In east Belfast, a taxi driver with known connections to Boogie Wilson was shot in the back of the head by a passenger and died at the wheel. On the Shankill, two associates of the Miller brothers were cornered and kneecapped by an armed gang who arrived in a minibus that was later found burned out in the shadow of the shipyard. In St Anne’s Square, a fourteen-year-old with a tremendous hangover slept it off in my spare bed. In the Bob Shaw, a confused barmaid started the new day shift her sullen, bitter husband had insisted she switch to. On the Malone Road, I sat in my big scratched car watching Jack Caramac’s opulent home, the road ahead of me busy with early-morning schools traffic, and thought about the meaning of wife.
Jack was being a bastard to Tracey, yet she stayed for love. She had promised to help me to help him. I had, undoubtedly, been a bastard in my time as well, yet Patricia had thrown me as far as she could throw me. What was so wrong with me that I wasn’t worth sticking with? Or what was so wrong with Tracey that she didn’t feel she could leave someone who cheated on her? Who was right? Did two rights make a wrong? Was a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Sometimes you can ponder too much. I have this fantasy where I’m like a shark, always moving forward, while at the same time being totally aware that I’m more like a goldfish, going round and round and round in an eternal quest for crumbs. I always forget what my reality is the moment something new and shiny comes along. I get inexplicably excited and hopeful all over again, convinced that love and lust and peace and happiness are all just around the corner. I should have There are no corners in a goldfish bowl tattooed on to my forehead.
Focus.
Jack was on air, and Tracey was supposed to be finding out stuff. I had no reason to believe that she would recognise something important if she found it, but she wouldn’t let me in to do it myself. I was used to trawling for information, it was part of what I did, but she was adamant. She said she would call me if she had anything to report. She had no idea I was outside. It was good to have her on my side, but not good to keep all my eggs in one basket. Not when I could be keeping an eye on Nanny the nanny as she left at the end of what must have been an overnight shift. She was wearing an anorak, zipped right up; she took a cigarette out as soon as she was halfway down the drive, but didn’t light up until she actually left the property. She turned right, moved along the footpath parallel to the Caramac hedge, and on to the end of the garden of the half-built house next door. She stopped there and waited. She lit another fag. She had earphones in. Ten minutes passed, and then a silver-coloured Ford Mondeo pulled up beside her. There was a woman with blonde permed hair behind the wheel. Nanny got in, and they drove off. I followed.
It was unlikely to be the silver car, but if it was, and the blonde was the woman who had nabbed Jimmy, then it was a pretty bloody amateurish operation. But then writing Shut the fuck up on a scrap of paper was hardly the height of sophistication. Was it possible that Jack, and Jimmy, for that matter, had been taken for a ride by their own nanny? And what did it say about my half-arsed attempts to investigate the case that I hadn’t grasped the bleeding obvious? Had Nanny the nanny outfoxed me by the simple expedient of not talking to me?
I started the car, and followed. Jack was still waxing lyrical. He was on health service cuts and castigating the Department of Health for not providing a spokesman to be annihilated live on air. I followed the car down the full length of the Malone Road until it turned into Chlorine Gardens and wound its way round to Colenso Parade. It was an area, and street, mainly inhabited by hard-partying Queen’s University students and resilient older folk. It took them a while to find a parking space. When they finally got one, I drove past them once, and then doubled back via Elaine Street and Sandhurst Gardens, just in time to see them enter a small red-brick terraced house with a black front door. Duly noted, I spent another ten minutes trying to find somewhere to park for myself. It’s never hard in the movies.
I rang the bell. Nanny the nanny opened the door with a smile that faded when she saw me. She was still in her anorak.
I said, ‘Hi, remember me?’
She said, ‘What you want?’
‘Oh, thanks for asking. I want to come in for a chat with you and your partner. Is she your partner?’
‘I do not under—’
‘About you and your employer, Jack Caramac, and little Jimmy, your charge? Little fella, rosy cheeks? Can we talk about him? I’ll only be five minutes. Can I come in?’
‘No,’ she said and closed the door.
I stood there, nodding to myself for a little bit, thinking about booking lessons at the charm school and how painful it would actually be to undergo surgery to have the cheeky bone extracted. Then I rang the bell again. This time it was the blonde woman who answered. Up close, she was a good deal older than Nanny, face lined, yellow teeth, bony legs in faded jeans. Actually, I was only surmising that she had bony legs.
I said, ‘Hello, I’m—’
‘Fuck off!’
‘If you would just give me a—’
‘What don’t you understand about fuck off? Fuck off!’
She slammed the door.
I nodded for a little while longer. But I didn’t get where I was in life by taking no for an answer, so I crouched to letter-box level and pushed it open. I could see Nanny the nanny and Blondie standing together at the end of the hall.
I said, ‘I only want to talk. Better you chat with me than with the police. I know what you did with little Jimmy; this isn’t going to end well unless you talk to me.’
Blondie said, ‘You’re talking shite. Fuck away off. Or we call the police.’
Not wanting to confuse the police, I said, ‘Go ahead.’
She took out her mobile phone and moved out of sight.
Nanny remained in the hallway. She drew on her fag.
She said, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
But she looked like someone who knew she had and was in the early, middle and late stages of denial.
Out of sight, Blondie said, ‘Don’t talk to him.’
Nanny kept looking at me.
I said, ‘Nobody else needs to know.’
She began to shake her head. Blondie re-emerged, took her by the arm and pulled her into the side room. A moment later, Blondie came back out and moved down the hall. She crouched down beside the letter box. We were eye to eye and mouth to mouth. She stank of onions and cigarettes.
She spoke quietly, as if not wanting Nanny to hear. ‘Do you have like a card or something, I can call you later?’
I delved into my wallet and reached through the letter box. As I did, she grabbed my hand, sandwiched it between her elbow and ribcage and ground her lit cigarette into it.
I yelled and tried to pull away, but she held me tight, and she ground, and she ground and she fucking ground. I wailed like a banshee. I rammed my foot into the door and pushed hard, trying to use the leverage to rip my hand back out, but she’d too strong a grip.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking FUCK!
Abruptly she let go and I tumbled back on to her flag-stone path. I lay rubbing furiously at my smouldering hand while she cackled with laughter through the letter box, at least until she guldered: ‘Now piss away off!’