I sat on the bottom step. I had no money and no idea what district this was. At the back of the entry there was a scurrying like the light tapping of fingernails. Even respectable tenements drew rats. There was a door beside me, one of the two on the ground floor. I pressed the bell. In the stillness I heard the dull burring from inside. I leaned on the tiny dull square of light three times; nobody came and I limped past the second door into the street.
The name of the street was on a plate on the tenement wall. It was the right name, but it was a ‘Street’. I checked the piece of paper and the name was right, only it was not ‘Street’ but ‘Gardens’. I went round the corner and there was another plate and it had what I wanted. I was back in business.
The Gardens began with one block of tenements. After that there were hedges with neat bungalows tucked behind them. I searched for some clue about the numbering until I was frustrated, exhausted and ready to give up if there had been anywhere else to go. When I got the right house, I found in the middle of the gate the number trickily worked in iron.
It was a house like the others; if you were absent-minded, or hungry enough, you might have rushed by mistake into either of its neighbours and sat down to someone else’s dinner. No lights showed, but then it was late. Nothing but the inertia of all the little decisions since I had fished out the fold of paper in the taxi made me open the gate.
There was a bell and it had a little light so that you could find it in the dark. I could not bring myself to ring it. Maybe if I went round the house I would come on Margaret standing at a window. We would get into bed and every time the springs creaked a woman’s voice, her mother’s, would call out: ‘Are you all right dear?’
I tucked the stick under my arm and leaned on the roughcast wall for support as I went round the house. The side window was open. There was no sound from inside and nothing to make out but shapes. I hesitated with my hands on the ledge for what felt like hours then turned back to the front door.
I made a pointless little rapping, too quiet to waken anybody. I rang the bell. I banged with my fist; I rattled the box. At the height of the din, an insomniac stopped at the gate. I turned to look at him. He went away. Under a lamp, he emerged as a fat little man with a white dog at heel. If he was a good neighbour, he had changed his mind.
With a soft rub of wood on wood the window rose. I reached in with the stick and swept it in an arc without touching anything. Please God, I thought, don’t make it her parents’ room. At least there was no sound of creaking springs. I bent in over the ledge till my hands touched the floor, gathered the good foot under me and hit the floor crouching. Silence.
I had got to my feet and started to edge forward when the door opened. A pencil beam of light crept forward just ahead of the new arrival. If the torch beam had swung about it would have caught me playing statues. The light crept across the surface of the table. There was a vase with white papery discs of honesty standing up out of it and a piece of paper propped against it. The paper was held so it could be read then was taken behind the beam out of sight. The light moved and there was a bump.
‘Bloody hell!’ a man’s voice said. I knew the voice. No name came with it, but I had heard that voice before.
A man’s shape spread cruciform against the lighter dark of the window and vanished as the curtains were drawn. The beam wound back across the carpet, a switch clicked and there was a dazzling brightness from overhead.
‘Muldoon!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you knew Margaret.’
His foxy mask gaped in shock, the torch still lit and waving in his hand. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he could speak.
‘Was that you hammering at the door?’ he asked.
‘Nobody else, but why didn’t you open the door? Is Margaret here?’
But at the first question his tiny eyes scuttled to the drawn curtains and I remembered the window opened behind it. I turned my back on him and went over to pull back the curtains. The glass underneath the catch had been cut out in a half circle. I put my fist up beside it as a measure.
‘I don’t think you came in by the front door either,’ I said. The neat hole was just larger than my fist. ‘That’s professional. I couldn’t have done it. Was that one of the optional extras in the seminary?’
‘Never mind me,’ Muldoon said. ‘Is burglary a new course at the University?’
‘I’m a friend of Margaret.’ I leered at him like a bad comedian. ‘She’s expecting me.’
As he didn’t answer, my own words put another thought in my head.
‘Are you breaking your vows with her?’
He put the torch out at last.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘You and Margaret. Nothing sinful. Only trying to make little Muldoons together.’
He didn’t rise to the bait. There are people who ask to be needled; Muldoon had taken me that way since the day I met him. Sometimes I had the feeling that I did not really care for him. With remarks like that, I could usually drive him into a miniature puritan frenzy.
‘You’d better sit down,’ he said. ‘Before you fall down.’
‘You first.’
He shook his head as if he was patronising me – it was very strange – and sat down himself beside the table with the flowers. When he was down, I let myself sit. Every muscle in my body sighed. For the first time I took in the room – a sofa, chairs, a gas fire set into the hearth with a fuss of ornaments on the shelf above it.
‘There’s nobody else in the house. Is there?’
‘Just you and me,’ he said.
‘Cosy.’
I knew I should be questioning, getting things out of him. My mind was foundering in pillows of weariness. When I tried to get him in sharp focus, bolsters of flesh pressed from below and above to close my eyes.
‘The question is,’ Muldoon said, ‘how you found this house? I was told you’d no idea where the girl lived.’
I tried to think who could have told Muldoon anything like that, but I was too tired. Who had I told? Whose business would it be?
‘But you did,’ I said, out of simplicity not cunning. ‘You knew her house all right.’
‘Cut out the dirty talk!’ When I meant nothing he decided to have his outburst of temper. ‘I’ve never liked you and that’s the truth. That come as a shaker to you? You’re one of those fellows think they’re great. Everybody has to like them. Not me, friend. Not one little bit – and if you’ve got it coming, I’ll be there to cheer.’
I had been amazed before by someone telling me what I was like – and they never came anywhere near being right.
‘If you’re ever there when I get something coming, Muldoon, don’t cheer. Not unless you want your jaw broken.’
‘You’re a right bastard!’
He moved as if to go for me, and changed his mind.
‘Come and give us a kiss!’ I said.
The minutes in the chair or the surge of adrenalin unthawed me.
‘Better still,’ I said, ‘tell me why you’re here. Did big Peter Kilpatrick send you?’
Muldoon went quiet in his seat.
‘Well Peter’s a good friend of mine,’ he said. ‘It would be possible he sent me. He might be wanting something back.’
‘He might be wanting something back,’ I mimicked him.
He made an ugly face and leaned forward.
‘Peter’s sorry he gave the girl the parcel. He wants it back.’
‘So?’
‘So let me have it and I’ll give it back to him.’
‘Did you think it was here?’ I needed some leverage to make him explain. ‘You haven’t told me why you came here.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with anything.’
‘I think it does. You tell me why you’re here and then we can talk about the parcel.’
He sat back like a man deliberately relaxing.
‘If it’ll make you happy. I thought Peter would be here.’
‘What
would he be doing here?’
‘What would he not?’ Muldoon said. ‘Isn’t he thick with the girl?’
I thought about that. I had to be stupid to have taken it for granted Margaret would be running errands for someone she knew only casually. He might be a friend of hers; because you did someone a favour it did not mean you went to bed with him.
‘I can’t imagine Margaret’s parents having Kilpatrick here as a house guest,’ I said.
Muldoon put his hand in his side pocket and drew out a piece of paper. I remembered the paper he’d lifted from the table.
‘Her folks are away on holiday. She’s left this note for them – they’re due back, but they’ve been away.’
‘Let me see.’
He folded it in his hand. I considered getting up fast but, whatever he saw in my eyes, he eased to the front of his chair. I didn’t think I was in condition to catch him before he made it out of the door.
‘Why has she left them a note? Has she gone away with Kilpatrick?’
‘With Peter?’ He looked as if he hadn’t thought of that. ‘It’s possible. He’d want out of here when she—’
‘What – when she what?’ My brain was too tired; I let the possibilities spill out. ‘When she gave me the parcel? Or when she came back and told him she’d given it to me? Why would that upset him? He told her to give it to me – that’s what she said. And I was to keep it for Brond.’
‘For who?’ I had never pictured what they meant when they said a man’s jaw dropped – that’s what happened, like a box lid on a hinge his jaw fell open. ‘For Brond?’
‘All I know is I was asked to give him the parcel – and now he’s got it.’
Muldoon stood up.
‘You’ve given it to Brond,’ he said colourlessly.
I straightened in the chair and took a grip on the stick. It had never occurred to me that there might be something in Muldoon to be afraid of – not till now.
‘I gave him a box,’ I said slowly, ‘and it was wrapped in brown paper tied with string – the hairy kind of string—’
‘Are you working for Brond?’
I ignored the question.
‘And there was tape, lots of tape. And we took off the tape and the string and the box opened. And there were two things inside.’ This was the moment when his face should tell me if he knew what had been in the parcel. He looked worried, tired suddenly – as always, red foxy. I could not tell. ‘A cloth and a gun. The cloth had stains on it – maybe ketchup off a fish supper. Somebody had fired the gun.’
Muldoon’s face was closed and secret.
‘I’ve been thinking Kilpatrick must have been the one who fired it and that was why he wanted to get rid of it. But now you say he wants it back and I’ve been wondering why he would change his mind. Has Kilpatrick killed someone?’
Muldoon grinned at me.
‘You want to give your head a rest,’ he said. ‘You’re too old for fairy stories.’
I got the stick under both hands and lurched to my feet. Muldoon came back into proportion. He was a little weed of a fellow.
‘How would you like me to rest the back of my hand across your mouth?’
‘There’s no need for that,’ he said. ‘Listen, Peter’ll explain. He’s the man that’s worrying you – let him do the explaining. I didn’t want to tell you he was here until I was sure everything was all right.’
‘Here? He is? Is Margaret here too?’
‘Of course, in the bedroom. I’ll get them.’
And he turned as naturally as that and went out. Even before I heard the outside door close, I knew he had fooled me. Margaret and Kilpatrick were not in this house. I listened to the stillness. The house was empty except for me and I had no right to be here and had to get out. I fell into a chair and tiredness rose over me like a small death. I wondered if Margaret Briody had really gone away . . . If that had been a note Muldoon had folded in his hand . . . If . . .
I woke in a fright. My arm had folded under me in the chair. Out in the hall red light came through the glass door from a street lamp. I took the first likely door and was lucky for there was a bed. My jacket and tie came off easily, then my trousers dragged and tugged with twin bundles of socks tangled in the cuffs.
Under the borrowed blankets, I couldn’t stop shivering.
NINE
Kilpatrick’s friend? Kilpatrick’s friend. Who was Kilpatrick’s friend? Muldoon, I remembered, and remembering came awake.
The room was full of light. A white ceiling and net curtains with sunlight behind them. On the other side, a dressing table covered with glass animals. The nearest was an elephant with ears like bright drops of water.
I felt alive and full of energy. I yawned and thought about getting up.
Hunger and a full bladder bobbed me gently to the surface again. Sitting up, I saw a yellow dressing-gown lying on the floor. The pillow beside me showed an edge of yellow and when I tugged on it a nightdress of yellow nylon slipped into my hand. It smelled of Margaret Briody.
There were eggs in the fridge in the kitchen. I put a pan on the hot ring and dropped a knob of butter in it, but by the time I had broken three eggs into a dish the butter was giving off black smoke. It was a fine morning and a strange house. Breakfast should be done properly. I found a dishcloth and wiped the pan clean; put their Cona on with coffee; added black pepper and stirred my three eggs with a fork; put a plate under the grill to warm; threw in butter again and as it spat and sizzled across the pan poured in the eggs. The mix spread and I shook the pan, folded, turned out the golden half moon on a plate. Perfect.
Naturally, I had forgotten to make toast.
Eat or make toast while the omelette deflates: it was like a question from the old professor in Moral Philosophy. I ate the omelette. Later out of hunger, I searched and found half a shop loaf in its wrapper and chewed down slices of it. The butter was good even with that – salt butter from the Orkneys.
It was a well-doing family. In the parents’ room, I found a drawer crammed tidily with documents and bills. I lay on the bed and read through them. On one demand note, her father had put a date and quoted as a reminder to himself part of his reply: ‘never welshed on a bill in my life’. He had underlined ‘never’ with three heavy slashes of a pen. From the kinds of stuff he bought, I thought he must be a builder, a slater perhaps, and imagined him as being on his own and wondered how much he made: enough anyway to let Margaret be at university and holiday abroad and have that shiny gloss on her skin. Even in the photograph on the wall, she glowed. I wondered if the proud father noticed how highlights and shadows conspired around those incredible breasts. The photograph beside it was of a little girl dressed for first communion. She looked bridal but familiar. I guessed Margaret must be an only child. Her mother would say to her in a few years: ‘We sacrificed but never grudged it – to give you a chance.’ I thought she might grudge it ahead of schedule if they found who she was with at the moment. I took it for granted now that Kilpatrick was hiding for some reason and that she was with him. I remembered what I had said to Muldoon. People did kill – it happened all the time. A friend of mine in the first term had been stabbed to death one Friday night outside a pub. A fifteen-year-old had stabbed him with a sharpened screwdriver and it had forced a way between two ribs into his lung so that he drowned in blood.
Margaret in the photograph on the wall glowed and smiled. I thought if I was her father I would keep her locked up. I would buy a machine gun – no problem for a man who settled his bills – and mow down all the men who lusted after her.
In their hearts, I thought, and scratched myself.
A bang echoed round the house and quivering into the middle of the floor I translated it as a front door closing. From the hall came the sound of a woman’s voice and the deeper mutter of a man in reply. In a silent frenzy I straightened the spread on the sheets and gathered up bills and letters to lay them back in the drawer. Two fat envelopes spilled on to the floor. I scuffed them under th
e bed. It had gone quiet. I considered escaping out of the window; and had a vivid picture of being arrested half over the sill.
The door eased open under my hand more slowly than I would ever have imagined. Through the crack I studied the empty hall, suspecting shadows. There was no reason why they should go into Margaret’s bedroom. They would be in the kitchen. Hungry after travelling.
In the bedroom I wasted no time. I found my socks in different places and crammed on my shoes barefoot. Stick in one hand, socks in the other, my jacket over my arm – the tie had vanished, a casualty of the night – I recrossed the hall. I was going to be lucky. With one finger I hooked the handle and the front door opened – it wasn’t properly shut.
A squat bullet-headed man, old enough to be my father, was reaching up to push the door. He had a case in his other hand and a holdall tucked under the same arm. He blinked at me and then put the hand that had been reaching for the door on to my chest and propelled me back into the hall.
‘Now don’t let’s be hasty, Mr Briody,’ I said. He wasn’t big, six inches less than me, but he was broad and with my shoelaces undone and holding one jacket and two socks I wasn’t feeling at my best.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I can guess. Where’s Margaret?’
I shook my head.
‘Through there.’ He pointed to the room Muldoon and I had been in the previous night. I found myself sitting in the same chair.
‘Stay there!’ he said and went back into the hall.
I put my socks on and got my shoelaces tied. I buttoned my jacket and then unbuttoned it, thinking Mr Briody might get over-excited. My tie remained among absent friends.
He came back and shut the door quietly. The other chair was too far away apparently, for he pulled it up close to me and when he sat down leaned forward.
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