The Bloomsday Dead

by Adrian McKinty

  And I quite like what they’ve done with it. Even when the sun is finally suffocated by a black cloud and it starts to drizzle. A different feeling here from old Belfast. The people who live in these apartments travel. They go places and they bring back tasteful souvenirs from the Algarve and Andalucía. Olive oil containers, spice racks, expensive wine. They know black people, they know gay people. They know who Yo-Yo Ma is. They think Vivaldi is vulgar and they are in love with

  Easy to look down on people like that. But hopefully they’re the future. Eventually the tenements and back-to-backs will disappear. And along with them the parochialism, the subordination of women, the mistrust of outsiders, the hatred for the other side. It might take a hundred years and a civil war but if these people are the vector of things to come, the evil will wither away and Belfast will be like any other dull, wet northern European city. And if I for one live to see it, I won’t shed a fucking tear. . . .

  Game face on. I turned a bend in the river and saw the beginning of the long line of houseboats. Attractive converted barges that were tied up along the river. Some long and thin like coal boats, others squat, with an extra story on top. Most well maintained, decorated with flowers, all reasonably seaworthy. There were about two dozen of them moored behind one another stretching for about a quarter of a mile. They weren’t the famous teak houseboats of the Vale of Kashmir, but they weren’t the stinking old hulks that I was expecting.

  I walked past a couple and stopped at the first one that had someone on deck. A young man wearing yellow shorts and a purple raincoat. He was patting a golden retriever and reading a book with the title Evolution: The Fossils Say No!

  The breeze turned. I shivered and felt the cold on my stitches.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for the Ginger Bap,” I said, zipping my leather jacket over the Zeppelin T-shirt.

  He looked up from the book. He had sleekit eyes and was practically a skinhead, but I figured he couldn’t be that bad because of his canine and sartorial choices.

  At least that was my assumption until he said, “Why, what are they to you?” with more than a bit of hostility.

  “They’re nothing to me, I was looking for them.”

  “Didn’t catch your name.”

  “Michael Forsythe. What’s your name, if you don’t mind me fucking asking,” I said with a wee tone in my voice.

  “Donald . . . Did you say Constable Michael Forsythe?”

  “No.”

  “Are you not with the police?”

  “No.”

  He put down the book, his eyes closed, and he shook his head as if he didn’t quite believe me.

  “Well, listen, to tell you the truth, I was thinking of calling the police, so I was,” he confided.

  “Why was that?” I asked.

  “There’s a smell coming from their boat, something awful, so it is.”

  “Which one is it?”

  “It’s the next one along. Down there, so it is, just right ahead of ya.”

  I looked to where he was pointing. One of the larger boats. A highsided, flat-bottomed cabin cruiser that had been moored there for some time by the look of the slime on either side of the fenders. It was shipshape but there were bits of paper and leaves sticking against the safety rail.

  “Robby noticed something was up first yesterday and then I twigged the smell this morning,” Donald said.

  “I take it Robby’s your dog,” I said.

  “Aye, he is,” he said, offering no more information.

  “What happened that got Robby so upset?” I asked.

  Donald’s natural Belfast reticence and his desire to get this off his chest conflicted inside him for a few seconds but eventually the latter won out.

  “Well, it was pretty scary. Lying in me bed. I don’t know what time it was. Maybe three or four in the morning. Robby starts growling and I tell him to shut up, but he keeps carrying on and I get worried. So I look around the boat and go up on deck and check the ropes and have a wee shoofty about, so I do.”

  “What ya see?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Everything’s normal.”

  “Ok, go on,” I said.

  “Well, Robby’s whimpering now and I don’t know what’s going on, I comfort him and he goes back to sleep right. But it creeps me out and I don’t sleep too easy.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, I got up yesterday and I went into the Tech and came back last night, everything seemed fine, except that Robby was a wee bit out of sorts the whole day, but he does that sometimes, didn’t really think too much about it. But by this morning first thing when I woke up I started smelling the stink, so I did.”

  “From the Ginger Bap?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did you go over there?”

  Donald’s eyes narrowed and he wiped his mouth. He wondered if he really should be talking this much to a perfect stranger. I smiled in the most friendly way I could. A smile that often has the unintentional side effect of scaring the bejesus out of people.

  “Aye, I did go over. I said, ‘Barry, open up,’ but there was no answer.”

  “Did you go on board?”

  “No, I did not, it’s a strict rule around here, you don’t go on other people’s boats without permission. No way.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Are you sure you’re not a peeler?” Donald asked suspiciously.

  “I’m not a peeler, but I’m working for the peelers, so it would probably be in your best interests to answer my questions.”

  “Look, I’m not causing trouble. I have never caused any trouble in my life, if you don’t count trouble at football matches and you’d be hard pressed to avoid a spot of bother at them Old Firm games cos they are—”

  “Donald, please, what did you do next?” I interrupted.

  “Nothing. I didn’t do anything. I just minded my own business,” he said.

  “Ok, probably very wise. Now, do me a favor, Donald, tell me about Barry.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Does he live there alone?”

  “Nah, he lives with his mate.”

  “Who’s his mate?”

  “I don’t know, student from Scotland or something. Barry’s an art student at Tech. Photography and shite like that. Other bloke’s in the same racket, I think. Almost everybody on these boats are students of some sort. I’m at the Tech myself. This is spillover accommodation. I don’t mind it.”

  “So Barry must be at least sixteen if he’s at the Tech?” I asked.

  “Barry? Probably near eighteen, thereabouts. You could say he looks a good bit younger, though.”

  I nodded. It all seemed correct so far, but I had to be sure it was the right guy.

  “What exactly does he look like?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, average looking, I suppose.”

  “What color was his hair?”

  “What does his boat say?” Donald answered sarcastically. I looked at the Ginger Bap.

  “Ginger hair. He’s a redhead,” I said.

  “Aye, he has a ponytail.”

  “Does he have a black sweatshirt with a bird on it?” I asked.

  “Aye. Owls Football Team. Wee tiny owl. Black, dark blue, something like that.”

  “You ever see Barry with a girl?”

  “Oh, aye, them boys are a couple of jack the lads. Wee lasses in there left and right, so they are.”

  “Did you see a girl going in there in the last couple of days?” I asked.

  “The last couple of days? Well, for a start, I haven’t seen Barry at all for two days. But before that, I think I just seen him and the Jock. No wee girls.”

  “Maybe you heard a girl’s voice or noticed anything unusual?”

  “No girl and nothing unusual until yesterday morning,” he said.

  “At around three in the morning, right?

  “Right.”

  “The two boys normally come back that late?”

  “Nah, the bars
close at twelve, so they’re there pretty sharpish after that, so they are.”

  I nodded, touched the .38 in my jacket pocket. If what had happened was what I thought had happened, I wouldn’t be needing the gun but you never knew.

  “Ok, Donald, thanks very much,” I said.

  “Are you going over there?”

  “Aye.”

  “Do you think there’s something wrong?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said without emotion.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to sit tight and do nothing for the moment.”

  “Do you think there’s been an accident or something? Maybe they left their gas on,” Donald suggested.

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Donald offered.

  “No.”

  “It’s my neighborly and civic duty, so it is,” Donald said, annoying me now.

  “No, you stay here. If you want to become a good citizen, you just go back to your novel and take it easy,” I said.

  I walked quickly to the Ginger Bap.

  When I got closer I saw that the vessel was listing slightly. Obviously you needed to pump the bilges every couple of days and obviously no one had worked the bilges for at least the last twenty-four hours.

  And of course there was the smell. The unmistakable stench of death.

  I suppose that’s what Deasey meant when he said the information wouldn’t do me any good. And Donald was probably right about the timing too. The bloody dog had heard something with its dog ears. Something it hadn’t liked. Whatever had occurred had taken place yesterday in the wee hours.

  I stepped on the side of the deck. The boat rocked slightly. The plastic fenders squeaked against the quay. I leaned on the safety rail and pulled myself on board. I found the door to the main cabin. I turned the handle. Locked. I examined it closer; no, not locked, jammed. Whoever had done this had exited the boat and jammed the lock shut with a line of wire shoved between the bolt and the side. Either of the two boys would have had the key so it wasn’t them.

  It was just a piece-of-shit wee bolt that gave after one kick from my Stanley boot. I pulled the hatch open.

  The smell hit me. Putrefaction. Either someone was dead down below or a freezer full of meat was rotting. I gagged and stood back.

  Donald’s dog started to bark.

  “What’s going on?” Donald called over.

  “Do you have a phone?” I shouted back.

  “Aye.”

  “You better call for an ambulance. Not the cops, not yet,” I said, and stepped inside. I held my T-shirt over my nose and took out the .38. There was plenty of light in the upper cabin and not a trace of disorder. Tidy cupboards, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. A table with two half-full coffee cups on either side of it. The Belfast Telegraph from June 13 next to one cup and beside the other a magazine called Panties Panties Panties with a cover photo of a jaded Chinese woman wearing neither panties nor anything else.

  Just then the boat groaned in the water. Instinctively I called out: “Is there anybody here?”

  Of course there was no reply. I looked into the coffee cups. The boys had been up, drinking coffee to keep themselves awake. They’d been expecting someone. And that someone had arrived.

  I held the T-shirt to my nose and pulled open the door that presumably led to the lower cabins. A ladder that went into the dark hole.

  “Hello?” I tried again.

  I stepped onto the ladder and kept the .38 in front of me. It wasn’t Bristol fashion but I was exarmy, not a navy ponce, so I descended the ladder facing forward with the gun out—just in case there were any surprises. A passing barge made the boat rock and the door closed behind me, leaving me in complete darkness. I wasn’t bloody having that. Whatever was down here I wanted to fucking see it. The curtains had been pulled over the rectangular portholes.

  I stepped off the final rung, crossed the room, and tugged the curtains back.

  Sunlight streamed in.

  The cabin looked disturbed, but it hadn’t been ransacked. There had been no fight. The foldaway beds on either side of the central walkway were unmade and there were clothes on the floor. There were books and a clothesline pegged with black-and-white photographs. Crappy photographs of trees, mountains, small children, and bits of rubbish on the sidewalk. Also a galley, a CD player, and a set of CDs hanging on a stand.

  The smell was even stronger down here.

  Two doors.

  One behind the stairs that led to the bilges and the engine; and a door at the end of the cabin that went to the heads and the rest of the boat. My hunch told me it was the forward door and as I approached I saw that there was a sticky residue leaking out underneath.

  No, not leaking, it had leaked yesterday morning. Now it was just rotting.

  “Aye,” I said sadly.

  Carefully I pushed open the door with the .38.

  Blood everywhere in a narrow corridor. On the wooden cabin floor, on the walls, even on the ceiling. I bent down and touched it, tasted it. Dry, brownish, and stale. At least a day old. A door to my left that was marked “WC.”

  I eased it open.

  This, presumably, was the Scottish student.

  A good-looking blond-haired boy about twenty-one or twenty-two still wearing his pajamas. His hands were coarsely bound behind his back with a dressing-gown tie. He’d been shot twice in the head. The first bullet in the back of the neck had killed him. After he’d fallen dead into the shower unit, they’d shot him again right down on the top of his skull just to be sure. They’d done it with a nasty big-caliber weapon. If I hadn’t known for a fact that they’d used a silencer, I would have guessed a pump-action shotgun because the kid’s face was hanging off his head and his brains, blood, and bits of skull were everywhere over the tiny bathroom.

  I nodded, walked back into the hall, put away the .38. No one was alive in here. They’d seen to that. Execution style.

  The forward cabin.

  A body wedged against the door. Carefully I nudged it ajar.

  A broken mirror, bloody bedsheets, and a redheaded girl sprawled facedown on the floor with her throat cut.

  “Oh, my God, Siobhan,” I said.

  My legs weakened.

  I bent down, gently turned her over.

  It wasn’t her.

  It was a boy. A slender youth with hippie-length red hair. His fore-head had been smashed in with a heavy object, a baseball bat or a hammer. They’d done this several times and then they’d cut his throat.

  This was Barry, without a doubt.

  I stood.

  “Poor wee fuck, should have stuck to your photos and your small-time Mary Jane,” I said to myself.

  I searched the rest of the forward cabin but there were no more bodies. And the guys who had done this wouldn’t have left any evidence.

  I stepped over Barry’s corpse, avoided looking at the dead Scot, and did a scout of the central cabin. Finally I went to that back door and checked the bilges and the engine room.

  She wasn’t here. No Siobhan.

  Not even a trace of her.

  I climbed the ladder and closed the cabin door. I opened the window and sat down at the boys’ table.

  Barry’s job had been to win her confidence and get her out of the center of town. But he hadn’t been the one that had lifted her. I doubted that she’d ever even been here. He’d charmed her, won her over, walked her away from the bright lights and the cops and Bridget’s goons. Down some alley and then the real kidnappers had bundled her into a van.

  They let Barry go home with his dough and then they’d come after him to make sure he kept his fucking mouth shut.

  “Well, that’s that.”

  I almost took a sip of two-day-old coffee to get the taste of blood out of my mouth.

  I had to be a hundred-percent positive before I left. . . .

  I braved the stench and went back downstairs, doing a final and complete search just to be sure, but there
were no smugglers’ bulk-heads or secret compartments or hidey-holes filled with kidnapped girls.

  But she wasn’t here. She’d never been here. That wasn’t the plan.

  Two bodies, buckets of blood, flies.

  A complete dead end. No goddamn pun intended.

  I sighed, climbed out onto the deck, took a deep breath.

  “Fantastic,” I said, and to add to my joy, now the cops were coming. Four of them. Waddling along the Lagan path without a care in the world, chatting away.

  Have to deal with those bastards and that will eat up a lot of precious time. That eejit called the peelers even after I told him.

  “Shit,” I muttered and ducked back inside the boat. Maybe there was a way of avoiding them. Could I make it off the vessel without being seen? The peelers arrived at Donald’s boat. The dog began barking. Donald pointed at the Ginger Bap.

  “Damn.”

  No, there was no way out.

  Not unless I jumped into the Lagan and swam for it and then they’d think I was involved and probably plug me.

  Reluctantly, I climbed back out onto the deck and I waved at the cops to pedal their slow arses over here and get things bloody moving.

  Four cops, one a woman. The lead with a big graying Zapata mustache. All of them in shirtsleeves, but only the lass wearing her bullet-proof vest. Nice-looking bit of stuff too, from this distance. Pert nose, cute figure, and blond hair almost hidden under her hat.

  “Who are you?” the lead copper yells at me as if I’m a football hooligan messing about on the terraces.

  I pick up a forget-me-not that has floated onto the deck. I sniff it.

  “Get off that boat,” he shouts.

  I do not reply. I don’t respond well to hectoring. Especially not from a bloody cop. Let the bastard come over and talk to me like a civilized person.

  “Hey, did you fucking hear me there, pal?” Zapata tries again.