She wants to turn away from the imploring in his eyes and the timbre of his voice but she’s frozen in the enormity of the moment. He allows her time. ‘No, we’re not,’ she at last agrees.
‘In that case, there can’t be borders between us.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Nothing in life that’s good ever is.’ She has no response. ‘I love you, Maire,’ he whispers.
She stays silent, burning with an overwhelming tenderness for him. She wants to say the word back but can’t bring herself to let it out.
CHAPTER 10
Post-election, Monday, 8 May
‘So, William MacGillivray Poots.’ Carne threw the challenge like a punch to the gut, ‘The early ’90s. Imagine I’ve dropped in from Mars. What’s going on here?’
‘It’s raining,’ replied the grizzled face sitting opposite him, the close-cropped whitening hair and square face with its jutting chin showing his near-sixty years. ‘Linfield win the cup. Two years running. Then it rains more. My wife refuses to leave me, however hard I try. The kids are a pain up the arse.’
‘All right, you gloomy bastard, tell me something new.’
Carne enjoyed the dourness – and the mordant wit beneath, a welcome riposte to the modern day of ‘Human Resources’ assessments conducted according to ‘behavioural pathways’ by humourless managers. After nearly four decades in the force, Billy Poots was nearing retirement, still a detective sergeant. In a changing world where terrorist violence was replaced by political compromise and paramilitaries became professional racketeers, he was a man of rugged integrity who took no prisoners and sought no favours. Carne viewed Poots as his greatest blessing since he and Alice had decided to escape their troubles in south London and come to live in her homeland. For some reason the Ulster salt of the earth had adopted the young English greenhorn and, whenever the chance offered, they had been a team ever since.
Wanting Billy to relax and allow the memories to flow, Carne had forgone the prying eyes and ears of the office and summoned him to a mid-morning get-together within the Victorian enchantments of Belfast’s Crown. Its restored columns and capitals, tiles and brocades made it something of a tourist trap these days; but the snugs were still places where you could hide and shut off the world. Carne ordered a Scotch for Billy and a diet Coke for himself. The drink of the reformed alcoholic, he had heard it said.
‘You want a reason why a young man disappears in the nineties and is found buried in a field over twenty years later,’ began Poots. He paused, sipped his Scotch, and cast a wary eye outside the snug. He spied a young American couple in jeans and rucksacks on shoulders, eyes locked in lovers’ embrace, on honeymoon perhaps in the ‘old country’. Two scrawny-looking men sat sadly on stools at the bar. The Crown’s day had just begun.
‘1994 was the year the pigs finally came to the trough.’ Poots’s harsh accent and crusty voice projected a world-weary contempt. ‘I’d been in the force five years. Sure, there were still murders and killings, sectarian stupidity, but it was slowing down. Most people had had enough. At the head of the queue, though they’d never own up to it, were our friends at the top of the IRA. Because, you know what, when you’ve been campaigning and struggling and lying and fighting and watching informers and gangsters behind your back for over twenty years, you fancy just a little warmth and comfort. And there’s nowhere more comfortable than the big, fat, cushioned seat under the big, fat politician’s arse.’
Behind Poots’s flat forehead and watchful eyes, Carne could feel the burning intensity of a historic rage.
‘It was called the peace process, Billy,’ Carne said quietly.
‘Peace process! Jesus Christ, self-enrichment process at the point of a gun and a bomb. Don’t worry, boss, I’m not biased, my aisle of the church was just as bent.’
‘So what’s this got to with a corpse in a field?’
‘You call me a gloomy bastard. You’re an impatient bastard all right.’ Carne smiled. Poots looked down at his glass.
‘Another?’
‘No, let’s get out of here and walk.’ Without waiting for an answer, Poots rose and strode towards the door. Carne leapt to keep up.
Across the road the Grand Opera House stood proud in all its restored, misplaced, oriental glory. Beside it the Europa Hotel, bombed twenty-eight times, giving its name to the newsman’s appetiser ‘Avocado Europa’, which exploded in your face. It all seemed a long time ago – another age – yet Poots still cast a look around before turning left towards Botanic.
‘Just shadows,’ said Carne.
‘My rational mind knows that,’ replied the older man. ‘But you weren’t here then.’
Though that was true, Carne also felt the ghosts. Looking around, there was no visible sense of them. This was a contemporary city of hotels, restaurants, clubs, cinemas, theatres, into which a treasure of peace money had been poured. But sectarian passions still flourished, national flags still provoked political fistfights, the marching season still brought mob violence to the streets. Every year or two a prison warder or policeman or soldier or reservist was murdered. Letter bombs were sent in the post. There was still a residual organization, with changing names but the same core personnel, willing to bomb, kill and maim in the name of ‘unity’. Atavistic needs for revenge still lurked. The pigs who had come to the trough could never feed in total comfort.
‘They don’t kill coppers now, Billy,’ said Carne.
‘Last one just a few years ago,’ replied Poots. ‘A prison officer two years ago. That’s milliseconds in Irish history. Remember the early sixties. You weren’t even born then, I was only a kid. This was the most peaceful place in the world. The only murders we ever had were cows in abattoirs. And then, three and half thousand people dead.’
‘Plus one,’ said Carne.
‘Yes, plus one. Just part of history, eh?’
‘Stop it, Billy. Now . . . talk.’
Striding down Great Victoria Street, the two men made an odd couple. Carne tall, slim, with that full head of dark hair and long face, calm, concise; Poots six inches shorter, cropped hair, florid, more than a hint of stoutness, pugnacious, talkative. Their differences, Carne often thought, must be what glued them together.
‘OK,’ continued Poots, ‘we go back to the early ’90s. The Provos are tired of fighting, the Brits are tired of fighting, even the sad benighted side I’m born into, we bigoted Prods, we’re tired of fighting. They all want a deal. But there’s one problem. Some of the boys want to fight on at any price. The idealists, the revolutionaries, the true believers.’
‘The fanatics,’ broke in Carne. ‘Yes. OK, here’s what’s interesting. By early 1994 we – Special Branch, Army, MI5 – know who the main deal breakers are. It’s not a secret, they’ve even got a name – the “Gang of Four”. Martin McCartney, Brendan O’Donnell, Sean Black, Joseph Kennedy. If there’s a leader, it’s McCartney – intelligent, highly political, committed, an ideologue. Until recently he’s been quartermaster-general of the Belfast Brigade. He knows where all the weapons are. We’re pretty sure that when he sees the split inside the IRA coming, he stores away a whole arsenal for himself and his friends.
‘Black and O’Donnell are different. Hard, brutal, unreconstructed. Remember Enniskillen?’
They fell silent. Even a generation later the wreckage-strewn square of a quiet market town on Remembrance Day remained an unforgettable vision of horror. Eleven innocent people killed, sixty-three injured, the lives of the families who mourned them unalterably blighted.
‘No one was ever arrested,’ continued Poots, ‘but we knew damn well Black and O’Donnell were at the heart of it. The IRA claimed the bomb went off prematurely but those two bastards meant every bloody bit of it.’ Poots bristled with quiet, visceral contempt.
‘And Kennedy?’ prompted Carne.
‘Kennedy’s the most interesting. He’s a fusion of everything. Politically radical, extreme nationalist and a killer – though we never nailed him. We
’re sure he broke his virginity with that visiting Met Special Branch officer – Halliburton. Nasty business. And Kennedy’s ambitious, charismatic in his way, a leader in waiting if ever McCartney falls by the wayside.’
Carne could feel the agitation in Poots’s voice. The older man was varying his pace, slow, fast, slow, fast, flicking a look behind each time he did so. He was back in troubled times, unable to escape. Sweat formed around his brow, his breathing becoming heavier. They reached the bottom of Great Victoria Street. To the left barbed wire and barricades still cloaked Donegall Pass police station. Across a wasteland of parked cars, the resplendent façade of the new Radisson hotel tried to contradict it, the present denying the past.
Poots could feel Carne watching him, checking him over. ‘Too early for that whiskey, boss. Let’s grab a coffee.’
They headed over the roundabout to Botanic Avenue and bought two double espressos from a coffee bar. As Poots drank his, Carne knew better than to interrupt him; he would finish the story at his own pace in his own time. Poots turned right into Crescent Gardens and settled on a bench overlooking a neat oval of grass. In a corner, two tramps slumped with crooked backs over empty bottles of cider beside their feet. A young mother pushed a pram, an overweight indeterminate dog circling around her. Pigeon shit decorated the pavements.
Poots drained his coffee, got up to throw the cardboard cup into a wastepaper basket and sat down again. They had not talked for nearly ten minutes.
‘The Gang of Four, Billy. The obstacles to peace,’ prompted Carne finally.
‘Yes, the Gang of Four,’ Poots resumed. ‘Something strange happens. In the spring of ’94: one by one, the Gang of Four disappears. First Black, we’re down to a Gang of Three. Then O’Donnell, and it’s a Gang of Two. And then, pretty much at the same time, Kennedy and McCartney. The Gang of None. There’s no noise, no claims, no bodies, they just fade out of the picture. And no one knows how or why. Or wants to know.’
Poots’s attention was caught by two men entering the far corner of the park and heading diagonally across towards their bench. As they neared, they could be seen to be in their mid-forties, one bearded, the other vigorously making a point with his unlit pipe. Poots stopped talking and watched them. They were just yards away. He felt inside his pocket and touched the reassurance of his pistol. The men looked at him with sudden suspicion, increased their pace and walked past. One of them cast back a glance of fright.
‘Hey, Billy,’ said Carne quietly.
‘Now I’m the one seeing ghosts,’ murmured Poots. ‘Perhaps my time’s come, boss, I’m finally losing it.’
Carne paused to allow him time to recover. ‘Does the story have an ending?’
‘The Gang of None? No, just a black hole. But you know the history. August 1994, ceasefire declared. OK, the first ceasefire’s not the final one but it’s the breakthrough. A few ups and downs and three years later, it’s official, the Troubles are over. Everyone lives happily ever after. More or less.’
Carne looked up. A few more mothers had arrived with prams and toddlers trotting happily around, not a care in the world. The shouts and screams of tiny joys broke through Poots’s funereal silence.
‘That’s the story of your body in the field, boss. Perm one from four.’
‘OK, Billy. So who fired the bullet?’
CHAPTER 11
January 1994
She says they’ll just go up for the day. Her parents’ house is too modest to stay in, it’ll be too awkward, there are only three bedrooms, unspoken questions about the sleeping arrangements will hang in the air. She sees his disappointment.
‘I want to get to know them,’ David says, ‘just as I’ve come to know you.’
‘I just don’t really wanna go there,’ Maire replies. ‘I told you before the place gives me the creeps.’
‘It’s your home town!’
‘Yeah, I got away.’
In the days leading up to the visit, her nerves show, making her irritable. Martin will be sure to have been told. Will he stay away, or come to inspect? Why even ask herself when she knows the answer. Maybe he’ll have told Joseph to come too. She avoided him over Christmas and dreads the thought of it.
She expects David to drive but he insists they take the bus. Nearly four hours there, more door-to-door, and four hours back – at least the journey will shorten the visit. They arrange to meet at BusAras at 7.30 a.m. on the Saturday.
‘Christ, look at you.’ She says it to scold, not tease. Gone are the jeans and bomber jacket; in their place dark trousers, a corduroy jacket, simple striped shirt and tie, his hair trimmed. She gets the look, even admires him for it – smart but not posh, clean, ordinary, classless, respectable. Her mother will love it.
‘I’ve got to look my best,’ he says. ‘First impressions are everything.’ He flashes a sparkling eye. ‘Aren’t they?’
Conversation during the bus journey is fragile and intermittent. As they cross the border north of Dundalk, just two small signs showing the change of state, she turns to him warily. ‘I never asked, did you ever go to the North?’
‘No,’ he replies, ‘I told you that before. When we were in Connemara.’ He dons the grin. ‘Virgin territory.’
‘Not sure I’d say that after the past twenty-five years.’ There’s an unfamiliar sourness in her voice. ‘I wish we weren’t doing this.’
‘They’re your family, Maire.’
‘Who I made the choice to leave.’
‘Do you mean the family or the place?’
He’s niggling her and she scorns him. ‘Where I was born, there’s not much of a distinction, is there?’ She doesn’t require an answer and he has the sense not to offer one.
Mid-morning, the Bus Eireann coach draws into the neat concrete rows of the Europa bus station, built two years before beneath a multi-story car park – just one monument to the money splurged to dampen the violence.
‘So where now?’ he asks as they dismount.
‘Bus down the trouble tourist trail – Divis, Falls, then the delights of Andersonstown.’ He’s still inhaling her chill. ‘Unless you want to go by black cab.’
‘Sounds great,’ he says.
‘Do you know what the black taxis are, David?’ she sneers.
‘Yes, Maire, I read and watch the news. Communal taxis ultimately controlled by Sinn Féin. Or the IRA, some would say. It would be interesting.’
‘God, you mean it, don’t you? OK, just don’t open your mouth.’
‘I can do Irish. You heard me singing.’ The grin is back.
‘Don’t you fucking dare.’ But, though damn him she might wish, she can’t help smiling. He gives her a discreet peck on the cheek.
‘Friends?’ he asks.
‘If you behave.’
He’s as good as his word, keeping silent in the black cab while she chats away to keep their fellow passengers at bay. His overcoat conceals the dissonant jacket and tie beneath.
They get out at Glen Road and she leads him through neat roads of semi-detached and terraced houses, some with well-kept front gardens, others with concrete paving, but none despoiled. A place of gnomes and dangling chimes where neighbours watch out for each other – where comings and goings are recorded by twitching noses and eyes behind half-drawn net curtains.
She stops at a house, clean plastic weatherproof windows recently installed, brick walls partially coated with pebbledash, in the front a narrow stone path curling around a central rose bush. She presses the bell and it sounds a musical ding-dong. After a few seconds a bespectacled bald man of middling height in his sixties opens the white front door with its central oval pane of multicoloured glass, beams on Maire and embraces her.
‘Good to see you, girl,’ he says.
‘Hello, Da,’ she replies.
He looks over at the young man beside her and offers his hand. ‘And you’ll be David.’
‘Hello, sir,’ says David.
‘Ach, for heaven’s sake, lad, name’s Stephen.’
A woman of the same age bustles down the narrow corridor from the kitchen, patting down her dress with her hands.
‘Hello, love,’ she says, kissing Maire on both cheeks.
‘This is David, Ma.’ She gives him a quick up and down.
‘Hello, Mrs McCartney.’
‘You can call me Rosa, David,’ she replies. Her shyness makes her seem almost tart. ‘Right, I’m away, you’ll be needing food on the table.’
‘Lovely smells,’ says David, but she’s already halfway back to the kitchen.
Stephen leads them into a compact sitting room with a central maroon settee and accompanying chairs, arms shielded with white linen cloths. Above a wood-effect gas fire is a mantelpiece with miniature china dogs and cats and a photograph each end, Maire in her sixth-form uniform and her brother Martin in Gaelic football kit. On one side are book shelves from ceiling to floor, the great Russian novels, Dickens, Joyce, a shelf primarily of World Wars One and Two history, and on the bottom political philosophers. Rousseau, Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin.
‘Will you have a wee drink, David? Whiskey? Beer?’ asks Stephen.
‘Whatever you’re having, Stephen, be great, thanks,’ he replies and turns to look more closely at the shelves of books. ‘You must be a history man?’
‘Aye, well, I try to take an interest,’ he says modestly.
‘You’d be a PhD, wouldn’t you, Da, if life was different,’ says Maire.
‘Not got your brains, kid.’ His pride in her illuminates the room.
‘Course you have, you oul fool,’ she says. ‘You just never had the chance.’
‘Never know now, will we?’ He rises stiffly and disappears to the kitchen. David shoots Maire a grin; she repels it with a grimace and raised eyebrow. Her father returns with a bottle of Jameson’s.
‘Unless you’re a Scotch man,’ he suddenly wonders.
‘No, that’ll be great,’ says David.
‘That’s handy, not sure I got any.’
Stephen turns to Maire. ‘Sorry, love, I was forgetting.’
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