Kiss the Bullet

by Catherine Deveney

  “Could you do a bit of digging for me?”

  “Maybe. Look leave it with me. I’ll talk to the editor about it.”

  “Great.”

  “Not sure how much money there’ll be for commissioning the piece though, Dan,” he says, sounding apologetic. “But I’ll do the best I can.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just get the contacts and that will be worth everything. I might be able to sell something on to an American magazine as well.”

  “Good idea. I’ll get back to you in a week or two when I’ve had time to look into it.”

  A week or two! An eternity.

  “Thanks Eddie,” she says.

  When she puts the phone down, she sees the tremor in her own hand and tries to still it, walking briskly to the front door to pick up the letters from the mat.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Days later she has her head in her hands. What madness is this? What was she thinking of? Perhaps it would be better if Traynor simply doesn’t get back to her. If he just melts away as he has done so often in the past. But when Traynor phones a couple of weeks later and says his contacts are not that keen to speak to her, instead of being relieved, the sense of disappointment is overwhelming. “Keep trying,” she urges him. “Persuade them.”

  Her anger is like an infection. When she is in the throes of it, when she indulges in thoughts of the past, or watches the latest political manoeuvrings in Ireland, it rages through her body like a virus, poisoning her bloodstream. She is lost somewhere inside her own dark fury. She could kill with her bare hands.

  When the anger begins to abate, she is left with a vague sense of shame. But the strange thing is she knows it can rage through her again at any time. No matter how much she resolves never to let it take hold, it flares up like an old recurring injury that is never far from the surface. There is a sickness inside her. There will always be a sickness.

  Today she was in the home section of a department store and she found herself looking at kitchen knives, glinting coldly in the artificial light of the shop, an array of precision. She suddenly imagined them, steel tips streaked with blood. The thought unnerved her, sickened her. Too physical, she decided immediately. But the point is she thought about it. She considered it. And her own capacity to consider it unnerved her, and she had walked quickly out of the shop and into the crowds of Argyle Street, letting herself be swept along in the tide.

  It is one thing to realise you want somebody dead. Another to be willing to be the instrument of their death. But another again to be able to turn that into a practical physical action. How does a person like her kill another human being?

  A gun, she thinks, a gun would be cleaner. Curl a finger. Pull a trigger. It gets messy then, of course, but she doesn’t have to touch him directly. But she could never get a gun. Where would she get a gun? Someone normal like her. Is she normal? Do normal people think this way?

  Mowing him down in a car. Is that possible? Letting her anger control the accelerator pedal, letting it force her foot down to the floor. Or poison perhaps. Weedkiller. Paraquat. Crushed paracetamol? She feels despair gnawing her. How much would you need? You might have the determination, but how do you get the knowledge? One thing she does know. You have to get close to a person to kill them.

  It’s a full two months later that her mobile rings in the middle of the supermarket. She looks at the number. Traynor. Her stomach lurches. His contact is promising nothing, but he has finally agreed to meet Danni to decide if he wants to help her.

  “He’s not a nice man, Danni, but he’s powerful,” Traynor warns. “Are you sure you’re up for this?

  Danni grasps the shelf in front of her, finds herself gazing into row after row of breakfast cereal.

  “Yes, Eddie” she says, as calmly as she can. “I’m up for it.”

  * * *

  She phoned Katy late that night when she was calmer.

  “I need to go back to America for a bit.”

  “Hollywood?”

  “Yes. I need to do some more interviews for the book. Sometimes, it’s only when you start that you realise the things you don’t have.”

  Katy yawned.

  “How long will you be away this time?”

  Danni hesitated.

  “Not sure. Will you keep an eye on the house again?

  “Yeah, yeah. When do you go?”

  “Monday.”

  “Tough job you’ve got there, honey. Guess someone’s got to do it.”

  “Yeah,” said Danni. “That’s exactly the way I look at it. Someone’s got to do it.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Belfast, October 2010

  The man they call The Wasp has a first floor office in a dingy sidestreet of Belfast. When Danni gets in a taxi and gives the driver the address, she is aware of his eyes flicking upwards to look at her curiously in his mirror. He says nothing; simply signals and moves out seamlessly into the flow of traffic. When he drops her under a streetlight, the only words he has spoken are to tell her the fare. She hands him a note and he takes it silently. Only when she gets out onto the street and looks around does he speak.

  “You a visitor?” he asks, fumbling for change.

  “Yeah,” She squints into the darkness at a side alley trying to see the name. “Is that it?”

  The driver nods.

  “Wouldn’t hang about here if I were you. Meetin’ somebody?”

  She is aware of his eyes travelling down her, assessing her, of that male capacity for simultaneous disapproval and desire. On the corner of the street, a moving shape catches her eyes. A woman in a thigh high skirt, heels and a short, flimsy, fake leather jacket. The woman is stick thin and shivering. She wraps the jacket tighter round herself. The taxi driver looks over.

  “Rattlin’,” he says.

  “What?”

  “She’s shakin’. Needs her next hit.”

  Danni moves away from the lit street into the alley, walking past metal bins that spew garbage from half open mouths. She jumps at a movement behind her, realises a silver Vauxhall is crawling slowly at her back. The driver looks intently as she moves to the side. Instinctively, she avoids his gaze. The paper with the address is scrunched into her palm. Number 42. She peers into the darkness. Odd numbers on the left, even on the right.

  When Traynor had called back with an address where she was to meet Sean Pearson, he said he wanted to come with her. She put her foot down. Not that it wouldn’t be brilliant to have him with her, she lied, but it was a journey that for the sake of the piece she should do alone. For the sake of the piece. That was Traynor’s kind of talk. He would understand that. It would make it too emotionally safe with him there, too comfortable, she said. It had to have an edge to be interesting.

  Reluctantly, Traynor had finally agreed but said he wanted her to keep in close contact with him. He had told Pearson her name was Danni Cameron, he said.

  “And listen,” he had told her, “pander to his vanity. Call him the Wasp.”

  “What?” she’d said incredulously.

  “Oh don’t ask. He’s a psycho so be careful. But he’s connected and he can help you. He knows everyone.”

  “Was he … was he responsible …?”

  “In the planning, I think, but not on the day.”

  “Got a light?”

  The young woman on the street corner is calling down the alleyway to her.

  “No sorry … oh no, wait a minute.”

  Danni remembers one of those books of pub matches she picked up somewhere and which has been lying discarded at the bottom of her bag since.

  “Here …”

  “Thanks.”

  The woman walks towards her, tottering in her heels on the rough stony ground of the alley. She walks like a wee girl in her mother’s shoes, like they’re too big for her, forcing her bare knees to turn in towards each other in the cold. Her arms are round herself still, holding her jacket closed over a black, boned, corset top. Her fingers shake as she lets go and she grasps
the matches, flaring one against the side of the pack immediately.

  “Ta.”

  Up close, Danni sees she is not as young as she first thought.

  “Ah’m Myra,” she says. “You a Scot too? I heard you talkin’ tae the driver. Glasgow, aye?”

  She takes a puff of the cigarette, hands trembling.

  Danni nods. It’s intrusive looking at her shake like that, she thinks, like being unable to avoid looking at something that should really be too private to view. Myra’s eyes seem vague, as if they don’t quite focus on what she sees.

  “I need a hit,” she says, drawing deeply on her cigarette.

  The driver who had circuited earlier in the silver Vauxhall drives back round into the alley and they move to the side of the road.

  “Wanker,” Myra mutters as he crawls by, staring out the window.

  She looks at Danni.

  “Sorry. But he’s been doing that for the last half an hour. He won’t pay for business, he’ll just get off on touring round in his bloody family Vauxhall peering out at us. Middle-class ponce who thinks he’s living on the dark side.”

  She draws in on her cigarette then laughs, choking on the smoke.

  “Tell you how much he knows … he thinks you’re one too.”

  She looks at Danni through eyes narrowed with smoke to see if she’s affronted at the idea.

  “Did you see the baby seat in the back of his car?” she continues.

  “No … no I … didn’t notice.”

  “You get loads like that.”

  Danni nods, unsure what to say and starts to move off, turning round to look for number 42.

  “Here,” says the girl, calling after her. “Do you want your matches back?”

  “No, it’s okay. Keep them.”

  The girl slips them into her pocket.

  “Who you looking for round here?” she asks, suddenly curious.

  Danni hesitates.

  “A guy who calls himself the Wasp.”

  She sees the girl’s face harden, the blue eyes focus more clearly on her.

  “You a friend of his?”

  “Never met him. You know him?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Complete bastard.”

  Danni nods. Well he would be wouldn’t he, she thinks. That’s what these people are. She shrugs and moves off.

  The girls watches her go, then suddenly shouts,

  “You’re going the wrong way.”

  Danni turns.

  “That way,” says the girl pointing back.

  She watches Danni walk for a minute then suddenly darts forward, closing her jacket over again, trying to run in her heels, the click clack ringing out in the alley.

  “Here, I’ll show you. I need to see him myself.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “We’re in the same line of business.”

  Danni wants to go alone. She doesn’t want to negotiate a first meeting with someone else beside her. But it doesn’t look like she has any choice. Myra leads the way up stairs and pushes on an intercom. There is a buzz.

  “Yeah?”

  “Myra.”

  The door pushes open.

  The stairway is clean enough but dark and dingy, lit by a muted wall light that can barely summon the energy to light past the first half dozen steps that curl upwards in a semi spiral. Myra pushes forward up the stair, still shaking, still grasping her jacket over her chest.

  The Wasp’s office is small and bare, the wooden desk decorated only with a telephone, an opened packet of chewing gum, and a glass of whisky. The windows block out the outside world with closed Venetian blinds. They are covered with dust, as if never opened. The one luxurious item in the room is an expensive looking leather chair, which the Wasp has sunk into, at the desk. He wears black trousers and a thin, black cashmere polo that would make him blend into the chair except for his startlingly white shaved head. Bizarre, Danni thinks immediately, looking at the unusual shape of his skull, the lumpy, ridge like effect in the baldness that moves underneath the surface. He sits forward in the desk when the two women enter, clunking a heavy gold bracelet against the desk. Then he very exaggeratedly lifts his arm and looks at his wrist watch.

  “Myra …” he says and the voice is quiet and pleasant enough but manages to convey a sense of threat.

  “Yeah, I know, I’m early,” she says. “It’s bloody freezing out there.”

  “You’re not dressed for the weather, Myra,” says a sarcastic voice behind them.

  Danni turns. She hadn’t realised there was another person in the room. Behind the door there is a small area with soft chairs and a low, square, coffee table. A man – a boy, thinks Danni – lounges in the chair, feet up on the table. His thin, striking face is slashed by elegant cheekbones.

  “And you’re going to attract the wrong kind of man in that stuff,” he continues. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you?”

  “Fuck off, Coyle,” says Myra sourly.

  Coyle grins, raising his hand innocently, as if backing off. Slim, white, long fingered piano player hands, Danni thinks. He looks lazily at Myra. His eyes are beautifully shaped, like dark, glistening almonds, but hard and malicious. She wonders how he manages to combine effete boyishness with such a suppressed sense of viciousness. The Wasp is watching her.

  “Who’s your playmate, Myra?” he asks, still watching Danni’s face.

  “We met on the way in,” says Myra.

  “Danni Cameron.” Danni keeps her voice and her gaze steady but a growing unease emerges inside her like a butterfly struggling from a chrysalis and fluttering its tentative wings. There’s something surreal about this room, its blinded windows acting like a closed eye to the world. It’s like being in a dimly lit ball suspended above the universe. She thinks the Wasp is like an alien. Her eyes are drawn repeatedly to the ridges in his bald head that ripple and crease as he talks and moves.

  “Oh yeah,” he says, with a momentary note of interest. “Eddie Traynor’s wee friend. The writer lady.”

  His eyes flick back to Myra who has become lost inside herself, eyes closed, shaking.

  “Myra, why are you here?” he asks impatiently.

  Myra opens her eyes. She looks completely grey, Danni thinks, save for the small, angry red crop of spots on her forehead and at the side of her mouth

  “C’mon Pearson,” she wheedles.

  The Wasp says nothing but holds out a hand to her. She unzips an inside pocket in her jacket and hands him a small pile of ten pound notes. He doesn’t even count it but simply keeps his hand held out towards her and beckons with an imperious finger. Myra opens her mouth as if to speak but closes it again silently. She fumbles in a small outer pocket, pulling out a couple of crumpled notes.

  He counts it out, hands her some back, and in one seamless movement folds the rest in two and slips it in a pocket.

  “Please, Pearson.”

  “Where’s Stella?” the Wasp asks, ignoring her pleas.

  Myra’s face crumples into agonised petulance.

  “She’s up the other end of the drag. Near the pub.”

  Her arms are wrapped right round herself, like she’s trying to still her body.

  “Please Pearson.”

  The Wasp’s mouth twists in disgust as he looks at her.

  “You’re becoming a liability, Myra,” he says, opening a drawer beside him. He throws a small sealed plastic bag onto the desk. Myra’s whole body changes in an instant. It’s no longer bent in supplication, but greedy, atavistic. She swoops on the bag and heads for the door, saying nothing.

  “Myra.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Another hour.”

  “But …”

  “Another hour.”

  Myra closes the door forcefully.

  “Take a seat,” says the Wasp, as if the interlude with Myra had never happened and he and Danni had only just met. In the corner, Coyle yawns lazily and slides further into his seat.r />
  “I had a message about you,” says the Wasp. “You’re writing about our Troubles.”

  There’s an edge of sarcasm to his voice that Danni doesn’t know how to respond to.

  “Yes.”

  “And what makes you think you know enough about it?”

  “I’m a writer. It’s my job to find out.”

  “A journalist?”

  “Not exactly. Though I am writing this for a newspaper.”

  “And you want to talk to someone who was an active member in the 1980s.”

  “Someone who was involved in the Glasgow bomb.”

  “Why so specific?”

  She shrugs but her heart thumps.

  “Because I’m a Scottish writer. And it’s embedded in the experience of the people who’ll read what I write.”

  “Don’t your Scottish audience care about the poor bastards further south in London and Manchester and Birmingham – Warrington even?”

  He smiles suddenly, the ripples running up under his scalp like ripples of sand marked by the flow of the tide. He’s playing with her. She can feel Coyle’s presence at her back. She want to turn round but keeps her head fixed on Pearson. Her back prickles.

  “Of course they care,” she says. “but they know about the Glasgow bomb because many of them were around then.”

  Pearson stares at her, then laughs lightly.

  “I tell you something,” he says. “I don’t know about your readers but I think you care about the Glasgow bomb.” He turns to Coyle.

  “I think we can help the lady, don’t you Coyle?” he says. Danni feels intimidated by the words. She half turns to Coyle, who is sprawled in the seat but opens one eye lazily.

  “The Fox,” says the Wasp. “Johnny. He’s your man. He’s very interested in the Glasgow bomb too.” He looks at Danni appraisingly but without interest. “She’s just Johnny’s type, I’d say,” he tells Coyle, like she isn’t there.

  By the time Danni turns back, the Wasp is writing an address on a piece of paper.

  “Who is he?”