Love in the afternoon. Or, at least, lust.
Later she said, ‘You’re distracted.’
‘I am.’
‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’
‘No, then you just have two people with problems.’
I was quoting the master. Or the mistress. No, wait, Lenny was the mistress. I was confusing myself.
‘Is it to do with me?’
‘No.’
She grew silent. She was probably miffed that it wasn’t about her. I pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head. That seemed to settle her. Women can be gloriously complicated, and astonishingly simple. I wished to dear God that she was my problem, but she wasn’t. All we had together was what we had together there and then: between the sheets. I was using her for sex. My heart lay elsewhere. She was using me for sex also, though I suspected I was getting the better part of the deal. If there had genuinely been anything between us, then I would have cared a tad more about the fact that she still shared a bed with her husband. It would annoy me to the point of wanting to mess up his world. Meanwhile the tiniest indication that Patricia might be with someone else was enough to ruin my day, and year, and life. Whatever you cared to call my new profession, at least part of the reason why I had only had one client and had not actually sought out any work was that I spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about what Patricia was up to, and with whom. I am in love with her, and always have been. I spend half of my life screwing up our relationship and the other half trying to fix it. My greatest fear is that one day she will finally, finally, have had enough of me.
Lenny left around six. I lay on in bed for a little bit, with a late-afternoon sunshine coming through the thin white curtains and across the bed, providing a tantalising hint of a summer that would probably never come. I showered and dressed, and sat out on the veranda with a Bush and thumbed through Derek Beattie’s phone again. I pondered. I watched young people pass through the square below on their way to some event in the MAC. I wondered what the Millers were up to. I had a flash of Springer at the sink washing blood off his hands. Maxi was right: there had always been corruption and collusion, but this was something beyond merely palming an envelope stuffed with cash or turning a blind eye. He was a killer other killers brought in to do the stuff even they couldn’t bring themselves to do. They might not murder me because of what they believed would be released if I died; but that would not prevent them hurting those who were closest to me.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Sure. Just making dinner. You want some?’
‘Okay.’
We agreed on half an hour.
I phoned Lenny.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Back to work,’ she said.
‘Nobody followed you?’
‘Nope, not that I noticed. I fooled them.’
‘Okay. Good.’
‘But thank you for caring. Lovebug.’
I pretended not to hear. When I finished with Lenny, I glanced at my watch, and then phoned Neville Maxwell.
He said, ‘Dan, I’m just heading out to the Lyric.’
‘My commiserations, and I’ll only be a minute. Professor Pike, do you have a direct number for him? And I don’t mean one that just bypasses the switchboard. I mean his mobile number, or one he’s liable to pick up himself.’
‘Yes, of course. Anything you want to tell me?’
‘I have information that may bring down the government and plunge us into a bloody civil war. You know, the usual.’
Maxwell let out a low gurgle of a laugh. ‘Ah, Dan, you can’t live on past glories for ever, you know.’
‘Bear that in mind,’ I said. He gave me the number. I called it immediately. I find it’s best to do things, to say things, to act on things, right away. If you pause to think about what you’re doing, usually you end up not doing it. I plunged right in when he answered on the third ring. ‘This is Dan Starkey. I have information that may bring down the government and plunge us all into a bloody civil war.’
Professor Pike cleared his throat. ‘Dan who?’ he asked.
‘Starkey. I met you the other day at Stormont, with Neville Maxwell.’
‘Oh . . . yes,’ he said. ‘What’s that you’re saying about . . .?’
‘Just trying to get your attention, Professor. Do you prefer Professor, or Mister, or Minister, or first-name terms?’
‘It depends on who I’m speaking to, and why. Is this government business, or Assembly, or private, or . . .?’
‘This time it’s personal,’ I said.
He paused for a moment and then said, ‘You can call me Professor. Incidentally, how did you get this number?’
‘Ah, now,’ I said.
He said, ‘Listen, Dan, I’m just sitting down for dinner, and I make a point of trying to protect family time, it’s rare enough. So what can I do for you?’
‘Well, Peter, it has to do with the Miller brothers buying influence in the Assembly, mostly through the blackmail of your wife.’
‘My . . .? Hold on one second.’ He must have held the phone against his chest, because the sound became muffled. I could just about make out him saying: ‘Darling, I’m just going to take this in the other room.’
A few moments later I heard a door close, the squeak of someone sitting down in a leather chair and then a colder, harder voice, but still the Professor’s, saying: ‘Now just you listen to me. I don’t know how you got this number or what it is you’re after, but I am a government minister, I can make so much trouble for you that—’
‘Cut the crap, Pete.’
Pause for intake of breath.
‘How dare . . .!’
‘Threepio, I hear you, and I say bollocks. And also I say: shut your fucking mouth and listen to me, because I can bring you both down in a fucking instant.’ Silence. ‘Now, you know exactly who I am, I wrote enough about you back in the day. I believe in your youth you even had a real actual cross burnt on my front lawn. But we’ve all grown up a lot since then. So listen to me. You may know none of this or all of this, I don’t really care, it’s how you react that matters to me. Your wife is being blackmailed by the Millers. She has a cocaine habit. She owes them a fortune. Until now she’s been paying the interest by influencing you and the rest of your cronies in the Assembly to go easy on or give a helping hand to the Millers’ many and varied business interests. But God love her, she’s trying to pay it off, that’s why she’s building that house in your back yard.’
‘You . . . you . . . you . . . Is this some kind of a sick joke?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘No, of course it isn’t. Professor, your wife’s a cokehead, what do you say?’
‘My, my, my . . . wife . . .’
‘Takes it up the nose, yes. Professor, I have it all documented and ready for release to the media tomorrow. People will love this.’
There was a long pause. And then: ‘Unless, Mr Starkey?’
‘That’s more like it,’ I said.
I told him what I wanted.
He listened patiently. At the end of it he said, his voice now back to its confident best: ‘It strikes me, Mr Starkey, that if anyone is doing any blackmailing, then it is you. You are the one now seeking to control the actions and policies of not only a government minister, but the entire government itself.’
It was a fair point. In one day I’d gone from being a private eye in denial, with no customers, to de facto brigadier general of the Ulster Volunteer Force and now the unelected leader of the Northern Ireland Assembly. You could get used to power. Power corrupts, but absolute power must be wonderful.
I said, ‘Dress it up how you like, Professor, but at the end of the day, all I’m trying to do is save a boy’s life.’
‘Mr Starkey, I have worked all my life for this country, one way or another. I have always felt that the Good Lord was at my side, guiding me. When I made mistakes, He forgave me and pointed me in the right direction. I am ashamed of nothing in my past. But times change, and the concerns that most agitate a young man do not seem so pressing in middle age. I am in a better place now, and I believe that is reflected in the respect I command for the work that I do. Politics is all about compromise, but perhaps we have compromised too much. Much as I hate to say it, this may be just exactly what we’ve needed, a wake-up call. Noon tomorrow, you say? Mr Starkey?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mr Starkey?’
‘Sorry, I drifted off during your speech. Yes – noon tomorrow will do nicely.’
He let out the smallest, saddest laugh. ‘Noon,’ he repeated. ‘By God, Starkey, if he’s not even your kin, this Bobby Murray must be some special boy.’
‘You would think that,’ I said, ‘but actually, he’s a bit of a shit.’