I Predict a Riot

by Bateman, Colin

  He was good.

  I am evil.

  Yin and Yang.

  Redmond looked at himself in the mirror, dressed in his priest’s habit. He gently flicked through his brother’s passport. He touched the worn cover of his favourite Bible.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  My brother’s keeper.

  Redmond knew suddenly what he must do. A void had been created when his brother died, a void that had to be filled.

  He would become his brother. He would carry on his good work. He would forsake evil, violence, and work for the common good. Damian had sacrificed his life for Redmond; now Redmond would donate his. They were twins, after all, almost identical. It would not be that difficult. As kids they were rarely mistaken for each other because their very different personalities were reflected both in their looks and demeanour. Redmond had always appeared cheeky and troublesome, while his brother looked like a choirboy. Their mother helped: dressing and cutting their hair to opposite extremes. It also helped their father, who was half-blind, half-drunk, to tell them apart. In addition, Redmond had a missing front tooth for a long time, where Damian had an endearing smile. Redmond had a permanently running nose, and if it wasn’t one eye with a sty it was the other, or often both. Damian passed through puberty with barely a pimple, but Redmond’s face looked like the collapse of Mount Doom. As they matured they grew more alike, but their interests and passions meant that they rarely spent time in each other’s company. When he became a priest Damian served in outlying parishes, while Redmond was either on the run or on remand. They had not strolled down the street in each other’s company for perhaps fifteen years. Nobody knew just how identical they had become. And now they never would.

  Redmond slipped his brother’s passport into his jacket pocket, then quickly packed Damian’s few possessions together into a small suitcase. He checked himself in the mirror again and found that he could hardly take his eyes off his own reflection.

  ‘Damian,’ he said, watching his own lips move.

  ‘I forgive you, Brother,’ said Damian.

  ‘I won’t let you down,’ said Redmond.

  85

  In the Bathroom

  ‘Linda - please.’

  ‘No! Go away!’

  ‘Linda! Come on, this is pointless.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say!’

  ‘Just unlock the door.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Look, Bertha’s a master of Tae kwon do. She’ll smash the door down if you don’t open it.’

  Bertha said, ‘Well, it’s more of a defensive art, and my feet aren’t what they were, and if you think I’m going to go damaging my own property, you’ve another think coming.’

  From the other side of the locked bathroom door Linda said weakly, ‘It’s not your property, and now it never will be, not after this. I’m mortified.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I thought your get-up was very sexy,’ said Walter. He wasn’t lying. Bizarre, but sexy too. When she’d opened the door to Walter, determined on seduction, only to find his sugar-granny with him, she’d looked somewhere between Mrs Robinson in The Graduate and the mad old biddy in Sunset Boulevard.

  God love her, Walter thought.

  ‘Well, what do you want us to do?’ Bertha asked.

  ‘I want you to blow out the candles, turn the lights on, then leave. I’m sorry for embarrassing you. I’ll understand if you don’t want to buy the apartment. If you do, I’ll send someone else to deal with it.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ said Walter.

  ‘There’s every need.’

  Walter sighed. ‘Well, have it your way. I’m sorry, Linda. It was a nice thought. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’

  They blew out the candles between them, Walter managing most because Bertha, though spry, didn’t have the puff for it.

  ‘All the best!’ Walter shouted back, switching the main lights back on then ushering Bertha out onto the landing.

  ‘Well, that was a bit of a shock to the system,’ said Bertha. ‘Had you been getting on well with her before?’

  ‘No, no. Purely business. She’s clearly, ahm, off her rocker.’

  ‘Well,’ Bertha said, ‘maybe it’s no bad thing.’

  Walter’s brow furrowed. ‘How so?’

  ‘We complain vociferously to her boss, and threaten to go to the papers unless he knocks a couple of grand off the price.’

  Walter laughed. ‘My God, Bertha, you’re a wily old bird.’

  ‘Less of the old,’ said Bertha, turning towards the stairs.

  Linda heard the front door close, and thanked God they were gone. She was sitting on the toilet, all Panda eyes and bunched-up toilet roll. Her baby-doll nightdress clung to her like a drenched nappy. She wanted to die. She had made a total and utter fool out of herself. She had lost Walter, lost the deal, and who knows, probably lost her job as well.

  What the hell was I thinking of? And what do I do now?

  She hauled herself up off the toilet seat, then cringed at her reflection in the mirror. I’m like one of those idiots who go on The X Factor or Pop Idol, convinced they can sing, and then the whole world laughs at them. The tears cascaded down her face again. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Stop it! You were just trying a little seduction! If he hadn’t brought that old bat with him everything would have been fine - you’d have been romping away! It’s only a little hiccup!

  She didn’t believe that for one moment. She firmly believed she had crossed the border from interestingly eccentric to certifiably mad. But thinking of hiccups reminded her of the bottles of Asti lining the fridge. Exactly what she needed right now. Linda splashed water onto her face, dried off, then unlocked the bathroom door and padded across the lounge and into the kitchen. She’d get drunk. There was the solution! Get pi**ed! She opened the fridge and removed a bottle. As she closed the door, a voice said, ‘Pour one for me, why don’t you?’

  Linda screamed and dropped the bottle. Walter, stepping out of an alcove on the other side of the fridge, caught it.

  ‘Good Jesus Christ!’ Linda yelled. ‘What the hell are you doing!?’ She instinctively moved her arms to cover her breasts, which were clearly visible through her nightdress. She did not feel the sex siren now.

  ‘Waiting for you to open the bathroom door,’ said Walter. He smiled sympathetically at her. ‘You look gorgeous,’ he said.

  Linda backed away. ‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘You said you were leaving.’

  ‘I know,’ said Walter, coming after her.

  ‘Where’s Bertha?’

  ‘Away home.’

  ‘Away laughing off into the night.’

  ‘Not at all. She understood completely.’

  ‘Yeah, bo**ocks.’

  ‘No, seriously. She thought it was quite sweet.’

  ‘Just wait there,’ said Linda, finally reversing into the bathroom and closing the door. ‘I need to get changed.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Walter, to the door.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Linda, turning the key. She had previously neatly folded her business suit onto the luxuriously tiled floor, and now she hurriedly began to pull it on.

  ‘You must think I’m such an eejit,’ she said, glaring at her reflection. Her hair was all over the place and her eyes were still badly smudged.

  ‘Yes,’ said Walter.

  She laughed finally. ‘I’m coming out now,’ she said, ‘but I have to warn you, I still look really scary.’

  ‘I’ll keep the lights low,’ said Walter.

  They sat facing each other in armchairs in the lounge, brimful cups of Asti in their hands and a second bottle waiting on the coffee table.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you brought Bertha with you.’

  ‘Well, as we didn’t use protection last time, I thought I’d better do so this time.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘She wanted to make sure the papers were in order. She wanted another
look at the property - I could hardly say no. And I didn’t expect …’

  ‘I thought it would be a nice surprise.’

  ‘It was. Up to a point.’

  ‘I get nervous, Walter. I’m sorry. On the phone today I talked such s**te, if you’ll pardon the expression, and I was worried I’d scare you off, so I wanted to do something to keep you interested.’ She shook her head. ‘In retrospect …’

  ‘It was a fantastic idea, Linda. I should have let you know. But I was just …’ Walter sighed. ‘I really like you, Linda.’

  ‘If you’re going to say let’s just be friends you can f**k off now. I don’t need that.’

  ‘I was going to say I really like you, Linda, full stop.’

  ‘Full stop?’

  ‘Full stop.’

  ‘Full stop what? I really like you, but?’

  ‘But nothing. I really like you.’

  ‘But let’s just be friends?’

  ‘No! For godsake.’

  ‘Oh. Well.’ She took a gulp of her drink. ‘I really like you too.’

  Thirty minutes later they were in bed. An hour after that she was lying in his arms thinking: He likes me, he likes me, he likes me, he likes me.

  Walter was thinking: I am such a b**tard.

  86

  Arrest

  Jimmy Marsh Mallow and Gary McBride arrived at New Allied Property Developments’ glass-fronted offices at a little after 10 a.m. Gary had called ahead without specifying what they wanted to talk to George Green, the Managing Director, about. George Green knew that Jimmy Marsh Mallow wasn’t coming to discuss parking tickets, but for such a smart man, hadn’t yet put two and two together.

  George was tall and thin, slightly stooped, and in his late forties. Many property developers start out building houses themselves, learning their trade from the bottom up, but George had never lifted a brick in his life. He came to property via Oxford University and the Classics. He was devoted to poetry and received some early acclaim for his own work, but was self-aware enough to know that ultimately it wasn’t good enough for anything other than vanity publication, and he would not countenance that. So he dropped poetry with the same finality with which he later jettisoned his first and second wives. Family money and pressure got him his first, initially disinterested start in property, transforming a Victorian shell into three luxury apartments. But once he saw the real money that could be made, and understood that he could do it without getting his hands dirty, George developed an abiding passion which more than filled the void left by his rejection of poetry. He specialised in turning brownfield industrial wastelands into gleaming new shopping malls and upmarket housing estates, though he had no qualms about turning harmless greenfield sites into low-cost public housing either. He just liked making deals, wielding influence, building things, and creating wealth, his own. He was probably, with the exception of a pharmaceutical giant and an absentee landlord, the richest man in Northern Ireland. He was used to meeting powerful men, and dominating conversations, but he felt uneasy from the moment Jimmy Mallow and his sidekick were shown into his expansive, river-view office.

  They shook hands. Marsh’s grip was solid, and George matched it. Gary just nodded at him.

  George slipped back in behind his desk. ‘Well, gentlemen, what’s all this—’

  ‘That’s some view,’ said Jimmy Marsh, ignoring the chair George had indicated and positioning himself by the window.

  ‘Yes, it is very relaxing,’ said George.

  ‘No shortage of apartments along here, is there? You build them all?’

  ‘Not all of them. The Windsor, the Winston, the Towerview. We’ve another one going up a bit further along.’

  ‘Business must be good.’

  ‘It’s up and down.’

  ‘Can’t have helped, that matter of the kid’s body being found in the river right outside, what, the Towerview?’ He turned to Gary for mock confirmation.

  ‘Towerview,’ said Gary, who had taken a seat.

  ‘Unfortunate,’ said George, ‘but a three-day wonder. That’s what you learn about the property business; you’re in it for the long haul.’

  Marsh remained motionless by the window. George looked at him for several moments, then switched his attention to Gary McBride. ‘Do you want to tell me what this is about?’

  ‘Well, he usually does most of the talking,’ said Gary, nodding at Marsh. ‘I tend to take notes and make smart comments.’

  ‘Not that smart,’ said Marsh, turning now.

  ‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion.’

  Marsh smiled, then took a seat beside him and looked at George. George clasped his hands. Marsh clasped his.

  ‘Gentlemen, I have a busy schedule. I find it better to come to the point sooner rather than—’

  ‘Did you have a busy schedule on Thursday, June the sixteenth?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Usually I hate cops who say, “We’ll ask the questions”,’ said Gary, ‘but we’ll ask the questions.’

  Before George could respond indignantly, Marsh said: ‘Are you married, George?’

  ‘I’m divorced. Twice. No children.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you mean, what happened? The marriages didn’t work out.’

  ‘You, ah, went over to the dark side, did you?’ Marsh asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You decided to play for the other team.’

  George’s brow furrowed, and then abruptly he burst into laughter. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marsh. ‘What do you think I’m suggesting?’

  George shook his head. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m trying to help you, gentlemen. I wish you would get to the point.’

  Marsh looked at him.

  Gary looked at him.

  George said, ‘Do you want me to call my solicitor?’

  Marsh said, ‘Do you want to call your solicitor?’

  ‘Oh for Christ sake. Inspector, I’m a—’

  ‘Powerful man? Yes, we know. Mr Green, Thursday June the sixteenth, say around six p.m., where were you?’

  George raised his hands helplessly. Then he pushed a button on his phone. ‘Karen, check my diary, would you? Where was I on June the sixteenth?’

  A young woman’s voice, probably belonging to the pretty girl they’d stared at on the way in, said, ‘June the sixteenth … Hold on.’

  George said: ‘Around six.’

  ‘p.m.,’ said Gary.

  ‘Hi. June the sixteenth, you were in and out of the office all day, with half a dozen meetings - do you want me to read out the list? Closest to six was … the Europa at five.’

  ‘Thank you, Karen. George pressed another button, then looked at Marsh. ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Us yes, you no.’

  ‘Chief Inspector, please, you’re starting to … Could you just be a little less cryptic? You know, half the secret of my success is that I’m always upfront about things.’

  ‘You hired a rent boy in Castle Street. Maybe you took him back to the Europa - we’ll find out - but you killed him. You chopped him up and you dumped him in the river.’

  George’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘As we speak, Forensics are going through your car, George, and we already have your phone records showing you called a pimp called Benny Caproni shortly before the boy was picked up.’

  ‘This isn’t … I didn’t

  Marsh stood, Gary with him.

  ‘We’re taking you in, George.’

  ‘But … but …’

  ‘You can call your solicitor from the station,’ said Gary, waving the tall, pale man out from behind his desk. George stood, then lifted an expensive fountain pen whose top had come off. He tried to fit the top back on, but his hands were shaking too much. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I can explain.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ said Marsh. He shook his head at George as Gary guide
d him past on rubbery legs. ‘I’m telling you, George, you shouldn’t mess with the wee lads. It always ends in tears. You of all people should know where to put your money. Bricks not pr**ks, George. Bricks not pr**ks.’

  87

  Chinese Whispers

  Thinking in racial stereotypes can have nothing to do with being racist and everything to do with not getting out much, or watching too many old black and white TV movies because you’ve no real life of your own. At least this is what Margaret thought as she stood beside May Li as May Li pulled and poked at her dresses, and then rifled through her designs, pausing only to hit a spittoon from nine feet away. It wasn’t actually a spittoon, of course. It was the bottom part of a ceramic plant pot which Louise had scrambled to put into place, based on past experience, and it served its purpose beautifully. The fact was that May Li spat. She spat on the footpath, she spat on the floor; if there was a spittoon, she spat in that, if there wasn’t, she gobbed into the handiest receptacle. She hacked it up from the back of her throat. She did it without thinking. She had been doing it all her life.

  The first time Margaret saw her do it, outside the shop, she thought, Well, she’s Chinese. The second time, inside, she thought, She’s really Chinese. But the third time, within a couple of minutes that is, she thought, This isn’t normal. Because if every Chinese spat as often as May Li did, Peking would be drowning in phlegm. As the makeshift spittoon went ping again, Margaret concluded that it had nothing to do with the fact that May Li was Chinese, but a lot to do with the fact that May Li liked to spit. Margaret glanced at Emma Cochrane, who was looking queasy, and Louise, who was holding her stomach.

  Margaret, who felt that she had her entire fantastical career riding on whether or not this little old Chinawoman guessed that she was a fraud and a charlatan, had decided as she re-entered the shop that she wasn’t going to be intimidated, that she was going to stand up and fight. There were moments when she experienced stultifying wavers in confidence, but this was not one of them. She would brazenly insist that the dresses were hers, no matter what.