In This Bright Future

by Peter Grainger

  Chapter Seventeen

  Late in the afternoon, he had left the park and caught a bus back into the centre. After something of a search he found a small restaurant that had a few French dishes on the menu, in an unpretentious sort of way, and spent an enjoyable hour and half over a starter of moules mariniere, a nicely cooked poussin with summer vegetables and a more than respectable blend of coffee in the Parisian style. He had also bought The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and he made a start on those; he was not expecting to make many close acquaintances in The Star Of The County Down, and so some substantial reading matter was in order. Over the years it had become a habit, to read a broadsheet from cover to cover occasionally – amazing what you can learn by studying items that you would never read in the course of a normal working day. Who would have guessed that the first international cricket match was played in 1844, not by any of the modern test-playing nations but between Canada and the United States? Or that stonefish anti-venom is the second most administered in Australia?

  At a little after seven, he went back to the bus station and waited for the next one that would take him along Clifton Road. The city was warm and full of people, and for once the bus he boarded was busy; the driver slowed things down by closely examining the Wanderer ticket, as if Smith might have gone to the trouble of faking one simply to ride around Belfast on a Saturday evening. Once seated, he looked out of the window as they made their way slowly westwards again, still seeing the flags, the barriers and murals as they crossed the divides, the bus weaving its way through the streets as if someone had devised the route as part of an attempt to stitch the districts together into a patchwork quilt of orange and green. He had a moment of impatience with it all, and then the impatience became doubt that it would ever be resolved, and then the doubt became a short-lived conviction that he was wasting his time here this evening, and taking pointless risks as he did so. If this came to nothing tonight, surely he would be justified in leaving for England tomorrow, taking an early ferry?

  By the time he reached The Star, at a little after eight o’clock, it was already filling up, already past the point at which he would be in any way noticeable, and the noise was such that he would have to raise his voice to make his accent heard. As he waited to be served, he studied the bar staff, wondering which one might make the best starting point – the youth had disappeared and he now had a choice between two short, shirt-sleeved men that might be brothers and a handsome-looking girl in her thirties. In the end it was the girl who turned to him and said, ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘A pint of Guinness, please.’

  She looked down the bar and saw that both pumps were in use.

  ‘Won’t keep you a moment, sir.’

  She smiled warmly enough, and so did Smith.

  ‘I was told I might be able to find Jackie Fitzgerald in here tonight. Would you happen to know if he’s been in yet?’

  The name didn’t mean anything to her, he could see that.

  ‘I’ll ask for you, sir,’ and then she was away down to the pumps. As she pulled the pint, she asked the question of one of the other barmen who stood next to her. Smith could not hear the man’s question but his lip-reading was good enough; the man had said ‘Who wants to know?’ The girl pointed him out and the barman took a long look before he answered her, turning his head a little as he did so, and preventing Smith from seeing what was said, though he didn’t have to wait long to find out what it had been.

  ‘Sorry, sir. We don’t know anyone of that name here. That’ll be three pounds and sixty pence.’

  He gave her a five pound note and watched her closely as she fetched the change. Her manner towards him had altered slightly, and all that had intervened since he first spoke to her was the conversation she had had with barman number one. So the barman had not said simply that he had never heard of Jackie Fitzgerald – he had said something that made the young lady back off. It was a pity that the sparkle had gone out of those brown eyes but in all other respects, Smith thought, this is a bit of a result.

  As he turned away, somewhat encumbered by the pint glass, the walking stick and two newspapers, a couple left their seats at a small round table, and Smith moved between other bodies queueing at the bar to take one of them. He drank some of the beer, noting that they kept it a little cooler here, and looked around at the people in front of him but all the while keeping a weather eye on the bar staff. Sure enough, within a minute the barman who knew no-one of that name had glanced in his direction – Smith fought down the impulse to raise his glass in salutation. With any luck, all he had to do was play the waiting game. That thought and the Guinness cheered him up a little. He was almost in a holiday mood, he decided, and so he made a start on The Times.

  At half past nine he finished the paper, having read it as promised from cover to cover. Don’t old soldiers have splendid obituaries? More men had arrived in the bar than had left it – there were almost no women present – and Smith had had to time his move to the bar for a second pint to the split second in order to avoid losing his seat. He had no way of knowing whether the barman had said to anyone that there was a funny little Englishman asking about Jackie Fitzgerald – maybe he had just kept the thought to himself. Smith considered asking more people in the bar but the majority were by now already well into their cups, and the result of doing so would be increasingly unpredictable. Another half an hour, he decided, and then I’m done here.

  The spare seat had been taken a while ago by a man in his seventies and a faded, stained brown trilby, and the two of them were now on a nodding sort of acquaintance. Beyond this chap, a group of six men had been sitting for half an hour or so, drinking steadily and talking quietly amongst themselves. A couple of them looked up and around from time to time but at no-one in particular, or so it first seemed, but for the past few minutes Smith had been aware that whenever any of them did so, their gaze around always seemed to include the table where he was sitting. He picked up the second newspaper and adjusted his position so that he could see them over it more easily.

  One was relatively young, probably not thirty – the rest were in their forties or fifties. Three had their backs to him, and the one in the middle had the reddish hair of the Celt, cut short and closely shaved on the back of the broad neck. The three faces that Smith could see were unremarkable; one had a moustache and another wore thick, horn-rimmed spectacles. All, as far as he could see, were drinking pints of Guinness except for the younger man who was holding a glass of lager. Smith looked down at the newspaper, no longer taking in what the words were saying, and when he looked up once more he saw the eyes of the bespectacled man were watching him again. After a moment they left him, and then the man said something to the three in front of him. There was no doubt in Smith’s mind then that they were talking about him, and that they had been doing so for some time.

  They were between him and the door into the street. He looked around but could see no other exits, and the bar itself was of the high, old-fashioned type – he wasn’t going over that in a hurry without someone getting hold of him. The old man sitting next to him did not appear to be a part of it; he had nodded and smiled at them a couple of times but so he had to most of the people in the bar. Still, six to one, at least… He would not, if it came to it, be fighting his way out of this one.

  The young man stood up and Smith felt himself go tense, but it was only to fetch more beer for a couple of the other men. So maybe he had a few more minutes. He reviewed what else he had; the walking stick and an empty glass. A broken glass is a horrible weapon but once one has smashed the glass, a statement has been made and that’s what they will use against you when you are down. He would rather be thumped and kicked a few times, and maybe that’s all it would be. Always look on the bright side…

  And then, strangely, the bar began to empty, the people nearest the door going first as if they were being pulled out by a vacuum that had formed in the street. Heads turned and questions were asked – something had kicked off outsid
e, someone said, and then a few more men were making for the exit. Suddenly there was open floor in front of him and the opportunity to leave the bar unimpeded; if someone had been intent on creating a diversion for him, they could not have done so more effectively. The party of six were all looking towards the doorway too, and Smith moved quickly, leaving behind half a pint of Guinness and The Times. He was past them before anyone realised and did not look back.

  Getting out into Clifton Street was not so easy. Several men had stopped right in the doorway, their glasses in their hands. Smith turned side-on and carefully shouldered his way through, more concerned with getting into the open than with what had actually taken place to cause the disturbance. The Star Of The County Down has a narrow alleyway down its right-hand side, barely wide enough to take a car, and whatever had happened or was happening was situated at the junction.

  Smith reached the edge of the crowd, certain that he was safe enough now, and stopped. Two men lay on the ground several yards away – one was face down but moving and cursing, the other was supine, motionless and silent. A third man was leaning with his back against the far wall of the alleyway, and bending forward slightly so that the steady stream of blood from either his mouth or his nose, or both, could run freely onto the pavement beneath him. As Smith watched, two young men left the crowd and went to the one on the road who was not moving – they began talking to him, tapping his face and then they adjusted the way he was lying. Smith guessed that they were medical students enjoying themselves. His own instinctive impulse was to get involved as well, to start asking who had seen what, but fights outside pubs on Saturday nights are not unusual in Belfast or in most other places these days.

  He began to piece it together simply by listening to the gossip around him. These three had been together and they had picked on the wrong man. Someone had pulled a knife – it wasn’t clear who nor whether any of the casualties here had been stabbed. The police had been called, and the ambulance. No sign of the chap who had done all the damage – must have been more than one though, surely, but it wasn’t a robbery, someone settling a score maybe… The man who’s unconscious, he’s no spring chicken is he, a bit long in the tooth to be brawling outside the pub.

  Smith felt someone edge in beside him and he flinched a little – the talk of knives had made him wary, as it usually did – and then he saw that it was the wrinkled old man in the brown trilby.

  ‘Did you hear what happened? I wish I’d seen all that!’

  Whatever it was, it had obviously made his evening. Smith said that he didn’t know what was going on.

  ‘Well, from what I can gather, these three got mixed up with some fella they shouldn’t have. Minding his own business he was, and they had a go. All over in few seconds it was. They never laid a hand on him, and now look at them!’

  The old man had been sitting beside Smith when all of that took place, if it did, but despite his wish that he had seen it, his account was already that of an eye-witness. By tomorrow he would be telling it as if he had had a ringside seat. Behind them, the crowd was already thinning out as the men returned to the pub – it was time to be going.

  ‘And you a visitor to our fair city. This doesn’t happen often these days, I should say that to you, sir. Don’t judge us all by what happened here just now.’

  Smith smiled and said that he would not; perhaps the old boy worked part-time as a goodwill representative.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink as some small gesture of compensation?’

  It was more likely that the old man had plans to be bought a drink or two rather than to buy them, and Smith declined politely.

  ‘Well, that’s a pity. It’s a fine public house. I’ve drunk here man and boy for forty years.’

  It was considerably more than forty years since this fellow was a boy but a thought occurred to Smith when he heard that. He was safely outside and in the daylight – it wouldn’t do any harm. He explained that he had been hoping to meet a man called Jackie Fitzgerald, had been told that this was his local.

  ‘Well then you must come back in! I know him well. You’ve been sitting there not six feet from him all this blessed evening! Come on back in and I’ll introduce you.’

  Really, Smith had said – which one is he?

  ‘The fellow with the red hair, that’s Jackie Fitzgerald. His father was a famous boxer. And you sitting just a few inches away from him! Will you come back in and say hello?’

  The two students had got some sort of response out of the injured man, and they were trying to move him off the road and onto the pavement near the pub doorway, where it was a little wider. They were half-dragging, half-carrying him, and his head with its pale face lolled to one side before straightening up again as consciousness returned with some reluctance. As far as Smith could see, he was not stabbed or even bleeding but he had undoubtedly received a blow heavy enough to knock him out for several minutes. As they manoeuvred him by, Smith saw the face properly for the first time, and then suddenly the face was all that he could see. The old man was asking him again to step inside to meet this wonder of wonders, this Jackie Fitzgerald, but the voice had become odd and hectoring, like a barker at an old-fashioned fairground.

  Smith watched them prop the injured man up against the wall of The Star Of The County Down – he looked and looked again to make certain that he was not mistaken, and then he was walking away. The old man and his trilby protested, and Smith said as he went, ‘Maybe another time.’

  It wasn’t the worst of ways to come across Tommy Blake again, though.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He had been walking steadily for a full ten minutes before he thought about Diarmuid Kelly, and the thought stopped him in his tracks. He could not see how it was possible for Kelly to be involved; no-one had been told about his, Smith’s, plans for the day, and he had not been followed – and certainly not by an amateur. It was almost half past eleven. If he phoned and Kelly was in bed, perhaps with Mairead, it would be more than a little embarrassing. If Kelly wasn’t, there was no guarantee that he would tell the truth about where he had been that evening. And whoever had given Tommy Blake and his boys a pasting had got away unhurt by the sound of it. Phoning would not help much then – when he next saw Kelly face-to-face, Smith was sure that he would know, anyway. But it could not have been him.

  The boarding house was locked up and silent when he arrived back. He wondered what Mrs Greene was making of the funeral business by now as he missed out the noisy step and padded past her room towards his own; once inside it, he drew the blinds, opened the window and looked out. There were floodlights somewhere near the cathedral, enough to illuminate the tower against the amber city sky. And there was still the faint hum of the city’s nightlife – nothing specific, no sirens, no car horns, no screams or shouts of the drinkers weaving their way home – just the low, distant throbbing of the beehive. Smith breathed it in, and put the window on the latch. It was almost too warm for sleep tonight.

  He lay down on the bed, still clothed, and thought about it again. First principle – there is no such thing as coincidence. Jackie Fitzgerald and Tommy Blake converging on the same pub out of the hundreds of pubs in Belfast on the very night that Stuart Reilly happened to be sitting in it? Yes, he had made a point of searching for Fitzgerald and had gone to the place where he had been told he might find him – but for Tommy Blake then to be outside that same pub was no accident. Was that what Fitzgerald and his friends had been waiting for – Tommy Blake to come in and finish the job he had started thirty years ago last night? But then, if there is no such thing as coincidence, what were the chances that Blake would run into some sort of avenging angel a few yards from the doorway of The Star?

  He went back to the beginning but the questions seemed to be multiplying. Had Fitzgerald called Blake, or had someone else put the two of them together? Was Martin McCain involved, or Michael O’Dell? Could a member of the Stormont Assembly have just been involved in a conspiracy to murder an English policeman?
And while he was about it, he’d better start wondering what might be in store tomorrow…

  He undressed then, turned out the bedside lamp and lay back down on the quilt. As the questions slipped away, he was left, strangely, with Detective Superintendent Allen’s face, in its usual territory, somewhere between harassed, annoyed and nervous, and his voice saying “Normal? Smith has no idea what a normal day’s policing even looks like!” It was oddly comforting.

  Breakfast was over, the coffee pot was almost empty and he knew that Mrs Greene was working her way around to asking him what had kept him out so late last night, when his phone began to ring. He tried not to look grateful as he said that he really ought to take this, and moved out of the dining room and towards the staircase. He said simply ‘Hello?’ – there was no telling who it might be and therefore who he should be on this occasion.

  He was at the top of the stairs before a voice responded to his own.

  ‘Perhaps we should meet after all.’

  Lorcan Quinn.

  Smith had climbed the staircase too quickly and was reminded again that this was not in order – he winced but waited until he was back in his room, the door closed, before he responded.

  ‘Fair enough. I don’t have much on today.’

  His mind had gone from nought to sixty in about three seconds, and mentally he applied the brakes at this point – no coincidences, so this was connected somehow to the events of last night. No need to have the details now – they would become clearer if he did manage to get Quinn in front of him. That was the priority, apart from staying alive in the process.

  ‘I’m assuming that you’re staying here in the city. Meet me in an hour in the car park of-’