I phoned Trish.
I kept my voice low so that Lenny wouldn’t hear, particularly the ‘Hello, how’s the love of my life?’ bit.
‘Fine,’ she said.
Fine to me is a grand summer’s morning, or the first pint on a stag night. Fine coming from a woman translates as appalling.
‘How’s the boy wonder?’
‘Fine.’
‘Is he holding you hostage and restricting you to one word?’
‘No,’ she said. Then she sighed. ‘No, really. It’s okay. I suppose. He’s bored. I’m bored. You’ve lumbered me with this. He knows he can’t go out, but there’s nothing here for him to do. I can’t entertain him. So, I was wondering . . . he was wondering . . .’
‘Mmm-hmmm?’
‘Well, he was asking if I could run him up to his house, just so that he can go in and get his Xbox. It’s in his bedroom, sitting there doing nothing.’
‘No.’
‘He’d be in and out in two minutes.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Dan, he’s a teenager, they’re miserable at the best of times. With everything he has going on, he needs something to take his mind off it, and I’m afraid daytime television doesn’t cut it.’
‘Rent him a movie. Download something.’
‘Dan, he wants the Xbox. Look, his mum is gone, he can’t talk to his friends. Just let—’
‘Trish – no. He goes near the Shankill, they’ll have him in an instant.’
‘Then I’ll take a run up and—’
‘No.’
‘Are you telling me no?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you do it for him. Dan. Please. I’m harbouring a fugitive, the least you can do is—’
‘Okay. All right. Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘So you’ll do it?’
‘I said to leave it with me.’
‘Dan, just say you’ll do it.’
‘Okay! Christ. I’ll do it. Satisfied?’
‘Thank you. Was that so hard?’
‘Trish. Jesus.’ Calm. Deep breath. ‘Right. Okay.’ I drummed my fingers on the table. ‘What’re you going to do about your work?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re going to take some time off?’
‘Dan, I happen to be off today. But I’m going in tomorrow.’
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’
‘It’s my job, Dan. It’s not a case of it being wise or not.’
‘I mean, you’re just going to leave him at home by himself? Couldn’t you take a couple of days off, just till I get this sorted?’
‘No. I don’t have them to take.’
‘Okay. It’s up to you. I’m sure it’ll be okay. We are insured, aren’t we?’
‘Dan, don’t.’
‘I’m just asking.’
‘Tell you what, why don’t you come round and babysit him? It’s not like you have a job.’
‘Nice one, Trish.’
‘You asked for it.’
We were quiet for a bit. Lenny came past and lifted my empty glass. She didn’t ask if I wanted another.
I said, ‘I appreciate your candour, Inspector,’ for her benefit.
‘You what?’ Trish asked.
‘Nothing. Sorry.’ I sighed. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes. It’s just . . . strange, having him around.’
‘I know.’
‘Because I keep thinking . . .’
‘I know.’
‘Do you ever think . . .?’
‘Trish . . .’
‘What he would have been like? He’d have been fourteen by now.’
‘Yes, he would. I know that. A little ginger teenager.’
‘He wasn’t ginger.’
‘He was one gene from it.’
‘But not your gene, Dan.’
Dagger between the ribs.
‘No. That’s true.’
‘I’m sorry, Dan, I didn’t mean that.’
‘I know that. Anyway, gotta go . . .’
‘Dan, don’t be like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Dan.’ I didn’t say anything. After a bit she said: ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, and cut the line.
The house on Dewey Street had been boarded up after the fire, but its defences had long since been breached. Scorched furniture lay in the garden: a sofa with the stuffing spilling out, a blackened sideboard, various battered kitchen appliances. Crime-scene tape flapped in the breeze. It was a Housing Executive dwelling, and they would soon be round to clear it out and make it ready for the next young couple on the list desperate enough for their own home that they wouldn’t care that someone had recently been murdered in it.
The front door was lying open. I stepped into the hall, and on into the living room. It smelt of burning rubber. Shards of broken glass and smashed ceramics littered the floor. The fire hadn’t made it upstairs, but the smoke had, and it still clung to everything. Jean’s bedroom had been thoroughly ransacked: drawers emptied and clothes ripped apart; someone had taken a dump on her bed. There were cider bottles lying around, stubs of cigarettes and bags with residue of glue. She’d not been dead for more than a few hours and her home had already been colonised by vermin. Bobby’s bedroom was similarly trashed. Posters on the wall had been torn to shreds and his clothes appeared to have been pissed on. There was a portable TV that wasn’t considered valuable enough to steal, so its screen had been smashed in. There was no sign of an Xbox.
I went back downstairs and outside. I turned to my left and knocked on the next front door. Nobody answered. I went right, and a small man in his sixties answered; white T-shirt, fleshy neck.
‘All right, mate,’ I said. ‘I’m from the Housing Executive, we’re going to be starting work on next door.’
‘Yeah? We’re puttin’ in for compensation, been coughin’ our guts up ever since.’
‘That’s not really—’
‘I worked in the shipyard, thirty years, me lungs aren’t good, I can’t be having that.’
I nodded sympathetically. I said, ‘It was a tragedy, what happened.’
‘Aye,’ he said.
‘Have any of her relatives been to the house, clearing out? The upstairs wasn’t too badly damaged.’
‘There was a few here, but they were too late. Minute the peelers and the firemen left, the scavengers were in, stole everything worth stealing. I couldn’t do anything about it. Fucking vultures, so they were.’ He nodded beyond me, across the road. ‘No respect, these young ’uns. My day they would have got a boot in the arse; these days they just boot you right back. Wee skitters.’
I looked where he had looked. ‘In there? Number four?’
‘Aye. Little shits.’
I thanked him. That’s why reporters knock on doors. Sometimes you get a break. It might mean nothing, or it could lead to a little tiny something that sends you in the right direction.
I crossed the road and knocked on number 4. A small man in his sixties answered; white T-shirt, fleshy neck. It seemed to be the style of the moment. I said I was a detective investigating thefts from the burned-out house. He asked if his brother had sent me. He glared across the road, at his brother, glaring back.
‘What’s it to do with me?’ he barked.
‘I’m afraid, sir, it has to do with your sons. We have CCTV footage that shows them entering the house.’
‘You’ve fuckin’ what?’
‘Security camera footage. They were in the house. Are they here?’
‘Aye. They’re upstairs.’
‘If you could send them down? The relatives want some of the family possessions back. If they get them, that’ll be the end of it; if they don’t, I’m afraid I’ll have to take them in. Sir?’
He was too busy glaring across the road to pay much attention to me. He gave his brother the fingers.
‘Howl on,’ he growled, and turned to the stairs behind him. ‘Nathan! Clint! Ge
t your arses down here now!’ There was a chorus of whats and whys. ‘Just get fuckin’ down here!’
Nathan and Clint arrived. They looked neither sheepish nor worried. They looked at me without apparent recognition and grunted.
‘He’s a peeler,’ said the dad, pointing at me. ‘Were yousuns in Jean Murray’s house?’
‘Wasn’t us!’ both of them cried together.
‘Not the fire,’ I said, ‘after. You stole stuff.’
Nathan shrugged. Or maybe it was Clint.
‘Youse came back here with a clatter of stuff,’ said the dad.
‘House was fuckin’ lyin’ open,’ said Nathan or Clint.
‘Everyone else was fuckin’ doin’ it,’ said Clint or Nathan.
The dad slapped their heads, one after the other. ‘Don’t fuckin’ curse, show a bit of respect. Now whatever you took, go and get it.’
‘Can’t,’ said Nathan or Clint. ‘We sold it. It was shite stuff anyway, only got a couple of quid for it.’
‘Who’d you sell it to?’ the dad asked.
Nathan and Clint shrugged.
I said, on a hunch, ‘You didn’t sell the Xbox.’
Nathan and Clint looked surprised.
‘How the fuck do you—’
Nathan or Clint started. Nathan or Clint shoved Nathan or Clint. ‘Shut the—’
The dad slapped them both again. ‘You have the Hexbox?’ They both avoided his eyes. ‘Right. Go and fuckin’ get it.’ They looked at each other. The dad barked: ‘Now!’
Nathan and Clint bolted up the stairs.
I stood for a long minute with the dad. Eventually I said, ‘Terrible thing,’ and nodded across at Jean Murray’s house.
The dad grunted. ‘Never knew when to shut her bake.’
I nodded. ‘Still.’
‘You know, I worked in the shipyard for thirty years.’
‘Really?’
‘Got laid off. He didn’t.’ He nodded across the road. ‘Not for another three years.’
His brother was in his front room, staring across.
‘Close, are you?’
Before he could respond, the boys arrived back downstairs. Nathan or Clint had the Xbox in his arms. He thrust it into my hands. ‘Here,’ he barked. ‘Satisfied?’
The Xbox was squat and black and scratched; the twin ventilation strips were smudged and clogged with dust. The other boy pushed two controllers against my chest. They both turned and stomped back up the stairs.
‘You’re lucky he doesn’t haul your arses down the station!’ the dad yelled after them.
I thanked him for his cooperation and said it was unlikely that we would be taking any further action, but he should consider my visit an official warning. He grunted. He closed the door. I was halfway back to my car when I heard a shout:
‘Hey, pedo!’
Clint and Nathan were at an open window, upstairs.
‘He knows his name!’ said Clint or Nathan, and they both cackled.
I turned back to the car.
‘Enjoy the Xbox,’ shouted Clint or Nathan. ‘It doesn’t work anyway, you sad fucking wanker!’
I put the Xbox in the back seat and climbed in. I drove away to a chorus of Clint and Nathan singing: ‘FUCK THE POLICE! FUCK THE POLICE!’
27
I dropped the Xbox off at my usual repair shop on Botanic Avenue, and the old fella asked if I’d checked the plug, with the weariness of someone who’d dealt with me before. I lied yes and he told me to come back in an hour.
So with time to kill and Colenso Parade only up the road a bit, I drove there and found a parking spot handy for keeping an eye on Nanny the nanny’s house. I’d bought a packet of crisps in the Bob Shaw, but with one hand the size of a small cushion, they were impossible to open. I was still trying to work it out when Nanny and Blondie emerged, climbed into their silver dream machine and drove off. A few minutes later, I sauntered down the alley behind the parade, counting off the houses. They all had back yards guarded by above-head-height walls. There were doors in the brickwork, but they’d been there for sixty or seventy years and there wasn’t much evidence of them having enjoyed the benefit of maintenance work. The locks were rusty, the hinges loose. When I came to Nanny’s, I didn’t have to do much more than lean on their green door before the lock gave way. I slipped inside and closed it behind me. I stood there and listened for a wee while, before negotiating my way through an overgrown and rubbish-strewn yard to the back door. It was in better nick than the yard door, but instead of being solid, it was made up of twelve small smoked-glass panels in a wooden frame. I took my bandaged hand and punched the panel closest to the handle. It cracked well enough for me to prise the glass out in two pieces. I then reached through and unlocked the door from the inside. I opened it and entered the kitchen.
I felt quite proud of myself. The way my luck ran, I could easily have opened a vein breaking the glass and bled to death on the back doorstep. There was a pleasant buzz of adrenalin. When I was a reporter, I wouldn’t have dreamed of breaking into someone’s house. But now that I was whatever I was, I was beholden to no one. It felt like exactly the right thing to do. I wasn’t a burglar. I was a champion of justice, which was, I’m sure, exactly how the police would look at it if they found me.
It was a two-up, two-down and sparsely furnished. There was cat food set out in a bowl in the kitchen. There was a flat-screen TV on the wall in the living room. There was a telephone stand in the hall with a small pile of mail. Most of the letters were bills addressed to Betty Spense. That would be Blondie. There was one letter addressed to a Marija Gruevski, with an unfamiliar foreign stamp. It had already been opened, so I took out three neatly hand-written pages in a language I did not recognise. I pocketed one bill, and the letter. Upstairs there was one bedroom packed to the hilt with cardboard boxes stuffed with nothing but old clothes and knick-knacks. The second had a large double bed and just about enough room for a small locker on either side of it. On the left one there was a framed photograph showing Marija with two girls of roughly similar age, smiling against a snowy background. There was nothing much of interest in her drawer. In Betty’s locker there were tights, nighties and a vibrator. I took the battery out, and put the vibrator back in the drawer.
I turned at the sound of a car door slamming. If the windows had been double-glazed I wouldn’t have heard it. I moved to the bedroom window and saw Betty approaching from about four cars up. I nipped smartly downstairs. I set the battery from the vibrator upright in the middle of the kitchen table. It would sow a confusion that would probably not be resolved until she tried to pleasure herself.
As the front door opened, I slipped out the back. I pulled the yard door closed behind me and returned to my car. I sat there for a while. When Blondie or Betty didn’t immediately burst out on to the street screaming that she had been burgled, I started the engine and drove back to Botanic and parked. I still had ten minutes until the hour was up, so I took out Marija’s letter, picked a word out of the address in the top corner and typed it into Google on my phone. It was a town in Macedonia. I knew nothing about Macedonia, but nine minutes later I knew a lot more, although it was from Wikipedia, so it might have been cack.
The owner of the repair shop claimed to be a master of all trades. He not only did Xboxes, he did vacuum cleaners too. And refrigerators, and electric heaters, and televisions, and computers, and alarm systems, and he could rig up a satellite system that would give you all the benefits of Sky without having to pay for Sky. I, who could not wire a plug, admired him immensely. I had used him on and off over the years. He knew me as Dan, I knew him as Bill. He had once had a brother called Ben. Together they and their shop were known as Bill and Ben, the Repair Men. According to legend, Ben had been electrocuted by an electric guitar he was repairing. Ben, apparently, was not a master of all trades.
As I entered, a bell sounded above the door. Bill was behind the counter, repairing a portable typewriter. He looked up. There was no familiar smile.<
br />
‘Haven’t seen one of those in a while,’ I said. He grunted. I followed it up with: ‘So, Bill, how’s the patient, could she be saved?’
He responded by moving out from behind the counter. He came past me, closed the door and locked it. He turned the Open sign to Closed. He moved back behind the counter. He shifted the typewriter to one side and fixed me with a look.
‘That bad, is it?’
He said, ‘How many years have I known you?’
‘Many,’ I said.
‘Have I ever cheated you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Have I been anything but courteous?’
‘No. Bill . . .?’
‘Yet you bring this shit in to me?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I know the Xbox is overrated, but . . .’
‘No,’ he said simply, and reached down and lifted up what appeared to be Bobby’s console. He set it down and nodded down at it. ‘This is your Xbox?’
‘Yes. No, in fact. I’m getting it fixed for a wee lad I know. Has he completely destroyed it?’
Bill thought for a moment, before nodding to himself. ‘Dan,’ he said, ‘I know you’ve had troubles, but you seem to be a decent enough, straight-up guy. I also know you haven’t the technical know-how to physically take the top off this Xbox without fatally damaging either it or yourself.’
‘Sad but true,’ I said.
‘And that is the only reason I haven’t gone to the police.’
‘The . . .’
‘If it had been anyone else, I’m telling you, I’d have had them here in a flash. You want to know why your Xbox doesn’t work? You think maybe this has something to do with it?’
I moved closer and peered down as Bill removed the top. I expected to see the inner workings. I did not. Inside, the electronics had been removed and replaced with a small handgun, a thick wad of cash and a see-through plastic bag containing a very large amount of white powder.
28
I was through the front door almost before Patricia had opened it. And before she could say anything, I was spitting out: ‘Where the fuck is fucking Peg Leg?’
‘Dan . . . Jesus . . . what’s got into you?’
She followed me down the hall. When he wasn’t in the kitchen, I went into the lounge. When he wasn’t in the lounge, I went into the living room.
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