FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (3 page)

“Good on ya…be sure ta keep a low profile…and keep yerself outa trouble. And enjoy those twenty-three hour Swedish nights tucked up in Anna’s arms. Don’t fret about the fuck-up in Tipp. The lads got clear and they’ve gone ta ground, just in case. The Yank ya had was interviewed on the TV and said he was well treated and never felt in fear of his life. So there ya go Finn. You’ve lost yer touch and ya can’t even put the fear o’ God in a wee little chemist. Mind yerself, and if ya come across Ingrid over there, tell her the bear says hello.”

I stepped on the train for Harwich just as the Manchester United football supporters began pouring off their special train. I thought all the dogs, horses and shields were a bit too much…until I saw the hordes racing down the platform, straight at the waiting line of police.

STOCKHOLM and UPPSALA, SWEDEN

It’s six a.m.
and I’m huddled under a lifeboat stanchion, freezing my balls off on the Harwich to Gothenburg ferry. The kidnapping fuck-up was only three days ago, but it seems longer than that.

An icy mist hangs over the sea as we creep up towards the River Gota. We slipped silently alongside the ferry terminal, arriving to a typical Gothenburg winter’s day. There’s just a hint of daylight in the grey sky, and it’s cold as a widow’s teat.

The moment the gangplank landed on the ground I ran down to the wharf and trudged through the snow, trying to avoid the long queue waiting for taxis. I managed to flag one down before it turned into the terminal. The taxi man dropped me at the railway station and didn’t complain when I paid him in Irish pounds – the only money I have.

The train is just about to leave the station. I ran past the ticket collector, yelling that I’ll buy a ticket on the train.

I telephoned Anna from the first station on the journey from Gothenburg to Stockholm. We arranged to meet at four p.m. at Stockholm’s Central Station.

I met Anna last year; she was a student at an English-language summer school in Brighton. I was a part-time waiter in a hotel we planned on bombing…along with the British prime minister and most of her cabinet. After unexpected peace overtures from the British government, and hints of prisoner concessions for our volunteers locked up in British jails, the bombing was postponed. The Army Council decided we shouldn’t be blowing up people we were negotiating with, and I was happy to agree. It meant I could hang around Brighton for the summer and fall head over heels for Anna. At least that’s what I told myself at the time. I did like her sense of humour, the eight freckles running in parallel lines across the bridge of her nose, and the sex.

I’m hoping to hide out with her for a couple of months, until the heat dies down. Obviously, I’m not going to tell her I’m hiding out.

Like I do all the time, I ran an imaginary conversation through my head – kind of practising for when we meet up again.
Jaysus you look as beautiful as ever. No, more beautiful, if that’s possible. Tell me, have you got yourself a handsome fellah yet? Are you spoken for now, my lovely
? Plenty of blarney…I do that all the time, practise it like. It works!

I must’ve fallen asleep. We’ve crossed half the length of Sweden, and we’re pulling into Stockholm’s Central Station….I never bought a ticket.

I spy Anna behind the barrier, waiting for me to appear. Her nose is bright red, her cheeks are rosy with the cold, and she’s stomping her feet trying to stay warm. She’s even more striking than I remember.

Anna is five feet seven inches tall, which is short by Swedish standards. Her button nose – with a sprinkling of freckles – turns up slightly and gives her a mischievous look. She has eyes like blue ice and they sparkle when she smiles, which she does often. Her flaxen hair is cut in a bob, framing her high cheek bones and adding a golden glow to her face. She’s Everyman’s vision of a Swedish beauty, and she’s mine – it was obvious when she raced across the station concourse and flung herself into my arms. I won’t bother with my rehearsed blarney…I don’t need it.

It’s a dark, bitterly cold December afternoon, and we’re catching a train to Telefonplan – a complex of high-rise towers adjacent to the Ericsson factory, where the company provides apartments for female workers. But instead of using the tunnel from Central Station to the underground T-Centralen Station, we decided to take the romantic route. Tramping through drifting snow, our breath freezing instantly in the icy cold air, we stopped just long enough to warm ourselves with piping hot cups of coffee from a stall.

———

The door to Anna’s apartment was flung open by a six foot, grey-eyed Boudicca. It’s Ingrid, I can’t believe my eyes…I’m delighted!

She grabbed me in a bear hug. “
Wot the fook
are you doing here, you big bastard?”

“Nice to see you too, Ingrid,” I managed to whisper, once I got her woolly jumper out of my mouth.

“Now you two, that’s enough lovey-dovey stuff. I know you’re thrilled to see each other again, but let me in to get the coffee on,” declared Anna from the hallway.

The small apartment is like a page out of an IKEA catalogue – lots of plain pine furniture and brightly coloured fabrics. I like it.

Over coffee and smorgasbord we covered the nine months we’d spent living together in a cottage in Kemptown in Brighton, after the aborted hotel bombing. Mac and myself were checking out Newhaven and Shoreham ports for a suitable place to land and collect a shipment of arms coming from ETA. The girls were attending English-language summer school, and working part-time in a Scandinavian-style cafe on Western Road, in nearby Hove.

One night Ingrid and Mac got caught up in a fisherman’s night net off the shingles of Brighton’s beaches – trying to swim naked from the West Pier to Palace Pier. We were still giggling about that when Anna dropped the bombshell.

“Finn, there’s something I have to tell you. I’m going to America in four weeks’ time and you can’t stay here. Ericsson owns the apartment and they want to let another girl stay here while I’m away.”

Jaysus! This calls for a rapid rethink.

“Why aren’t you staying with your parents, or in your own apartment?” I asked Ingrid…just in case there’s any possibility with her.

“Because Finn, now I am an important person. I’m a teller in the foreign exchange department of a bank in Kungsgatan. And anyway, it’s easier to get there from here. My parents have moved to Uppsala and I could never commute all the way from there, but I suppose I’ll have to when Anna goes. Perhaps my brother would drive me to work when he visits his fiancée in Östermalm…some chance!”

Back to square one. I’ll have to contact Mac to see if he or the Chief have any bright ideas.

I phoned Mac; he said he’ll check with the Chief and to ring back later, which I did. They haven’t anything in mind for right now, but Mac said the Chief is working on something that might get me a bunk under canvas…if everything works out.

———

We’re hanging around together like peas in a pod, and the girls are taking me to all the trendy joints around Gamla Stan in the evenings. I’m no lover of discos, but for the girls’ sake I do my best. I dance the slow ones with Anna and the fast ones with Ingrid…at least most of the time.

The first chance Ingrid got to talk to me on our own, she told me that Anna confessed something to her when they returned to Sweden last year. Anna told Ingrid that she’d fallen madly in love with me; she said she’ll never lie with another man, and that she was saving herself for the day I come back for her. It’s flattering, if a bit old-fashioned, but I enjoyed hearing it all the same.

———

We’re out in Gamla Stan tonight, and I’m keeping an eye on a big Icelander who’s been bothering Ingrid whenever we leave her alone at our table. He’s very drunk, but she says she can handle him.

During a slow dance with Anna I checked out our table and saw the Icelander lunge at Ingrid and shove his hand inside her blouse. Abandoning Anna on the dance floor, I ran to the table. I smashed the Icelander’s nose with the heel of my hand and kneed him in the face as he sank unconscious to the floor. He’s lying motionless under the table, choking on his own blood. I turned him on his side and placed him in the recovery position.

Fights are rare in Stockholm clubs, so there are no bouncers to control the customers. Even so, the bespectacled cashier is pushing through the crowded dance floor, heading in my direction. I dashed past him and swiftly disappeared out the exit, just before the police arrived.

I’m waiting across the road from the club, frozen stiff with the cold. I only have on a light shirt; my jumper and anorak are still in the cloakroom. Thank God, I see Anna running across the road with a big woollen ski jumper. I’m so cold I can’t move my arms, and my teeth are chattering too much to speak, but Anna’s managed to slip the jumper over my head.

“I
borrowed
it from the back of a chair and slipped out past the policewoman,” Anna explained.

We’re waiting in the freezing cold for Ingrid, but at least I’m warming up with the borrowed sweater and Anna’s cuddles. An ambulance arrived at the club and the Icelander’s being carried out on a stretcher. Ingrid’s right behind him, and she’s carrying all our clothes from the cloakroom.

“Ingrid, can you drop the jumper Anna borrowed back into the club?” I asked. “I don’t want someone freezing to death on their way home because of me….At forty-five degrees below freezing it’s not unlikely.”

We took a taxi to Telefonplan and didn’t speak until we were back in the apartment.

“Finn, the police were given a good description of you. The paramedics told me the guy’s nose and upper jaw are very badly broken, and he’ll probably need surgery to repair the injuries. With that much damage the police will take this very seriously and come looking for you,” said a worried-looking Ingrid.

This is all I need – another effing police force on my case. So much for keeping a low profile as Mac advised!

“So Finn, tell me, how did you learn to hurt someone that much?” Ingrid quizzed.

“Oh, it was the military training I mentioned. You know…we got trained in unarmed combat.”

“But you told me you’d no time for the Irish or the British armies,” Anna piped up. “So who trained you?”

“It was like this Anna…you remember when we were together in Brighton I told you that I’d been studying in Trinity College in Dublin, but I’d dropped out?”

“Yes, so…?”

“Well it wasn’t exactly like that. I was in Trinity, but I left because of the Troubles. Aping the Civil Rights marches in America, the Nationalist communities in Northern Ireland decided to have their own marches against the Unionists who’d treated them like third-class citizens for fifty years. The B-Specials…the Royalist bully boys in uniform…attacked the Nationalists, ignited fires in the roofs of their homes with phosphorus-filled tracer bullets, and dragged pregnant women out of their beds in the middle of the night. And it made me, and hundreds more like me, mad as hell. Then there was Operation Motorman, when the Brits stormed the no-go areas in Derry. They destroyed the barricades that were built to keep them out, and they murdered two unarmed young lads during the operation. They’d also brought in internment, and they were locking up anyone they fancied in concentration camps. So I volunteered to join the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and they taught me many things…including how to deal with the likes of your man tonight.”

“So when we met in Brighton you were already a rebel soldier? And was Mac?” asked Ingrid.

“And that’s why you couldn’t come here to see me in Sweden, like you promised? Is that why Finn?” asked Anna, with a wistful look in her eyes I’ve not seen before.

“Correct. Mac is a volunteer like me, and we had to get back to the action. The IRA needed to keep the young lads joining up…let them see we hadn’t given up the fight. Myself and Mac hit a few British Army patrols and rescued a volunteer being tortured in a police barracks by MI5, the British intelligence service. So, sorry love, we were kept a bit busy. But I always found time to take a peek at my photograph of you. Look, here it is. It’s a bit crumpled now, but I keep it with me all the time. A bit soft for a fighting man, eh? Still, it got me through some bad days, looking forward to seeing you again. And here I am, up to my neck in trouble again.”

The girls are having an excited conversation in Swedish – they usually speak English when I’m around. I can’t really make out what they’re saying, but Anna just gave Ingrid a hug and handed her the telephone.

“Yes. Yes. Call him now, go on,” said Anna.

Anna came and sat beside me. She kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand while we listened to Ingrid make the call. She’s not speaking Swedish, but whatever it is, it’s not that dissimilar. I heard Anna’s name and understood
Irlænderen
which is one of the Scandinavian names for an Irishman, but I can’t remember which one.

“OK, that’s it all fixed. Just one more call to make. Cross fingers that my good-for-nothing brother is still with his fiancée in Östermalm. He’ll have to drive you to Erick’s place right away. I think someone in the disco thought she recognised Anna, and the police could be here any minute you know,” announced Ingrid. She dialled another number, spoke rapidly in Swedish and hung up. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’ll go with you Finn, and introduce you to Erick. He’s a good friend, and you can stay in the spare room of his apartment. He attends the university in Uppsala. OK, you two better do your loving now, there’s not much time. We’ve got to hide a terrorist!”