The Ghosts of Belfast (The Twelve) jli-1

by Stuart Neville

  “Twice,” Fegan said, his mouth drying at the memory. He swallowed. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Anyway,” McGinty said, ‘the point is if someone had a personal thing, some score to settle with Michael McKenna and Vincie Caffola, they just might have done me a favor in the process. They might have done my cleaning-up for me, so to speak. Do you understand, Gerry?”

  Fegan remained silent as McGinty’s hand patted his knee again.

  “The fact is Michael McKenna and Vincie Caffola were becoming liabilities. The party’s no poorer without them. Now I’ve got an excuse to see off some foreigners who were eating into my business, and a new stick to beat the peelers with. Who knows, if I can convince the media the cops killed Vincie, we might be able to squeeze the Brits with it.”

  “I see,” Fegan said. He could see both their reflections in the glass facing them. His own face appeared skeletal next to the other man’s.

  “You were always smarter than you let on, Gerry,” McGinty said. “You could have done well for yourself if you’d wanted to. Anyway, my point is this: if someone unknown to us, a man working alone, had some bone to pick with Michael McKenna or Vincie Caffola, I might be prepared to overlook his transgression. Just this once. As it happens, he’s done me a good turn, so we can let it go.”

  McGinty took his hand away from Fegan’s knee and draped it around his shoulder. “But that’s all. So far, no harm done. But no more, or I might have to take action. One thing, though.” McGinty leaned in close, his breath warm on Fegan’s ear. “He better not take me for an arsehole. Ever.”

  Fegan cleared his throat. “I’m sure he won’t.”

  “Not if he’s half the man you are,” McGinty said as he took his arm from around Fegan’s shoulder. “Now, to business. I’d like to see more of you around, Gerry. You always were a good fella to have about. There’s always work for a man like you. I need to know who my friends are in these trying times. Who I can trust, you know?”

  “I try to keep myself to myself these days,” Fegan said.

  “Fair enough, but you can’t become a hermit on us. It’d do you good to be active, you know, shake away the cobwebs.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And the drink, Gerry. You’ve got to knock that on the head. I’ve been hearing stories about you lately. About you sitting in McKenna’s bar, getting hammered. I hear you’re talking to yourself.”

  “I’ve been cutting back these last few days,” Fegan said, truthfully.

  “Glad to hear it. The drink killed my father. Yours too, if I remember right.”

  Fegan turned his head away, looking to the street outside. Kids rode bicycles in the sunshine. The Lincoln turned right, then right again, doubling back towards Fallswater Parade. “Yeah,” he said.

  “So, anyway, I’ve a wee job for you.”

  Fegan turned back to the politician.

  “Don’t worry,” McGinty said, smiling. “It’s nothing heavy. Thank God, very little is nowadays. Just a message I need you to deliver.”

  Fegan thought about it for a moment and said, “All right.”

  “Marie McKenna, Michael’s niece.”

  Fegan’s fingernails bit his palm. “Yeah.”

  “Seems you’re on friendly terms with her. She gave you a lift yesterday.”

  “I don’t know her.” Fegan said. “Not really. I never talked to her before.”

  “Well, she offended a lot of people, shacking up with a cop like that.” McGinty watched the houses, the murals and the flags sweep past his window. “Having a kid to him and all. There’s a lot of people would like to make their displeasure known to her. But Michael made sure she was left alone for her mother’s sake. Now Michael’s gone, it might not be so easy to keep them away.”

  “They split up years ago,” Fegan said. “Why would anyone care now?”

  “People have long memories, Gerry. Especially when it’s somebody else’s sin. We remember Bloody Sunday. We talk about it like it was yesterday. But we forget about the people who died in the days before and the days after. It’s human nature.”

  I remember my sins

  , thought Fegan.

  They follow me everywhere

  . He wondered if McGinty remembered his.

  “I’d like you to have a wee word with her,” the politician said. “No threats. Subtle, like. Advise her she might be wise to move on. Across the water, maybe.”

  “You want me to tell her at the house?” Fegan asked.

  “Oh, no, not at Michael’s mother’s. She has a flat off the Lisburn Road, on Eglantine Avenue. Call by there later and have a chat with her. Like I said, keep it friendly. All right?”

  Fegan couldn’t return McGinty’s smile. “All right,” he said.

  16

  The house on Fallswater Parade brimmed with black-garbed friends and family, but not as densely packed as the day before. Today, Fegan was able to breathe. He tried not to stay in one spot too long, lest some old acquaintance should corner him and grind him down with stories of past days. He filched a can of beer from the table in the living room and slipped out to the hall.

  McGinty and Father Coulter were in the house somewhere, eating sausage rolls and slapping the faithful’s shoulders, but Fegan avoided them for fear of seeing shadows.

  A moment of indecision gripped him. He had to stay a respectable amount of time, just for appearances, but where could he drink his beer in peace? Upstairs, in one of the bedrooms? No, that would be intrusive. The yard would be full of smokers. Where, then?

  He remembered the alcove under the stairs. There was a telephone table with a seat in there. He could slip in, sit down in the semi-darkness, and if anyone questioned him he could say he was just resting his feet.

  Fegan squeezed past a group of men and ducked into the small alcove. When he realised Marie McKenna had the same idea, and was already perched on the seat, he could only stare at her, his back bent, his head pressed against the underside of the stairs.

  “Hello,” she said. He couldn’t tell if her eyes glittered with bemusement or fright. Maybe both.

  “Hello,” he said. “I was just . . . ah . . .”

  “Finding a place to hide,” she said, small lines forming around her grey-blue eyes as she smiled. “Me too.”

  She held a glass of white wine. Lipstick smudged its rim. Fegan wondered what it tasted like.

  “I’ll find somewhere else,” he said, backing out.

  “No, there’s room,” she said. She shifted further along the seat, leaving space for Fegan’s wiry body. He hesitated for just a second, then slowly lowered himself to rest beside her.

  “I wanted to talk to you, anyway,” Marie said. “To apologise.”

  “What for?” He opened the can of Harp lager and took a sip. The fizz burned his tongue.

  “For being all . . . well, weird, yesterday. I said some things I shouldn’t have.” The wine rippled in her glass as her hand shook.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Everyone does things they wish they hadn’t.”

  “True,” she said. He caught the residue of a smile as he turned to look at her.

  “Why did you come here?” Fegan asked. The question was out of his mouth before he could catch it. He looked back to the beer can in his hand.

  Marie stiffened beside him. “What?”

  Nothing

  . That’s what he would have said if he wasn’t losing the remnants of his mind. Instead, he said, “They don’t want you, but you came here anyway. And yesterday. Why did you do that?”

  She breathed in and out through her nose three times before saying, “Because it’s my family. For better or worse, it’s where I came from. I won’t be driven away, no matter how hard they try.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “If they don’t want you, why bother?”

  “Do you read much?” she asked.

  He turned back to her. “No. Why?”

  “There’s a little book called

  Yosl
Rakover Talks to God

  . It turned out to be a hoax, but it appeared to be written by a Jewish man hiding from the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. The most awful things have happened to him, but in the end, he stands up to God. He says, ‘God, you can do what you want to me, you can degrade me, you can kill my friends, you can kill my family, but you won’t make me hate you, no matter what.’ ’

  Marie gave a long sigh. “Hate’s a terrible thing. It’s a wasteful, stupid emotion. You can hate someone with all your heart, but it’ll never do them a bit of harm. The only person it hurts is you. You can spend your days hating, letting it eat away at you, and the person you hate will go on living just the same. So, what’s the point? They may hate me, but I won’t hate them back. They’re my family, and I won’t let their hate push me away.”

  Fegan studied her skin’s tiny diamond patterns stretching across the back of her hands, the fine ridges of the bones, the faint blue lines of her veins. “I’d like to read that book,” he said.

  “Well, you can go to the library. I don’t have it any more. When I was seventeen, my father showed my copy to Uncle Michael. Uncle Michael made me tear it up. He said it was Jewish propaganda. He told me to remember what the Jews were doing to the Palestinians. I remember thinking it strange at the time. He didn’t say the Israelis; he said the Jews. I don’t think he’d ever met a Jewish person in his life, but still he hated them. I just didn’t understand it. Funny, I hadn’t thought about that book in years, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since Uncle Michael died.”

  A minute of quiet passed, both of them sipping their drinks, before Marie said, “Seeing as we’re asking difficult questions, why did you come in here to hide?”

  “Too many people here I used to know,” Fegan said. “I can’t listen to them.”

  “You’re a respected man around here,” she said.

  “They don’t respect me. They’re afraid of me.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Fegan plucked at the beer can’s ring-pull. “You know what I did?”

  “I’ve heard things,” she said. Her shoulder brushed against his and he shivered. “Listen, I’ve known men like you all my life. My uncles, my father, my brothers. I know the other side, too, the cops and the Loyalists. I’ve talked to them all in my job. Everyone has their piece of guilt to carry. You’re not that special.”

  The last words were softened with kindness.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. Somehow, he liked that idea.

  “Anyway, I don’t think you’re like that now,” she said. “People can change. They have to, or there’s no hope for this place. Are you sorry for what you did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It shows. On your face. In your eyes. You can’t hide it.”

  Fegan wanted to look at her, but he couldn’t. He ran his finger around the can’s opening, feeling it bite at his fingertip. Words danced just beyond his grasp.

  “I should go,” he said, raising himself off the seat. He stepped out of the cubby-hole and turned, ducking down to see her. “Can I come and see you later?”

  Marie’s mouth opened slightly as she considered it. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was going to take my wee girl out for a walk after tea, if the weather stays clear.”

  “I could come with you.”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled. After an eternity, she opened them again and said, “Okay. You can come with us. I live on Eglantine Avenue.”

  She told Fegan the house number. He smiled once and left her in the alcove.

  17

  The Minister of State for Northern Ireland had been sitting in the back of the car for more than twenty minutes, and they had travelled less than two hundred yards. Compton and the driver sat up front, staring at the back of a bus. The constant blaring of horns and rumble of London traffic did nothing to ease Edward Hargreaves’s headache. The vibration of his phone only soured his mood further.

  The voice told him the Chief Constable was on the line.

  “Geoff,” Hargreaves said.

  “Good afternoon, Minister,” Pilkington said.

  “Please tell me we’re making progress on the Belfast situation.”

  “Some. Our colleagues have sent a man in to see what’s going on.”

  “And?” Hargreaves asked, impatient. The car advanced another five feet closer to Downing Street. “I’m meeting the Secretary and the PM shortly, and I need something to tell them. Was it this Fegan character?”

  “We simply don’t know, Minister. Circumstances point to him, but McGinty says otherwise. He says the Lithuanians got McKenna, and my men got Caffola.”

  “

  Did

  your men get him?” Hargreaves asked. He knew the answer, but found amusement in irking the Chief Constable.

  “Certainly not, Minister. He’s using it for propaganda, trying to better his position in the party by grabbing headlines. He gave a speech a couple of hours ago saying he’ll recommend the party withdraws its support for the PSNI if some of my men don’t swing for it. The brass neck, as if it was up to him.”

  Hargreaves couldn’t help but smile at Pilkington’s predicament. “Yes, I’ve got a transcript in front of me now. He’s a clever bastard, that McGinty. And the Unionists are already making noises about walking away from Stormont. This needs to be nipped in the bud, Chief Constable. If our man can’t get to the bottom of it, you’ll have to be prepared for sacrifices.”

  A second or two of silence passed before Pilkington said, “Are you suggesting I allow my men to be charged with Caffola’s killing when I know they’re innocent? Minister, let me make it clear: I will not throw good police officers to the wolves for the sake of political expediency. If you think—”

  “How noble of you,” Hargreaves interrupted. “Political expediency is our stock in trade, Geoff; you should know that better than anyone. How many little transgressions have you let slide to keep the wheels turning, hmm? How many robberies have gone unsolved on your watch for want of a little effort? How many punishment beatings have been ignored for the sake of a quiet life?”

  “Minister, I really don’t—”

  “Don’t lecture me about expediency, Geoff.” Hargreaves felt his smile stretch his dry lips. “How many of your men would be standing trial if not for expediency?”

  Pilkington sniffed. “I won’t dignify that with an answer, Minister.”

  “Sacrifices,” Hargreaves said. “Everyone must make sacrifices for the greater good. Keep me informed.”

  He hung up without waiting for a response.

  18

  Davy Campbell stood at the bar, alone, conscious of being the only man here not wearing a black suit. The sideways glances had started as soon as he entered McKenna’s, murmurs passing from person to person, heads nodding in his direction. They recognised him; they knew he was the one who had drifted to the dissidents in Dundalk. He waited for a challenge, some demand to know what he was doing back in Belfast. None came, perhaps out of respect for the departed. Had he been a stranger, he would have been tackled within seconds of entering. This wasn’t the sort of pub you just dropped into for a quick drink as you passed by. Peace only went so far.

  The late Michael McKenna’s bar might have been a dive, a place for lowlifes to swill, but there was no denying they served a decent pint. Campbell raised the pint of dark Smithwick’s ale to his mouth, and its cool smoothness slicked the back of his throat.

  “You’ve some fucking nerve, boy.”

  Campbell didn’t turn his head. Eddie Coyle’s reflection stared back at him from the grubby mirror behind the bar. He stood a full six inches shorter than Campbell, his thinning blond hair standing in tufts above his round face. Campbell wiped foam from his beard.

  “What are you doing here?” Coyle asked. “You get fed up playing toy soldiers with them cunts in Dundalk?”

  “Something like that,” Campbell said.

  Coyle stepped closer. “What, you think now Michael’s gone you can ju
st waltz back in?”

  “I’m just having a pint, Eddie, all right?” Campbell turned to face Coyle. “You want to have one with me, dead on. If not, then fuck off out of my face.”

  Coyle’s eyes narrowed. “You what?”

  “You heard me.” Campbell placed his glass on the bar.

  A smile crept along Coyle’s lips, wrinkling his blotchy cheeks. “Did you just tell me to fuck off?”

  “I think that was the gist of it, Eddie, yes.” Campbell smiled. “If you don’t want to take a drink with me, then fuck off. Clear enough?”