In This Bright Future

by Peter Grainger

  The light was in the passageway almost opposite the boarding house – a light reflected up into a face for no more than two or three seconds. The light from a mobile phone that came and went before Smith had time to see any details. It could not have been switched off so quickly, and must therefore have been pushed into a pocket or held flat against a body. Someone outside for a smoke or just making a private call, or sending a message, would have felt no need to hide the light in that way – and whoever it was must have seen the figure of Smith coming along the road no more than twenty yards away. That was why they had hidden it.

  He debated his options as he watched the black rectangular space between the houses. Then he took out his own phone, flicked sideways until he found the app for the torch and held it ready. It was quite exciting – he had only used this once before, looking for a leak under the kitchen sink. He stepped off the pavement towards the passageway, noting the pattern of lights in the windows of the two adjoining houses. One downstairs on the left, one dim and upstairs on the right, a night-light. If they altered, it might explain something.

  He stood at the entrance to the passage, so that he was still in the glare of the street-lamp about forty yards distant, and switched on the torch. When he pointed it along the narrow space, there was nothing but a bicycle visible at the far end. Whoever had been here had left quickly and in absolute silence. They would have prepared an exit and there would be no point in following them, or they were waiting for him in the darkness beyond, in which case following them would be worse than pointless.

  Smith turned out the torch and listened. Traffic in the distance, the bass-beat of music somewhere. He walked back to the street and looked at the lights in the houses but there had been no change. If they were going to shoot him tonight, they would probably have done so by now. He turned and headed across to Mrs Greene’s, thinking about the parting joke he had made to Diarmuid Kelly. This really wasn’t the kind of city in which one should risk speaking true words in jest.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mrs Althea Greene was an excellent landlady. On his first morning she had asked if his coffee was not too strong, and her guest had said no, that he enjoyed strong coffee. This morning the coffee was just a shade, a semi-tone stronger, and she watched as he took the first sips of it. His nod of approval sent her away to her kitchen with almost a smile.

  There were four tables in the little breakfast room – two were presently empty. The couple whose room Smith had briefly occupied when he watched the street sat at the other end of the room, keeping their voices low and confidential, and their heads close together. They touched hands on the table when they were not actually eating, and although it was plain that they were married, the suspicion grew in Smith’s mind that it might not be to each other. He wondered about Mrs Greene’s view of the matter, whether she would condone such shenanigans under her widow’s roof if she knew of them. Perhaps, as a businesswoman who now advertised on the internet, she had been able to embrace a more diverse and liberal clientele than the Irish landladies of the past.

  When she reappeared to ask if everything had been satisfactory, he said that it undoubtedly was, and then he asked whether it would be an inconvenience if he worked in his room for an hour or two after breakfast. It would not be so at all, she said, would he like tea or coffee later on while he did so? She was moving away and then she turned and came back to him, saying that she didn’t think the phone people would disturb him but she ought to warn him just in case.

  Smith said, ‘Is there a problem with the phone, Mrs Greene?’

  ‘So there is. It went off some time yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘And you reported it and they’re coming out this morning? That’s a much quicker service than we ever get back in England.’

  ‘No, I never reported it – I didn’t know it had gone wrong. A man came to the door and told me. Someone else must have let them know.’

  He drank the last of the coffee before he spoke again.

  ‘I’m sure you are careful but always check the identity badges of people who just turn up at your door. I assume the phone had gone wrong when you checked it for yourself?’

  ‘Oh yes, the line was dead. And I am very careful, Mr Colgate. I know that as a widow and on my own, I’m a likely target for all sorts of villainy. But he said they’d be working on the pole outside mostly – they might just need to pop in to check that everything had been fixed. Not more than an hour’s work, he said.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for mobile phones.’

  Mrs Greene had warmed to the gossip now – no doubt this gentleman’s obvious concern for her safety had touched her in some long-forgotten place. She said, ‘And yourself now, Mr Colgate. That was a late meeting you had last night. I’d no idea that the funeral business was so demanding.’

  Smith had no sense last night that she was up and listening for his return when he turned the key quietly in the lock and moved circumspectly up the stairs, missing out the penultimate one which creaked.

  ‘People do not realise quite what is involved, Mrs Greene. But I have to confess to you that I have looked up a couple of old friends while I’m here. We got talking about old times. Even undertakers like to reminisce…’

  ‘I thought it must be something like that. As you’re working this morning, I can bring you a drink at, say, half past ten. That’s the time I have something myself, every day. Or you could join me in the kitchen, if you’d like to have a break from your room…’

  The pages of the Alwych notebook were not large enough for the next phase on the investigation, and that was why he had put the A4 notepad into his small bag of luggage. In the centre of a page he wrote ‘Friday 21st of June 1985’ and then he enclosed that in a neat rectangular box drawn with a six inch plastic ruler – one that he believed he had owned since his schooldays. From the box he drew a series of straight lines, each one terminating with the name of a person, someone who had in some way become a part of that night’s sequence of events. Another short line on from the name and then details of where they had been or claimed to be, with whom and what they might have been doing. If it had been a representation of a clock, the members of the cell formed the numbers from one around to five o’clock. Then he added in Aidan Quinn and his unknown associate at six, Lia Wisbey at seven, and Bradey O’Neill at eight; according to Catriona, Lia had been at home with her parents and Bradey had been in Lisburn been courting his girl of the time, the one who became his wife.

  If there was an answer, it was probably to be found somewhere within this circle. Any of those that he had spoken to already might have lied to him, and he always allowed for that – everybody lies but not always and not all at the same time, thank goodness. He thought that Catriona had told him the truth – she had much more motivation to do so than to lie, considering the situation in which she found herself. Lia had not mentioned the fact that she had been told about Aidan Quinn being outside the house, even though a fool could see that it was potentially significant, and that led to two thoughts – first, she was not a fool, and second, she might have kept other matters from Smith and even from her sister. Strangely, he also thought that Martin McCain had been as honest as he was ever likely to be with someone like Smith. McCain and Callaghan often did operate together, Smith could recall that, and so the story about moving the explosives had the ring of truth. And McCain could very easily have given him nothing at all; instead he had a name and a place to be in a couple of hours. Of course, it was possible that what McCain had actually given him was a death sentence.

  It was not the first case Smith had worked in which the memories of people were the only resource. One moves painstakingly along the chain of connections, hoping it will turn somewhere into a chain of causality; sometimes one returns to links in the chain that one has visited before, sometimes one returns several times, refining questions in the light of what one has subsequently uncovered, but that was not a likely possibility here. McCain had already said, hadn’t he, ‘Don�
��t come back to me’? Smith had the sensation of being on thin ice; it was breaking behind him as he pushed off for the next step, and there would be no opportunity to retrace the ones he had already taken.

  At a little after nine, there were new voices downstairs. From the top of the flight he could see the lower half of Mrs Greene speaking to someone at the front door, and a few seconds of listening in told him that it was the telephone engineer. He went down and stood behind her, watching the man. Yes, just a minor fault in the distribution point outside here, we’re replacing all these old aluminium connections anyway, ma’am. When we’re done we’ll pop in and check that everything is working to your satisfaction.

  He was young and tanned with a moustache – Mrs Greene seemed pleased that he would be popping in and making sure that everything was working to her satisfaction. When the engineer moved away, Smith could see out into the road – there was a van in convincing colours and another older man in the same uniformed overalls with the company logo already putting a ladder up against the pole. He looked for a few more seconds and could see nothing wrong with it, but that didn’t make it right. The census, the night watchman and now an unreported telephone fault? The first one could have been the Provisionals checking his location but the problem of the mixed race girl remained; hiding in dark alleyways was right up the IRA’s street, so to speak, but surely a BT van with matching uniforms was beyond their reach, not to say some sort of overkill? Overkill was not a notion he readily associated with Republican terrorists but if this was not all coincidental, someone had just parked that notion out in the street.

  ‘Mrs Greene, I’m going to be busy for another hour and then I have a midday meeting. I’d love that coffee in my room if the offer is still there.’

  If she was disappointed that her kitchen seemed to hold fewer attractions than his room, Mrs Greene concealed it well. Coffee, she said, would be served at half past ten. He went back up, aware that he must now make a decision. It was Friday, and Serena Butler was not on duty this weekend – it was sad but true that he would remember something like that from completing the rotas a fortnight ago. If she was going to look up what he had in mind, it had to be today. It was also now clear that he would need to extend his stay at the boarding house into the beginning of next week; there wasn’t much likelihood of him reaching any other members of the old cell this afternoon after his meeting with Michael O’Dell, always assuming that even that took place as planned.

  He sat in the occasional chair by the window, his leg up and resting on the bed. What he needed from Serena wasn’t so bad – being asked to explain why one had asked a colleague to look up the details of a thirty-year-old crime was preferable to being asked why one had sought details of living, breathing individuals while one was off duty. But it was still something of a risk for her, and he thought for several minutes more before he decided to take it.

  ‘Hello? Serena? It’s me.’

  ‘Hello, sir. How’s the knee?’

  She sounded positively cheerful and pleased to hear from him, which was suspicious for a number of reasons, not the least being that she was usually pretty sullen until midday. He’d need to look into that later.

  ‘Eh? Oh, it’s still halfway down my leg. Where are you?’

  ‘In the canteen getting a late breakfast.’

  He closed his eyes at the thought of April’s bacon sandwiches.

  ‘That’s nice. How’s everyone?’

  ‘Chris is alright now. As he’d been on the team for a whole five days, he started giving me orders yesterday. I had to take him out the back and knee him in the groin a few times but he’s walking again this morning.’

  ‘Good work. And good practice for his new relationship.’

  Serena was laughing as she finished eating something – it had to be a bacon sandwich, he could almost taste it.

  ‘Oh, I met her. She was in the car park waiting for him on Wednesday. She’s very nice, DC.’

  Very nice? A chance then that Waters had seen the light and moved on already. He asked for a description.

  ‘Tall, skinny and blonde, driving a Saab coupe. They looked good together.’

  No, that was her.

  ‘Yes, a lovely couple, especially when they’re into their street-fighting. You should ask for a demonstration. Heard from John?’

  Her voice changed, became more confidential and serious, even though she was plainly enjoying the fact that she was bringing him up to speed.

  ‘You missed the excitement. Maggie had a show yesterday.’

  ‘A show? What sort of a show?’

  When he had last seen Maggie Henderson, just five days ago, she had seemed as far around the middle as a medium-sized pony. She was certainly in no fit state to be performing anything. Perhaps it was a fashion show at their house, baby clothes and things.

  ‘It’s when the plug of mucus in your cervix that protects the baby comes away. It’s usually a sign that-’

  ‘OK, got it! How long now?’

  Suddenly he had gone off the idea of a bacon sandwich.

  ‘They couldn’t say but they thought she was having Braxton Hicks as well.’

  ‘Dear me. Fancy getting that as well as being pregnant. Is it serious?’

  He could hear voices then, someone speaking to Serena as they passed by, and a muffled response as she covered the phone. A few seconds passed before she continued.

  ‘That was John Wilson – we’ve got a briefing in ten minutes. DC, I found a wonderful video about all this on You Tube. We can watch it together when you get back, if you like.’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely. I’ll get some popcorn in. If you’re out and about today, it doesn’t matter…’

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘What I was going to ask you to do. Remember when you called round?’

  ‘I can do that. What do you need?’

  He explained it to her, and she made a few notes on her phone at the same time as he did so – he had no idea how that was possible. As soon as the briefing was over, she said, she would get onto it, and call him back with whatever she had found.

  He passed the time by locating Old Timothy’s on his own phone and then planning how to use the Belfast Wanderer service to get there. After that he thought about John Wilson sitting down with Christopher Waters and Serena Butler, wondering whether his lot were ever still called Smithfits by the other teams at Kings Lake Central – he hadn’t heard it for a while. All misfits and strays found their way to him in the end, someone had said, quite a while ago now, but the force didn’t seem to have the characters these days that it used to have – perhaps that was why he was never up to full strength any more. It was down to recruitment, of course, the profiling and targets set by human resources, weeding out the really interesting people before they could do any good… And then he wondered about that particular morning briefing. What was it about? A week and he had already lost touch.

  He received a text message first saying that the system was busy, could she please try later. Really? This was criminal records, for heaven’s sake, not a call to the company that sold you the extended warranty on your television. Ten minutes passed – long enough for him to have doubts form about whether he should have asked her to do this. If he heard nothing in the next five, he would text back and tell her to forget it. He stared at the fifteenth minute, waiting for it to end before he pressed reply and then the phone rang and vibrated in his hand.

  ‘DC? I’ve got something but it’s only a police surgeon’s report – there’s no full autopsy on the system that I can see. It all looks different to what we do now.’

  ‘It was, for all sorts of reasons. What was the surgeon’s name?’

  ‘Hold on… Hold on. Misik?’

  ‘No, never heard of that one. What was the stated cause of death?’

  Serena read back from the screen into her phone.

  ‘Aidan Quinn, age eighteen… body found by an Army patrol early in the morning. Multiple gunshot wounds consistent with be
ing ambushed by a number of assailants. More than one weapon involved. There are some details about the guns used if you want them.’

  Smith didn’t answer immediately. The expression on his face could only be described as blank – it was the closest he ever came to showing surprise.

  ‘No – maybe later. What does it say about the locations of the wounds?’

  ‘OK. It’s here somewhere. Five in the back and two in the front – one in the chest, one in the head. There is speculation that he was hit first from behind by fire from an automatic weapon and then finished off by pistol shots. This is all gruesome stuff, isn’t it?’

  Oh yes, thought Smith. You have no idea, thank God.

  ‘Right, thanks Serena. I owe you.’

  ‘Well, that’s all there is. No autopsy report. The case remains on file, no-one was ever charged. Is this what you’re up to? Are you going to find them after thirty years?’

  There was no way to answer her that would not have been disrespectful to someone, somewhere. He said, ‘So what was the briefing about?’

  ‘Superintendent Allen winding up the drugs push, I think. We’ve all done very well…’

  ‘Sorry I missed that. Anything else going on?’

  ‘A body in a field out at Eastacre this morning. I think he was one of these metal detectorists – suspicious circumstances but I don’t know how suspicious and I don’t know who’s getting landed with it yet.’

  ‘Eastacre? If he was on the Old Priory site, he might be a victim of the curse.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got a book about local myths and legends. We can sit down and read about it after we’ve watched that You Tube video. Keep me up to speed on Maggie. It looks as if I’m going to be here over the weekend now.’