In This Bright Future

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Your help? What exactly d’you mean by that?’ Then Kelly gave a short laugh and folded his arms – ‘Are you going to start an investigation, Mr Smith?’

  Smith said to the river Lagan, ‘That’s one way of looking at it. I have some experience in looking for people, in asking questions. I’m willing to put that at your disposal, if you think it would be of any use.’

  A boat passed in front of them, creating a heavy wash as it turned and headed away towards the east bank – as the starboard side became visible they could see that it was a police launch. Kelly didn’t speak until the waves could be heard rolling up onto the nearby shore.

  ‘Jesus! I think you’re serious.’

  ‘I am.’

  Kelly said, ‘If I smoked, I’d have a cigarette now.’

  ‘I can oblige if you want to give it a try.’

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight. Have you any idea how dangerous it would be? I thought you were supposed to be an intelligence officer!’

  Smith was frowning before he said, ‘One cigarette wouldn’t kill you, though you might feel as if it was…’

  Kelly was an interesting mixture, Smith thought, as he turned to watch him again. There was sometimes in his speech the old Irish volatility, the irascible mockery of anyone who seems to treat them as no better than their stereotype, and yet, as now, there were other moments when the modern, analytical mind of the programmer had sway.

  Kelly said quietly, ‘I’m talking about the fact that there are still people here who’d slit your throat as quick as look at you once they knew who you are. Or who you were. That doesn’t matter to them. For them there is no past, no forgetting, no forgiving. Once a tout, always a tout.’

  Kelly said the final word with contempt, and Smith wondered whether he felt that or whether it was designed only to test him in some way.

  ‘I know that these things run very deep and how much they matter. Your grandfather was a great Republican.’

  The young Irishman bit immediately, back straightening, arms unfolding, fists at the ready for something.

  ‘The people I was talking about – you don’t put my grandfather in with them. He believed in the cause and he made great speeches for it but he never lifted a finger in anger, never mind pulling a trigger. He hated the violence. He was a famous man of peace in all those times…’

  Smith let it subside a little before he spoke again.

  ‘Yes, I know. I had that conversation with him more than once.’

  Kelly saw what had been done then, and the puzzle of it silenced him for a moment – his grandfather, Brannan O’Neill, and this Englishman, sitting down and talking about the struggle for a united Ireland. It was a difficult thing to grasp.

  Smith said, ‘I’m being straight with you. Coming here yesterday was partly a whim because I was not at work; if I’d been at work, I wouldn’t be here. But also, I suppose I came to show you I mean it, the offer of help. It’s not just a casual thing to say in my lounge or on the phone. I’m here and I’ll talk to anyone from those times if it will help to find out what happened to your uncle.’

  ‘And not because you feel in any way to blame?’

  Kelly was no fool. That thought had occupied at least thirty of the forty minutes that Smith had spent waiting on the bench for him to arrive.

  ‘I don’t know if I was to blame. I suppose that’s something I might find out. But I was involved.’

  ‘Aye, you were that.’

  Smith had decided that this had gone on long enough without a cigarette. He offered the packet to Kelly in a deliberately meaningless gesture that at least brought a brief smile. Then Kelly said, ‘I told you we’ve already had this looked into.’

  ‘Yes. The Independent Inquiry for the Location of Victims’ Remains. They seem to have been quite successful in some cases. Several ex-policemen involved, I think, from what I was reading.’

  Kelly was thinking it over now, weighing it up.

  ‘You would actually speak to them – to members of the Republican Army?’

  ‘If I could find them, yes.’

  Kelly smiled, a different sort of smile, and Smith thought, oh, well, from that you know where at least one of them is today. That would be a useful start.

  ‘And what’s to stop them blowing your head off?’

  Smith shrugged, enjoying the cigarette – having read about the risk of post-surgical thrombosis he had given up three days before the operation but that was all behind him now.

  ‘The element of surprise, maybe. Hopefully a shortage of weaponry these days. I haven’t forgotten entirely how to be careful.’

  ‘I’m not sure that ‘careful’ quite covers it. You say you came yesterday. Where are you staying?’

  ‘As I said, I haven’t entirely forgotten how to be careful…’

  Kelly nodded and accepted it. And then his face grew more thoughtful, as he confronted at last the thing that had been on his mind since he realised that ‘Stuart Reilly’ really was in Belfast. It was a little while before he could bring himself to say it.

  ‘And would you want to see her? You know who I mean.’

  ‘I think it’s more likely to be a question of whether she would want to see me. But as your uncle’s sister, she’s probably a material witness. I told you the truth when I said that I don’t know what happened that night. I would speak to anyone who saw him that day – that would be the usual procedure.’

  Kelly stood up from the bench and looked down the river towards the bend where it disappeared from sight.

  ‘The usual procedure? There’s nothing usual about any of this. I mean, I take it you don’t usually interview people that you’ve… You’ve been involved with. Do you?’

  ‘No – of course not. But you came to find me, and now I’m here. This has to be your decision. Actions have consequences, always. You took action, and this is the consequence.’

  Kelly’s gaze travelled slowly up the river, bringing his eyes closer to seeing Smith again but stopping a little short of him.

  Smith said, ‘If you now judge this to be a bad idea, I’ll understand, completely. I’ll leave today and you won’t hear from me again. This might be a sleeping dog that is best left that way. But it has to be your decision.’

  The response, when it came, took him by surprise.

  ‘Do you have a family of your own, Mr Smith?’

  ‘Children? No, I do not.’

  Kelly looked at him directly now.

  ‘Are you not married, then?’

  ‘I was. My wife died a few years ago.’

  ‘I see. Brothers or sisters?’

  ‘I have two sisters. Why?’

  ‘Just wondering. You say this is my decision. I don’t know but maybe we do things differently here. There are more people than me who will be affected by all this, and I need to speak to one of them before I decide anything.’

  ‘I can see that. We can meet up later on. I’m sure I can amuse myself in Belfast for an hour or two.’

  Kelly was shaking his head and taking a phone out of the pocket of his jeans – one of those larger, flatter, newer phones, Smith noted.

  ‘No, I’m not letting this drag on. I’m going to call someone, if you’ll sit and wait for a minute or two.’

  He was already walking away, fingers busy on the screen, not looking back to see if Smith was in agreement. Calling her was perfectly reasonable, of course, though it wasn’t something that he would relish doing himself in Kelly’s position; it seemed to confirm one thing, though – Kelly had been telling the truth when he said that no-one else knew he had gone to England to find the man they had known as Stuart Reilly.

  Extraordinary. A little over forty eight hours ago he had been contemplating what to do with two weeks of recuperation – some gentle gardening, some reading, some guitar-playing – and now he was sitting on a bench beside the river Lagan in sunny Belfast. And it was sunny, and warming up after the disappointing start that June had brought with it. Smith looked up at the sky –
stratocumulus breaking up as the high pressure stabilised, plenty of blue already showing. Then he looked at Diarmuid Kelly again; the young man had wandered away some thirty yards and was mostly listening now as someone else asked the questions. Or maybe they were ranting away on the other end and Kelly was simply hiding it well. Extraordinary indeed, so extraordinary that a second cigarette before midday might be called for. He took out the packet again, weighing it up, and then noticed that the phone call had ended. Kelly was staring over the river again towards the east of the city but almost certainly seeing none of it. After a few more seconds, Kelly turned and began the walk back towards the bench.

  Smith said, ‘Well? What did she have to say?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mother.’

  Kelly’s expression said more than a shake of the head might have done.

  ‘No, that wasn’t my ma. That was my Aunt Lia. She’s on her way over there now.’

  Although they had not yet spent three hours in total in each other’s company, the two men shared a moment of mutual understanding then. Smith thought, well, I suppose it was inevitable – if Lia O’Neill, as she was, was still walking this earth, nothing would prevent her from being present at an occasion like this one.

  He said, ‘So what’s the plan now?’

  ‘We’ll head that way ourselves. Did you want to call by wherever you’re staying and pick up the body armour?’

  ‘No. I came expecting to be murdered more than once in the next couple of days.’

  ‘Many a true word, sergeant…’

  Smith stood up, ready, it seemed, to confront the first such occasion.

  Kelly said, ‘I need to make one more phone call.’

  Smith’s question was not voiced as such, but Kelly seemed to think that it deserved an answer.

  ‘To my office. They’ll be expecting me back, y’understand.’

  This time it was Smith who walked away while the call was made. It could, of course, have been to anyone; intuition and experience were both telling him that Kelly was being honest but he had no means of checking that it was so. He could have insisted on meeting everyone involved in a public space of his choosing but doing so, assuming that any of them would have agreed to it, would mean that the kind of questioning that he needed to carry out would be impossible anyway. People, these people, would not trust him with the truth about anything if he made it clear that he did not trust them with his life. So, shortly he would be getting into a car with Diarmuid Kelly – he would be driven to a destination in Belfast, presumably, and walk into a room that might contain any one of a dozen angry people from his past life here, or two or three of them. He waited then, watching Kelly on the phone again, thinking about the letter that leaned against the little brass dragon on his desk in Kings Lake.

  After a minute or two, Kelly waved him back to the bench.

  Smith said, ‘Was that the young woman I spoke to when I called earlier?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I have to say, she didn’t seem too impressed when I called you her boss.’

  Kelly smiled as he took one more look at something on the phone.

  ‘That was Mairead. She comes in sometimes when she’s not working herself and sorts things out, that’s all.’

  ‘What does she do? Something else in computers?’

  ‘No. She’s a nurse, does private work, agency stuff.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Smith was waiting, ready to go, but Kelly made no move.

  ‘I’ve told her what I’m doing – she knows about the situation here this morning and about what happened back then.’

  Smith shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him.

  ‘How long have you been together?’

  ‘Two years next month.’

  ‘Well, that’s long enough to know, isn’t it?’

  Kelly nodded but still made no move.

  ‘And I do have people that actually work for me, I subcontract all the routine stuff now. In fact, in a couple of months…’

  Whatever was going to happen in a couple of months tailed away.

  Smith said, ‘Well, you’re in the right business, the whole world knows that now. I can just about manage the home screen on Word, after several years’ practice. I have a young assistant of my own for when things get tricky with it. His name’s Waters but we’re not going steady or anything. Oh, I can do email as well.’

  Kelly was looking at him oddly then. Was he being too offhand? Was the humour completely inappropriate? Whether or not Kelly found it so, what Smith had said was no distance at all from the truth.

  Kelly said, ‘Are you certain you want to do this?’

  ‘No – but I’m certain that I should at least make the attempt.’

  ‘Fair enough, then. I’ll take you there.’

  The house on Hannahstown Hill had been on the very edge of the city’s suburbs when Smith first visited it but was no longer so – new building had gone beyond it on two sides and it was plain that in another three or four years it would be surrounded. As a consequence, it looked a little smaller and a little less impressive than he remembered it, though time alone can have the same effect – and no doubt Smith was about to meet people who would think that he himself was a little smaller and a little less impressive than he had once seemed. It is best to make oneself aware of such things before others do so, whenever possible.

  Diarmuid Kelly parked the Impreza on the road in front, the driveway already being occupied by a Vauxhall Astra saloon and a Skoda estate. Once on the A12, the Irishman had driven quickly and intently like a man heading for a fight, and Smith had felt the acceleration pushing him back into the seat; cars like that don’t come cheaply – Kelly was very much in the right business by the feel of it.

  As they climbed out, Smith saw a face at the kitchen window, a woman’s face, and he thought for a moment that it was her. Kelly put up a hand in greeting but nothing came back from the window. Smith squinted because the sun was on the glass a little. The face that watched him do so was fixed, suspicious and cold.

  Lia O’Neill, as she was, had perhaps not changed much at all.

  Chapter Six

  ‘As I live and breathe, it is.’

  Lia Wisbey watched the two of them standing side by side in front of the car for a moment, nothing being said between them, just the same look exchanged as if they were both wondering which of them was the most apprehensive. Diarmuid put up a hand but she did not respond; her own were both frozen, trapped on the edge of the sink by the intensity of their grip on it. Then they were walking up the path towards the front door.

  She went to the doorway that opened into the lounge, thinking to warn her that they were here, but said nothing in the end – she would have recognised the sound of the car anyway. Then she returned to the sink to finish drying the last of the breakfast things, her back to the passageway by which they would enter the kitchen.

  When she heard them come in, she did not turn around immediately. She put down the dish slowly, picked up another tea towel, a fresh one, and dried her hands methodically, waiting for one of them to speak first.

  ‘Aunt Lia? I think you know who this is…’

  ‘Do I? Do I really? Is it Mr Reilly?’

  Still with her back to them, rubbing the towel between each of her fingers as if nothing mattered more this fine morning than having perfectly dry hands. And then finally she turned and met Smith’s eyes directly with her own.

  ‘I don’t think any of us really knew who you were and I doubt if any of us do now,’ with a sharp glance at her nephew.

  ‘Hello Lia.’

  Even had he known her married name – and he had seen the ring before she turned around – Smith could not have addressed her as Mrs, but using the Christian one seemed over-familiar in the circumstances. He could have said simply ‘Hello’, he supposed, on reflection, but even that would not have sounded right – and then he finally concluded that nothing he could have said as a greeting to this woman
could ever have sounded right.

  She ignored him pointedly and looked at Kelly.

  ‘What in God’s name have you done?’

  Kelly said, ‘I found him is all. And I went to ask him what he knew about Uncle Brann. I didn’t ask him to come. I didn’t know he was here until an hour ago.’

  Smith nodded slightly in support, and she saw it without looking at him – then she waited for him to return to a state on immobility. He had no doubt at all that a state of invisibility would have been her preferred option.

  ‘And you’re the one with the brains in this family? Heaven help the rest of us is all I can say.’

  She shook her head, looked down and folded the tea towel neatly, halving it each time until it was no more than six inches square.

  ‘Anyway, she wants to speak to you first. On your own.’

  Lia Wisbey was talking to Diarmuid then, and she indicated with a nod the doorway that must lead through to the lounge. He went without another word or a look at Smith, shoulders back, head erect, and Smith thought, well, these strong women haven’t beaten him down yet, even though he seems to be doing what he’s told. When Kelly had gone, he looked directly at Lia, wondering why her sister hadn’t come into the kitchen. Wouldn’t she rather they had confronted him together, under the circumstances?

  Lia said, ‘I’m not making you anything. I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that you’re welcome here.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  He stood at ease, feet slightly apart, hands behind his back, one holding the wrist of the other. The kitchen was clean and tidy and functional – quite new in fact, the sink and worktops, bright and shiny and set a little lower down than usual. On the walls, two prints of the Irish countryside; a western strand with the surf rolling in and the other was of mountains in the mist, the mountains of Mourne he would guess. Simultaneously he tried to remember and to forget that he had stood in this kitchen before, that he had sat at a table just there and drunk whiskey with this woman’s father and her brothers.

  ‘Ironic, don’t you think?’