I sat up in bed at exactly three thirty-three a.m. and repeated these words: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck damn fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck bollocks fuck. I punched the mattress and the headboard, with my good hand, and cursed some more and threw a plastic bottle of Diet Coke across the room. I buried my head in my hands and rocked back and forth.
The door opened and Joe, in T-shirt and boxers, said, ‘You okay?’
‘Nightmare,’ I said.
‘Get you anything?’
I could have said yes, you could get me the huge wad of cash, the bag of drugs and the revolver I’d just realised I’d left in the boot of my now flattened car. But I didn’t. I said no and thanked him. He went back to bed. I went back to swearing.
Sleep was not an option. I was such a loser. I had been trying to keep Bobby safe, but had only managed to dig his grave a little deeper. I lay still, with the covers thrown back, and tried to calm my breathing. I had to try and forget about what was gone, and think everything else through. It was hard. My head was full of wee sweetie mice. Every time I managed to string two ideas together, they nibbled through the strands.
Concentrate.
Settle.
Okay. I had gotten into this to find out who had kidnapped little Jimmy and why Jack was being warned off. Losing the Xbox stash didn’t change that. Nanny the nanny had confessed to being involved in a half-arsed plan hatched by her partner Betty. She had thought she’d got away with it until I started pestering her. While Betty’s overreaction had helped to keep me interested, it was still Jack’s sudden volte-face that most intrigued me. However hard I thought about it, I couldn’t see any connection between Nanny’s confession and Jack’s sudden buoyancy.
If Jack knew she was involved, she should have been sacked instantly, even if he preferred not to take it to the police. So his sudden good mood on the night of his party, his firing me and then attempting to shut me up through legal and physical threats, all suggested there was something else he thought I might uncover if I kept poking around. But why was that any of my concern? Why couldn’t I just let it go?
Patricia said, ‘You never let anything go.’
‘Including you.’
‘We’ll pass swiftly over that one,’ she said. ‘You love a good grudge, so you do.’
‘Maybe you should apply your passion for the truth to your personal life.’
‘We’ll pass swiftly over that one as well,’ I said.
‘Convenient. Keep your high moral standards strictly for your day job.’
I hadn’t called her because of Joe, although he had something to do with it. I had called her because I always did. She was part of me, and always would be. She was in bed, apparently by herself. Bobby was in the next room, wired up to his Xbox. She could hear him shouting in triumph every time he splashed a wall with zombie brain. It was gone four in the morning.
‘Have you banged on the wall and reminded him he’s starting his apprenticeship in the morning?’
‘Yep.’
‘Did it work?’ It was a rhetorical question. I said, ‘I’ll have him out of there as soon as I can, Trish.’
‘Promises.’
‘Soon as I straighten it with the Millers.’
‘You think that’s likely?’
‘I can only try my best.’
‘Well you have their drugs, their money and their gun. That must count for something.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What was the street value of the cocaine Mrs Murray flushed down the bog?’
‘Unknown, but informed opinion has it about forty grand.’
‘Oh,’ said Trish.
Joe was up at dawn to accept a delivery. There was an awful lot of clanking from a huge refrigerated truck, and then lashings of ribald banter with the driver. Eventually it quietened down, and I managed a brief doze until Patricia and Bobby arrived. When I asked how easy it had been to get him up, she just rolled her eyes. He was sullen when I spoke to him, but brightened considerably when Joe strolled in. It was either Joe’s sunny disposition or the fine array of knives he brought with him. Bobby was led away without a word of farewell or thanks.
Trish stood over my bed.
‘How are you this morning?’
‘Stiff,’ I said.
‘Nothing new there, then.’
She brushed her lips against mine and said, ‘I’m away to work. Will you drop him home later or will I pick him up?’
‘Could you pick him up? I’ve work to do.’
‘You should sleep.’
‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’
She looked down at me and nodded. ‘Do you have any idea how much of a wanker you sound like sometimes?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
My thoughts shifted back to Abagail Pike, and the way she’d been leaning on her Porsche, arms folded, as I was driven away from her home. She had either rumbled that I wasn’t a Malone employee as soon as she answered the door, or I’d given myself away during our conversation. The best politicians are adept at matching names to faces. Maybe the photo shoot had lodged in her memory and it had just taken a while to click. The text she’d sent while standing with me in her kitchen was to summon help. She’d pretended to drive off, but waited around the corner for the cavalry to arrive. She could just as easily have waited in the house, but by absenting herself she could rightly claim not to have been present if it ever reached the media that Malone Security had given me a beating. She was an MLA and the wife of a government minister. If she had sanctioned the beating, it was by any stretch of the imagination a risky overreaction to being asked a few questions.
I lay back in bed and scrolled through my phone until I found Neville Maxwell’s number. When I was a newspaper columnist, he had worked at Stormont, and recruited me for some freelance work shepherding visiting reporters around the North in the run-up to an election that would have given us full independence. I was supposed to encourage said reporters to give positive coverage to the preferred candidate, Michael Brinn. I hadn’t, and of course it had all gone pear-shaped. People had died; the fate of a nation – or at least a province – had hung in the balance.
Neville, bless him, hadn’t borne a grudge. He was a civil service man, obliged to work for whoever was in power irrespective of his own political beliefs. When Brinn was exposed as a fraud, Neville had just soldiered on, as supportive and gracious towards the next man in charge as he had been to the previous. That was fifteen years ago now, and although he was retired, he still kept his finger on the pulse. He was something of a media go-to man when they wanted a precise, sober take on whatever was happening in Northern Irish politics. As I got to know him better over the years, I discovered that this presentation of himself as the statesman-like voice of reason masked the fact that he took a feverish delight in behind-the-scenes intrigue and gossip, the more malicious the better. He was a godsend for a reporter.
When he answered, he said he couldn’t stay on for long, he was about to get his make-up on.
‘Really? Anything you want to tell me?’
‘I’m due on telly. Doing a pre-record for Stormont Live. Both viewers expect me to look my best. How’s Patricia?’
‘I hear she’s fine.’
‘Like that, is it?’
‘As it ever was. Listen, Abagail Pike, what do you think?’
‘Fine chest.’
‘Apart from that.’
‘I’m serious. Don’t underestimate the power of the chest.’
‘Neville, I’m ser—’
‘I know you are, and so am I. What have you done to upset her?’
‘Just curious.’
‘Dan, I know you.’
‘I’m working on something.’
‘Will it echo in the very corridors of power?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Not even in some side rooms?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘So what’s in it for me?’
‘The Shipyard?’
‘It’s overrated.’
‘Tell you what, as I’m kind of stuck for time, why don’t you come up here and we can have a natter? There’s a very fine restaurant on site, and it’s subsidised to the hilt, so it won’t cost a fortune. Jesus, what am I doing, I’m talking myself out of your treat!’
I got dressed, not without some difficulty, and slipped out. I had a brief glimpse of Joe behind the counter, and Bobby beside him, looking uncomfortable. It was probably the stripy apron and hat. It was a difficult enough look for a grown man to carry off, let alone a teenager.
I flagged down a taxi and tried not to shout out every time it hit a pothole or braked too suddenly. Of all the roads, the smoothest was the half-mile sweep from the Stormont gates up to the Parliament buildings themselves; it had been lulling politicians into a false sense of security for years.
The uniforms at the guard hut looked at me with distaste. I couldn’t blame them. I had forgone a shower in favour of trying to get the bloodstains out of my shirt and jacket, without much success. My hair was all over the place. One eye was still partially closed over and I’d scrapes on my forehead, cheeks and the one hand that wasn’t trussed up like an oven-ready chicken. The three middle-aged, out-of-condition guards appeared to be all the protection our government required. Even in my weakened condition, I could have seized power with a catapult. They took a long time to examine my ID and to check that I really, really was expected. Then I was pointed in the right direction and left to walk alone to the grand entrance to the buildings where the fate of my country had never quite been decided. I paused only to nod respect to the statue of Carson – Edward, as opposed to Frank – glaring defiantly over the fine lawns and rolling grounds, before entering the marble foyer. I presented my ID again and was already turning instinctively for the underground canteen where I’d always chowed down in the past when I was yelled at and redirected upstairs to the members’ brasserie.
Heads turned as I entered, but only because I looked a complete shambles. Neville Maxwell was neater, and tidier, but scarcely much healthier. He was all skin and bones. He had the sallow complexion of someone not long for this world, and that was with his television make-up still on. He stood to greet me. His handshake was firm, but his fingers felt as brittle as Twiglets.
The brasserie wasn’t the kind of establishment where you ordered a pint of Harp. I had a glass of white, Neville a Coke. There was classical music playing in the background. Dvorak. Neville seemed to notice it at the same time as I did. We nodded at each other over our menus. Though it was long ago and far away, I had come to the conclusion that he had known exactly what he was doing back then, employing a loud-mouthed, semi-drunken reporter to shepherd an American journalist around the North; he had expected that I would put a spanner in the works, though I’m sure he couldn’t have imagined exactly what the fallout would be.
‘The duly elected,’ I said, nodding around the tables, ‘saving Ulster one scallop at a time.’
‘My, Dan, you sound almost cynical.’
‘Moi?’ I tilted my glass. ‘Used to be I knew this place inside out. I’ve been out of the game a long time. But let’s get to the subject at hand.’
‘Ah yes. The wonderful Abagail Pike. She’s a fine politician, but she has her knockers.’
He giggled. I giggled too. He was seventy-three years old, and I felt it. But sometimes it’s great to have a mental age of twelve. We dialled it down to a smirk as the waiter arrived to take our order, and eventually we settled.
Neville sipped his Coke, then set it down and nodded across the fine linen tablecloth at me. ‘Dan,’ he said, ‘I’ve been observing politicians for a long time, and they’re all pretty much the same. Just look around this room. I guarantee you that with the exception of a few of the converted terrorists, every one of them shared identical traits at school – they were smart and they knew it, they held strong opinions, of course, they were great debaters, but they . . . how do I say this kindly? They . . . they were bland, overserious swots. They didn’t know how to have fun or relax; their teenage years passed in a blizzard of conformity; they probably didn’t lose their virginity until they were in their twenties. They were boring, church-going, terrible at sports, largely friendless and old before their time.’
‘You’re too kind.’
‘It’s the truth. They were born to do this and this alone. They control our lives, but they do not live in our world. This is a place where a little personality goes a very long way. So when they actually rub up against one, they are utterly flummoxed – and that’s where Abagail comes in. Friend or foe, they just can’t cope with her. She’s fast and funny and flirty, she’s in their faces. I have seen politicians who can talk eloquently on extremely complicated subjects completely off the cuff for ninety minutes who still cannot manage two words to her without dissolving into puddles of sweat. In the real world she may not be the most gorgeous creature God ever created, but in these rarefied surroundings she’s a Bardot, a Monroe, and she knows how to use it.’
‘Even with her sisters?’
‘Yes, I think so. They admire her ability as an operator. Oh, there’s a little jealousy in there as well; not all of them are similarly blessed in the looks department.’
‘Oh bitchy.’
He gave a little shrug. ‘I’m old enough now to say what I want. What’re they going to do, throw me out? They know I know where the bodies are buried.’
‘Metaphorically speaking,’ I said.
He raised an eyebrow, before adding: ‘Of course.’
‘Then tell me something about Abagail Pike I don’t know.’
He smiled. His teeth had recently been capped, probably to meet with the requirements of HD television. Seventy-three-year-old prefluoride smoker’s teeth would scare children. But they appeared over-sized in his shrinking face.
‘What do you want, rumours or fact?’
‘Frumours.’
‘I’m told she’s accidentally walked into a few doors.’
‘Yes, almost like getting punched in the face.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Seriously?’
‘That’s the . . . frumour.’
‘Anything else?’
‘She has expensive tastes.’
‘How expensive? Her man’s supposed to have made a fortune in the private sector before he entered politics.’
‘And I believe he did. He’s set up a number of charities, and plenty of his money goes into them. They do a lot of work abroad.’
‘You mean Pike smuggles it into offshore accounts?’
‘No, I mean actual, verifiable charity work.’
‘Commendable, I’m sure. But still, a minister’s wage packet, his wage as a sitting member, her own . . . put that all together, it’s not to be sniffed at.’
‘No indeed. Not to be sniffed at.’
He touched the end of his nose as he said it and gave the smallest sniff up. At that moment the starter he’d ordered for both of us arrived. The waiter said, ‘Sir, quail eggs and shark fin soup with ginseng.’ It was £3.50 on the menu, but still not as cheap as the version Patricia and I had not enjoyed at the Shipyard. Neville shook out his napkin and tucked it into his shirt collar. He thanked the waiter. He then allowed his eyes to rove around the brasserie. He nodded at a couple of Assemblymen I didn’t recognise. When he came back to looking at me, I think he knew my eyes hadn’t left him.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘Am I sure what, Daniel?’
‘That she . . .’ and I touched my own nose as subtly as I could with my bear paw of a free hand.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Lovely soup,’ he said.
I tried a spoonful. Wherever you got quail eggs and shark fin soup with ginseng, it seemed it still tasted like cack.
A different waiter, passing by and noticing the depressed state of my glass, asked if we were okay for drinks. I ordered another wine. Neville raised his glass and drained it. He handed it to the waiter.
‘Why don’t you bring me another Coke?’ he asked. ‘It’s really quite addictive.’