Of wee sweetie mice and men

by Colin Bateman

  'Ostrich,' said Sissy, 'rare, please.' She nodded at me. 'He's the chicken.'

  I shrugged. I was.

  'You loved him very much, didn't you?''More than anything on this earth.'

  'I thought that. I only saw you together the once. But I thought that.'

  'We were so similar. Like two halves of the one person. We did everything together. Worked together. Ate together. Slept together. Read together. Gardened together.'

  'He said he was a bit of a gardener. I saw his rose pruners.'

  'He was very proud of his garden. He was very proud of his work. We both were. That's why we took it so hard when we were asked to leave the department. We both had excellent arrest records. No discipline problems. Both popular. We just liked eating. That's no crime in anyone's eyes, 'cept for the NYPD.'

  'How did you find out he was dead?'

  'Officer came to see me. He knew Pete from way back. He asked me straight out, you want me to find out who killed him, or do you want me to write it off like we do most of the black boys? He didn't mean any offence by it. I said no, leave him be, he's gone now, ain't gonna do any good stirring up more trouble.'

  'You have a family.'

  'I have two boys.'

  'What're they like?'

  'They're fat too.'

  'I don't mean like that.'

  'I'm sure you don't, but that's just the way they are. They're good kids.'

  'How're they taking it?'

  'On the chin. They're strong boys.'

  'It'll maybe hit them later.'

  'Something will. That's our lot in this city.'

  'That's a bit profound.'

  'That's realistic. I wouldn't expect you to know what it's like.'

  'Maybe not. You said you had insurance.'

  'I have insurance. It'll see me through, won't make me rich. Besides, I want to work. I'd go mad if I didn't work. And this is the only business I know. You have a problem with me replacing Pete?'

  'None at all. I'm just not sure about Geordie McClean. He's more of a mind to go home than spend a lot of money trying to track down Bobby's wife.'

  'I wouldn't call it a lot of money.'

  'No. I know. Any money then.'

  'What if I just turn up with the girl? He'd pay me a reward?'

  'I'm sure he would. Are you likely to just turn up with the girl?'

  'I might.'

  'Is there something I should know?'

  'No. Just enquiring.'

  'You're not holding anything back?'

  'No. I just want to know where I stand. Can you have a word with him? Get me a retainer, or an agreed reward?'

  'I can try. He might take some convincing.'

  'Because I'm a woman?'

  'Probably. Because you don't look like a detective.'

  'Surely that's a plus.'

  'In some ways. In others, I'm not so sure. I mean, he's going to say to me, what's she going to do that her husband didn't already do? He'll say, sure we know it's not the Sons of Muhammad have

  Mary after all, it's the IRA, what the hell does she know about the IRA? That's what he'll say. What do you know about the IRA?'

  'Nothing.'

  'His point exactly.'

  'Surely the point isn't what I know about the IRA, but whether I can get Mary McMaster back.'

  'It's maybe one and the same thing.'

  'I want the chance to find out.'

  'I'll ask. It's all I can do.'

  'My husband died working for you.'

  'I know.'

  'You owe me.'

  'I know.'

  So I asked. I got Geordie on the phone. I buttered him up for a while, then I called her over and she hit him with the guilt thing.

  By the time she hung up she had a promise of a small retainer, plus a lot more if she managed to turn Mary up; he'd probably throw in two tickets to the fight as well, he was that kind of a guy. When we got back to the table we decided to celebrate with a tanker full of drink. It was an odd sort of party: two lonely souls, baring souls. By the end of the afternoon Sissy knew more about me than perhaps any woman on the planet, bar one. I probably knew more about Sissy than any damn man on this mortal coil, but if I did, I'd forgotten it by the time I got to the lift.

  I could barely stand. Maybe my resistance to alcohol was lessening. Maybe import Harp is stronger than the indigenous variety. Maybe it was the burger. I leant on Sissy as we waited for the doors to open. She was a rock. A soft rock. A veritable REO Speedwagon of rock. 'I'm very sorry about your husband,' I said.

  'Thank you.'

  'When's the funeral? Maybe I could send some flowers.'

  'Cremated. Already. No point in him lying around.'

  'Really? Cremated. What about the ashes?'

  'They're at home.'

  'Spooky.'

  'Doesn't worry me.'

  'Where are you going to scatter them?'

  'I'm not.'

  'Spooky.

  '

  The doors opened. We stepped in. She pushed for ground, my finger wandered up and down the panel. Someone had unaccountably stolen the eighth floor.

  'Which floor?' Sissy asked.

  'Eight.'

  She pushed a button.

  'I thought that was three.'

  She shook her head.

  'But now that I look at it, it is in fact, eight.' She smiled. 'But now I can't find three.'

  'You don't need three.'

  'I know. I need a drink.'

  'You don't need a drink.'

  'I know. Need and want are two different things. I've lost my wife, you know.'

  'I've lost my husband.'

  'United in grief.'

  It dinged. The doors opened. 'I've work to do, Starkey. I'll call for you tomorrow. At nine - am. You'll be sober?'

  I stepped out. I nodded. 'Nine,' I said and turned left for my room. I would be sober. By then.

  27

  Sissy cut a swathe through the morning crush like a juggernaut in suede boots.

  There was at last a hint of spring in the air, which I might have appreciated if my head hadn't felt like some very small person was chiselling away inside it, trying to reshape it into a tombstone. My mood was not good. Sissy had been true to her word and had banged on my door on the stroke of nine, larger than life and full of enthusiasm. She said she had had a break. I wanted her to give me one, at least another three hours in the glorious confines of a continental quilt. I had to admire her. Well, I thought about having to admire her, but no one likes a swot.

  There was no need to dress. Dressing has a presumption about it I have never cared for. A drinking man never undresses. The wrinkly, stubbly, beery look is a fashion which ignores fashion. Sissy, jabbering, piloted me to the lift. I was about to congratulate her on taking to her task with such relish, but then decided she might take it as an allusion to her prodigious appetite and changed tack. Besides, even the thought of relish made me feel sick. I got her to stop while I bought a can of full-fat Coke from a newsstand and drained it in two. I waited a moment while it decided to stay down, then said, 'Tell me why we're going shopping again?'

  Her eyes crossed in frustration, then she shouted something back, but it was lost in a blast of horns from a gridlocked Times Square. I gave up. She ploughed on through the rush-hour crowds and I struggled along in her wake, much as I had once trailed her husband's coat-tails in that ill-fated raid on the Shabazz.

  Finally we turned into Macy's. Some call it the biggest store in the world. Mary had shopped here before the Republicans had snagged her. Doubtless they had been with her at the time. While she innocently chose shirts for her husband, they measured her up for a kidnapping. Sissy stopped a security guard and asked him to call the security manager. She used his name, but it went by me. My hearing was slurred. He spoke into his radio and within half a minute a balding guy appeared. He had an erect, military bearing, which was ruined by the stomach bulging out of his cream uniform.

  'Mrs Smith?'

  'An
drew. How are you?'

  'Fine. Thank you.'

  Andrew smiled warmly. Sissy kept her face grim but nodded appreciatively. He took her hand in two of his and squeezed it. Sissy introduced me. He shook my hand and then motioned for us to follow him. He led us to an elevator and from there to the fourth floor and on into an office. A bank of video screens, forty-eight in all, dominated one wall. Three security men sat before them, watching intently.

  Sissy shook her head. 'Sure looks like my idea of hell, watching those things all day. Television's bad enough.' One of the men looked round. 'No offence,' she said.

  'No offence taken, ma'am,' he said, and returned to the screen.

  'Don't worry about them, Mrs Smith,' said Andrew, retreating behind a mahogany desk. 'They watch them for no more than thirty minutes in any one hour. And they can be fun.' He waved his hand at a couple of chairs and we sat. 'Any more than half an hour though, and they start to miss things. Proved by the experts. We have them all on rotation. We run a book on the shoplifters. Arnie over there holds the record. Seventeen in one day. Can I get you a coffee?'

  Sissy shook her head. 'Any chance of a Coke?' I asked. Andrew pushed his swivel chair backwards about five yards and opened a fridge masquerading as a cupboard. I could have put my head in it and gone to sleep. He pondered the contents for a second, then glanced round at me.

  'Diet?'

  I shrugged. Not one of my better shrugs. I had some worries about my head falling off and rolling across the floor towards him with my tongue hanging out. Andrew propelled himself back to his desk and reached the can across to me. I flipped and guzzled. I cleared half the can, stifled a burp and said: 'Sorry. Dehydrated. Long flight.'

  He nodded. Sissy gave me the eye, then turned back to the security chief. 'You have some news for me.'

  'Yes. Of course. I'm very glad you called, very glad. I would've called earlier - but I lost your husband's number. Lost his damn name too, to tell you the truth. Damn near tore the office apart trying to find it, but no luck. It gets hectic in here, lady, as I'm sure you'll appreciate. How is he, by the way?'

  'He's dead.'

  'Ah.' His mouth widened slightly, his eyebrows arched, like he was waiting for a punch line. Sissy's face remained sombre. 'Oh,' he said simply, 'I'm very sorry.'

  'Thank you. He was murdered. Working on this case. So I'm sure you'll appreciate the urgency of the matter.'

  'Yes. Of course. He was a nice guy. Very thorough. You can always tell an ex-cop, can't you?'

  Sissy nodded. 'The shirts?'

  'Yes, of course. The shirts. Your husband was here enquiring about purchases made by a Mrs Mary McMaster. Purchase by way of a Visa card. Three shirts, and a pair of sunglasses.' Sissy nodded. Andrew opened a drawer and produced three white shirts. He pushed them across the table towards Sissy. She didn't move for them, so I leant forward and picked one up. 'These shirts were returned the day before yesterday. Too small. Exchanged for larger sizes. They hadn't been opened.'

  'Do you know who by?' I asked. 'Was it a woman?'

  'No. It was a man.'

  I passed the shirt to Sissy. She turned it over in her handwithout looking at it. 'How did this come to your attention?' sheasked. 'There must be ten thousand transactions here every day.''More than that. Good luck plays the major part in it. The shirts were returned to customer services and set to one side for return to stock control. As it happens the employee who originally sold the shirts, and was aware of my enquiries about their original purchase, came on duty shortly after. We move our staff around all the departments, so it was your good luck that she happened to come on to customer services at that time. She recognized them. So she brought them up to me. A very efficient girl.'

  'Can we talk to the cashier who received the shirts in the first place?' I asked. 'Get a description.'

  Andrew smiled. 'Oh, I think we can do better than that. How would a name, address and photograph do?'

  Sissy matched the smile, and raised him half a dozen teeth. 'You're not serious?'

  'Absolutely. I don't think the guy you're after is one of life's smarter cookies. For one thing, he made no attempt to disguise himself, so we have him on video. We can't cover every part of the store all the time, because it's so damn big; our cameras flit from point to point, but we keep one permanently on the customer services department because that's where most of the attempted frauds are mounted. Once I'd found the video of him returning the shirts, I tracked back through the other tapes in the store covering that particular time period. Took me an hour or two, but once I get started on something there's no stopping me. Found him eventually in the women's lingerie department. Bought some pretty hot stuff as well. And he used a credit card.'

  'What a wanker,' I said, mainly to myself, but it came out as normal.

  Andrew glanced over. 'I'm not sure I know the term, but I get your drift.' He opened a file on his desk. 'Guy's name is McLiam, Marcus McLiam, has an address in Brooklyn Heights. We showed the tape to our employee in the lingerie department. She remembered him vaguely. Remembers he was talkative, without ever really saying anything. Know the type? Had an accent, but she couldn't really place it. Thought it was maybe Irish or Scottish. Said it was harsh, grating on the ears, sounded like he was complaining, when he wasn't.'

  'Northern Irish’ I said.

  'Could be.'

  I turned to Sissy. 'Is this what's called hitting pay dirt?'

  'Oil. Gold. Owning an ostrich farm. All rolled into one. We're on our way.'

  It seemed important not to rush into anything, to call a time-out to consider. I needed to get my brain into gear. Sissy's friend Duncan owned a fast-food place behind Macy's. It was crowded but we still managed to talk international terrorism with raised voices over doughnuts, coffee and Coke, without anyone batting an eyelid.

  After the initial euphoria, and still with the hangover, I tried to deflate things, just a little. Whatever way you looked at it, it was a good break, but just how good?

  We had the name and address, plus two slightly blurred stills from the video cameras. The guy looked pretty young; short dark hair, moustache, pug nose, wide-set mouth; he wore a khaki jacket, what appeared to be black jeans. We watched the video through four times. He smiled a lot, didn't look nervous at all; I had to admire it, I would have been nervous being in the lingerie department for perfectly legitimate reasons.

  'Okay,' said Sissy, 'so it doesn't say very much about the calibre of the opposition.'

  I nodded. The head stayed on. 'Your husband once told me he'd never met a smart foot soldier yet. Maybe he had a point.'

  'He knew what he was talking about. The question is, though, was it a foot soldier being stupid, or something else? Was it overconfidence? Or something to throw us off the trail?'

  'Stupid isn't a word you would normally associate with the IRA.'

  'But isn't that the point? The IRA have called a ceasefire, haven't they? And they never operated on the US mainland anyway. So we're probably looking at some maverick outfit. And there's no shortage of radical Irish groups in New York.'

  'And how would you know?'

  'Starkey, there are radical groups for every nationality. Scratch a New Yorker and there's an emigrant's fury just dying to get out.'

  'Yeah, someone left the melting pot on the boil.'

  A pained expression crossed her face. She opened her mouth to say something, but some half-digested doughnut got in the way. She coughed, swallowed, her eyes watered a little. Undeterred, she took another bite.

  'I'm sorry,' I said, 'you've obviously been busy. Busier than me. No, I know the IRA didn't operate over here. A few arms deals maybe. But no terrorism. Mostly because they didn't want to affect Noraid's fundraising activities by carrying out anything that might be regarded by the public as an atrocity. But not everyone's happy with the ceasefire. Maybe not even the IRA. They could be looking for a way to creep back into action. Or what about all those gunmen who aren't finding it easy returning to normal life? And organ
izations like Noraid are still raising money. Where does that all go if the war's over?'

  'Re-education? Community work?'

  'Possibly. Or funding a kidnap and blackmail. It's hardly an atrocity, unless you're the one's been kidnapped. There are endless possibilities. Maybe they've formed a new stupid wing. Most terror groups have them. I'm sure we would have found the Stupid Sons of Muhammad if we'd looked long enough. Marcus has done something that's almost too stupid for words. That's what bothers me. We could be reading too much into it.'

  I took a bite of a chocolate doughnut. Washed it down. I looked at the photos of McLiam. He looked so normal. That was the problem with back home. The psychos looked normal, and vice versa.

  Sissy picked up one of the photos and studied it. 'He could be entirely innocent. Maybe the shirts were just dumped somewhere and he found them, decided to trade them in. Maybe they were given to him by someone involved in the kidnapping, someone trying to help out an impoverished relative.'

  'He can't be that poor. He used a credit card.'

  'You never been poor and used your credit card?'

  'Point taken.'

  'There are other possibilities of course,' said Sissy.

  'I know. I was trying not to think about them.' It was too close to home. 'That Mary is having an affair with this guy. That she's decided to dump Bobby.'

  'But she's only been in New York a few days. That's quite a jump.'

  'It happens. Besides, maybe she knows him from Belfast. Maybe he followed her over. Proclaimed undying love. She moved in. He returned the shirts, bought her sexy underwear.'

  'What about the threats then?'

  'Could be genuine. Could be they're trying to make some money off Bobby.'

  'Wouldn't she be better waiting until the fight was over? Divorce him then, take him for every last cent?'

  'They've no kids, she's run away - be long-drawn-out, she mightn't get much in the end. Better to get your money up front, in one big pile.'

  'But there haven't been any demands for money.'

  'Not yet. He could be the genuine article, a terrorist she happens to have fallen for. He's carrying out the blackmail, plus whatever else might be in store, and he gets to sleep with the kidnap victim as well. Best of both worlds. It's happened before.'