The Keeper

by Catriona King

  Liam swallowed a mouthful of bile and stared at the story written on the ground. His thoughts were disturbed by a shout behind him and he leapt to his feet, his hand moving instinctively to his gun. The P.C. saw his movement and paled so Liam dropped his hand and stepped over the crime scene tape with a smile.

  “Don’t worry, son. I only shoot on days with a Y in them. What was the yell for?”

  The boy beamed. “You were right, sir.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. What was I right about?”

  “I’ve found something.” He held out a gloved hand, opening it to reveal a cigarette end. It might be something or nothing but Liam was feeling generous.

  “Well done. Bag it and get it to forensics. In fact…” He pulled out his mobile and called the lab. “I need another C.S.I. sweep of all three crime areas, before people go and ruin my scenes.”

  ****

  The Victims’ League of Northern Ireland. The VLNI. Howard Street, Belfast. 3 p.m.

  Helen Connolly adjusted her brown A-line skirt and tapped the Board table impatiently with her pen.

  “Would everyone bring over their drinks, please. We need to make a start.”

  She folded her freckled hands on the table, clasping them together to avoid the finger drumming that would show how she really felt. Her fellow Board members seemed to think that her meetings were social gatherings, a time to catch up with their golf buddies and what not!

  That wasn’t what they were there for; they were getting paid to deal with important things. Still, she glanced around with barely concealed disdain, when all you had to work with was councillors who were ex-paramilitaries and pensioners who’d joined to pay for their seven holidays a year, what else could you expect?

  She unclasped her hands to straighten her papers and noted that every member had taken their seat except one. She sighed inwardly. Him. As usual. He thought he was special just because he’d done a bloody law degree in jail.

  “Mr Dallat. Would you care to join us?”

  Kieran Dallat gave a sarcastic smile. “Just coming, Chair. I need my coffee strong, in case I fall asleep.”

  So that’s how it was going to be, but then that’s how it always was, and in the politically correct world they inhabited she couldn’t even say a sharp word. Killers were rehabilitated and it was the people who called them as much that were in the wrong. Peace and reconciliation; if she hadn’t been getting paid sixty grand a year to promote it, the whole thing would have made her sick.

  She glared at her papers, glancing at the wristwatch she’d set beside them to ensure that the meeting kept to time. Ten minutes late starting; she’d have to catch up if she hoped to get out of there at seven sharp.

  “Before we go to the first item on the agenda.” She gave a fake smile to a dark-eyed woman on her left. “We have an observer with us today. Ms Rose Matheson from the Department of Law. Would everyone kindly introduce themselves.”

  The guest smiled back more genuinely, staring intently at each member as they spoke. Her appearance said she was in her thirties or forties, but her eyes said she’d seen more of life than those years could possibly afford. The coffee straggler spoke first. Kieran Joseph Dallat, a self-confessed IRA man of twenty years standing, and since his release from prison a community activist and councillor. It was what they did with old warriors to keep them out of mischief; bury them in committees and planning complaints, hoping to bore them all to death.

  Dallat smoothed down his grey goatee and gazed at their visitor, appraising her as he did. She was a looker, as they’d called them in his youth, nowadays it was ‘hot’ or ‘fit’ or some other short, sharp word. But it wasn’t just her looks that he was assessing; he was trying to figure out if Rose Matheson was from Special Branch or MI5. It wouldn’t be the first time that a British government lackey had hidden in plain sight. The fact that said government now paid his wages appeared to have completely escaped his grasp.

  He nodded at their guest in greeting. “Kieran Dallat. Councillor in Derry. Formerly a trade unionist.”

  A man on his left snorted rudely, sending a dribble of coffee down his round knob of a chin. “It’s not like you to be so modest, Dallat. Normally you’re shoving your IRA membership down everyone’s throat.”

  Connolly made a half-hearted attempt to intervene, when really what she was hoping for was a brawl. Maybe then the powers that be would see what she had to contend with every week.

  “Mr Orton. Gentlemen. Please remember that we have a guest.”

  The dribbler squinted sharply at Connolly and then at the woman beside her, his throaty croak roughening by the word. “It’s best she knows what we’re expected to work with.” He sneered openly at the man beside him. “I’m forced to sit with a killer every week.”

  Dallat lashed back. “As opposed to you I suppose, who joined the British Army to patrol your own country? How many of your fellow Irishmen did you kill?”

  Connolly knew she had to rein in the meeting urgently so she turned quickly towards the quietest member of the group, a woman in her late sixties who was tidying the papers in her file. “Thank you, Mr Orton and Mr Dallat. Ms Campbell, would you care to introduce yourself?”

  Eleanor Campbell glanced up vaguely, as if surprised by the sound of her name. She looked like someone who never expected to be called upon and Connolly imagined that she’d never been picked for a sports team at school. Campbell spoke so softly that their visitor strained to hear

  “I’m Eleanor, Eleanor Campbell. Non-executive Board member. I was a teacher before this.” Matheson knew it had been at a primary school even before the words were said. “I taught five to seven year olds. Such lovely ages.”

  Campbell smiled around her as if picturing the other members at that age and they all smiled back at her pityingly. Matheson had the feeling that the woman was the Board’s unofficial mascot; she wouldn’t have been surprised to find boiled sweets and knitting needles in her bag.

  Matheson turned towards the final Board member just as the Chair nodded them on to speak. Another woman. It was unusual. Public Boards in the UK rarely had more women than men and few of them ever had a female Chair. Progress at last.

  “This is Rachel Harris. Our financial wizard.”

  Harris’ looks were androgynous: short hair, unadorned nails, a sober grey suit and a voice that when she spoke was flat, cool and firmly in the alto range. Yet there was something very feminine about her; sultry rather than cutesy, the distinct hint of a thirties femme fatale. She acknowledged Connolly’s compliment with a look that said ‘why are you being so nice?’ followed by another that said she knew that Connolly was sucking up to their guest.

  She reached behind the Chair and extended a hand to Matheson, who shook it, smiling at the polite but challenging stance. When women shook hands with each other it was much more than a greeting; a straight “good afternoon” would have done that. It was: take me seriously, I’m not afraid of you, and I’m your equal, all in one move. Matheson liked that. Rachel Harris was definitely one to watch.

  The visitor glanced at Connolly in a signal that she wished to speak.

  “Good morning everyone, my name is Rose Matheson, and, as Ms Connolly said, I’m from the Department of Law. But sadly I’m nothing like as exciting as Mr Dallat suspects…”

  Dallat gave a grudging nod of respect; any woman who could read his mind couldn’t be all bad.

  “…I’m just a lowly civil servant, here to observe the League’s processes as part of our five yearly audit plan.”

  Orton and Dallat snorted in unison and then Dallat spoke again, his Derry accent speeding up. “Aye, and there’s a pig flying past that window. Give it a wee wave, Rose.”

  Everyone glanced out the window in reflex, everyone except Matheson and him. The civil servant smiled. “I’m telling the truth, Mr Dallat. But by all means weave conspiracy theories. I’m sure that it will brighten up everyone’s day.”

  The republican snorted again. “I wouldn’t ban
k on it.” Then his cynical expression changed to a curious stare. “Why audit us?”

  “We’re obliged to audit all public bodies.”

  The cynicism returned. “Yeh, and the fact that us victims’ groups have been kicking off recently has nothing whatever to do with it.”

  “Nothing, I assure you.”

  Connolly leaned forward, breaking the deadlock. “Ms Matheson has told you why she’s here, Mr Dallat. If you want to start Jackanory-ising it, then please do so outside this room.”

  Eleanor Campbell whispered under her breath. “I’m sure that’s not a word, Chair.”

  “It is now.” Connolly glanced at her watch and rapped the table hard with her pen. “This discussion is over until coffee at four-thirty. Now. First item; how is the legal case progressing on possible compensation for paramilitaries who died during The Troubles?”

  It was the signal for another row.

  ****

  The Antrim Road.

  The woman was kneeling by a flowerbed outside her small house when her observer parked across the street, or at least he thought that it held flowers. Perhaps it didn’t. Herbs were probably more likely nowadays, to put in her vegetarian pasta, or maybe the odd cannabis plant; those old revolutionaries had been stoned half the time back in the day. He watched as she raked the dry mud with her trowel and tugged ruthlessly at the weeds, piling each one beside her before turning to the next. He guessed that she probably eschewed weed killer because it harmed the earth; how responsible. She looked responsible, and respectable, as respectable as she’d looked strolling around the shop a few hours earlier. Perhaps she’d even joined the local residents’ committee or volunteered at a charity shop. The zeal of the reformed was such a cliché; like ex-smokers who lectured anyone they saw with a cigarette in their hand. Who would ever guess how many people this little gardener had blown up in her youth? With her long hair in a fashionable centre parting, and her afghan coat trailing on the ground.

  His pulse raced suddenly as he remembered, and the wave of guilt that accompanied it made him feel clammy and sick. He wound down the window and slowly sucked in the cool air, then he reclined in the driver’s seat and forced himself to think back to almost four decades before. The end of the seventies, early eighties had been her heyday; the time that she’d been in the IRA. He corrected himself. The time that she’d been active in the IRA; after all, did anyone ever really leave? Did revolutionaries and terrorists anywhere hang up their Kalashnikovs and balaclavas or did they simply turn their zeal to other things? Politics, Quangos, parliamentary committees; ways to exert influence without getting themselves locked up.

  There had been two types of terrorists even back then. The killers and the talkers, with their different supporters tagging along behind. He’d understood the killers; violent fanatics who would use any ideology or zeitgeist as an opportunity to kill. They’d turned to ordinary crime when The Troubles had ended, and with them what you saw was exactly what you got. It was the talkers that he’d never fully comprehended, but they’d been by far the more dangerous of the two. Marx reading intellectuals who had twisted ideas and ideals into an executioner’s noose. Sitting up until the wee small hours discussing the validity of ‘the war’, they would eat mung beans and lentils to save the animals but kill any human being who got in their way.

  She’d been one of the intellectuals back then but he knew the ‘University’ of Armagh Women’s Prison had taught her even more. Knowledge learned was hard to forget, so he would have been astounded if the gardener wasn’t still supporting terrorism somewhere in the world, even now in the autumn of her life.

  But it wasn’t what she was doing now that concerned him, it was what she had done in the past. And a few short years in prison wasn’t compensation for her victims’ pain, or his.

  ****

  4 p.m.

  Halfway across town Craig was rapping just as hard on the desk he was perching on as Helen Connolly had been at her Board, intent on bringing his squad to order and getting some proper work done now that he’d finally finished in court. He gazed around as they shuffled to their seats. Annette was there, looking paler than he’d seen her look in months; he really needed to ask her what was up. Liam had his forty-inch legs propped up on a desk, so close to Andy’s ear that he shoved them away forcibly and they hit the ground, making the big man yelp. Davy was tapping away at the smart-pad on his lap, hopefully working on the lists that he’d given him to research; if Craig had seen what the analyst was really looking at he would’ve been surprised.

  Carmen was ignoring all of them, sitting with her arms folded and staring straight ahead into space. Her six month office sentence was ending the following week and he had to admit that her work behaviour had come on leaps and bounds; however, he sensed that, courtesy of Nicky, her behaviour everywhere else was about to take a turn for the worse. When Ken returned to his army base at Craigantlet things might settle down again, but he wasn’t looking forward to losing someone who’d become a useful member of his team.

  Speaking of useful members of the team. Craig did another scan then asked a question.

  “Does anyone know where Jake is?”

  Jake McLean was the squad’s detective sergeant and someone who’d matured a lot since he’d joined them two years before. Not just in his work, although that was definitely good, but in his attitude to life generally; probably because he’d suffered his grandfather’s terminal illness and death in the past year.

  A husky voice behind Craig gave the answer.

  “Phoned in sick. Says he’ll be in later.”

  He twisted round towards his P.A. Nicky knew everything about the team that he should have known but didn’t because he was usually too busy to ask. Her expression said that there was more but that it wasn’t for public consumption, so he parked Jake’s ‘illness’ for later and returned to the matter in hand.

  “OK. We’ve been spoiled for the past year having Ken -”

  A snort from Carmen broke his flow. OK, she was annoyed, but his sister’s love life wasn’t his sodding fault. He was tempted to say something sharp but instead he picked up his thread without comment.

  “- having Ken with us, but we have D.C.I. Angel on the team now, which is an asset -”

  Another snort, this time from Liam. “If he’d stop eating and do some work he might be.”

  Andy Angel was economical with his energy and rarely without food in his mouth, most of it containing chocolate. The two should have combined to make him the size of a barn but he was actually built like a wraith, something that annoyed the fuller figured Liam no end.

  Nicky shot back. “And if you stopped eating you’d be four stone lighter.”

  Craig rolled his eyes and continued. “When you’ve all stopped interrupting we have a case to solve.”

  Annette raised a finger politely. “Two if you count Joanne Greer, sir.”

  “Annette’s quite right. Let’s not forget that we have Greer’s assassination to work on as well, and I’m not letting go of the international side of the sect either. In fact…” He swung round quickly, just in time to see something on Davy’s smart-pad that made him want to smile. He continued without showing that he’d noticed. “…Davy’s working on the IT side of both pursuits for his PhD, so he’ll be liaising with Interpol, MI6 and other international organisations.”

  Davy was the squad’s twenty-eight-year old analyst and he’d been a member of Craig’s team for years. Years during which his extreme shyness had diminished and with it his once strong stutter on ‘w’ and ‘s’. He shut down his screen hastily, fearing that Craig had caught a glimpse of what he was checking out, and blushed to the roots of his dark hair, newly shorn in a short, edgy style. It made him look like a member of a boy band.

  “I’m following them up, chief, but it’s s…slow.”

  Craig’s smile aimed directly at him confirmed Davy’s fear that he’d seen his screen. The detective turned back to the others and started to summarise their cas
e.

  “OK, as you know we now have three dead paramilitaries.”

  “Ex-paramilitaries.”

  “Strictly speaking you’re correct, Carmen, but if everyone had seen them as ex then I doubt that they’d be dead now, so their paramilitary backgrounds are still relevant.”

  She conceded the point with a shrug; her manners still needed some work. Craig sipped his coffee before continuing, his face saying it was cold. Nicky took the hint and went to brew some fresh and Liam’s pathetic expression said that they needed two. He seized on the hiatus to give Davy’s elbow a nudge.

  “If there was CCTV we can get an I.D.”

  The analyst gave him a quizzical look. “What?”

  “For whoever attacked you.” He sighed exaggeratedly. “Your hair, lad. Who did it to you? You’re not telling me that it was voluntary?”

  Nicky gave a husky laugh and Davy shot her a glare.

  “Oh, admit it, Davy. That was funny.”

  Liam was on a roll. “’Course it goes with his geek tattoo. Is it all part of a look then?”

  Nicky’s howl drowned out Davy’s answer. “Tattoo? You’ve got a tattoo? Does your mother know?”

  Davy’s mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe you s…said that! I don’t need my mum’s permission; I’m twenty-eight, not ten.”

  Liam snorted. “So that’ll be a no then. You’re too chicken to tell her.” He began making clucking noises but Nicky wasn’t prepared to be amused.

  “What does it say?” She added the only thing that she considered might justify such self-mutilation. “Is it something romantic with Maggie’s name?”

  It was Davy’s turn to snort. “No, it is not. W…What a dork idea. That stuff’s for girls.” He missed her face darkening and carried on. “If you must know it says Na-Nu.”

  Annette perked up. “From Mork and Mindy? We used to watch that when I was a student nurse. Mork calling Orson, come in Orson.”