Home Front

by Thomas Waugh

  Gunmetal grey clouds congregated overhead, like a smack of jellyfish, as Marshal walked towards the end of a small jetty and dropped the body in the water, after fastening the dead man to some old dumbbells he owned. It was not the first corpse disposed of in the Thames. It would not be the last, either. A few bubbles rose to the surface just after the corpse was swallowed up by the murky river, as if it were burping after a meal.

  He was diligent in cleaning the van, mindful of not leaving any trace evidence of Nolan. Of his crime. Sin. He heard the voice of Foster inside his head. Better to be safe than sorry. Marshal hoped that his friend was looking down on him, witnessing how he was fulfilling his promise. He did not know whether he felt half-redeemed or half-damned, as he smoked three cigarettes in succession after climbing into the cab of the vehicle.

  Like a hand drawn to a flame, Marshal watched the video over again. Nolan had given up the names of his confederates, who had been present when his friend was murdered. One of the names, Kevin Morrison, had featured in the intelligence files, along with a photograph. Marshal recalled how Morrison possessed a protruding Mr Punch chin. Bushy, ginger eyebrows rested on his forehead like a couple of dead caterpillars. He had been arrested for smuggling contraband several years ago and a was person of interest in a series of recent car bomb attacks in Derry. Morrison was a mere foot-soldier, however.

  Marshal was determined to work his way up, not down, the food chain.

  15.

  The day after Marshal returned from Kent, he contacted Oliver Porter. He wanted to start turning the screw on his target. Marshal briefly played out the scenario of forwarding the incriminating video onto the authorities. But how incriminating would it prove to be? It was now doubtful, to say the least, that the prosecution could call Nolan as a witness. There would be questions concerning the source of the evidence. Mullen could still claim plausible deniability. There was still no irrefutable proof that Nolan was acting on Mullen’s orders. His alibi was still sound. The statesman would claim that the prosecution was a conspiracy and politically motivated. Knowing the furore that it could cause, the Crown Prosecution Service might even spike its guns and drop the case altogether. The accused might claim diplomatic immunity - or flee to a non-extradition country. There was more than one way that the fish could slip through the net. Mullen could elude both justice and vengeance, if the two were not one and the same thing. Marshal decided to pursue his own form of justice. He could still use the video to his advantage.

  “You are playing with fire,” Porter warned, after Marshal disclosed his strategy, as he tossed Violet another dog treat during their walk. It was a beautiful day, aside from the cloud his friend was casting over it.

  “I’ll need to, if I am going to smoke the bastard out. I have a plan, to reel in the fish.”

  “You know as well as I do, James. Man plans, God laughs.”

  Porter was tempted to enquire more into the events at the wharf. But he was wary of asking questions that he did not want to know the answers to. I’m retired, he told himself, more than once. He assented to Marshal’s request, however, in recommending a journalist who would be willing to run a story on Mullen.

  Towards the end of the call, Marshal asked after Grace. The first thing he had done, when returning from Kent, was check his phone for a message from his girlfriend. Or should he now call her his ex-girlfriend? If not for Foster’s death, she might now be his fiancé. Grace was now becoming Gatsby’s green light for Marshal. Distant. Part-fantasy.

  “As much as I may be an admirer of Hartley’s titular novel, I cannot act as a go-between for you and Grace. You should make the call. But you should not wait around forever to do so.”

  An unerring silence ensued. Porter even thought that the connection might be lost. At the other end of the line Marshal stared at his bare hand and imagined a wedding ring on his finger. Might it not cut into his skin like the ties he had placed around Nolan’s wrists?

  Grace had now swapped over a photo of the happy couple with one of the bookshop on her screensaver. She visited the store every day in an effort to stay busy, distracted. She received a barrage of messages, from the likes of Xanda Doleman and Nigel Raglan, asking her out to dinner. Grace neither accepted nor declined the offers.

  John Mullen was about to find out, if he did not already know, that a week was a long time in politics. He turned his flabby hand into a flabby fist and, mallet-like, pounded his desk in frustration and rage. The measure of Bushmills in the tumbler was twice as normal. He had put his phone on silent due to the incessant ringing and pinging messages, although it still lit up and vibrated regularly.

  Duggan paced up and down in a corner of the office, calling confederates in London and Belfast, enquiring as to the whereabouts of his cousin. He cursed his name more than once. He felt like killing him - if he wasn’t dead already. His nose was screaming out for cocaine, like a child in a supermarket demanding sweets.

  Several newspapers, tabloid and broadsheet alike, were strewn across the desk. Each headline rankled, knotting up the statesman’s stomach.

  “Sinn Fein politician uses taxpayer money to fund love nest with high-class prostitute… Tonight, Josephine… An escort with her John… DUP asks for enquiry into misuse of public money… Beauty and the Beast… Beauty call… Sinn Shame…”

  Compromising photographs accompanied the articles. Photos of the couple leaving and entering their respective apartment blocks. They were kissing and holding hands in some. Josephine was picking crumbs of food from his chin in another. Mullen found himself reading some of the comments when he started going through some of the coverage online.

  “She looks more like his daughter, or granddaughter… Is he about to kiss or eat her? It’s sick. He’s a pervert… I preferred it when he was in bed with the IRA… We need to clean out the Augean stables of Sinn Fein. My money should be used to pay for nurses, not for politicians to pay for tarts who dress up as nurses.”

  Mullen had received a call from a journalist, Trevor Giles, the evening before, asking if the politician would like to respond to the story before it went to print. It would be too late for his lawyer to try and slap an injunction on the story. Essentially the facts were correct, although that would not prevent the statesman from staunchly refuting the salacious claims. The photographs were particularly damning. Mullen was tempted to bribe or threaten the journalist, but he could not be sure if the call was being recorded, or if there were people listening in on the other end of the line.

  Another call came through, this time in the middle of the night. It was from the party secretary, Allan Boyle. Mullen could remember when Boyle was a teenager, rattling a collection tin in the pubs, fundraising for the cause. He could also remember Boyle in his twenties, vomiting after witnessing his first kneecapping. The former university student, a self-proclaimed “Marxist and intellectual”, was always keen to pen-push, rather than hold a gun as a volunteer. Boyle was a snivelling, cowardly bastard who had always felt uncomfortable and deficient in the company of the veteran campaigners, Mullen judged.

  “You know that I do not care what you do in your private life. We all have our indulgences,” Boyle remarked, sounding more like a Westminster mandarin than a docker’s son from Belfast. Mullen thought to himself how Boyle’s indulgences included paying rent boys and preferring singing the Internationale over any rebel song. “But the voters - and our donors - do care about such things. The party is going to have to suspend you, pending an investigation. We cannot allow our opponents to generate too much political capital out of this. The party and cause must come first. The wind will blow over eventually, however, and we can re-assess things then. You will understand that it will be best for everyone if we do not put you forward for selection when it comes to the next election.”

  A vein throbbed in Mullen’s temple as his insipid colleague spoke. How dare the upstart, who would not be in the position he was in if not for the generation who came before him, lecture him on what was best for the
party and cause! Mullen’s nose grew redder then normal. He bit his tongue and ground his teeth. Mullen would not have been surprised if Boyle was behind the leaking of the material. It was no secret how Boyle wanted to usher the old guard out and turn the party into a socialist endeavour. It was strange, comical, that the party was willing to overlook his terrorist past and current criminal enterprises - but God forbid he take a mistress.

  Duggan worked out that the photographs had been taken after the soldier’s death. The Head of Security posed that there could be a connection - but could offer no other intelligence concerning the issue. The apparent disappearance of Nolan could surely not be a coincidence. His cousin would have had access to their employer’s schedule, to arrange the photographs. The articles had also contained emails from Mullen, which condemned him as much as the photograph and lead story. Duggan judged that Nolan had been cc’d on the emails, some of which had been sent over a year ago. The emails had never been intended for public consumption. Mullen had described a rabbi as a “buck-toothed kike” and a health minister as a “mincing lefty”. If Nolan was involved in the leak, he would not have acted alone, Duggan reasoned. He would have been bribed or coerced, but by who? There were more questions than answers. One such question was, if Nolan had been turned – did he still possess a copy of the video to pass on to the press or police?

  Mullen had made too many enemies over the years to narrow candidates down to a single suspect. It was just as likely that the photos could have been arranged and leaked by a seeming ally. Sinn Fein had spent just as much time over the years in-fighting, as well as combating their opponents. Mullen would have been capable of destroying a rival in such a way, so why should others not be capable of such actions?

  It was now midday. Mullen had just spent the past half an hour on the phone to his accountant. It was time to move more of his money into his offshore accounts, so the party, the authorities and his wife could not have access to his capital. He also instructed Duggan to call in some debts. “Don’t accept any excuses. Punish anyone who is unable or unwilling to pay. We need a show of strength right now.”

  The politician mopped his brow and sipped, or more than sipped, his whiskey. He called his wife again. No answer. He then called his daughter again. No answer. Both before and after those calls, he rang Josephine. No answer. The statesman was not used to having his calls go unanswered. Mullen needed to speak to his mistress, to warn or pay her off so that she did not speak to the media and make a bad situation worse. He prayed for an earthquake or outbreak of war, somewhere in the world, to take the story off the front pages.

  Email after email came in, like bullets spraying out of a machine gun. Talks that he had arranged were suddenly cancelled. He instructed Caitlin to keep any fees, if they had paid in advance. He was formally suspended from a couple of company boards he sat on. On being told by Caitlin that he was starting to receive a torrent of messages from his constituents, the statesman gnashed his teeth and lashed out:

  “Fuck the fucking constituents. Those needy, whining bastards are the least of my concerns,” he bellowed, before throwing a coffee cup across the room – and smashing a photograph of himself and Mo Mowlam which hung on the wall.

  Mullen barely had time to think about the source of the betrayal or attack, let alone what he would do to the person or persons responsible. He was tempted at one point to unleash Duggan on the journalist behind the article. “Pay him or pull his teeth out. Just get me a name.” But he changed his mind. Any move against Giles might prove the final nail in his coffin.

  The sun was just about to set. The day had been long, as if stretched out upon a rack. For every fire he had tried to put out, two flared up. Mullen was sitting with his head in his hands when he glanced at his computer screen to see another email flash up. It was from a solicitor, one Adam Marcus. Marcus informed Mullen that his wife had engaged the law firm to commence divorce proceedings. He should not attempt to contact his wife. As much as it had strangely been a highlight of his day when he read the word “divorce”, the words “financial settlement” had been less welcome.

  Marshal had accessed Nolan’s email and contacted Giles, playing the disgruntled employee who was owed money by his employer. Payback would now come in the form of ruining Mullen’s reputation – and selling his story for cash (Giles transferred £10k into Nolan’s bank account to buy the rights to the photos). Marshal forwarded on the photographs, along with a wealth of compromising emails.

  Evening.

  Mullen’s foot tapped up and down beneath his desk. It did so when the politician was anxious or horny. His tie was askew. His grey complexion resembled parchment. The day had aged him more than the past year. Duggan had just discovered the payment from the journalist to his cousin. Nolan had ratted them out, for a measly ten grand. Or had he?

  “My cousin still might not be behind things. Something else could be going on here,” Duggan argued, not just in an attempt to defend his kinsman (and a potential error of judgement on his part). No one had seen hide nor hair of Nolan in the past twenty-four hours or so. He could have been used and disposed of. Disappeared.

  “Well, do your damned job and find out who it is. Someone is fucking with me. We need to start fucking with them,” the statesman raged, running his fingers through what little hair he had left. His hand trembled slightly as he poured himself another whiskey.

  His chin buried itself into his chest as he slumped even further into his chair. The large, expensive Eames had once felt like a veritable throne. But Mullen’s kingdom was crumbling around him. He felt more like he was in the stocks, than sitting on any throne. Money would soon be slipping through his fingers, like grains of sand. He once heard a celebrity call divorce the “love tax”. Courtiers were not replying to his summons. His queen - and mistress - had abandoned him. How long before the tabloids found Josephine - and paid her thirty pieces of silver to crucify him? People were treacherous and cynical. It was what made them people. In the same way that he was calling in his debts, Mullen received a couple of calls from unofficial business partners. They were calling in debts that Mullen owed to them. It was a signal that he was no longer considered a good bet.

  The shit-storm had no intention of abating, it seemed. There were still plenty of thunderclaps and lightning strikes to come, he imagined. Mullen tried to call Josephine again. He wanted to just hear her voice, as well as order her not to speak to the media. No answer.

  A blister was forming on her palm from where she had gripped the carrying case too tightly throughout the day. The blaring lights of Cork airport hurt her eyes. She put her sunglasses on, again. The escort deliberately dressed unglamorously and wore her hair differently to how it had been in the photos. Several youths, who were part of a stag party, wolf-whistled at the woman. Josephine hoped that they would catch a dose of the clap. An ageing stewardess, with a tan as fake as her Armani watch, offered up a haughty or disapproving look - as if she had recognised the scarlet woman. In reply, Josephine replied with a defiant or scornful expression. She then thought how paranoia might be setting in. Had the stewardess really recognised her?

  She had immediately packed some essentials that morning, after summoning the courage to speak to her mother - and request to come home. The call girl had first tried to get through to Luke (the hedge fund manager) and Jamahl (a DJ), hoping that one of them might take her in or pay for her to stay in a quiet, boutique hotel outside of London. No answer. Her nightmare was coming true. The escort had wanted to be rich, but she never wanted to be famous. Josephine turned her phone on silent, as call after call and message after message come in from private or unknown numbers. Some texts and voicemails offered escalating sums to sell her story. She was half-expecting former clients, who had been celebrities, to contact her - or sell their stories to secure a sixteenth minute of fame.

  A few other old, creepy clients got in touch:

  “I’m here for you.”

  When she heard the voicemails, calling her “Bea
uty”, it made her skin crawl.

  A couple of girls, also in the trade, offered their support. But, for most of her friends, their silence was deafening. It spoke for the equality of the sexes that women could be as heartless as men.

  Josephine had made a promise to Mullen, as she had done so for her other clients, that she would always remain discreet about their time together. Others might not judge her to be honourable, but Josephine believed in keeping her word. “When you give your word, you must keep it,” her father had told her when she was just a little girl. It would be bad for future business if she was seen as being indiscreet too.

  Thankfully, she would be home by midnight. Josephine saw Mullen’s number flash up once more. She was tempted to answer it. She had some sympathy for what he might be going through. It was likely that his career would be over. She liked him. But she did not like him that much - and ignored the call. Instead, she sent a text message to her mother to say that she had landed safely. Her mother had avoided speaking about the affair over the phone. Her silence spoke volumes. Josephine was bracing herself for a lecture, or Catholic sermon, tonight or in the morning. The mother would doubtless tell her daughter that she had brought shame on the family - and herself. But she would also put her arms around her daughter and cook-up her favourite meal. Josephine was more worried about disappointing her father. She could no longer be daddy’s innocent little girl. It would break her heart if she had somehow broken his - if he proved too embarrassed to go down the pub or look her in the eye. Her mother had said over the phone: “This could be a good thing for you. You can start over and train to be a nurse again.”

  Right now, it did not feel that a “good thing” was happening. Right now, it felt like whoever had taken those photographs had snatched her life away.

  Josephine switched hands and continued to pull the carrying case behind her.