Belfast Confidential

by Bateman, Colin

  'I understand that, sir. But unless—'

  'Ah, there you are!'

  I turned, and saw Alec hurrying towards me. He was wearing a white button-up doctor's jacket, designer glasses and carrying a clipboard. 'Thought I'd lost you for a moment. If you'll just come this way.' He pointed ahead, down a corridor leading into the hospital proper. Then he waved and smiled over at the receptionist. 'It's quite all right. He's with me.'

  She nodded. We walked on. A dozen yards along I said, 'Where'd you get the coat?'

  'Liberated it outside.'

  'Does that mean stole?'

  'You're here, aren't you?'

  'You're starting to get good at this, Alec.'

  'Dr Large to you,' he said.

  There were various different houses within the hospital, some of them secure and to which it would have been a great deal more difficult to gain access. Fortunately for us, Sinclair House was dedicated to longterm voluntary patients. There was a nurse behind a desk. Before I could say anything, Alec launched in.

  'Hi, Doctors Large and Stark, here to see a patient, Carmel Ryan.'

  'Carmel McAuley,' I said quickly.

  'And I'll need to see her records.'

  The nurse looked us over briefly, before directing us down a hall. Evidently, once you were in, you were in. 'You'll have to ask for her records down there,' she called after us.

  There was a television switched on in the corner of her room, which seemed comfortable. A different nurse said, 'We don't normally allow them TVs in their rooms, but she won't sit with the others.' Carmel was facing the TV but she was staring out of the window, across the hospital lawn. Before we crossed to her, the nurse handed Alec the patient's file. He began to peruse it.

  I said, 'How has she been?'

  'Well, actually, she's been quite agitated these past few days.'

  'Any particular reason?'

  The nurse smiled indulgently. 'They don't really need one, do they?'

  'And is she talking much?'

  'Well, yes – she has lucid periods.'

  'What about visitors?'

  'I'm really not sure, Doctor. You would need to check with the desk.'

  Alec nodded down at his notes. 'Thirty years as a voluntary patient. It's a very long time.'

  The nurse nodded in agreement. 'It's sad. No family here any more.'

  'But no attempts have been made to assimilate her back into the community?'

  'I think, if you check further back, there was some effort made in the early days. But it didn't work out.'

  'Very well.' Alec smiled down at her. 'You run along then. And if you don't mind me saying, I like your hair.'

  'My hair?'

  'You've changed it recently, haven't you?'

  She blushed.

  'Makes you look younger.'

  'Thank you, Doctor.'

  She skipped happily away. I shook my head at Alec and his 'into bed' manner, then I crossed the room and stood in front of the window, so that I was blocking Carmel's line of sight to the gardens outside. She stared straight through me at first, and then slowly her head moved to one side, so that she could see the grass again.

  I pulled up a chair beside her and said, 'Carmel?'

  Her eyes drifted lazily towards me. She was, without doubt, Jacintha Ryan's twin sister – but she was also quite different. She was a Ryan or a McAuley in her natural state. No hairdye. No plastic surgery. No make-up. No care and attention. She had bags under her eyes, and her brow was deeply furrowed. She had never been Botoxed. She probably didn't know what it was. In itself, no bad thing.

  I touched her arm. 'Carmel. Hi, I'm Dan. This is Alec.'

  'Dan,' she said.

  'Dan. I need to ask you some questions.'

  'Dan. Have you come to get me? She said she was coming.'

  'Who said that, Carmel?'

  Her eyes softened a little. 'My sister.'

  'Jacintha.'

  'Jacintha's coming for me. She's taking me away. To her house, in the fields.'

  'When is she coming?'

  'Soon. Did she send you?'

  I glanced up at Alec, who was busy going through Carmel's drawers. 'Alec,' I said, 'leave it.' He left it. I smiled at Carmel. 'That's right, Carmel, Jacintha sent me. She's coming to get you soon.'

  She was wearing a black top and corduroy trousers. I noticed that she had one hand nestled inside her top, moving it round and round, round and round. 'Home,' she said.

  'Home,' I agreed. 'But before you go, you have to pass a little test, like at school – is that all right?'

  Her brow furrowed slightly. I could see that her eyes were slightly unfocused. 'I just want to go home,' she said. 'Mummy has my Communion dress.'

  I looked up at Alec. He was back going through her possessions again. 'Will you leave it?' I snapped. He closed another drawer. 'The notes. Does it say what she's on?'

  Alec opened her file again and quickly scanned it. 'There's a whole list of stuff,' he said, then gave a little shrug. He showed me the list. It was long, but the names meant nothing to me, though I was willing to bet they weren't all vitamins. Keep them drugged, keep them docile. For thirty years.

  I said, 'Carmel – when did you last see Jacintha?'

  'Yesterday.'

  'And before that? When was the last time before that?'

  'My birthday.'

  I glanced up at Alec. He checked the file again. 'This time last year, give or take a couple of days.'

  'My birthday present,' said Carmel. 'I'm going home.'

  'Does she come every birthday?'

  Carmel nodded. Her hand seemed to be moving faster under her top.

  'Carmel – how long have you been here, in this hospital.'

  'Long time.'

  'And have you never left?'

  'I'm not well. I'm sick. Not safe.'

  'But now you are, you're going home?'

  'Yes.'

  'You feel better now?'

  'I have to go to Communion.'

  'But you feel better?'

  'Yes. Jacintha says I'm great, I'm a good girl, and as soon as there's no bad boys left, then it's time to go home.'

  'What do you mean, bad boys?'

  'The bad boys.'

  'Which bad boys, Carmel?'

  'Bad boys who cut my hair.'

  'Why did they cut your hair?'

  'I don't know. Carmel was bad . . .' She was starting to get agitated.

  I patted her arm. 'It's all right.'

  'Carmel was bad, Mummy was bad.'

  'It's okay.'

  'Carmel was bad, Carmel was bad!' I glanced nervously back at the door. It was a madhouse. Nobody was paying any attention. As I turned back, Carmel's hand suddenly shot out from beneath her top. It was covered in blood. She began to wipe it across her face. 'Carmel was bad! Carmel was bad!'

  The movement also pushed the top up to reveal that her stomach was criss-crossed with wide gaping sores and scars which were bleeding and weeping freely.

  'Christ All Mighty,' said Alec.

  'Bad,' said Carmel. 'Bad, bad, bad, bad!'

  There were no nurses nearby. I grabbed her hand. 'It's okay,' I said.

  'Bad, bad, bad.'

  'No, Carmel, no.' I began to force it down.

  She suddenly looked very frightened. 'Sorry . . . sorry. Didn't mean . . . didn't mean . . . Please don't. Please . . .'

  'Shhhhh, it's all right. It's okay.' I let go of her hand. She pulled her top down.

  'Won't happen again,' she whispered. 'Won't happen again.' Tears sprang. 'I just want my dress. I just want my dress.'

  I patted her arm again. 'It's coming,' I said. 'It's coming. Isn't Jacintha bringing it?'

  This seemed to calm her. I stroked the top of her hand, then set it gently down on her lap. My own hand was covered in her blood. I wiped it across my trousers. 'There's nothing to worry about, love, nothing. The bad men are gone, the bad men are all gone.'

  She nodded slowly. Then, as I stood up, her bloody hand sl
ipped back under her top, and began that same rotation again.

  'She'll be here soon, Carmel. You keep watching. You keep watching.'

  We crept out of the room.

  As we hurried down the corridor, the nurse with the nice hair came beaming across. 'Well? How is she?'

  Alec handed her the file. 'Still barking,' he said crisply, then led us out of the hospital.

  54

  The pieces were starting to fall into place, but it was as if we'd bought a jigsaw in a charity shop: you could be certain that several pieces were missing – stuck down the back of a settee or swallowed by a toddler. Carmel was a child in a middle-aged woman's body, living on the promise of a new life with her sister. Once Jacintha had finished dealing with the bad men who'd tarred and feathered them. But who were the bad men, and what did they have to do with the trail of death which had been left across the city?

  As I sat behind the wheel, still in the Purdysburn car park, running through the possibilities, I noticed that Alec was smiling again, and snapped an angry, 'What?' at him.

  He reached inside his jacket – he had thrown the doctor's coat into the back seat by now – and removed a small photograph album. I realised that I'd caught a glimpse of its cover when I shouted at him to keep his nose out of Carmel's drawers.

  'You didn't,' I said.

  'I did.'

  He opened it on his lap and flicked through the pages of childhood snaps, mostly small prints in the kind of washed-out colours that we put up with in the 1970s. Carmel and Jacintha playing in a sandpit, on holiday in what looked like Portrush, their parents dancing with them, toys being opened at Christmas. Innocent. A good-looking family.

  So what?

  Like most photo albums, there were a number of empty pages towards the back – and wedged sideways into one of these was a larger, and slightly creased black and white photograph. Alec pulled it out and turned it round. 'This'll be what you're after.'

  It showed a group of kids, ranging I guessed from nine or ten up to maybe twenty. The fashions were very much of the 1970s – tank tops, perms, flares, sideburns. There were two rows of them standing, and a third sitting on a bench. There was a banner held just above the head of the kids in the front row, reaching to the chests of those in the second. It said St Patrick's Youth Club. The twins weren't difficult to pick out – blonde, beautiful, the only difference between them being that one, and I couldn't tell which, was missing her front teeth. She looked cute and happy. A thousand grannies must have said to her, 'Who kissed those out?'

  'Very nice,' I said.

  'Look again,' said Alec.

  I scanned the faces. 'What exactly am I looking for?'

  'A familiar face.'

  I tried again, one by one, top row down to bottom, my finger hesitating over each of them. And then I stopped over one little lad who had a real cheeky look about him; his eyes were half-closed as if he'd been laughing, and the tip of his tongue was just sticking out. He was familiar, but only in a vague kind of way – but what gave it away were the white shorts stained with mud, the dirty knees, and the black and white baseball boot he had resting on a football. And as soon as I added that to the face, I had him.

  'Terry Breene,' I said.

  'Oh,' said Alec. 'Right enough. Didn't mean him.'

  He nodded at the photograph again. I ran my finger along the top row, then the second, and at the very end on the right, there was another boy who caught my attention. He was definitely one of the youngest, and he was undeniably the best turned out. He had on a flowered shirt and a waistcoat and well-pressed trousers, and whilst the rest of them looked like they'd just been charging about the park for half an hour, this boy didn't have a hair out of place. He looked like he'd just been for a job interview with a gospel showband. I kept staring at him. Something about the eyes. They weren't looking to the camera, but rather condescendingly across at his youth club mates. A girl directly behind him had raised her fingers above his head to give him rabbit ears. The message seemed obvious – he thought he was better than them, and they thought he was a wanker.

  'It's Liam Miller,' I said.

  Alec's eyes snapped down to the photo again. 'Christ – it is. But it wasn't him I was thinking of.'

  'Alec, for fuck sake, we haven't got all day, just fucking—'

  He jabbed a finger towards the middle of the back row – at the two oldest boys in the photo. One was clearly the hard man of the group. While the others luxuriated in their big hair, his was cut back into a skinhead; he was wearing a cut-off denim jacket, skinners and Doc Marten boots.

  'Our old chum,' said Alec.

  Christ. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was Concrete Corcoran, back in the days before he'd fully set.

  Alec nodded, but he wasn't finished. He pointed at the next boy along. Altogether a more respectable-looking character – round-faced, horn-rimmed glasses, healthy big perm like he was the drummer from Slade, an attempt at a bandito moustache, but just too young to pull it off. It looked like he was the focus of the group, their natural leader. Although there were three almost even rows, they looked as if they had all formed up around this one boy. But I didn't recognise him.

  'Without the hair,' said Alec. 'Recede it right back, lose the bumfluff and glasses.'

  I tried it. 'I still don't see it.'

  'Add thirty years – he's still in charge.'

  'I'm still not getting it.'

  'Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the First Minister.'

  The penny dropped. And as it dropped, a shiver ran directly up my spine.

  Frank Galvin. Frank fucking Galvin.

  'Jesus Christ,' I said.

  'Exactly,' said Alec. He gave a slight shake of his head. 'You know something? It's not a youth club photo at all.'

  'I know,' I said. 'It's a hit list.'

  55

  What do you do? Do you sit there with your mobile phone and call people? Do you say, 'Guess what we found out? Yep, yer man Liam Miller and Concrete Corcoran and Terry Breene and Frank Galvin were all members of the same youth club. What a year that was, eh? And you know what else? So was Jacintha Ryan, and if you put two and two together, and divide by three corpses, you get one left over and that's Frank Galvin. Except not for long because Jacintha Ryan's been paying Matthew Rye to knock off all her old chums, and there's only one of them left now and he's about to get on a stage in the middle of a field and jump through hoops for her and he has absolutely no idea what's coming.'

  The people at the other end of the line say, 'Well, why would she do something like that?' And you say, 'Revenge.

  'She went away and reinvented herself, but she never forgot what her friends, her pals, did to her and her sister, and all because her mum gave some comfort to a dying soldier. Maybe it was what drove her to such success in the States, this burning need for revenge, and maybe it took thirty years for her to get into a position where she could do something about it. And now that class of 1972 or 1973 or 1974 is paying the price.'

  But then whoever you call says, 'And who is this I'm speaking to?' and you say, 'Dan Starkey.'

  They say, 'Not the gay journalist-killer Dan Starkey? The one that's plastered all over the papers and the TV? That Dan Starkey?'

  And you cut the line because you know nobody is going to believe you, not yet – that whatever has to be done you have to do it yourself, or perhaps with the help of one other, the grinning idiot sitting beside you.

  Except he's not such an idiot, having stolen the last piece of the jigsaw, having completed the picture.

  11 a.m. The cutting of the sod was due at eleven, but when did things ever get under way on time?

  First Minister: busy schedule, everything timed to the second.

  Jacintha Ryan: efficiently building an auto-empire.

  Of course it would be on time.

  We roared out of the Purdysburn car park, careered across lanes, cut corners, the vehicle soaring over humps and speed-traps. Alec was a Belfast version of S
teve McQueen in Bullitt. In about eight minutes we were able to turn onto the Falls, but then we had to stop dead because the traffic was tailed right back. Everyone was turning out for the ceremony. The footpaths teemed with young mothers and their children, hurrying towards the factory site. Every once in a while they pointed up at the Goodyear Blimp. She'd gone and hired that out as well. Money was no object. Hot air balloons, Matthew Rye, the local cops; probably, it now seemed, even the hoods who'd attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv and hastened Terry Breene to his suicide. It was all part of her revenge. Mouse had obviously suspected, and paid the penalty.

  Alec pumped the horn, he yelled out of the window, but we weren't going anywhere. A cop started to take interest. I ducked down. Alec gave him a pacifying wave. The cop's attention was diverted to a thirteen-year-old girl who'd dropped her flagon of cider.

  We jumped out of the car and started running. People are always running in West Belfast, so nobody paid any attention. It was at least half a mile and five minutes before we puffed to the top of the slight rise which looked down over the factory site. The great and the good were already in position, and there were hundreds of locals standing behind crash barriers watching, just as Jacintha Ryan and First Minister Frank Galvin began to mount the steps onto the stage. As they did, 'Johnny Comes Marching Home' roared out of huge speakers and vast sparklers erupted around them. The people cheered. The shadow of the Goodyear Blimp drifted across the former home of the yellow diamond daisy.

  We stood watching for a moment, not quite sure what to do. There were too many people, too much noise. Cars stuck in the traffic were blasting their horns; other drivers, with more patience, had climbed out, abandoning their vehicles, and were hurrying forward. Everyone loved Frank Galvin, local boy made good, and they were starting to fall for Jacintha Ryan, local girl made big, and now bringing it all back home. Could we be wrong? They seemed like such a great team. Was Matthew Rye really out there somewhere, preparing to kill Frank Galvin in front of all these people, all those cameras? Why not just leave it for some dark night when the First Minister was going home to his wife and kids?