Belfast Confidential

by Bateman, Colin

  It helped, actually, trying to concentrate, because my head was thumping from the crack and the hangover, and the traffic was still in rush-hour mode which gave our journey home a stop-start-stop motion which brought me to the edge of throwing up.

  Focus.

  Focus.

  I began to run the timeline through my head

  It all started with Mouse's murder. Tied up, burned to death in his own office. Before I could even begin to investigate that, I'd been warned off by the police. Then I'd been too busy trying to organise Belfast Confidential to do much beyond chat to some of the potential new entries on the Power List – no penetrating interviews, no revelation of information which must not make it into print. At least, none that I was aware of. Then an attempt to murder me which had resulted in Liam Miller's death. My virtual kidnapping from outside Liam's wake by Concrete Corcoran, and a private viewing of his works of art. Now the assault on the Maccabi Tel Aviv team. Of all the things that had happened, this last one seemed the least likely to be connected to the others. For a start it hadn't involved me at all, or wouldn't have if I hadn't stuck my big nose in. If it was an attack on anyone, apart from the victims, it was on Linfield Football Club in general, and Terry Breene in particular. The hoods had talked about Jews, but it seemed just as likely that it was because Terry was a Catholic.

  Was there anything to connect it to the other incidents?

  Well, there was the fact that last night's match was an attempt to bring some middle-class sophistication to Belfast soccer, which meant the Power List types. Which also meant vol-au-vents and nibbles provided by Past Masters, of which Terry Breene, Liam Miller, May Li and Mouse were all members. Liam had redesigned the corporate lounge at Windsor Park; he was involved in the design of the Ryan Auto factory in West Belfast; he had also signed an agreement with Mouse to make a reality TV show. Liam acted as mentor and agent to Concrete Corcoran, whose artwork hung in Past Masters, the Linfield corporate lounge and the Belfast Confidential office. Concrete Corcoran was a man with a violent past who was making his way in the artworld by leaning on critics. Yet while he might conceivably have had a reason to murder Mouse, he hadn't harmed me when given the chance. He was also keen to get hold of whoever had killed Liam Miller. And the attack on the Maccabi Tel Aviv players was carried out from the ultra-Loyalist Sandy Row, whereas Concrete came very much from the Republican side of things. There was, of course, nothing to say that in these peaceful days the two sides couldn't co-operate, but it seemed unlikely.

  Which left, what?

  Confusion.

  The easiest thing would have been to say – you know what? These are random acts of violence, and none of them are connected.

  Mouse could have been murdered for a hundred reasons, professional or personal.

  The cops had leaned on me because they genuinely don't like interference.

  Killers came to my house because . . .

  It brought me back to Mouse, and what he might have found out; the same thing that whoever had killed him was trying to stop me from finding out, or publishing.

  But there wasn't anything.

  At least nothing major, nothing that stuck out. I knew from my many years as a reporter that it was usually the little things that pissed people off. You could report a gruesome murder trial, and then the accused would phone you up and threaten your life because you referred to him as 'balding'. You could write a glowing review of a play and then lose a theatre's advertising because you misspelled the name of a sponsor. The thing was, you could never second-guess what would annoy people.

  We weren't far from home now, but traffic had stalled. Patricia laughed. Alec giggled. I missed the punchline. Maybe there wasn't one. She glanced back at me and smiled; I smiled back and closed my eyes again. She said, 'If you're going to be sick, let me know. I'm not cleaning this car up again.'

  I nodded.

  Why me?

  Why send someone to kill me in particular?

  In thirty-odd years of Troubles, I could think of only one reporter who'd been murdered, and barely a handful who'd been injured in any way. Belfast Confidential was a money machine; surely whoever had killed Mouse had to know that that wouldn't be the end of it, that the magazine would continue, and that if they killed me as well, then another Editor would be appointed, and then another, and another. And there would always be reporters, and the more people they killed, the more interest those reporters, let alone the police, would take in the reasons why. Eventually they would find out. They always did. And they had to know that. So why Mouse, why me? Why the hurry?

  Well, you hurry because of time: you're late, you're early, something to do with timing. What if it was something that was happening soon, something time-specific, something that meant that action had to be taken now to prevent it happening, or to prevent revelations coming out that might interfere with it happening?

  Back to the Power List Issue.

  Or Concrete Corcoran's upcoming art exhibition.

  Or Linfield becoming a power in European football.

  Or Jacintha Ryan cornering the market in fast cars.

  Or Liam Miller pastelising another unfortunate building.

  Liam.

  What if my justified sense of my own importance was getting in the way? What if the target had actually been Liam, and not me? What did that do to my tangled web of connections – apart from widen the range of suspects to the one million men in the country who despised everything that he represented? What if a rival lifestyle guru had pulled the trigger?

  A bloody turf war between make-over specialists.

  Tarantino does Feng Shui.

  I needed to sleep.

  Warm bed. The smell of grilled bacon and the sound of gentle laughter wafting up. My hair was matted with blood. Sleep came. I dreamed of chaos theory and May Li. I had not spoken to her directly since throwing up on her bra; and this was the image that kept coming back to me. I seduced her in a dozen ways, and she was more than keen, but every time I came to the point of entry, I charged up the stairs and threw up on her bra. And then, as I gripped the sink and tried to regain control, there was a shot from downstairs and Liam Miller was shouting, 'Not on the rug! Not on the rug!' and then Patricia was in the doorway waving her finger and saying, 'You have twenty-four hours to move out,' in the softest, gentlest, most hurt voice I could imagine.

  And I could imagine a lot of things.

  34

  Alec drove me to work three hours later. I'd had a sleep, but it was a tossy-turny exhausting one, and even a cold shower hadn't done much to re-energise me. He said, 'I should have gone with you last night.'

  'My fault,' I said.

  'I should have insisted.'

  'Don't worry about it.'

  'I miscalculated. It won't happen again.'

  I'd called ahead, so that Stephen and Patrick were waiting in my office when I arrived. They complimented me on my stitches and said that not content with occupying the West Bank, Israel now also wanted to invade Northern Ireland. When I'd finished giving them each a fixed grin, we went over the pages for my second issue of Belfast Confidential. It was dominated by photographs from Liam Miller's funeral and wake. There were quite a few of Kieren Kitt, including one for the cover of him crying at the graveside. There were also photos of May Li, and Terry Breene, Liam's mother, and even one I'd had blown up of Concrete Corcoran, standing in the background.

  'You've done a grand job,' I said. And they had. They gave each other high fives, and began to reach across the desk to include me, but I kept my hands on the desk because I wasn't twelve.

  We went over the Power List for an hour. We were getting to the point where we had to make a decision about who was going to be number one.

  Stephen was arguing for Frank Galvin.

  Patrick was for Jacintha Ryan.

  'It has to be Frank,' said Stephen, 'if people are going to take it at all seriously. Jacintha Ryan hasn't done anything yet. Next year – that'll be her time, once she's prov
ed herself. Frank was number one last year, and if anything he's more popular now. Give me one good reason why he should be displaced?'

  'Sex,' said Patrick. 'Sex always sells.'

  'This isn't about selling,' Stephen argued. 'It's about the Power List. Put her on the cover if you want, but don't make her number one.'

  'No, we should change it. We've done Galvin to death. We need a breath of fresh air. Okay, so she's done nothing yet, but she's transformed West Belfast already: it's going mental over this factory, everyone who matters is in a frenzy over this Masked Ball, and think of all the sponsorship money she's putting into sport and the arts and community projects. She's really going for it.'

  'What money is she putting into the arts?' I asked.

  He glanced down at his laptop, then scrolled through some notes. 'She's sponsoring a painting school . . .'

  'It wouldn't be called Easel, by any chance?'

  'Ahm, let me see . . . yup. That's it. You know it?' I nodded. 'And then she's commissioned dozens of local artists to provide artwork for her corporate offices.'

  'You have their names?'

  'The artists? No.'

  'Well, see if you can find them, and see how many of them match the born-again terrorists the Arts Council are funding.'

  'Will do.'

  'Anything else on Jacintha Ryan herself?'

  'Well, we're kind of hampered by her being over there and us being over here. If you would care to provide me with a first-class return ticket to New York, I'm sure I could find out a lot more. Knock on a few doors.'

  'That's what the phone's for, Patrick. That's why we have the internet.'

  'Well, I had to try.' He smiled. 'Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've spoken to a number of business reporters in the States, in New York, in Detroit – you know, Motor City – and they all seem to think that (a) she's pretty dynamic (b) that if anyone can make a go of starting a motor company from scratch, she can, and (c) what sort of a lunatic is she, locating that company in Belfast? They argue that you can't build a sustainable company when you're halfway round the world from your main market – the States – even with Government support. They think she's going to struggle.'

  'And how do her people respond to that?'

  'That America isn't the centre of the auto-business any more, that she'll sell as many cars to China as she does to America, and every place in between. It's not where she's based that matters, it's the demand for the product.'

  'And how do the boys in Motor City view the product?'

  'They haven't seen it.'

  'What do you mean? Sure, I was driving around in it the other day.'

  'Well, you would think that, wouldn't you? What you were actually driving around in was a mock-up. It has the chassis design of the Jet, and much of the interior is pretty unique, but the most important thing, the engine – well, that was a Ferrari engine you were driving, because they haven't finished tinkering with the Jet engine. And even if they had, they wouldn't let it out of their labs because it'll be another eighteen months before the first Jet rolls off the production line and they don't want to let all their secrets out before that. They're promising that it'll be revolutionary. Whatever that means.'

  'Maybe it runs on milk. Or eggshells.' They didn't look convinced. 'So what about her personal life, anything we can use there?'

  'Not much. She sits on the boards of half a dozen charities and they basically exist to mount fundraisers, but she tends to stay in the background. Not keen on the press.'

  'Any particular reason?'

  'Who can say?'

  'What about connections back here? I mean, from before she went to America.'

  'Well, that was thirty odd years ago.'

  'Some of them very odd,' said Stephen.

  'There's not even any old neighbours we could talk to. All the old houses were knocked down about fifteen years ago and the people dispersed all over the place.'

  'But if we wanted to,' I pointed out, 'we could track them down, see what they could tell us about the family.'

  'If we wanted to,' said Patrick, rather glumly.

  Downstairs, Mary handed me a small padded envelope and said, 'Guess who left that in?'

  'Mother Teresa' was on the tip of my tongue. But I held back. I said, 'I've no idea.'

  Inside, there was a mobile phone It appeared to be state of the art. With it there was a scrawled note: As promised! And then a Christopher Corcoran signature followed by a smiley face. By my reckoning, given the size of the scrap of paper and the technical excellence of the smiley face, it was probably worth well over a thousand pounds.

  'He's really rather attractive,' said Mary, 'for an older man. But then I'm an older w—'

  'He was here?'

  'Oh yes. About five minutes ago. He dropped it off for you personal, like, while he was picking up the painting.'

  My eyes shot across the room – to the blank space where Concrete's landscape had previously hung. 'He took the painting?'

  'Oh yes. He said it was for his exhibition. He's taking them all back, he said.'

  'And you just let him walk out of here with a twelve-thousand-pound painting over his shoulder?'

  'Oh no. It wasn't over his shoulder, he had two fellas to carry it for him. Anyway, what's your problem? He said he was bringing it back.'

  I turned at the sound of a flushing toilet, and saw Alec Large emerge from the gents, just down the corridor. He immediately looked concerned. Something to do with the thunderous look I was giving him.

  'Is there . . . is there anything wrong?' he stammered.

  'Concrete Corcoran just walked out of here with a twelve-grand painting.'

  'Really?'

  'Yes! Really! You're supposed to be on guard!'

  'Well, I have a bit of a gyppy tummy. I think it must have been the fry.'

  'Fucking hell,' I said. 'First you let Concrete Corcoran steal a painting, now you're having a go at my wife's cooking.'

  Alec pondered that for a brief moment. 'I'm sure it wasn't your wife's cooking. Eggs work funny with me.' I took a deep breath. 'But yes, I shouldn't have left my post without first securing the office. A bit of a miscalculation, that.'

  As if to prove that despite this he was still on top of his game, he tensed suddenly as the office door opened, then rushed away down the corridor to confront this latest intrusion. I shouted after him, 'Alec – for god sake relax, would you!' But then I saw who it was coming through the door. She had half a dozen smart men in suits with her. Alec stood before them, briefly examined a piece of paper she thrust into his hands, then turned and gave me a rather forlorn look. She saw where he was looking, then marched past him towards me, with the suits following immediately behind. She stopped in front of me.

  'Wendy,' I said, as pleasantly as I could. 'Long time no see.'

  'Dan,' she said.

  Mouse had only been dead for a few weeks, but his first wife appeared to have lost a stone since his funeral. She was still an elephant short of being svelte, but her cheeks were pink and shiny, her smile was wide, her eyes were bright, and she gave off every indication of being in ruddy good health, with revived spirits to match. All of which made me a little concerned, frankly.

  'Wendy,' I said again.

  'Dan. Thrilling good news.'

  'Oh? I'm happy for you. Do you care to share?'

  'Oh yes. You see, that's why I'm here. It turns out, Dan, that Mouse's marriage to that Philippino bitch isn't worth the paper it's written on, because in his rush to screw her, he neglected to sign his divorce papers, which means that we were still married when he died, which means that full and total ownership of Belfast Confidential has passed to me.'

  'Oh,' I said.

  'Which means that you, who showed me no loyalty whatsoever, who froze me out and made your bed with that slant-eyed cow, have five minutes to clear your desk.'

  'Oh,' I said.

  35

  Of course, when Wendy McBride said five, she didn't mean it. She actually meant ab
out three. That's how long it took from her making the announcement for me to be escorted by her smart-suited bouncers up the stairs, for me to rescue a photo of Trish, a few odd pieces of paper from my desk, and then, with Concrete Corcoran's free mobile under my arm, to be escorted back down the stairs again and out onto the pavement. Before they closed the door on me I half-heartedly suggested that we consult the Belfast Confidential solicitors to work out a compromise, or compensation, or even my first month's pay, which I hadn't received yet, but it turned out the men in suits were the BC legal team. One of them said, 'Last time I spoke to you, you were hiding in your roofspace. Now bugger off.'

  Through all of this my staff, my loyal staff, kept their heads down and kept working. I suppose they were becoming used to working in a state of flux. Nobody said goodbye, not even Mary, or Patrick or Stephen. As I stood rather forlornly on the pavement, with my meagre possessions in my hands, Brian Kerr, the erstwhile Deputy Editor of Belfast Confidential, came walking up with his possessions in his. When he saw me, his lip curled up and he spat, 'Told you, you cocksucker.'

  'At least I can,' I snapped back. And then I thought, Christ All Mighty, not only have I been sacked, but the power of the witty riposte is also deserting me. And he was through the door before I could say anything else.

  My mind was reeling as I crossed to the car. I ought to have felt quite relieved, because putting the magazine out had been quite a grind. Acting responsibly and showing discipline had both gone against the grain, even if I hadn't been entirely successful. And if I was no longer in charge, then surely there was no longer any reason for anyone to take a pot-shot at me. So that was a weight off my shoulders. But part of me had enjoyed the challenge, the responsibility the investigation and the prospect of untold riches. And I was angry at being dumped out on the street and generally treated like shit. Then I thought about May Li and what sort of a state she must be in. Had she been in court, fighting to have her marriage recognised, and to therefore keep control of Mouse's assets? Had she been left to fight that fight on her own? Alone and confused in a strange country? Or did she even know? What if she was sitting at home now, blissfully unaware that her whole world was about to fall apart? What if that was Wendy's next port of call?