His mother had been into the room twice, once to tell him to turn the music down and the second time to tell him his tea was ready. She was less than pleased when he told her he didn’t have the stomach for it. Now he was waiting for the moment when he’d hear Liam’s car stop outside his window. He was glad Liam was going with him. He was a familiar face to accompany him on this journey into the unknown. It was not a dangerous job, but it was a very important one. The bearded man he had never met before last Tuesday told them that at the briefing. It was only babysitting a bank manager’s wife and daughter on the Malone Road. They’d hold them hostage while the real work was undertaken by the other unit at the bank. It was a simple fund-raising operation. In and out in three hours, he said; even if the job was not complete. In and out in three hours and rendezvous at the address he wrote on the back of his cigar packet that was now nestled in Cormac’s shirt pocket.

He’d just come out of the bathroom for the third time inside ten minutes when his mother called him to say Liam was outside waiting in the car. She kissed him on his way out and issued her standard warning regarding Liam. He was nervous and apprehensive about the night to follow when he climbed in beside his friend. He said hello to Liam, but did not get any response. Instead, Liam turned the music up to full volume, hit the steering wheel four times and skidded away from the village down the hill towards the lights of Belfast. They were barely out of the village when he lifted his shirt to show him the gun stuffed into his waistband. Cormac’s temperature dropped to match that of the glistening steel that flashed against the passing street lights. He asked Liam to stop the car. He told him he’d made a terrible mistake and he wanted to stop before it went too far. Liam told him it had already gone too far. He was a volunteer and there was no place for cowardice in the IRA. He tried to calm his thumping chest and just about succeeded by the time they pulled into the waste ground on the outskirts of the city. The other car flashed its lights twice and Liam responded in kind. The door opened and he watched the bearded man approach Liam’s stolen old Ford. By the time he climbed into the back seat, Cormac’s heart was thumping against his ribs so violently he was surprised the man didn’t tell him to turn it down along with the music. The man said something about waiting outside the house until they were called in. Balaclavas were to be worn at all times. Conversations with the hostages must be kept to a minimum and no referral to names or places that could be traced back. Liam answered for both of them, before the man shook their hands and said a short prayer. On the ten-minute journey to the house, Cormac played and rewound the same piece of music again and again. It was the only thing he could do to try and bring some familiarity to the situation he’d so stupidly placed himself in. As they reached the front door and the engine died, he promised himself this was his one and only job. He never wanted to feel like this again. In all the books he read, the speeches he listened to, the seminars in which he’d been an enthusiastic participant, nothing prepared him for the sickening feeling he now had in the pit of his stomach. The feeling that what he was about to do was very wrong and could never be undone. He saw a man being violently bundled into the car in front.