by Dave Duggan
It took me three goes to get the keycard into the slot to trigger the green light on the door lock, by which time Amy was giggling and pushing me through the door. It eased closed behind us, with a satisfied sigh, as she propelled me onto a bed. There was more giggling and fumbling with the condom I plundered from my pull-along suitcase, then no more missed strokes or stumbling, no further false starts or mishaps. We found each other forcefully and thoroughly and, in a briskly energetic drive, travelled to deep, brief ecstasies, which shuddered through us, echoing in our whimpers, whispers and breathy calls.
In the chest-heaving pause that followed I saw, through the corner window, two swans angle towards the lake. I was sure I could hear them honk above the bellowing of my heart in my chest. Then Amy started giggling again, a grown up woman’s giggle, surprising from so elfin a figure. I joined her, when I realised we were strewn across my room-mate’s bed, the contents of my suitcase littered across another bed.
We disentangled and passed each other items of clothing.
‘Just a minute,’ I said, as I held her bra. ‘I haven’t really seen you yet.’
Amy struck a pose, an urchin’s pose, eyeing the far distance, one hand on her hip, the other on her chin, so her arm crossed her chest. She was the Venus Demure, feigning modesty. I tossed her the bra. She caught it, put it on, then stepped deftly into her pants. I pulled on my shirt and said ‘Great.’
I salvaged the debris from my bed and stuffed it back into my suitcase. She smoothed the covers on my room-mate’s bed. There was a round of toilet visits, cleansing and readying for leaving. So much intimacy, so sudden and speedy, left me nerve-jangled.
‘I am hungry now,’ said Amy. We walked at pace along the corridor and down the service stairs, where we pecked our lips together, sealing an agreement to meet during lunch, then we entered the dining area by separate doors.
The break-time queue was long satisfied. There were no more than dregs in the coffee dispensers. I took half a cherry scone and smothered it in butter and raspberry jam. It was as tasty as the sweet sweat I licked from the base of Amy’s porcelain neck.
Events overtook the plans Amy Miller and I had to meet during the conference lunch-break. Two squarely-built men in suits, the very same who had book-ended Amy and me in the morning queue, met me at an angle of corridors en route to the dining room. Only one spoke. The second one stood slightly off, as if expecting to make a tackle on a strong-running rugby flanker.
‘Hello, Eddie. You’re invited to a wee private lunch with Officer Cosgrove. If you’d like to come with us?’
‘Ah, thanks. Give the Officer my regards, best wishes and regrets. I already have a lunch engagement.’
‘Officer Cosgrove, from IS, is very keen to enjoy some quality time with you.’
‘Who is he?’ I asked.
The big man looked down at me. He was as ‘country’ as I was ‘city’. I was a bale of hay he could heft and toss over the roof of a bungalow on his way to a stand-pipe to drench his muddy hands clean. I might, as a teenager, have dashed round him and palmed off his back-up with pace and verve, but these trackers had me angled to a corner, with a lift emptying crowds of hungry colleagues right beside us. And I was no longer a teenager.
‘Officer Cosgrove said you might be hesitant, but asks me to assure you that the invitation is cordial. The room is quiet and the soup is delicious. The vegetarian option is a vegetable broth. Or you might prefer the Fermanagh oxtail.’
His colleague made a half-turn. The talker moved in behind me and the three of us processed round the corner past the lift doors and into a small salon where Officer Cosgrove of PS(N) Internal Security sat at a table set for two, over-looking the golf course, supping oxtail soup from a china bowl.
I took the empty seat and pulled out my phone, intending to message Amy, but the talker whipped it from my hand.
‘You won’t need that for the moment, Slevin,’ explained Cosgrove. ‘It’s impolite to use them, while sharing lunch. Cuts into the chat. I recommend the oxtail. Old-fashioned comfort food.’
He took another spoonful with a loud slurp, then began to break a bread roll into the remainder. We were left alone and a seemingly cordial silence descended upon us, broken only by the clink of Cosgrove’s spoon on the china bowl and the slush of his eating.
The talker returned with a tray of food. Oxtail soup and a crusty roll; another roll, this one filled with chicken in a cream sauce; a glass of water; an orange; cutlery and a folded napkin, pert as surgical implements. I recognised it as an hotel version of prison rations, finessed, yet grim as the fare served on the wings.
I looked out of the window, at the golfers hurrying back from the course. Had they programmed game-time as part of the conference or were they simply skiving? I saw my room-mate, just as I guessed, pulling his golf-cart behind him, laughing with his three companions, until his eyes met mine and the four-ball veered off, hunching shoulders and quickening their pace. Cosgrove smiled as he brought another spoonful to his thin lips and I knew we were two fish in a glass bowl he wanted everyone to hear about. The ‘wee private lunch’ was a public affair and I wondered if this was the sole reason I was invited. Now I was Slevin, the dirty cop, lunching with IS.
Odours of oxtail, chicken and orange reached me from the tray. I lifted it and put it on the floor beside me.
‘Let’s have it then, Officer Cosgrove. I have a lunch engagement.’
‘No doubt. Room service, I imagine. Pity you won’t take the soup with me. A taste of home for the big lads here. Shame to see it go to waste.’
He nodded and the talker lifted both our trays with a set of fluid moves, not spilling a drop of soup or water. My orange rolled about slightly as he swirled away from the table and left the room. My lips felt dry and I regretted letting the water go. I ran my tongue round my mouth and tasted Amy’s flesh. I touched my fingers to my nose and smelled her juices. I was hungry, but not for prison food, however refined.
‘If that’s all, sir, I’ll be making …’
I moved just as the talker returned. He put a hand on my shoulder and sat me back in the chair. He passed a touch-screen tablet to Cosgrove.
‘You’ve had a hectic few months since we last met, Slevin. Nearly got yourself blown up, if you don’t mind. You’d swear someone was out to get you. Here, I want you to have a look at something and then I want you to give me your account of what you’re up to.’
He propped the tablet on its foldaway feet, so we could both see it. He set it against the window, backdropped with the last of the straggling golfers, doing their best not to be seen. Cosgrove smiled, obviously enjoying himself. He removed his thin metal spectacles and wiped the lenses with the edge of his pristine cotton table napkin.
‘Bifocals, Slevin. Means I get to see everything, all the time. Here we go.’
We both viewed a short sequence of clips from a camera in the foyer of the railway station. They showed me entering the foyer, speaking with the staff member, going into the inner office, then coming out again. There was no audio, but I couldn’t assume he didn’t have that. Or other footage he wasn’t sharing with me.
‘Bit late to be going for a train, Slevin,’ Cosgrove said.
‘I was there to pick something up. He’d phoned me, the fella at the railway station.’
‘And what was the “something” that was so important it couldn’t wait ‘til the morning?’
‘I was doing him a favour, letting him get away early. And saving the “something” from being sent back to Lost Property at Central. Besides it was a nice fresh night and the walk did me good. Check the cameras on the Peace Bridge. You’ll see my breath in the air. The resolution is good on those cameras.’
I had a long apprenticeship, on the streets, in the war and in prison. The basic rule was: when you lie, stay as close to the truth as you can.
‘So, he gave you this “somethi
ng”?’
‘Actually, I left empty-handed. You can see there.’
‘Why?’
‘The “something” was for someone else, not me.’
‘And who was that?’
‘You’ll have to ask yer man that. Jake, wasn’t it? That’s what he called himself on the phone. You would have heard him.’
‘Jake Tees, yes. And it seems that’s what you’re doing to me, Slevin. One long drawn-out tease.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, sir. If I dash, I might just catch the end of lunch. I fancy the vegetable broth. Less chance of bullshit than the oxtail.’
Cosgrove shut down the tablet.
‘Jake Tees says he gave a folder to another Edmund Slevin. A folder that had your number on it.’
‘Ah, a misfortunate misunderstanding. No more than that. It’s a big rail service. Names and numbers get mis-recorded, I’m sure. Folders and files get mis-directed all the time. You won’t mind if I suggest it even happens, occasionally, with us and we’re the police. Well, I am. I’m not sure what IS is. A canker on a branch of bad apples?’
I pushed my chair well back, which gave me enough room to get out and round the Talker. I made it to the door and heard Cosgrove yap ‘let him go’, as I yanked the handle. The second man was stationed opposite the door, but between his initial surprise at seeing me and, I guessed, a ‘stand down’ signal from the talker, I turned and plunged against the flow of conference goers exiting the dining room, among them Amy Miller, who came towards me, sprightly as a ferret.
‘You stood me up, Slevin,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry. Look … I … They …’
‘Not a great response. Look at you. Stammering in the corridor, while PS(N)’s finest parade by, leering at us. You scored some cold soup, when you could have had me. Hot. Not even a message, Slevin.’
A flush of panic raced through me, when I realised they still had my phone.
‘They took … There was no …’
‘They? I heard about you, Slevin. You and your visions and your voices. But I didn’t think you’d be this dodgy.’
I was rattled. Confusion and lust flared through me.
‘Look …’
‘You hurt me, Slevin. Not a good move.’
‘Tonight then. My room,’ I gasped.
‘You’re taking the piss? A threesome?’
That slowed a couple of people down beside us. I heard a muted whoop.
‘I’ll sort that. You and me. And time.’
We were getting even more interest from colleagues passing by. Amy was unfazed. I was on the point of screaming.
‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’m on a panel in the Lustymore Suite …’
Someone wolf-whistled then and Amy smiled. She was enjoying herself. Every fucker was. Except me.
‘… on “Women and Progression in the Police Service”.’
I caught her arm and whispered in her ear.
‘I’ll message you.’
Amy brushed me off, as she might brush lint off an old coat. I could send her a message, but in my rush away from Cosgrove I had forgotten to demand my phone back. I decided to give his heavies a breather, before I got back to them.
I found my golfing roommate, Hammy’s ‘callow and timid youth’ from Vice, on his way to the conference’s afternoon session on the latest scientific research into legal highs: ‘Bath Salts, Plant Feeds and their narcotic effects’.
‘You need to find a bed for the night.’
He didn’t speak. Seeing me with Cosgrove had spooked him over an edge he was already tottering on. He wanted nothing more to do with me.
‘And, see tomorrow, I’ll make my own way back. You won’t have to drive me.’
He almost cheered. I just needed to get my phone back, not only to message Amy, but to reclaim my life. Without it, I was no longer a police officer. I was way outside the law, further than a criminal. I was an ex-prisoner, an ex-guerrilla, an ex-cop. An ex-person.
I dodged the afternoon session I was scheduled to attend, sitting near the front, then, just as it was about to begin, exiting the room via a door at the side of the podium. That manoeuvre raised my mood. It pissed off my two trackers, though one or other of them was always in sight. I drifted down corridors, ghosted up and down service stairs, shared the service lift with an East European chambermaid who said ‘hello’ and got on with her work of checking toiletry items on her room service trolley. I got out at four, then used the stairs to go down. She continued upwards. I most enjoyed passing through the kitchens, as the chefs prepared dinner. They barely lifted their heads from their chopping, skinning, pounding and stirring. The smell of roasting meat and steaming broccoli followed me through the emergency exit and into a rear car park where two delivery vans burled round each other and sped away, one to Western Artisan Beef Company and the other to Freshveg – a Fennessey Company.
I pulled out a cigarette and realised that I hadn’t had one since breakfast. Maybe I could give them up.
My Number One Tracker came up and handed me my phone.
‘Here. I thought it would be more interesting.’
‘I wondered when you’d turn up.’
‘What’s on the menu?’ he asked.
‘Roast beef and broccoli, my nose tells me.’
‘Don’t be making any dinner plans. You’re for the top table. Clashing the aul’ cutlery with the CC and the Yank Professor, who gave the key-note. She wants to show you off, the prize Charolais, though you’re a bit lean for that.’
‘I’m guessing that’s an agricultural reference and, if it is, it’s lost on me, big lad.’
‘Aye, Charolais. Large and beefy. Could be on the menu. Wouldn’t be bad. You’re more streaky bacon than prime steak.’
‘You’re right there, sir. I’m a rasher of a man. Listen, I’m not going anywhere. Why don’t yourself and Daffy Duck quack off for a while?’
‘You think we could? Me and Daffy Duck quack off? That’s good. You’re better in person than on the phone or by reputation. We’ll see what we can do. Top table, seven sharp. Face washed. Clean knickers, if you have them. You’d never know your luck.’
‘Here, before you go, do me a favour. Tell me this. What’s Cosgrove after me for? What does he want, because if I knew, I’d be only too glad to give it to him.’
He stuffed his fists in the square pockets of his waxed jacket and shrugged.
‘You’re good at that, eh? Giving it to cops? Officer Cosgrove goes after dirty ones. He’s good at it. We work for him, more brawn than brain, right enough, but we’re smart enough when we have to be. You ask me what he wants. I’d say he wants to hose you down clean, then flush you into the slurry with the rest of the manure.’
‘You’re an education, you are. A farmhouse encyclopaedia. What’s your name?’
‘Goosy Gander. I’ll tell Daffy Duck you were asking for him. Stay close and be at the CC’s table at seven.’
Then he walked off and I was left to consider what to do until seven o’clock. I checked my phone. They’d drained the power and it wouldn’t come on. I would have to go back to my room and put it on charge. I could go searching for Amy, but I expected she would avoid me again.
I was left with the terrifying options of a round of golf or catching the end of a session on human trafficking: ‘Following the Money: Proven trafficker routes from Asia to Europe’. I went back to the sanctuary of my room, asked the desk for a call at six and went to bed. I didn’t dream about golf or money. I dreamed about water.
FIFTEEN
The bedside phone grumbled in alarm. I woke up gasping and soaking wet, as if I’d been swimming. I lifted the handset and put it down again, then got up and showered like a man washing off the slime of submersion. I dressed and made my way to the dining room, which was laid out restaurant-style, with small tables seating four
or six people, as well as banquettes along two walls. The CC and another woman sat facing the room from the purple upholstery of a high-backed banquette on the wall nearest the kitchen access. There was a gap of two tables before the next table of six. The CC made the introductions, as I took a seat with my back to the room.
‘Excellent, Detective Slevin. I knew we could rely on you. This is Dr. Rankin. Were you at her presentation this afternoon?’
I took the Doctor’s hand and avoided the question.
‘I hope I’m too not late. Just three of us, is it? The room looks great. Like a wedding.’
Doctor Rankin laughed and shook my hand. She was tall, like the CC, with wavy black hair and the solidly trim physique of a regular swimmer. It was hard to be accurate, but I guessed she was in her early forties. Both women wore fine lace shirts underneath light waist coats, the CC’s an embroidered bolero. I wore a button down blue shirt. I’d left my jacket in the room. The temperature in the hotel was low-end sauna.
‘Good to meet you, Detective Slevin.’
‘You too, Doctor Rankin.’
No first names were shared. The CC continued.
‘Detective Slevin is also a doctor. Guess his field.’
Dr Rankin looked at me and ventured,
‘Medicine? Pathology?’
‘Mythology. I think I smell broccoli.’
I had decided to keep this dinner cordial and get away as quickly as I could. The tables were filling behind us, voices were bubbling up and chairs were sounding, as people pulled them out and sat upon them.
The kitchen doors swung open and two waiters arrived with our starters. The CC said to place the fourth one, as she expected her guest to arrive any minute. I focused on my portion of smoked salmon on a rocket salad, adrift slightly off-centre on an unnecessarily large platter.
‘Let’s start,’ said the CC. The sound of cutlery on china joined the voices in the room.
‘Mythology?’ said Dr Rankin. ‘That’s a bit unusual for a police officer.’
