusiasm was discernible as he read.
“Were are u mate”
Pliers’ thumbs flashed expertly across the keys.
“Nearly there cam yerself ffs”
A few steps further and Pliers stepped off the narrow path of cracked flagstones and made his way up the side of the church until he reached a small, arched door, its wood thick and dark with age, banded with metal strips and studded with rivets. He knocked three times, counted to five, knocked three times more, counted to five once more, then knocked once. Presently, the heavy door opened with a doom-laden creak and Pliers stepped inside. As his eyes slowly grew accustomed to the tepid orange candle light, he saw five men seated at a plain oak table – three on one side, at the other side two men and his empty chair. All wore coarse woollen gowns, their faces black in the depths of the oversized hoods. The three sat behind a vellum card, on it written in skilled copperplate the letters ‘DUP’; the two men and the empty chair were behind another, this one reading ‘LCC’.
Hushed greetings were mumbled as Pliers took his gown from a hook behind the door, donned it and made his way to the table, the legs of his chair scraping harshly on the stone floor. For a few seconds that seemed to Pliers longer than an Ibrox injury time, silence descended upon the cramped room, a silence only deepened by the soft whistle of the wind in the empty fireplace and rendered oppressive by the lowness of the wood-beamed ceiling.
“Welcome, gentlemen, it’s been some time, so it has.”
When it came the North Antrim voice – Buckna perhaps – was deep and strong, confident of its authority, the ‘S’ sounds whistling as if coming through newly-fitted dentures.
It had indeed been some time: Six months? A year? Pliers found it hard to track the time as he got older. He remembered how he’d scoffed when first asked to join this new Loyalist Communities Council. Another talking shop, he’d sneered when his UDA Brigadier took him into the keg room of the Flag and Flute and asked him to come on board.
“We need you, Pliers,” the man had said with a simple sincerity that grabbed him by the collar of his Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt. “Ulster needs you.”
Pliers had worried about what it would mean for his daily duties, the dull but vital and honourable work that made ‘Simply the Best’ so much more than a bonfire banger. The birds, the gear, the loans, the doormen – high-maintenance businesses don’t take care of themselves, he’d said.
“One or two meetings a month, Pliers,” his Brigadier had said, slapping a meaty hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “You take your fancy bit to the caravan more than that.”
And so here he was, listening, as the DUP man spoke.
“We’ve achieved so much in so many fields in so short a time together I sometimes think we don’t give ourselves enough credit. Education, health, transport…”
Men mumbled their agreement.
“We’ve changed the school curriculum to include morning prayer, allegiance to the flag and Poppy Studies. Patients have to sign a form condemning the Ra before they get an appointment. We’ve got direct flights from Belfast to Colombia with free extra baggage.”
A spontaneous round of applause broke out around the table, ending only when the speaker raised two hands.
“But gentlemen, we gather here on All Souls Night not to celebrate.” His voice was softer now, but sinister, and a vague sense of unease began to seep through the company. “We come here to punish a traitor.”
Pliers McCoubrey had been afraid many times. He knew that a soldier who doesn’t feel fear is a fool – and he was no fool. He’d felt an icy hand grip his heart when a sniffer dog nosed his trunks in the passport queue at Schiphol. He’d thought that pumping vein in his neck would explode every time he signed on for his cousin who moved to Benidorm. But this was a new kind of fear. He felt as if a Magimix was making a smoothie out of his guts and under his hood, cold sweat poured in rivers down his forehead, dripping off his threaded eyebrows and stinging his eyes like acid. He balled his fists fiercely and clenched his jaw, his Turkish teeth locking shut with an enamel click that he felt sure would betray him. But the DUP man spoke on.
“This night I invoke the mighty spirit of Jahbulon to help us find the traitor of traitors, the serpent of serpents, the Judas of Judases, the Brussels sprout of Brussels sprouts.”
From the darkness of the fireplace came a thin stream of smoke, gathering in volume until it resembled the plume of the Flying Scotsman. And when it stopped, the standing smoke turned into a twisting mini-hurricane, spinning madly until it seemed as though it would rip the room to pieces. And then it stopped. And it cleared. And there stood Jahbulon, his ram’s horns scraping the ceiling’s beams, his goat’s hooves clicking loudly as he moved towards the table, his red eyes blazing from the midst of his full-bearded face.
“Great Jahbulon,” cried the DUP invocator. “Make known to us the knave that hath shared our secrets with Big Trunks on the wireless. Show us the blackguard who doth sully our labours by DMing the newspapers. Reveal to us the wretch who shall pay this night for his treachery.”
The speaker slumped heavily into his chair as Pliers bowed his head, closed his eyes and prayed a silent prayer. The click of hooves on stone came like the ticking of a death row clock as the beast moved slowly around the table, its rank breath pouring from its gaping mouth in white clouds. At each man it stopped, stooped and stared long and hard into the hood at the face within. Pliers counted the men off. One… two… He felt as if his chest and stomach had swapped places and he was breathing through his heart and not his lungs. Three… four… He moved his shaking hands from the table to stop his sovereign rings from clicking on the wood and placed them on his lap. Five…
Click, click, click.
Suddenly he felt the chill of the night on his shaven dome and neck as his hood was pulled down. Slowly and with an agonised whimper he lifted his head to see his five hooded comrades lined against the facing wall, their arms folded under their wide sleeves. From over his shoulder came a huge reptilian claw, a black and gnarled finger extended. The nail dug into the table and a ghastly scratching filled the room as a message was carved in the wood.
Here.
Sitteth.
A.
Betrayer.
Most.
Foul.
Pliers knew it was useless, but like his grandfather at the Somme he also knew that Ulster’s demands were rarely easy ones. Trusting his new hip like he’d never trusted it before, he sprang from his seat on to the table and leapt from it towards the door. Miraculously, the metal ball and socket held fast as his twenty stone hit the stone floor hard, but the knees beneath him gave way and he fell with a scream of pain. As the men fell upon him, a memory from his boyhood came too late: Getting his kneecaps done for stealing purses seemed a long, long time ago to Pliers McCoubrey.
The keg room of the Flag and Flute looked different to Pliers, as things tend to when you’re hanging upside down. The Brigadier looked different too as he lit up a rollie and blew the smoke in Pliers’ flushed face.
“I always liked you, Pliers,” he said, picking a flake of tobacco from his tongue with the tip of his index finger and examining it closely. “But there was always something about you… something… not quite right.” He said the last the three words slowly and deliberately, then leaned forward on the keg on which he perched and twisted his head to look in Pliers’ eyes.
“Find a tout, be in no doubt,” he told him, “that’s what I was always told.
“Find a Brussel, show him the muscle.”
The veins in Pliers’ neck were bulging as the blood rushed to his head and when he spoke his throat felt as though it were closing and his voice was tight and high.
“What happens now, boss?”
The Brigadier stood up and dropped his butt in a puddle on the cement floor.
“I think we both know, Pliers. You’ve seen it done to others. Matter of fact, you asked for it to be done to others.”
“Please, boss, for pity’s sake. Don’t make me watch The Blame Game.”
But the Brigadier was gone. And Pliers McCoubrey knew it was time to answer to Ulster.
