“Charming…” she said, and moved to do so.
As she turned the handle, he spoke. His voice was thin and small.
“In case you’re wondering… if I’m not around, I mean… I might have to go away for a little while.”
“Is everything okay?”
She badly wanted to show him something. Concern. Warmth. At the very least, support.
“When has everything ever been okay?” he said sarcastically.
As she left, Emily passed Rosemary and Pascal talking furtively in the kitchen. Their tone dropped discernibly when they saw her.
“Au revoir,” Pascal called after her.
And then, to Rosemary, she clearly heard him say in his heavily accented English, ‘There is one who kisses and there is one who is kissed.’
14
Dan Watson’s willpower had held out for just two days.
The presentation at the City Hall had been an unmitigated disaster on pretty much every level. The Chief Constable wanted a full report indicating how an event that should have been a PR coup for the PSNI and HET had turned into an unseemly scrum for money.
And all in front of the US delegation.
Nevertheless, he just couldn’t seem to keep his mind on anything else but the open invitation two doors down the hallway.
Part of him felt pathetic and useless.
Another part felt that he knew exactly how to fix that.
In the short term anyway.
When Officer Totton responded to his request to ‘drop in when you get a moment’, she noted right away that his blinds were drawn and the dimmer lights were on low.
HET officers worked a rota system on conventional police duties, so she was in uniform, having just come back off a patrol.
He had placed the photo of his children and his wedding ring in the desk drawer.
He felt a little foolish.
“Ah, Helen. How goes it?” Christ, he felt like a schoolboy.
“Fine, Dan… fine. Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”
He was already up and halfway around his desk.
“I’ve hardly thought of anything else.”
He paused when he reached her, momentarily hesitant. Then almost knocked her over in his hunger and haste. Hands everywhere, mouth gulping on hers.
She grabbed his ass with both hands, pulled his crotch into hers and held it there.
Rubbing against him.
Her hair came undone.
He was kissing her neck, her hair, her breasts.
“God… don’t eat me alive!” She laughed.
He felt chastened.
“Sorry… sorry.” He backed off a little.
“No, it’s okay. I like it… I do… wait… wait a minute.”
She unbuckled her utility belt and let it fall, clunking, to the floor. Handcuffs, torch, Taser, pepper spray.
“Maybe we should lock the door?”
Dan felt momentarily conflicted. But he knew he couldn’t stop now.
“Yes, okay.”
She crossed the room, turned the lock and returned, unbuttoning her blouse.
“Would you like me to eat you alive?” she said, smiling, her hands already on his belt buckle.
He was shocked but fought to hide it. “Yes… God yes,” he gasped, but looked at the door with concern as someone walked past, down the corridor outside. “Maybe we should get a room; a hotel… someone might come.”
She was already on her knees in front of him. Already had her hand down his boxers and was gently pumping him. Big blue eyes, looking up, compliant. With her other hand she reached up and spread her palm open on his chest. Scrunching his chest hair.
“Oh gawd…” he breathed and closed his eyes.
She pulled the shorts down fully and gently cupped his balls, squeezing them a little. He was scared he would cum then and there.
Think of something… anything! Had he had a shower this morning? Was it clean down there?
Now she was licking, flicking her tongue, before taking him in.
“Mmmmm,” she moaned.
He rested his hands on the top of her head, closed his eyes and forgot about everything.
15
One of Cecil Herringshaw’s proudest boasts was the lineage he claimed.
All the way back to Oliver Cromwell’s Yeomanry at Drogheda.
He shared the same warts on his face as the great man himself, and drew attention to the fact.
Herringshaw had had a family coat of arms made up as a plaque, which was affixed to the gatepost pillars of his large detached home in Templepatrick, County Antrim.
The same crest appeared on his business cards.
It featured a leaping salmon and the red hand of Ulster in the bottom quadrants, with a shield of red and yellow halves bisected by a blue diagonal stripe.
He’d even had a number of ties made up with the rather garish design resplendent upon them.
As he sat reflectively puffing his slim panatela in the front seat of Ronnie Simpson’s parked Mercedes, thoughts of duty and loyalty; of insurrection and purge wafted about him with the smoke he exhaled. To those who saw him, he brought to mind the image and gait of a Bond villain.
Mayor Simpson eased the electric window down a touch, partially raised himself with an effort from the leather upholstery and loudly farted.
“Trumpetbum!” complained the big man.
“My guts are at me, Cecil,” said Simpson in apology.
Herringshaw looked straight ahead, without any acknowledgement.
The City Hall car park was emptying, save for themselves and a tourist information caravan. The big Benz stunk of leather, tobacco, aftershave and bad eggs.
Cecil Herringshaw loved these informal pre-meeting car park briefings.
It was where the real business was done.
Substance before the pretence of having to play silent subordinate to the Mayor for the public’s consumption. Only right that the elected representative and first citizen at least appeared to be making the decisions.
Both men enjoyed a mutual admiration.
And both recognised their respective talents and the rules of their relationship.
If Ron couldn’t secure agreement on the golf courses and clubs of County Down, then Cecil, who played off scratch, would offer to employ a different clubbing technique with the party in question.
Enough said.
Eventually Cecil spoke. “I think we’ll have to keep an eye on our friend Watson, Ronnie. I’ll tell you for nothing, I’m not best pleased at this Historical Enquiries malarkey. He’s some fuckin’ cheek announcing that Loyalist paramilitaries and security force collusion were part of their remit.”
“Now Cecil, we’ve nothing to hide here,” said the Mayor, smiling.
The luminescence from the dashboard display lit him up. Pristine white dentures glowed from an orange, sunbed tan. “And we’ll not behave like we have.”
The tone of Herringshaw’s voice dropped menacingly. “Should I need it, I have a card up my sleeve, where that particular gentleman is concerned.”
Ambulance and fire brigade sirens wailed somewhere off in the distance. Across the road, the good citizens of Belfast lined up dutifully, awaiting buses home from the daily grind, oblivious or indifferent to the vagaries of what passed as a democratic decision-making process inside the sober façade of City Hall.
“Looks like snow… early for this time of year. Do you think it will keep the flag protesters off the streets?”
“Things are shaky, Cecil… people are worried we’re being sold out. They’re at each other’s throats out there.”
“Aye… so much for ‘a shared future’!”
Simpson pushed himself up again, scratched his arse and surreptitiously smelled his fingertips by way of scratching his nose. He turned to face Herringshaw.
“If they’re willing to pay for it, Cecil… if they’re willing to pay for it, then a shared future is what we’re going to give them.”
&
nbsp; 16
The rusting gates of the Francis Hughes Community Centre in Da Rossa Estate, West Belfast were held partially closed by a shiny new link chain and heavy padlock. Slicked and greased with fresh lubricant, it was a stop-gap measure from the local authority against the young hoods who had been using the grounds for drinking and spliffing up.
The corporation felt that this modest effort offered a semblance of ownership and influence, deep within hostile territory.
But no-one here was fooled.
RIRA was sprayed on walls again as soon as it was removed. A weekly choreography that neither side looked like abandoning. This was where the ‘Real’ IRA drew on what limited support they could muster. The unreconstructed Republicans. Those who favoured the old adage, Not a bullet… not an ounce when the prospect of decommissioning was first mooted. Those on the margins who fed off the poverty and deprivation in the area. Those who still remained outside the sway of Sinn Féin, denouncing them as traitors and Brit-lovers.
The small man struggled with the tiny key, sausage fingers prematurely arthritic, pinching and stabbing awkwardly for the aperture of the lock. The mild tremors that pulsed through him, occasioning his body to shake unexpectedly, did not help his co-ordination. Gnarled, the skin dry and split, the knuckles uneven and misshapen from their savage pummelling of cement and brick.
In anger.
In release.
In the frustrated agonies borne of bitter disappointments.
Disappointments in men and in life and at the desperate hand that he had been dealt.
Joe Breslin sighed and stuttered an exasperated curse under his breath.
The speech impediment had developed many years ago during the early stages of his rehabilitation. It surfaced at times of irritation and anger.
His stooped stance further reduced his height, diminishing him so that he might easily be mistaken for a child from behind. Furrowing his brow in concentration, at last he managed to secure the lock.
He glanced around to ensure that he had turned off all the centre’s lights, and pulling his baseball cap down low over his eyes, pushed his plastic lunchbox up into his armpit and walked with an awkward, pained, open-legged gait back to the council house where he lived with his mother and younger sister.
All things considered, it hadn’t been a bad day.
*
His morning had begun when a small group of local children – all in possession of a different musical instrument – tugged, pushed and pulled at each other impatiently.
They peered through the fence at the ugly concrete building covered in Republican graffiti, then back to Joe expectantly.
“Joe! Joe! Joe! Let us in… it’s freezin’ out here!”
He shuffled over to do so as quickly as his broken body would allow him.
With a click, the lock turned and the peeling, squealing gates cracked open, giving way to the small torrent of laughing children who poured through them. Joe opened the centre’s double doors, and before they swung closed behind him, turned on his heel, now inside looking out.
Da Rossa housing estate was a vision of awfulness.
Empty flats, breeze-blocked shut, windows scorched around the edges. A dilapidated ice cream van, rusting now, clown faces and cartoon characters a parody. Skinny, scabby dogs. Rubbish tipped out onto green areas. Used nappies and condoms. Empty, crushed beer cans and torn Rizla paper packets.
Tired, defeated people.
The children were dutifully arranging the plastic chairs in a performance circle. Discordant notes and snatches of musical phrases arose from the young people inside.
He felt like closing the gates against it all.
Keeping it out, if only for a while, whilst he and the kids lost themselves in the jigs and reels and the folk-stories behind them.
The days when the traditional Irish music classes occurred were good days for him. The children – often so cruel and dismissive of each other – seemed to treat him with a kindness, almost a reverence that might have been reserved for some poor fictional Disney wretch that they’d seen in Beauty and the Beast or The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
He was aware of course that their parents knew all about poor Joe Breslin, the man who had had his young life stolen away in his prime.
The days when music classes took place were special for another reason.
On alternate weeks, the black Volvo that pulled up to the door contained not just Dympna – the music teacher from St. Aloysius Primary School – but also Molly McArdle, the sightless piano tuner from the Workshops for the Blind.
Joe had only recently confided in his sister Anne that he thought – no, he was sure – that he was in love with Molly McArdle.
Yes, even if it had been only some four months from making her acquaintance.
Tears had rolled down Anne’s cheeks uncontrollably and she had needed to leave the room before returning and discussing with her older brother whether he should share his feelings with the woman.
Joe said that he felt that Molly already knew, as they were getting on like a house on fire.
She’d asked him and he’d let her feel the contours of his face with her hands.
Soon, he thought, he would ask her out on a date.
Joe, Molly and Keano, her guide dog.
17
Eban knew that Rosemary and Pascal were not at home.
If you were so inclined, it was possible to discern the comings and goings of your housemates by the opening and closing of room doors, the footfall descending the stairs and the slamming of the front door. It was a tried and trusted method employed by both him and Emily when they wanted to enjoy each other and not be interrupted.
They were fearful that the noises of their lovemaking would travel and provide the others with some voyeuristic satisfaction or lazy gossip.
He looked again at the letter he had been dreading.
The letter he had been craving.
The letter that might once and for all bring it to an end.
It was signed, Sgt Samuel Coulter on behalf of Detective Inspector Dan Watson. Historical Enquiries Team, Police Service of Northern Ireland.
For the umpteenth time he methodically went through the contents of his folders, laying out the press cuttings in date order; arranging the correspondence in date order; looking again at the HET Terms and Conditions document and the sections he had highlighted in pink, blue and green ink. The yellow annotated Post-its, strategically ordered and poking out from between its pages. A seemingly endless amount of meticulous, painstaking research – and no small amount of anguished soul-searching – had finally brought him to this point.
He ached to be done with it.
Or just to have a confidant in all of this.
A second opinion.
Someone to vindicate what he was about to do.
But that, he knew – had always known – that would not be possible.
He heard Emily move around in the room above him. He desperately wanted her to enfold him in her perfumed arms. To reassure him. To fall asleep together again. Maybe for the last time.
They had not spoken since they had parted in anger. He had been dismissive and accusatory toward the only person who had shown any concern for him. And he could not explain the reasons why to her; could not seek mitigation on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to… what?
The failings of a feeble man, tortured by the horrors of memory and conscience?
It took only a few moments to convince himself that contrition was the driving motivation for seeking a reconciliation with her.
In truth, blood was already rushing to his semi-hard erection.
Memories of Emily naked but for a pearl choker and stockings; red polka-dot silk dressing gown spread out under her. Doing it standing up, against the wall, behind the door of his room. On the king-size bed, in the hotel in Portstewart, that weekend away together. When she was having her period and said that it would be more arousing for her.
*
He climbed the stairs quietly and tapped on her door.
“Emily… it’s me.”
There was a pause. Then the sound of objects being moved around. Cups, plates, glasses clinking.
Bless her, she’s tidying her room, he thought. She knows what an obsessive-compulsive freak I am.
Eventually the door opened a meagre width. Emily peered through the gap, her dressing gown clutched closed at the neck.
“The house is empty,” he whispered.
It was the standard shared code, the traditional precursor to their lovemaking. As potent as any foreplay.
“I should tell you to fuck right off Eban Barnard!”
Her voice did not match the admonishment. It was somehow tempered by the unanticipated, now-dawning promise of longed-for intercourse.
Eban recognised it. “Can I come in?”
She pulled a mock-disapproving face but swung open the door and stood aside, allowing him entry.
The room was how he’d remembered it.
Brightly coloured scarves and silk blouses were scattered here and there, draped over every available stand and surface.
In the corner stood a music stand, replete with sheet music for medieval madrigals. A lacquered wooden recorder was placed along a shelf there. A large ornamental mirror was placed against the wall. From it hung string upon string of every kind of necklace.
The unmade bed was covered in a detonation of clothes: skirts, sweaters, slacks, jeans. Dresses hung in see-through cellophane bags in the only wardrobe available.
Several coffee mugs sat around what little spare surface space that remained. Stuffed into them were mouldering banana skins and orange peels. The whole room smelled of perfume, cocoa butter and talcum powder.
“Ahh… just as I remembered it,” he said faux-sarcastically.
“Let’s not go there right now,” she warned. “If you think—”
Before she could say anything else, he had crossed the floor to her and placed his hand through the gap in her dressing gown and between her legs.
White Church, Black Mountain Page 6
