Kiss the Bullet

by Catherine Deveney

“Like you said. It’s your job to find out. Ask him lots of questions, Danni. He’ll enjoy that. “He’s proud of his work, is Johnny.”

  “He was definitely involved in the Glasgow bomb?”

  “The key man on the day.”

  The fabric of her top is actually pulsating slightly with the thump of her heart now.

  “The one who planted it?”

  He glances up, alerted by something in her voice.

  “Yeah.”

  She lets her eyes drop.

  “The thing is,” he says, sitting back. “What do I get in return for helping you Danni?”

  She looks at him uncertainly.

  “The Fox has only been back in Ireland a few months. I’d like you to take him a wee message. Do you think you can do that, Danni? Tell him that I’d like to see him, that I’d like him to call by some time. I was going to drop by but maybe it will be better if you give him some warning. Let him know that we know where he is, and that all his many friends are thinking of him.”

  Jesus. What is she getting mixed up in? Danni takes the scrap of paper, realising with relief that she is being dismissed. She nods curtly.

  One landing down, she stops long enough to call a taxi on her mobile, fingers trembling. Outside, Myra is sitting on the bottom step. She has stopped shaking. Danni sees something in her hand, and as she draw level, realises it’s a chocolate bar. Myra half turns, leaning herself against the railing next to the step.

  “He’s a bastard, him,” she says, taking a bite out of the bar.

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “A year.”

  “Know anything about him?”

  Myra shrugs. He keeps things pretty tight.”

  Her eyes are flickering.

  “Is he married?”

  “Yeah, married to …”

  She stops talking. The light from a streetlamp is casting a half glow over her face. Danni peers into the semi darkness at her. Her hand is half way to her face and a thin, fragile ribbon of toffee stretches precariously from mouth to hand.

  “Myra?”

  Myra’s eyes open and she looks vacantly at Danni.

  “Myra?”

  “Sorry,” she mumbles. She begins to chew the bite in her mouth but her eyes droop again and she drifts towards sleep.

  “I need to go,” says Danni gently, bending towards her and touching her arm.

  “The Lady Margaret,” says Myra.

  “What?”

  “His wife,” she says, jerking her head backwards towards the building. “The lady Margaret we call her. None of us have ever met her. He keeps all that well separate. We don’t know where he lives or anything. He’s dead private.”

  “Have you ever heard of a guy called the Fox?”

  Myra shakes her head.

  Danni moves from the steps onto the street and pushes her bag onto her shoulder.

  “Nice to meet you, Myra.”

  Myra watches her through half closed eyes, then seems suddenly alert, jerking into life.

  “I’ll walk you to the corner,” she says.

  “Are you going home?”

  “You heard the bastard. I’m not allowed.”

  “What would he do if you didn’t do what he said?”

  “Break me in fucking bits. But I’m going to get away from him soon.”

  Danni’s taxi is waiting on the corner. She turns back before getting in.

  “Myra, who is that guy Coyle?”

  “Number one boy. They’re always together. He’s ehm … …” she leans against a lamppost and her eyes are drifting again, struggling to meet Danni’s. In a moment, she looks up. “What …?” she says.

  “What were we …?”

  “Coyle …” Danni prods.

  “Yeah, Coyle. Pretty boy. He’s supposed to be part of Pearson’s security team. She fishes for her cigarette pack in her pocket. “I don’t care how macho Pearson is, I’m waiting for him to climb out of the closet.” She laughs and flicks another of Danni’s book of matches. “But Coyle’s waiting harder.”

  Danni climbs into the taxi and as it takes off, sees Myra standing smoking under the street light, her eyes half closed. The Vauxhall car has returned, crawls slowly by her. As the taxi turns a corner, Danni is thrown sideways, and she turns her head forwards again, back into the darkness of the cab.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The outer door of the flat is flaked with peeling blue paint, the colour like cheap, chipped nail polish on a dirty nail beneath. A dingy white net curtain hangs over the glass. She’s feeling sick looking at that door, at the ordinariness of it. Because this isn’t ordinary. It’s … it’s volcanic … and it feels like nothing should be ordinary ever again. The floor of the close is unswept, dirty, the windows looking out from the stair landing smeared with grime. The walls are painted the same sickly green as the walls in the hospital where her mother died.

  There is a bell to the right of the door. She can hardly breathe as she lifts her finger towards it. The main man, the Wasp had said. The one who planted it. Press the button. Press the button. But still her finger hovers. Something tells her if she does, nothing will ever be the same again. If she doesn’t press the button, she can walk away, go back home, pretend she was never here. But if she does, that’s it. Forever.

  Her hand is shaking. She presses the button. Nothing happens. Damn it. Is the bell working? Did it ring inside the flat? She waits, then lifts her finger again, listening intently for any sound. She hears nothing and in frustration, stabs her finger on the button and keeps it pressed.

  She sees a shadow in the hall, the slight movement of the net curtain but somehow she cannot lift her finger from that bell. It screams in her name. The door opens cautiously. She sees the eyes first, piercing blue eyes in a pale, angular face. Inside their blueness, she sees Angelo reflected and the hatred that twists in her is like the sharp, raw pain of salt on a mouth ulcer. The man’s hair is long and dark, curling below his collar, sweeping back from his face in a way that creates a kind of drama, like opening curtains on a stage. He is not a handsome man, exactly, but he has an elongated elegance; high cheek bones, broad, lean shoulders, long tapering fingers.

  “I heard you the first time,” he says quietly.

  His eyes are intent, unblinking.

  “Did you?”

  She cannot keep the animosity out of her voice. That makes him curious, she can see.

  He leans one hand on the door frame.

  “What do you want?”

  “The Wasp gave me your name.”

  She watches his eyes flicker shut momentarily.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he mutters in exasperation, his jaw clenched tight. “Whatever it is, I can’t help you.”

  “My name is …” She begins, but he cuts her off.

  “I don’t want to know your name,” he says dismissively, and he begins to close the door. “I’m sorry, I can’t help …”

  But she sees it coming, her dismissal, jams her foot in the door, startling him. He looks down at her foot and then up at her face.

  “I just want to talk to you,” she says.

  “If Pearson sent you, I don’t want to talk to you …”

  “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Take your foot out of the doorway,” he says. It is not menace in his voice exactly, but she senses his force. She hesitates but draws back.

  “What are you here for?” He looks at her coldly.

  “I just want a word. I’m a writer and I …”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head quickly, and this time he moves so fast the door slams in her face.

  She feels anger shooting up inside her, spraying like a fountain. How dare he dismiss her! He’s taken everything from her this man, everything. She’s the one who will do the dismissing here. When she’s finished and not before. She bangs her closed fist on the dingy pane above the door and rattles the letterbox.

  “I want to talk to you!” she yells.

  She puts her finger bac
k on the bell and keeps pressing. In a minute, she hears the sound of music thumping back at her through the door, the raucous beat of the Rolling Stones and she knows, however much noise she makes, he isn’t coming back.

  She comes back in the morning, early. She can’t sleep anyway. There’s nowhere that feels safe. An hour later, he opens the door, steps over her and leaves. He carries books and folders; looks like he won’t be back for some time she thinks, dispirited. She is determined to be here when he returns.

  Early evening. Outside, the light is fading. Danni sits, her back to the wall, arms folded, feet stretched out across his mat. Tiny flakes of blue paint from the door have rained onto her legs. Footsteps. Light, steady. Her heart thumps. He rounds the corner from the stairs, stopping short when he sees her. He has a newspaper, tightly rolled in his hand as well as his books. She looks up at him, her eyes questioning.

  He has black jeans on and a grey sweater that hangs long and loose on his angular frame. A black scarf is tied round his neck. She looks at his feet. Black boots. A cheap version of the Italian leather boots Marco used to wear. He steps over her and puts his key in the lock, pushes the door open and closes it without turning back to her. She doesn’t move. Marco wore clothes well, she thought. Didn’t he? Didn’t he just. Her bones are aching from sitting and she feels stiff with cold now.

  Three hours later, the door opens.

  “Have you been there all day?”

  She’s been there so long she can’t be bothered answering, does not look up. He leans against the doorframe, his head resting on his arm. He is beginning to feel uneasy. She can tell she troubles him.

  “You can’t sit there all night.”

  She’s almost lost the sense of why she’s there. Her eyes stray down to his feet. Those boots. So strange. So inconsequential. Yet they’ve conjured up Marco in a way he hasn’t been conjured for … oh, at least a couple of years. She used to think about him all the time. She was frightened to let go of him because memory was all there was. The last connection. But in the end, loss becomes a burden you scarcely even notice any more. You absorb it until it’s no longer an appendage but simply part of you. Part of your weight. A second skin.

  “You can’t sit there all night.”

  “You said that.”

  He looks at her with serious blue eyes. They don’t dart over her; they simply look and absorb. She has the feeling that she will come to know that look. There is something almost familiar about it already.

  “Go home.”

  “I’m a long way from home.”

  She leans her head back against the wall.

  “What do you want?” he asks curiously. His brown hair is beginning to fall forward onto his forehead.

  “To talk to you.”

  “Why me?”

  “The Wasp sent me.”

  “Is he still using that fucking stupid name?”

  His voice is a whiplash of irritation and she glances up in surprise.

  He leans on the door.

  “How do you know him? Are you one of his girls?”

  “One of his girls?”

  He shakes his head.

  “No, of course not. No matter. I’d like you to go now.”

  “He says you are called the Fox.”

  “Playground names. He needs to grow up.”

  “Is the Fox an operational name?”

  Her voice is tight with the effort of trying to keep the hatred out of it. He senses it, she can tell. Maybe not the hatred but the effort, the importance of this to her. He stares at her and for the first time she notices one left eye has a small tiger stain in the blueness. Once it’s noticed, she can’t not see it, can’t imagine how it took so long to strike her.

  “Well?” she says. “Is it an operational name.”

  “My name is Johnny,” he says quietly, and he closes the door softly.

  She continues sitting, staring into the stairwell. She hears voices outside, kids voices. A banged door, running feet, laughter. Footsteps on the stair and three children come running round the corner, almost falling slap bang into her outstretched legs. They stop, stare, go into single file to pass, and then she sees them look at one another and burst into fits of giggles. The feet run again up to the next landing, whispered voices. A banged door above, and then silence.

  An hour later, his door opens again.

  “Go home.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m not talking to a newspaper.”

  “I’m not a newspaper.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Not here.”

  He hesitates but then stands back, opening his door wider. It takes her a moment to realise he’s letting her in. She tries to move but her legs have seized and she moves awkwardly.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” he says.

  He holds out a hand to help her up, a thin, almost skeletal white hand that shows his veins like a network of arteries on a thin, autumn leaf. The hand of a murderer she thinks, with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. She does not take it. She cannot bear the intimacy of touching him. His hand drops back to his side.

  Inside, the flat is clean but sparse and dreary. A dark carpet and black leather sofa and chair, light woodchip walls and a couple of nondescript cream cushions. In the corner, a small television set that is still switched on. The news. The biggest thing in the room is a bookcase spread along one wall, crammed floor to ceiling with books and files and papers. There is not an inch to spare but she gets the feeling everything is in its place. Murderous order.

  He says nothing but holds out a hand to the sofa to indicate she should sit. But she doesn’t want to touch anything in here. She doesn’t want to sit in his seat, or have her shoes tread his carpet. She doesn’t want to know where that landscape on his wall is. She doesn’t want to know the name of the novel that is spread open on the arm of his chair. She wants to see him but she doesn’t want to know him.

  He shrugs, sits down in the chair, and watches her. She sees now, much more clearly than when he was standing, that he is tall. There is so much of him to settle into the chair. He unfolds himself into it, long, lean lines.

  She thinks that in her case, ‘why’ is the most redundant, useless word in the world. What does it matter, ‘why’? There is no ‘why’ that makes sense. No explanation that ameliorates what happened. It’s not like he can explain and then she’ll say, “Oh right. Okay then. That’s fine. I’ll be off home.” But when she asks herself why she is sitting here in his sitting room, instead of in a police cell for throwing acid in his face when he opened the door, she cannot explain it in any terms other than the curiosity of why. Why this man was involved. Why he is what he is. Why he did what he did.

  Besides, she has to make sure he is who she thinks he is. She has to be sure. And there is something about cold, not hot, revenge that seems right. She wants him to suffer. To rot. She doesn’t want it all over in a few minutes. She wants to take her time and see him sweat. She has the feeling that she is like a bomb herself. She wants to plant herself firmly in his life and explode in his face when he least expects it, like his bomb exploded in hers.

  He is looking at her calmly but expectantly. He tilts his head to one side.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t said anything.”

  “I told you I’m a writer.”

  “And? What’s that to me? What do you want to write about?”

  “I want to write about terrorism.”

  “Terrorism is your word, not mine.”

  “I want to write about what has happened to the aspirations of those involved in the IRA bombing campaigns of the seventies and eighties in the light of the 1998 peace agreement. And what they feels now about the continuation of violence by the dissidents …” A hot dryness in the back of her throat catches her, makes her voice stumble as if she’s nervous. She is nervous. “Whether they feel,” she repeats, “that they have ac
hieved what they set out to achieve.”

  Johnny catches the hair that is tumbling onto his forehead with one hand and sweeps it back.

  “I don’t want to be interviewed.”

  “Let’s just talk then. And I don’t need to use your name.”

  “You don’t know my name.”

  “Johnny.”

  He half smiles, grimly. “There are a lot of Johnnys in Ireland.”

  “So it wouldn’t matter.”

  “You want me to tell you about myself?”

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just … just … can’t. I’m a private person.”

  “You could help others understand what’s going on here.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Nobody will know it’s you.”

  “You will.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he says, and the tiger spot in his eye glows warm and brown in the slant of light thrown from a standing lamp, “I would have to trust you.”

  Johnny watches her go from behind the curtain, sees her pass through the pool of light of the street lamp. He feels confused. He does not know why he let her in. There was something about her, sitting with her legs stretched out like the picture of Polly Flinders in his childhood nursery rhyme book. The taxi she called is waiting across the street. She does not look up to the window as she gets in. Even from up here, he can hear the bang of the taxi door. The trundle of the taxi as it shoogles away.

  Something about her. Such a tiny figure, like a child almost, yet very feminine. The short, elfin hair and pale, porcelain skin. The enormous clarity of her light brown eyes under the precise, elegant arch of dark brows. She drew him in, he can see that now she’s gone. Maybe it was because he sensed something missing in her, a kind of handicap that was more subtle than his own slight limp but just as real. It moved something in him. He recognised it, reached out to it.

  And if he’s honest there was a curiosity about her connection with Sean Pearson. The Wasp, he thinks disdainfully. Pearson was always in his own ridiculous underworld. Whatever the rest of them were fighting for, Pearson was fighting for something else. Himself mainly. There is no surprise that Pearson knows he’s back in Belfast, that he knows where to find him; he has always made it his business to know those things. He has been half expecting him to get in touch, knew he would still want to pull his strings …