Legitimate Target

by Dee McInnes

  Noreen wore a thick line of mascara, black trousers and shoes and a burgundy shirt. ‘Danny’s Place’ was embroidered across the chest pocket. “I only have fifteen minutes,” she said blowing smoke out. “What can I do for ye?”

  “I’m interested in speaking to Maeve Donnelly,” Viv said. “Last night, you said you were cousins?”

  “Maeve? What do ye want with her?”

  “You said some very interesting things when we met.”

  “I did? That’d be a first,” Noreen laughed, and took another drag. “Who were ye there with?”

  “My girlfriend is engaged to the film producer.”

  “Aye. I used to be into that sort of thing whenever I was younger,” Noreen said.

  “All the world’s a stage,” Viv said. “And all the men and women merely players.”

  “That’s right enough.”

  “So said Shakespeare, I can’t lay claim to it,” Viv smiled. “You might remember you saw me with someone last night. He’s asked me on a date. You said he had treated your cousin badly. I’d be very interested in her opinion.”

  Noreen tipped her head to one side, the cigarette hovering in mid-air. “Dermott Donnelly,” she said. “It’s coming back to me, seeing the two of ye together. Maeve and him divorced, a couple o’ years back. I’m not sure if she would want to talk about him. They didn’t part on great terms, although he still sees their daughter every month. It was part of the settlement.”

  “I’d really appreciate it,” Viv said. “I’ve had some bad experiences myself where romance is concerned and wouldn’t want to repeat them. I work in Belfast so I’m only here today, if Maeve would have five minutes? I could make it worth her while. Maybe she could get some extra things for her daughter. I know teenagers are expensive.”

  Noreen took a last drag of her cigarette and ground it under the heel of her shoe. “I’ll ask,” she said, pulling out a phone with a cracked screen and a diamanté cover. Noreen moved away from the table. Viv strained to overhear the conversation but could only pick up snatches. “No notion,” she managed to hear Noreen say, and “It could be worth a few quid.”

  “Maeve doesn’t really know how she can help ye,” Noreen said, coming back to where Viv was waiting. “But she’s home, if you want to call in? She lives five minutes from here, number eight Rosemount Street. Fourth door from the corner shop. Good luck to ye, I have to get back.”

  Google Maps led Viv straight there. A tabby cat was cowering under a hedge outside the house. A narrow path of concrete slabs led up to the entrance. Number eight was the last in a block of terraced houses, circa nineteen fifty. Its brown UPVC windows, two narrow ones on either side of the front door and a larger one to the right, were fitted with vertical blinds.

  Maeve opened the door before Viv had a chance to ring the bell. Maeve wore a grey, hooded top over a pink T shirt that strained across her chest. ‘Born To Party’ was emblazoned in sparkly letters. Maeve folded her arms and stared at Viv with suspicion, her eyes narrow slits underneath a shaggy fringe. Maeve had a plastic slide-comb on the top of her head and jet-black hair trailed across her shoulders.

  “I hear you want to talk about my ex. I’ve no clue what help I can be. I’m hardly his biggest fan.”

  “Hello, thanks for agreeing to chat,” Viv said. “My name’s Vivien. I’m looking for some information about Dermott. What’s he’s like, as boyfriend material.”

  “Why should I tell ye anything?” Maeve said. “He left me and my daughter high and dry. I’ve a part-time job that starts in thirty minutes. Time’s money ye know.”

  “I could offer you something, twenty pounds say, for your help. My last partner turned out to be a nasty piece of work, I don’t want to make the same mistake again,” Viv said. Her relationship with Harris Clarke had ended because she put her job before him and couldn’t give him the commitment he wanted, but she wasn’t about to tell Maeve the truth. All Viv wanted was to find out anything that might help to unlock the past. She was tired of hoping that someone would review the atrocity, that someday someone would catch whoever was responsible for her father’s murder. Approaching Dermott’s ex-wife might turn out to be a rash decision, but it was a risk she was prepared to take.

  Maeve unfolded her arms and swept her fringe from her face. “Call it forty,” she said.

  “Okay, sure,” Viv said, unzipping the pocket of her coat.

  “Wait. You’d better come inside,” Maeve said, stepping back. “There are some right stickybeaks on this street.”

  Viv followed her through a passage lined by several pairs of discarded shoes. Maeve opened a door that led into a sitting room. The windows overlooked a narrow garden, the river Foyle and Derry city visible in the distance. “That’s a great view,” Viv said.

  “The best thing about this shite hole,” Maeve said. She took the two twenties Viv held out and stuffed them into the pocket of her hoodie. “Me and Dermott were together for nine years years, ‘tho we separated for three of them before it was official. He drinks to forget about us, to forget the past. That was one of the main problems.”

  “The drinking, or the past?” Viv said.

  “Both of them. Equally,” Maeve said, looking irked. Her fringe had fallen back over her eyebrows. “His mother had the exact same problem. She spent most of her time down at the Gallion Club. She never got over Cara’s death. Neither of them did, to tell you the honest truth.”

  “Cara?”

  “Dermott’s kid sister. She died during The Conflict when she was seven years old.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Viv said.

  “Aye, well, there was a lot of bad stuff happened in them days. You’re not from around here, by yer accent. I’m sure ye found that our Dermott can be very charming, whenever he takes the notion, and he still has his good looks.”

  “As I told your cousin, I’m working on a project, up in Belfast,” Viv said. “Dermott and I met at a function last night and we got talking. Later on, Noreen mentioned that he had been involved in the terrorist fighting, had been involved in some serious stuff?”

  “I’m saying nothing on that score,” Maeve said. “Noreen can sometimes shoot her mouth off whenever she’s had a few. She needs to learn to keep her trap shut. I have Anna-Rose to think about.”

  “Okay,” Viv said. “I see.” She tried a different tack. “Where’s Dermott been living, since the two of you split up? He said he was staying at the City Hotel last night, but I assume he’s not always there...if money’s tight?”

  “His mother lives not far up the road from here,” Maeve said. “He’s been staying with her on and off. Between that and my brother’s place, over the border.”

  “He mentioned a close schoolfriend,” Viv said.

  “Our Terry, aye, Mac to his friends. My maiden name was Mackle.”

  Viv made a mental note. “I see. Dermott said your uncle had a holiday house near Buncrana, isn’t that right?” Viv said, remembering the conversation at Grianan Fort, the wind howling across the mountain. Remembering how she had felt about Dermott before his true colours were revealed.

  “Uncle Hugh is long dead,” Maeve said. “It suits our Terry to stay down there, living like a hermit, especially since his… accident.”

  “I was thinking of doing a bit of sightseeing around Inishowen, before I go back. My ancestors were Irish,” Viv said. “Dermott offered to show me around and I’d like to surprise him, if you think he’d be down in Buncrana with Mac?”

  “You could try Terry’s place, if you’ve really nothing better to do. I’d offer to put yous in touch, but there’s no mobile signal down there,” Maeve said. “And don’t expect no red-carpet treatment. My brother’s not like Dermott. He doesn’t make friends as easily. His house is called ‘The Lookout’, right opposite Lisfannon beach. More of a hut than a house. Don’t tell anyone I sent ye,” Maeve said.

  “Okay, thank you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Viv thought about Pete’s warning
that some stones were best left unturned, but she couldn’t stop now. He’d sent a message to say that he and Aidan were on their way to a place where Karol’s girlfriend worked.

  Viv decided she would wait and weigh up her options when she got to Mac’s house. Jump in with both feet? Confront Dermott and gauge his reaction? Pretend he had revealed more than he had done last night? Threaten to go to the police? Somehow persuade him to hand himself in. To give up the names of the others involved in the ambush. Would he adopt the same stance as Maeve? Refuse to say anything. Send Viv packing…or something worse? The information about his sister’s death might offer some leverage. Before she drove away from Rosemount Street, Viv searched the online database of people who had died during The Troubles. There was no match for Cara or Ciara Donnelly, no matter how wide an age range she put in.

  A book published sixteen years earlier by Sutton, ‘Bear in Mind These Dead’ had been turned into an online database that chronicled the three thousand, five hundred and thirty-two deaths attributed to the Northern Irish conflict between sixty-nine and two-thousand and one. Viv sometimes looked up her father’s name and read the stark summary: 15 October 1986. Hunter, Sean (64) Catholic. Status: Prison Officer, Killed by: Irish Republican Army (IRA). Shot during gun and booby trap bomb attack at the Blackthorn Inn, Dunross, near Magilligan, County Londonderry. The black and white thumbnail picture of her father wearing his prison officer’s uniform, was badly blurred… like her vision, each time she read through the words.

  Perhaps Cara’s death had slipped through the net? Maybe her death hadn’t been attributed to sectarian violence, or, like Andrew Haslett, the true nature of her death had been concealed.

  Viv stopped the car. The beach and the choppy, grey water of Lough Swilly were to her left. A row of single-storey houses extended along the opposite side of the road. Most were conventional rendered brickwork painted in white or pastel colours, beneath pitched, slate roofs. It was not difficult to identify ‘The Lookout.’ Mac’s house was a rectangular box of army green, corrugated-steel surrounded by a three-barred fence. The roof was flat, with a silver, metal chimney poking up at one corner. Several steps led up a steep, grassy bank to the black, wooden gate and door beyond.

  She rapped the metal knocker and waited. There was no sound or movement from the other side. She gave another rat-tat-tat and looked in through one of the white, panelled windows.

  “He’s out,” a voice said.

  Viv turned around, trying to locate its owner.

  “I see’d him leaving, I suppose it was about an hour ago.”

  On the other side of the fence was a pale lemon coloured house. Viv glimpsed a stooped figure, leaning on the handle of a yard-brush. An old man. He shuffled closer.

  “Hello. Would you know where I could find, Mr Mackle, Mac?” she asked.

  “He’ll probably be down at the pier...he goes out most mornings. Fishin’,” the old man said. “Christ knows what he expects tay catch at this time o’ the year.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Is it far?”

  “Follay the road. Bear left after the golf course, toward the harbour,” the neighbour said.

  The ripples on the Lough were gunmetal grey, reflecting the sky. Pete had left his coat on the back seat and she put it on over her jacket, before climbing out. Two battered fishing-boats were raised up on bricks. She walked around a pool of standing water. Steps led down to a well-maintained lifeboat and an orange inflatable, secured behind a mesh fence. There was no-one in sight.

  A red and white candy-striped lighthouse loomed in the distance near the lichen-stained sea wall. Further along the pier, she came across a battered fifty-CC motor scooter with twin panniers, propped on its kick stand. The structure that jetted out into the grey water was bordered by a metre-high railing on two of its sides. On the third, ankle-high rails were interspersed with rusty mooring rings. A solitary seagull screeched overhead.

  She noticed a dark figure at the far end of the pier and a fishing rod propped up against the railing. As she got closer, she saw it was man on a low, fold-up chair. Beside the chair there was a plastic tub and a shopping bag. The man was sitting with his back to her, facing out towards Inch Island.

  “Hello,” she called out, not wishing to startle him. “Are you Mac?”

  He turned his head. The fisherman had a red nose, weather-beaten cheeks. The rest of his face was hidden behind a thick beard. “Who’s askin’?”

  She approached the high, end rail and leant against the cold metal. “I’m a friend of Dermott Donnelly,” she said, extending her right hand. “I was hoping I might find him.”

  The bearded man wiped a palm on his thigh and stood up. He held her fingers in a rough grip. His eyes were the same colour as the water. She found it hard to read his expression.

  “You’ve not long missed him,” he said, after a pause. “Freeman had some hangover when I saw him earlier. You two must have had a great night. Hair of the dog?” He leant down, opened the bag and extracted two cans of beer. He held one out.

  She ripped open the tab. “Cheers. Thank you. Dermott mentioned me?”

  “Aye. Said he’d met a classy English bird. And here ye are,” Mac made a sound at the back of his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a snort.

  “You said, Freeman?”

  “What? Oh, aye. Sorry. That’s just what we call him. It’s the meaning of his Christian name, in Irish.” Mac wore a thick, camouflage jacket and a pair of scuffed, brown boots, laced through D rings. He seemed much more affable than Maeve had led her to hope. Maybe Viv had caught him on a good day, or maybe he was just another drunk?

  “Have you caught anything?” she asked. “What sort of fish are out there?”

  “There’s not a lot of variety at this time of year,” Mac said. “Mostly Doggies and Thornies, nothing fancy. But I don’t expect ye came all the way down here to talk to me about fishin’? Dermott’s gone away back to Derry… his ma needed him, or something. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey. How did ye find me?”

  “Dermott told me about your uncle’s hide-out, when we met the first time,” she said. “And your neighbour suggested I might find your here. Dermott had some fond memories about the times he spent down here, on holiday.”

  She sipped the beer, some sort of cheap Continental pilsner.

  “Holiday?” Mac made the same sound again. He coughed up a glob of phlegm and spat it over the side. “That’s one way of putting it. I may as well take this line in,” he said, reaching towards his rod that clamped onto the railing. “There’s not much doing today.”

  Mac dragged the toe of his left boot along the concrete as he shifted his weight.

  “Could I buy you a sandwich, or something hot to eat,” Viv said, trying to think of a way to prolong the conversation. “This beer isn’t bad, but I’ve not had any lunch. And I’m driving back.”

  Mac didn’t say anything. He carried on packing away his rod. She listened to the surge of the waves beneath their feet, and the seagull wailing overhead as it spied Mac giving up so early. Viv had her fingers crossed.

  “Are ye that taken with him?” Mac said. “It all seems a bit sudden like, but the feelin’ seems to be mutual. What do they say? Love struck? ‘Tho Freeman deserves a bit of female company, since my wee sister let him down so badly. There’s a pub half a mile up the road from here. The Reel Inn. It does some decent grub, nothing fancy, mind you.” Mac drained his can, crumpled it into the carrier bag. “You go on ahead, I’ll catch you up.”

  Viv watched Mac manoeuvre the moped onto the pavement outside the pub, his dismantled fishing rod rested across the handlebars. He trailed his left foot as he approached the door. Mac wrestled his camouflage jacket off and hung it over the back of the chair. Underneath, he was wearing a black, cable-knit sweater.

  “You came on a bit of a fishin’ expedition yerself,” Mac said, taking the chair across
the table from Viv. “Unfortunately, like me, yer goin’ home empty handed.”

  “How’s things, Mac?” the barman called. He came out from behind the counter and strolled over, setting down two placemats and a knife and fork, wrapped in a thin, paper napkin. “Who’s yer good-lookin’ friend?”

  “Table service, Rab?” Mac snorted. “Makes a change. This here is Freeman’s latest squeeze.”

  The barman’s stomach bulged over the waistband of his jeans and he eyed Viv up “What can I get ye, Miss?”

  Mac ordered a pint of stout and Viv opted for a half of draught lager. She scanned the white, laminated card that listed the so called, lunchtime specials.

  “The fish n’chips and the steak pie are usually edible,” Mac volunteered.

  The barman came back carrying their drinks and took their order.

  “You’re single yerself, I take it?” Mac said, when Rab had retreated behind the bar.

  “Yes, for a while now,” Viv said. “Tell me something about Dermott,” she said. “If we’re going to make a go of it…I gather he’s had a difficult time, since he split up with his wife. I think he misses his daughter. He just has the one, I think?”

  “One, aye. I suppose,” Mac said.

  “Unless there’s a string of children I should know about?” Viv laughed.

  “Naw. Just… Anna-Rose.” Mac hesitated, his steel-grey eyes piercing hers. “What do ye do, across the water? Freeman didn’t say.”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Have ye written anything I’d have heard about?”

  “It’s unlikely,” Viv said.

  “Can I trust ye, not to go blabbing, or putting this about?” Mac looked around the bar. “Some of these walls have ears.”

  Viv leant her elbows on the table and pulled her chair closer. “Most definitely. I don’t know anyone here, or in Derry.”