Dan Watson read again the crumpled paper tag, the words written in blue ballpoint pen.
The tag attached to the door key with matted, fraying yellow cord.
It was an address that the police had used since way back in the day.
A safe house for on-the-run informants and sometimes British Army Special Ops.
From the outside it was deliberately anonymous.
Just another red brick semi, dirty lace curtains behind a high privet hedge.
Paintwork peeling, windows grimy, rusting wrought iron double gate, like the majority of student rentals that surrounded it.
The area had once been a desirable family destination for young professionals, academics and those with a bohemian inclination. But as more and more of these had moved to the suburbs, a proliferation of For Sale and For Let signs had mushroomed.
The main street had seen an explosion of fast food joints and express mini-supermarkets.
Watson ruminated on whether the entire street had anyone over the age of forty left living in it.
He went outside and as had been agreed, left the key under the rotting, mottled carcass of large potted plant by the door.
What a bizarre and pathetic place to end it all.
But wasn’t that what he himself had become? What his conduct, his existence had become?
Bizarre.
Pathetic.
He had used the house twice for trysts with Helen Totton.
It was straightforward enough for him to get the key.
Just walked into the duty office, opened the filing cabinet and pulled out the folder marked Residential/Capital Assets. In it was a clipboard to which a number of keys for properties in the area were attached, all with identifying address labels.
Their first time there, the sheets on the bed felt damp and smelled musty.
There was black spongy mould in the far corner of the room and a chill in the air.
All of this hadn’t really mattered until afterward. As they lay together naked, sweating, smoking a cigarette, with little to say to each other except office talk.
He knew now, of course, why she had been so interested in the Barnard case.
Knew that bastard Cecil Herringshaw had been pulling the strings all along.
The second time they used the house, Helen Totton had brought cosmetics, a toothbrush, a sleeping bag, some air freshener and a flask of coffee.
At the time he’d preferred to believe that this suggested an attempt by her to make things more ‘homey’.
More permanent.
More personal.
That blind, urgent, angry sex was turning into something more, perhaps.
Would they look back and laugh at the clandestine nature of all of this?
A wry smile broke from his tight lips.
In fact, she has been just making herself as comfortable as possible before putting in another shift on her back.
Watson extended his big hand in front of him, sweating palm upward. It was shaking.
He brought the other hand level.
The blue-black Glock 17 standard issue semi-automatic pistol lay flat across his palm.
It felt like a toy, its lightweight plastic casing hardly suggesting the full seventeen rounds that it held in the clip.
The fabric armchair he sat in seemed to cling to the chill and damp from a house that was only occasionally occupied.
He again looked at the brass cartridge present in the chamber, a tactile metal edge protruding slightly out, immediately behind the ejection port on the right side of the slide.
The weapon was loaded and ready for use.
He pushed it down in the narrow gap between his thigh and the rough cloth of the chair where it could be easily and quickly located.
He rested his hand there.
Let it go limp.
The furnishings in the house were a mish-mash of 80s tat and Ikea self-assembly.
It made for an incongruous mix which could not rise above the overriding impression of the squalid and the seedy.
The whole property stank of cigarette smoke and dampness.
The wooden hearth surrounding the barren fireplace had been burned and scarred black by a number of cigarette butts that had been carelessly left there by some earlier occupant.
A crushed Coke can and some biscuit wrappers lay abandoned in its mouth.
Its edges were sooty and blackened.
On the dining table sat a vase with some plastic lilies.
A beer mat had been peeled back so that someone might use it to write on.
High above him, the water tank in the loft groaned.
He had left the tap running in the bathroom following several unsuccessful attempts to throw up in there.
The fluorescent strip lighting in the kitchen hummed loudly. A moth trapped inside the translucent cover beat in vain against the plastic.
Little or no natural light seemed to permeate the living areas of Number 172 Stranmillis Parade, Belfast 9.
*
He had asked both Helen Totton and Cecil Herringshaw to meet with him here at 3.30pm.
He told them that he had a proposal that would take care of any continued meddling from Eban Barnard, whilst protecting the identities of both Herringshaw and Alex Barnard from any reopening of the Joseph Breslin case.
Watson was particularly keen to emphasis the results of his deliberations, which placed Councillor Herringshaw at the scene of that assault all those years ago.
It wasn’t just pride in his own police work – he needed to be sure Herringshaw would attend.
Needed to hook him and bring him to a place like this, for reasons Herringshaw could not reveal to others.
As for her, well… it was nothing more than revenge.
He could live – and die – with that.
The bitch had strung him along and played him for the fool he undoubtedly was.
How could he have let it all slide away so quickly?
He was weak.
A weak, wretched man and Helen Totton had seen that somehow and used it against him.
No resolution of this debacle would be complete without her inclusion.
And he told himself that it was for Elaine.
Long-suffering, compliant Elaine.
Her natural generosity of spirit and capacity for forgiveness would not have extended to Helen Totton selling her story to the Sundays.
He felt sick again at the thought of the mess he was dumping in her lap.
And the children’s of course.
But he could in conscience find no better solution to the impasse facing him.
Blackmail, professional ruin, lonely, solitary, humiliation, an old age waiting, wishing for it all to end.
It was better – much better – this way.
Watson’s eyes stung with the tears now welling up in them.
He shook them free to clear his head and wiping his nose with his sleeve, steeled himself again for what he must do.
He was aware that almost as many people had died from suicide in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement as were killed during the entire Troubles.
A significant number of these were police officers who had used their own legally held firearms.
He knew this because he had recently attended the biannual seminar arranged by Human Resources for officers of sergeant’s rank and above.
They had subcontracted the mental health of the force out to a high profile psychotherapy practice.
Earnest, well-meaning, touch-feely members of the caring professions, who nodded soberly whilst taking notes on paper emblazoned with their distinctive logo.
“Please don’t allow the stresses of the job to imperil your mental well-being.”
Please don’t blow your own brains out more like!
Add to that the recent high profile cases of love triangles resulting in murder-suicides and it all fell into place.
The press would have a field day of course.
But that hardly seemed to matter now.
What was important was that there had to be enough uncertainty around whether Watson had taken his own life or was in fact a victim of one of the other two.
In this way, Elaine’s police pension could be protected and his own character perhaps redeemed, if only partially.
Suddenly Watson stiffened.
His mind had been wandering.
To the day of his passing-out parade.
To Elaine’s laugh… or the way it used to be.
To a model aircraft he’d made when he was a boy.
To a song his father used to sing when coming home from the pub.
There was the noise of voices outside.
A key in the lock.
They had arrived together.
So much the better.
Probably cleaner that way.
Do them both at once.
One shot.
Him in the temple, up close.
Her in the heart.
Then…
He tensed, sat up straight and allowed his right hand to drop and rest again in the narrow space between his leg and the chair.
A colleague who had survived a terrorist shooting had once confided in him his fear that an abrupt, violent act resulting in his murder would leave his spirit suddenly dispossessed and exiled forever, in the very place that the attack had happened and at the moment of his death.
He had gathered up a stack of junk mail and bills when he’d first arrived and left them on the kitchen table in front of him.
He glanced at the transparent windows of the brown envelopes, spilled across the Formica surface like a beaten hand of cards.