Belfast Confidential

by Bateman, Colin

  Vim – there's another one you don't get any more.

  'Did you speak to him?' Patricia shouted from the top of the landing.

  'Yes. He's really pissed off.'

  'Really?'

  'No, but we need to get going.'

  'I'm coming, I'm coming!' she shouted as she hurried down the stairs, glass in hand.

  As she passed me at the bottom I said, 'Just like last night.'

  She stopped and cupped my chin with her hand. 'Although just the once.' She gave me a sarcastic smile, then stepped quickly along to the kitchen for more ice.

  We sat in the car outside for five minutes, while Patricia fixed her make-up and finished a cigarette. She tutted as she examined her reflection in the driver's mirror, which, annoyingly, she had turned to face her.

  'I look like an old hag.'

  'No, you don't.'

  'Look at the lines around my eyes.'

  'I don't see them.'

  'You're as blind as a bat.'

  'Love is blind.'

  'Oh fuck off.' She squinted and moved her head to one side. 'Have I too much make-up on?'

  'No.'

  'My hair's like straw.'

  I sighed. 'Could we just go in?'

  'Are you wearing aftershave?'

  'No.'

  'I like aftershave.'

  'I know.'

  'I bought you some for Christmas.'

  'I know. I forgot. Can we go?'

  She shook her head. 'All right, Grumpy Drawers.' She opened the door and climbed out. I gave a sigh of relief and followed her up to the front door. She smiled back at me. 'I'll be on my best behaviour. Promise.'

  I nodded and rang the doorbell.

  It opened almost immediately, and then she was standing there, May Li. It struck me for the first time that as she was Mouse's wife, we would be perfectly within our rights to refer to her as Minnie Mouse. The thing was, I had never seen anyone look less like a Minnie Mouse in my life. To say that she was stunning was to under . . . oh fuck it, in Belfast parlance, she was what you'd call a ride. It's coarse and it's demeaning, but it absolutely hits the nail on the head. Petite, black-haired, small angular face, white hesitant smile and green eyes – it's the eyes that almost always get me on a woman. You can just tell how much light and life and intelligence and humour there is in a woman by her eyes, even in that very first instant of seeing them.

  Patricia, who I'd expected to be cold and aloof, surprised me by stepping forward immediately and holding her hand out and saying, 'Hi – May Li,' and then she gave her a hug. May Li hugged her back and said, 'It's so nice to meet you. I've heard so much about you. Please call me May.' There was hardly any accent at all; her English was perfect.

  Patricia let her go, and May Li turned to me. She held her hand out, and I clasped it, and we both went, 'Oh!' There was, literally, a spark between us.

  May giggled. 'I'm sorry, it's the static electricity – we have new carpets.' It was such an endearing giggle that I was prepared to believe her, but she'd shaken Patricia's hand and there was no spark between them.

  'Come in, come in.' She ushered us into Mouse's palatial new home.

  'That's a beautiful cocktail dress,' Patricia gushed. 'It's Dior. No, it's Gucci. It isn't Valentino, is it?'

  May gave an embarrassed little shrug. 'It's a Valentino copy.'

  'It's gorgeous! You'd never know.'

  'Well, I bring the silk in from home, and Sadie from the Markets runs it up for me. No point in paying top dollar when you can't tell the difference.'

  'Oh, I know.'

  I sighed. It was going to be a long evening. Cocktail dresses? Christ, I was wearing my beer trousers and no one had said a thing.

  May led us into a lounge that was dominated by a huge plasma screen. We sat on a white leather sofa. She got us drinks – red wine for Trish, Harp for me – and said, 'Do you want a glass with that?' My normal response would have been, 'Wise up, are you brain dead?' but she was beautiful so I said, 'Please.' Patricia was looking at me, so I quickly said, 'Is he not here yet?'

  May shook her head apologetically. 'Mouse said he'd be home by now, but I'm sure he won't be long.'

  Patricia giggled. 'I'm sorry, I just didn't think you'd call him Mouse.'

  'What do you mean?' May asked.

  'I mean – sorry, I just presumed you'd call him by his proper name.'

  The endearing smile faded. 'He has a . . . different name?'

  Patricia's mouth dropped open. 'I'm sorry, I—'

  May exploded into laughter. 'Only rakin',' she said, like a native, and I think in that instant some kind of a bond was created between them. Patricia snorted wine up her nose and it dribbled back down onto the white leather sofa and threw her into a panic and May started going, 'It's okay, it's okay, we can get a new one,' and that made her laugh even more and they were getting on so well together that I would have felt left out of it if it hadn't been for the spark between us that still had me thinking, sitting there sipping foam from a half-pint glass and quietly dribbling it onto my beer trousers.

  At eight-fifteen, with Mouse still not there and his mobile playing host to three voice messages from May, which would surely have been irate if we hadn't been there – I mean, they were married and no one is that patient in a marriage – I said maybe I should take a run down there, see if I could gee him along.

  May said, 'He'll be fine, he is so committed to his work. Why don't we just start?'

  Between us Trish and I had expected her to cook something Thai, to impress us, but instead she had made roast beef and roast potatoes and green beans, and she even put a plate of chips down beside me and gave me a little wink as she did it and I quickly took another slug of beer to cover up my embarrassment but Patricia hadn't noticed because she was going, 'Ooooh, it's so tender, how did you cook it?'

  By ten, with no sign of him, May had grown a lot quieter, and every few minutes, as à car passed outside, she jumped up to see if it was him, but it wasn't, so she sat back down on the edge of her chair and clasped her hands in her lap. She chatted on, but she was distracted. I said, 'Listen, I'll take a run down and see what's keeping him.'

  'Would you?' said May.

  Patricia said, 'Haven't you had too many?'

  I said, 'I'll be fine.'

  It was important to drive normally. Drunk drivers either drive all over the place, or so cautiously that they draw attention to themselves. So, at a steady forty-two miles an hour, and sucking on four Polo mints from the glove compartment, I was confident that I could fool most of the cops most of the time. The Belfast Confidential offices were located directly behind the BBC, just off the Dublin Road, in a square that was fairly quiet by day but gridlocked at night because it served as hooker central. Belfast doesn't have many prostitutes, and most of them look like the back end of a bus, but for the farmers who flood in from the country it's a case of any port in a storm, and they do a roaring trade. I wasn't sure if the police just looked the other way, or took a slice of the action, but the hookers were always there.

  I was just about to turn into the square when I saw there was a police motorbike parked side on, right in the middle of the road, blocking access, and a cop in a crash helmet directing traffic away. I wound my window down and asked what the problem was and he looked at me like I was an idiot, then glanced behind him. I followed his gaze. I'd been so busy paying attention to driving properly that I hadn't taken a proper look at my surroundings, but now I saw fire engines, and a lot of firemen running back and forth, and several ambulances, and crowds of onlookers, and hookers, staring up at the offices of Belfast Confidential and the flames leaping from its windows.

  9

  I jumped from the car, ducked under the flailing arms of the motorcycle cop and raced forward. There was a big, flash sign hanging outside the offices, but only the letters BEL and CON were still illuminated. Mouse's business occupied the top two floors of a four-storey building, and it was from these that smoke was pouring and flames were leapi
ng. Most of the windows had already exploded in the heat, but even as I approached, others were giving way, showering the ground below with shards of glass.

  'Keep back! Keep back!' a police officer was shouting; he and half a dozen colleagues were angrily shepherding onlookers away while firemen wearing breathing apparatus hurried into the building.

  'Has anyone been brought out?' I shouted at them, but was ignored. Another policeman took me by the arm and tried to lead me away. I repeated my question. 'Just move back, sir!' he bellowed in my face. He was stressed out, and he had every right to be, but Mouse was my friend, and even though asking the question or getting an answer wasn't going to help him in any way shape or form, it had to be asked and it had to be answered. I gave a sudden shrug of my arm, and it took the cop by enough surprise that I was able to wriggle free and dash back towards the burning building. I veered off to the right towards where two ambulances were sitting. One had its back doors open and two paramedics just inside it appeared to be busy making preparations for an imminent arrival.

  'Lads!' I shouted. 'Has anyone been brought out? Is anyone hurt?'

  One of them ducked under the doorframe. 'They're just bringing—'

  I was grabbed roughly from behind by the cop whom I'd shrugged off, plus the motocycle cop from the entrance. 'You!' the biker shouted. 'This way!'

  They each took an arm and bent it up behind my back, which wasn't a lot of fun.

  'What the fuck are you doing?' I shouted. 'My friend's in there! My mate's in that fucking fire!'

  'That may be,' said the biker, 'but you blocked the fucking road, arsehole, and you stink of fucking drink, and you're fucking done.'

  They frogmarched me to the edge of the square and threw me into the back of a police car. They locked me in and went back to supervise the fire. I couldn't do a damn thing. Couldn't open a door or a window, couldn't call Trish for help because I'd left my mobile in my car, couldn't do anything but put my hands on the window and fight back the tears as I saw Mouse being brought out of the Belfast Confidential offices by a team of firemen straining to carry his new, muscular bulk on a stretcher. As he emerged, the paramedics quickly clamped an oxygen mask to his face, then secured him in the back of the ambulance. It roared away, siren wailing.

  I slumped down, feeling sick to my stomach. Patricia and May were still at home, drinking wine and swapping stories and probably thinking that I'd picked Mouse up and lured him off for a drink somewhere. And now I couldn't even tell them what I'd seen, even though, really, it was very little. A fire, and Mouse being brought out on a stretcher. I'd seen his face for only a few seconds before the mask was applied, but it was enough to register that it was him, and that his skin was smoke-blackened. Such a big event, so little information. I sat fuming in the car, watching as the firemen battled to bring the blaze under control. They darted in and out of the lower floors for a little while, but at some point the decision was made that it was becoming too dangerous.

  Eventually one of the cops who'd locked me in came back, chatting away to another of his colleagues. He opened the driver's door and I heard him say, 'Nah, it's half-price . . . Aye, in Woodsides . . . Sure, wait till I take this joker in and I'll give you a bell.'

  They were talking about the mundane things in life, while my friend was lying injured in some hospital. It was just another night for them, but it was my mate.

  'I need to go to the hospital,' I said.

  'Why?' he snapped back. 'You better not have fucking pissed yourself, or you'll get your fucking head in your hands.'

  This wasn't exactly the new face of the PSNI, or maybe it was, but I had to ignore it. 'Please,' I said, 'he's my friend, we were supposed to be having—'

  'Shut it, arsehole.'

  Another, different cop climbed in beside my driver. He glanced back at me. 'What's your story?' he asked.

  'My friend—'

  'Suspected DIC,' the driver interrupted. 'Here.'

  He handed the new, younger guy a testing kit. I was kind of familiar with them. They read me my rights and gave me my instructions and asked me to blow into the bloody thing and of course I was over the limit.

  The more I protested, the more annoyed they got, and the more annoyed they got, the more pissed-off I became; so it was a shouting match all the way to Donegal Pass police station, them threatening all kinds of retribution. They were to be applauded, of course, for not giving preferential treatment to members of the press – that would have been the kind of hypocrisy I might once have railed against in my own column – but that said, I half-hoped that I might have proved the exception to their rule. We all live by our own double-values. Not even Mouse's name seemed to register. Perhaps they didn't read Belfast Confidential, although that would have made them the only two in the city who didn't.

  They hauled me into an interview room and left me there to stew. Eventually they came in to take a statement and I asked about my phone call and they said I couldn't make one. It wasn't a question of withholding my rights, but some other drunken arsehole had smashed up the phone they normally used and they were waiting for a technician to come down and replace it. They locked me in a cell then seemed to forget about me. I heard a lot of shouting and screaming and thumping. At about 4 a.m. an older cop brought me in a cup of tea and I asked him what all the noise was and he said, 'We had a riot of our own upstairs – lotta joyriders from up the Falls. We won. Five submissions and a knockout.' I asked about the phone and he said it was still being repaired. I asked him if he'd heard about the fire at Belfast Confidential and he said, 'Yeah, heard about that.'

  'Did you hear what happened to the fella they brought out?'

  'Sorry, no.'

  'But if he was dead or anything, you'd have heard, right?'

  He thought about that for a moment. 'Suppose. We don't get that many stiffs any more. Not like the good old days.' He stood and looked wistful for a moment, then he smiled at me and said, 'Try and get some sleep.'

  I nodded. I was tired. I slumped down on what passed for a bed. But sleep wouldn't come. Of course it wouldn't.

  Turns out, they couldn't charge me. The cop who'd arrested me came in a little after eight the next morning, his eyes heavy, his uniform smelling of vomit. He was half-embarrassed, half-seething. With the phone being busted, I'd been denied my right to a phone call, and that meant that there was a possibility that I'd get off on a technicality, and they were only in the business of prosecuting certs. So he gave me a caution and reluctantly took me back upstairs. I was handed my car keys again. As far as he knew, my car was still parked by the scene of the fire. I asked again if he'd heard anything else about it and he said, 'Do I look like fucking Ceefax?' I asked him for his name and he said, 'Bartholemew,' and I said, 'Nice one.'

  Outside I found the nearest phone box and phoned Trish at home, then her mobile. She answered on the second ring.

  'Dan!' she exclaimed, then followed it with, 'Thank God!' and 'Where the fuck are you?' almost in the same breath.

  I explained quickly. She said, 'I was worried sick. I'm at the hospital – Mouse is in the theatre now. May's in pieces. I thought you were in there! Do you hear me, Dan? I thought you were in there!'

  'I know, I know, I'm fine. What about Mouse, did you see him?'

  'No, no . . . they wouldn't . . . Christ, Dan, it's not looking good.'

  They'd taken him to the Burns Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital. I took a taxi across and stepped out into its chilling shadow. It was a cold morning with black clouds hanging low over the city. Perched as it was on the edge of the Falls, it wasn't very Royal but it was very Victorian. Or Dickensian. Everywhere in Belfast seemed to have gotten a face-lift in the past few years or been replaced with bright shiny newer versions, but for some reason the RVH had been left out; 'gothic' was too happy a word for it. Structural stitch-ons and subtractions in virtually every decade over the past century had given it an ailing, indecisive feel and an ambience of despair. As I raced along the corridors, the blue linoleum til
es seemed to suck up the dull light coming from the fluorescent tubes overhead.

  But it wasn't the drab surroundings that made Patricia and May look so pale; it wasn't the stench of old folks and industrial-strength Dettol; it was the knowledge that a friend and husband was fighting for his life on the other side of a couple of sets of swing doors; the knowledge that even if he did pull through he might never be the same again. Broken bones are for Christmas, burns last for ever.

  May Li sat on a plastic couch, her head down; Patricia was sitting with her arm around her, but she removed it as soon as I approached and came over and gave me a hug. Her eyes were heavy and her mascara had run. I kissed her dry lips and smelled stale wine. 'How is she?' I asked, which is one of those dumb questions you have to ask. Trish just shook her head. 'Have you heard anything about the fire? What happened?' She shook her head again, then motioned for me to follow her over to a drinks machine. She put some coins in and got us both a Diet Coke. We were just about out of earshot. 'They think it was arson,' Trish whispered urgently. 'There were cops here when we arrived, I heard them talking, said the place stank of petrol.'

  I glanced back at May Li. She was still staring at the ground.

  Arson.

  It had now been nearly twelve hours since Mouse was carried out of his burning offices, and in all that time I hadn't thought about the causes of the fire. There had just been a crazy presumption that because it was Mouse, my old friend, there would be some kind of straightforwardly daft explanation; that perhaps while publicly campaigning against smoking, he had nipped into the office for a crafty fag and somehow managed to set the rubbish bin on fire; that he had skimped on the wiring in order to devote all his finances to the launch of the magazine and now it had come back and burned him on the arse. Something vaguely comical – but petrol?