‘Did you get a decent look at him?’ Rob asked.
‘Just jump right in there,’ said Gerry.
‘It’s fine, it’s fine, and no, not really. It was dark, and although it felt like it went on for ever, I suppose it was really quite quick.’ She got a little teary. ‘So, no, I didn’t see who it was, but then I know who’s behind it, so what’s the difference?’
‘Who?’ Rob asked.
‘The hoods! The paramilitaries! They haven’t gone away, you know!’
‘I mean a name or a specific... Someone the police will be able to arrest. What did they say?’
Janine’s good eye flitted to Gerry. ‘I didn’t... report it, yet.’
‘Why not?’ said Rob.
‘Because what are they going to do?’ said Gerry. ‘She barely saw him. And even if they got him, he’s not going to name names, is he? And if this is what they do when they’re not getting their money, what’re they going to do when they hear we’ve brought the police in?’
‘Exactly,’ said Janine. ‘But I think – I think maybe that might be the end of it? Because now they know I can’t pay them any more, and they’ve punished me, so what’s the point in them carrying on with it? I was the weak spot, and they exploited it.’ She took Gerry’s hand and looked into his eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry, Gerry, I should have told you, but I was scared. Will you ever forgive me?’
‘Forgive? There’s nothing to forgive! I don’t know how you worked under all that pressure, it must have been awful. And I think you should take a few days to recover, and then start right back in with us on Monday morning. Isn’t that right, Rob?’
‘It... I mean... whatever you say.’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ said Gerry. ‘Welcome back, Janine.’
‘Oh, Gerry.’
‘In fact, welcome home, Janine,’ said Gerry.
Janine started to cry again.
When she finally stopped she apologized for making such a show of herself, and asked what they wanted for lunch. Rob said he couldn’t stay. Gerry half-heartedly tried to persuade him. Janine thanked him profusely. Gerry offered to give him a lift back to the office, but he said he would walk, he didn’t know the town that well but he was pretty sure it was only a fifteen-minute stroll.
Except, when he came out of Maxwell Park he turned right instead of left; it didn’t make a huge amount of difference to his journey, maybe an extra ten minutes, but it was a happy accident because it brought him to the very end of Maxwell Road and he could see the Winemark off licence about a hundred metres away. Rob sauntered up and in. The woman behind the counter smiled at him and said what a nice day it was and could she be of any help and they had an offer on Australian wines. Rob said he wasn’t in for any wine. He was with the Express. He wondered if she’d heard anything about what happened outside last night. She said no, though she had been working. He told her about the paper’s advertising manager being beaten up just yards along and she said, ‘Janine?’
‘You know her?’
‘Yes, of course, she’s a regular – and I mean that in a good way. Lovely lady. She was attacked? I never heard anything – but then we’re all double-glazed against the traffic, so a bomb could go off we wouldn’t hear it. Oh dear. Is she okay?’
‘A bit battered,’ said Rob.
‘And she was in last night, I served her.’
He thanked her anyway and turned for the door.
The woman called after him, ‘Please tell her I was asking for her?’
‘Will do,’ said Rob.
‘And is her boyfriend all right?’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Aye, he was with her, he wasn’t attacked too?’
‘No, I... Do you mean, Gerry?’
‘Well, I really don’t know his name. Big fella, not much in the way of hair but he’s like – you know, like a doorman or something? You know, like a bouncer? He looks like he could handle himself in a fight all right. He must have left before she was—?’
‘Aye,’ said Rob, ‘I suppose he must have.’
*
As soon as Rob and Gerry left for lunch, Alix slipped out too. She was on a mission. Ailsa and Roy were supposed to be her friends – Ailsa more than Roy, because they went way back to primary school together – but she knew they were somehow connected to the fire at the half-way house. It was just too much of a coincidence that the very day she had accidentally mentioned where Mark Dillon was staying it was attacked by arsonists. She was determined to have it out with them – people could have been killed, and Thomas Brady very nearly had been. She’d spent the morning talking to the health board’s press office trying to get an interview with Dillon, but he’d said no.
On the way there she faltered a little – the half-way house was, after all, a home for those who’d recently been released from prison; what if one of them was in fact an unreformed arsonist? Coincidences did happen, that’s why they were called coincidences. She couldn’t just burst in and accuse them.
Ailsa answered the door, all smiles and saying she wasn’t long out of bed, then asking about Alix’s hangover because her head was still killing her. Now that they were face to face across the kitchen table again, Alix realized how ridiculous she was being. She’d known Ailsa most of her life, she was incapable of hurting another human being. Ailsa poured coffee and brought out half a dozen cupcakes in a Tupperware box and they discussed why the hell they were called cupcakes when they were clearly just buns. Alix ate one and was starting on a second when she casually dropped in about the fire and Ailsa said, ‘What fire?’ and looked genuinely surprised. She got up and went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, ‘Roy – Alix is here! Did you hear about the fire?’
‘What fire?’ drifted down.
‘At that place where Dillon is, Dufferin Avenue?’
‘Didn’t hear, but I hope it got the bastard.’
A minute later Roy appeared in the kitchen, wearing a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, with a towel draped over his shoulders and flecks of shaving foam still below one of his ears. He nodded at Alix and said, ‘How serious?’
‘Bad enough. Someone poured petrol through the letter box, whole place went up.’
‘What about our guy?’
‘He’s fine. Actually – he turned out to be a bit of a hero.’
‘Hero – what the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Easy, Roy,’ said Ailsa.
‘Just what they’re saying. He saved some people.’
‘And is that what you’re putting in your paper, that he’s a hero?’
‘I don’t know what’s going in, Roy.’
Roy crossed to the worktop and began to make himself a cup of coffee. Alix noticed for the first time that he was keeping his right hand in his tracksuit pocket. When he lifted the kettle he was somewhat awkward with it, and when he poured the boiling water it spilled out too fast and came up and over the brim of his mug. Alix glanced at Ailsa and saw that her friend was watching Roy too. When her eyes came back to Alix they flitted away again. Roy turned with the mug in his left hand and leaned against the sink, sipping at it and looking between his wife and Alix at some unknown spot. It was, suddenly, unbelievably awkward.
Alix studied the kitchen table. Ailsa was her friend, Roy was part of the package. She liked him all right, but didn’t really know him that well. Billy, her former editor, had had a mantra based on forty years’ experience in the newspaper business. ‘You never know what goes on behind closed doors.’ And she had begun to learn it herself. The most pleasant, charming and endearing people could be monsters at home; the outgoing, shy; the beautiful, plagued with self-doubt; the roughest, obsessed with needlepoint. Sometimes it ended with that nice Mrs Jones plunging an axe into her husband’s head. Sometimes, Billy said, you never found out, but you always had to take it into account. Nobody ever showed 100 per cent of themselves. Anyone who did, you had to suspect there was another fifty per cent hidden away somewhere defying the laws of mathematics. Alix loved Ailsa, h
ad spent weeks and months and years in her company, but she still would never really know what she was like once that front door shut, what she was really like with Roy. Roy himself was generally pleasant and had a good sense of humour, but according to Billy’s dictum, he could just as easily be an arsonist, an arsonist with his hand thrust into his pocket because he had burned it while setting fire to a half-way house.
Eventually Alix broke the silence with a simple, ‘Well.’
‘Aye,’ said Ailsa.
‘Thing is,’ said Alix, ‘I think the editor will probably take me off the story anyway. He’ll say I’m personally involved in it. And maybe that’s for the best.’
‘Is that because you think Dillon is a hero?’ Roy asked.
‘Roy, I can... any reporter can only report the facts. As I understand it Dillon did save some lives. It doesn’t mean you forget what he did before. Maybe he has turned his life around, I don’t know. I mean – what he did was appalling, absolutely appalling, but what do you say then about someone who could pour petrol through the letter box of a building where a dozen people were sleeping, where a dozen people could have died? Aren’t they just as bad?’
Roy shook his head. ‘If you ask me, someone should have smoked those bastards out months ago. And actually, Alix – is that why you’re here? Do you think we had something to do with the fire?’
‘No, I—’
‘Because if you are, you can just fuck off out of here and never come back.’
‘Roy, please, there’s no need for that,’ said Ailsa.
‘Well!’
‘No, I’m not suggesting that, not at all,’ though deep down, she knew she was, ‘I just wanted to let you know about it, keep you up to date.’
Roy chewed on his bottom lip. Then he said, ‘Okay. Well. Sorry. I’m just pissed off with him. It’s not you.’
‘It’s fine, honestly.’ She got up from the table and pulled her jacket on. Ailsa got up too. Alix leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Sure I’ll have youse round to my place soon for something to eat, eh?’ Then she turned to Roy and put her hand out to him. ‘Friends?’ she said.
She waited for him to withdraw his hand from his pocket.
Roy nodded, then came forward and gave her a one- armed hug.
Alix hugged him back. When they parted, their eyes met, and he knew that she knew, and she knew that he knew she knew. When she looked at Ailsa it was just Ailsa, and she hoped that she really didn’t know, but she knew now that she herself would never know unless she came straight out and asked them, and she just wasn’t brave enough to do that. With strangers, yes, sure – but, with friends, impossible. The only thing she was really sure of was that their relationship had changed for ever, that, no matter what was said on the surface, she would never again be welcomed into their home.
Driving back to the office, she wondered if the job was making her cynical or if she’d always been that way. She realized that she felt happier now than when she’d made the outward journey – lighter, and more determined than ever to write her story, and write it properly. With that in mind she decided not to go straight back to the office. She’d been fobbed off all morning by the health board’s press officer. She was going to get her story straight from the horse’s mouth.
*
It was probably worth an article in itself – how easy it was to get into a hospital. All Alix had to say was that she was here to visit her brother and what ward was he on and she was told exactly where to go, wasn’t even asked for ID. Mark Dillon was in an open ward, though with the curtains pulled around his bed. She hesitated before stepping through the slight gap, a little nervous, a little scared as to how he would react, aware that she was stepping outside the bounds of what she should be doing as a local newspaper reporter – but she was young, she was ambitious, she wanted to step up to the big leagues. Getting an exclusive (though in truth nobody else seemed to be clamouring for it) interview with the villain-turned-hero wasn’t exactly tracking down Nazis, but it would be a step in the right direction.
She said, ‘Mr Dillon?’
He was lying on top of the bedcovers. He’d an IV in his arm. He had bandages on his hands and across his shoulders and the back of his neck. His eyes were red. He was reading the back page of a newspaper and said ‘Yep?’ without looking up, but when she said nothing he did and it took him a moment to place her. Then he said, ‘What the...?’ and looked about, a little panicked. His voice was ragged.
‘Sorry – I just wondered if I could have a quick word.’
‘About what?!’
‘About everything, about the fire, about being back in town, about—’
‘No! You’ve no right to come in here! Who the fuck do you think you—?’
‘I’m just trying to write a story about...’
The curtain moved behind her. There was a red-faced nurse, ‘Sorry – but what’s going on here? Visiting time isn’t for another—’
‘I just wanted a quick word with—’
‘She’s a fucking reporter!’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, you have to get permission before you can just—’
‘I know but—’
‘But nothing. Now, please...’
The nurse pulled the curtain back a little further to allow Alix to exit. Alix looked at Dillon and then quickly delved into her handbag and produced a card. ‘Let me leave you this,’ she said, setting it down on the table at the end of his bed, ‘and if you want to talk you can—’
‘I don’t want your fucking card!’
‘Please,’ said the nurse.
‘Going,’ said Alix, her face burning.
She backed out through the curtain and began to walk away. She left the ward and was half-way down the corridor when the nurse called after her – ‘Excuse me?’
She debated whether to stop – she was bound to want to report her for barging in on a patient, and that would undoubtedly get back to Rob. She stopped, and took a deep breath, and turned slowly. She was about to launch into another apology when the nurse said, ‘He’s changed his mind, he does want to talk to you. Shouldn’t really allow it, but he is a bit of a hero, isn’t he?’ She turned on her heel and Alix fell in behind her. ‘Just a few minutes, then? He’s really not very well – smoke on the lungs. It’s quite nasty.’
When she pulled the curtain back Dillon held his hands up and said, ‘Sorry – look, I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I’m just—’
‘Of course you are. You’ve been in a fire. You’re all burned.’
‘No – not really. A few wee marks, that’s all.’
‘You’re quite the hero, Mr Dillon.’
‘Mister now, is it?’
‘Well.’
‘Is that what you’re going to write?’
‘It’s what people are saying. Do you want to tell me what happened?’
‘No, I really don’t.’
‘It’s a good story, and we have to write it. Surely it’s better to have your input? It might help rehabilitate you in the eyes of—’
‘In the eyes of who, exactly? And who says I need rehabilitated?’
Alix moved to the end of his bed. ‘Look, I’m not trying to cause you any trouble... but I have to report the news, and you saved people’s lives in that fire, and we should celebrate that. But I can’t write the story without saying why you were in the half-way house in the first place.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re a small town and people will know and if we don’t mention it they’ll think we’re deliberately hiding it. And also, it’s the right thing to do. We’re just presenting the facts.’
Dillon was shaking his head. ‘Sorry, look, if you put it in the paper it means everyone will be reminded of what happened. Even if you call me the greatest hero since Captain America, the one thing people are going to take away from it is that I once killed a baby. I could save ten thousand people in ten thousand fires but they’d still point at me and
call me a baby killer. If you put my face in the paper, I’ll never be able to walk down a street in this town and feel safe, never be able to sleep without thinking there’s someone pouring petrol through the letter box, trying to kill me.’
‘We don’t know that that’s what—’
‘Of course it is! And you know something? I don’t blame them.’
‘Them?’
‘Little Peggy’s parents.’
‘You don’t know that they...’
‘You forget, I met them, first day on a new job, face to face, and I saw how they were, the disbelief and the anger. If the dad had gotten hold of me there, I’m pretty sure he would have killed me. That, that... bitterness doesn’t go away. How can it? I killed their baby. If I could go back, if I could not drink, not show off to my mates in that stupid fucking souped-up car, don’t you think I would? I am so sorry for what happened.’
‘Why don’t you tell them that? Maybe it would help.’
‘You know something? I may be some kind of hero, but I’m not brave enough for that. Not in a million years.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.’
There were tears in his eyes.
When she got back to the office and she started to write she couldn’t quite settle on what she wanted to say. Dillon hadn’t specifically said that what he was telling her was off the record, which meant that according to the arbitrary and meaningless ethics of journalism she was free to use it. She’d taken the precaution of recording their conversation on her phone. She hadn’t hidden the phone, she had quite clearly had it in her hand, and even made a deliberate demonstration of pushing a button just as soon as she arrived back at his bed; if he had noticed, he hadn’t commented. She was aware of the power that she had to slant the story whatever way she wanted. It was a question of how much prominence she gave to his previous conviction, how well she conveyed his sorrow, how she portrayed his undoubted heroism (and she managed later in the afternoon to speak to several other witnesses who confirmed what Dillon had done) and how much space she gave to the reactions of the still-grieving parents or if she even dared hint that they might somehow be connected to the fire.
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