One corner of Stephen’s mouth twitched reluctantly. “Typing up witness statements.”
“Oh, lovely. How many words per minute can you do?”
“I don’t mind. I mean, I’m the newest, you know? All the others have a few years under their belts. And someone has to do the—”
He was struggling valiantly to get it right. “Stephen,” I said. “Breathe. This isn’t a test. You’re wasted on secretarial work. You know that, I know that, and if Scorch had bothered to take ten minutes to read your file, he’d know it too.” I pointed to a bench, under a lamppost so I could watch his face and out of view of any of the main exits. “Have a seat.”
Stephen slung his knapsack and helmet on the ground and sat down. In spite of the flattery, his eyes were wary, which was good. “We’re both busy men,” I said, joining him on the bench, “so I’ll cut to the chase. I’d be interested in hearing how you get on in this investigation. From your perspective, not from Detective Kennedy’s, since we both know just how much use his would be. No need to be diplomatic: we’re talking strictly confidential, just between the two of us.”
I could see his mind moving fast, but he had a decent poker face and I couldn’t pick out which way it was taking him. He said, “Hearing how I get on. What d’you mean by that, exactly?”
“We meet up now and then. Maybe I buy you a nice pint or two. You tell me what you’ve been at the last few days, what you think about it, how you’d be handling the case differently if you were the boss man. I see what I think of how you work. How does that strike you?”
Stephen picked a stray dead leaf off the bench and started folding it carefully along the veins. “Can I talk to you straight? Like we were off duty. Man to man.”
I spread my hands. “We are off duty, Stephen my friend. Hadn’t you noticed?”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean. At ease, mate. Say whatever springs to mind. No repercussions.”
His eyes came up from the leaf to meet mine, level and gray and intelligent. “Word is you’ve got a personal interest in this case. A double interest, now.”
“That’s hardly a state secret. And?”
“What it sounds like to me,” Stephen said, “is you want me to spy on this murder investigation and report back to you.”
I said cheerfully, “If that’s how you want to look at it.”
“I’m not mad about the sound of that.”
“Interesting.” I found my cigarettes. “Smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
Not as green as he had looked on paper. No matter how badly the kid wanted to be in my good books, he was nobody’s bitch. Normally I would have approved of this, but right that minute I wasn’t in the mood for doing dainty footwork around his stubborn side. I lit up and blew smoke rings up into the smudgy yellow light of the lamp. “Stephen,” I said. “You need to think this through. I presume you’re worried about three aspects of this: the level of commitment involved, the ethics, and the potential consequences, not necessarily in that order. Am I right?”
“More or less, yeah.”
“Let’s start with the commitment. I won’t be asking you for in-depth daily reports on everything that goes on in that squad room. I’ll be asking you very specific questions that you’ll be able to answer with a minimum expenditure of time and effort. We’re talking two or three meetings a week, none of which need to last more than fifteen minutes if you’ve got something better to do, plus maybe another half hour’s worth of research before each meeting. Does that sound like something you could manage, just hypothetically speaking?”
After a moment Stephen nodded. “It’s not about having better things to do—”
“Good man. Next, possible consequences. Yes, Detective Kennedy would quite probably have the mother of all hissy fits if he found out you and I were talking, but there’s no reason why he should. It ought to be obvious to you that I’m very, very good at keeping my mouth shut. How about you?”
“I’m not a squealer.”
“I didn’t think so. In other words, the risk of Detective Kennedy catching you and sending you to the naughty corner is minimal. And, Stephen? Keep in mind that’s not the only possible consequence here. Plenty of other things could come out of this.”
I waited till he asked, “Like what?”
“When I said you had potential, I wasn’t just blowing smoke up your arse. Remember, this case won’t last forever, and as soon as it ends, you go back to the floater pool. Looking forward to that?”
He shrugged. “It’s the only way onto a squad. It needs doing.”
“Following up on stolen cars and broken windows, and waiting for someone like Scorcher Kennedy to whistle for you so you can fetch his sandwiches for a few weeks. Sure, it needs doing, but some people do it for a year and some people do it for twenty. Given the choice, when would you, personally, want to get out of there for good?”
“The sooner the better. Obviously.”
“That’s what I thought. I guarantee you, I will in fact be noticing exactly how you work, just like I said I would. And every time a place opens up on my squad, I remember people who’ve done good work for me. I can’t guarantee the same for my friend Scorcher. Tell me something, just between the two of us: does he even know your first name?”
Stephen didn’t answer. “So,” I said, “I think that takes care of potential consequences, don’t you? Which leaves us with the ethics of the situation. Am I asking you to do anything that might compromise your work on the murder case?”
“Not so far.”
“And I don’t plan to. If at any point you feel that our association is jeopardizing your ability to give your full attention to your official assignment, just let me know and you won’t hear from me again. You’ve got my word on that.” Always, always give them a free out that they’ll never have a chance to use. “Fair enough?”
He didn’t look reassured. “Yeah.”
“Am I asking you to disobey anyone else’s orders?”
“That’s splitting hairs. OK, Detective Kennedy hasn’t told me not to talk to you, but that’s only because it hasn’t even occurred to him that I might.”
“So? It should’ve occurred to him. If it hasn’t, that’s his problem, not yours or mine. You don’t owe him anything.”
Stephen ran a hand through his hair. “I do, though,” he said. “He’s the one that brought me onto this case. Right now, he’s my boss. The rule is, I take orders from him. No one else.”
My jaw dropped. “The rule? What the . . . ? I thought you said you had your eye on Undercover. Were you just hand-jobbing me there? Because I don’t like being hand-jobbed by boys, Stephen. I really don’t.”
He shot upright. “No! Of course I—What are you—I do want Undercover!”
“And you think we can afford to sit around all day reading the rule book? You think I made it through three years in deep cover in a drug ring by sticking to the rules? Tell me you’re having a laugh, kid. Please. Tell me I haven’t been flushing my time down the jacks whenever I picked up your file.”
“I never asked you to read my file. For all I know, anyway, you never saw it till this week. Till you wanted someone inside this case.”
Fair play to the kid. “Stephen. I’m offering you an opportunity that every floater on the force, every guy you trained with, every guy you’ll see in work tomorrow morning would sell his granny for. You’re going to throw it away because I can’t prove I’ve been paying enough attention to you?”
He was red all over his freckles, but he held his ground. “No. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
Sweet Jesus, he was young. “If you don’t know this by now, mate, you’d better write it down and learn it by heart: the right thing is not always the same as what’s in your pretty little rule book. To all intents and purposes, this right here is an undercover assignment that I’m offering you. A bit of moral ambiguity comes with the job. If you can’t cope with it, now would be just a perfect time
to figure that out.”
“This is different. It’s undercover against our own.”
“Sunshine, you would be amazed at how often that happens. Amazed. Like I said, if you can’t handle it, not only do you need to know that, but so do I. Both of us might have to do some rethinking about your career goals.”
The corners of Stephen’s mouth tightened. “If I don’t do this,” he said, “I can forget about a place in Undercover.”
“Not out of spite, kid. Don’t fool yourself. A guy could bang both my sisters at once, stick the video on YouTube, and I’d happily work with him, as long as I thought he’d get the job done. But if you make it clear to me that you’re fundamentally unsuited to undercover work, then no, I’m not going to recommend you. Call me crazy.”
“Can I have a few hours to think about it?”
“Nope,” I said, flicking my cigarette away. “If you can’t make this call fast, I don’t need you to make it at all. I’ve got places to go and people to see, and I’m sure you have too. Here’s what it comes down to, Stephen. For the next few weeks, you can be Scorcher Kennedy’s typist, or you can be my detective. Which one of those sounds more like what you signed up for?”
Stephen bit his lip and wrapped the end of his scarf around his hand. “If we did this,” he said. “If. What kind of thing would you be wanting to know? Just for example.”
“Just for example, when the fingerprint results come back, I’d be fascinated to hear whose prints, if any, were on that suitcase, on the contents of that suitcase, on the two halves of that note, and on the window Kevin went out of. I’d also be interested in a full description of his injuries, preferably with the diagrams and the post-mortem report. That might well be enough info to keep me going for a while; who knows, it might even turn out to be all I ever need. And that should be back within the next couple of days, no?”
After a moment Stephen let out a long breath, a trail of white in the cold air, and lifted his head. “No offense,” he said, “but before I go spilling inside info on a murder case to a total stranger, I’d like to see some ID.”
I burst out laughing. “Stephen,” I said, finding my ID, “you’re a man after my own heart. We’re going to be good for each other, you and me.”
“Yeah,” Stephen said, a little dryly. “I’m hoping.” I watched his disorganized red head bent over the ID, and just for a second, under the hard throb of triumph—Up yours, Scorchie baby, he’s my boy now—I felt a little pulse of affection towards the kid. It felt good to have someone on my side.
12
And that was about as long as I could put off going home. I tried fortifying myself for it at Burdock’s—the thought of Burdock’s was the only thing that had ever tempted me to go back to the Liberties—but even the finest smoked cod and chips have their limits. Like most undercovers, I don’t have much of a knack for fear. I’ve walked into meetings with men who had every intention of chopping me into convenient sections and arranging me artistically under the nearest patch of concrete, and never broken a sweat. This, though, had me shitting an entire brickworks. I told myself what I had told young Stephen: count this as an undercover op, Frankie the Intrepid Detective on his most daring mission yet, into the jaws of doom.
The flat was a different place. The house was unlocked, and as soon as I stepped into the hall the wave came rolling down the stairs and hit me: warmth and voices and the smell of hot whiskey and cloves, all pouring out of our open door. The heating was on full blast and the sitting room was packed with people, crying, hugging, clumping up to put their heads together and enjoy the horror of it all, carrying six-packs or babies or plates of EasiSingle sandwiches covered in plastic wrap. Even the Dalys were there; Mr. Daly looked tense as hell and Mrs. Daly looked like she was on some pretty high-powered happy peanuts, but death trumps everything. I clocked Da instantly and automatically, but he and Shay and a few other lads had staked out a man-zone in the kitchen, with smokes and cans and monosyllabic conversation, and so far he looked fine. On a table under the Sacred Heart, propped up between flowers and Mass cards and electric candles, were photos of Kevin: Kevin as a fat red sausage of a baby, in a spiffy white Miami Vice suit at his confirmation, on a beach with a gang of shouting, sun-broiled lads waving lurid cocktails.
“There you are,” Ma snapped, elbowing someone out of her way. She had changed into an eye-popping lavender getup that was clearly her top-level finery, and she had done some fairly serious crying since that afternoon. “You took your time, didn’t you?”
“I came back as fast as I could. Are you holding up all right?”
She got the soft part of my arm in that lobster pinch I remembered so well. “Come here, you. That fella from your work, the one with the jaw on him, he’s been saying Kevin fell out a window.”
She had apparently decided to take this as a personal insult. With Ma, you never know what’s going to fit that bill. I said, “That’s what it looks like, yeah.”
“I never heard such a load of rubbish. Your friend’s talking out his hole. You get on to him and you tell him our Kevin wasn’t a bleeding spastic and he never fell out a window in his life.”
And here Scorcher thought he was doing a favor for a mate, smoothing a suicide into an accident. I said, “I’ll be sure and pass that on.”
“I’m not having people think I raised a thicko who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. You ring him up and tell him. Where’s your phone?”
“Ma, it’s out of office hours. If I hassle him now, I’ll only put his back up. I’ll do it in the morning, how’s that?”
“You will not. You’re only saying that to keep me quiet. I know you, Francis Mackey: you always were a liar, and you always did think you were smarter than everyone else. Well, I’m telling you now, I’m the mammy and you’re not smarter than me. You ring that fella right now, while I can see you do it.”
I tried to detach my arm, but that made her clamp down harder. “Are you afraid of your man, is that it? Give us that phone and I’ll tell him meself, if you haven’t got the guts. Go on, give it here.”
I asked, “Tell him what?” Which was a mistake: the crazy level was rising fast enough without any encouragement from me. “Just out of interest. If Kevin didn’t fall out that window, what the hell do you think happened to him?”
“Don’t you be cursing at me,” Ma snapped. “He was hit by a car, of course. Some fella was driving home drunk from his Christmas party and he hit our Kevin, and then—are you listening to me?—instead of facing the music like a man, he put our poor young fella in that garden and hoped no one would find him.”
Sixty seconds with her, and my head was already spinning. It didn’t help that, when you got down to the basics of the situation, I more or less agreed with her. “Ma. That didn’t happen. None of his injuries were consistent with a car crash.”
“Then get your arse out there and find out what happened to him! It’s your job, yours and your la-di-da friend’s, not mine. How would I know what happened? Do I look like a detective to you?”
I spotted Jackie coming out of the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches, caught her eye and sent her the superurgent sibling distress signal. She shoved the tray at the nearest teenager and zipped over to us. Ma was still going strong (“Not consistent, will you listen to him, who do you think you are at all . . .”) but Jackie hooked an arm through mine and told us both, in a rushed undertone, “Come here, I said to Auntie Concepta I’d bring Francis over to her the second he got here, she’ll go mental if we wait any longer. We’d better go.”
Which was a nice move: Auntie Concepta is actually Ma’s aunt, and the only person around who can beat her in a psychological cage fight. Ma sniffed and delobstered my arm, with a glare to warn me this wasn’t over, and Jackie and I took deep breaths and plunged into the crowd.
It was, no competition, the most bizarre evening of my life. Jackie steered me around the flat introducing me to my nephew and nieces, to Kevin’s old girlfriends—I got a burst o
f tears and a double-D hug off Linda Dwyer—to my old friends’ new families, to the four phenomenally bewildered Chinese students who lived in the basement flat and who were clustered against a wall politely holding untouched cans of Guinness and trying to look at this as a cultural learning experience. Some guy called Waxer shook my hand for five solid minutes while he reminisced fondly about the time he and Kevin got caught shoplifting comics. Jackie’s Gavin punched me clumsily on the arm and muttered something heartfelt. Carmel’s kids gave me a quadruple blue-eyed stare, until the second youngest—Donna, the one who according to everyone was a great laugh—dissolved into big hiccuppy sobs.
They were the easy part. Just about every face from once upon a time was in that room: kids I had scrapped with and walked to school with, women who had smacked me round the back of the legs when I got muck on their clean floors, men who had given me money to run to the shop and buy them their two cigarettes; people who looked at me and saw young Francis Mackey, running wild in the streets and getting suspended from school for the mouth on him, just you watch he’ll end up like his da. None of them looked like themselves. They all looked like some makeup artist’s shot at the Oscar, hanging jowls and extra bellies and receding hairlines superimposed obscenely over the real faces I knew. Jackie aimed me at them and murmured names in my ear. I let her think I didn’t remember.
Zippy Hearne slapped me on the back and told him I owed him a fiver: he had finally managed to get his leg over Maura Kelly, even though he had had to marry her to do it. Linda Dwyer’s ma made sure I got some of her special egg sandwiches. I caught the occasional funny look across the room, but on the whole, the Place had decided to welcome me back with open arms; I had apparently played enough of my cards right over the weekend, and a good slice of bereavement always helps, especially with a scandal-flavored topping. One of the Harrison sisters—shrunk to the size of Holly, but miraculously still alive—clutched my sleeve and stood on tiptoe to tell me at the top of her frail lungs that I had grown up very handsome.