‘It was political,’ Tony said, feeling the first flames of his anger build – the first stirring of any emotion, in fact, since Danny’s death. Comforted by its presence after days of numbness, he clung to it. ‘The fucking army ran him over.’
‘It was an accident,’ his father said, lifting the spoon out of his mug and, with it, the film settling on the surface of his drink.
‘Accident my arse. They drove over him, like a dog.’
His father lifted his head, gazed at him, his eyes brimming, and Tony regretted the insensitivity of the words. ‘The guy who was driving is nineteen. Younger than you. It was his first week here.’
‘Is that what they told you?’ He kindled his own rage, even as he wondered why he was directing it at his father
The older man inhaled, sharply, then held the breath, as if reluctant to let it go for fear of what might happen. ‘And what did Mullan tell you? That they’d get them back?’
Tony kept his expression neutral. ‘Maybe someone should.’
His father nodded. ‘And what good would that do? Would it mean Danny would be back home with us?’
‘Someone should pay.’
‘Why? Will that balance things out, if there’s some other father sitt–’ He paused, his breath a suspiration. ‘Sitting stirring his cold fucking mug of tea the day he buries his boy. Will that make things better?’
Tony felt the urge to move to his father, to encircle him in his arms, but the distance between them seemed greater than ever. ‘It’ll not make them worse,’ he said.
‘Yes, it will,’ the old man said, his expression drawn. ‘You don’t diminish your own grief by creating it for someone else.’ He raised his chin, already trembling, but it did not stop the tears.
Tony sat for a moment as his father sobbed, hoping propinquity was its own support. Then, embarrassed, he moved into the living room.
After nine, father, mother and son, sitting in the silence of their home, exhausted by the day’s events, heard the clatter of gunfire down the estate. The late evening news confirmed that a policeman had been shot on patrol.
At one in the morning, their front door was rammed open and six soldiers forced their way into the house. Tony was in his bed, sleeping only in his underwear. They were in his room before he even had a chance to grab something to cover him. His father was already being pulled down the stairs by the time they got Tony to release his grip on the bedpost; one of them raised his boot and ground Tony’s fingers against it until he had to let go. Two of them dragged him after his father, ignoring his mother’s screams.
He was down in seconds and out on to the street, illuminated by the strobing of blue lights from the police Land Rovers which were parked at the end of the row, keeping back the straggle of protesters who’d already emerged from their houses.
The bench in the rear of the Land Rover was cold, the cushion padding long since torn away. He thought for a moment that one of the soldiers, who he’d seen lifting his clothes off the chair beside his bed, would hand them to him, but the heavy doors swung shut and he sat in his pants, his father opposite in stripped pyjamas, his mouth moving wordlessly.
‘Here, son.’ The man next to Tony peeled off his shirt and handed it to him. ‘Better half-dressed than buck naked,’ Hugh Duggan said. ‘Smoke.’
Tony shook his head.
‘First time?’
‘Aye.’
‘They’ll try all sorts,’ Hugh said. ‘Whatever they do, say nothing. But don’t be surprised if they threaten to shoot your ma, or stitch up your da here. Fuck ’em. Tell ’em nothing. But they’re a shower of dirty bastards. Whatever dirty trick they pull, you be ready.’
Chapter Four
‘Be ready for 8.30,’ the text had said. In fact, the car pulled up at the bus stop five minutes early. The youth who opened the passenger door for Tony was in his early twenties at most, his hair thick and curled.
‘Tony Canning?’ he asked.
Tony nodded. He’d been instructed to bring an overnight bag with a change of clothes. The only one he’d been able to find that morning was the small tartan travel bag he’d bought for Ann when first she went into the hospital. She only used it for a few days before it became clear her stay would necessitate more than two days change of underwear. Even with so little use, the bag had still smelt of the hospital when he’d opened it.
As he’d packed it for his own journey that morning, he’d found a pen lying at the bottom of it. He’d brought it in with her Sudoku book, to keep her entertained. He’d held it between his finger and thumb, as if it was a talisman from his dead wife. He’d contemplated bringing it with him, pretended to forget it on the dressing table after he left the house and felt embarrassed at such a poor attempt at self-delusion.
He wanted to ask where he could put the bag, but the young man made no effort to open the boot for him, so he set it in the footwell and then sat twisting slightly to one side.
‘Richard Barr,’ the driver offered, his hand held out. As Tony shook it, he noticed a sleeve tattoo of a Celtic design. Looking at Barr now, he saw the edge of a similar design hemming the neckline of his T-shirt and he wondered absently if it extended the whole way from his neck to his wrist.
The half hour drive from Derry to Dungiven passed in platitudes. They trailed behind a learner driver doing 40mph and Barr swerved lightly in and out behind her, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping some unheard beat on his knee before he finally pulled out and sped past her on the chevrons at a right turn junction. Tony instinctively gripped the dashboard in front of him, even as he glanced in the wing mirror, half expecting to see the blue lights of a police car spark into life behind them. It seemed foolhardy, doing anything that might draw attention to them, considering what they were going to do. But then what were they going to do? Visit Scotland? Three old friends and their younger driver.
Barr seemed to note Tony’s discomfort, for he straightened himself a little in his seat, flexing his arm muscles as he gripped the wheel tighter with one hand, tapping out the beat of his own thoughts with renewed vigour.
‘When did you last see Hughie?’ the youth asked.
‘Thirty years ago, too,’ Tony replied. Hughie. He’d never called him Hughie. It was the name a friend would use. And they had never been friends.
For a moment, Tony didn’t recognise Hugh Duggan, despite him being the only person at the bus stop just outside the town. When he stood, the wind caught and twisted his trouser legs, plastering the material against his frame, accentuating his thinness. His neck was narrow and jowly, the skin loose. His hair was shorn tight, little more than grey stubble. His skin was sallow where once it had been florid.
They pulled up alongside him and Barr got out of the car. He moved around the back and opened the boot, then approached Hugh, his hand outstretched. ‘Mr Duggan,’ he said. ‘It’s a real honour.’
Duggan muttered something, his gaze sliding from the youth’s face towards Tony. He raised his chin a little, interrogatively, his expression not softening.
Tony opened the door and got out, using the stop as an opportunity to put his own bag in the boot of the car to afford him more leg room.
‘Hugh,’ he said, nodding. ‘Long time.’
‘Long time,’ Duggan agreed.
‘I’ll get your bag,’ Barr said, lifting Duggan’s bag before the man could protest and taking it around to the boot.
‘Was this your fucking idea?’ Duggan asked, moving closer to Tony, the funk of his breath sharp as it rattled in his throat.
‘I thought it was yours,’ Tony said.
Duggan looked at him askance. ‘Why would I? It must have been her. I knew she’d go soft.’
Tony followed Barr around to the back of the car to put his own bag away. He had to shift Duggan’s a little to make space for his own. When he closed the rear door, he saw that Duggan had already taken his seat in the front, though he’d not noticed the car shift with the man’s weight as it now did when Barr climbed into
the driver’s seat and started the engine again.
Tony took the back seat. He was glad in a way. He could tune out of the murmured conversation happening in front of him. It also meant that Karen would be sitting beside him, in the back. He reached across, brushed a few crumbs of dirt off the seat.
Barr was filling the silence with chatter. ‘My da talked about you all the time,’ he said. ‘You and him did time together.’
‘He was a good fella,’ Duggan muttered. ‘God rest him.’
Barr laughed, seemingly having not heard the prayer offered for his dead father. ‘He told me this one time that the screws were bringing you across the courtyard because they thought you were passing messages through the wings and you took the piss out of them, pretending to hide things, and this screw was running from one side of the yard to the other, having to check every fucking hole in the walls. He said they even had to go down the drains, cause you pretended to drop something.’
His face lit up at this shared memory he had not even witnessed. A prison yard joke, passed between the generations, now mythologized.
‘What–’ Tony began, about to ask why Hugh had served time, but the question was pointless and he realised he did not care to hear the answer. He could guess; the specifics would change nothing.
‘Do you remember that?’ Barr asked, smiling open-mouthed across at his passenger.
‘Do you mind just driving the fucking car,’ Duggan said. ‘What’s that saying? The past’s another country? Well, that’s another country.’
The smile faltered a little on Barr’s lips, as he processed the man’s response. Somehow, he found a way to rationalise it to his own satisfaction, for he nodded earnestly and turned his attention to the road.
Chapter Five
The glare of the fluorescent light in the holding cell, buzzing behind a protective mesh cage, coupled with the heat of the room, had left Tony’s eyes dry and reddened. He was aware of Hugh Duggan, the man with whom he was sharing the cell, studying him and wondered if he thought he’d been crying.
‘That fucking light,’ he said.
‘They do it deliberately,’ Duggan said. ‘And it’s either far too hot or far too cold. They don’t want you getting comfortable.’
When they’d first arrived and were being processed, they’d had their cheeks and hands swabbed, prints taken and Tony’s had been offered a Tyvek suit to wear in the cell. Tony had watched the insouciance with which Duggan had dealt with each element, the familiarity with which he opened his mouth for the cotton swab, didn’t gag when they pushed it too close to the back of his throat. He’d clearly been through it all before.
Duggan had stretched out on the bench attached to the opposite wall, his legs crossed at the ankles, his hands behind his head as a makeshift pillow.
‘Get some sleep, wee man,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a long night.’
Tony had wondered at his calmness, his ability to shut out the shouts, the banging of doors, the whistles that echoed down the hall outside. He moved across to the heavy iron door and thumped on it, using his fist at first, but then open palmed when it had hurt too much.
‘You’re wasting your time, wee man,’ Duggan said. ‘They won’t open that until they’re good and ready. Or they think you’re not.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Tony said. ‘My da, Jesus, what could he do?’
‘You’re the brother of the lad got run down, isn’t that right, wee man?’
Tony nodded lightly, bristling at the appended ‘wee man’. He studied Duggan more closely now. He was, perhaps in his late twenties, florid-faced, black hair shorn close, already peppered with grey. He was certainly no more than ten years his senior, though carried the air of one much older.
‘Sorry for your loss. I heard they didn’t even stop to see if he was hurt. Fucking terrible thing.’
Tony moved back to his own bench and sat. ‘Bastards,’ he muttered, then stood again, his anger boiling over once more. The strength of the feeling surprised him, consoled him. He could not bring Danny back, just as his father had said, but he could let anger honour his memory, raging against those who had killed him. ‘Bastards!’ he shouted.
Duggan chuckled to himself, lightly. ‘Were you watching the game earlier?’
Tony stared at him, blankly. He didn’t remember there being a match on and, for a moment, wondered if he was commenting on the match after which Danny had been killed.
‘It was one-nil to them. Then our side got a wee late one,’ Duggan added.
Tony sat again, nodding his head although he had no idea what the man was talking about. He began to wonder whether it was a ruse; perhaps Duggan knew that they’d be listening in to the cell and was moving the conversation on to something innocuous, trivial. It was only after an interminable description of the minutiae of someone’s playing style, a discussion to which Tony could offer nothing, never having heard of the player in question, that he began to reassess the purpose of Duggan’s choice of topic.
‘Yeah. Don’t be worrying. We got a late one; the balance sheet’s even now, anyway, eh?’ the man had said and winked at Tony.
Tony nodded. ‘Thank–’ He stopped himself. If the cells were being monitored, he reasoned he’d be safest saying nothing that could be contrived as dangerous. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see it.’
‘Shame,’ Duggan said. ‘You’d have loved it. Great goal. A header.’
Ten minutes later, the door grated back on protesting hinges as two police officers came in.
‘Duggan. You’re with us.’
Duggan stood and stretched, as if twisting a crick out his neck. He padded past Tony, winking once. ‘See you again, wee man. Keep her lit.’
The door slammed behind them, both officers ignoring Tony’s questions about the whereabouts and well-being of his father.
Around 6am, one of the two men who had taken Duggan away arrived back at the cell with a cup of weak tea in a polystyrene cup which he handed to Tony.
‘Wasn’t sure if you took milk or sugar, so there’s a bit of both,’ he said. He was young, maybe only a year or two older than Tony himself. His hair was sandy, his moustache neatly trimmed. His eyes were bloodshot, shadowed with bags which suggested he’d had as little sleep as Tony. He moved across and sat on the bench on which Duggan had been lying.
‘Where’s my father?’
‘He’s fine,’ the man said. ‘I’ve a few questions and then you’ll be done.’
Tony straightened, sceptical. He put the tea to one side.
‘Where were you last night?’
‘At home,’ Tony said. ‘I buried my fucking brother yesterday, where would I be?’
The officer raised his hand. ‘Take it easy, big lad,’ he said. ‘I’m only asking. Was your father at home?’
Tony nodded.
‘What were youse doing?’
Tony tried to remember. He wondered if they had already questioned his father and were looking for him to corroborate his father’s statement.
‘Watching TV,’ Tony said.
‘What was on?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t paying any attention to it. The news at some stage, ’cause we heard about the cop being shot.’ He’d used the term defiantly, stopping himself from self-correcting to ‘policeman’.
The policeman nodded. It took a moment for Tony to realise he wasn’t even writing anything down.
‘You were talking to Sean Mullan at your brother’s funeral, is that right?’
Tony nodded, quizzically. ‘I didn’t even know who he was till after, when my dad told me.’
‘Your dad knows Mullan?’
‘He knows of him,’ Tony said, careful now. ‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘And what did Mullan say to you?’
Tony studied the man’s face. He returned the gaze without guile. Did they already know? Had they been listening in at the funeral? If he said nothing, would they have him because they’d know he’d lied?
‘He
expressed his condolences over the death of Danny. That’s all I remember.’
The officer nodded, smiling mildly as if this was what he’d been expecting to hear. ‘That’s fine. I’m sorry for your loss, too. It was a dreadful thing to happen. We’ll let you get home.’
He stood as Tony watched him open-mouthed. ‘What?’
‘Someone will bring you in some clothes. Your father will be ready in a few minutes. Thanks for your help.’
A weak winter dawn was breaking when Tony and his father stepped out of the station. Several others who had been lifted the previous evening spilled out, bleary eyed into the grey light of morning. But not Hugh Duggan.
‘Are you OK?’ his father asked him, touching his arm as if to assure himself that Tony was actually there.
‘Grand. Are you?’
‘Did they do anything?’
‘Nothing. Asked me a couple of questions and that was it. What about you?’
‘The usual,’ his father muttered distractedly.
It was the following day before Tony began to suspect that he’d only been in the cell in the hope he might make Duggan talk. And it was the day after that when his parents told him that they had arranged with his uncle in Paisley that he was going to get out of the North and go and work in Scotland.
‘We’ve lost one son,’ his father said. ‘We’re not losing another one.’
The Last Crossing Page 2