Collusion

by Stuart Neville

  ‘Used to be,’ Toner echoed. He wiped whiskey from his moustache. Two days’ stubble lined his jowls. ‘Friendship’s a funny thing. You think it’s solid, for life, but it can blow away just like that.’

  Lennon nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said, truthfully.

  Toner stared back at him, something turning behind his eyes for a few seconds before dying away. ‘Look, get to the point,’ he said. ‘You’re not here just to pass the time.’

  Lennon laced his fingers together on the tabletop. ‘I heard you’ve been acting strange lately, like you’re scared. I want to know what you’re afraid of.’

  Toner sat back and folded his arms. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘People,’ Lennon said.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That you’ve gone downhill since Paul McGinty died. That you’re drinking like a fish. That you know more about what happened than you’re letting on, and it’s ripping you to pieces.’

  ‘No.’ Toner shook his head, slow, his eyes unfocused. ‘No, that’s not … It’s not … Who said that?’

  ‘You’ve been talking when you’re drunk,’ Lennon said. You said it’s not over, they’ll come for you, it’s only a matter of time.’

  Toner’s cheeks reddened. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘A friend of yours,’ Lennon said. He thought about taunting the lawyer with the tales Roscoe had told him, that Toner was so scared he couldn’t get it up any more. He decided against it.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Toner said. His eyes glittered.

  ‘Maybe I can help,’ Lennon said.

  ‘Bollocks.’ Toner tried to stand, but his legs couldn’t hold him upright.

  ‘I can help,’ Lennon repeated. ‘We can help. I have contacts in Special Branch. They can protect you.’

  Toner snorted. ‘Protect me? Jesus, I wouldn’t need protecting if it wasn’t for them cunts. You’re not here on official business, are you? If you’d told anyone you were talking to me they’d have warned you off.’

  ‘Who would?’

  ‘Who do you think?’ This time Toner’s legs held him. The table shook as his thighs squeezed past it. Your fucking bosses. Special Branch and the Brits. You want to know what’s happening, talk to them, not me.’

  Lennon reached for his wrist. ‘Patsy, wait.’

  Toner pulled his arm away and opened the door. ‘Talk to your own people, see what they’ll tell you.’

  ‘Marie McKenna,’ Lennon said. ‘Her daughter. My daughter.’

  Toner froze. ‘Jesus, that’s who you are. You’re the cop Marie took up with.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lennon said.

  The waitress appeared over Toner’s shoulder, a group of young professional types behind her. ‘I need the snug,’ she said.

  Toner ignored her. ‘You want to know where she is?’

  Yes,’ Lennon said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Toner said. ‘Nobody does. She’s better off out of it. So are you. Don’t go stirring things up. That’s all I’ll tell you, and that’s too much.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the waitress called.

  ‘Just a second.’ Lennon took a card from his pocket and pressed it into Toner’s hand. ‘If you want to talk.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Toner said, handing the card back. ‘Leave it alone. Will you do that? Leave it alone. It’s best for everyone.’

  Lennon lifted Toner’s lapel and tucked the card into his inside pocket. ‘Just in case,’ he said.

  Toner suddenly looked very old. ‘Leave it alone,’ he said. He turned and headed towards the exit.

  Lennon slipped the waitress a fiver and thanked her. He went for the door, taking his time to let Toner melt away. There was no sign of the lawyer when he shouldered his way out onto Great Victoria Street, taxis and cars and buses blaring horns at one another as they fought for space under the shadow of the Europa Hotel.

  He remembered the resolution he’d made last night and checked his watch. It had only just gone six-thirty. He’d forgotten to text his sister, but it would hardly matter. Most likely nobody would bother with visiting his mother on a week-night. If he got a hustle on he could be in Newry before eight, sit with her for an hour, and be back in Belfast by ten.

  Lennon walked towards the car park on the Dublin Road, his mind flicking between a frail old woman, a frightened lawyer, and a little girl who didn’t know his name.

  For the third time in twenty minutes, Lennon told his mother who he was. For the third time, she nodded with only a vague hint of recognition on her face. She fussed with her dressing gown for a moment before looking back up at the wall opposite her bed.

  Every visit was like this, a string of bland exchanges punctuated by bouts of confusion. He came anyway, perhaps not as often as he should, but enough to be noticed. It wasn’t that he begrudged her the time. Rather it was that he hated to see her like this, even though she’d disowned him years ago. He hated that he’d had to wait for her mind to go before he could see her again. She was little more than a shadow of the woman who had giggled like a girl when he and his brother danced with her at weddings and confirmation parties.

  ‘The evenings are fairly drawing in,’ she said, looking to the growing darkness beyond the window. ‘Next thing you know, it’ll be Christmas. Who’s having Christmas this year?’

  ‘Bronagh,’ Lennon said. ‘It’s always Bronagh.’

  Bronagh was the eldest of his three sisters. It was she who had told Lennon to leave and never come back all those years ago.

  The day before Liam went in the ground, Phelim Quinn, who sat on Armagh City and District Council, called at Lennon’s mother’s house. He took the mother aside, expressed his condolences, and reminded her it wouldn’t do any good to talk to the police. Sure, they’d do nothing for them anyway. Liam had paid for his mistakes, and it would be best for everyone to just put it behind them, move on. In a very quiet voice, Lennon’s mother told Quinn to get out. As Quinn walked down the path to the small garden gate, Lennon caught up with him.

  ‘Liam wasn’t a tout,’ Lennon said. ‘He told me.’

  Quinn stopped and turned. ‘He told me the same,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t make it so.’

  Lennon’s throat tightened, his eyes burned. ‘He wasn’t. He said someone was covering themselves, putting the blame on him.’

  Quinn came close to Lennon, the councillor’s whiskey breath souring the breeze. ‘Watch your mouth, son. Your family’s had enough grief. Don’t give them any more.’

  Tears fought for release. Lennon forced them back. No way he’d cry in front of this bastard. No way. ‘You got the wrong man,’ he said. ‘Just you remember that.’

  He turned and went back inside to where his mother and his three sisters huddled together. Still he held the tears back, the sting of them scorching his eyes as they tried to get out. He swallowed them, and he’d never cried a single tear since.

  The day after Liam went in the ground, two uniformed cops came. Bronagh kept the mon the doorstep for ten minutes before her mother intervened and let them in. Lennon watched the cops from the living room doorway. They spoke in flat tones, their questions bland, their responses perfunctory. They knew they were wasting their time, Lennon could tell by their faces and their postures. Their visit was nothing more than a formality, a T to be crossed so that the case could be filed away with hundreds of others that would never be solved for lack of cooperation from the community.

  Lennon stopped them in the hallway.

  ‘Phelim Quinn,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘He did it. Or he knows who did it.’

  The sergeant laughed. ‘I know who did it,’ the sergeant said. ‘Constable McCoy here knows who did it. Every other bloody person on this street knows who did it. The second any one of them will go on record, then we’ve got a case. Until then, we might as well go after Santa Claus.’

  He put his hand on Lennon’s shoulder. ‘Listen, son, I’d dearly love to be able to put the bas
tards that killed your brother away. I really would. But you know as well as I do that’s never going to happen. Christ, if there was any chance of collaring them, it wouldn’t be lumps like us calling to see you, it’d be proper detectives. We make the notes, we fill out the forms, and that’s as much as we can do. Best thing you can do is stay out of trouble and look after your ma.’

  The sergeant and constable left Lennon in the hall and closed the door behind them.

  Over the following weeks, the house seemed frozen, everyone locked in grief, anger and fear, with no way to express it. As Lennon lay awake at night, now alone in the room he and his brother had shared, he considered the implications of his decision. He had filled out the forms, giving the address of his student digs in Belfast. He was back at Queen’s, starting his psychology Master’s, when the call for the first test came. The relief at getting away from his fractured home was tarnished by the fear of what he had embarked upon. Six months of interviews and physical exams followed while he worked part time as a porter at the Windsor House mental health unit at the City Hospital. All the time, he kept it secret, even from his friends at Queen’s.

  Lennon spent fewer weekends at home, driving down from the city to the village in the second-hand Seat Ibiza he had inherited from his dead brother. The empty bed in his room seemed like a shrine to Liam, and its presence would allow him no sleep. He asked his mother once if he could remove it. She slapped him hard across the cheek, and he did not ask again. Bronagh began to exert more control over the household, organising meals, doling out chores to her younger sisters, while her mother spent her days staring at air.

  A torturous Christmas passed, the meals taken in near silence. By March, the final hurdle loomed: the security checks. Lennon was sure they’d eliminate him because of his brother, and began to quietly wish for the rejection letter to arrive. A part of his mind that was both hopeful and fearful told him that perhaps, just maybe, his brother hadn’t been involved long or deeply enough for his name to be associated with any crime. Or perhaps supplying the Belfast address as part of his application would distance him from his family. When the letter arrived instructing him to report to Garnerville Police Training College for induction, he spent an age staring at the words, knowing he meant to attend, knowing his old life would be gone.

  He went home one last weekend, chatted to some old school friends over a pint in the local, did messages for his mother, walked the length and breadth of the village. After Sunday Mass, he told his sisters and his mother over the roast dinner Bronagh had prepared. Claire and Noreen said nothing, just gathered their plates from the table, put them in the sink, and left the room while Bronagh sat still.

  His mother gazed at the tablecloth, her body trembling. ‘You’ll be killed,’ she said. ‘Just like Liam. You’ll be killed. I can’t lose two sons. I can’t. Don’t go. You don’t have to go. You can change your mind. Stay at university, finish your Master’s, get a good job. Don’t do this. Don’t.’

  ‘It’s what I want to do,’ he said. ‘I need to do it. For Liam.’

  Bronagh shook her head, her lip curled in disgust. ‘Don’t you dare use him to justify this. You know what this’ll do to your family. Ma won’t be able to show her face. We’ll be lucky if we’re not burnt out.’

  ‘But it’ll never change,’ Lennon said. ‘How can we complain about the RUC being a Protestant force when we refuse to join? How can we condemn them for not protecting this community when we won’t allow them to? I’m doing this for—’

  ‘Just get out,’ Bronagh said. She slipped her arm around her mother’s shoulders. ‘Look what you’re doing to her. Get your stuff and get out.’

  That evening, Lennon left the home he’d grown up in. With a tattered suitcase and a sports bag carrying his few possessions, he drove back to Belfast. He heard through an old friend that Phelim Quinn once again called on his mother a few weeks later. This time, Quinn told her if her son ever returned to Middletown, he’d be shot. For the second time in a year she told the councillor to get out of her house.

  Lennon bent down and kissed his mother’s forehead. She reached up and stroked his cheek. A crease appeared on her brow.

  ‘Where’d all those lines come from?’ she asked. ‘You look more like your father every time I see you.’

  Lennon doubted she remembered the last time she’d seen him. ‘So you keep telling me.’

  ‘He’ll be back soon,’ she said.

  ‘Who? Our da?’

  ‘Aye, who do you think? The Pope? He’ll be back soon, and he’ll take us all to America with him.’

  Lennon could barely recall his father’s face. Almost thirty years had passed since he’d seen it. No one had heard tell of him since, but it would do no good to remind Lennon’s mother of that. Let her cling to her delusions if they brought her a glimmer of happiness.

  ‘He’ll take us all to some fancy place in New York. Me, you, Liam and the girls. All of us together.’

  ‘That’s right, Ma,’ Lennon said. He kissed her again and left her there.

  The exit to the car park opened as he approached it. Bronagh stepped through and froze when she saw him. She stood there for a few seconds, still as a cold morning, before putting her head down and walking past him.

  ‘Bronagh?’ he called.

  She stopped, her back to him, her gaze fixed on the floor. Her hands formed fists, opening and closing. She wore a smart jacket and skirt. She’d probably come straight from the hotel she managed in the centre of Newry.

  ‘How’s she been?’ he asked. ‘Are they looking after her?’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, I forgot to text you.’

  ‘Don’t do it again,’ she said. She walked away without looking at him.

  29

  The Traveller was sick of waiting. Two and a half hours now, coming three, and no sign of Toner. The little runt of a lawyer had left his wife and kids and moved into a grotty flat off the Springfield Road. The Bull said he was drinking himself to death. The Traveller would be doing Toner a favour, really. Put him out of his misery.

  He shifted in the driver’s seat. The wound in his arm wouldn’t let him settle, and his eye itched and stung. He’d put a dollop of antibiotic ointment in it twenty minutes ago. For conjunctivitis, the chemist had told him. The stuff found its way down to the back of his throat and turned his stomach. He’d opened the window an inch to let the night air at it, but it did little good. Everything was a blur in that eye. The Traveller knew he wasn’t at his best. It wouldn’t matter with a speck of fly shit like Toner, but anyone harder, he’d have to hold back.

  A fresh flutter of stings and itches made the Traveller’s eyelid twitch, and a warm drop of something ran down his cheek. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  He pulled a wad of tissues from the door pocket and mopped his face and eye. The soft paper stuck to something on his eyelid and tore. He blinked, shreds of tissue flapping against his cheek. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Shite bastard fucking whore.’

  The Traveller screwed his eyes shut and put his head back. He picked at bits of tissue, feeling them tug at the stickiness on his eyelid. He felt in the door pocket for the bottle of water. He found it with his fingertips, unscrewed the cap. Blinded, he poured some into his palm and splashed it across his eyes. He wiped them with the heel of his hand, then his sleeve. His vision came and went as he blinked. He reached for the interior light switch and flicked it on. His reflection in the rear-view mirror blurred and focused. Jesus, that eye looked bad enough. The lid was red and swollen, the eyeball was streaked red. Maybe he needed more of that ointment. He looked around him to see where he’d dropped it.

  He saw Patsy Toner standing on the footpath across the road, outside his building, staring back.

  ‘Fuck,’ the Traveller said. He reached between his legs, under the seat, where he’d stowed the Desert Eagle, found only rubbish and damp carpet.

  Toner stood frozen for just a second before he turned and ran
for his front door. The Traveller explored the darkness beneath him, grazed his knuckles on the metal rails that supported the seat. As his hand flailed in the narrow space, he spared Toner a glance. The lawyer’s panicked whines didn’t mask the sound of his key scraping at his lock.

  The Traveller twisted his torso as he shoved his hand further back. His injured shoulder screamed at the effort, but he was rewarded by the feel of cold pistol in his fingers. He pulled the Eagle free, leapt out of the car, on his feet, chambered a round, aimed.

  Toner’s door slammed shut.

  ‘Fuck,’ the Traveller said. He ran for the door, kicked once, twice. It wouldn’t budge. Toner lived on the top floor. The Traveller hit the buzzer for the first floor flat. He hit it again. He stayed close to the door in case the flat’s occupant looked down from the window above. He heard footsteps on the stairs inside.

  A woman of young middle-age opened it, her face sharpened with anger. ‘What do—’

  The Traveller crushed her nose with the butt of the gun. She fell back and her head bounced on the polished floorboards. She sighed, coughed blood, and stilled. Her chest rose and fell. The Traveller thought about finishing her, but there was no time. He stepped over her and made for the stairs. He took them two at a time until he reached the top floor.

  Toner’s door would give with one kick, the Traveller was sure of it. He paused, breathed deep, wiped his sleeve across his eyes. The right blurred, and he blinked until it cleared. He formed a good combat grip on the Eagle, one hand supporting the other, and booted the door below the handle. It slammed back against the wall. A ragged couch faced him in the dimness. Dishes, bottles and the detritus of takeaways littered a coffee table. The Traveller edged into the room. A breeze licked at the dampness on his face.

  ‘Fucking cock-pulling arsehole,’ he said.

  A door in the corner of the kitchenette stood ajar. It opened onto a metal staircase that descended into the yard two floors down. A fucking fire escape.

  The Traveller’s eye flickered and blurred and burned. Something warm trickled down his cheek. His left shoulder ached.