She did so at lunchtime the next day as the sun toasted the pavements and beat on the roof of the taxi that took her through the city streets.
It was ridiculous, she conceded. She would have to learn to drive again.
Her father had a car which he said she could use.
‘It’s a Saab. I never bother with it, I’m always in the Range Rover. It’s yours whenever you want it. Just let me know and I’ll sort the insurance out.’
Lessons – that might be the answer. She had not forgotten how to drive and her licence was still valid. A couple of refresher sessions would get her into shape.
In any case, Belfast had changed a lot. There were new buildings, new road systems. She would have to get familiar with them before letting herself loose on the unsuspecting travelling public. But so much for independence. Here she was, contemplating borrowing her father’s car.
It would be just for a little while, not forever, and surely that was all right?
They were in the docks area now, amid multi-lane confusion. She looked out on new office blocks and huge grain silos that were sheer sheets of corrugated cladding. She saw the old dark stone of the Sinclair Seamen’s Presbyterian Church with its Italianate tower. The cab stopped in somewhere called Pilot Street, which didn’t sound right.
‘It’s the Clarendon Dock I’m looking for,’ she said.
The driver put his arm across the back of the passenger seat and twisted round to look at her. He had dark jowls and would never be clean-shaven. A picture of two little blonde girls was stuck to the dashboard and she assumed they looked like their mother.
‘This is it, love,’ he said. ‘In front of you.’
She peered out. There was a gap straight ahead and a small wrought iron archway with the words ‘Clarendon Dock’ worked into it.
‘Where exactly is it you’re trying to get to?’ he asked.
‘There’s a pub,’ she began.
‘There’s a whole lot of them,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the Rotterdam Bar just there,’ he pointed, ‘and round the corner there’s Pat’s Bar.’ He winked at her. ‘Or you could try the Dockers’ Club. We just passed it.’
‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘This will do.’
She paid him, got out and asked if he would come back for her in half an hour.
As he reversed up the narrow street again she walked through the arch and found herself in a stone square. There were tiered steps curving around, like rows of seats, creating a little amphitheatre. Against a wall stood an empty, black-painted stage with the words Guinness Gig Rig across the top. A string of Guinness pennants flapped in a breeze that carried a mealy smell from the silos.
She stood, looking at it all. She could have been here before; she just wasn’t certain. She didn’t recognise any of it but the place was such a part of her mystery that she felt some kind of familiarity, as if she were visiting an historic site.
New buildings stood all around, mellow brick and stone and smoky blue glass that threw the sun back on itself with dazzling flashes of light. Over to one side, behind a high wire fence, a building was just being started, only a framework of girders so far. She could see construction workers in hard hats and hear the ringing echo of their hammers on the metal skeleton.
A sign on the fence announced that it would be a block of new luxury apartments, ready at the end of the year. There was an artist’s impression of the finished product but it was partly obscured by a proud banner that said ‘All Sold’.
She walked left towards the sign for Pat’s Bar. Outside the pub, office workers, men in neat suits, the women in cotton dresses, sat at picnic tables. She passed two young men and three girls crowded together, plates and glasses in an untidy jumble. The girls laughed at something suddenly and the sound echoed off the old stone walls.
Meg glanced around. At another table were a couple of men in dusty jeans, pints of lager golden in their fists, racing pages open. Near them, two women sat soaking up the sun on the warm steps.
They were like performers in a drama or figures in some kind of tableau that had been arranged just for her. No one bothered with her, yet she could not shake the feeling of being watched.
Had he been here that night, the man who killed Paul Everett? Was he here now?
Pat’s Bar was crowded. Cigarette smoke danced in shafts of sunlight. It was dark, a place for the drinkers mostly, the men from the building sites and from the flour mills. Trying to avoid their stares, telling herself that they were men and she was a woman, that was all, she went up to the bar where she ordered a cup of coffee and a chicken sandwich.
‘Is that stage always there?’ she asked the barman when he set her order in front of her.
‘Only in the summer months when there’s gigs on. They take it away in the winter.’
She went back outside with a tray and found a seat along the wall just at the door. From there she could survey the whole of the little square and as she did she knew that if she sat there all day, or for a million years for that matter, it would make no difference to her memory.
When she had finished eating she got up and began to explore further. There was a cobbled pathway in new stone, lined with young trees. It took her round the corner of a building which housed an education department of some kind, and suddenly she was at the edge of the old dock.
The oily water shone in rainbow streaks and the smell from the silos was stronger. Straight across from her were the yellow shapes of Samson and Goliath, the giant cranes, standing astride the shipyard, but further along towards the city, the landmarks were not so familiar. The Waterfront concert hall was like a huge glass hat box. Behind it the Hilton hotel and the new BT headquarters were two stiff-shouldered sentries in honeyed brick.
The city had changed; it was reborn. All around her were examples of regeneration against the odds.
She wanted to be a part of that but it was going to be hard.
She turned away. There was nothing here for her, nothing that evoked a memory of that night.
But it had started her thinking. There was a name. She had it on a piece of paper somewhere at home.
It was on the page of notes she had jotted down the day the police came to talk to her.
Mrs Fiona Jackson and her husband. She didn’t know his first name.
She looked them up in the phone book. Jackson, 43 Willoughby Park. There it was. At about six that evening she rang to see if anyone was in.
A man answered. ‘Hello?’
She hung up straight away. She had withheld her own number so she knew he could not dial 1471 and call her back. She did not want to talk on the phone and if she said who she was they might not agree to see her. The best thing was to turn up on the doorstep.
She rang for a taxi, then changed out of her jeans into a skirt and blouse and a light linen jacket. The cab reached her in fifteen minutes. ‘Coming,’ she called when she heard the doorbell, stuffing her purse and a few things into a canvas shoulder-bag. She would get a bus back.
They headed across to the Malone Road and over the Stranmillis embankment. Elizabeth’s flat was somewhere near here. She had yet to visit it but right now she was in no rush to do so.
They joinedthe OrmeauRoad nearits top end where the Forest-side shopping centre sprawled, vast, ugly slabs of windowless brown and grey like some sort of a prison built on the site of what had been the city’s first supermarket thirty years ago.
They reached the Saintfield Road and in a couple of minutes the driver started indicating to turn right.
Willoughby Park curved downhill, a sloping dormitory of bungalows behind red brick garden walls and bushy hedges.
‘What number did you say?’
‘Forty-three.’
They drove slowly, exploring unfamiliar territory, peering out at the numbers on the gate posts. Even numbers were on the left, odd on the right.
He pulled over on the other side of the street and stopped. ‘Forty-three. Here you are.’
She got out and looked at the house. The grass in the front garden needed cutting and dandelions had laid siege to the flower beds round the edges. Across the front window, a partly closed Venetian blind obscured any glimpse of what might be inside.
She paid the driver and wondered for a second if she should ask him to wait but in the end she didn’t. He drove off, leaving her standing alone and apprehensive on the pavement.
She rang the bell. The door was opened almost instantly by a small man in his early fifties, strands of hair across his head like thin leather straps. He wore white trousers and a blue sports shirt, opened deep to reveal a gold chain at his neck.
‘Haven’t seen you before,’ he said. He looked past her furtively.
‘No, I—’
‘Come in,’ he said and pulled her by the arm, glancing out to make sure no one was looking.
‘Mr Jackson,’ she began again, caught by surprise. I—’
‘In here,’ he said, closing the front door and leading her a few swift steps into the hall. He opened a door. ‘Make yourself at home. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
‘Look, I—’
He disappeared, closing the door behind him.
She was in a bedroom of kind. The curtains were pulled shut and light came from lamps with rose-tinted bulbs. Candles cast flickering shapes on the walls and there were a couple of oil burners scenting the air with jasmine.
She looked around. What sort of place was this?
In the centre of the room was the bed. It was wide and uncovered, apart from a sheet that appeared to be made of rubber.
And as she began to get used to the light, she saw that there were objects mounted on one wall.
Whips. One of them was a cat o’nine tails.
Oh Christ.
She started to move towards the door but just as she did it opened. Jackson stood there. He was a little breathless. ‘Now then,’ he said and smiled strangely.
He was wearing a short white towelling robe that was almost purple in the unearthly light. His legs were bare and she felt something nauseous in her throat because she knew he would be naked underneath.
She stared at him. His smile vanished and he looked puzzled. ‘You’ve still got your clothes on. And where’s all your stuff?’
‘Stuff? Listen, Mr Jackson—’
‘Your oils and stuff. For the massage. The taxi – I thought—’
‘Mr Jackson,’ she said as firmly as she could to cover the tremble in her voice. ‘I think there’s been a mistake here. I’m not who you think I am. I—’
He stepped back, trying to wrap the robe tighter round himself. ‘Are you the police?’
‘No, I’m not the police. My name is Meg Winter. I called on the off-chance that I might be able to have a word with you and your wife.’
‘My wife’s dead,’ he said.
She was shaken. ‘Oh . . . I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean—’
‘Car accident. A year ago.’
‘I’m terribly sorry.’
He was getting angry, trying to recover his dignity, but he dressed for it. ‘Just who the hell are you, barging into my house like this?’
‘I didn’t barge in. You more or less dragged me in.’
He closed the door and stared at her, his eyes narrowing.
She felt her mouth dry as if something had sucked all the moisture out of it, then she glanced around hurriedly for some way to defend herself. There was nothing except the whips and she doubted if they’d be much use in a crisis.
She was taller than he was but he was strong. She had felt his grip on her arms.
A kick. If he came nearer that’s what she would do. Somewhere just below where he had tied the belt of his robe. Then she’d be through the door and away.
But he didn’t move towards her. ‘What do you want?’ he said. He looked at her bag. ‘Are you trying to sell something?’
‘No, I just want to explain. Four years ago, you and your wife witnessed an accident. A sports car was run off the road. A man was murdered and a woman was injured, left in a coma. I – that was me.’
He looked hard at her. ‘Who did you say you were again?’
‘Winter. Meg Winter.’
His eyes widened as he remembered. ‘You? I read that you’d recovered. So you just turn up at my door, do you? Out of the blue? You’re all right now but my wife’s dead. That’s just great, isn’t it? What the hell do you want with me?’
‘I wanted to talk to you . . . both. I wanted to hear from you what you saw that night, to see if there was anything you might have forgotten to tell the police at the time. You see, I’ve lost my memory.’
‘Well, that’s your problem. Nothing to do with me. So why don’t you just get the hell out of my house?’
He opened the door wide and she felt herself breathe again.
She walked quickly past him into the hall, then she made straight for the front door in case he changed his mind. But he didn’t. He stayed where he was and watched her go.
She had opened the door and turned. ‘Mr Jackson, I’m really sorry. If I’d known—’
He waved angrily. ‘Just go on. Get out. And keep away from me in future.’
She closed the door firmly behind her and hurried away, feeling as if the smell of the room was still on her clothes.
As she walked up the park towards the main road, a taxi passed her, slowing down. There was a young woman in the back with bright blonde hair and a wary glance.
Meg walked on. She heard a car door slam but she did not turn to see. She knew where it had stopped.