Oak and Stone

by Dave Duggan

  ‘A moot point,’ I said.

  ‘Lovely, Slevin. Lovely. Ever the uppity intellectual. I haven’t a clue what that means, but if it confirms that I told you there’s a row, I’ll let you off.’

  ‘It does. How do you read it, Tony?’

  ‘Me? The dog-handler?’

  ‘The cop. The gunman. The lifer. And like me, the CC’s pet.’

  ‘Ah, now, Eddie, that’s all you. I’m brawn, you’re brains. I’m steroids and gyms. You’re libraries and ideas.’

  ‘Fuck off, Tony. This?’

  ‘The usual. There used to be money in waste and doing nothing about it once you’d collected it, except piling it high, burying it deep or drowning it. Now there’s money to be made, big money, in getting the contracts to clean up the waste. And doing nothing about it.’

  ‘That’s what this is. A contracts dispute?’

  ‘My best guess, yes. Three males, all young, killed off-site, taken here for disposal. The fire is the cover. There’s probably an acclerant used, but let the arson folks pick up on that. I just needed to see them, so I can write up my report.’

  ‘Anymore in the shed?’

  ‘Not according to the dogs and they’re as infallible as the Pope and not nearly as pricey.’

  ‘It’s another gang thing then.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘Like the woman blown up in the field.’

  ‘I heard about that. Nearly took you and your young fella with her. Could be linked. You think they are?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘You okay, Slevin? You don’t seem like your usual sparky self. Has the boss got you in front of the head-shrinkers?’

  ‘Yeh, but I can talk to the wall in my own flat, if I need to.’

  ‘I’d go back to the shrinks, if I was you. Boys like us Slevin, with the old anger and the guilt bubbling deep, we need the odd redd-out of the sump.’

  We were still looking down at the three burnt corpses, not making eye contact. It didn’t feel like a good idea to tell him that it wasn’t anger or guilt I was carrying. Fear was the emotion that drove me and that lately threatened to overwhelm me, fear of the tides I sensed rising about me. Hetherington bringing up Dalzell, or Beresford as he called him, rattled me. Now talking to Tony White only added to my fears, yet I had to ask, given what the Vice man at the lift had told me.

  ‘Amy Miller with you today?’

  ‘Not just yet. We’ll be changing shifts. Freshening up the dogs and coming back this afternoon, under lights maybe. She’ll be along then. I thought maybe you’d be offering our Amy a pillow. I heard the two of ye lit up that conference before the Christmas.’

  ‘Lit it up is right. Are your crowd always stoking fires?’

  ‘Not us. Look, it’s none of my business, I know that, but let me do the man-to-man thing. Our Amy is a star. A fairly incandescent star. If she wasn’t a cop, she’d be a soldier, sniping somewhere south and east of Kurdistan, as we speak. If she wasn’t a soldier, she’d be a hired assassin, in and out, clean kills, like you see in the spy flicks. She’s a shooter and she likes killing things. Especially when she’s angry. I like to keep that anger in check and give her an outlet every now and then. I’ll be pointing her at the Olympic shooting team.’

  ‘And you get paid for that?’

  ‘You’re a thick man, Slevin. Anger and guilt, like I said. That’s what we’re really about these days. And keeping the head right.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Tony. My head’s grand,’ I lied.

  ‘Good. I’m just keeping an eye out for my Amy.’

  ‘And so am I.’

  ‘Not from 300 metres, at the wrong end of a telescopic sight, you’re not. And if you don’t want to listen to me, you can fuck off. I have what I need for my report. Three dead? Poor fuckers. More? Wouldn’t be at all surprised, the way you’re going.’

  Tony scribbled a note on a pad, gave me a mocking half-salute and left the tent. I was saturated in a sweat that had been rising up my back since the earlier exchange with Hetherington. I looked at the three corpses and shivered. How did I get here? And where could I go now?

  The technician came in again and quietly said,

  ‘Sorry, sir, are you finished here? We need …’

  ‘Of course. No bother. Thanks. Nothing here but the dead.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I stepped out of the tent. The heat from the burning shed rested on the air like a blanket. I felt its warm fleece on my head and on my cheeks. Two fire trucks began reversing, as they prepared to leave. Three more remained deployed, cascading water onto the blackened ruin.

  Karen Lavery approached me, as I lit up a cigarette outside the tent. She looked so lithe and graceful in her crime scene blue, I almost fell at her feet, prostrate with desire.

  ‘One of your team is inside,’ I settled myself enough to say.

  ‘Good. We need to close the first phase, then get the remains back to the lab. See if we can retrieve some DNA or something else to help with an ID.’

  ‘The Chief Fire Officer moved them. You in on that?’

  ‘No. Not me. One of the Higher Ups.’

  ‘At least it wasn’t a cop.’

  ‘Tricky, I know, but if they weren’t moved, maybe we’d have nothing to work on. I mean nothing. The fire people tell me the temperatures were at incinerator levels and higher in there. Then the gas explosion gobbled up the oxygen, so more of them survived than the killers intended.’

  ‘You go along with the gang crime view?’

  ‘Too organised to be passion. Too thorough to be random. Your old comrades are way past this game, though you had your day. I’d say gangs, yes, organised crime, money, drugs, contracts. Bad deals gone wrong. DI Hamilton is having it out with the fire people, the Gangs Unit and the Arson brigade. I’m surprised you’re not over there, backing him up.’

  We both looked in the direction of the fire scene, where, slightly above a cluster of vehicles, including Tony White’s WART personnel carrier, I could see the head and shoulders of my boss, Omar Hamilton, with Kenneth Hetherington at his back. Hammy didn’t need me.

  ‘I’m going back. Might catch a lift with the fire brigade. See you, Karen.’

  ‘Eddie, just … before you go. Could I come round to your place tonight? Get something to eat, whenever I finish up here? I don’t know what time …’

  ‘Sure. Yeh. Just message me, give me whatever notice you can, don’t worry about it, and I’ll get us a take-away.’

  Karen smiled and went past me into the tent. I thought of all the boxes and cartons stacked in my flat and vowed to clear them before she arrived. I would get the place back into some kind of shape, make it less like a bachelor disaster zone. I had no idea what Karen might intend. Did we have a date? I was reasonably certain that she had no plans to shoot me.

  I felt enlivened and glad, so I jogged gamely towards a departing fire engine. I flagged it down, showed my badge and asked for a lift back to the city. If the fire fighters thought that was odd, they didn’t say and, as they had room for one more, they hauled me into a seat behind the driver and I listened to their speculations as to who lit the fire and who the three dead might be.

  TWENTY ONE

  After returning to the office to complete the paperwork on the Kalam Savane case, I had no time to clear up my apartment. When Karen messaged me, I dashed out for an Indian takeaway. I was unpacking it on my kitchen worktop, as the door bell rang.

  I let her in and relished her freshness as she passed me. She’d been home to shower and change, after being at the fire scene.

  ‘You’re redecorating, I see. Early 21st century student boho?’

  ‘No slagging. That’s all work. The Todd Anderson case.’

  She stood in front of the wall of Venn diagrams, grids and timelines. Then she moved to the wall where�
�d I’d stapled documents, lists and artefacts. She ran her fingers down Hetherington’s bullet points about the seated skeleton image. I watched her closely. She was wearing dressy leisure-wear; a light mauve fleece jacket, slacks that held the shape of her long legs and light ankle boots that would give her purchase on any obstacle she might care to scale. She had let her hair grow out again and now it rested on her shoulders and collar like the golden pelt of a rare cat, reflecting the fine mesh of her spectacle frames.

  ‘Bringing work home now. I never saw you as a promotion-hunter, Eddie.’

  Hearing her say my name in so ordinary a way made me melt inside. I was more rattled than I thought.

  ‘I got an Indian. A few starters, a korma, a biryani. All chicken and veg. There’s some nan as well as rice. We can buffet the lot together. You want a bottle of beer?’

  I spread the food on the worktop and we perched on stools to eat from the packaging, sharing bread, passing cartons, plastic spoons and forks and kitchen roll. We let the music I’d put on – more from the oud players – be our dinner soundtrack. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in weeks. Whatever way it went, it was a date.

  I made coffee and we moved to the cluster of armchairs by the windows in the living room. There were two large panels, each with a more narrow panel beside it, which can open widely. Now, all were sealed tightly and the blackness outside held our reflections, high above the river. Low light from the three standard lamps ranged around, painted us into a simple, warm domestic scene.

  ‘The Anderson case is getting to you, then?’ Karen said.

  ‘It was. A little. I think I’ve found a lead. Something we missed. I’ll get at it when I’ve cleared my desk again. Hammy’s on this fire thing. He’ll have me weighing in there.’

  ‘That’ll play out in its own way. Here, take a bet?’

  ‘Jesus, Karen, you’re always gambling.’

  ‘Never very high stakes. I’m like you, Eddie. Cautious as a thrush. And I only do it for the laugh. A fiver says Hammy gets a task force out of the fire thing.’

  ‘A task force?’

  ‘Whatever we call it now. A joint initiative. A combined venture. A Multi-Focus Group. I still favour Task Force. I bet you a fiver Hammy gets to head one up on this Mobuoy Road dump fire and murder.’

  ‘You’ll need a snappier title and, even though you’re probably right and I always lose, I’ll take your bet. A fiver says this’ll go to the Gang Crime Unit and that Hammy’ll be side-lined and he’ll make the Serious Crime Team a bunker full of sore losers, sore heads and sore hearts.’

  ‘Is that what you are, Eddie? A sore heart?’

  ‘Me? What about you and farmer Bill?’

  I had it said before I could stop myself. I thought she’d go quiet. Instead she came back gamely.

  ‘Houl’ that tongue there, lad. You’re moving onto delicate ground.’

  ‘Sorry, Karen. Sorry.’

  ‘Might I be right in saying we’re both a bit raw at the minute?’

  ‘Well, I’m not long after being blown up in a field. And I have a big case going nowhere, so, yeh, you could say, I’m a bit raw. Yourself?’

  Now she went quiet. And pinched her glasses back up her fine nose. And leaned back in her chair. And stretched her long legs in front of her. And let out a sigh so deep and searing, it burned into me with a flame more telling than the fires at Mobuoy Road.

  I went quiet too. The music of the ouds hummed along, sonorous as warm breezes around us. I grew uneasy.

  ‘You want more coffee, Karen? Another beer?’

  ‘Can I ask you something, Eddie?’

  ‘Of course, yes.’

  ‘Can I stay tonight?’

  My first thought was about the state of the guest bedroom. Almost immediately, I wondered if that might help get Karen into my own bed. She continued before I could speak.

  ‘Just to sleep. Nothing else.’

  ‘Right. Like an old married couple,’ I said.

  I was glad that made her smile.

  ‘Yeh. Like a married couple. No need for the “old” there, Eddie.’

  I smiled too, though I hadn’t a clue how I’d manage to get through a night like that, without doing something stupid. I was as randy as a rutting ram in spring.

  ‘What about your fella? That over?’

  ‘It never really got going, if I’m honest. Not his fault. He’s the classic case of the thoroughly good man I don’t deserve.’

  ‘Or wish for, maybe?’

  ‘What do you wish for, Eddie?’

  That stumped me. Is this how married couples go on? No telly. Low music. Food consumed. Appetites sated. I resorted to my book knowledge, as I often do when things get sticky.

  ‘You know, being out at the fire today, reminded me of Prometheus.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Greek buck. Bit of a fire fiend. Stole it from the Gods. Tricked them in fact and, with fire, basically started what we call culture. Things made in heat and hearth.’

  ‘Jesus, Eddie, I only want to stay over. I don’t really want to get married.’

  Now we were both laughing; laughing at ourselves, our aspirations and at what we couldn’t say to each other, even in the warmth of food, music and hearth.

  ‘You asked what I wished for? Right now, I wish I could sort this Todd Anderson case.’

  ‘What’s the problem with it? At the very end of this very exact day, as your boss might say, it’s just police work and that’s what you do.’

  Now it was my turn to be quiet. When I looked at the windows I saw our heads in the blackness, hovering in the air, free-floating, like animated lanterns. Karen raised her coffee cup to her lips and I saw her reflection lean towards me.

  ‘I’d better not drink too much of this or I’ll not sleep. Though I’m so shattered, I don’t think I’ll have much bother. Can I help with this Anderson thing? Sounding board even?’

  ‘Thanks. I don’t … it’s me. I … I usually get into cases because I can make a story out of them. Questions. Answers. What happens next. Who, I wonder. That’s it. I wonder. I speculate … I … then, I find something and I … this thing, it’s like the fire. I’m afraid to get too close to it. Because I’ll have to get into things I don’t want to get into.’

  ‘Jesus, Eddie, maybe I should book into a hotel. Or just go home.’

  Again, we laughed and this time, when we made direct eye contact, I winked.

  ‘Tell you what, we’ll go to bed. I promise I won’t snore. We’ll be celibate as Buddhist monks and you’ll not moan the price of hoggets in my ear and we’ll rise in the morning as fresh as new-minted silage. I might even concoct some fried rice from the take-away leftovers.’

  ‘Deal. Only don’t worry about the snoring. That’s asking too much.’

  We tidied up and put away, working around each other in easy silence. I felt tension seep away from my shoulders and chest. I turned the music off, to hear us potter about.

  Then we moved to the night rituals of toilet, bathroom and bedroom, all the time silent and at ease in our cloistered domesticity. I turned off the lights in the main room and watched my hieroglyphics, charts and diagrams lose their lustre. Maybe I could sleep without thoughts of Todd Anderson, my mother and The Morrigan raging in my mind?

  I was in bed first, lying with my hands behind my head on the pillow. Karen came from the bathroom and turned off the last lights. I watched her step out of her clothes, an ebony silhouette in the night blackness. Her graceful movements as she bent, then unhooked, raised, dropped, lifted, folded and placed her clothes on a chair beside her, made my breathing deepen.

  When she climbed under the duvet, wearing an undershirt and pants, she released a bottomless sigh, settled into a side-on crouch, facing me and whispered,

  ‘Newtownstewart, 220 hoggets, 330 to 398 pence per kilo; Swatragh
, 725 hoggets, 304 to 408 pence per kilo; Kilrea, 450 hoggets, 345 to 367 pence per kilo.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I breathed. ‘We’re moving to Swatragh.’

  ‘You asked about my farm man. To be fair, he liked me and I liked him. But not enough. And, well, we tried, but I was always trying too hard.’

  ‘Try to get some sleep now.’

  She turned away from me, reached back and took my arm, turning me to spoon with her. I grew hard as she rested her rear in my groin. It wasn’t simply lust I felt. It was assurance. There was no urgency. I heard her breathing deepen and I let my palm rise and fall on her belly. My last thoughts were with Prometheus and fire, not as blaze and inferno, but as warmth, solace and closeness. I pulled closer to Karen and relished her warmth as we stole away together into dreams.

  We woke, startled by the shattering of glass in the living room. Karen yelped.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Did I register two small explosions, two thumps in close succession, the splintering glass? Karen sat up and I hissed.

  ‘Get down.’

  We climbed out and crouched on either side of the bed, as the night silence returned. I crawled to the bedroom door. When I pushed the door open, I heard wind rushing into the living room. I knew I hadn’t left windows open. I pulled myself along on my belly until I made it to the nearest standard lamp and pushed down on the floor switch. The room lit up enough to see the shattered glass of the two main windows piled like snow particles on the carpet under the long ledge that fronts the apartment. Karen was on the floor beside me.

  ‘A bomb?’

  ‘Don’t think so. And too neat to be stones or bricks. Anyway, the glass is too strong.’

  ‘Gunshots then. Jesus, Eddie.’

  ‘Another message.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Could you make it back to the clothes chest? The bottom drawer has a gun and a torch.’

  Karen shimmied backwards. I got up on my hands and knees and crawled across to push the floor switch on a second lamp. Now I could see two marks, at the same height and about metre apart, on the wall opposite. By an eyeline estimate, I put them dead centre of the two large panes that overlooked the river.