Belfast Confidential

by Bateman, Colin

  Because that's not the way she wants it.

  She wants to do it now. When he's basking in his popularity, when he's revelling in the fact that he's brought the good times back to the troubled streets he grew up on. It's how she does it.

  Terry Breene, on the cusp of football triumph.

  Concrete Corcoran, at the launch of his exhibition.

  Liam Miller? The Lifestyle King. A fixture in every house. And an expert on fixtures.

  Maybe it hadn't all gone according to plan, since there were complications like Mouse and me and Stephen and Patrick, but I had no doubt at all that Frank Galvin was the big fish she was after, and that if she was going to have him killed at all, it would be here, a very public murder.

  No, an assassination.

  'What now?' Alec gasped.

  'I don't know.'

  'We can't just stand here!' Alec shouted.

  'I know! I know!'

  An assassination. The difference between my death and Galvin's. He was important. He was a household name. For every assassination, an assassin. Kennedy. King. A sniper.

  Christ, that was it. But where?

  I spun, scanning the skyline.

  And there was no deduction to it at all, really, because there was only one point nearby that gave an unrestricted view of the factory site and its little stage, but also the privacy and elevation required to line up a perfect shot.

  Little old lady.

  Aggie O'Fee.

  And her lodger.

  Upstairs.

  I stared at the house, about two hundred metres away. The upstairs window was open. A glint of sunlight on metal.

  Christ All Mighty!

  I took off running again, and Alec charged after me. I pushed and shouted my way through the crowds still arriving to watch the ceremony.

  'Where? What?!' Alec was shouting.

  'The house, the fucking house!'

  I had the gun out now, and even as I ran I was able to check that it was ready to fire. I was becoming used to being in these situations. But familiarity does breed contempt. I hated that after all these years I was still chasing someone with a gun. I felt sick, and my legs were as heavy as lead, and my heart was ready to pop.

  But these things you do.

  Right.

  And wrong.

  I was at the door. I raised my foot and kicked it in. Or tried to. It stayed firm.

  I kicked it again. It wouldn't budge.

  Alec arrived beside me, but without stopping he raced on and put his shoulder to the wood and it came straight off its hinges. He tumbled in with it and lay there long enough for me to jump in over him. Mrs O'Fee was just emerging from the lounge with a tray in her hands and a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits on it.

  She said, 'Oh.'

  I took the stairs three at a time. Two bedrooms. Left and right. I chose left, pushed the door open with the gun held out in front of me and screamed, 'Put it fucking down!' – except there was no one in there, just a window open and a curtain flapping.

  Crack.

  From the next room.

  And a second later, distant screams.

  I pivoted back out of the room and rammed the second door open. 'Put it fucking down!' I yelled as I charged in.

  There was a rifle in the window, mounted on a stand. But no gunman.

  At least not until he put a pistol to the side of my head and said, 'You first.'

  Matthew Rye stepped out from behind the door. There was sweat on his brow and stains under the armpits of his white shirt. He had loosened his tie. Hot work, killing someone.

  The screams grew louder.

  Police sirens.

  'You fucking did it,' I said.

  'I fucking did. Drop the gun.'

  I dropped it. I was thinking: Right, Alec, do it now. You've sneaked up the stairs, you have your gun out, do it now!

  But there was nothing, no creak of a floorboard, no hint of support. He had to be there; he was just taking it very, very slowly.

  Talk, talk, you have to keep talking.

  'We know what you're about,' I said. 'You've got them all now, haven't you?'

  'Really?'

  'St Patrick's – anyone who did well, anyone who stuck their head above the parapet, she put them on the list and you killed them.'

  'Very good,' he said.

  'You're a hired killer.'

  'That's me. This gun for hire. A million dollars. Easy work if you can get it. And only fools like you to annoy me.'

  'Well, I was bored. And here we are.'

  'Here we are.' He changed the angle slightly on the gun. He took a step back. He didn't want to get covered in blood.

  'You think it's over, don't you? You think it won't come out?'

  'I know it won't.'

  'You assassinate the First Minister, you think they won't track you down?'

  'Well, the thing is, Dan Starkey – I didn't assassinate him.'

  'What?'

  'It's a business, Dan. I kill for money, but I'm not fucking stupid. Of course you don't kill First Ministers or Prime Ministers or Presidents and get away with it.'

  'I . . . I don't understand. You shot . . .'

  He smiled. 'I shot Jacintha Ryan.'

  'Ja . . . she's . . . ?' I looked to the window, but the angle wasn't right, standing up, where we were. I couldn't see anything but sky and distant houses and the tail of the Goodyear Blimp.

  'Of course she's dead. I don't miss.'

  'But why her? Why Jacintha?'

  'Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?'

  'Well, conversation's a dying art.'

  'Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Fair point. Well, let me explain, then you can write this up and file it in hell. Jacintha made the fatal mistake of paying my final instalment before I pulled the trigger. It went through at exactly eleven a.m. – electronic transfer, you see. Once I knew that, there was really no necessity to kill Mr Galvin. I don't need that kind of a shit storm. And, seeing as how Jacintha was the only one who knew our little secret, then it seemed clear that all I needed to do was remove her, and I was home free. I just skip out in the confusion.'

  'Except . . .' I pointed out.

  'Except she wasn't the only one who knew our little secret. There's you.'

  'The fool.'

  'Still the interfering fool. So.' He smiled 'Time to go. Any last words?'

  'Nah,' I said. I'd been there once too often. And the words were never right. The only thing I could think of was that Alec had let me down, that there wasn't enough Viagra left in him to make him rise to the occasion. Or that he was waiting for Matthew Rye to try and leave, and then he could grab all the glory for himself.

  And my wife.

  'You're sure?'

  'I'm sure. Fucking just do it.' I closed my eyes.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Everything exploded in light and smoke, but even as I reeled sideways I knew that I was still alive. There was pain and incredible noise and my ears were fucked, but I opened my eyes and saw Rye slump to his knees. He was cradling his left hand. Blood was spurting. He was missing a finger. No, two. The gun lay in two pieces on the floor beside him, smoking.

  I charged across and kicked him. Hard. He fell over.

  I jumped on him. I grabbed his hair and cracked his head off the floorboards. Everything was fugged, the sound like it was underwater. But I kept cracking his head.

  I knew exactly what had happened. He'd pulled the trigger and the gun had exploded in his hand, for the simple reason that he'd bought the weapon either directly or from an associate of Concrete Corcoran, and like everything that came out of Concrete, it was crap or counterfeit and worked half the time, or some of the time, or none of the time.

  I was so busy thinking this, and banging his head, that I didn't even notice Rye's good hand snake out and grasp hold of my own gun, lying on the floor beside us. Wasn't aware until it was too late and he had it against my leg, and he groggily pulled the trigger and there was a second explosion, and
this time I felt the pain.

  I toppled off him, clutching my leg and yelling.

  He tried to scramble to his feet, to shoot me again, but I retained enough wit to kick out hard with my good leg, and his feet went from under him before he could get fully erect. He hit the floor hard and the gun was knocked from his grasp. It landed between us.

  We both dived on it. We wrestled and poked and cried and screamed and gouged and bit because we were both bleeding and desperate; we both had a hand on it at the same time, then banged it back and forth on the ground, trying to dislodge each other's grip while still biting and tearing and yelling and grunting. It banged down once more, but this time a bullet shot out of it, and it was shock enough for us both to let go of it.

  I was the first to recover.

  My years of training.

  Or his loss of blood.

  I grabbed it. It felt unusually hot. It was probably another of Concrete's dodgy weapons, capable of firing one bullet before self-destructing. I couldn't take the chance of it blowing up again, so I managed to turn and throw it out of the open window. There was a brief moment when Matthew Rye looked at me in disbelief, then he jumped to his feet and charged out of the door and down the stairs.

  And then, silence.

  Blood was oozing out of my leg. I was in agony. My eardrums were screaming. Any moment now, he would come back up those stairs to finish me off.

  But still, nothing.

  Slowly, slowly, I dragged myself across to the window. I pulled myself up. Heard:

  'Put your hands in the air! Armed police officers! Put your hands in the air!'

  But it sounded like it was coming from a million miles away.

  There were a dozen of them. Matthew Rye was on the ground, handcuffed. Alec Large was standing there with Aggie O'Fee. He was smiling up. She was staring at her battered front door, looking distraught.

  'Put your hands in the air! Armed police officers!'

  Maybe two million miles.

  Alec shouted, 'It'll be all right! I told them who you were! They're just playing safe!'

  I almost laughed. Playing safe. Sure. Double murderer holed up. And they'll hold fire on the word of Alec Large?

  I slumped down, away from the window.

  They'd work it out, that I was one of the good guys.

  They just needed time.

  To speak to someone sensible.

  Trish.

  Or Mouse. He always had his head screwed on. He could tell them.

  I settled myself as comfortably as I could on the floor. There was a lot of blood, some of it mine, and splinters, and there was a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall. I thought she was smiling at me, but I might have been mistaken. Even if she was, I didn't return it. What was the point? It would only end in tears.

  56

  These things get sorted out. They always do. Since when has there ever been a travesty of justice in Northern Ireland?

  They just needed a little time. I lay in hospital, with various tubes attached, and prayed that I wouldn't contract some kind of Superbug just as one final kick in the hole from yer man upstairs. My leg was pretty messed up. It was looking unlikely that I would ever play for Liverpool now. Me and Terry Breene. My hearing was returning to normal. People sent flowers.

  I lay there, in a private ward, nobody really saying who was paying for it, but I think Frank Galvin was involved somewhere. He came round and shook my hand and smiled for the cameras and absolutely denied that he had ever been involved in the tarring and feathering of the McAuley girls, although I knew it was a lie, and he knew that I knew it was a lie. There were others out there who knew it as well, the ordinary boys and girls who hadn't made anything of their lives apart from becoming decent people struggling to survive in a harsh part of a tough city, the very people Frank Galvin championed. I had thought of Galvin as one of those closet IRA men who could never change his spots, but maybe I'd just picked on the wrong species. He was more like a snake, a snake charmer, perhaps, and he had changed his skin. How long this new, attractive skin lasted . . . well, who could tell?

  Galvin said, 'Dan, she fooled us all.'

  'Uhuh.'

  'She never had the money to build the Jet. She only ever produced a couple of dummy cars and several thousand Matchbox toys. But who could ever have guessed?'

  I shrugged. 'She was a high flier in the auto industry. She was tipped to be Head of General Motors. But then she had some kind of a breakdown, and she was quietly eased out. She negotiated a two million dollar pay-off, and a confidentiality agreement. Didn't want anyone else in the industry to know she had, you know, mental problems, told them it would harm her chances of working again. Then she set about spending the money on this . . . con.'

  'And a gunman.'

  'An assassin. So there was never any car, never any jobs. It was just a very complicated way of getting her revenge.'

  'It seems that way, yes. You would think, if she was determined to kill people, she would just have done it quietly, then enjoy her money.'

  I shook my head. 'I think she knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted to havé a ball, literally, and then go out in style.'

  'You think she knew he would shoot her as well, in the end?'

  'Possibly. But I think she thought he would kill you first.'

  'Then, sorry to disappoint her.' He smiled kindly down at me. 'Well,' he said, 'country to run. What're you going to do?'

  'Limp,' I said.

  Alec came to see me every day. He said he was thinking about retraining as a psychologist. Or a psychiatrist. He wasn't entirely sure of the difference, and neither was I. Patricia tried to time her visits to avoid him, but it seemed inevitable that they would meet eventually. So one Wednesday when she came in, she opened her arms for a hug and Alec, sitting beside me, enjoyed a very brief moment of hope, and opened his arms to receive it. Then closed them sadly as she enveloped me.

  She was very good with him though, and I didn't say anything. He had saved my life, and he had a heart of gold.

  Later, when he'd gone home, we were kind of canoodling. Patricia lay on the bed beside me, doing her best not to jar my leg. But before we could get anywhere, there was a knock on the door. I said, 'Leave it,' but Patricia, like Liam Miller, could never resist a knocked door. She rolled off and opened it.

  Wendy was standing there, with a bottle of wine. She said, 'Is this a bad time?'

  'Yes,' I said, 'but leave the wine.'

  'Wendy,' said Trish. 'Haven't seen you in ages.' There wasn't a lot of warmth in it.

  'I came to apologise,' said Wendy. 'To both of you. I've been awful.'

  'No, you haven't,' said Patricia, again with little to no conviction.

  'No, I have.'

  'Okay,' I said.

  'I was just bitter – at Mouse. You know. And then . . .'

  'Crazy with power,' I said.

  'Yes. That.'

  'Well,' said Patricia, 'no harm done.' Not a lot of conviction in that either.

  'You've been through hell,' said Wendy, 'both of you. And I'd like to make it up.'

  'How?' Patricia and I said together.

  She came fully into the room. She sat on the end of the bed, and shook her head at my shot leg. Then tears began to roll down her cheeks. 'I do so miss him,' she said.

  We left her for a respectful twenty seconds. Then I said, 'How?'

  She wiped at her eyes. She managed a smile. 'Well, Brian Kerr is a total wanker. He doesn't know his arse from his elbow and nobody wants to work for him.'

  'Ah,' I said.

  'So I want you to come back and edit Belfast Confidential.'

  'Really?' said Trish, a woman who knew the benefits of a regular wage.

  I shook my head. 'No chance,' I said.

  'Dan,' said Wendy, 'it needs you. The issues you did were the best. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know you're good at it, and the money's great.'

  I shrugged. 'When May Li owned it, she gave me forty-nine per cen
t.'

  'May Li never owned it. Forty-nine per cent of nothing is nothing.'

  'Well,' I said, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I thought I owned it. Now anything else would just feel like a rip-off.'

  She thought to herself for a moment, then nodded. 'Okay. I can offer you three per cent.'

  'Forty-five.'

  'Four.'

  'Forty.'

  'Five.'

  'Thirty-five.'

  'Six.'

  'I see a pattern emerging. Settle at twenty and I'm yours.'

  'Ten.'

  'Fifteen.'

  'Twelve.'

  I looked at Trish. She shrugged. I said, 'Okay, deal.'

  Wendy put out her hand. I shook it.

  'Let me open the wine,' I said.

  'Should you?' Wendy asked.

  'Of course,' I said.

  'I mean, you have to get to work. They're waiting.'

  I pointed at my leg. 'I'm seriously ill.'

  Trish looked at me. Wendy looked at me. I had just pulled the cork out with my bare hands.

  'Start on Monday, then,' said Wendy.

  'Alrighty.'

  'With one proviso.' I tutted. 'We do the Power List right away.'

  'Okay.'

  'And you put yourself in it.'

  'Me?'

  'Yes, you. You're the Editor and part-owner of Belfast Confidential. And your part-time job seems to be changing the fate of nations. I think you deserve it.'

  Trish leaned across and kissed me on the cheek. 'Yes, you do,' she said.

  I smiled at both of them. 'Will it help me get girls?' I asked.

  I got out of hospital on a Friday, and I was due in work on a Monday. I was kind of looking forward to it, but also feeling a bit down. I was still on crutches, living on painkillers.

  On the Sunday, Trish took me out for a drive for some fresh air. I hobbled along a beach; Patricia collected shiny stones. We ate lunch in a pub. Someone recognised me from the TV coverage and forced me to sign an autograph. On the way home we found ourselves on the motorway within sight of the graveyard in West Belfast where Terry Breene, Concrete Corcoran, Liam Miller and now Jacintha Ryan had been laid to rest. We turned off and drove up past Aggie O'Fee's house. She was outside it now, giving a television interview, standing proudly by her new front door. She was probably telling them about how old she was and how she still had her own teeth.