White Church, Black Mountain

by Thomas Paul Burgess

  The drive into the town was flanked on both sides by some of the most impressive golfing real estate in the country.

  Emily was taking the demanding hairpin corners carefully.

  She was a conscientious driver and studiously observed the obligatory ‘hands at ten and two o’clock’ and ‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ protocols.

  It was when pulling out to overtake a learner driver that she noticed again the silver BMW 6 Series in her rear view mirror.

  She remembered the same or a similar car pulling out behind them when they had first left Belfast. She vaguely noted that the front-seat passenger wore a bright red sweatshirt, as it had caught her eye.

  Now here was the same make of vehicle and the same brightly-clad front-seat passenger a little distance behind them on the North Antrim coast.

  Emily never gave this a second thought.

  It was perfectly feasible that there were a half-dozen or more cars with red-shirted passengers on the roads that day. Even within the realms of coincidence that these travellers had left from their very own street on exactly the same journey as themselves.

  She had no inclination to mention this to Eban, who was going on somewhat in an entirely atypical manner about not leaving goals, dreams or ambitions unfulfilled.

  Most unlike him, she thought.

  Besides, he would only chide her that she was paranoid and that living in Belfast for too long can do that to you.

  Eban directed her to the White Rocks Beach, a long, pristine stretch of sandy strand.

  The wind was whipping in at a pace and although the sky looked ominous, the rain had all but ceased. It was virtually deserted now but for a few hardy surfers in wetsuits and a pensioner throwing a tennis ball for his dog.

  They had come prepared, each donning a heavy outdoor coat, scarf and hat.

  “Do you remember the last time we were here?” he asked. He moved to link her arm and pull her closer but she lightly resisted this and walked a few paces in front of him.

  She said something he couldn’t hear, the wind taking her words and carrying them by him.

  “What?” he yelled.

  She turned around to face him. “That was then…” she yelled above the breakers.

  And this is now, he finished the sentence in his mind.

  Something had changed about Emily, he thought.

  This wasn’t about playing hard to get.

  She was being standoffish.

  But more than that.

  She was resolved, he considered.

  She had crossed some rubicon or other and she did not intend to come back from it again.

  *

  Although both carried on walking in silence, their thoughts did indeed return to the first time they had visited here together.

  It was in summer, in the early weeks of what passed for a courtship between them.

  Eban was enjoying his role as unofficial tour guide, showing this English girl the sights. Choosing only those that held an emotional resonance for him personally, and sharing these with her in a more intimate fashion than both were perhaps aware of.

  Bonding in a way that he was not prepared to admit to himself.

  They had just slept with each other for the first time the night before, and whilst rendered a little awkward through a lack of adequate foreplay, it had undoubtedly brought them closer together.

  Caught up in what might have been the first flowerings of a relationship, Eban went a little over the top that day.

  She had lost a leather pump shoe in the sand and retrieving it, he pretended to throw it into the waves, dropping it deliberately at the arc of his swing.

  Then in a completely unexpected action, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the surf, wading in fully clothed, up to his knees.

  She screamed with laughter and mock alarm as he threatened to put her down in the surf, but carried her back to safety on the sand.

  They had kissed then and there, his hands buried in her streaming hair, holding each other close and tight as two young boys passed by eating ice cream cones and giggling.

  If there had ever definitively been a moment when Emily felt that she might be falling in love with Eban Barnard, then that was it.

  But today they walked in silence and apart from each other.

  He throwing small stones into the breakers, she occasionally pocketing a colourful shell here and there.

  Both quietly reflecting on the mixed messages that day in summer had given them.

  They had clung together so fiercely, kissed so passionately because of their fear, their loneliness, their longing, their disappointment.

  Here today, it was achingly, irrefutably clear that neither had been able to stop the other’s suffering.

  Eventually it began to rain.

  “Are you ready to go back?” she asked. As if impartially, coldly inquiring as to whether he had satisfied whatever notion had brought the two of them out here in the first place.

  He knew the moment had come when he would have to find the courage to love her. If it was not already too late to do so.

  Both his mother and father had been sentimentalists and throughout his youth he had unconsciously modelled himself emotionally on them.

  His father with tears in his eyes, singing to his mother some Jim Reeves or Slim Whitman song – “If I had my life to live over… I would still fall in love with you…”

  His mother, outwardly less demonstrative, but a devotee of romantic novels and enamoured of Christmases, family and self-sacrificing dignity in the face of tragedy.

  It never seemed that it took much to get them going and as he grew older, Eban began to harbour suspicions that this easy emotionalism was being deliberately cultivated as a controlling mechanism. Something resembling a passive-aggressive manipulation of his own feelings.

  Histrionics and operatic levels of worry and grief were not uncommon, but all provoked by selfless love and concern of course.

  This rendered him suspicious of the maudlin, but left him open both to emotional manipulation by others and capable of it himself.

  Therefore, as he looked at Emily now, solitary and vulnerable, her hair being whipped around her face by the wind; the waves crashing on the beach behind her and then being pulled back out to sea, he could not answer her.

  Could not tell her he was ready to go back.

  Rather, he just turned around in the direction of the car and began walking.

  *

  They drove back in silence to their Bed and Breakfast accommodation in Portstewart.

  On reaching the edges of town, Emily – distracted somewhat by the growing distance between them and the prospect of the coming evening – took a wrong turn at one of the many roundabouts on the outskirts.

  This led her to exit prematurely and drive the wrong way up a one-way street and into oncoming traffic. With horns blaring and headlights flashing all around her, Emily panicked. She slammed the brakes on hard, almost catapulting Eban through the windscreen. He was jerked back violently by his seat belt.

  She threw the car into reverse gear and quickly checked that the path was clear in her rear-view mirror.

  She was surprised to see the same silver BMW reversing away from them at speed.

  She could clearly make out the driver, front and back-seat passengers looking over their shoulders and behind them as their car hurtled backward and away from Emily.

  This time there could be no mistake.

  The man in the front wore the red hooded sweatshirt she had noticed both times before.

  They must have been following Emily and Eban closely to have made the same mistake and travelled some distance along this one-way system.

  A lapse in concentration on their part, perhaps, but their cover was blown.

  When she had righted the vehicle Emily pulled over to the side of the road.

  She was shaking and close to tears. Irate drivers slowed down to glare in and to shake fists as they pulled level.

  “Ar
e you okay?” asked Eban, rubbing at his collarbone where the belt had bitten.

  “Yes… yes… I’m alright. Eban, listen – this is going to sound crazy, but…”

  Emily explained all about their perceived trackers, about the man in the red top and about the unlikely coincidence of it all. She was half-surprised when Eban did not routinely dismiss all this out of hand as nonsense.

  “It’s been a strange week for me.” he said. “I have some information that some people may want kept quiet.”

  Emily looked at him as if he was joking. When she could tell that he was not, she was deeply perturbed.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  When he looked away out of the car window and remained silent, she pleaded with him.

  “Eban, you’re scaring me.”

  It was getting dark now.

  On the remaining drive back to Portstewart her mind was in turmoil.

  Who was this man beside her?

  What did she really know about him after all?

  What might he be involved in?

  Perhaps Rosemary Payne had been correct all along.

  For a man of his age, he seemed to be without ties, family, friends… it just didn’t seem right.

  They pulled into a small public parking facility some yards away from their accommodation and unloaded their overnight bags from the boot.

  Walking toward the guest house, Emily suddenly grabbed his arm.

  She whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Don’t turn around… there it is again!”

  The silver BMW car sat parked in shadow at the side of the road, some short distance from where they had alighted.

  “Keep walking and let’s get checked in,” said Eban and steered her onto the footpath and toward the guest house.

  They walked up the path and rang the bell.

  An elderly woman shuffled toward them, smiling. She opened the inner double-glazed doors and motioned them to come in.

  Both did so, but all at once Eban turned on his heel and walked back down the path to the street. Emily turned around, puzzled, and stood in the doorway.

  He looked back down toward where they had parked their car and saw two men walk around it, shining a pocket torch through the windows and crouching low to peer inside.

  “Stay there!” he ordered Emily and made his way toward them, walking purposefully and at pace down the centre of the road.

  On seeing this, both men quickly ran to their car and jumped inside.

  The powerful engine roared into life.

  The headlamps flashed onto full beam.

  The car pulled out violently and screeched at speed toward Eban.

  He stood stock still in the middle of the road with his arm extended and hand raised like some mythic custodian.

  Blinded by the lights, awaiting the impact.

  Welcoming it.

  The car shrieked to a halt three feet in front of him.

  Eban was shaking violently.

  He walked around the side and leaned lower.

  The electric window on the driver’s side droned down.

  “Can I help you, officers?” said Eban as calmly and as acidly as he could muster.

  “Don’t know what you mean, mate,” said the driver. He had an English accent.

  The other man in the front seat laughed a little to himself and looked straight ahead.

  “Don’t they teach you anything about surveillance, you wankers? Tell your friend there if he wants to stalk somebody then better not to do it in a bright red jumper!”

  “Don’t know what you mean, mate,” said the driver again.

  “Look, if you want me to come back to the station then just ask, okay… there’s no need for all of this…”

  The big man who had been taking up most of the back seat leaned forward into the semi-light. He was well dressed in a sports jacket, shirt and tie.

  Eban could see the moles and warts on his face.

  His bulbous nose, red with broken vessels.

  His hair thinning and combed over.

  His scalp flaking.

  “You’re the boy who can’t keep his trap shut.”

  “And you are…?”

  “You’ll know soon enough, Barnard… you’ll know soon enough,” was all he said.

  He sank back into the shadows again. “Go!” he barked.

  The car took off at high speed.

  It swept by Emily, who had followed him and now stood some steps behind.

  She had heard it all.

  The veiled threat. The implied menace.

  She had seen that ogre of a man.

  He had looked straight into her eyes as the car passed by.

  *

  Later, she refused to get undressed.

  He had kept his word and reserved single beds.

  But she refused to go to bed.

  She sat up all night long.

  Wrapped in a shawl and drinking tea made with the small kettle in the room.

  Wondering if they would come back in the night?

  If they were at 15 Donnybrook Avenue right now?

  Going through Eban’s belongings?

  Through her own?

  Her eyes closing. Jerking awake when a car door slammed outside, or another guest walked down the corridor.

  Eban offered nothing by way of explanation.

  Nothing that might help her understand, or allay her fears.

  Instead he just complained vaguely of some pains, gulped down some pills from an unfamiliar prescription bottle, turned to the wall and went to sleep.

  If she had previously been in any doubt, then all that had now changed.

  Her flight to Heathrow was already booked.

  She would be attending for interview at Dudley Primary School at 4pm on Monday afternoon.

  52

  Dan Watson couldn’t focus on the task at hand.

  A rudimentary review of his section workload allocations.

  These tiers of middle-management bureaucracy seemed more multifarious and byzantine than back in the good old, bad old days.

  Endless self-evaluations to be completed online.

  Time and motion studies by any other name.

  Usually a prerequisite to cuts and redundancies.

  Now they wanted you to justify your usefulness by itemising your working day down to the last minute. Then to produce pie charts and graphs at the push of a button, generated from software he couldn’t understand.

  He felt ancient.

  He could see the age profile of the force change in front of his very eyes.

  He would have liked to consider his pension options but knew he would miss the overtime benefits.

  Besides, although the kids had grown up and moved away, that didn’t seem to reduce overdraft payments from the ‘Bank of Dad’.

  And the wife still expected her three foreign holidays a year. It had somehow become part of their unspoken contract.

  So things ground on relentlessly through the same old, same old.

  Because it was just easier that way.

  This business with Helen Totton had unsettled him, no question.

  It had made him believe for a short while that he might have a second act in him.

  Before he was past it and put out to pasture.

  That he could reinvent himself in some way that might allow him to start again.

  A second bite of the cherry.

  Plenty of people had done it at his age. Or so he’d heard.

  But Officer Helen Totton now seemed to be disavowing him of that particular pipe dream in no uncertain terms.

  Why hadn’t she returned his texts or calls?

  It was like she was ignoring him.

  Like nothing had ever happened between them.

  Overnight it seemed like she had vanished from off his radar entirely.

  No more ‘chance’ meetings in the records hall.

  No more impromptu, unannounced visits to his office.

  No more after-work
drinks.

  It had got so that he couldn’t settle, couldn’t concentrate.

  Thinking every internal phone call, every ping of his mobile phone, every footfall approaching his door was her.

  Christ, he couldn’t believe it! He was acting like a lovelorn kid!

  If something had changed he wanted to know why.

  If things were to be wound up between them, dismissed as a fling, fun while it lasted, then he wanted to be the one pulling the plug.

  Surely it was his prerogative.

  He’d always imagined it would be that way.

  Now he was hearing on the grapevine that she and Constable Charlie Maxwell, a divorced father of two from County Tyrone, were a hot ticket.

  Seeing a lot of each other apparently, and for some time now by all accounts.

  His pride hurt like a teenager’s. He felt silly and stupid but he couldn’t help it.

  And now this!

  *

  One of the secretaries had come to him with a sheet of paper she’d found left behind accidently on the photocopier glass.

  It was the last sheet of their file on the Eban Barnard interview and it contained his signature as interviewing officer.

  The secretary had brought it to him, believing that he may have inadvertently left it there.

  He instantly knew he hadn’t.

  Such sloppiness wouldn’t have been like him.

  The file was classified confidential, and given the information it contained he would never have copied it, let alone left it behind in a public area.

  So who had?

  He exited his office and went straight to the records room, requesting the sign-out book.

  Flipping through the last two days’ entries, he located the Barnard file code and sliding his finger across to the corresponding signature on the opposite page, his heart froze.

  Signed out by Const. Helen Totton; 5.25pm. Signed in by Const. Helen Totton; 5.47pm.

  What the fuck is going on? he asked himself.

  Dan Watson tried again to reach her now, with a considerable degree more urgency and no little anger.

  He did so adopting the most officious tone he could take, and whilst not wanting to go into any details in the email, felt that he left her in no doubt as to the necessity of contacting him urgently. He even used the term ‘insubordination’, and signed the communication with his formal title.