“Do I not? I know this much: that’s why you joined the cops. Because of what we almost did, that spring. How it made you feel.”
“I had a sudden urge to make amends for my wicked past? The sappy streak is cute on you, but no. Sorry to disappoint.”
Shay laughed out loud, a fierce burst that showed his teeth and made him look like that reckless bad-news teenager again. “Make amends, my arse. Not our Francis, not in a million years. No: once you’ve got a badge to hide behind, you can get away with anything you like. Tell me, Detective. I’m only dying to know. What’ve you got away with, along the way?”
I said, “You need to get this through your thick skull. All your ifs and buts and almosts mean bugger-all. I did nothing. I could walk into any station in the country, confess every single thing we planned that spring, and the only thing I’d get in trouble for would be wasting police time. This isn’t church; you don’t go to hell just for thinking bad thoughts.”
“No? Tell me it didn’t change you, that month we spent planning. Tell me you didn’t feel different, after. Come on.”
Da used to say, a few seconds before the first punch, that Shay never knew when to stop. I said, and my voice should have made him back off, “Surely to sweet baby Jesus in heaven you’re not trying to blame me for what you did to Rosie.”
That twitch of his lip again, halfway between a tic and a snarl. “I’m only telling you. I’m not going to sit in my own home and watch you give me that self-righteous look, when you’re no different from me.”
“Yeah, pal, I am. We may have had some interesting conversations, you and me, but when you get down to the actual facts, the fact is that I never laid a finger on Da, and the fact is that you murdered two people. Call me crazy, but I’m seeing a distinction there.”
His jaw had set hard again. “I did nothing to Kevin. Nothing.”
In other words, sharing time was over. After a moment I said, “Maybe I’m losing my mind here, but I’m getting the sense you expect me to just nod and smile and walk away. Do me a big fat favor: tell me I’m wrong.”
That glitter of hate was back in Shay’s eyes, pure and mindless as heat lightning. “Take a look around yourself, Detective. Have you not noticed? You’re right back where you started. Your family needs you again, you still owe us, and this time you’re going to pay up. Only you’re in luck. This time, if you don’t fancy sticking around and doing your share, all we need you to do is walk away.”
I said, “You think for one second that I’m going to let you away with this, you’re even crazier than I thought.”
The moving shadows turned his face into a wild animal mask. “Yeah? Let’s see you prove it, pig. Kevin’s not here to say I went out that night. Your Holly’s made of better stuff than you, she won’t squeal on family; and even if you twist her arm, you can take everything the child says as gospel, but other people might not feel the same way. Fuck off back to your cop shop and get your little pals to blow you till you feel better. You’ve got nothing.”
I said, “I don’t know where you got the idea that I’m planning on proving anything.” Then I slammed the table into Shay’s stomach. He grunted and went over backwards with the table on top of him, glasses and the ashtray and the whiskey bottle thudding everywhere. I kicked my chair out of my way and dived after him. That was the moment when I realized I had come into that flat to kill him.
A second later, when he got hold of the bottle and aimed for my head, I realized that he was trying to kill me too. I ducked sideways and felt it split my temple open, but through the burst of stars I got a grip on his hair and banged his head off the floor till he used the table to shove me off him. I went over hard, flat on my back; he leaped on top of me and we rolled, jabbing for soft spots with everything we had. He was as strong as me and every bit as furious, and neither one of us could let go of the other. We were wrapped together tight as lovers, pressed cheek to cheek. The closeness, and the others downstairs, and nineteen years’ worth of practice, muffled us almost silent: the only sounds were hard straining breath and the fleshy thuds when something hit home. I smelled Palmolive soap, straight out of our childhood, and the hot-steam smell of animal rage.
He shot a knee at my balls and scrabbled away, trying to get his feet under him, but his aim was off and I was faster. I got him in an armlock, flipped him onto his back and planted an uppercut on his jaw. By the time he could see straight I had my knee on his chest, my gun out and the barrel pressed to his forehead, right between his eyes.
Shay went still as ice. I said, “The suspect was informed that he was under arrest on suspicion of murder and was cautioned accordingly. He responded by telling me to, quote, fuck off, unquote. I explained that the process would run more smoothly if he behaved in a cooperative fashion, and requested that he present his wrists for handcuffing. Suspect then became enraged and attacked me, striking me in the nose, see attached photograph. I attempted to retreat from the situation, but suspect blocked the exit route. I drew my weapon and warned him to step aside. Suspect refused.”
“Your own brother,” Shay said, low. He had bitten his tongue; blood bubbled on his lips when he talked. “You dirty little prick.”
“Look who’s fucking talking.” The jolt of fury practically lifted me off the ground. I only realized I had almost pulled the trigger when I saw the fear zap across his eyes. It tasted like champagne. “Suspect continued to abuse me and informed me repeatedly that, quote, I will kill you, unquote, and that, quote, I’m not going to bloody jail, I’ll die first, unquote. I attempted to calm him by reassuring him that the situation could be resolved peacefully, and requested again that he come to the station with me to discuss it in a controlled environment. He was in a highly agitated state and did not appear to take in what I was saying. At this point I had become concerned that suspect was under the influence either of some drug, possibly cocaine, or of some mental illness, as his behavior was irrational and he seemed extremely volatile—”
His jaw was clenched. “And on top of everything else, you’re going to make me out to be a lunatic. That’s how you’ll have me remembered.”
“Whatever gets the job done. I made numerous attempts to convince the suspect to sit down, in order to bring the situation under control, with no effect. Suspect became increasingly agitated. At this point he was pacing up and down, muttering to himself and striking the walls and his own head with a closed fist. Finally, suspect seized . . . Let’s give you something more serious than a bottle; you don’t want to go down looking like a pussy. What’ve you got?” I took a good look around the room: tool kit, of course, neatly tucked away under a chest of drawers. “I’m going to bet there’s a wrench in there, am I right? Suspect seized a long metal wrench from an open tool kit, see attached photos, and repeated his threat to kill me. I ordered him to drop his weapon and attempted to move out of striking range. He continued to advance towards me and aimed a blow at my head. I avoided this blow, fired a warning shot over suspect’s shoulder—don’t worry, I’ll keep well clear of the good furniture—and warned him that if he attacked me again I would have no choice but to shoot him—”
“You won’t do it. You want to tell your Holly you killed her uncle Shay?”
“I’m going to tell Holly sweet shag-all. The only thing she’ll need to know is that she’s never coming near this poxy stinking family again. When she’s all grown up and she barely remembers who you were, I’ll explain that you were a murdering fuck and you got exactly what you deserved.” Blood was falling onto him from the split in my temple, big drops soaking into his jumper and spattering his face. Neither of us cared. “Suspect attempted again to strike me with the wrench, this time successfully, see medical records and attached photo of head wound, because trust me on this, sunshine, there will be an absolute beauty of a head wound. The impact caused me to pull the trigger of my weapon reflexively. I believe that, if I had not been partially stunned by the blow, I would have been able to fire a nonlethal disabling shot. However,
I also believe that, in the circumstances, firing my weapon was my only option, and that if I had refrained from doing so even for another few seconds, my life would have been in serious jeopardy. Signed, Detective Sergeant Francis Mackey. And with no one around to contradict my lovely tidy official version, what do you think they’re going to believe?”
Shay’s eyes had gone a thousand miles beyond sense or caution. “You give me the sick,” he said. “Turncoat pig.” And he spat blood in my face.
Light splintered across my eyes like sun slamming through shattered glass, dazzled me weightless. I knew I had pulled the trigger. The silence was huge, spreading out and out till it covered the whole world, not a sound left except the rhythmic rush of my breathing. For a vast dizzy freedom like flying, for wild clean heights that almost burst my chest open, nothing in my life had ever compared to that moment.
Then that light started to dim and that cool silence wavered and broke open, filled up with a babble of shapes and noises. Shay’s face materialized like a Polaroid out of the white: battered, staring, covered in blood, but still there.
He made a terrible sound that could have been a laugh. “Told you,” he said. “I told you.” When his hand started scrabbling for the bottle again, I turned the gun around and smacked him across the head with the butt.
He let out a nasty retching noise and went limp. I cuffed his wrists in front of him, nice and tight, checked that he was breathing and propped him up against the edge of the sofa so he wouldn’t choke on his blood. Then I put my gun away and found my mobile. Dialing got messy: my hands smeared blood all over the keypad and my temple dripped onto the screen, I had to keep wiping the phone on my shirt. I kept one ear open for feet pounding up stairs, but all I heard was the faint demented gibbering of the telly; it had masked any stray thumps and grunts that might have filtered through the floor. After a couple of tries, I managed to ring Stephen.
He said, with a certain amount of understandable wariness, “Detective Mackey.”
“Surprise, Stephen. I’ve got our guy. Held, handcuffed and not one bit happy about it.”
Silence. I was doing fast circles of the room, one eye on Shay and the other one checking corners for nonexistent sidekicks; I couldn’t stand still. “Under the circumstances, it would be a very good thing all round if I weren’t the arresting officer. I think you’ve earned first shot at the collar, if you want it.”
That got his attention. “I want it.”
“Just so you know, kid, this isn’t the dream pressie that Santy’s leaving in your Christmas stocking. Scorcher Kennedy is going to go through the roof on a scale I can only begin to imagine. Your main witnesses are me, a nine-year-old kid and a severely pissed-off skanger who will deny knowing anything about anything, just on principle. Your chances of getting a confession are somewhere near nil. The smart thing would be to thank me politely, tell me to ring the Murder Squad room, and go back to whatever it is you do on a Sunday evening. But if playing it safe isn’t your style, you can come down here, make your first murder arrest, and take your best shot at making a case. Because this is the guy.”
Stephen didn’t even pause. He said, “Where are you?”
“Number Eight, Faithful Place. Ring the top buzzer and I’ll let you in. This needs to be done very, very discreetly: no backup, no noise, if you drive then park far enough away that no one’ll see the car. And hurry.”
“I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Thanks, Detective. Thank you.”
He was around the corner, in work. There was no way Scorch had authorized overtime on this one: Stephen had been giving the case one lonely last shot. I said, “We’ll be here. And, Detective Moran? Fair play to you.” I hung up before he managed to untie his tongue and find an answer.
Shay’s eyes were open. He said, painfully, “Your new bitch, yeah?”
“That was one of the rising stars of the force. Nothing but the best for you.”
He tried to sit up, winced and let himself fall back against the sofa. “I should’ve known you’d find someone to hang out of your arse. Now Kevin’s not around to do it.”
I said, “Is it going to make you feel better if I get into a bitch fight with you? Because if it is, I’ll go nuts, but I would’ve thought we were a few steps past the point where it would make any difference.”
Shay swiped at his mouth with his cuffed hands and examined the streaks of blood on them with a kind of strange, detached interest, like they belonged to someone else. He said, “You’re actually going to do this.”
Downstairs a door opened, letting out a burst of overlapping voices, and Ma yelled, “Seamus! Francis! Your dinner’s nearly ready. Come down here and wash your hands!”
I leaned out onto the landing, keeping an eagle eye on Shay and staying a safe distance from the stairwell and Ma’s line of vision. “We’ll be down in a minute, Ma. Just having a chat.”
“Yous can chat here! Or do you want everyone to sit around the table and wait till it suits you?”
I dropped my voice a notch and put a pained twist on it. “We’re just . . . We both really need to talk. About stuff, you know. Could we take just a few minutes, Mammy? Would that be all right?”
A pause. Then, grudgingly: “Go on, then. It’ll keep an extra ten minutes. If yous aren’t down by then—”
“Thanks, Mammy. Seriously. You’re a star.”
“Course I am, when he wants something I’m a star, the rest of the time . . .” Her voice faded back into the flat, still grumbling.
I shut the door, shot the bolt just in case, got out my phone and took photos of both our faces from various artistic angles. Shay asked, “Proud of your work?”
“It’s a thing of beauty. And I’ve got to hand it to you, yours isn’t half bad either. This isn’t for my scrapbook, though. It’s just in case you decide to start whining about police brutality and trying to dump the arresting officer in the shite, somewhere down the line. Say cheese.” He gave me a look that could have flayed a rhino at ten paces.
Once I had the gist of things on record, I headed for the kitchen—small, bare, immaculate and depressing—and soaked a J-cloth to clean the pair of us up with. Shay jerked his head away from it. “Get off. Let your mates see what you did, if you’re so proud of it.”
I said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about my mates. They’ve seen me do a lot worse. But in a few minutes’ time they’re going to be walking you down those stairs and up the Place, and it had occurred to me that the entire neighborhood doesn’t need to know what’s going on here. I’m just trying to keep the drama to a minimum. If that’s not your style, by all means let me know and I’ll be happy to give you another clatter or two, for top-up.”
Shay didn’t answer that, but he shut his gob and stayed still while I finished wiping the blood off his face. The flat was quiet, just a faint snatch of music I couldn’t place coming from somewhere and a restless wind wandering through the eaves above us. I couldn’t remember ever looking this closely at Shay before, close enough to take in all the details that only parents and lovers ever bother to see: the clean savage curves of his bones under the skin, the first speckle of five o’clock shadow, the intricate patterns his crow’s-feet made and how thick his lashes were. The blood had started crusting dark on his chin and around his mouth. For a strange second I caught myself being gentle.
There wasn’t much I could do about the black eyes or the lump on his jaw, but when I was done he was at least a few steps closer to presentable. I refolded the J-cloth and went at my own face. “How’s that?”
He barely glanced at me. “You’re grand.”
“If you say so. Like I said, it’s no skin off my nose what the Place sees.”
That made him take a proper look. After a moment he jabbed a finger, almost reluctantly, at the corner of his mouth. “There.”
I gave my cheek another scrub and raised an eyebrow at him. He nodded.
“OK,” I said. The cloth was smeared with great spreading splotches
of blood, blooming crimson all over again where the water had revived them, soaking through the folds. It was starting to come off on my hands. “OK. Hang on there a sec.”
“Like I’ve a choice.”
I rinsed the cloth a bunch of times in the kitchen sink, tossed it in the bin for the search team to find later on, and scrubbed my hands hard. Then I went back out to the front room. The ashtray was under a chair in a scatter of gray ash, my smokes were in a corner and Shay was where I had left him. I sat down on the floor opposite him, like we were a couple of teenagers at a party, and put the ashtray between us. I lit two smokes and stuck one between his lips.
Shay inhaled hard, eyes closing, and let his head fall back on the sofa. I leaned back against the wall. After a while he asked, “Why didn’t you shoot me?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Don’t be a bleeding sap. I’m only asking.”
I peeled myself off the wall—it took an effort; my muscles were starting to stiffen up—and reached across to the ashtray. “I guess you were right all along,” I said. “I guess, when you get down to it, I’m a cop now.”
He nodded, without opening his eyes. The two of us sat there in silence, listening to the rhythm of each other’s breathing and to that faint elusive music coming from somewhere, only moving to lean forward and flick ash. It was the nearest to peaceful we’d ever been together. When the buzzer yelled, it almost felt like an intrusion.
I answered fast, before anyone could spot Stephen waiting outside. He ran up the stairs as lightly as Holly running down; the stream of voices from Ma’s never changed. I said, “Shay, meet Detective Stephen Moran. Detective, this is my brother, Seamus Mackey.”
The kid’s face said he had already got that far. Shay looked at Stephen with no expression at all in those swollen eyes, no curiosity, nothing but a kind of distilled exhaustion that made my spine want to sag just looking at it.
“As you can see,” I said, “we had a little disagreement. You might want to get him checked out for concussion. I’ve documented this for future reference, if you need pictures.”