Games with the Dead

by James Nally

  He pops out a tiny cassette, slips it into a Dictaphone.

  ‘I call my version Dusko Popov, after the double agent, because it’s 100 per cent reliable and you just pop it on and pop it off.’ Fintan registers my confusion: ‘Let me play you the tape.’

  He presses rewind, then play. The moment the tape reaches Fintan’s parting shot, we both lean forward.

  BRUNT: Right, no more obfuscation George. Answer me honestly, did you fuck this chap?

  GEORGE: Yes.

  BRUNT: Did you know he was sixteen?

  GEORGE: He was fifteen, the first time.

  BRUNT: Christ. And what was all that about scarring on your bottom?

  GEORGE: Those scars don’t prove a thing. He could have seen my backside in any number of circumstances.

  BRUNT: So, you do have these cigar scars on your bottom?

  GEORGE: Well, strictly speaking yes.

  BRUNT: That this male prostitute administered to you?

  GEORGE: I, we … look he got totally carried away. It’s not my thing at all.

  BRUNT: Well that’s just terrific, isn’t it? If this does go to court, your arse cheeks are going to become the focus of national attention. Well done, George.

  GEORGE: I think you’re somewhat overreacting, Theresa, to a minor detail.

  BRUNT: For God’s sake, George, you’re missing the point as usual. I’m trying to stop you, us, becoming a national laughing stock. I can see the cartoons now, some snotty-nosed rent boy picking out your butchered bum cheeks from an identity line-up of crinkled old arses.

  GEORGE: Don’t be unkind, Theresa.

  BRUNT: Listen to me, George. We can’t have this turning into a speculative national debate about the state of your arse. As your friend, I’m advising you to throw someone under the bus.

  GEORGE: What?

  BRUNT: You’re a backbencher, George. Political plankton. You must know some lurid gossip about one of the big fishes that John Major despises.

  GEORGE: I’m afraid I can’t do that.

  BRUNT: Is there anything at all we can throw at this sleazy bastard so he might leave you alone?

  GEORGE: There might be something. I happen to know that a Scotland Yard Commander is up to his neck in corrupt activities. Though I’d have to break the confidence of my Lodge.

  THERESA: We can’t have you upsetting the Masons as well. Right, there’s only one thing for it, I’ll call the Telegraph now. You confess to having a brief relationship with this Tommy Allen character, only after he swore to you on his mother’s grave he was twenty-one and they’ll go easy on you.

  GEORGE: If you think that would be for the best, Theresa.

  BRUNT: I’ll call the editor as soon as we get back to the car. It’s the only way we can control this cigar-scarring business.

  GEORGE: And what about the tabloid Mick?

  BRUNT: We let him have the statement we give to the Telegraph, if – and only if – he drops any reference to cigars and scarred arse cheeks. You’d best get home and break the news to your family.

  Chapter 13

  Archway Tavern, North London

  Saturday, June 18, 1994; 20.30

  Fintan drops me off at the Archway Tavern, dictating that I find a prized perch for the big game. He paces outside, dictating his ‘big game’ prized scoop to a copy editor.

  It’s just 30 minutes until Ireland’s World Cup clash against Italy. In Giants Stadium, New York. The game of all games. I’m already shaking. Somehow, Ireland’s rise as a soccer force since 1988 seems inextricably linked to our renaissance as a nation. It’s almost like we’ve been qualifying for major tournaments and shedding old Catholic shackles in tandem. Since ’88, for example, we’ve legitimised divorce and homosexuality, elected a radical, liberal woman President and brokered peace in Northern Ireland. The Republic’s role as poster boy for the EC has seen the introduction of free third-level education, the prosecution of kiddie-fiddler priests and the prospect of an economic boom.

  Which is why I fear a hiding from the Italians tonight might bring it all crashing down around our ears. They knocked us out four years ago, and the British pundits talk of ‘a grudge match’ and ‘Ireland’s revenge mission’. But we’re not really like that. We just want to make sure we don’t make a show of ourselves. It’s Ireland for God’s sake; 0-0 will do grand.

  I scope my phone for the umpteenth time. I notice it’s what people do now, when they’re alone. More texts from Zoe, checking that I’m okay. Childishly I refuse to reply, drawing perverse comfort from the idea she’s beside herself with worry. My revenge mission.

  Fintan slides onto the stool next to me, harassed.

  ‘What’s going on with you and Zoe?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I had the deadline bends out there because she kept calling me, checking you’re okay and asking why you’re not coming home or getting back to her.’

  His super-keen scoop-sensor is on high alert. I can almost see his nose twitching, so there’s no point lying. I blurt it all out; about the texts, her confession of an affair with a man named ‘Charles’ and her admission that it had all been ‘a terrible mistake’ which she’s anxious to remedy.

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ he says.

  ‘Well, all hail the mighty fucking prophet Fintan Lynch.’

  ‘Bottom line is, she’s never believed you’re good enough for her, Donal. Neither has her insufferably snobby mother, for that matter.’

  ‘Oh, thanks a bunch. What a shame OJ Simpson is otherwise preoccupied. I’m sure he could dispense some equally sage relationship advice.’

  ‘I’m just telling you the truth. She’s a uni-educated, Guardian-reading, middle-class liberal who loves the arts and is riven with ambition. You’re a lumpen drunken cop whose sole ambition in life is to win some “dad-of-the-year award” for a kid that isn’t even yours.’

  ‘Do not bring Matt into this, Fintan. I swear to God I’ll knock you out here and now.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he laughs. ‘Like the Oasis song says, you need to be yourself, Donal. You’re twenty-five and you’ve just spent the last six months sulking because she won’t have sex with you. Start living is my advice.’

  ‘Yeah well snorting coke every weekend and talking endless shite about yourself doesn’t work for all of us, Fintan. Unlike you, I don’t need to delude myself into thinking I’m living in some elusive fucking zeitgeist.’

  ‘That last line came straight out of Zoe’s mouth. I can actually hear her saying it. You need to leave her before you become completely brainwashed.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave her. Don’t you get it? I love Zoe and I love Matt. They’re my family now. At least I have a family.’

  He recoils and I instantly regret delivering such a low blow. I know he’s missing Mam a lot more than he’s letting on. We both take an emotional standing count.

  ‘Look, Donal, if you want to win her back – and I can’t for the life of me imagine why now she’s betrayed you – then you need to earn her respect. That’s what has been lost here. You can’t have love without respect.’

  ‘How original. Maybe you should ring Sandra’s photo casebook, get Tania and Ellen along to act out our break-up?’

  ‘Your only hope is to move out right away. Show her you’re the boss and you’re not taking any shit. You’ve still got your room at ours. Me and Aidan would love to have you back at the Arsenal. Aidan was saying the other night he hasn’t seen you yet this year!’

  I think back to our carefree, salad days living together. Aidan – psychiatric nurse and pothead – must rank as the most laid-back housemate of all time.

  I smile for the first time in days. ‘We were a happy crew, weren’t we? The Hack, the Quack and the Insomniac.’

  ‘It’ll be like old times. You could do with the break. Give it a week or two and she’ll be begging you to come back. Give it three and you’ll be able to watch the entire World Cup tournament in the pub, guilt-free and still have
the woman at the end.’

  Someone cranks Jimmy Magee’s foghorn to max, bringing Fintan’s caveman relationship advice to a merciful end. Giants Stadium is rammed, at least ninety per cent of it green.

  ‘They only gave us 3,000 tickets, amazing,’ says Fintan.

  Magee’s rundown of the Italian team feels like a death sentence: Baggio, Maldini, Baresi, Donadoni, Costacurta, Signori, the other Baggio.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I say. ‘The best players from the world’s best league. Meanwhile we’ve got Terry Phelan and Eddie McGoldrick.’

  ‘Hey, this team has beaten the best,’ says Fintan. ‘We can do this.’

  He’s right, of course. And not just about the football. But to make such a bold gesture as moving out, I need some sort of sign that it’ll all work out okay. That she’ll ask me back. An omen, to rubber-stamp my rubber spine.

  Fuck it, if Ireland win, I’ll ring her tonight and tell her I’ve moved back in with Fintan and Aidan, just until we sort things out. Of course, it won’t come to that. Ireland can’t possibly beat this lot.

  Eleven minutes in, Baresi’s weak defensive header bounces off the chest of Ray Houghton. He’s thirty yards out, side-on to the Italian goal and their seven-foot keeper, Pagliuca. Once, twice, three times it bounces. Houghton swings his weaker left peg. The ball spins, floats, in slow motion, in silence, in a dream, over Pagliuca’s flailing arms, under the crossbar, into the back of the net.

  Mayhem! Colliding bodies. Spilt beers, spilt tears.

  ‘Oh my Jesus,’ screams Fintan, grabbing me in a headlock and running me skull-first into the wall.

  For the next seventy-nine minutes, we cling on, and on, and on, every Italian attack an ulcer, every shot a full-on stroke.

  The final whistle triggers my complete emotional collapse. Through a mask of tears, I watch our raggle-taggle band of Irish, English and Scottish-born players, some accomplished, more still journeymen, stagger over to the fans in delirious disbelief. I think of our aunts and uncles and cousins scattered across America and Australia, those generations of Irish cursed by forced exile and written out of our history, and how our ‘blow-ins’ like Coyne and Sheridan and Babb have done this for them. For us.

  I then step outside to make that call, knowing that tonight, at least, there’ll be no shame for an Irishman to be seen crying in public.

  Chapter 14

  Arsenal, North London

  Sunday, June 19, 1994; 05.00

  I’m walking through the front door of our flat. I can hear Matt wailing. I must get to him at once.

  I look in the kitchen, then the sitting room, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Then I realise where his crying is coming from; the cupboard below the stairs. How did he get in there?

  The door opens only a fraction. There he is, his little wet face crumpled in despair, wailing my name over and over: ‘Dong! Dong! Dong!’

  But the door won’t open. I grab the handle hard and pull with all my might. Still it won’t budge. It’s then I see the black hand reach around Matt’s pale little throat. Frantic, I pull with everything I’ve got and roar blue murder at the figure in the shadows. But the door won’t yield and the black swallows my screams.

  That gloved hand closes in on Matt’s little throat, turning off his sobs like a tap.

  ‘Matt,’ I wail from the very pit of my soul.

  All flashes yellow. Fintan stands over me in bedraggled alarm.

  I glance about, recognise his sitting room and flop back against the couch.

  ‘Jeez, Dorothy, great to have you back,’ he says.

  Chapter 15

  Arsenal, North London

  Sunday, June 19, 1994; 10.00

  The titanic emotional strain of watching Ireland win a football match and dumping the woman I love knock me out for five hours straight. If only I could endure the same emotional torment every day; there’s the cure for insomnia right there.

  As I lumber down the stairs, it’s like I never moved out. Aidan’s in his bedroom, taming his Sunday morning black dog anxiety with a fat spliff, noodling on his guitar and braying unrequited love for his latest bus-stop/supermarket crush. Aidan’s an old friend from Ireland and an eejit, but a nice one. I say a hopeless romantic. Fintan says hopeless at romance and all its inherent politics.

  Fintan’s sat at the kitchen table, stacked ashtray and sacked newspapers telling their own story; he’s been up for hours breaking down the news agenda. He pushes his rag my way.

  ‘Our fat Tory friend made quite the splash,’ he smiles. ‘Alex Pavlovic won’t be happy that I’ve trumped him yet again.’

  Married MP Rent Boy Shame blares the front-page headline. Happiness is … a Hamlet-scarred Butt! teases the strapline.

  ‘Isn’t the cigar stuff a bit dark and twisted for your readers?’

  ‘Sweet schadenfreude more like. It’s a bit like David Mellor shagging that actress in his Chelsea kit. Our readers love seeing the powerful not just brought down but humiliated. Total Brunt was spot on. Debate about the precise condition of George Field’s arse cheeks will run and run. And at least we know the “cigar butt” thing is true. The stuff about Mellor in the Chelsea kit was totally made up, icing on the cake if you like. But it’s the image everyone remembers.’

  ‘How do you know the football kit isn’t true?’

  ‘Our secret filming guy, Gerry Woods, showed me the footage. My God, talk about the albino walrus of love.’

  ‘Don’t you worry that, someday, one of these people you publicly humiliate might turn around and top themselves? Or that their innocent kids suffer?’

  ‘I’m just the messenger, Donal. Besides, when you look at the family histories of these toffs, you discover Phillip Larkin was spot on, at least about one class of people. They’re genetically doomed to emotionally fuck up their kids in every way imaginable, starting with boarding school aged five. You’re going to like the next page even less.’

  I open to the headline Outfoxed!

  With unadulterated revelry in our failure, the sub-headline screams Blundering Cops ‘Sign Julie’s Death Warrant’, by Alex Pavlovic, Deputy Chief Crime Correspondent.

  I shake my head. ‘Is there a default mode on your computer systems that ensures the word “cops” is always preceded by the word “blundering” or “bungling”?’

  He smirks. ‘You do tend to do both quite a lot.’

  Hapless detectives who failed to save innocent kidnap victim Julie Draper were duped into handing over a £175,000 pay-off to her evil kidnapper, the Sunday News can reveal.

  Pretty estate agent Julie, 24, had been dead for at least thirty-six hours when cops paid the ransom to her abductor, who calls himself Mr Kipper. Detectives remain convinced that Julie’s killer also abducted and murdered Suzy Fairclough, also 24 and an estate agent, in 1988

  Last night, the Draper family’s MP condemned ‘systematic police failures’ in the investigation, and accused detectives of ‘effectively signing Julie’s death warrant’.

  ‘They lost Julie, the kidnapper and the cash,’ raged John Tilbrook MP. ‘What’s to stop this animal targeting another random victim now he’s realised how easy it is to get away with it?’

  Kipper sent a letter to police this week threatening to target a child unless he receives another pay-off. An insider on the investigation says they are anxiously waiting further contact.

  Underneath, a shot of ‘devastated Bill and Beryl Draper at their family home in South Norwood’. The accompanying caption plays tastelessly on the new National Lottery slogan: It could be you!

  Said Bill: ‘She never hurt a fly. We just don’t understand why he targeted her.’ Said Beryl: ‘What scares me is anyone out there could be next. He’s just plucking innocent people off the street.’

  The article goes on to describe Julie as ‘bright and independent … a gem collector and crossword fanatic … devoted to her beloved dogs, Rex and Dino, and her goldfish, Ben and Jerry.’

  My mind snags on that final detail. I say to Fintan: ‘
I thought Crossley said her fish were called Mutt and Jeff?’

  He smiles: ‘He may have been treating your fishy question with the contempt it deserved.’

  ‘So much for your theory that she knew her kidnapper,’ I say. ‘It’s clear she didn’t have an enemy in the world.’

  ‘I just don’t buy it,’ he says.

  I hope Fintan’s right. Because if Julie had been randomly selected, then how could her kidnap be connected to the murder of Nathan Barry? My mind rewinds to those dreams. What had Julie been trying to tell me? I need her to come to me again, give me some more clues. For that to happen, I need to get close to her dead body. But how? As a mere acting DC, I’d need to get clearance from Crossley to visit her in the mortuary, which isn’t going to happen. This is where my pathologist ‘squeeze’ Edwina Milne may come in handy. Though how the hell I broach the subject during a ‘convivial supper’ is another matter.

  ‘It’s not your brilliant brain or gratifyingly juvenile body I’m after, Edwina, it’s your keys to the mortuary.’

  I’ll text her anyway, see if she’s up for a bite tonight. How we proceed from there is anyone’s guess. I just hope I’m not subconsciously engaging in some sort of Freudian ‘mum substitute’ thing.

  ‘Oh God brace yourself,’ Fintan sighs as I turn another page.

  Massacre, says the headline. Six shot dead in village pub.

  Six men were shot dead and five wounded when terrorists attacked a pub during Ireland’s World Cup game against Italy.

  ‘Jesus,’ I hear myself say.

  The Ulster Volunteer Force has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Heights Bar, a Catholic pub in the small village of Loughinisland, Co. Down.

  ‘They murdered them for shouting for Ireland.’