by John Steele
Had they hit their intended target, Jackie’s father would have been left with a letter of condolence from the RUC and his bottles of booze to toast his dead son.
At least, Jackie thought, an innocent would still have been walking the streets.
#
Sam finished his third pint in thirty minutes and stood to leave. He and Billy felt it was best if Jackie had a personal firearm. Jackie had thought of his police issue Walther, tucked away in his bedroom in Bendigo Street. He was to take possession of a Glock buried up in Cregagh Glen in the arms bed they’d discussed weeks ago the night Jackie had crippled Peter Rafferty. He should meet Rainey there after nightfall to pick it up.
Ruger shuffled his considerable girth towards the doors as Tommy entered the Park View. They gave each other a nod of the head, and then Ruger excused himself and eased his heavy frame out into the late afternoon sunshine.
Jackie walked to the counter to leave his glass with the barman.
Tommy said, ‘What are you having?’ It was the longest sentence Tommy had ever directed at him.
‘I’m all right, thanks.’
‘Ach, c’mon, let me buy you a drink. By way of apology for Rab’s performance on Saturday.’
‘Hardly your fault.’
‘Ach, I know. But that tight bastard’ll never stand you a round, so I’ll do it instead.’
Jackie took the path of least resistance and relented, having a pint of lager. They raised glasses, then took a sip each.
‘How’s Mount Vernon?’ said Jackie.
‘Revealing,’ said Tommy.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
A silence followed which Jackie thought he was expected to fill. Then he realised Tommy didn’t expect anything of anyone. Except, perhaps, the worst.
‘You must see big Ruger up there sometimes,’ said Jackie.
‘How’s that?’
‘His girlfriend being from up there, same as yourself.’
‘Oh. Aye. Anyway, Saturday night. Rab was out of order. What was it set him off?’
Me talking about you, thought Jackie.
‘The drink, probably,’ he said.
‘Aye, he’s a terrible man for the drink. Did you find that wee girl, Leanne?’
‘I went out the side for a bit of air and bumped into her.’
‘And then headed home, aye?’
‘Aye. Actually, I headed over to her place.’
‘When was that? I didn’t see you after we talked.’
‘About ten, twenty past twelve, maybe.’
‘Does she live near you?’
‘Other direction,’ said Jackie. ‘Cregagh Estate. I’d to get a taxi home from hers later.’
Tommy nodded his head. He lit a cigarette, offering one to Jackie, who found himself surprised that a smoke hadn’t entered his head since arriving at the bar. He took one and accepted the light offered. They stood at the counter, smoking, taking mouthfuls of alcohol to season the tobacco, poisoning themselves in silence.
Another minute passed.
Then Tommy said, ‘Heading out tonight?’
‘I think so, aye,’ said Jackie. ‘I don’t want to be at home after what Ruger told me.’
‘About the Provos, aye?’
‘Aye. Don’t want to be around my da in case he’s affected either. I’ll probably head over to that new place on Templemore Avenue, the Windsor. Safety in numbers.’
He wondered if Tommy knew about him taking the Glock for personal protection.
‘Good place, aye,’ said Tommy. ‘Sure, maybe I’ll see you in there.’
With that he finished his smoke, drained his glass and took off.
The Windsor. Now he’d told Tommy he’d be there, Jackie whispered to himself, ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in the place.’
He immediately regretted his choice of words.
CHAPTER 24
Saturday
It is a gorgeous day now. As he makes his way back to the car, the sun has found its full morning glory and shines on the telephone wires strung across the street, giving them the look of giant spiderwebs.
He isn’t as sharp as before the fight but still doesn’t see a tail. He works hard not to limp and keeps his head low. His face is a patchwork of welts and he doesn’t want any passers-by to remember him so close to the house. Beyond the elegant Victorian facade, Rab’s home was a fortress. He might be lucky. The roar of the handguns might have been smothered by the reinforced doors and windows. He hears no sirens.
Back at his car, Jackie checks his face in the mirror. His nose is skewed to the right, hammering away at his nervous system in protest. His left eye is swollen, although not as badly as he feared, and a quick check reveals that his teeth are still intact. But he doesn’t look pretty. Caked blood is smeared around his face. He needs a place to wash and recharge his batteries.
His pre-paid mobile rings. It’s Sarah. For a moment, he considers her house. But he can’t let her see him like this and it may still be watched.
‘Hi. Do you want to come over? I’m making pasta for lunch.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. And he is. Then is taken by a notion. ‘I promised Rebecca Orr I’d call in for a chat about Gordon, old times. She’s making lunch for me. What about we do something tomorrow, like Sunday dinner?’ It’s hardly likely but he needs to believe in the fantasy right now.
‘Okay,’ says Sarah. ‘Ring me later to sort out a time and stuff.’
He promises he will and hangs up. Then he guns the engine and turns for the Holywood Road and the shore of Belfast Lough.
#
He called Rebecca Orr just outside Holywood to check she’d be in. She still lived in the same house that she had with Gordon on the outskirts of Bangor, an ever-growing coastal town on the knuckle of the North Down coast. As he drives up to the house, he almost passes out with a sudden wave of emotion – emotion he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t have the energy to try. He is confused and out of joint, and bone-tired.
Rebecca Orr opens the door and does a sterling job of hiding her revulsion at the bruised and broken face in front of her. A copper’s wife, thinks Jackie. This isn’t the first time she’ll have put a policeman back together. Then he remembers he’s no longer a copper.
‘Jackie,’ she says, ‘come inside.’
She treats his injuries with care and an economy of language, quietly sponging his cuts. An ice pack on his eye and nose, a strong cup of tea to keep him busy and help calm him. She’s twenty years older than when he last saw her and looks a little harder, but she’s still a handsome woman with a quiet strength and dignity. He spots a Bible on the coffee table. It looks well thumbed.
It is a long time since Jackie has given himself over to the care of a woman. It is a long time since he has seen a Bible, come to that, recently read or otherwise. Not since his mother sat at the kitchen table and read a passage each morning while the kettle was boiling.
The first tears come hot and salty, and take him by surprise. Moments later, he can’t keep his eyes open and his shoulders are heaving. He tries to keep the sound in, to internalise, but it’s all too much and he collapses in great, wracking sobs. Rebecca takes him in her arms and she holds him on her sofa in the clean, neat and ordered living room. She is a fragile-looking woman but, when she pulls his head to her chest, he feels warm and safe.
Later, when he is calmed some, he feels ashamed. Ashamed to bring his own sordid world to this woman’s home. Ashamed that he has spent his life hiding, whether behind a job or on the other side of the world, from those that love him. And ashamed that he has taken two lives today.
Rebecca Orr brings another cup of tea for him on a tray with a plate of biscuits. He hasn’t spoken a word to her beyond, ‘Sorry.’
‘I don’t want to know, Jackie,’ she says, ‘why you’re in this state. And I’m sorry about your father. I read it in the Telegraph death notices.’
He looks wretchedly at the carpeted floor and nods. There is one of
those silences that can’t be measured in minutes.
‘He had a lot of time for you,’ she says. For a moment Jackie thinks she is talking about his da. Then she says, ‘Gordon.’ He thinks she probably likes the sound of her husband’s name. She is fingering her wedding ring and smiling faintly.
‘Gordon kept me right,’ he says. ‘He reminded me who I was back then. Why I was doing what I was doing.’
‘Jackie,’ says Rebecca, ‘I’m glad you came to me. I loved my husband very dearly, but I hated what he did. Did you know we used to live in the city? Willowfield? I loved that house. There were lots of kids around, always playing outside in the summer. Then the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed. You’d have been a teenager then. The loyalists turned on the police. The Thompsons lived six doors down from us. He was uniform in Strandtown station. They burned the family out one night, left them homeless, and then Gordon knew it was only a matter of time before we were targeted. We found this place and got out of Belfast.’
She picks up the plate and offers him a biscuit. When he declines she frowns and, to please her, he takes a Rich Tea. Nodding, she says, ‘When he was taken, I was glad it wasn’t by that world that he had to live in for his job. He never brought it home, but God knows what he saw when he was a policeman in this country.’
Rebecca Orr takes his hand in hers.
‘You’ve been tainted by that world too, Jackie. You still are. I think most of the men and women who did your job were, to some degree. But you are a good man, just like Gordon. He said so himself and he would have known.’ She sighs. ‘You’re a lost soul, mind you. A Sunday morning in church wouldn’t do you a bit of harm. But you’re a good man. And a good man needs all the help he can get in this world.’
#
Forty minutes later he is in the woods at Helen’s Bay on the shores of the lough, bent double and retching violently into the undergrowth. A wild hare watches with mild interest a few feet away.
It isn’t that Jackie has never seen death. He’s seen it ugly and peaceful. He’s dealt with the terrible anguish that follows and, he has to be honest, celebrated it a couple of times. HMSU took out an active PIRA cell in Armagh back in the day, a group of players responsible for the deaths of two police officers, a soldier and three civilians. There’d been a couple of drams mixed in with the tea in the canteen that evening.
But the thing is, death isn’t an end, despite what most people think. His mother would have said it was a new life in Heaven, but for Jackie it’s a chain reaction. Someone carries that death around for the rest of their days, be it through guilt or loss or anger. They might pass it on to others around them. Others still might carry the flame of revenge as a result of a death, burning their insides until they’re hollow. And now he is responsible for two lives being taken. He clings to the thought that they deserved it. But they both died slow and Simpson died bad. And what chain reaction has he set off?
He can hear kids laughing and a dog barking eagerly somewhere.
He feels totally, coldly alone. He is living another existence, in another world to the families and dog walkers enjoying their afternoon stroll beyond the treeline. He fears that his only company from this day forward will be Rab Simpson and Danny McCardle, visiting him of an evening to reminisce.
Jackie wants to call his sister and tell her he loves her and is proud to be her brother. But he is damned if he’ll contaminate her with what he has done, with his world, and holds off on contacting her just yet.
So he fishes his sim card out of his pocket, slots it in his mobile and texts Eileen Tyrie.
#
After things had gone pear-shaped in Belfast, Jackie travelled. He spent a year in New York, then went to Hong Kong and got a position with the Police Force, staying a couple of years until 1997. Following the handover, he travelled in Asia.
But the pull of home was strong. He caught snippets of the peace process on TV: the leering grin of the British Prime Minister, ‘the hand of history on his shoulder’; the earnest gaze of the Irish Taoiseach, looking faintly uneasy as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was getting the Republic into. So he moved back to the British Isles and settled in England, close enough to home and family to feel connected, far enough to ensure the past remained where it belonged.
He picked up a position working as a groundsman and nominal security guard with a racehorse trainer and stables in the West Country. The job was mainly centred in the Cotswolds but he had the occasional trip to London. It never ceased to amaze him how huge cities like London or New York consumed their residents, almost enslaved them. Whether you lived in Tsim Sha Tsui or Tower Hamlets, Wan Chai or Chelsea, that district and by extension the metropolis around you, became your world, ignorant of life beyond your postcode. The Battersea bio-sphere.
The same was true of the Tyries and Cochranes of this world. It was true of those who lived with violence and criminality the world over. And he can see that the same is true of Eileen. He stands opposite her in the living room of her home in the affluent enclave of Ravenhill Park, Rebecca Orr’s car parked around the corner. She has given him its use while his rented Toyota sits in her driveway in Bangor.
As she simmers in controlled fury, he can see that Eileen is calculating. Calculating how to drink her coffee without leaving a smear of red lipstick on the rim of the cup. How much flesh to give him as she crosses her legs on the sofa. How long it will take to get him out of her house.
‘I hardly need to say it,’ she fumes with polite bile, ‘but you shouldn’t have come here.’ She smiles with no feeling beyond malice. ‘And you look like shite.’
Her daughters are out with friends. He is standing and wants to stay that way, just in case Billy should decide to visit. But from everything he’s heard of their marriage lately, that doesn’t seem likely.
‘Your text said you’d meet me later, at your hotel,’ she said. ‘He’ll kill you if he finds you here. He might well kill me, too.’
‘I don’t think you need to worry,’ says Jackie. ‘If you’re still breathing after what he did to Mark the Godfather, I think you’re bulletproof. You are the mother of his children.’
‘Don’t bring my kids into this.’ Her tone is even, but the anger scratching to get out behind her eyes is anything but.
‘Mind you, they’re hardly kids any more,’ says Jackie. There are photos framed around the room of one or other of the girls, a couple of the three Tyrie women together. None with Billy. ‘I’m guessing that’s your oldest, Claire. Quite a heartbreaker. Is she away to university now?’
Eileen clasps her hands around the Wedgwood cup, straining to remain composed. She has always been fiery, but playing the paramilitary First Lady has taken some of the edges off.
‘Bet the boys’ll be queuing up for a chance to carry her books. Now this,’ he says, picking up another photo, ‘must be Wendy. Sixteen?’ He whistles softly as she sets the cup on the tray, placing it just so.
‘They grow up fast, don’t they? Jesus, a man could be arrested for what’s in his mind when he sees a young girl like that. Two years and she’s legal. Mind you, two years is a long time to wait.’
‘Don’t,’ says Eileen. There is a pause and she looks wretched. He thinks she’s going to leave it at that but then her face creases in a plea. ‘Don’t, Jackie. That’s not you, that’s not the talk of a man like you. Don’t even pretend.’
He’s pleased, despite himself. Then he fishes his wallet from his pocket and takes out a Polaroid photograph. He leans towards her and sets it image-down on the sofa next to Eileen, then stands back. Her face drains of colour and she looks from him to the photograph.
Jackie says, ‘Have a look.’
She lifts it cautiously, as if it might sting, and slowly turns it over. Her blanched face tenses, then sags and something unreadable flits across her dark eyes. Now that she’s confronted the image, Eileen almost looks relieved, which scares Jackie.
She says, ‘Shit.’ Then she glares at him and sits forward, perchi
ng on the edge of the sofa. ‘You were gone – I thought dead. Billy was playing around, I knew it. I was tired, lonely. After you left I had years – years – of a soulless marriage with a monster. My life was hell.’
‘This isn’t about you,’ he says. ‘It’s not really about me, either. But enough’s enough: somebody needs to stop Billy before any more lives are ruined.’
As they face each other, she sitting and he standing, his ears pick up a low drone somewhere in the distance. As it gets closer, he realises it is a helicopter. Smaller than the Army Lynx which hung over the city in the old days, this has more of the annoying, tinny hum of a police chopper. Perhaps Rab and his friend Danny were destined for tonight’s Telegraph evening edition. On cue, he hears the wolf whistle of police cars careening down the road.
‘Hope it’s no one we know,’ he says.
‘Did you do something, Jackie?’
‘And if I did, what would that be to you?’
‘Is it Rab?’
His silence, part caution, part surprise, answers the question.
‘Oh, Jackie, what have you done?’
‘What I had to. I’ll say no more, but whatever I did, I had no choice.’
‘I can believe it,’ she says. ‘He never forgot what you did to Tommy.’
He sags on the sofa opposite her, tilts his head back and rubs both hands over his face. Then winces as they rough up his damaged nose.
‘I did not kill Tommy. Rab talked about it. Billy inferred I’d done some killing, too. But, on my mother and father’s souls, I did not kill Tommy.’
‘I always knew you didn’t have it in you,’ she says. ‘I mean that in a good way. You’re not a natural killer, is what I mean. Despite Rab.’
For a moment it’s good to hear her say it. Then he thinks of that back room in Ardenlee Avenue and leans forward, resting elbows on knees.