The Last Crossing

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘Aren’t you a little curious?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  They travelled back to her flat on the bus and again he walked her to the door. This time, briefly, they kissed. Her lips were dry, the skin chapped from the night air. He moved to kiss her a second time, but she responded with a quick peck on the side of his mouth.

  ‘We’ll do this another time,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed the night.’

  ‘Can I get your number?’ Tony asked, hurt at her preventing a second kiss.

  She nodded, and wrote it on the back of his hand with her eyeliner pencil. ‘You’ll need to remember that,’ she said. ‘It’ll smudge and come off in no time.’

  ‘Can I come up?’ he asked, his body seemingly electrified by the evening’s events.

  ‘Next time,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. Thanks.’

  She leaned up and kissed him again, quickly on the cheek, her hand on his chest, as if to promise that there would be a next time.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  She smiled, without humour. ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘Are you angry at me looking in the boot?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I just don’t want to know what’s there. I’d rather you hadn’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if I know what’s there, I might start wondering whether what we’ve just done was wrong.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Wrong?’ Tony repeated.

  Duggan nodded. ‘What if Kelly wasn’t the tout?’

  Tony felt his head start to spin. He put his hands to the side of his seat, as if to steady himself against the ship’s movement.

  ‘You said he was,’ he said.

  ‘I was told he was,’ Duggan said. ‘But what if it was a lie?’

  Tony studied the man opposite him, trying to tease out the subtext in what he was saying. ‘Do you think it was one of us?’

  ‘I know it wasn’t me,’ Duggan said. ‘But I knew Kelly. He was my friend. I trusted him. He knew things, worse things, that no one knew about and never a word said. The more I’ve thought on it, the less certain I am.’

  ‘I’ve not thought about it at all,’ Tony lied.

  ‘That’s not true,’ Duggan said. ‘I’d believe it if the ice maiden out there said that. But not you. Nor me. And I’ve thought about it a lot more since this idea was pushed, digging him back up again. You can’t dig up a grave without disturbing some skeletons.’

  ‘Who… who do you think was if not him?’ Tony asked. He wondered if Duggan had noticed him stumbling on his words, whether he would read something into it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Barr said, blithely. ‘What’s done is done. All we’re looking at is closure for the family.’

  ‘Closure,’ Duggan said, staring at him. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘An ending,’ Barr explained, hesitantly, unsure if Duggan’s question had been rhetorical.

  ‘An ending? There is no ending. Things don’t end; they’re abandoned, unfinished. Do you think Martin Kelly had an ending? Like his story was done?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Tony said, nodding at Barr, but speaking to Duggan. ‘What’s done is done. We can’t change it, and we don’t have to investigate it. We just need to remember where he is and let the family come and find him.’

  ‘And what then?’ Duggan asked. ‘Do you think that’ll be enough? You don’t think they’ll want to know why? Don’t you want to know why?’

  ‘No,’ Tony said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters to me,’ Duggan hissed. ‘It matters to me. I never did nothing that I wasn’t sure about. Every single thing, every person, I knew why and I knew I was right. When I face my maker, I’ll have their names in my mouth and not an ounce of guilt in me for I know why I did them and why they deserved it. But not with Martin. And I want to know why.’

  Tony held his gaze. He thought of the tablets he’d been taking in the toilet, about his thinness, the jowls of skin hanging at his throat. ‘Are you sick?’ he asked.

  Duggan’s anger flared for a second, then died away as quickly. ‘None of your business,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know if Kelly was the right person or not,’ Tony said, then added hastily, ‘I know it wasn’t me,’ but his comment lacked the conviction of Duggan’s comments. ‘And I trust Karen. But we can’t change what we did. We can only hope to make up for it, if we were wrong.’

  Barr looked from one to the other of them. ‘Men, no one’s worried about what happened. We just need to give the moderates something to keep them happy. No one cares about Kelly.’

  ‘His family does,’ Tony said, tapping the paper.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Barr said. ‘Uncle Sean wanted to make it very clear; the family just want the body back to bury him properly. For closure,’ he repeated, seemingly pleased with the word.

  ‘I’ll see how Karen is,’ Tony said, standing up, the boat’s rocking causing him to stumble a little and have to grip the back of the chair again for a moment to steady himself. He felt a heaviness in his chest, had felt it intensifying as he and Duggan had talked, dismissed it as indigestion, caused by the greasiness of the fry they’d just eaten.

  Karen was standing on the deck, facing towards Scotland, the wind cutting along the sides of the ferry lifting the ends of her hair. As a consequence, Tony could not tell if she had been crying, though her eyes were reddened and glistening.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded, her arms gathered around her. She raised her face to the wind.

  ‘I just thought this was all over. Thirty years ago.’

  Tony nodded, stuffed his hands into his pockets and silently regretted having not lifted his coat to come outside to where she’d stood.

  ‘Me too.’

  Karen looked at him, as if testing the veracity of his comment. ‘Have you thought about it? About Martin?’

  He nodded. ‘Quite a bit.’

  She shook her head. ‘That was another life to me. I came home and put it all behind me.’ She paused a moment, as if realising that, in so saying, she was including her time with Tony in the comment. ‘It was the only way I could deal with it. I used to wake up, thinking about him; the stench of burning so strong in my nostrils, I’d get up and turn on the light, looking for a fire.’ She looked at Tony. ‘It’s the smell I can’t forget.’

  ‘It was the crying for me,’ Tony said. ‘How vulnerable he was, naked, alone. We never let him say what he wanted us to tell his mother.’

  ‘Were we wrong?’

  ‘Hugh thinks so.’

  ‘Hugh does?’ she asked, incredulous.

  ‘Not wrong to do it; wrong in the person we chose. He thinks Martin wasn’t the one.’

  Karen turned once more to the east, to where the Scottish headland loomed on the horizon. ‘Who does he think it was?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s not said.’

  ‘Was he not the right one?’

  ‘To be a tout?’

  ‘To die?’

  Tony shrugged. ‘That’s not my call to make.’

  ‘When you stood there, watching him, did you know for certain it was him? That’s he’d been the one passing on information?’

  ‘If that’s what Hugh was told, we had to go with that.’

  Karen nodded. ‘Funny how we can rationalise things,’ she said. ‘I turned my back on my whole life and started over. You’re pretending that Hugh’s decision was binding for us all.’

  ‘I don’t pretend anything,’ Tony said. ‘I know what we did; what I did.’ He felt a sudden anger towards her, spurred perhaps by her admission that she’d forgotten him when he had not, could not forget her. ‘My brother and wife and son all died. And when my son died, I thought of Martin. I thought it was the universe or God or something balancing the books. I took someone’s son, so they took mine. And when Ann died, I tried to work out why and do you know what? It was because of Martin as well. It’s like Death follows me because of wh
at we did, punishing me for it.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Karen said. ‘My family, I’ve lost no one. You can’t blame what’s happened now on what happened then.’

  ‘It’s cause and effect,’ Tony said.

  Karen shook her head. ‘I don’t think the universe missed Martin Kelly that much,’ she said. ‘You know what he was like.’

  ‘It’s the breach in nature,’ Tony said. ‘That’s what Shakespeare said.’

  ‘You and your books! Is that why you became a sacristan?’ Karen asked. ‘For penance?’

  Tony considered the question. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And has it worked?’

  He laughed without humour, raised a shoulder. ‘I don’t know. But when I die and make that last crossing, I know I’ll see Danny, and my parents and my wife and son standing at the far shore waiting for me. But I worry every day that Martin Kelly will be standing there, too.’

  ‘And do you think helping find him will stop that from happening?’

  Tony nodded. ‘I suppose so. Maybe I’m looking to be forgiven or something.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Karen said.

  ‘Why did you agree to it?’ Tony asked, scuffing at the deck with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘I’ve kids now; I can only imagine how horrendous it would be to lose one of them and never know what happened to them. I’d never stop looking for them. His family are going through that and we have the power to spare them that pain.’

  ‘Is that the only reason?’

  ‘The only one,’ Karen nodded. ‘I never wanted to go back here again.’

  Tony considered the response, and how she had moved on seemingly so easily. ‘Then we all have our reasons.’

  ‘I know yours and mine,’ Karen said. ‘And that young lad’s being used by his uncle for politics, so I know his reasoning. Why’s Hugh Duggan agreed to this if he doesn’t actually agree with it?’

  ‘I think he’s looking for answers,’ Tony said. ‘I think he’s not well.’

  ‘He looks awful,’ Karen said.

  ‘He was taking medication in the toilet,’ Tony explained. ‘I think he’s sick and looking to protect his legacy.’

  ‘And what if the truth comes out and he doesn’t like what he hears?’

  ‘Which truth?’ Tony asked. ‘Whose version of it?’

  ‘Any of them. All of them.’

  Tony shrugged. ‘You know him as well as I do,’ he said. ‘Is he the type who’d look to make amends now?’

  ‘Hugh’s a wounded dog,’ Karen said, looking in through the window at where he and Barr sat. ‘He’s spent his life running around looking to bite someone for his pain.’

  ‘We were no different.’

  ‘Then,’ Karen agreed. ‘But we moved on. Hugh didn’t. He’s as angry now as the first time I met him, after my daddy was shot.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘My daddy was shot,’ Karen said.

  They lay together in her bed, both still wearing underwear for she’d insisted, as he started to unclasp her bra, that she wasn’t ready to have sex. Instead they’d touched each other, become comfortable with each other’s bodies, then lay curled together, legs entwined as they kissed. She had her head on his chest and was playing with his chest hair, twiddling several strands in his fingers, twisting them, teasing them gently, the pain at once sharp and sensual.

  It was their third date following their bringing the car back from Paisley to Glasgow. He’d not seen Duggan since. He’d tried Liverpool Betty’s a few times, but there was no sign of the man; nor Martin Kelly either. But he had seen Karen; they’d gone to the cinema on their second date. The Living Daylights was still playing on the multiplex in town and they’d gone to it. There’d been a handful of couples in the cinema and they’d had the whole back row to themselves. It was there that they’d kissed properly for the first time.

  After that, they’d gone for dinner again, this time without having it arranged for them. The conversation had been easy; Karen had picked an Italian she’d wanted to try. They’d sat at a small table with a candle guttering in a wax-encrusted wine bottle and talked about home. Afterwards, she’d invited him in for a cup of coffee and they’d kissed again on the sofa, before she announced she had work the next day and needed to get to bed.

  The third date, she’d suggested she would cook for him. She’d made lasagne with a salad. He’d brought a bottle of white wine in the off licence near her flat and they’d drunk it between them before finding themselves tumbling into her bed together.

  As he’d undone the clasp of her bra, he’d felt her stiffen, felt her arms close against her side, preventing him from removing it completely. ‘I’m not ready to have sex with you,’ she’d said.

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  She’d looked up at him, her eyes wide and guileless. ‘I’m not… I don’t want to yet.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he repeated.

  They’d kissed again, slower, more tenderly now, the passion spent a little by her interruption. Then she’d lain against him, running her hand down his chest, across his boxers, over the length of him. He’d held her against him. Her room smelt of potpourri to disguise the faint mouldy smell of the apartment block. Outside, the noises of the street drifted through the thin curtains she’d already pulled. He looked now at the picture on the bedside cabinet he had seen before. It was her, younger, with a man.

  ‘Is that your dad?’

  She nodded against his chest. ‘He was shot,’ she said, simply.

  ‘What?’ Tony raised his head a little to better see her, but she kept her head where it was. Pressed against his chest, her gaze directed away from his.

  ‘My daddy was shot,’ she said.

  ‘By who?’

  She shrugged. He could feel the growing dampness of her cheeks against his skin, could hear the catch in her voice, her tone thickening with tears.

  ‘He was a solicitor. He represented a couple of people who were connected, so I think maybe he had a name for being one of them. Someone decided he was a legitimate target. We were watching TV. It was a Sunday evening; I remember because That’s Life was on. Every time it was on, dad would pretend he was that dog, you know, the one that said “Sausages”. “Rausages” he’d say, laughing to himself, like it was the first time he’d thought of it. He’d just done it, just said “Rausages”, and there was a banging on the door. He went out to answer it; sometimes people called late at night needing his help for some of their family that had been lifted or something, so it wasn’t anything odd. I followed him out to make a cup of tea. I was being nosey, to be honest, trying to see if I knew who’d been lifted this time. When he opened the door, there was a man standing wearing a motorbike helmet, with the visor down. Dad didn’t have time to do anything, not even to turn. The man was holding a gun and it fired, three times, one after the other, like short, sharp cracks. Dad didn’t scream, didn’t cry; he just dropped to the ground. I just stood there, frozen, looking at this man who’d shot my daddy. He stepped into the hall and I thought he was going to shoot me too. He raised the gun again and tried to shoot Daddy again, but the gun must have jammed or something. He looked at me and said something, but I couldn’t make out what it was, because the helmet muffled him, you know, and my ears were still ringing from the gunshots. But he said something, a word. Then he turned and ran outside to a bike with another man already on it waiting and they drove off.’

  She shifted her head slightly, moving her hand to wipe away a tear, then sniffed.

  ‘I went over to Daddy and sat with him. He was breathing funny, like he couldn’t catch a breath, and there was blood bubbling from a hole, from the gunshot wound in his chest. A second shot had hit his shoulder and the third had gone through his cheek. He was trying to talk, but it was like the words weren’t there, like his breath wouldn’t come right to make them. I knelt down beside him and the ground was already soaked with his blood. I started shouting for help, but some of the neighbour
s were coming running and I could hear screams and crying from outside. I took his hand, and it was warm and he had this blister from where he’d been gardening that day and I was worried that I’d hurt his hand when I held it. I felt him squeeze my hand once, and then he gave this really deep breath and the bubbling at his chest stopped. And when I looked, the light had just slipped from his eyes.’

  Tony lay still, afraid to speak, knowing that whatever he uttered would be completely inadequate. And, he sensed, the story was as much for her benefit for his, as if she’d not had a chance to tell it to anyone else and needed to talk.

  ‘The man next door was in by then and kept saying over and over that an ambulance was coming, to hold in there. But Daddy had already gone by then. The man started saying an Act of Contrition and he held Daddy’s other hand in his. I leaned over and kissed my daddy on the forehead and when I looked, I thought I’d left a lipstick mark, but it was blood. His blood.’

  She raised her head and wiped her face and nose with the edge of the bed sheet. ‘That’s what happened to my daddy.’