"Who is it?" Mrs. Quinn yelled into the solid mahogany door her Frankie put up in place of that old hollow thing with the windows in it, because Eamonn was too damned lazy to do it himself.  She wasn't expecting anybody.

     The slam of the metal doors of one R.U.C. and two army jeeps answered her question before the knocker could.  "R.U.C.  Open up!" the knocker boomed.

     Mrs. Quinn was fond of her new door, and she waited long enough for it, Jesus knows.  She opened it.  The well-armed and armored knocker put his head back that bit more so he could look down his nose at Mrs. Quinn and tell her, after she said that, yes, she was Mrs. Quinn, that she, Mrs. Quinn, was under arrest under section fourteen or so of the Prevention of Terrorism Act--or thirteen under the Emergency Provisions Act, but who can remember?--and that she was going to have to go with them to the Antrim Road R.U.C. station.  The knocker's male and female flanks dropped their arms from inside their flack jackets and looked down their noses at Mrs. Quinn, too.

     "Right.  I'll just turn off my cooker and get my coat," Mrs. Quinn said.  Eamonn would have to fix the grub for himself tonight, she thought.  It'll do him no harm, the old man.
     Mrs. Quinn buttoned her coat, pushed back her uncooperative straight red hair, and got into the R.U.C. jeep--and not for the first time in her life, either.  Her boys were always breaking windows or shouting Up the Rah at the Brits, and they never failed to get lifted for it.  Her boys were bloody geniuses, she always said.  Mrs. Quinn would take the ride with them because they were too young to be questioned on their own.  Her boys never did any time.  That lazy bastard she married did, though, but that was another story.

     Mrs. Quinn wasn't much for travelling by motor, unless she were doing the driving, because the motion always got the best of her.  Jeeps always put her head away, they were so cold and damp.  And she couldn't see and she couldn't breathe because of the official armpit stink and petrol smell of them.  That was the worst of it, she always said, the jeep ride.

     Mrs. Quinn stared down at the pair of feet on the floor beside her to get her mind off the rattles and bumps of the journey.  The female R.U.C.'s square, rubber-soled shoes with the very orthopedic round toes and the skinny, round, black laces in the four wee holes made her think of that old bitch Mrs. Lawlor across the street.  Lawlor was always out her door like a flash whenever one of the Quinns got lifted.

     "'Tis a pity your lads are forever getting into trouble," Mrs. Lawlor said this time.  Old Mrs. Lawlor was shrewd--or simple--enough to pick up a Cork accent when she went down there after the snouts burned her out twenty-odd years ago.  "You'll do the talking as usual, aye Mrs. Quinn?" Mrs. Lawlor enjoyed times like these.  Mrs. Lawlor was the last one the snouts should have burned out, if they were after their enemies, Mrs. Quinn always said.

     "Aren't any of the menfolk taking the ride with you?" Mrs. Lawlor shouted over her cane and her stomach.  "Sure, what would they want with a wee woman like yourself, Mrs. Quinn?" Mrs. Lawlor had the same shoes as the R.U.C. female, only in white.

     The jeep slowed almost to a stop, lumbered over one, then another, speed ramp, sped up twenty feet, then stopped.  Mrs. Quinn wanted to vomit.  They don't waste any time trying to sicken you, she thought.  The knocker and his male and female counterparts led her through a few doors, down a hall that smelled like piss and weakened pine bleach, and into a dirty little holding cell the size of half a working kitchen.