Oak and Stone

by Dave Duggan

  The conversation with Hetherington had unsettled me. The gun was the thing. Standard police-work. No body? Find the murder weapon. Find the killer. And I knew enough about my young colleague to know that he would do his best to track it down. Just like he said.

  Ruby’s mini-stand was at the edge of Waterloo Place, in a direct line with the people making their way towards the Guildhall Square and the main stage. I stood where I hoped she might see me and waved. She waved her besom above her head in return, then lifted her microphone in salute.

  She burled as she sang, one full turn. She was a caller at an ancient temple of the blues. I smiled, then moved back towards the river. There would be fireworks. Especially if Hetherington found the gun.

  I left Waterloo Square and went to the front of The Guildhall, facing the river, where I climbed onto the raised area in front of the café. People in various costumes sat at tables, eating cakes and drinking coffee and hot chocolate, iridescent marshmallows bobbing in the froth. The living were living it up on the night of the dead. I could see that the crowd was six or seven deep at the railings along the river. More people milled and promenaded behind them. Three mummies, shaggy bandages unravelling, boosted each other onto a low wall in front of me, then laughed as one by one they fell off. I secured my vantage point for the fireworks. The announcer began a countdown. The crowd joined in. Fathers lifted toddlers onto their shoulders. Mothers urged babies, bundled in blankets under spider’s web covers, to look to the skies.

  We all raised our eyes to the inky blackness. The street lights along the riverside dimmed as the first belly-thump sounded, to be immediately followed by a bright flower-burst that flashed light on the last golden leaves dangling on the trees in the park opposite. We were star-lit for a brief moment and we oohed. More bursts followed: great orbs of shattering colour; streamers that raced lacy rainbows past each other; sparkling comets, fizzing into darkness. We loved them all. We were charmed by cheating the night, falsifying the dark by making bright and being together.

  Even I felt I belonged. For the duration of a fizz-bomb.

  When the last great tumult of light and sound left the sky and the families with young children began to process away from the river towards their cars and home, I stood a while, staring across the emptiness, my eyes adjusting just enough to see the Morrigan’s eyes blaze through the silk-black fabric of nightness, the eyes I had seen in my window, in my dreams, in my books, on my cell wall and in my working hours in search of questions I struggled to frame.

  Did I kill Todd Anderson? Did someone kill him with my gun? Someone I knew?

  I was beginning to ask ‘why?’ when a voice beside me said ‘Hello … , eh, detective …’ and I turned to see Donna Bradley, costumed as a witch, complete with hat and broomstick. Beside her stood her feline familiar, Teresa, wearing cat’s whiskers, but not conceding much more, like me really, in character as herself: a football under her arm, a sports shirt I couldn’t identify – her school perhaps? – and on her head, a peaked cap branded Dreamtime.

  ‘Ah, hello, Mrs. Bradley. Great fireworks,’ I said.

  ‘Fantastic. They were brilliant, weren’t they Teresa?’

  Teresa nodded. I grinned. Her muteness was developing into standard teenage communication. And she wore the cap as a further badge of her age.

  ‘Dreamtime,’ I said, pointing. ‘You still got the boots?’

  Teresa nodded again.

  ‘And school? Okay?’

  Teresa shrugged. A positive answer.

  ‘She’s flying … detective … ,’ Donna Bradley ventured.

  ‘Eddie.’

  ‘Flying, yeh. Eddie. I’m Donna, well, you know that. We … are you on your own? We’re going to have a hot chocolate, aren’t we Teresa? If you’d like …’

  There was a kindness, in her heavily mascaraed eyes, that I rarely know, but before I could reply she rushed on.

  ‘No, sorry, no. You probably have friends to meet. Or something. Only, Teresa talks about you. I mean, she writes notes, you know. Nothing … nice notes.’

  ‘Thanks, Donna. Thanks, Teresa. Maybe I’ll call up to the house some day I’m up around your way, though, well, not everyone likes to have the cops calling. Even socially. Maybe especially socially.’

  For the briefest moment I did see myself as part of a threesome. A man, a woman and a teenage girl. Hot chocolates and chocolate brownies marshalled in front of us. Laughter lighting up our frothy lips. To someone passing by, simply another family group.

  I had embarrassed Donna, in front of her daughter. Her kindness floundered somewhere in the clefts wrought by the relationships between a man and a woman, between a cop and a citizen.

  ‘Ach, I know,’ said Donna. ‘I understand. Don’t think … you know …’

  ‘Listen, have a good night. I’m due to meet some people for a drink, see out the rest of the night.’

  I made it seem plausible. I had no one to see, at least no one living. I only had appointments with ghosts.

  ‘I wanted to … did … well, had you any luck with the man?’

  I knew she meant Todd Anderson.

  ‘No. Investigations are continuing. There’s been no breakthroughs …’

  ‘I thought that,’ she said. ‘I mean, I would have read something in the news feeds or seen it on tv. You know, him being a footballer. They did have a big memorial for him at the ground. And then nothing.’

  I could have said it’s always like that. Death and then nothing, sooner or later. In Todd Anderson’s case, at least locally, it had been sooner, though it was taking longer to enter nothingness in my world, following Hetherington’s visit to Manchester and Dalzell’s stirrings.

  Donna beckoned Teresa closer and handed her a tenner.

  ‘Teresa, go and get us two hot chocolates – loads of marshmallows for me – and two buns, the brownies you like.’

  Teresa stuck to the spot for a moment, a mix of fear and refusal in her eyes. Then I said,

  ‘Here, I’ll hold that ball for you.’

  As she passed it me, I continued,

  ‘The Globall Lite World Cup Special. The one I gave you up in the house? Germany won the cup, just like … well, nearly everyone said.’

  I bounced the ball and it returned smartly to my palms.

  ‘Still good,’ I said. ‘You haven’t completely kicked the stuffing out of it.’

  ‘Not for the want of trying,’ said Donna. ‘Thanks, Teresa. We’ll be here. You sure you don’t want something?’

  ‘No, you’re grand. Thanks. No.’

  She mouthed her regret in a downbeat grin and said ‘two’ to her daughter. Teresa headed for the café entrance.

  ‘How will she … ?’ I began to ask.

  ‘She has her ways. I kinda push her a bit every now and then. Who knows, she might even speak in the café, to give her order? When she was very young, my granny, she always seemed ancient to me, she said I should never worry about Teresa, because she was special, seeing as the fairies took her. I said I was glad they gave her back,’ she said, smiling.

  The Night of the Dead swung through another turn. I knew what the grandmother saw. Teresa was a changeling, taken and returned by the fairies, thus marred and gifted in ways only the fairies understood.

  ‘She’ll fit in well tonight. There’s nothing but fairies, goblins, elves and ghosts out tonight.’

  Donna laughed. It sounded like cackles from embers, dying in a fire. The sound went well with her witch’s outfit. I admired her. I should have said ‘yes’ to the hot chocolate. But, I’m a detective and there is no let up when the case is yourself.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Mrs Bradley. Donna. And to see Teresa. She looks great. A handful, I’d say, not that I’d know. Teenagers are all like that, I suppose.’

  There was an awkward moment, as I made to pass her the ball, though her hands
were buried in the folds of her witch’s gown. We stood in silence, slightly askance of each other. I saw Teresa coming out of the café, with two chocolate brownies perched on two large cups in a cardboard cupholder. She looked tall and well-formed. She smiled as she slalomed between tables of young goblins, elves, fairy princesses and witches. She laughed when one of the fairy princesses, no more than three years old, stood on her chair, blessing her and everyone else with her crooked fairy wand.

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry about her,’ I said. ‘She’s very strong.’

  We both looked at Teresa, being personally blessed and honoured by the toddler fairy princess, who tapped Teresa gently on her bowed head. Everyone smiled, delighted by the child and the teenager, who played with her so thoughtfully.

  ‘What a lovely girl,’ they thought. ‘Such innocence and manners.’

  ‘If ye get anything on the man,’ Donna said, ‘ye will let me know. Directly, I mean. In case I have to prepare Teresa for court or something.’

  ‘I will. Don’t worry. It’s nothing but dead-ends, at the minute. We have Teresa’s statement and we might just need to freshen that up, ask her a couple more questions, but we’ll do what we can to keep her out of court.’

  She smiled her thanks, then wiped her lips. Her red lipstick smeared across her cheek and into the shadow of her mascara to give her the look of a stroke victim. And in that moment, I felt, for the first time, that I might never find who killed Todd Anderson.

  ‘You must have a lot on your plate. Weren’t you involved with that unfortunate woman blew up in the field?’

  Was I? We still didn’t know who she was. Maybe I was involved with her, long before she was killed.

  Then Teresa joined us and, in a dumb-show of pass-the-parcel, we arranged that she and her mother had hot drinks and cakes in their hands and the football sat clamped between Teresa’s feet.

  ‘Enjoy the night,’ I said. ‘Good to see you both. And yeh, I’ll be in touch.’

  I moved off and didn’t look back. I passed the table where the fairy princess was now sobbing in her father’s lap, her wand a severed twig angled across the table of food and drink leavings.

  Two uniforms approached me. I recognised the woman, Constable McLaren, who picked me up at Auntie Maisie’s house.

  ‘Good evening, sir. Everything alright?’

  ‘Fine. Thanks, officer.’

  ‘Only it can get, well, a bit rowdy later on, as you know and, well …’

  ‘I’ll be okay. I won’t stay about too long. I just needed a breath of air.’

  I couldn’t tell her that I’d been drawn to the square by the sense that someone was waiting for me there.

  Her colleague, a large-framed southern country-boy, continued.

  ‘We seen that Crossan fella and a few of his latchicos over be the bank.’

  I looked past him and spotted my former comrade, Dessie Crossan, at the centre of a group of men and women, with young children dressed as superheroes milling about them. I recognised most of the adults.

  ‘Thanks, but I should be alright. It’s only Halloween.’

  Constable McLaren rested her hands on her gun belt, one to the front at the buckle, the other to the side on her night-stick.

  ‘Of course, sir. Just, when it gets a little bit later, some of the young fellas, you know, they get a bit … boisterous.’

  ‘You see that cannon there?’

  I pointed to the barrel, poking out from the city walls above us.

  ‘About twenty years ago, maybe more, me and two other fellas smuggled bangers onto the walls. We hid them in that cannon, the morning of Halloween. Then, on the night, when things got a bit boisterous, we threw them at officers, just like you, standing right below us, near enough here. The two lads and me, we split. They were caught. I made it over a gate and into the back yard of a shop on Shipquay Street, where I slept in a skip. The lads never gave me up. One of them is dead now. He might be here tonight. Samhain, you know. Night of the dead and all that. The other was Dessie Crossan.’

  The male constable took a step backwards. The woman smiled.

  ‘See how things change and stay the same,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. And no. Thanks for your concern,’ I said.

  They stepped apart and I walked between them, into the last encounter of my night, the meeting that had drawn me to the streets, the finale of my Halloween odyssey.

  Dessie Crossan raised his chin, as I passed.

  Any fireworks tonight?

  No. All quiet.

  Nothing but the dead. And us.

  I journeyed through the waves of devils, warlocks, ghouls, Frankensteins, blood-drenched surgeons, aliens, daleks and vampires, St. Trinian’s girls, Mickey Mouses and robots to get near the front of the crowd, ranged before the temporary staging, set at a ninety degree angle to the face of the Guildhall. A light show illuminated the building from projectors on the walls, showing a city scape crossed by bats, owls, witches on broomsticks, and tombstones leaning over gaping graves, out of which maggoty corpses crawled.

  The band on stage finished a rock and roll number. The MC took the microphone and announced the city’s soccer team. Fifteen young men, led by the chair of the board of directors, Denis Green, trooped on and lined up. They wore club suits and ties and looked elegant, smart and sheepish, in equal measure. The MC began to interview Denis Green. The young men clustered uneasily in pairs and threes, joking shyly and waving to the crowd. One man stood slightly off and alone, distinctively tall, blond-headed and clean-shaven.

  I wasn’t surprised. I knew all along that Todd Anderson would be there.

  There, for me alone. A dead end.

  The clock on the Guildhall began to chime midnight, drowning out the interview on the temporary stage. I looked up at the clock-face. The two hands clasped firmly together above the searing eyes of The Morrigan, as she tolled the turn of the year from light to dark. October slipped into November and ice-floes shuddered alive beneath my crepe-soled feet.

  FOURTEEN

  I perked up a bit when Hammy sent me to a police conference. He tackled me, as I sat beside Sharon, munching a granola bar, while she grazed on her tray of pulses and nuts. We were drinking still water, me from a bottle, she from a container I guessed sat under a filter at home.

  ‘Feeding time among the herbivores, is it? I’m surprised you’re letting this beast into your cage, Sharon. I thought you had more discernment,’ Hammy quipped, then tossed me a printed message.

  ‘CC’s after you again, Eddie, my boy. High level conference in some spa on the banks of Lough Erne. Paddle your own canoe, kiddo. Paddle your own canoe. You’re sharing with one Joseph Dickson, representing Vice. He’s a callow and timid youth, so don’t cause him any anguish.’

  Then he strode to his own office and slammed the door behind him, setting the blinds aquiver until he zipped them closed.

  ‘Relax. The master is now back in his lair,’ Sharon said, spooning another mouthful of her healthy lunch between her dainty teeth and her fiery red lips.

  ‘He thinks we’re his caged beasts,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not far wrong. What the fuck are you doing here anyway, Slevin?’

  ‘My job, Sharon. Simply my job.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got the higher-ups convinced. I’m on the jury and, as they say, I’m still “out”. So’s Hetherington, your buddy. He’s sure you’re some kind of mole. Or even a quisling.’

  ‘Too rich for me, Sharon. Far too rich for me. I’m doing my job. I’m detecting. Detecting and solving crimes. Serious crimes. If that’s not good enough for Hetherington or anybody else, what can I do?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m just the office herbivore.’

  I foot-propelled my chair back to my own desk and scanned the page Hammy had given me. Conference details; a room number; a registered set of sem
inars and workshops; a query about dietary requirements. Why had I received the invitation – summons? – to this jamboree was one of many questions I couldn’t properly frame.

  The thing about a police conference is that the hotel corridors are full of tall people. In jail, the population was short, even the screws were short, and the passages were crammed with people I could look down upon. At the police conference, I found myself gazing upwards most of time, as I hunted Amy Miller, who’s name appeared on a list of attendees I received on arrival.

  I found her in the queue for coffee and scones at the mid-morning break. She was squeezed between two men, big as second-row rugby forwards, who talked over her head. I stepped in, nodding at the man behind her, who nodded back at me and continued talking to his mate, while edging round slightly to accommodate me. I concentrated on Amy.

  ‘You’re not really that hungry, are you?’

  ‘I thought I was. And I fell in with these two fine men at the end of the first session and ended up here.’

  ‘What session were you at?’

  ‘“Policing the Permeable Border”’

  ‘You thinking of changing jobs?’

  ‘No. I was working late last night. I needed a sleep.’

  ‘You can lie down in my room. I have biscuits. And coffee.’

  ‘Who are you sharing with?’

  ‘A nice, quiet lad from Vice. My guess is he’s on the golf course.’

  The queue bunched up as we left. The two big lads nodded and carried on talking. I resisted the urge to grab Amy’s hand and run, run, run along the corridor, up the service stairs, down to the far end of the first floor and to my room on the lake-side extension, its corner window framing a sliver of the lake, a wedge of farmland, a plateau of parking and a stand of flag-poles, now naked, in the misty morning.