Dark Dawn (ds o'neill)

by Matt McGuire

  ‘Ah, the O’Neills,’ he’d announced in gentle mockery. ‘Now isn’t this a lovely sight.’

  O’Neill and Catherine were with Sarah, who wobbled behind on her pink bike. Ward’s dog was ex-police canine, a German Shepherd called Rex. He loved kids and licked Sarah’s face, prompting bouts of, ‘Mummy, Mummy, can we get a dog?’ Catherine asked if Ward fancied a cup of coffee, said she wanted to meet the great DI that she’d heard so much about.

  In the cafe opposite the Shaftsbury Inn, Ward could see that O’Neill’s wife was smart. She gave as good as she got and wasn’t afraid of ribbing her husband in front of his superior. Ward also liked the daughter. She was pretty and well behaved. He asked about school and let her pet the dog, promising to bring him round to visit.

  Catherine had thought Ward was the kind of uncle you would wish your kids had. She left feeling reassured, knowing her husband had someone like Ward looking over his shoulder at work. She had asked O’Neill several times to invite him round for dinner but they never managed it and life seemed to take over.

  On the drive home that day, Ward had looked at Rex, curled in the footwell of the passenger seat, and he felt a pang of regret, thinking about O’Neill and his young family. He thought about Maureen and her tears when they learned that they couldn’t have kids of their own. He thought about her telling him that he could leave her and that she’d understand. He thought about the cancer, about the tint of her skin when the chemo started, about the vomiting, the worry and eventually, the resignation. That had been fifteen years ago. Ward had thought about remarrying but somehow it didn’t seem right. Maureen would have laughed, told him to stop being so stupid. He couldn’t get his head round it though and felt that he’d be betraying her. The dog had looked up at Ward from the footwell. He took his hand off the gear-stick and reached down to pet him.

  Outside 16 Tivoli Gardens, Ward watched the BMW drive away. Catherine wouldn’t have moved on so quickly. It wasn’t in her. Too much respect. For O’Neill, for Sarah, for herself. He got out of the Mondeo and approached the house, thinking about the hand ruffling the girl’s hair.

  ‘Hi, Sarah.’

  ‘Hey!’ the girl exclaimed, recognizing Ward. ‘Do you have Rex with you?’

  ‘Not today, honey. He has been asking for you though. Wants to come over. We’ll get you to take him for a walk. Would you be up for that?’

  The girl nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Was that your uncle just leaving?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ward remembered hearing about Catherine’s brother. A solicitor for McRoberts amp; James in Belfast. A pretty decent guy, O’Neill said, for a lawyer.

  ‘Your mum in?’

  ‘Yeah. Will I get her?’

  ‘No. Don’t worry. You just keep playing.’

  Ward waited for Catherine to answer. He heard her approach, speaking as she opened the door.

  ‘OK. So what did you forget this ti-’

  She faltered as soon as she saw Ward. Her face fell. She had known this day was coming. She’d waited for it ever since O’Neill joined up. The lone policeman, standing on your doorstep. ‘Mrs O’Neill?’ She thought about Sarah, hearing the tennis balls against the wall. She suddenly felt an urge to hold her daughter, to pull her close, to protect her.

  Ward saw Catherine’s face and put up his hand.

  ‘Calm down. He’s all right. This isn’t one of those calls.’

  It didn’t register.

  ‘Listen, Catherine. John’s fine. He’s alive and well. Probably getting up someone’s nose at this very minute.’

  Slowly Catherine’s expression softened. The look of horror was replaced by one of curiosity.

  ‘This is. .’ he searched for the words, ‘more of a social call.’

  Ward waited. He had stood on hundreds of doorsteps and knew the territory. He needed her to invite him in, into the familiarity of the house, the cosiness. He needed it to open her up, to get her talking, and then to get her to listen.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ Catherine said as she opened the door and stood aside. She shouted round the corner: ‘Sarah. Five more minutes and then your bath.’

  ‘OK,’ a distracted voice shouted back.

  In the kitchen Catherine offered Ward a cup of tea. He accepted, knowing it would help with what he wanted to say. It would make it feel less like she was talking to a cop.

  ‘So, Detective Inspector Ward?’

  ‘Please. Jack is fine.’

  ‘OK, Jack. So tell me, since when did the PSNI start making social calls?’

  ‘We’re a twenty-first-century police force, you know. We do everything now. Bobbies on the beat, old ladies across roads, cake sales.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ Catherine joked.

  She handed him his tea. Ward took a drink. The woman didn’t speak, waiting for him to make the first move. You could tell she was married to a cop, Ward thought.

  ‘O’Neill doesn’t know I’m here.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ Catherine gave a faint smile, realizing that Ward probably knew her husband as well as she did.

  ‘How long’s he been out of the house?’ Ward asked.

  ‘He told you?’

  ‘He hasn’t told anyone. No one at Musgrave Street knows.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘What can I say?’ said Ward humbly. ‘Guess us old dogs have our uses, after all.’

  Catherine paused before she spoke. ‘It’s been six months. We’ve been on a break.’

  ‘Those don’t sound like O’Neill’s words.’

  ‘He was never here. It was like living with a ghost. Sarah sees him almost as much now as when he lived here.’

  Ward didn’t answer. He wanted to hear what she had to say, to give her a sympathetic ear, let her know he was on her side. Already he could see the crack in the dam growing and with a little prodding. .

  Catherine went into the litany of problems. The shifts, the tiredness, the last-minute phone calls, the cancellations, the staring into space. Ward listened. It sounded like she’d rehearsed it hundreds of times, over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of it all. He thought this was the first time that she’d said it out loud. The first time she’d let it all out. She was a peeler’s wife, after all. There weren’t exactly a lot of people you could bare your soul to. It was more than that though, he thought. Catherine was a private person. There was something old-fashioned about her, a pride, not wanting to hang your dirty laundry out in public. He let her go on, sensing the tension that had built up over months. She needed to tell someone, to unload, to let it all out. Ward sat quiet, listening and nodding.

  After ten minutes Catherine began to slow up and run out of steam. She lifted her tea and slurped. Ward took his time. He needed to let it settle. Let everything come to rest before trying to talk to her. The two of them drank their tea in silence. Finally Catherine spoke.

  ‘Sorry to throw all that at you.’

  ‘The course of true love,’ Ward said, then paused. ‘Sounds like it had been brewing for a while.’ He looked round the kitchen, taking in its domesticity.

  ‘He needs you, you know.’

  ‘He needs the job. Let’s not kid ourselves. That’s all he needs.’

  Ward slowly shook his head. ‘That’s not true. And I think you know it’s not. He needs you. He needs this place. He needs Sarah. He needs those frigging tennis balls,’ Ward rolled his eyes, laughing softly. ‘He needs to know that there’s five more minutes and then it’s bath time. He needs to know there is more than chasing after some guy, trying to get a charge, a confession, something so it will all make sense.’

  ‘You might know that, but he doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s because he’s young, because he’s stupid, because he’s trying to prove himself. Because he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. That he knows better than everyone. You’ve got to understand, Catherine. It’s what makes him a good peeler.’ Ward took a breath. ‘But it doe
sn’t mean he doesn’t need you. You and Martina Navratilova out there.’

  Catherine smiled. Ward went on, telling her about his thirty years, about the other detectives he’d seen, guys like O’Neill. Stubborn. They’d bite on to something and never let go. Great cops. But they needed something else, something to come home to, something normal. Otherwise, it was them against the world. They’d go out on a limb. Start taking risks. Nothing to lose. Half the time they didn’t even know they were doing it.

  ‘Jack, it’s the job he cares about. Not us. He isn’t capable of both.’

  ‘I don’t think you really believe that.’

  Catherine had thought about giving John an ultimatum: us or the job. But she knew her husband, knew he couldn’t stand being told what to do. Not by her, not by anyone. He’d leave in a moment of anger, just to spite her.

  The front door opened. ‘That’s me in,’ Sarah shouted, pounding up the stairs.

  Ward grinned at her voice and the thunder of her steps. ‘She’s a great kid, that one.’

  Catherine sighed.

  ‘She needs him, Catherine. And I think you need him too. But I’ll tell you something else: we need him. The job needs him.’

  Ward searched his thoughts, trying to get his head round it, trying to explain it to her.

  ‘The police here have changed, you see. I’m not saying it was perfect before, far from it. But at least it was full of peelers. Nowadays the place is run by glorified secretaries and accountants. Bean-counters.’

  ‘Careful,’ Catherine joked. ‘You’re talking to one of those bean-counters.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not a cop. It’s all about paperwork these days. Filling in forms. These guys wouldn’t know their way round a suspect if he walked into the station and wanted to confess. John’s different though. You can see it. He’s got instincts. He can read people, read the street. He knows the score. You put him in a room and in five minutes he’ll tell you who beats his wife, who steals from his boss and who’s done two years for GBH.’

  Ward took a drink of tea.

  ‘This probably sounds like a load of rubbish to you. But Catherine, I know. I’ve been around — I’ve seen it. That is what gets the job done. This is what puts people behind bars. Muggers. Murderers. Rapists.’ Ward paused. ‘Paedophiles.’

  Catherine nodded, acquiescing slightly. She’d been married to a peeler long enough to have heard the romance before. The thin blue line. She hadn’t met a cop yet who didn’t believe themselves to be the only one who knew what was going on out there. She knew what they told themselves. Half of her wanted to laugh at it, the other half believed it. She gazed out the window, thinking about what kind of a world Sarah would grow up in.

  ‘We were on our second date, back before he joined up. He’d taken me to the pictures and we were walking down the Dublin Road. Three guys had started into some fella on the other side of the street. They had a load of drink on them. The next thing, the guy was on the ground and they were kicking lumps out of him. I’d pulled John beside me, telling him to leave it. He couldn’t though. He ran over and the three of them started on him. I thought he was going to get killed. They never got him down though, and after a while they realized he wasn’t going anywhere. They just gave up and ran off, jeering as they went. John just stood there, his face bleeding, standing over the guy.’

  Ward could picture O’Neill, running across the road, piling in.

  ‘A black eye, a bloody nose and four stitches,’ Catherine told him. ‘That’s John. Never happier than when someone is beating the crap out of him. Always giving a shit, even when it’s not his turn. Tell me, Jack, when is it ever someone else’s turn?’

  Ward didn’t know the answer. Catherine paused, taking a drink of her tea.

  Ward could sense the fondness for her husband starting to resurface. He could feel the story beginning to melt some of the ice from the previous six months. He stood up, saying he needed to get back, and thanked Catherine for the tea. He asked her just to think about it. That was all.

  Heading back to Musgrave Street, Ward wondered if he had done enough. There was a chink of light, a glimmer of hope. It was something, at least.

  THIRTEEN

  He was twenty minutes late. The lift hummed up towards the fifteenth floor of the anonymous glass building on Bedford Street. Lynch wondered if Burton would still see him. He had been early, but found himself doing another lap of the block, toying with flagging it altogether. He didn’t need a shrink. Lynch told himself it was the sleeping tablets. They’d helped. A few hours of broken sleep was better than nothing. So if it took another trip to Burton to get another prescription, then so be it. He could sit and listen. Tell the doc what he wanted to hear. Spin a few stories.

  He was lying to himself though. He knew it. The truth was, he was curious. Curious and hopeful. It wasn’t a great combination. Lynch knew you could end up in a lot of shit on the back of those two. He tried to ignore his better instincts. He wanted to know how Burton knew. About the Brits. About the gun. He’d thought all that was long gone. A distant memory. Pure history. Turned out it hadn’t gone anywhere. It was there, hidden away, lodged in the back of his mind. He’d spent the week having flashbacks — the faces, the taste, the smell. Pupils dilating, palms sweating, heart racing. Lynch wondered what else Burton might know about. What else he might uncover. Could he tell him why he felt like a ghost walking round inside his own body, like a stranger in his own town?

  Lynch stepped out of the lift into the plush reception area. The leather sofa was empty. To the left of the receptionist’s desk, Burton’s door was open. The blonde girl looked up from her computer as he approached.

  ‘Joe Lynch. .’

  She nodded at the door. ‘You can go right in.’

  Lynch stepped forward, pausing in the doorway to Burton’s office. The room was exactly as he’d left it. Beige carpet, neat furniture and the vista, out over Belfast. The doctor sat behind his desk, writing on a piece of paper. He looked up at Lynch who was momentarily framed in the doorway.

  ‘Come on in, Joe.’ Burton’s voice was businesslike. ‘Grab a seat.’

  Neither of them mentioned that Lynch was late. Burton himself guessed why, but knew it was a bad place to start and would guarantee he’d not get anywhere. Why slam shut what was already a pretty closed book. He’d been surprised when Dr MacSorley had phoned and requested another appointment. He could see, looking at Lynch’s face, it had been touch and go whether he would actually come.

  Lynch sat in the seat he’d occupied the week before. Burton closed the door and sat opposite. His chair was offset slightly, so that he didn’t face his clients directly.

  ‘So?’ Burton said.

  ‘So.’

  Silence.

  ‘You came to see me, Joe.’

  ‘They teach you how to set these chairs up, don’t they?’

  Burton looked at the furniture.

  Lynch continued. ‘You don’t face people. Too intimidating. Too much confrontation. Like an interrogation.’

  ‘For some people, yes.’

  ‘But that’s what it is though, isn’t it? You want to know what’s going on with folk. What makes them tick. They sit down and you ask the questions. Examine them. Their secrets. It’s like going to Confession.’

  ‘Maybe. Except we don’t offer forgiveness.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Lynch snapped back. ‘No one’s asking for it.’

  Burton sighed. He knew Lynch would want to spar with him. To feel him out. Decide whether he was going to say anything. Still, Lynch had come back, which meant something. Burton knew that was his leverage.

  ‘Get out, Joe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said get out.’ Burton paused. ‘If you want to talk about furniture, then take yourself to MFI. I don’t have time for it.’ The psychologist leaned forward to stand up and go back to his desk.

  ‘You didn’t know, did you?’ Lynch said, halting the other man’s movement.

  B
urton paused before sitting back in his seat. ‘Know what?’

  ‘About the Brits. Being put against a wall. About them putting a gun in my mouth.’

  Burton looked at Lynch and shook his head.

  ‘No, I didn’t. But there had to be something. I went fishing, that was all.’

  ‘So that’s it. There’s some theory out there, some textbook. How people get “involved”. What makes them say they’ve had enough of doing nothing. Makes them decide to do something about it.’

  ‘Radicalization. It varies from person to person. It’s all about Muslims these days. September Eleventh. Those planes and the Twin Towers. Iraq. Afghanistan. Ireland’s yesterday’s news. Nobody wants to hear about us any more. The peace deal’s been done. It’s time to move on.’

  ‘Suppose there’s a theory about that and all?’

  Burton raised his eyebrows and nodded. If there was an A-Z of conflict resolution, he was yet to be convinced by it.

  ‘Thing is, Doc, the guys who write these theories, that’s all they do — write them. They don’t fucking live them.’

  The conversation had found its rhythm from the previous week. Back and forth. Lynch wanting to square up. Confrontation was where he was most comfortable. Burton wondered if he always needed to be on the offensive.

  The two men stopped talking. Burton’s eyes fell and he gazed at the table, deliberately ignoring the other man. Finally Lynch spoke again.

  ‘So what are we supposed to talk about?’

  ‘You tell me, Joe.’

  ‘You’ve read the books, Doc. Surely there’s a list. Seven Steps or something. Is that not how it works?’

  ‘What do you think, Joe?’

  ‘Hey, it’s your patch. How am I supposed to know how it works?’

  Burton’s eyes fell back to the table. Lynch watched him disengage.

  ‘So we just sit here?’

  ‘You can leave if you want.’

  Lynch looked round the room, glancing from the bookcase to the desk to the window. Beyond the green domes of City Hall the yellow arm of a crane slowly swung across the rooftops of the city centre. They were building a new shopping centre round the back of Corn Market. He’d stopped on the way over to look at the gaping hole, the size of a football pitch. A huge billboard announced: Victoria Square. Two women passed behind him.