by John Barlow
Chapter Seven
He grabs her MacBook, running his fingers along its cold edges. Only Apple could make a computer sexy to touch. He Googles Sheenan. The obituaries have already started.
Bernard Sheenan, born 1965 in West Belfast, was a product of the troubles in Ulster, but also an architect of the Peace that followed…
A halo is already being hoisted above his head. An architect of peace? He killed a baby boy.
… Academically gifted, Sheenan left school at sixteen and became an apprentice electrician. He had no background in republicanism. His father, also an electrician, had worked as a contractor for the British army and at various government installations in Ulster. Whilst still an apprentice, Sheenan found himself drawn to left-wing politics, and began attending meetings of various socialist groups. On leaving one of these meetings he was caught up in the shooting of Terry Forlex, a member of the Provisional IRA, who had also attended the meeting. Forlex survived, but the incident led to Sheenan’s radicalisation within the republican movement. In his book about the troubles, written whilst still in the Maze, Sheenan would refer to this as his ‘whiff of grapeshot’.
Sheenan became active in the West Belfast Battalion, quickly gaining a reputation for both intellectual rigor and physical bravery. He moved to the British mainland where he worked as an electrician and joined an IRA cell, providing technical support for the mainland bombing campaign of the late 1980s. His natural talents as a strategist were soon recognised and by the early 90s he had become an advisor to the IRA’s Army Council. He was convicted of arms offences in 1993. From the Maze he became prominent in defining the policy of the Provos in their final years of terrorist activity…
John stops reading. Natural talents? What about the bombs in pubs, the shootings, the disgusting cowardice of it all? And what about Leeds? Semtex on a supermarket shelf and no warning given, a job botched so badly that no one ever claimed responsibility. There’s evil in the world, but sometimes evil makes mistakes. Your baby was murdered because of a mix-up. Sorry…
He clicks through several more obituaries, burning with a rage he cannot understand or rationalise. What is it he’s looking for? Someone saying that Sheenan was a murdering bastard, that nothing should be allowed to assuage the guilt of a person who destroyed a life that was two weeks old, a life that had hardly begun?
Whilst in the Maze, Sheenan was instrumental in shaping the Republicans’ approach to talks with the British government. He was said to be one of the few men that Mo Molan, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, genuinely respected. When the Good Friday Peace Agreement was signed in 1998, Sheenan left prison and severed all ties to republicanism. He moved to a small village in County Kerry and worked as a self-employed electrician, becoming involved in a number of local charities. He never spoke about republicanism again.
John stops. Good-bad-bad-good. He knows all about moral relativism. Tony Ray’s son? He’s spent his entire life thinking about good and bad and what it means. But in all that time, through a difficult adolescence in which he slowly came to understand that his father and brother were criminals, he never saw them as evil. Robbing and counterfeiting? Dodgy, yes, but who had his dad ever harmed? Chanel, Rolex, the Bank of England?
He clicks through more obituaries. They seem almost to be celebrating Sheenan’s life, a glowing recommendation for terrorism as a career path. He wonders what the obituaries for the fortnight-old baby were like? Or any of Sheenan’s other victims for that matter. He knows the papers are right, that everyone is a product of their environment, of the times they live in. Everything, every act, should be judged in its context, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter…
He knows all that. But the sense of disgust won’t go away, the feeling that some acts are so evil they should never be forgiven. A dead baby, Roberto’s mashed-up skull… Is there nothing that deserves death in return?
He hears the scratching of keys in the lock.
A moment later the door opens and Den is standing there, jeans, trainers, her old brown leather jacket.
“I still have my set,” she says, squeezing out the thinnest of smiles as she slips the keys back into the front pocket of her jeans.
He gets to his feet, the laptop still in his hands.
“Mmm, got yourself a Mac,” she says.
She looks around, quickly taking in every detail of John Ray’s huge and annoyingly tasteful bachelor pad. It doesn’t seem to have changed one bit since she was last here.
“You want coffee?” he says, putting the Mac down and starting towards the kitchen area. Then, thinking better of it, he walks over and kisses her on the cheek.
She smells just like she always used to, a faint hint of peaches. And it was her skin, he used to tell her, not her perfume. Straight out of the shower she smelled just the same.
He looms over her, six-two to her five-seven.
“You let your hair grow,” she says.
“Nah, I just haven’t cut it.”
“Or brushed it. The message?”
“Huh?”
“You texted me.”
“I… sorry, yes, I just didn’t expect to see you so quickly.”
“Staying with my sister for a few days. I had some leave due. And no,” she smiles sarcastically, “I don’t have anywhere better to go.”
He wants to hug her, push his face down into her neck, feel her skin against his.
But something’s wrong. The sarcasm is frozen on her face.
“Hello there!” says Jeanette as she emerges from the bathroom in a robe that’s too small for her, the pre-Raphaelite richness of her hair at its burning best against the white towelling.
“Traded down to an older model, John?” says Den.
“Ouch!” Jeanette laughs, makes her way to the kitchen. “You must be the ex.”
“Cropped up in the conversation, have I?” Den says, arms folded, as if bolstering herself from the cold.
“No, actually,” Jeanette says as she gets herself a mug from the cupboard. “But there are bits of you everywhere. Trashy paperbacks which I am sure are not the property of Mr John Ray MA, hairdryer, tweezers, tampons, this bathrobe… Then there are the pants he keeps in his sock drawer.”
“Feel free to borrow them, if they fit.”
“Ooh, double-ouch!” she says, hoisting herself up onto a high stool by the kitchen island and pouring herself a coffee, doing a pretty good job of showing no further interest in the two people standing awkwardly by the door; making it look, indeed, as if they are the ones intruding on her morning routine.
Den watches her for a moment, then turns her attention to John.
“The message?”
Her skin looks good, a little pale, perhaps, and her hair is a touch shorter than it used to be, almost like a schoolboy’s.
“Have you lost weight?” he says. Doesn’t know why. Den was always slim. Plus, she’d never cared much about whether there was a bit of fat on her. Never cared about any of that stuff.
“The text?” she says.
She never cared about hiding her impatience either.
“It’s Dad,” he says, first thing that comes into his head. “He wants to see you.”
His eyes are wide open, pleading for her to understand.
It takes her a second or two. She glances across at Jeanette.
“Okay. Okay, what time do you want to go?”
He rubs a hand across his face.
“You know his dad?” comes a voice from the kitchen area.
Jeanette slips down from the stool, moves over to the sofa and sits there cross-legged, cradling her mug.
Den and John are still near the door, looking like guilty fools. Of the two, Den is the more proficient liar, part of her job, an unavoidable skill.
“I’ve met him once or twice,” she says. “He’s got a soft spot for the police, hasn’t he, John?”
“Shit, you’re a copper!”
“None taken,” says Den, turning bac
k to John. “You wanna go now? I’m busy later.”
“I won’t be a minute,” he says. “Need a new shirt.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Den says as he disappears into the bedroom, almost jogging across the room, as if he’s glad to be out of there.
“In town for long?” Den asks, once John has disappeared.
“A while, yeah. Renting a cottage in Bramthorpe. It’s a little vill…”
“I know it. Very peaceful.”
Jeanette nods. “It’s a nice angle, that, isn’t it?” she says, leaning back on the sofa until the bathrobe comes apart, revealing a deep cleavage that she’s obviously not shy about.
“What, Bramthorpe?”
“No. That Tony Ray’s son was shacked up with a police officer. Rank?”
“Who me?”
“Just for the record. I’m writing Tony Ray’s biography, in case John forgets to tell you. It’d be great to have a chat with you sometime.”
“I bet. Detective Sergeant, Greater Manchester CID. I used to work here in Leeds.”
“Don’t tell me,” says Jeanette, looking down admiringly at her own body before pulling the bathrobe together, “you moved to Manchester when things fell apart with big bad John Ray? Getting in the way of promotion, was it, living with criminals.”
“He’s not a criminal.”
“So let’s have a chat,” Jeanette says, smiling. “Tell me how good he is.”
“Looks like you’ve been getting to know his good side pretty well without my help.”
John reappears, brighter, stronger, the old John. Same baggy black suit, fresh white shirt, no tie. A big man, and he’s ready for action. You wouldn’t want to get in his way right now.
“What?” he says, the two women both looking at him.
But he doesn’t want to know what.
He needs to talk to Den.
Chapter Eight
“You gonna let her write a book about your dad?”
“What? Oh, that… Haven’t decided,” he says as he drives the Saab erratically, a cigarette in his mouth, the window right the way down, smoke blowing into his face. “She just turned up. Sort of, I dunno, she’s…”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Good, good,” he says, hardly listening, his driving getting worse.
“Not given up the cigs, then?” she says as they take what seems to be a random series of roads, heading vaguely out of town.
“I thought I had. I thought lots of things.” He drums his fingers on the wheel, looking left and right. “You fancy a coffee?”
“What’s all this about, John?”
“It’s got to be between us. Is that okay?” he says, narrowly missing a parked car then braking hard, both of them thrown forwards in their seats.
He thought he was over the worst of it. But now, back out on the streets, it’s hit him again. His hands are beginning to shake.
“I think you’d better pull over,” she says. “I’ve got something I need to tell you as well.”
A couple of minutes later Den’s also smoking. They’re on a tree-lined road, neat semis on both sides. There’s no one about, but she keeps her voice down.
“So Lanny Bride asked you?”
He nods. They both know why.
“Roberto?” she says. “How old?”
“About sixty. He ran the bar for Lanny.”
“Not active, then?”
“I’d say not.” He stops, shakes his head. “Lovely man. I mean, obviously to you it’s… it’s…”
He feels her hand on his. When he looks up, he realises there are tears in his eyes again.
“It’s OK,” she says. “I know who he was. You’ve talked about him before. I know.”
“Funny, isn’t it? Good and bad? Not that easy to tell apart when it’s someone close, someone who you know was good. What do they say in London? Diamond geezer. He had no kids, no family. That’s all that’s left of him, a cliché and a pool of blood.”
She takes a drag, shudders as the smoke hits the back of her throat, then flicks the cigarette out of the window.
“My advice,” she says, “forget about good and bad. Look at the facts. And,” she adds, looking out at the calm residential street, “we better get moving. You all right to drive?”
“I’m fine. Where to?”
“To see your dad. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes, but that was just to…”
“Roberto use to work for Tony, right?”
“Yeah, back when I was a kid.”
“Come on then,” she says. “I haven’t seen him for a while.”
He pauses, hands on the steering wheel.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
Back when he was a kid? He was about nine when he started to see the flashes of disdain in people’s faces. He knew it was something to do with his dad. Yet at home Dad was just the bloke with the funny accent and the suits. Always a nice tie, smart shoes. Good clothes, not natty. Tony Ray was no spiv. He didn’t get involved with bringing up the kids much, but he was usually at home in the evenings, never one for the high life.
Every week there’d be something new to discover in their big old terrace house in Armley. Crates full of cosmetics and perfume in the spare room, boxes of transistor radios and cassette players piled up against the walls. Now and then there’d be a rail of clothes in the front room, leather jackets or women’s fur coats, covered in clear plastic so thin it made a hissing sound when you ran your hand over it.
Then there were the Saturday mornings down at the showroom with his brother Joe, never a customer in sight, but always a handful of men hanging around, playing cards and ruffling your hair too hard. His dad was a criminal? He was an immigrant who’d made his own way. A Spanish rogue stepping out of the Yorkshire fog in an overcoat, like a character from a grainy old British film. What harm had he done, with that dark-eyed smile and the way he had of always getting what he wanted? Tony Ray was just Dad.
Then it all changed. His dad became famous.
Chapter Nine
They pull up at Oaklands Residential Home, about the most exclusive place in the area to spend your golden years. There’s no good or bad here, five grand a month is the only measure of your character.
John has told Den everything he knows about Roberto. There wasn’t much to tell. Rob had worked for his dad until the Old Bailey trial, at which point he disappeared for a few years, finally resurfacing as an employee of a young Lanny Bride.
“So,” says Den, “why don’t we hear what your dad’s got to say.”
“Say? You haven’t seen him recently…”
“Another stroke?”
“That and general decline.”
“Can he hear? Understand?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll do,” she says, jumping out of the car.
She looks like a teenager, lithe and alert. The last twelve months might have taken the bloom off her, but she’s still young, and it still amazes him that she’d ever had the slightest interest in him.
But she had.
Then you threw it away, John.
They stand at the electric gates as a new member of staff double checks John’s details. The gate is set in a fifteen foot high metal fence painted matt black and running all the way around the perimeter of the house and gardens.
“Is this to stop people getting in or out?” she says, resisting the temptation to hold her warrant card up to the camera and tell ’em to get a move on.
A moment or two later the gate swings slowly open and they walk into Oaklands, an old mill owner’s residence stuffed with oil paintings and sculptures and over-qualified staff, plus several dozen senile people who pay for it all and have no idea why.
Tony Ray has a corner room on the ground floor. His double-glazed French windows give directly onto a raised terrace scattered with wrought iron tables and chairs. The terrace looks out across a large, fiercely
manicured garden in which several gardeners in overalls are now kneeling over flower beds, replanting.
John and Den pick their way through the tables. One of the French windows of the corner room is slightly ajar. From inside they can hear the television.
“Hi Dad,” John says, poking his head inside. “Look who’s come to see you.”
Tony Ray doesn’t move. He’s in a high-backed armchair, staring at the television. The trousers of his turquoise shell suit have ridden up, creased round his knees so that most of his shins are visible, the skin shiny and yellow. His jacket is unzipped to the stomach, the vest beneath it showing signs of breakfast. Five thousand quid and they dress him like a dishevelled clown.
As John steps into the room, a man looks up from the floor.
“Morning!” he says after a moment’s pause, kneeling as he breaks into a broad smile. “I’ll not be a second.”
Den appears behind John, and they watch as the man flattens out a Persian style carpet, then gets to his feet.
“Dry cleaned. That’s a bit better, isn’t it, Tony?” he says, nice and loud over the noise of the television.
There’s an identity card clipped to the breast pocket of his overalls. The photo is recent. He’s in his mid-forties, balding mousy hair, pale face.
“I’m Graeme,” he says, still smiling. “You must be John.”
“My reputation goes before me, does it?”
“Ha! He mentions you all the time,” he says, nodding at Tony, who is staring at the television, ignoring them all. “Not today, though. Bit under the weather. Anyway,” he says, “I’d better be going.”
He’s already tapping at the screen of a handheld device as he makes his way out through the internal door which, like all fire doors on the premises, is left wide open.
“You all right, Dad?” John says, closing the door.
Tony Ray now looks up, taking his eyes off the TV for the first time. The news bulletin has just finished and now there’ll be chat shows until lunchtime.
