by Chris Petit
‘Do you believe in fate, Inspector?’
He shrugged. The voice was not as husky as he had expected but strangely whispery. She got out another cigarette after carefully grinding the old one into the gravel with the sole of her patent shoe. Cross lit it for her. No one apart from McCausland talked to her, though many stared. She was very beautiful, playing the part of the poised, enigmatic widow, her nerves betrayed only by her staccato smoking. The gaze she had levelled at the camera was misleading, he saw. In life she rarely looked at anything for long. Cross wondered what she did. A provincial journalist like Warren seemed a poor catch. He remembered the description of her as a war-zone groupie.
Her name was Miranda Ramsay and he asked if he could talk to her about Warren’s death before she went back. She said she was staying at the Europa and was free for the rest of the day.
She was waiting in the bar when he arrived that evening.
‘Funny things, funerals,’ she said over her drink. Cross was being abstemious and stuck to tonic water. She smoked her cigarettes, making it look exotic, like someone in an old film, while they made small talk, then finally touched on her marriage. Cross wondered if she was drunk.
‘He had nice hands,’ Miranda said, as if that explained everything. ‘And a soft smile.’
She had changed since the funeral into a dark skirt and white blouse with a single string of pearls, and she smelled of a perfume he could not identify. He ordered her another gin and tried to imagine her naked. She caught him looking at the hollow of her throat and smiled. He smiled back, less certainly. He was reminded uncomfortably of Deidre’s story of her recent visit to the Europa. Perhaps it was her fantasy of an anonymous sexual encounter that he was hijacking. Nevertheless, an agreeable tension prevailed. He had not been unfaithful to Deidre and was surprised at how easy it could be.
They finished their drinks and he walked her across the lobby and pressed the lift button. At that awkward moment when he should have said goodbye the lift arrived and she stepped inside, her silence its own invitation. Others followed, making it easier to join her. Even then he hesitated, but her ironic smile reassured him and he moved into the mirrored box. They didn’t look at each other or speak during the ascent, or as he walked behind her down the corridor. It would be this transition, Cross thought, from lobby to bedroom, he would remember most clearly.
They kissed, leaning against her door as she shut it behind them. Her tongue was pointed and darting. He wondered at the unfamiliarity of it all, the newness of a different height and weight, the false urgency of her probing tongue, which conveyed a passion not felt, the sweet-sour taste of her gin. He avoided touching her skin with his hands, which were uncomfortably moist. He thought of breaking off and making his excuses, but when she took his lower lip between her teeth desire won out over uncertainty.
They kissed their way towards the bed and twisted awkwardly on its edge as he unbuttoned her blouse. Underneath she wore a camisole, which she lifted over her head. Her ribcage looked surprisingly fragile.
Afterwards he remembered her flattened pubic hair when he had first uncovered it, and the delicate mole on the inside of the top of her thigh. He wondered at what point he had known they would end up in bed and what had made it inevitable, in spite of his doubts about whether she found him attractive. They had met at six and at ten to seven she had taken him upstairs and by ten past he was entering her: she had given a tiny gasp and a low moan. She’d ground herself against him and dug her nails into his back while he tried to make sense of what he was doing. He could not shake off the feeling they were riding different races, with her driving him with such blind ferocity as a way of losing herself, while he clung on diffidently, preoccupied only with delaying ejaculation. He came unsatisfactorily before meaning to, without her noticing, too soon for her. He tried to massage her to orgasm but she seemed restless, and he apologized and she said, rather halfheartedly, ‘It was nice anyway, wasn’t it?’
Cross caught sight of himself in the mirror and avoided looking at where his belly was starting to slacken, a sign of the gut to come. She lit a cigarette, snapping at it angrily with a lighter. Cross stared out of the window. They were high up at the back, overlooking the bus station. He sensed she was already regretting the encounter. He didn’t know what he felt. That he had used her to get even with Deidre? That like Deidre he wanted the memory of an encounter, for no other reason than to have that memory?
‘You’ve a wife,’ she said.
The statement hung in the air like an accusation.
‘Why did you get married?’ he asked in retaliation.
‘Meaning Niall wasn’t my type?’
‘Something like that.’
‘For a man who’s just fucked me, you’re not very tactful, Inspector. I told you, I liked his hands.’ She paused, deciding whether to continue. ‘Niall and I shat in the same pot. We understood each other because we were running from the same background, the one that’s not quite middle-class enough. Know your place and all that.’
She gave Cross an ironic look, tinged with contempt. ‘Familiar?’
There was an aggression in her voice, frustration seeping in. She pulled the sheet up until it covered her breasts, drew deeply on her cigarette and reached for an ashtray. Cross felt self-conscious next to her. He got up and felt even less comfortable. His shirt and trousers lay in a tangle on the floor.
‘Yes,’ he said in answer to her question, ‘I know all about knowing your place.’
He dressed while she talked.
‘I was born Mavis Bull, thank you very much. When I was eleven I started to notice how men looked at me. The doctor with his soft hands probing where he shouldn’t. “And how does that feel?” Even then I knew enough to know which was preferable – the soft hands of the doctor, with his smell of shaving cream and leather in his car, or some yob with callouses whose idea of sex begins and ends with his knob. So I moved on, ideas above my station. The modified accent, the discreet lies about one’s – one’s! – background. But you know about the minefields of the middle classes. I rather suspected you did when I first set eyes on you.’
Cross wondered if her story was the point of their encounter and that sex was the crash course that permitted this intimate monologue. He imagined her inspecting herself naked in the mirror after he had gone.
‘Perhaps that’s what you and I recognized about each other. One counter jumper to another. It’s very hard to acquire what’s not given naturally – the easy gesture, the familiarity that goes with the upbringing, knowing instinctively what note to adopt. Oh, I know it isn’t the whole picture. As a class the middle classes are probably more neurotic than most, and spiteful with it. But I was seriously fucked by them – taken in, turned over and fucked, then laughed at behind my back for saying the wrong thing. Pardon, toilet, serviette, snigger, snigger. It was pathetic. Even more pathetic was how much it hurt.’
Cross looked at her. ‘What happened?’
‘I moved up in the world, as they say. The Miranda bit I made up. It seemed right at the time. Only afterwards did it strike me as the kind of name a ten-year-old would give to a doll. The Ramsay was acquired. Fifty, kindly, comfortably off, impotent, a bottle of Scotch a day, leather patches on his elbows, called himself Major. Still boyish but had worn badly, him not the jacket. That was in London. I was twenty-three. He was something in the government – he never said what. I liked him, and was terrified of him too, although he did his best to protect me from his friends, who all saw through me and carried on witty conversations in a higher language that went right over my head. “Poppet,” one of them called me. They drank Scotch and played bridge, which I was hopeless at, and they swore casually in an unaffected way. If they had wives they didn’t bring them. Once, trying to impress, I swore too, a nonchalant use of the word fuck, strategically placed, expecting them to laugh. The one that called me poppet said, “Not funny, dear,” and it was then I realized three things. That there are certain counters you can neve
r jump, however good you get. That for these men women are quite insignificant. You could be the Duchess of Athlone, for all they cared. I also understood, because of the way I was brushed aside and the way the poppet man continued to play his cards without the slightest hesitation after squashing me, that these men controlled lives.’
Cross sat on the edge of the bed, wondering why she had chosen him. Some change in her tone made him turn round. Her eyes were moist and he was moved for the first time. He reached out and took her in his arms. She cradled herself against him and went on.
‘The whole thing seems quite unreal now. We could have been living in 1910, not the 1960s – the flat with the mahogany bookcases, the housekeeper who came every day. There had been another Mrs Ramsay who’d died ten years before in the Far East, in a car smash. Sometimes when he was alone with me he used to cry. He would never say what it was about and blamed the whisky. Did I say how we met?’
Cross shook his head.
‘He picked me up in St James’s Park. Came and sat on the bench next to me when I was eating my sandwiches and started naming the ducks. “I only live just around the corner,” he said. He was kind and I liked his whisky breath and he was quite alone in the world, no relatives at all, and was endearingly old fashioned in a fatherly sort of way. It was probably a question of fucking daddy as far as I was concerned, not that I got to fuck very often. Even his orgasms were sad, half-erect affairs that wept gently when the moment came. He tried hard to make sure I was satisfied. I wasn’t very often but appreciated the gesture.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘One breakfast he just stood up with a look of terrible surprise, put his hand to his throat, and keeled over. I don’t know what I felt. Whatever it was it wasn’t what I was supposed to feel. Some time later the one that called me poppet came round and asked if I was interested in going to Belfast, which was when I realized what their work involved. He also made a pass and out of spite I let him because I fancied he was a lousy lay and relished the prospect of telling him.’
She looked up at Cross and pulled a face.
‘Lesson one: don’t take these people on. They beat you hands down every time. He was determined to fuck me until I came and I was just as determined not to give him the satisfaction. In spite of it all being so personal there was something quite the opposite about it. He fucked me like I was a lump of meat and, yes, in the end he won. He pushed me on my front and holding my head into the pillow so I could hardly breathe he entered me from behind and used his free hand to fuck my arse. And afterwards, when he could see my humiliation, he came himself, withdrawing to deposit his sperm on me as a way of finally defiling me. And that basically is how I became an intelligence asset, which is not something I should be telling you at all, but never mind.’
She lit another cigarette. A silence fell over the room and they stayed there a long time not talking. In the end Cross got up and phoned the childminder to say that he wouldn’t be home until after the children’s bedtime. He hung up and said that he would have to go soon.
‘I’ll be going back to Dublin in the morning. Funny things, funerals,’ she added again, sourly. ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything. Ships in the night and all that.’
‘Do you live there now?’
‘What’s to keep me here?’
He felt strangely unreleased by her story and incapable of asking the questions he felt he ought to. In the end, she did it for him.
‘What do you think happened to Niall?’
‘I don’t know. According to the pathologist—’
‘I asked what you thought.’
‘Technically there is nothing suspicious, but—’
‘God, you sound like a policeman. Brian McCausland told me how Niall died. I don’t believe it.’
‘That he could have done such a thing?’
‘I’ve known enough men to know what they’re capable of. I don’t know what Niall got up to in his own company. There was nothing between us to suggest that’s what he liked, but if he did I can see why he was too shy to say. That’s not the point. The point is, whatever his private sexual preferences were, he is not likely to have pursued them in a cupboard.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Niall suffered from claustrophobia.’
‘He was very drunk when he died. That might explain it.’
‘I doubt it, but there’s something else. He spoke to me about a month ago. He was scared.’
She lit another cigarette.
‘He thought he was being watched. He said he was calling from a public phone box. It sounded like he had got himself in a terrible muddle over some story.’
He realized Miranda Ramsay was trying to steer him.
‘Are you saying he was killed?’
‘I’m not sure what I’m saying, beyond saying he was scared. And his death doesn’t fit what I know about him.’
‘Did he say anything about this story?’
‘Nothing, apart from it involving a cover-up. Niall was in a state and none of it made much sense.’
‘Did he mention anyone called Heatherington?’
‘Not that I remember.’
‘McKeague?’
‘Yes, he mentioned him. He said the real point was who killed him.’
‘I thought it was either his own men or the INLA.’
Miranda Ramsay shrugged. ‘If you say so. All he said was that if you looked at who really killed McKeague it started to make sense. He said it also tied in with a death on the mainland, one of the biggest of the last ten years.’
‘Any idea who?’
‘I’m giving you a very structured version of what was a rambling and incoherent speech.’
Cross didn’t know how to leave, whether to kiss her or to refer to what had just happened between them. They ended up shaking hands, which seemed the most equal thing to do.
‘Don’t regret it,’ she said, with a wry smile.
As he left, she added, ‘Did you say Heatherington?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘He’s dead now, I think. I don’t remember any more than that. Did you ever play that game, Dead or Alive? Name someone and the other person has to say which they are. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Anyway, if you said Heatherington, I’d say dead. I’m sure Niall’s story dealt mostly with the dead.’
When Cross got home Sally was coming downstairs. ‘I’ve just been settling Fiona. Mrs Cross rang earlier.’
He thought he probably still smelled of Miranda Ramsay and stepped back as Sally passed. He went upstairs and showered. After towelling himself dry he inspected himself with distaste in the mirror and thought about her hardness.
‘The men I fuck and the men I marry are quite different,’ she had said. ‘I liked Niall. There was something nicely vulnerable about him. You could still see the child that had got bullied. For some reason for me husbands are not there to be good in bed. Some faceless fuck with a crowbar for a tool I can have when I want, and, yes, I probably am just out to humiliate myself. You too, perhaps? I saw you caught in two minds, pretending to be the faceless fuck but not sure.’
She had laughed as he looked caught out.
‘You’ve nice hands, though, like Niall,’ she’d said.
‘Heatherington was abducted from his girlfriend’s flat in Andersonstown in 1976 and his hooded body was found two days later less than a mile away in Colin Glen. He was twenty years old. The Provisional IRA claimed they executed him for complicity with the security forces.’
Westerby was reading from a cutting from the Irish Times. They were in Cross’s office, drinking thin coffee in plastic mugs that buckled from the heat of the liquid. It was not yet lunchtime and the lights were on again.
‘So what have we got?’ he asked. ‘Heatherington shot by the Provos in 1976? McKeague shot in 1982 by any number of people, it seems.’
The wind rattled the window sashes so hard that he had to get up and jam them with tissue while Westerby consulted her
notes.
‘McKeague was shot either by the INLA, the UDA or even by his own men in the Red Hand Commando. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d all ganged together to do the job. He seems to have been an exceptionally nasty piece of work.’
‘What about mainland deaths?’
‘The biggest ones are last year’s Brighton bomb casualties and Airey Neave, who was blown up in 1979 as he left the House of Commons. They were the most spectacular unless you count Lord Mountbatten, but that was in Sligo.’
‘What else is there on Heatherington?’
‘He was one of six young men acquitted of shooting two RUC constables in Finaghy Road North in 1974. After his death, two years later, the Irish Times ran this article.’
She handed it to Cross, who glanced at the headline, ‘Murdered Man in Herron Death Cycle’. The article noted Heatherington’s death and went on to say that the story was more complicated than the Provisionals’ claim that Heatherington had been a British agent and that it had its roots in the still unsolved killing of Tommy Herron in 1973.
Cross sighed. He remembered Herron – short and belligerent, with an ebullient quiff. He read on.
‘Who’s this Brown mentioned?’
Westerby checked her notes again. ‘Gregory Brown, shot May 1976 in Cregagh Road from a passing Cortina. The Ulster Freedom Fighters claimed it, saying that Brown, who was a Protestant, had been involved in Herron’s murder.’
The UFF were a paramilitary arm of the UDA, which would make sense, Cross thought, if they’d carried out Brown’s killing in revenge for killing one of their leaders.
‘The Times carried a report after Brown’s death,’ Westerby went on, ‘claiming that he had been part of a gang involving an RUC detective constable, a UVF or UDA gunman, a Catholic and a woman.’
‘What’s all this got to do with Heatherington?’
‘Search me, sir. And the journalist who wrote it is on holiday for three weeks. Barbados.’
27
Belfast, May 1974
CANDLESTICK’S defection was planned by Davenport as part of a wider strategy whose results would take several years to reach fruition. Davenport discussed the matter only with his superior, known behind his back as the Man who Fucked Younger Women, and to his face as G. No one knew exactly what G did. Some whispered that he was there for Anglophile Americans who liked the fact that he looked the part, to the extent that in film and television thrillers his equivalent was often played by the actor he most resembled: the same ramrod back, moustache and tightly packed, tamed hair that looked like a surreal collaboration between René Magritte and the British public school system. Davenport knew that deep down G was quite mad.