Woman of State

by Simon Berthon

  Amy lifted the cover and eased the legs apart. She bent down beneath the cover, the light of her torch casting a faint glimmer. She closed the legs together again and straightened the cover from neck to toes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with simple finality.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked Carne.

  ‘Yes, I think so. Amy?’

  ‘There’s one small favour, Ms Gallagher.’ Carne detected an unaccustomed nervousness in his colleague. ‘As you came into contact with the deceased shortly after he died, there may be DNA traces from you on his clothing. It would assist the investigation if I could take a DNA swab and fingerprints as what we call an elimination test. So that we don’t confuse your DNA with—’

  ‘I’m a lawyer, I understand why you need it,’ Anne-Marie interrupted scratchily.

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘I’ll wait for you by the exit,’ said Carne. She shot him a wary look. Was she warning him about assuming any familiarity?

  Ten minutes later, she reappeared with Amy alongside.

  ‘Done,’ said Amy.

  ‘Good,’ he replied. The three of them stood awkwardly together. ‘Can I, er . . .?’ he began.

  She intervened. ‘My driver’s waiting outside.’ Was he being cold-shouldered or, with onlookers present, kept at arm’s length?

  ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I’ll be all right.’ It was said harshly. She turned to leave without looking back and the door gave an ugly slam as she disappeared behind it.

  Amy saw his dejection. ‘More to the point, are you all right?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ he replied.

  ‘By the way, he was murdered, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he was.’

  Anne-Marie walked to the car, eyes fixed far into the distance, emotions locked in chains, brain disconnected from the screeches and squealings of the grinding urban machine. Hinds jumped to open the rear door. He had observed her closing down once before and tried to snap her out of it with cheery chitchat. This time, he knew better.

  ‘How long to the flat, Keith?’

  ‘Twenty minutes or so, Minister,’ he replied.

  ‘Make it an hour, would you?’

  She stared out of the window at the falling dusk, day slowly giving way to the car lights and street lamps of night, shapes she converted into softened contours and sounds. She tried to remember the year – 1980 was it? – when the McCartneys and Kennedys, sharing a caravan, first went on holiday together. Portrush in the summer, long sweeping beaches, on sunlit days the peaks of Donegal to the west, to the east somewhere in the distance the coast of Scotland and that other world that lay beyond her island. She was eight, a pretty little girl, they used to say, despite the puppy fat, with shiny auburn hair bouncing on her neck, neatly side-parted and held by grips to the front. Martin was fourteen, six years older. Later, she sometimes wondered whether there were just the two of them because her parents had exercised a restraint unusual in Catholics or whether there had been difficulties conceiving. It was a question she never got round to asking her mother and would never have dreamt of asking her father. Too late now. Too many questions came too late now.

  Ahead of her was Joseph sprinting into the sea, urging her to keep up with him. Even aged eleven, he was tall and strikingly lean. His legs reached out like a racehorse’s. She put the image into slow motion and he was floating ahead of her, hitting the edge of water, spraying foam into a mist of sparkles, screaming with delighted horror at the cold collision of the ocean, kicking his legs higher and higher as he urged himself on through the ever-increasing waves. Then he stopped, turned, saw her at the water’s edge and yelled. ‘Maire!’ And what had he said? Yes, that was it. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Not ‘don’t be scared’ or ‘don’t be a coward’ or ‘don’t be a girl’. He had run back towards her, grasped her by the hand and said, ‘Come with me, the waves are our friends.’ And she had looked at the waves, curling with their white tips of surf, rolling over onto the water, flattening out into the level sea, and she realized there was nothing to be afraid of as each one of these waves’ lives was so short that they could harm only themselves and not her.

  Later, they were back on dry land, his body rough with salt and sand, his hair bleached and stiff from the sea spray. She found a rock pool and returned with a bucket full of water, crept up behind him and poured it over the back of his head and down his back. He turned round, pulled the corners of his mouth to each side, contorted his face into an idiot’s leer and said, ‘One day, Maire McCartney, I’ll give you a wet kiss for that.’ She stuck her tongue out at him and said, ‘You’re rude, Joseph Kennedy. And, anyway, you wouldn’t dare.’

  It had taken him seven years to summon up the courage.

  ‘What took you so long?’ she asked him when he finally did.

  ‘I didn’t want you to think me rude,’ he answered. He must have stored the line for all that time.

  ‘We’re here, Minister,’ said Hinds. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Her hands were dampened by a moistening of which she had been unaware.

  ‘An hour passes quickly when you’re . . .’ Her voice tailed off; anything she said would be trite, a feeble cover-up.

  ‘Yes, Minister.’

  She gathered her handbag and box and went to open the car door but he was there before her.

  ‘Goodnight, Minister.’

  ‘Goodnight, Keith.’

  He hesitated. ‘Are you all right, Minister?’

  ‘There seem to be a lot of people asking me that today, Keith.’ She patted him on the arm and walked away. Then she realized she had forgotten to tell him and turned back.

  ‘We were both correct, Keith.’

  ‘Minister?’

  ‘Brian Fitzgerald was once called Joseph Kennedy. It appears he changed his identity. I hadn’t seen him for a long time.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Minister. It’s been an ordeal for you. But over now.’ She gave him an ironic smile, turned and headed towards the glass doors of the apartment block.

  Her flat, pristine as always, seemed barren and lifeless. It was the cleaner’s day and she could smell polish and bleach, but none of the comforts of home: coal burning in the fire, a cake rising in the oven, meat sizzling under the grill. Arriving home from school, she would always find her mother cooking something, insisting that she sit down, rest and eat. Now she felt the solitariness of her single-minded ambition and success. In such moments, work was both her distraction and her interest, but the red box seemed no more than an inanimate conveyor of trivia set against the reappearance of two dead men’s bodies.

  Carne’s phone buzzed. The message read: ‘Sorry. Can I offer you coffee and sweets? A-M.’

  Amy’s eyes were flashing with curiosity. ‘Billy?’

  ‘No, not Billy.’

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it?

  ‘Amy, with you I have no secrets.’

  ‘Secrets?’ Seeing his reddening face, she grinned.

  ‘How can someone like that be so self-contained?’

  ‘She won’t be deep inside,’ replied Amy. ‘She was raised a Catholic. She’ll still have the confessional urge somewhere.’

  ‘What does she have to confess?’ Carne asked. The blushing had vanished.

  ‘It’s more there’s a question she has to answer, isn’t there?’ He nodded. ‘An agent or a victim perhaps?’ she continued.

  ‘Yes. Doer or a done-to.’

  ‘What do you think, Jonny?’

  ‘I don’t think, Amy. I just gather evidence.’

  ‘And theories.’

  He gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘You’re a funny girl, Amy Riordan.’ He walked out into the street.

  CHAPTER 24

  Thirty minutes later he was in the lift going up to her flat, buzzed by an irritating sense of Groundhog Day. She opened the door and stretched out her hand to shake his. ‘I won’t make a habit of it.’ The image disappeared in an instant.

 
‘I felt we hadn’t finished our conversation,’ she continued. ‘Drink?’

  ‘I think I’ll stick to that coffee you offered,’ he replied.

  ‘Me too. Let’s chat while I’m making it.’

  She led him into the galley kitchen. Small oven, tall fridge-freezer, microwave, toaster, impeccably clean white hob, unstained and unchipped white china sink, state-of-the-art coffeemaker. Not the kitchen of a woman who did much cooking. She noticed him casting his eyes around.

  ‘Are you interested in kitchens?’ she asked. ‘Or are you trying to analyse me?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He looked rueful. ‘I can’t stop myself.’

  ‘Well, it’s all German.’

  ‘I have limited interest in kitchens.’

  ‘So do I.’

  She handed him a cup of coffee and stretched up to a cupboard in search of something. He could not help his eye ranging over the flexed legs and narrow heels lifting from her shoes, the hem of her black skirt rising above her knees, her thighs sharply delineated against the taut material. ‘Let me,’ he said, catching himself.

  ‘There are chocolates there somewhere,’ she said. ‘The cleaner’s probably hidden them.’ He easily found a box of dark Belgian truffles and handed them down to her. ‘Looks like this is tonight’s supper.’

  He followed her back to the sitting room, where she placed herself on a circular pouffe, kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs beneath her, leaving him to sit alone on the sofa. It seemed that she wanted to affirm a gap between them.

  ‘You wish to continue our conversation,’ he said, deflated.

  ‘Same rules, Jon?’ She was still using his first name; a childish relief flooded through him.

  ‘Yes, Anne-Marie, same rules.’

  She stood up with her cup of coffee, walked over to the mantelpiece and inspected herself in the mirror hanging above it. ‘God, what a fright!’

  ‘You won’t expect me to agree with that.’

  She angled her head so that she could see him in the mirror’s reflection. He remembered Amy’s words; was she the penitent in the confessional box calculating whether to say it or not? Whatever it was.

  ‘Joseph was my first.’ With a finger she wiped the tiniest smudge of mascara by her right eye and walked past the pouffe to sit on the other side of the sofa. Like the priest facing the invisible sinner, he stayed silent, while she told him about the childhood holidays. As she finished, she sipped her coffee and offered him a chocolate. ‘Have one, they’re just sitting there.’ He did as he was told and she took one too, dark with a strawberry filling. She bit elegantly into it, a tiny line of pink falling on her lower lip which she retrieved with her tongue. He felt that patter in his chest.

  ‘A few months after I turned sixteen,’ she continued, ‘we fucked. I could tell he’d done it before, he was too familiar with the condom. I hadn’t. I felt annoyed with him for that.’ She stopped, remembering, and smiled. ‘Not very annoyed though. He told me I was the one he’d always wanted.’ She looked up at him. ‘Am I embarrassing you?’

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘You’re making me sad.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink, for God’s sake.’ There was a roughness in her voice. ‘Not every day you get to see the corpse of the man who took your virginity laid out on a mortuary slab.’ She took a deep breath, and covered a sniffle with her wrist. ‘Would you mind getting it? Should be bottles in the fridge.’

  He went to the kitchen, and found a bottle, two glasses and a tray. She ought to eat. He opened the fridge: berries, sheep’s yoghurt, skimmed milk, yellowed broccoli and faded lettuce in the crisper, oranges, lemons. At the back lay a pack of smoked salmon a day beyond its use-by date. He heard the sounds of water running in the bathroom, giving him the time to search for something to accompany it. A pack of crackers was all he could find. And black pepper. He located a plate and a knife and fork, laid out strips of the fish, added the lemon and returned with the tray. He heard the toilet flushing, more running of taps and she was back.

  ‘Heavens!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘A woman can’t live on chocolates alone.’

  ‘You’re sounding like my mother.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  She ground black pepper and squirted lemon over the fish. ‘Today was almost worse than finding his body because I knew what to expect. It gave it a reality, and a finality.’ She took a mouthful and he could see her suppressed hunger; adrenalin must be the main ingredient in her diet. Her last thought had silenced her and he watched while she ate. Just the salmon, not the crackers. The calm was companionable and he did not want to seem too curious.

  She took the last bite. ‘Protein injected. Thank you. Where were we?’

  ‘Talking about Joseph.’

  ‘What more do you need to know?’

  ‘Why he ended up like this, I guess.’

  ‘You’d have to enter his heart and mind to know that.’

  He hesitated, afraid of pushing too far. ‘Can you try?’

  ‘Joseph always looked up to Martin. Odd, really. You’d think Joseph would be the leader: better-looking, taller, even eloquent sometimes. But Martin was three years older. He was fifteen in 1981, when the hunger strikers died. It radicalized him. I was only nine, so I felt their anger but didn’t properly understand it till later. Anyway, Martin joined the Provos, rose to be a top man. As a boy, Joseph hero-worshipped him, grew up hugging his coat tails. They were thick as thieves. I started hearing “Martin says this”, “Martin says we should do that” all the time. Not operational stuff – I didn’t know about any of that. But it was like he became the repository of the wisdom of Martin McCartney.’

  She stopped, like a schoolteacher checking her pupil was taking it all in. ‘You see, Martin wasn’t just a simple Republican: he saw himself as a revolutionary, too. That’s why he couldn’t stop. I looked up to him, too, my big brother, bit of a hero when I was small, but it all became . . . I don’t know . . . oppressive somehow.’ She hesitated. ‘With Joseph, too.’

  She lapsed into a silence of memory. Carne followed the moment until enough time had passed to re-engage her.

  ‘How did it end with Joseph?’

  She looked sharply up, colour rushing into her cheeks. He sensed her choosing words carefully. ‘How can I best put it?’ she finally said. ‘I began to feel he was keeping secrets from me. I guess that was inevitable, given his involvement. But the trust went. I upset him. I upset myself too.’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  She smiled. ‘I think that begs so many questions about what lies in our hearts that you need a cleverer person than me to answer it.’

  Carne smiled back. ‘I doubt that.’ He wondered what really had caused the break with Joseph – there must have been some sort of final catalyst. He itched, too, to explore what David Wallis had meant to her but could see he had gone far enough. He tried to imagine her growing into womanhood but found himself distracted by a reflection of the young man on the mortuary slab who must have adored her. ‘So where are we now?’

  ‘1991, I guess. I was trying to make my big escape to Dublin.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ She seemed about to answer but then he felt a frisson of that earlier frost.

  ‘That sounded like an interrogation.’

  He winced. ‘Sorry.’

  She topped up his glass without asking him. ‘I’ve done enough talking about me. What about you?’

  ‘I’m better at asking questions than answering them.’ She looked up at his still-unlined face and, perhaps prompted by the earlier memories of Joseph, saw the child in him – the residual, unfaked, shyness. He had begun to twiddle his fingers on the glass table.

  ‘I’m not just changing the subject,’ she said. ‘I’d like to know.’

  ‘OK.’ The twiddling stopped. ‘My father was a musician, electric piano and organ. He was good, did recording sessions with some of the big name groups. Gigs too. Trouble was, he saw himself as a free spirit of the sixti
es. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. My mother was a teacher – they’d married before his career took off. He drifted away leaving her and this one-year-old baby boy behind. But it turned out I’d inherited some of his genes. Just the musical ones, I hope. So it was the church choir for me, respectable south London church school, practise my piano every day.’

  ‘Do you still play?’ she asked.

  ‘Sometimes. I lost the appetite after Alice died.’ There was an immense pain in his eyes. Again he felt the urge to tell more and the sureness that this was not the time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Death brings no recovery.’ He was peering down at his hands, momentarily disengaged, stopping himself. He found a way of reverting to her. ‘It’s worse for you: Joseph, David, your brother.’

  ‘Yes. But they were all victims of political conflict. I tell myself that makes it different. And that’s why politics can’t be sorted by violence. It took me a bit of time to get there but the rule of law really matters. And politicians make laws.’ She stood up and walked towards a desk in the corner of the room. Halfway there she glanced back. ‘Quite a lot of the time I believe myself.’

  She opened a drawer of the desk and returned with a small box covered with red velvet. She gently lifted from it a silver bracelet, matching earrings, and a silver ring with a single red ruby. ‘From David,’ she said.

  She gave him the pieces of jewellery and he examined them in his hands, running his fingers along their smooth, cool surface.

  ‘Were they just a present?’ he asked. ‘Or was he meaning more?’

  ‘Or was it just another little deceit?’ Her question cut through the air that separated them.

  He handed her the box. ‘I don’t believe he was deceiving you with these.’ He paused. ‘Whatever else he was up to.’

  She restored the box to the desk drawer. ‘So’ – she reverted to the pragmatic tone she had initially greeted him with – ‘you can have one more question tonight. I need my sleep.’

  Her brusqueness stung him. Was she mercurial – and therefore unreliable? Or embarrassed by lapses into sentimentality? Perhaps she was just showing that characteristic he had first noticed: the need for self-control, the fear of slipping up, of giving too much away. But, if she was offering him this one more question, he must take one more chance. He pulled a photograph from his pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. She inspected it in silence.