Belfast Confidential

by Bateman, Colin

  She secured the page with one hand, and ran a finger down the list. When she came to Liam Miller she looked up at me and said, 'If Liam Miller didn't do it, can we frame him anyway?'

  'That seems fair.'

  She smiled and started to move away, then stopped and came back. She lifted up the Bic pen I'd been doodling with and wrote another name at the end of the list. She turned it round for me to see.

  'Wendy McBride?'

  She nodded. 'The wronged wife. A woman scorned and all that. Aren't most murders domestics anyway?'

  They were, but I still couldn't see it. 'Trish, come on. She's a bit of a dragon, but I don't think she's up to killing her husband.'

  'Well, dragons breathe fire, don't they?' She returned to the sink, made her coffee and began to tramp back upstairs. 'Are you coming up?' she asked wearily, then stifled another yawn.

  'No, I've a murder to solve.'

  'All right, Sherlock,' she said.

  17

  When I left for work that morning, Topper was sitting in his front garden, sneezing hard. I gave him a 'Pssssss-wssssss, psssss-wssssss-wsssss' as I passed just to show that there were no hard feelings and he coughed something up in response. As I drove away I caught a glimpse of Georgie, the wife, picking the Siamese up and stroking him, and her husband standing beside her, watching me go. It was kind of creepy. They were too nice, too well-defined. They were probably devotees of the cult of Liam Miller. Like a Satanic cult, but worse. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then fucking feng shui and designer breads are the work of a bigger, badder devil. This thought gave me a kind of sad, sick feeling, because I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to go and meet the annoying little guru himself. He was on the list, and I intended to talk to them all, face to face.

  I reached the office at 8.30 with the intention of being the first one through the door, setting an example, but they were nearly all already there. Mary brought me the morning post which she'd already opened and organised in her version of its order of importance. On the top there was a gold embossed invitation on black card with a haunting-looking illustration of a puppet-like character in a mask. It read: Jacintha Ryan and Ryan Auto invite the Editor of Belfast Confidential to a Masked Ball at Belfast City Hall to mark the start of Project Jet. There was a date just over a week hence.

  'Christ,' I said, 'a Masked Ball. There's two feet in the twenty-first century for you.'

  'I think it would be fantastic.'

  I pushed the invitation across the desk to her. 'Be my guest.' She reached for it, and I pulled it back. 'If you can set up interviews for me with the following . . .' and I gave her the list, first taking a moment to stroke out, colour in and generally make indecipherable May Li's and Wendy's names. She examined it briefly, rolling her eyes at each name. 'You'll be lucky,' she said. Then her eyes fell on the photos I'd been examining for a swimsuit feature we were going to run in the next issue. They'd been shot up on the Strand in Portstewart. 'Jesus, where'd they take those?' she asked. 'Their goosebumps are bigger'n my nipples.'

  I was still trying to get to grips with that image when Pat came in and said he had a copy of Mouse's post mortem.

  'The press release? Yeah, I saw.'

  'No, the Full Monty.'

  'I'm impressed.'

  Clearly he wasn't as toothless as Toothless. He didn't volunteer where he'd gotten it and I didn't ask. There were seven pages, and I hardly understood a word of them. 'Whoever got you this, I hope they explained it to you.'

  Pat nodded. 'It's pretty gruesome stuff, but basically, yes, it confirms the earlier release which stated that the burns were what killed him. He was tied hand and foot. No evidence of other injuries.'

  'Okay,' I said. 'Thanks.' He wasn't finished, but he looked awkward about continuing. 'What?'

  'Page seven.'

  I turned to the last page and perused it without anything striking me. Pat came and pointed it out. 'Cocaine in his system.'

  'Mouse?' I thought about it for a moment. His drug of choice had always been Harp. But his circumstances had changed so dramatically over the past couple of years, there was no reason why his choice of relaxant shouldn't have changed as well. 'How much?' I asked.

  'Heavy enough, according to my man, but not an overdose. Nothing lethal.'

  'Did you know he partook?'

  'Well, it kind of goes with the territory. You know, the whole media, showbiz set.'

  'And do you use it?'

  That surprised him.

  'Me?' He cleared his throat. 'Well, I, ah, well, I mean . . .'

  'I'll take that as a yes. What about Mouse, did he have a dealer?'

  'Yeah, I suppose.'

  'In here?'

  'Here? Well, I, ah, wouldn't exactly . . .' He saw where I might be going with it, and panicked suddenly. 'It wasn't me!'

  'Who then?'

  'I don't know!'

  I gave him a hard look, then lifted the phone and dialled Stephen's extension. He answered on the third ring. 'Stephen? Pat says you're the office coke-dealer.'

  'The bastard!'

  'Get up here now.'

  As he thundered through the door Pat stared at him, wide-eyed, and shouted, 'I never said a thing! Swear to God!'

  'Yeah! Right! You fucking—' Stephen seemed to remember me then. 'Well? You pay fuck-all wages, I have to do something.' He took a deep breath. 'I'm fired then, am I?'

  'No, Stephen. We're just trying to establish Mouse's drug intake.'

  'I'm not fired?'

  'Not yet. Was he really into it?'

  Stephen shook his head. 'He thought he was, but he wasn't. I'm not either. It's just social use, and a couple of friends, you know?'

  'What about May Li?'

  'A little.'

  'You ever see them take it together?'

  'I don't really move in their circles. But once, yes – down at Past Masters.'

  'The club?'

  'Aye, in their VIP room. They took me down one night, more as a driver than anything. It was just innocent fun, you know.'

  'I'm sure it was.'

  'I've never taken it at work, Boss.'

  'Okay.'

  'I swear to God.'

  'All right.'

  'If you want me to enter some sort of a programme . . .'

  'That won't be necessary.'

  His brow furrowed in confusion. 'What sort of a boss are you?'

  I shrugged.

  'You're supposed to set an example.'

  'Excuse me?'

  'You should throw me out on my ear for dealing in the workplace. But you hardly bat an eyelid.'

  'Well, I'm not your mum, you know?'

  Stephen smiled across at Patrick. 'Well then – great. Ahm, do you want a spliff?'

  I took a deep, invigorating breath. I clasped my hands and gave a gentle shake of my head. 'Don't get me wrong,' I said. 'What you do on your own time is your affair, but you keep it out of the office, and you turn up on time, and you do your work. All right?'

  'All right,' said Stephen.

  'Right, Boss,' said Pat.

  As they went down the stairs, I heard them laughing. It wasn't a nasty kind of a laugh though, just buoyant with disbelief. I wasn't trying to be Mr Dead-on Trendy Boss. I had a magazine to produce and a murder to solve, and the simple fact of the matter was that I needed them.

  18

  Despite its name, I'd expected the Past Masters exclusive private members club to be a chic, post-modernist chrome and mirrors effort. In reality they'd taken three four-storey houses at the back of Great Victoria Street and knocked them into one. This would have been all right if the houses had been constructed to the same design, or they'd kept the façade and hollowed out the rest, but they'd gone the opposite way: new façade, and kept more or less to the original interiors, which were clearly from different pages of the architect's handbook. One side of the new, unified building was all narrow corridors and hidden alcoves, the central section boasted big, spacious rooms that were bathed in lig
ht from wide windows back and front, while the third was kind of a mix of both, which gave the whole complex an odd, higgledy-piggledy effect.

  I pointed this out to Patrick O'Brien as he gave me a pre-lunch tour of the premises and he gave an exaggerated, 'Exactly! That's the point. Do you never have one of those days where you want to keep your head down in a dark room? And then an hour later you want space and light and air? We have all of that!'

  'Or perhaps you just couldn't afford to have it all done to one design.'

  'Oh, so cynical! It's a good job you've got free life membership, or I'd charge you double.'

  'I have free life membership?'

  'Well, more accurately, the Editor and owner of Belfast Confidential will always have free life membership – you're our recruitment officer, you are!'

  He laughed, and continued the tour. He was in his mid-thirties, slicked-back hair, sunglasses glinting out of it, a black suit, white open-necked shirt. I complimented him on the black suit and its nice small lapels – a hatred of big lapels was another of my hangovers from punk days – and he opened the jacket and showed me that it was an Armani. 'You can never go wrong with Armani,' he said, and I thought, Well, you probably can if Concrete Corcoran is supplying it, and the chances were he probably was.

  Another thing – I'd expected a lot of modern art on the walls, but he'd gone for bog standard landscapes. I pointed this out. Patrick stopped me beside one of the canvases on the stairs on our way to the restaurant. He waved his arm across it: 'This one's called Hills, Trees and Bushes Outside Ballymena.'

  'So?' I said.

  He smiled and said, 'Look a little closer.'

  I studied the painting. I spotted hills, and trees and bushes, but I'd have to take the artist's word for it that it was outside Ballymena. I looked back to Patrick and shrugged. 'What?'

  He pointed. Right in the middle, amongst the trees, I almost literally couldn't see the wood for the trees. But I could now see a giraffe.

  'That's a fucking giraffe,' I said.

  'I know.'

  'In Ballymena?'

  'Outside it. He's a very unusual artist. You should check him out for your Power List.'

  Not unusual, I thought. A weirdo. But nevertheless I resolved never to think of him again.

  O'Brien guided me into the restaurant, which was all dark wood and stained wooden floors. He handed me a menu and I was pleasantly relieved to see it was not only in English, but that most of the dishes were familiar. He saw me nodding appreciatively and said, 'Our chef's from up the road. Didn't see the point in bringing someone in from France or wherever. The clientèle we attract, you know they're always off at business meetings and they have to eat all this modern crap. When they come home here, they might just want pie and chips, you know what I mean?'

  A waitress – blonde, tight black top, Eastern European accent, brought me a Harp poured into a pint glass they kept in the freezer. I ordered the aforementioned pie and chips and said, 'So business must be good?'

  O'Brien nodded thoughtfully. He gave me a look, he raised an eyebrow. I raised one back and said, 'What?'

  He said, 'You're enjoying this, aren't you?'

  'Enjoying what?'

  'Keeping me on tenterhooks.'

  'Am I keeping you on tenterhooks?'

  'You bet your bollocks you are. Come on, I'm not going to enjoy my lunch unless you tell me.'

  I took a long drink of Harp and said, 'Tell you what?'

  'Christ!' he exploded, although not in an angry way. 'You just love this, don't you? Come on, tell me! Are we in or not?'

  And then the penny dropped. The Power List. I set the glass down. 'It's important to you, is it?'

  'Of course it is! Look – look.' He opened his jacket and removed several folded pages. He opened them up. It was a photocopy of last year's list. He quickly flicked through the pages, pointing and saying, 'Look, there . . . there . . . here,' at entries he had previously circled in red. 'They're all members, this is the place to be seen, to have meetings; decisions are made here which shape this little city of ours. We really have to be on your list.'

  The food arrived. We both sat back while a different waitress, but also blonde with a tight black jumper, laid it before us.

  'What did Mouse say?' I asked.

  'Mouse, God rest his soul, gave a clear indication that we were in.'

  'He was a regular here?'

  'Yes, he was. Two or three lunches a week, three, sometimes four nights.'

  'With his wife?'

  'At night? Sure. Not so much during the day.'

  'I heard he liked a little snifter after dinner.'

  'Snifter?' I touched the side of my nose.

  'Oh – right. Well, I couldn't really say. We have a strict anti-drugs policy here, Dan.'

  'So if I wanted a line right now, you'd throw me out.'

  'I would ask you to retire to the privacy of our men's room.'

  'Out of sight, out of mind.'

  'Something like that.'

  'Is there much of it goes on? I mean, London, New York, I can imagine, but I always thought of Belfast as, you know, a couple of Paracetamol being the limit.'

  O'Brien laughed. 'Oh, you should get out more, Dan.' I shrugged. He said, 'Looking at you, I'd say you still think dope's a bit dangerous and Ecstasy's right up there with crack cocaine.'

  'Well, isn't it?'

  He smiled indulgently. The pie was good. Their chips were chips. He said, 'So?'

  'So?'

  'The Power List?'

  'Well,' I said, 'it's obviously important to your business.'

  'Yes, it is.'

  'Which, according to our information, isn't going tremendously well.'

  His sunny demeanour suddenly faded a little. 'Where did you hear that?'

  'We research all of our entries thoroughly, you know that.'

  'But you're not going to print that we're in difficulties?'

  'Are you in difficulties?'

  'No! But if you say that it isn't going well . . . As Liam says, "Negativity breeds negativity – banish it!"'

  'That's what Liam says,' I agreed.

  'So you can't print that.'

  'Can't.'

  'I mean, it would be worse than not appearing at all, appearing negatively. We're just a new business, it takes time to get to profit, you know that. Our membership's growing, our word of mouth is fantastic, but if Belfast Confidential includes us, we'd be eternally grateful, Dan.'

  'In what sense?'

  He put his knife and fork down and lifted his glass of white wine. 'In whatever sense you like,' he said without looking at me, but allowing his eyes to wander across the half-full restaurant. But he looked back to see what my reaction was. I keep a poker face in my bag for emergencies, so I slipped it on. 'Dan – it's how it works, isn't it? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.'

  'Like the Masons,' I said.

  'Exactly. But without the handshakes.' The waitress came to take my plate away. I said thanks. O'Brien said, 'Whatever you want, it's yours,' and his eyes flitted to her curvaceous rear end as it proceeded towards the kitchens.

  I smiled.

  He smiled.

  I said, 'When's the last time Mouse was here?'

  'Night he died. That's why I was so shocked to hear about it. One minute he's eating his dinner, and the next . . .' O'Brien blew air out of his cheeks. 'Well, you know.'

  'Who did he dine with?'

  'I'm not sure. Tell you the truth, I didn't actually see him, but he was signed in.'

  'Can you check?'

  'Of course.' He stood up and walked over to the maitre d'; they talked for a few moments, then they both disappeared into the kitchen. I counted waitresses for a while, then he came back and lifted his napkin as he sat down. 'He ate with Terry Breene.'

  'The footballer.'

  'The footballer. Mouse was booked in for five-thirty. Although when I say he ate, he only had a starter, a Caesar salad. Terry Breene had a prawn cocktail, a T-bone steak w
ith a Béarnaise sauce and a Black Mamba Gâteau.'

  'Black Mamba?' I asked.

  'It's really Black Forest, but we try to sex things up a bit, you know?' He gave a gentle laugh. 'Anyway, Terry Breene.'

  'Is he a regular?'

  'Like clockwork. Hang around, I'll introduce you. They finish training at three, he's usually here not long after.' O'Brien took a deep breath. 'So, what's it to be for dessert? Something from the menu, or something, ahm, off menu.' And his eyes winked back to the waitresses.

  I cleared my throat and said, 'I'm not hungry right now, but maybe later.'

  'Later it is then.' He extended his hand, and I shook it. 'So make yourself at home, treat it like your own place.'

  'Seriously?'

  He nodded, although I was sure that he didn't get my meaning, but that was okay; few people did.

  There was a bar upstairs. I took out my mobile and for the next hour conducted the mundane business of running Belfast Confidential from a corner table with a window which overlooked a set of traffic lights. I sipped another Harp and thought about how relaxing it was working like this, and I wondered if this was how Mouse had done it as well, enjoying a cold pint and trading space in his magazine for the pimped waitresses at Past Masters.

  19

  I was reasonably intoxicated when Terry Breene came in a little after three-thirty. He went straight to the bar and ordered a Bush. O'Brien had promised to introduce me, but he was nowhere to be seen, so I walked up as steadily as I could manage and said who I was, and he said, 'You're the cunt trying to put me in your cunting Power List.'

  'Yep,' I said.

  'Well, you can go and fuck yourself.'

  'Ah, if only,' I said.

  He was in his early fifties, but looked about ten years older. Having a liver transplant can do that to you: make you sallow, and thin, with wispy hair like straw, but he'd once been voted Sexiest Man in the Universe, so even at his worst he still made handsome men look like they'd been beaten with the ugly stick. He knew it, women knew it, I knew it. He gave me a hard stare, then stepped around me and walked up to the table where I'd been sitting. He turned and shouted back at the blonde, tight-black-jumpered bargirl: 'Who's sitting at my fucking table?!'

  'That would be me,' I said. I'd left half a pint, my mobile and a notebook sitting there. He gave me another tough look then sat down. He took a mouthful of his whiskey, then said, 'So what's this about?'