The Living

by Léan Cullinan

  I stopped walking, resisting Matthew’s pull. ‘Yes?’ My own voice rasped like an ill-fitting door. ‘That’s me.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw the other officer look up from his clipboard and make his way towards us.

  ‘You’re a member of the Carmina Urbana choir?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Matthew asked, and he packed so many layers of hostility and distrust into the question that I turned and looked at him at last. His face was like stone, and his hand on my shoulder was no less rigid.

  I saw Diane looking over at us, shocked and wordless.

  ‘Miss Houlihan, we need to ask you some questions,’ said the female officer. She nodded briefly at her colleague as he joined us. ‘My name is Sergeant Hall,’ she continued. ‘You’ve stopped at my request, and I must now search you. Please step this way.’ Her tone was personal – almost intimate.

  ‘Oh, you are joking!’ Matthew exclaimed. ‘This is … no. Seriously, you do not want to do this.’

  Hall regarded him coolly, then turned back to me. ‘Step this way, Miss Houlihan.’

  Stunned and confused, I moved slightly towards her, but before I’d taken a step, Matthew gripped my shoulder harder – hard enough to hurt. ‘What’s this about?’ His voice was close to a growl. A bolt of panic shot through me. This was not safe. Not at all.

  ‘It’s just routine,’ said Hall, blinking at him. She seemed entirely calm, in control of the situation.

  I could just tell her, I realized suddenly. I could lean forward and say, he has a gun, and he’d be arrested on the spot, wouldn’t he? I glanced at him again, his beautiful mouth, the hair curling around his ear.

  ‘Well, she doesn’t consent,’ said Matthew.

  I gasped. ‘You don’t get to say what I consent to!’ I wrenched free of him and took a few steps forward. I wondered what she thought I might be hiding under my thin, close-fitting concert dress.

  Then I remembered the memory stick, and sweat beaded out all over my body. It was all I could do to stand still. Tears were streaming down my cheeks again. Dimly, I heard Hall inform me that she’d be using the backs of her hands on my breasts, buttocks and inner thighs. I was so numb from cold that I could barely feel her touch, but as she approached where the memory stick was hidden I lost my nerve and shied away.

  Hall spoke softly. ‘Is there something in your bra?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Is it a weapon?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Please take it out and hand it to me.’

  I dug out the memory stick, my own fingers chill against my private flesh.

  Hall reached to take it from me. Before she got hold of it, though, her colleague dropped his clipboard and shouted ‘Stop!’ We both turned sharply to see him dive into the crowd, walkie-talkie at his lips.

  The reason for his behaviour was immediately apparent: Matthew had disappeared.

  Hall took the memory stick from me, and her other hand landed heavily on my shoulder. ‘Caitlín Houlihan,’ she said, ‘I’m arresting you under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’

  I heard my voice as though from far away. ‘OK,’ it said.

  Sergeant Hall led me to a police car and guided me into the back seat. I clicked my seatbelt into place and settled myself, almost as though I were meant to be there. All this new knowledge boiled in my brain and burned away at the flesh under my ribs. The two officers in the front of the car communicated by radio with the station, but all I could make out was a babble of syllables. My eyes were stinging now, but tearless. My hands and feet prickled as they began to recover from the cold.

  What had I done? How could I possibly be sitting in the back of a Belfast squad car, under arrest? Why hadn’t I left that stupid memory stick in my bag? This – the police getting hold of it – was exactly what Nicky Fay had been trying to avoid, presumably. What a monumental fuck-up I’d made of George’s assignment. He might fire me.

  That’s if I even came through this mess without going to prison. That thought made me retch. It dripped through my head like some sort of corrosive slime. I couldn’t go near it.

  What on earth did they think I’d done? ‘Terrorism Act’, Sergeant Hall had said. Well, that was ludicrous. I wasn’t a terrorist.

  If my mind refused to dwell on these subjects, I couldn’t think about the choir either. Diane and some of the others must have seen me being searched, taken away. How could I ever look them in the face again?

  All this without even mentioning Matthew. Whatever about anything else, how had that happened? I’d risked my safety and joined up with a man who’d bring a gun to a bomb scare and run away from the police.

  The journey seemed to take a week, but at last we stopped outside a big bunker of a building, and I was led inside. After the booking procedure, which would have been mind-numbing if I’d had any mind left to numb, I was brought to a smallish, windowless room lit by a glaring fluorescent oblong. Someone would see me ‘shortly’. The door closed with a loud click behind me.

  And there I stayed. The room was bare apart from a table and two chairs. I sat gingerly on the dirty plastic seat of the chair nearest me and rested my elbows on the cold surface of the table. My feet screamed their thanks for the reprieve. Without my phone I had no notion what the time might be. It must be around nine, I guessed. I was still shivering, but from what mixture of cold and emotion I couldn’t tell. Scanning round the room I noticed the camera lens in the corner by the ceiling. I resisted the temptation to wave.

  So, they’d be interviewing me soon. Questioning me. Here I was, assisting the police with their enquiries. I’d waived my right to a solicitor, not seeing a viable alternative. I wondered if there was anything I could do to prepare myself. How could I make them believe that I wasn’t a terrorist? I wished I knew more about body language. I wished I knew more, full stop.

  What if they asked me about Matthew? Despite the gun, despite everything, I still found a tiny flicker of loyalty to him, somewhere deep down. In one little puddle of clarity I knew that, despite everything, if he was going to get in trouble I didn’t want it to be greater because of me.

  Cate, there was a fucking bomb scare. People could have been killed.

  I remembered the warmth of his hand on my shoulder, the reassuring solidity of it.

  I’d stay as calm as I could, and I’d answer their questions truthfully. But I wouldn’t give them more than they were asking for.

  It was none too warm in the room, but eventually I thawed. Then there were just the jitters of stress to contend with. I stood up and paced the short distance back and forth across the room, feeling like a cliché. Next, perhaps, I’d carve those bristly day-counting marks into the wall with my hairclip.

  Maybe I could escape – maybe if I tried hard enough, I could turn myself into mist or smoke, snake under the door, waft through the building, curl around the officers’ heads and hands as they went about their business unaware, disperse out through vents and windows to resolidify in the street outside. And why stop there, indeed? Life as an evanescent fog held a certain appeal just now.

  Why was I in this room on my own? Were they going to leave me here all night? When would something happen?

  Nothing did, not until I had given up hope that it would, had given up pacing and stretching and had sat in that horrible chair until my buttocks froze.

  I had just stood up to try and get my blood circulating again when the door opened. I turned to see Sergeant Hall coming in with a tray on which there was a jug of water and two plastic beakers. Following her was another officer, a man, who carried a leather briefcase.

  I stood as tall as I could, fighting off my feebleness.

  The male officer went to the other side of the table and put his bag down on the floor. He reached across to shake my hand. ‘Miss
Houlihan?’ Some eddy in the air as he leaned forward gave me a noseful of worthy-smelling soap.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, aiming recklessly for a tone of serene entitlement, as though I did not have a tear-streaked face, goose-pimpled arms and a blister forming on the ball of my right foot. I was in freefall. This was totally unreal.

  ‘Sergeant Phillips is my name.’ He gestured for me to sit down, and sat opposite me. The chair creaked as it took his weight. Sergeant Hall placed her tray on the table and went to stand at the door; she didn’t catch my eye when I looked over.

  Phillips spoke. ‘Just some questions, if you don’t mind, Miss Houlihan.’ He took from the briefcase a slightly dog-eared notepad and a pen. No mention of how long I’d been waiting, or why I was here at all.

  So this was it. In a flood of certainty I realized I’d tell them everything. Matthew could look after himself.

  Phillips looked straight at me. ‘Who is David Cornwell?’

  The room whirled.

  I sat and breathed, riding this latest billow of shock. David Cornwell? The name meant nothing to me. Slowly, I gathered my lips to form What? – but Phillips went on before my throat made any sound.

  ‘How do you know Noel, Eric and Frank?’

  I managed to shake my head. This was weird – something had gone badly askew. I was in the wrong room of the wrong police station on the wrong night. I coughed, and found my voice. ‘I don’t know anyone called Noel. Or Frank. I was in primary school with an Eric …’

  Phillips was writing. ‘Eric what?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’ I was doing my best, trying to give Phillips what he was looking for. He was grey-haired and soft-spoken, with a deeply lined face and big, pendulous earlobes. ‘O’Connor?’ I ventured. I was shaking again now, worse than earlier.

  ‘Eric O’Connor. And where was that?’

  ‘Queen of Angels, Ardee. County Louth. In the … Republic …’ I faltered.

  Phillips scrutinized me for a second or two, then wrote again.

  I said, ‘Sorry, what’s this about?’ I felt weak, empty, dreamlike, floored by astonishment.

  Phillips gave the tiniest smile. ‘You know what this is about.’ He nodded, looking straight at me again, brown eyes set close together under thick brows.

  ‘I honestly don’t,’ I said, offering him my open palms as though to prove my point.

  ‘Come on, Miss Houlihan. Use your brain.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Who gave you the thumb drive?’

  ‘Nicky Fay!’ I exclaimed, feeling bizarrely relieved that I was able to tell him something relevant.

  Phillips nodded as he wrote. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Nicky Fay, in the Starbucks café, earlier today.’ The rhyming was deliberate. There was an air almost of celebration in the room.

  I wanted to say, If you knew, then why ask me? But that would not be wise. Instead, I said, ‘May I have some water?’

  Phillips poured out some and handed it to me. I sipped gratefully, feeling the cold liquid proceed down my oesophagus.

  ‘What’s on the thumb drive, Miss Houlihan?’ Phillips looked straight at me again, face serious.

  ‘I think it’s a file …’ I began, and he tilted his head very slightly to one side, as if to tell me to get on with it. ‘It’s a document that my boss needs for a book.’

  Phillips was writing again. ‘Who do you work for, Miss Houlihan?’ Such an ordinary question, so quietly delivered, but in this context, so sinister.

  I paused, thinking of George, his matted jumpers and ready laugh, his robust stance on printer errors … his political sympathies. Our side. Or theirs. Where did the Police Service of Northern Ireland fit into that schema?

  ‘I work for a small publisher in Dublin called Bell Books,’ I said.

  ‘And your boss’s name?’

  ‘George Sweeney.’ My voice was very small.

  Phillips repeated, ‘George Sweeney. And what’s in this document that George Sweeney needs?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I was on auto-pilot. My mind was shutting down, refusing to co-operate with me.

  Phillips waited.

  I went on. ‘He didn’t tell me what it was. He just said it was corroboration for a book we’re publishing in the spring.’

  ‘And that’s what you believe is the case?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Tell me about this book.’

  Again I hesitated, recalling the obsessive elusiveness of Eddie MacDevitt, the trouble his book had already brought upon my beloved uncle, and not least, the searing look Nicky Fay had given me as he left Starbucks. I was in deep waters here, and I didn’t know enough to keep safe. ‘It’s just a memoir,’ I said. ‘It’s by a guy called Eddie MacDevitt. He’s not famous or anything.’

  ‘And what has Nicky Fay got to contribute to this memoir?’

  ‘I don’t know. George asked me to collect the document for him while I was here for the concert. That’s all.’

  Phillips sighed. ‘And if I put you on the spot and told you to make an educated guess? Hmm?’ He looked at me, eyebrows raised and mouth bunched in a sceptical expression.

  I was unable to hold his gaze; I dropped my eyes. I licked my lips and took a breath. ‘I’d guess that maybe Nicky Fay and Eddie MacDevitt might have a connection through Republican circles?’

  Phillips feigned astonishment. ‘You don’t say!’ He wrote laboriously. ‘Republican. Circles.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think, Miss Houlihan,’ said Phillips, serious again. ‘I think you know more than you’re telling. You and your nimble-footed companion. What’s his name, by the way?’

  A bitter marble of unease now, rolling around in the pit of my stomach. Had they arrested Matthew too? Was he maybe in another room in this very building, being questioned about me?

  ‘Matthew Taylor,’ I said, feeling like a traitor.

  Phillips made a note, then leaned towards me and spoke even more quietly than before. ‘What else did Nicky Fay give you?’

  I blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do I mean? Well, you tell me. Was it information? A message for someone, maybe?’

  I was hollow with fear. Whatever about Matthew, I couldn’t give them Uncle Fintan. I shook my head and lied. ‘No. He just gave me the memory stick and told me to give it to George on Monday.’

  ‘Monday,’ said Phillips. He stopped writing, sat back and folded his arms, gazing calmly at me. Neither of us said anything for a long time.

  At last Phillips spoke again. ‘Now, if you’ll please have a look over my notes and sign at the bottom if you feel they are an accurate record of what you said.’ He passed over a single page, covered in cramped, clear writing.

  ‘I – what? Are we finished?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. We’ll be back in a wee while to check one or two details.’ He put his pen and pad back into his briefcase and waited for me to read the notes. Notwithstanding my near-inability to make sense of anything at this point, they seemed perfectly clear and fair to me. Phillips stood up then, and he and Hall went outside, shutting the door behind them.

  I sat in a welter of nerves, wondering if this was a strategic move on their part. Did they disbelieve me? Were they trying to catch me out? It made no sense. I poured myself some more water and sipped it slowly. When would they come back? The silence in the room was thick and heavy. More than anything else now, I wanted my bed.

  Time passed. How much, I had no way of knowing. The next time the door opened it was not Phillips but another male officer, accompanied by a woman who introduced herself as Inspector Nolan. She called me Cate, and wanted to know how long I’d been working at Bell Books and how I’d got the job. Her niece worked in publishing too, she said, in London.

  Nolan also took notes by hand. Just as I began to relax, she turned the conversation back to Nicky Fay. She wanted to know everything about our meeting this morning. I told her what I could remember.

  ‘What
else did he say to you, Cate?’ she asked, echoing Phillips. ‘Who else did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I insisted again. ‘Nobody.’ I felt sick.

  Nolan paused. ‘And so he gave you a memory stick with some documents on it?’

  ‘Yes. Or maybe just one document.’

  ‘Did you open it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you take it with you when you went on stage tonight?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ I said. ‘He told me not to lose it. I felt safer bringing it with me.’

  ‘Now, the man you were with when you were stopped by Sergeant Hall,’ said Nolan, and looked at me with eyes harder than before. ‘What’s his name again?’

  My breath caught. ‘Matthew Taylor.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Ex-boyfriend,’ I said, because that seemed inevitable now.

  ‘And what was he doing at the Waterfront tonight?’

  I looked down at my hands, wondering if I was going to break down and sob. All I could think of was the warmth of Matthew’s skin in the darkness. ‘He’s in the same choir as me,’ I said.

  ‘Carmina Urbana.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And do you know why he ran away while you were being arrested?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Would you care to speculate?’

  He had a gun. I looked up at her. ‘I suppose he must have had something to hide.’

  Nolan finished writing with a decisive full stop and passed me over three pages of notes. ‘Please sign the bottom of each page.’

  ‘When will we be finished?’ I asked her. I felt impossibly small and weak.

  She smiled and shook her head. ‘Oh, we’ve a way to go yet, so we do.’

  My eyes widened. How long could they keep me here, anyway? I had absolutely no idea.

  Nolan collected her things and left with her silent colleague, and I was alone again. This time, though, I had not long to wait. After just a few minutes, the door opened again, and Phillips and Nolan came back in together. This time, it was a double act, with Nolan taking the notes and the two of them pelting me with questions. Over again we went through all I had told them before. For good measure they asked me to repeat the details of my meeting with Nicky Fay backwards. I had no notion what good that would do them, but I gave it a try.