‘Go. Now.’
After a moment he leaves, practically tiptoeing. The door closes softly behind him. Me and the guy are left looking at each other.
He adjusts his coat collar where Steve had a hold of it. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure who that was—’
‘I asked him to bring you in,’ I say. ‘I’ve had enough of you hanging around my road.’
He’s not fazed. ‘In that case, perhaps you both did me a favour. I’m not sure when I would have got up the momentum to knock on your door.’
His accent is educated English, with something else overlaid on top – Nordie, maybe Belfast. He hasn’t spent the last thirty-two years in a palace in Egypt or a nightclub in Brazil. He’s spent them a train ride away.
‘Have a good look around,’ I say. ‘You want the full tour?’
He’s examining my face, intensely enough that I twitch, wanting to smash in his nose with the gun butt to make him stop. He says, ‘You’re very like me. Do you understand that?’
‘I’m not blind,’ I say. ‘And I’m not stupid.’
That gets a tiny satisfied smile, like me not being an idiot is to his credit. ‘I never thought you would be.’
All that maths homework I saved up to drop at his feet. There’s a silence, while he waits for me to say something, or maybe throw myself into his arms. I don’t.
‘This is a very strange moment for me,’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you for almost a year.’
‘Wow. A whole year, yeah?’
‘I did consider making contact at the beginning. I give you my word, I did. But I didn’t know your name, and your mother had gone off the radar really very effectively. And at the time, given the various complications in my life, in many ways I felt you would be better off without—’
‘And now, what, you need a kidney?’
A thin smile. ‘The year before last, my mother and father died, within months of each other.’ A smaller pause, for me to say sorry for his loss or feel bereaved or fuck knows what. ‘Losing one’s parents causes an immense shift in perspective. It brought home to me the value of their presence within my life, on a much broader scale than I had ever understood it before: the value of being rooted within a greater story than one’s own. I became acutely aware, for the first time, just what I had deprived you of. As soon as I reached that realisation, I began looking for you.’
Those dark eyes, all intense and urgent and meaningful. No wonder my ma fell for it; she was only twenty. I’m not. The truth is he was feeling vulnerable all of a sudden, what with being next in line, and he needed someone who could make him feel like he wasn’t gonna vanish into nothing. ‘At one point I actually hired a private detective,’ he says, ‘but all I could give him was your mother’s name, and—’
‘You’ve found me now.’
‘As soon as I knew how to find you, I came. I booked a hotel in Dublin and drove down that very day.’
The face on him says he expects me to be all moved. ‘Shame you didn’t find out a few weeks earlier,’ I say. ‘You could’ve got your Christmas shopping in.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ He nods at my gun. ‘You must know I have no intention of hurting you. And it does put a damper on the conversation.’
There’s a smile at one corner of his mouth, a smile that he expects to work. A charmer, this guy. Shame that gene skipped a generation.
‘There’s no conversation,’ I say. If Steve had the sense to do what I told him, he’s in his car and well gone by now, too far for this guy to chase him down and try to pump him for info. ‘You’re leaving.’
That takes the smile away. He says, carefully, ‘I realise you must be angry with me—’
‘I’m not angry. I’m done with you. Go on.’ I motion at the door with the gun.
‘No,’ he says. His hands come up towards me. ‘Let me stay. Please. Just for a little while; an hour. Half an hour. If you still want me to leave after that, I will.’
I say, ‘Out. Now.’
‘Wait.’ He hasn’t moved, but his voice sounds like a leap to bar the door. ‘Please. I’m not going to pry. You can tell me as much as you like, or nothing – it’s up to you. And I’ll tell you anything you want to know – you must have questions. Anything. Just ask me.’
Here it is: my deepest and darkest, the one that no best mate or partner or lover will ever know. In that second I see what Aislinn saw. I see the moment she chased over barriers and through muck and out the other side of death; it bursts into my house like ball lightning and it sings in front of me, an arm’s reach away. What’s your name, how did you and my ma meet, why did you go, where have you been, what do you do, tell me all of it, all . . . I see me tilting like a hawk high in warm air, while below me he unrolls all my might-have-beens, for me to circle above at my leisure till every fork and tributary is stamped into my mind, reclaimed and mine. I see him opening his cloak to show me all the lost pages of my story written in silver on the night-sky lining.
‘OK,’ I say. I lower the gun. ‘Yeah: I’ve got questions.’ I can hardly breathe.
‘And I can stay. Half an hour.’
‘Sure. Why not.’
He nods. He waits, gazing at me too intently to blink, hanging for the questions like they’re the best gift I could ever give him.
They would be. This is what my ma was telling me, through all her bullshit fairy tales. If I let him give me the answers, he’ll own me. Everything in my life, past and future, will be his: what he decides to make it into.
I say, ‘How’d you track me down?’
He blinks then.
‘You said anything I want to know.’
He glances at the sofa. ‘May I sit down?’
‘No. First you start answering. Then I’ll see.’
A wry quirk of one eyebrow, like he’s decided to humour an overwrought kid. I use that look on witnesses sometimes. ‘All right. I went to my local shop on Sunday afternoon, to buy my newspaper. While I was in the queue, I glanced at the other papers on the stand. Your photograph was on a front page. I knew as soon as I saw you.’
It sends red straight through me: he’s got no right recognising me. ‘So?’ I say. ‘What’d you do?’
‘I looked you up in the phone book, but you’re unlisted. I was certain your work wouldn’t give me any information. So I rang the paper and asked to speak to the journalist who had written the article. I told him who I was – I could hardly expect him to give me any information otherwise – and that I was hoping to get in touch but uncertain of my welcome.’ A dry glance at the gun. ‘With good reason, apparently.’
‘And he just handed over my address?’ Even for Crowley, that doesn’t ring true; Crowley does nothing for nothing. ‘What’d you give him?’
‘I haven’t given him anything.’
I know that crisp snap of denial, too; too well to fall for it. ‘Yet,’ I say. ‘What’d you promise him?’
He thinks about lying, but he’s too smart to risk it. ‘The journalist said he could provide me with an address for you. In exchange for an interview after our meeting.’
I can just picture it. Top Cop’s Childhood Anguish; side-by-side photos of my shitty block of flats and his detached house in a leafy suburb; ‘All the time she was searching for the truth on the job, she was really searching for me,’ sobs long-lost dad. Not the front page, or anything; part of some glurge spread about fatherless women. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke. Crowley wouldn’t even need to publish it; he could just wave it under my nose and demand every scoop I ever have, and know I would hand them over.
I say, ‘And you said yeah, sure, no problem.’
‘I wasn’t overjoyed about the prospect. Baring my soul for some tabloid isn’t something I ever envisioned myself doing. But I would have done much more than that to find you.’
He doesn’t come across like an idiot, although you never can tell. I say, ‘Or you could have just rung up my work and asked for me. Or sent me a letter.’
‘I
could have, yes.’ He runs a palm down one cheek and sighs. ‘I’ll be honest. I wanted the chance to observe you for a while, before making that commitment.’
Meaning he wanted the chance to decide whether I was good enough to contact. If I’d had a fella in a shiny tracksuit, half a dozen screaming brats and a smoke hanging off my lip, he could have turned around and gone home: no harm, no foul, story ended before it began.
Maybe he even believes that’s why he did it this way, but I don’t. I know exactly what he was at. Playing this the approved way – break the news nice and gently from a distance, have a few careful getting-to-know-you phone calls, meet on neutral territory when everyone’s comfortable with it, all that shite – that would’ve let me decide when and whether. This guy was never going to do that. He wanted this situation – wanted me – on his terms, start to finish. Unlucky for him, that gene didn’t skip a generation.
I say, ‘So you spent the next three days hanging around outside my gaff like a peeper.’
That flares his nostrils. ‘I don’t enjoy admitting it. But I said I would tell you anything you asked. I hope now you realise I meant it.’
‘Your journalist buddy gets nothing. First thing tomorrow, you ring him and tell him you had the wrong woman. And make it convincing.’
His head lifts. Pride looks good on him and he knows it. ‘I gave him my word.’
He wants me to beg, or stamp my foot and remind him he owes me more than he owes some hack. I laugh, one crack – I’m not going to give him more. ‘What’s he gonna do, sue?’
‘Obviously not. But I prefer to fulfil my obligations.’ When the corner of my mouth lifts: ‘And I don’t think either of us particularly wants him as an enemy.’
‘Trust me: you’d rather have him for an enemy than me. You think I don’t have friends on the force around your way? You want to spend the rest of your life being pulled over and breathalysed every time you get in your car? Brought in for questioning every time a kid says the bad man had brown skin?’
His mouth – wide hard-cut curves, like mine – has tightened. He says, ‘This obviously means a lot to you.’
He leaves space for me to take the bait. I don’t.
‘All right. I’ll tell the journalist I was mistaken.’ He nods at the sofa. ‘Now may I sit down?’
The cheeky fuck is already moving towards my sofa. ‘Great,’ I say. I lift the gun and point it at him again. ‘You can go now.’
That startles him. ‘But your questions. Don’t you want to know—’
‘Nope. Off you go.’
He doesn’t move. ‘We said half an hour.’
‘I’m finished early.’
‘Half an hour. That was the agreement.’
I laugh out loud. ‘You should’ve got it in writing. Fuck off. Don’t come back.’
His jaw sets. ‘If you’re trying to hurt me—’
‘I’m trying to get you out of my gaff. If I want to hurt you, I’ll use this.’ I move my chin at the gun. ‘Go on.’
For a second I think I’m going to have to do it. He’s not used to backing down. Funny, that: neither am I.
I see the moment when he realises I’ll do it. It widens his eyes and he eases back a step, towards the door, but he’s not done. ‘I understand that this has been a shock. Believe me, this wasn’t the way I would have chosen to— Let me leave you my card. When you feel differently—’
His hand’s going to his breast pocket. ‘No,’ I say, and train my gun on that hand till it stops moving. ‘We’re done. If I ever see you again, I’m gonna shoot you dead. Then I’ll explain how terrified I was of my stalker, my friend Steve will back me up, and I’ll sell the story of our tragic misunderstanding to your journalist pal for big bucks.’
Slowly his hand moves away from his pocket. He says, ‘You’re not what I visualised.’
‘No shit,’ I say. ‘Bye.’
For a moment he stands there in the middle of my sitting room, staring at my sofa without seeing it, like he can’t get a hold of what comes next or how to do it. He doesn’t look like the spit of me, not any more. He looks like some middle-aged guy who’s spent too long, the last few days, standing in the cold and imagining.
In the end he moves. With the door open he turns and I think he’s going to say something, but he just nods and steps out into the night.
I go to the doorway and watch him to the top of the road. His hat is under the street lamp, rolling a little in the rising wind; he bends to pick it up like his back hurts, dusts it off and keeps walking, out of the light and around the corner. He doesn’t look back again.
I wait five minutes, then another five, to make sure he’s well gone. My hands are shaking – the cold is hitting me – and I make sure my gun’s pointing behind me, into the house. When I’m positive he’s not going to try coming back, I holster up and ring Steve.
He picks up fast. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m grand. Where are you?’
‘I’m only in the pub round the corner – what’s it called, the Something Inn. I thought just in case – I mean, I know you’re well able, but . . . Is he, like, still there? Or . . . ?’
He wants to know if I’ve got a corpse on my sitting-room floor. ‘He left. Can you come back here?’
‘Yeah,’ Steve says, too promptly – now the little spa thinks I want to cry on his shoulder. ‘Be there in five.’
He’s hurrying down the road in three, wind grabbing at his scarf. ‘Jesus, relax the kacks,’ I say, opening the door for him. ‘The gaff isn’t on fire.’
‘You OK?’
‘Like I already said. I’m grand. Did you leave your pint?’
‘I did, yeah. I thought—’
His hair is sticking out sideways, all orange and urgent. ‘You bleeding drama queen, you,’ I say. ‘Want a drink to make up for it?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’
I head into the kitchen and go for the booze cupboard. ‘Whiskey OK?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ Steve hangs in the doorway and has a good look around the room, to avoid looking at me. He says, to the kitchen window, ‘I saw him. His face, like.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’
Steve waits for me to say something else. I say, ‘Ice?’
‘Yeah. Please.’ He watches me set out glasses and pour – my hands are rock-steady again. ‘Did you . . . ? I mean, are you going to see him again?’
I pass him a glass. ‘I’m guessing no. I told him if I do, I’ll shoot him.’
The loud, startled snort that escapes Steve makes me realise how it sounds, and all of a sudden I’m laughing too. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Steve says, through a wave of laughter. ‘I don’t think that went the way he was planning.’
That makes me worse. ‘The poor fucker. I’d almost feel sorry for him, you know that?’
‘Seriously?’
‘No. I hope he shat himself.’ That leaves the pair of us helpless, leaning against walls. I wipe my eyes, knock back my whiskey and pour myself another. ‘Here,’ I say, holding out my hand for Steve’s glass. ‘You’ve earned it. I’d say you thought I wanted your help to dispose of a body, did you?’
Steve chokes halfway through his shot and doubles over, which sets me off again. He spills half of it, and my whiskey is too good to waste, but I don’t care. I feel better than I have in a long time. ‘The state of you,’ I say, whipping the glass off him. ‘You need to learn to hold your drink. Here.’ I hand him his refill and head for the sofa.
‘You genuinely are grand,’ Steve says, turning serious and giving me a proper once-over. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Told you.’ I lean back into the cushions and take a sip of my booze, tasting it properly this time. I can feel things shifting, in the back corners of my head: a change in the angles of light, weights rebalancing. Maybe tomorrow when I ring my ma, I’ll tell her how I spent my evening. Now that ought to get a reaction.
Steve says, ‘Then . . . ?’ Meaning, Then what am I doing here?
I sit up. I say, and I
’ve gone sober too, ‘Something’s after hitting me. About the case.’
That moment, when my vision slid and stuttered and I saw what Aislinn was chasing, in all its miraculous excruciating glow. In that moment I saw what me and Steve should have spotted a good twenty-four hours ago: what Aislinn saw when her chat with Gary sent her Daddy daydream splattering across the floor. When that soothing lifeline voice of Gary’s reached her, in the middle of the wreckage. She saw the obvious next place to look.
Steve takes the other end of the sofa. He balances his glass between his fingers, not drinking, and watches me.
I say, ‘Remember what Gary said, on the phone? He told Aislinn her da was dead, and she went to bits. So he kept talking, to calm her down: went on about how much her da had loved her, how he was obviously a great guy. Does that sound like it’d put her off missing her da? Make her go, Ah, what the hell, I’ll just leave it?’
‘Nah. Someone like her, that’d make her feel like she couldn’t let go; there had to be something there worth finding. That’s what I’ve been saying.’
‘Remember what else Gary said to her? He went on about the guys working the case. How they were good Ds, how thorough they’d been. How if there was anything to find, they’d have found it.’
Steve shakes his head, eyebrows pulling together: And?
‘If I was Aislinn,’ I say. My heart is banging. ‘If I was someone like her. I wouldn’t go off chasing some half-baked gang fantasy for no good reason. I’d go after someone who I knew could give me actual info. I’d go looking for one of those Ds.’
There’s a silence. Faint wind struggles in the chimney.
Steve says, ‘How would you find them?’
‘I’ll bet you anything Gary named names. “I know Feeney and McCann, they’re great detectives, I’m sure they did everything they could . . .” ’
Steve says, like he’s not breathing right, ‘McCann.’
Another silence, and the wind.
I say, ‘Aislinn rings up Missing Persons and asks for Feeney or McCann. The admin tells her Feeney’s retired and McCann’s moved to Murder. She’s got no way to chase Feeney down, but it’s easy as pie to find out where Murder’s based and wait outside at the shift changes. She wouldn’t even have needed to ask around to pinpoint her guy; the amount of time she’d spent thinking about this, she’d have recognised him. Even after fifteen years.’