He turned to Patricia and began to say something and then thought better of it.
'So,' I said, 'about this tape . . .'
'What about it?' He snapped quickly, peering out over the edge again.
'Well, for a start, what's so bloody important about it?'
He snorted. 'You mean you never listened to it?'
'I didn't need to. I had no idea there was anything besides some crappy music on it. So?'
Coogan shook his head. 'I don't know.'
'Okay. So I'll count to three. And my hearing isn't the best. One.'
'Okay, okay 'Two...'
‘I don't know exactly what was on it...!' He spat. He took a deep breath. 'All I know is that McGarry was hawking it around; he was looking for like a hundred grand for it. He said it was dynamite. Of course no one was going to pay him for it, it's not the way things work round here, but everyone was keen to have a listen.'
'You must have had some idea what was on it.'
'Well, yeah, sure, I mean it has to have something on Brinn, doesn't it? And we've all got a vested interest in anything that'll keep him off the throne.'
'So all this . .. death is just so as yous can get a bit of dirt on Brinn?'
‘I would have hoped it would be something a bit more substantial than a bit of dirt.'
'And nobody would pay McGarry?'
'No. He soon realized he was on a hiding to nothing. When he was put under a bit of pressure he started to panic; easiest thing would have been to destroy the tape, but he's a greedy man and couldn't bring himself to do it. So he put it somewhere he didn't think anyone would look, but somewhere he could have easy access to it. With Margaret. It was a stupid bloody idea, but sometimes you do stupid things when you're in a jam.'
'But you found out, and you killed Margaret.'
'Aw no, not that one. You can't pin that one on me. I have some standards. I loved her once, you know.' There was an odd touch of emotion in his voice for a moment, but it soon disappeared, like a match on ice. 'I have a fair idea it was McCoubrey and his gang that done her. And one day I'll do him.'
'You reckon you'll be around that long?'
I gave him a little shove, but still held on to him. 'Jesus!' He steadied himself on the parapet. 'Can I buy my way out of this?'
'No.'
'What will get me out of it?'
'An ability to fly.'
He held my eyes for a moment, a strong, leader's stare, bereft of the mental unbalance I had expected. 'Did you love her? Margaret?' He asked.
'She should be alive.'
'Did you love her?'
That's none of your business, Coogan.'
'All I'm saying is that if I'm gone . . . it's up to you to get whoever killed her. McCoubrey.'
'Whatever you say, Coogan . . .'
I stepped back to give my push a little extra weight.
'Dan!' Patricia shouted from behind me and I stopped, my hand clamped on Coogan's sleeve. I turned to her. She was standing by the kitchen door, the collar of her dressing gown pulled tight around her throat. 'Don't.'
'What?'
'Don't push him, Dan,' she said quietly, her eyes avoiding mine.
'After what he did to you?'
'It wasn't rape, Dan.'
'It was in my book.'
'Dan, let him down.'
'He killed Parker. You never met Parker. He was a good man and he pushed him right out this bloody window. Coogan's no sort of a man at all, why shouldn't he go the same way?'
'It makes you as bad as him, Dan. And you're not.' I thought about that for a second. 'Is that some sort of a compliment?'
'Dan, you're in enough trouble already. Don't make it worse.'
'You mean it can get worse?'
Was she being humane or showing loyalty to him? Before I could think it through, Lee joined in. 'She's right, Dan. It will only make things worse. They're not going to give you a medal for killing him. Murder is murder. Just because he puts his head in the fire doesn't mean you have to.'
'I'd love to put his head in the fire.'
'You know what I mean.'
Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to push him over the edge. In fact, a lot of things would have given me greater pleasure. Margaret alive. Her mother alive. Parker back. An end to my persecution. A decent haircut. But Coogan had killed Parker, and was as responsible for Margaret and her mother as any other gangster in the city, so why shouldn't he die? Those who live by the sword die by the sword. The pen is mightier than the sword. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
And in the end the reason he didn't die, despite that burning horror at what had happened to Parker, was because even with him up there, just needing the slightest of shoves to go to hell, the merest push, I couldn't do it.
We tied them up with a roll of electric flex we found in the kitchen. Flats like that always have rolls of flex for tying people up.
'You have clothes to get into?' I asked Patricia.
She shook her head. 'I don't know where they are. We had to leave the last place in a hurry.'
'And he didn't even think to get you any new ones? What a callous lover.'
'Don't start.'
'Sorry.'
I took a carton of milk from the fridge, smelt it and put it back. The fridge was well stocked but it had the pungent smell of good food that had spent too much time in its own company.
'I take it this isn't the Coogan family residence?'
Patricia shook her head. 'We've only been here a night or two. We arrived and the family moved out. I think they're downstairs somewhere.'
The outside of the fridge was decorated with little plastic stickers like you get once in a while in a Cornflakes box. There was Mickey Mouse and Donald, Goofy and Pluto, and beside them a little tricolour and a colour photo of a Gaelic footballer.
I walked back into the lounge. Lee stood over the three of them, helpless now, her gun still trained on them. 'You okay?'
She grinned. 'Best fun I've ever had.' She nodded back into the kitchen. 'Still getting divorced?' She asked quietly.
I shrugged. 'We have these ups and downs,' I said.
'Just an average sort of night then.'
'You know, more or less. Bit quiet.'
Patricia moved into the doorway. 'You two getting on all right?'
'Fine,' I said.
Lee kept her eyes on Coogan and Co.
'You must tell me how you met.'
Before we left I got Lee to phone the police and tell them where they could find several known terrorists. I said to Coogan, tied as he lay, awkwardly shielding his groin, 'I hope I've interfered with your capacity to have children, because frankly we could do without any more of you.' As he was opening his mouth to reply I stuck a very dangerous-looking sock in it.
On the way out we passed someone who may or may not have been Davie, Coogan's guard. There wasn't much he could do. We made a curious trio, tripping out into the breezy night: the glue-head in denims, the lady in the pink dressing gown and the nun with the pistol.
21
We drove in silence, or at least as close to silence as we could get in Lee's collapsing Mini. The streetlights of Belfast were harsh against the greyness of the advancing summer dawn; a dew-tinged chill permeated the car, but there was no gathering together for warmth. Lee drove, her Godpiece sitting flat on the passenger seat. I sat in the back, separated from Patricia by a radio-cassette speaker that lay face up between us; a tangle of wires falling from its back to the floor disappeared under Lee's feet. She was playing a tape by Van Morrison. It was slow and mournful and suited our speed and our mood. Patricia stared resolutely out the side window, lost in thought.
Maybe she was thinking of Cow Pat Coogan, tied up, whom she had saved from a death I did not have the capacity to bring about. The great Cow Pat Coogan, the legend, so nearly brought to a sticky end by a trio as unlikely as us. What was the secret of his legend, good public relations? Here was a rebel more famous for his love of mon
ey than for revolutionary zeal, a bandit more suited to a bad Western than a contemporary civil war. A bank robber better suited to 'We ride muchachos' than the Gaelic promise 'Our day will come'. A man with sufficient charm to seduce Patricia even though it was within a few hours of kidnapping her. A man who had thrown Parker from the balcony without remorse.
I had few illusions about him being captured by the police. For a start there was an accomplice watching out for him somewhere in the flats. He would sooner or later check in with Coogan. And the police weren't about to storm in to capture him. They would treat Lee's call with extreme caution. They had been caught in too many ambushes in the past. It would be the old waiting game. They would wait for daylight at least. At best Coogan might be pinned down in the flats for a few hours.
As we entered the centre of Belfast, Lee said: 'Well?'
'Mmmm?' Patricia answered, lazily.
'Where to?'
'The old question,' I said. 'Seems like old times.'
'What old times are you thinking about, exactly?' Patricia demanded, focused now.
'You know, you're getting awfully paranoid in your old age,' I said.
She was about to reply, but stopped as I put my finger to my lips. 'Let me explain,' I said quietly.
And I told her about Lee. She listened in silence, occasionally glancing forward and catching Lee's nervous looks into the mirror.
'Which is where Lee comes in,' I concluded. Lee didn't take her cue. 'I said, this is where Lee comes in.'
She darted a look back at me. 'Sorry,' she said, 'I can't take my eyes off those posters.'
I had half noticed them on the way in, little white cardboard rectangles hung from lampposts all the way down into the centre. In the grey of dawn I hadn't properly made out who they depicted, but now as the day broke properly I could make out Brinn's long bent noses, hundreds of them, everywhere. 'I keep thinking about that tape, what might be on it. I was going to vote for him, y'know?'
'Innocent until proven guilty,' I said.
'Yeah,' Lee replied, half-heartedly.
'You were going to tell us how you managed to turn up and save us,' I said.
'No, you were going to tell me where I'm supposed to be going.'
I sat back and thought for a moment. 'We need somewhere where no one is going to look for us, somewhere safe but comfortable, where we have access to good health care and fine food.'
'You're not talking about my house, by any chance?'
'Now that you mention it...'
Lee shook her head, but it wasn't a refusal, it was mock exasperation at the predicaments she kept volunteering herself for.
Patricia leant forward, placing her hand on the back of the driver's seat. 'I should thank you for looking after my husband,' she said, and then added after a moment, 'I don't know what you see in him.' She gave a shy half-grin, looking at Lee, but it was meant for me.
We sped through the empty streets, devoid even of soldiers and drunks, towards Lee's. When we got there Patricia went up and had a bath and I dozed on the settee while Lee made breakfast. Patricia borrowed a T-shirt and a short skirt that was just a little too small for her. She put on some make-up. She still looked tired. Lee got out of her nun's habit and into her nurse's outfit. 'I've been up all night and now I've to go to work. Life's a bitch.'
'You can't take it off?'
'I've exams coming up. They'd have my guts for garters.' We all sat to have breakfast. She'd scrambled eggs. They disappeared very quickly.
'So? Our heroine, how come?' I asked finally. She sat back and laughed. 'Madness, I suppose.'
'Thank God for the mad,' I said.
‘I don't know, maybe the few days you were here made me a bit, you know . . .' She glanced nervously at Patricia. '. . . Protective of you.'
'Yeah, sometimes you do just want to smother him with kindness,' Patricia said, pushing a crust of toast around her plate with a fork, 'but mostly you just want to smother him. I don't know how you put up with him.' There was little or no malice in it.
'Anyway, I gave him a lift down to the restaurant, went off and did my thing, and swung past there on the way back, just to see if I could be any use. I hung around for a while and saw you coming out. It didn't look like you were with friends, so I followed you up to the flats. I hung around out there for a while and I'd more or less worked out what floor you were on from the lift - at night you can follow it up the centre of the building - and I sat around some more gnashing my teeth wondering whether I should go home until I saw that guy come off the balcony and then I knew what I had to do.'
'You don't do things by half measure, do you?'
She shrugged.
'And the gun?'
She reached over to the armchair behind the breakfast table where she had left her weapon and picked it up. She pushed it into my face and pulled the trigger. It clicked.
'Fake,' she said. 'Not only am I a nun-do-gram, but I do a mean Highway Patrol woman.'
My legs were shaking under the table and my heart was drumming: I had stared death in the face again and won.
‘I thought it might have been,' I said.
Lee was going to work. She shouted cheerio from the front door. I got up from the table and went after her. Patricia watched me.
'It seems silly for you to go to work after last night,' I said.
'I'm a nurse. It's what I always wanted to be. Saving lives, y'know? Look on last night as an extension of the National Health Service.'
I smiled. 'You're very blasé about it all.'
She looked so sweet. 'I think it's called shock. I'm sure mopping up some oul' bastard's shite will bring me down to earth.'
She opened the door and stepped out; I hovered in the hallway, nervous of the daylight and recognition. 'You don't mind Patricia staying here for a while, do you? There's nowhere else really, till this is over.'
She shook her head. 'No. Not really.' And after a moment's thought: 'She doesn't like me very much, does she?'
'She doesn't like anyone very much right now.'
'So,' Patricia said, as nonchalantly as if the night before had been nothing more exacting than a nurses' disco, 'that's two women on the go in the last few days. One of them dead, unfortunately.'
'Purely platonic'
'Which one?'
'Lee. Both, now.'
'Yeah.'
She sipped on a cup of coffee. It had been bright for some time and the chill of the dawn had given way to a light summer heat which gave the kitchen a nice musty flavour.
'Trust is a wonderful thing, isn't it?' She said.
'What're you saying?'
'You know, how it used to be. It used to be I didn't have to worry. Maybe I should have. Maybe I was too naive.'
'I don't want to get into all of this right now, Patricia.' I was too naive.'
'You weren't. You were right, it's how it should be. I fucked up. I'm sorry. You've had your revenge. Can we close the subject?'
'As easy as that?'
'As easy as that.'
'No screaming match, no three-day sulks?'
'No. I've a tape to retrieve, I can't afford to sit around talking shite for days. I mean, face it, no matter if we talk till we're blue in the face we're not going to change anything. I can't persuade you to love me, and I can't persuade you to trust me. You either will or you won't. Okay?'
She sipped her coffee again. 'Okay,' she said quietly.
'Okay,' I said.
I got up and went out to look for Lee's phone. I had expected Patricia to go for the screaming match with an option on the sulking. It was a pleasant surprise. Maybe she'd changed. Maybe I'd changed. Maybe it was the new haircut.
The phone was in the front lounge, partially hidden by an album cover. The Pogues. I phoned Mouse. 'YES?'
'That's not a very pleasant greeting, Mouse.' For the first time in my life I heard him speak quietly. Dan?'
'Y'know, Mouse, if this line is bugged, speaking quieter isn't going to fool them.'
'JESUS, DAN, OF COURSE IT'S NOT BUGGED. HOW THE HELL ARE YOU ANYWAY, DANNY BOY?'
Last time he'd called me Danny Boy was at a party when we were eighteen and I'd attempted to punch his lights out for it; he had given me a hiding, but he'd never called me it again. Bugged. Electrical wizard that he was, he could tell a bug at a hundred yards. Clever and quick Mouse.
‘I need a car. See you at the monkey puzzle in twenty minutes.'
I put the phone down.
Patricia was standing in the doorway when I turned from the phone.
'How's Mouse?'
'House Mouse? Where?'
'Ha-ha.'
'Yeah, well. He sounds okay. Wasn't exactly an in-depth conversation. He's getting me a car. I'm going to Bangor.' I looked at my watch. It was 8.15. 'To see a man about a tape.'
'By yourself?'
'By myself.'
‘I should come with you.'
'You should not. You should wait here for Lee to come home and sit around and watch TV and not let yourself get into more trouble.'
'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.'
'Something like that.'
'And you've done so well so far, I'd just be a hindrance.'
'Mmrnm.'
'You mean just because you've managed to flop from one frying pan into another for the past week or so, barely escaping by the skin of your teeth, murdering by accident, beating people up by accident, getting shot, having friends killed and wives kidnapped, you think I might in some way cramp your style.'
'Put like that, yeah.'
She was silent for a moment, then nodded slowly. 'I suppose you're right. A lot has happened. I have a lot of thinking to do.'
Besides,' I said, 'it will probably simplify the thinking if I get killed.'
'There's that,' she said.
Patricia turned and started to make her way up the stairs. 'I didn't realize how tired I was,' she said. 'I'll take a rest and then maybe do that thinking.' Okay.'
I watched her move her weary limbs methodically up, step by step. She was near the top when I said: 'What was he like?'
'Who?'
'Coogan. What was he like?'
She turned and sat on one of the pinky-grey carpeted steps. Her brow furrowed and her eyes looked kind of lost for a moment, as if she was maybe looking for some lost feeling of ecstasy. 'He was ... strange. Very sure of himself .. . charismatic ... is that the word? I don't mean, like, he spoke in tongues...' She giggled, then lost them again. 'Revenge is a funny thing, Dan, isn't it? It burns you up, and then once you have it, you think, Jesus, what have I done?'
Divorcing Jack Page 16