by Chris Petit
‘Christ Saves. It is the usual form of greeting between the Carriers.’
He drew Wilson’s attention to the religious advertisement below theirs. Westerby’s efforts to trace its placer had drawn a blank. The mislaid copy details had been located by the newspaper but both name and address had turned out to be false. But, like the Wilsons’ entries, it had been paid for by postal order, which needed neither signature nor personal details, and Cross wondered if it too mightn’t have some connection to the Carriers of Christ.
Wilson lifted his spectacles and squinted, then covered one eye and held the paper to his face. His expression turned gradually to uncontrolled rage. ‘What is this? “When God has forsaken His mansion the Devil must do His work.”’ He jumped to his feet, quivering and working his mouth until threads of spittle formed. ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’
Margery raised her hands in surprised benediction, with an expression that Cross took to be a combination of arousal and fear. Wilson snorted incoherently until she stood and smoothed his forearm with her hand.
‘I’m sure the policeman didn’t mean to upset you.’
Wilson’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling and he began muttering. ‘Save us, O Lord, from the abominations of evil. Deliver us into the valley of peace. Praise the Lord in His wisdom and cast aside the temptations of Satan.’
He sank to his knees, hands clasped. Cross turned to Margery, saying that he had no further questions.
‘Brother Raymond, I will be back to pray with you after I’ve shown these people out.’
Cross paused on the doorstep and said to Margery, ‘We’re working on the theory that the dead man had some connection with one of the advertisements. Perhaps yours.’
‘Oh no, we’re very select. There’s no one who would fit your description. A tramp, you said, oh no, nothing like that.’ Her eyes were bright with strange excitement, her voice sing-song and breathless. ‘In spite of what my brother told you, we are a very small and dedicated organization and our membership is very respectable. Sometimes I think that we should cast our net wider.’
‘Why did your brother get so upset just now?’
‘Sister Margery!’
She and Cross both started. Neither had heard Raymond enter the hall.
‘Leave these people to their business,’ he announced stiffly.
‘Yes, brother Raymond,’ she replied, her voice hardly a whisper, her expression one of cowed terror.
In the car, Cross reflected on Raymond Wilson’s anger, that inflammable mix of bigotry and fear so symptomatic of the country and so quick to explode. He asked Westerby what she thought.
‘I thought he was just an old ham, sir, until I saw how scared she was.’
‘How old do you think they are?’
‘She’s older, late forties, though it’s hard to say with her got up like that. And I think it’s part of his thing to pretend to be older because it gives him authority. But all that eye-rolling and claiming he can’t see is just faking.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘If they are, well, do you mind if I call a spade a spade, sir?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Well, if they are fucking then they’re going to pretend they’re not, even to themselves. It would involve a lot of pretending.’
‘How do you know all this, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Father was a shrink, sir.’
Hence calling a fuck a fuck. He had been shocked.
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Purdysburn.’
Purdysburn was the big psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Belfast.
‘Ever tempted to follow him?’
‘No future in it. I’m going to be the first woman chief constable.’
Maureen McMahon was gone when they got to the hospital, her bed occupied by a stranger.
‘Where the hell is she?’ Cross asked the ward nurse.
The nurse knew nothing, having only just come on duty, so Westerby went off in search of a sister.
Cross had been embarrassed by the speed with which Blair had discovered Maureen McMahon’s identity. He had simply checked with the city’s Catholic schools and found someone who remembered her. He’d also told him that her father was high up in the Provisionals.
‘He’s blown up half Belfast. And he hates the RUC since we beat up his sister.’
Despite misgivings, Cross had arranged to meet McMahon. He regarded it his responsibility as senior officer to inform next-of-kin in person about any death or serious accident. Tracing him had not been easy. The Provisionals were suspicious of the initial contact, and denied knowledge of his whereabouts. In the end Cross had turned again to Blair, who revelled in that sort of fixing. In less than three hours he had a number that would get a message to McMahon.
McMahon had returned the call personally. When Cross said he wanted to talk about his daughter, McMahon announced coldly that she was no longer his responsibility, but when Cross told him of her condition there was a sharp intake of breath.
Westerby returned with the news that Maureen had been moved to a private room on the sixth floor.
‘On whose authority?’
‘Her father’s.’
The door to Maureen McMahon’s room was closed and a man with the unmistakable look of a bodyguard lounged on a chair outside.
‘You’re expected,’ he said. ‘But she stays out here.’
Cross told Westerby to wait and went in.
Eamonn McMahon sat hunched forward by his daughter’s bed, staring at her intently as though his will alone could bring her back to consciousness. He looked up as Cross closed the door.
‘Ah, the police. Thank you for taking the trouble to contact me personally.’
The voice was mocking. McMahon remained seated. Wiry carrot hair and watery eyes made him seem boyish and vulnerable, in contrast to his fearsome reputation. He was neatly dressed in jacket and tie. It was strange inspecting the senior IRA man at such close quarters. He seemed mild mannered and self-effacing, but Blair had warned him not to be fooled.
‘You’re a hard man to find,’ said Cross.
‘What brings an English policeman to Belfast?’ asked McMahon, picking up on his accent.
‘My wife.’
‘Ah, a Protestant?’
Cross ignored him.
‘Well, she would be, wouldn’t she?’ said McMahon. He sat lost in thought for some time before standing up and deliberately planting himself too close to Cross. He was several inches shorter but used his lack of height as a form of control, keeping his voice low so that Cross had to stoop.
‘Inspector, knowing the circumstances of my daughter’s accident will not help me come to terms with the dreadfulness of what has happened. We were not close lately but that does not diminish the pain I feel. And it is not a pain I wish to share or discuss with a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. From what I can see, you are only here to relish the irony of my particular situation, that of an officer of the Republican Army being visited by the sort of random act that I have apparently inflicted on so many others. And no doubt, as you look an intelligent man, the further irony of a man like me having a rebellious daughter has not escaped your attention.’
‘In the case of serious accident or death most people are reassured by some sort of formal account, preferably from a senior officer,’ Cross replied, stung.
McMahon clicked his teeth, his loathing of Cross and what he stood for all too evident. Cross – feeling the sharp stab of his own prejudice – advanced, forcing McMahon back, and used his height to bear down on him.
‘I don’t give a flying fuck about who you are or what you do, and your little whispering tricks. But hear this. Am I speaking loud enough for you?’ He was shouting and didn’t care. ‘I do think that the sorry state of your daughter lying there requires some form of proper explanation and if you don’t want it that’s fine by me.’
He turned and walked out, the anger coursing through him. He was vaguely aware of Wes
terby hurrying after him down the corridor and into the lift. He was glad she had the sense not to say anything.
They were outside before he calmed down. He breathed in a deep lungful of air. The smell of hospital formaldehyde and institutional dinners always depressed him. He noticed it was a fine day for a change and told Westerby to take the car back to the barracks.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘I feel like a walk.’
He left her looking puzzled. She drove by a minute or two later and he saw her turn to check that he hadn’t changed his mind. He waved her on.
He had gone about a quarter of a mile when his sixth sense warned him of another car slowing down behind him: the moment of every policeman’s nightmare. Was it possible McMahon had set him up? He kept walking, fighting panic. A high wall cut off going to his left.
‘Inspector.’
It was McMahon’s voice. For a second Cross thought it was McMahon about to kill him.
‘Inspector, can we talk?’
Cross turned warily. McMahon was in the back of the car, window lowered, seemingly unaware of Cross’s panic. As he got out, everything returned to normal. Seeing Cross sweating, he asked if anything was wrong. Cross shook his head and McMahon made great play of letting him see the penny drop, looking at the car, then back at Cross.
‘Christ, I didn’t mean anything by that. I wasn’t thinking. I saw you walking and wanted to apologize for my rudeness. You’re quite right, you were only doing your job.’ Cross wondered what had led to this change of heart. ‘Do you have children, Inspector?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you know what it’s like. You want so much for them, too much sometimes. And after a certain age they only see that as interference. Maureen took after her mother in a way. She only wanted what she saw as a normal life and not getting one turned her wild. Do you mind if I ask you a question, Inspector?’
Mind or not, McMahon would ask.
‘What’s a detective from the murder squad doing on this case?’
Cross wondered how McMahon knew which department he worked for. He cautiously explained the body in the road, mentioning the stigmata but not the freezing.
‘Did anyone claim it?’ The inevitable question.
‘No. Though with the wrists being stabbed I thought of torture, and a sectarian connection. IRA informers are usually tortured.’
The sentence hung in the air. McMahon decided to ignore it. ‘If it’s a question of identity I know people who could say if he was one of ours or one of theirs, if he was either.’
‘He was probably nothing to do with anything. The man was dressed like a tramp.’
‘A tramp? Some of our lot are pretty awful dressers, but they usually just about keep themselves in shape. But I can ask around.’
Cross experienced a gnawing anxiety. Had he somehow fallen under the IRA man’s influence?
‘How do you know which department I work for?’
McMahon gave an enigmatic smile and they parted awkwardly, each unsure how to end their brief truce.
Cross walked over the Donegall Road and entered the run of streets parallel to Sandy Row and Great Victoria Street. It was all guesswork, he decided, wild stabs in the dark, whether he was dealing with a crazy case of a frozen man or trying to understand the unfathomable motives of Deidre.
He was not sure how to interpret their unexpected resumption of sexual relations, whether to read it as an act of exorcism performed over the ashes of their marriage or a sign of hope.
He walked for a long time until he found himself in the vicinity of the tourist board where Deidre worked. Marketing the unmarketable, as she put it, trying to attract visitors to a country they wouldn’t come to if they were paid. She could be very funny about the job, which she attacked with the energy reserved only for the hopeless cause.
When they had first met, Cross had been a policeman for several years and Deidre was attending a course in cordon bleu cookery at a minor Bristol college that was hired to provide and serve the food at a police dance. She kept returning with her tray of vol-au-vents, and because she was beautiful he kept taking them. She wondered what he’d look like with his shirt off, and he was taken by her boisterous un-Englishness, her pale skin and out-of-control hair.
During the disco Cross surprised her by asking her to dance and surprised her again by dancing well. Drink made them bold as they strolled through the dark gardens of the eighteenth-century house where the party was held. When Deidre removed her shoes to walk barefoot on the grass he took it as a sign that he could have her if he wanted. Her mouth was the sweetest he had kissed, her taste and smell unlike anyone else’s. He felt liberated, felt like taking risks. They ended up fucking on the lawn under a crescent moon, and when she came unstintingly and joyfully he wondered if it hadn’t been she who had seduced him.
Their backgrounds turned out to be remarkably similar, in spite of the difference of wealth: two childhoods stifled by gentility, the difference being that the O’Neills’ was the ‘right’ sort.
‘They’re terrible bigots,’ Deidre warned.
‘Deidre tells me you’re a left-footer,’ Gub O’Neill had said with a hollow cheerfulness that did nothing to disguise his dislike of his prospective son-in-law. ‘And a Brit.’
Gub and Barbara O’Neill were quintessential Unionists, rich Ulster Protestants, a branch of the ruling clan that had run the province for generations. They made it clear that their ambitions for their daughter went further than her ending up with a policeman. But Deidre always did have a rebellious streak and Cross realized that part of her reason for marrying him was to spite her parents. For them it would have been less of a disgrace had Cross been of Ulster stock, but he was English, and, worse, his Catholic origins made him ineligible for the secret societies of freemasonry and Orange Lodges to which all male O’Neills traditionally belonged, by birth and marriage. Cross was the first Catholic to marry into the family.
It was nearly lunchtime, he saw. Deidre came out of the building ten minutes later. Cross was fifty yards down the street, standing in a doorway.
He watched her shopping alone, buying sandwiches, while he tailed her like a suspect and chided himself. In Marks & Spencer she bought lingerie. It struck him that his behaviour was like the start of a murder plan and he laughed off the thought as absurd.
At the cash desk she looked up suddenly. He was sure she had spotted him, but then she turned back to collect her purchase and he melted into the crowd.
The next morning he feigned sleep, watching her dress through half-closed eyes, aware of the stirring in his groin. He wondered if the lingerie had been bought for herself or for the sake of her new man. Whichever, she didn’t put it on that morning. After she had gone he looked for it before going downstairs, but there was no sign of it in her cupboard or drawers.
10
HE watched secure in the knowledge that she did not know she was being watched. She left the small terraced house and walked in the direction of the taxi place as usual. He waited, then followed in the car, arriving as her taxi set off. He knew most of her movements and where she drank, and wondered what made her select these anonymous Taig bars in urban precincts, barricaded behind their wire cages.
He was careful to avoid following her into them, tempted as he was to get closer, and waited outside. Usually she left with a man. Most of them he had grown to recognize, all Taigs. She occasionally took them to another bar, in Protestant Shankill, a journey that usually involved a change of taxi. There the men ran nervously up the back steps that went to a room on the first floor with its own entrance. Sometimes she drew the curtains, often not. Afterwards, the men left alone, looking nervous, the effect of the fuck already undone by the prospect of hurrying back to safety through loyalist streets.
She never used this bar to pick up men, though sometimes she visited the landlord, to return the favour of being allowed to use the room, he supposed.
It was strange, the feeling of knowing her so well
without her knowing him. Knowing her name, her birthday, where she lived, her telephone number, watching sometimes as she walked the kiddies to school. Had it really been a year since he had decided on her? He would be sad when it ended. He liked this stage, feeling like a guardian angel. It was part of the control, this sense of being able to alter destinies.
Seamus, who used to live with her, had been gone seven or eight months now. He had followed him too, from the house to where he worked as a joiner on a building conversion in the city centre and drank sometimes in a big bar nearby.
Seamus had looked suspicious at his approach, which was only to be expected, and frightened, too. He was with the security forces, he said, and there was something urgent he had to pass on concerning his safety.
‘Name any bar and I’ll meet you there in five minutes, ten minutes, whatever you say. What I have to say won’t take long.’
Quarter of an hour later Seamus walked into the place he’d named, still looking suspicious.
‘You should know your name is on a list,’ he told him once they were settled with drinks.
‘What kind of list?’
‘A list of the Ulster Volunteer Force.’
Seamus said there had to be a mistake. He was just a carpenter and not even a republican.
‘They’ve mixed you up with another man of the same name, muddled the addresses.’
‘Jesus.’ As it dawned on Seamus that he might be killed he began to panic. ‘Christ, what can I do?’
He asked why his name could not be taken off the list.
‘I’ve no influence in these matters.’
‘What am I to do?’ Seamus kept repeating. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I saw the list myself. With your name and address. And a photograph too.’
‘What am I supposed to have done?’
‘All I know is that your name is on the list.’
‘Suffering Jesus. This is a nightmare.’
They had stayed in the pub until closing time, Seamus using drink as the solution to his problem. He talked about the woman he was living with and her children which weren’t his, and as he rambled on his dissatisfaction with life became evident.