Collusion

35

Lennon shook as he drove. As soon as he pulled onto the Sydenham bypass, he regretted it. His chest heaved and hammered, his palms slicked the Audi’s leather steering wheel. He needed to pull over, get his head clear. Without thinking, he took the Bridge End exit and headed south.

Images and sensations flickered across his mind, but he couldn’t grasp them. As the old Sirocco Works factory site, now an expanse of wasteland, passed on his right, he turned left. Republican murals everywhere, fallen martyrs twenty feet high to tell both locals and passers-by who owned these streets. He met the peace wall, the most inappropriately named of constructions, a barrier of brick and wire standing thirty feet high, slicing the community across its belly. He followed it as far as he could before dead ends and junctions forced him to a quiet street where no one walked. He pulled to the kerb, the Audi’s tyres crunching on litter and broken glass.

As the engine died, he looked around him. The peace wall stood to his right, to the west, making the houses feel like barracks in a prison camp. Coats of red, white and blue paint had chipped and faded from the paving stones. The remaining rags of a Union Jack fluttered from a flag pole. The red-brick buildings had shuttered windows and doors, their eyes and mouths sealed shut by steel, blinded and muted by … what?

Lennon looked up and down the road, and then he realised. This was just one of many abandoned streets, deserted by fleeing residents who could no longer stand the running battles, the showers of bricks and bottles, the petrol bombs setting light to their roofs. One by one, on each side of the peace wall, the families moved out, piling mattresses and good tables and old mirrors that once belonged to grandmothers into hastily borrowed vans or trailers.

Did anyone live here now? He searched for signs of someone, anyone, making a life on this street. Not a soul. Less than a mile away, millions were being pumped into brownfield sites, building apartments, shopping centres, technology parks. Just across the river, property was changing hands for prices never imagined only a few years before. One-bedroom flats sold for a quarter of a million, snapped up by investors looking to make a killing out of Belfast’s peace boom, desperate to get rich before the bubble burst as it surely would. And here, not ten minutes away, stood two rows of empty houses with generations of memories rotting away along with the mortar and woodwork, all because small-minded thugs couldn’t see beyond the world of Them and Us.

Nausea gripped Lennon’s stomach, turned and kneaded it. He pushed the car’s door open and leaned out, breathing hard, swallowing bile. ‘Jesus,’ he said. His voice sounded hollow in this lost place.

Lennon spat on the pavement. The day’s warmth faded fast. The air cooled his skin. He smelled smoke, a fire burning somewhere, old wood and tyres.

Patsy Toner said Marie and Ellen were there.

In the middle of the killing, on an old farm near Middletown, Marie McKenna and Lennon’s daughter. They had survived, fled the country, but what had they seen? What had Ellen seen? He coughed and spat.

He tried to replay the conversation, to put the events in order. Once Toner had got going, he had recited them in a kind of monotone, as if he’d recounted the story to himself so many times the words had lost all meaning. A madman, a killer, cutting down Paul McGinty’s faction, body upon body. At times Lennon had wanted to grab him, shake him, tell him to stop.

Lennon knew some of the names: Vincie Caffola was pure thug, Father Eammon Coulter an apologist for murderers, Brian Anderson a disgraced cop – the papers were full of stories of the backhanders he’d taken, the colleagues he’d sold out, after his killing. And Paul McGinty was the worst type of politician, just two steps from the gutter. A gangster who fancied himself as a statesman, a working-class hero, rather than the money-grubbing, power-hungry parasite he really was. Politics was simply a way to put a respectable face on his greed.

And Toner had confirmed it: it all started with Michael McKenna, Marie McKenna’s uncle. Marie had kept her background from Lennon when they first met, but she couldn’t hide it for long. She had told him over dinner, tried to play it like it was nothing, as if her father and uncle’s past had nothing to do with her present. But she was smarter than that. He could see it in her face as she spoke. She knew what it could mean for Lennon and his career, associating with the niece of a known paramilitary godfather, the daughter of his brother and lackey. She knew he would be compromised, his loyalty suspect, particularly given his own background.

The look on her face said: Here’s your get-out. Leave now, with your dignity intact, no harm done, no foul.

Lennon stuck with her. Looking back, he sometimes wondered why, but really, he knew. He was getting tired, his early thirties nudging his mid-thirties, forty looming on the horizon. He’d started to feel old when he trawled the bars, the women looking younger and younger until they seemed mere girls, and the pursuit grew uglier by the night.

When things began to unravel, his great mistake was to tell Wendy about it. She had never given him a chance when they were both single, but when she saw him in a real relationship with another woman, saw that he could make it work, that changed. Her friendly interest in his love life, her fond wishes for his happiness, turned to flirting and questions he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. When he told her how Marie’s nesting instinct had started to grind on him, how he no longer felt in control of his own life, Wendy’s eyes glittered. She began to sit closer, her thigh brushing against his more often, her hand resting on his forearm for longer.

Night after night, as he lay listening to Marie’s shallow breathing, he fought to keep his mind away from the sensation of Wendy’s hand on his skin, to stop imagining the softness of her lips. He questioned himself in the sleepless hours. Is this what I want? Is this, a life with Marie, what I really want? The same answer came to him every time.

It’s what I’ve got.

Lennon and Marie made love once more before it ended. He had been adrift for days, unable to tell her what kept him from sleep, even though she knew something was badly wrong. That evening they lay together, his head on her breast, desperately hoping her warm flesh would soothe him into reason. They moved together slowly, easily, just as they had done hundreds of times before. Her hands found him as he kissed her, pushing aside fabric. He slipped off her nightdress as she writhed beneath him. He entered her and they established the calm rhythm of familiarity. As his climax approached he tried not to imagine Wendy’s body moving like that, her eyes closed, her mouth open to him. He buried his face in Marie’s shoulder to block it out.

They said nothing, lying there, holding each other. When they separated he saw she was crying. With his fingertip he traced the path the tears had taken.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘We proved the point, didn’t we?’

‘What point?’

She got out of bed and wrapped herself in her dressing gown. ‘That we can go through the motions when we have to.’

He watched her leave for the bathroom and felt suddenly ashamed to be naked.

It had been a grey day, cold outside, half-hearted raindrops on the window. Six weeks gone, she told him. Maybe this would bring them back together, she said. Maybe this would heal the rift that had grown between them. He had smiled and took her in his arms, told her everything would be all right, even as the panic bloomed in his gut.

He could no more be a father than he could a surgeon or a priest. He would fail. He would let his child down, just like his own father had. Still, he held Marie close, his soul crumbling as he lied to her.

Lennon stirred and remembered where he was. A breeze leaked in through the Audi’s open door, cool air exploring a deserted street. Something snagged his attention, a movement at the periphery of his vision. He turned his head and saw an old Peugeot 306 pull in to the kerb in front of his car. Its engine grunted and wheezed, struggling to cope with the power forced upon it by boy-racer modifications. Its suspension had been lowered, alloy wheels and low-profile tyres fitted. Its rear windows were blacked out and a dark band obscured almost half of the front windscreen. Lennon could make out three forms inside, all wearing Rangers football shirts.

He considered easing his legs back into the Audi, pulling his door shut. His anger wouldn’t let him. He watched the three of them climb out of the Peugeot. They wore trainers and tracksuit bottoms, just like the boy whose body Lennon had inspected in a backyard less than a mile from this spot. But that might as well have been a different planet; in life, that boy was as alien to these youths as prey is to a spider, even though they dressed and spoke the same. Just different coloured shirts, that was all.

The driver was the leader. Lennon watched him closest of all.

‘’Bout ya,’ the driver said.

His friends flanked the Audi, eyeing it as they passed on either side.

Lennon said nothing.

‘You lost?’ the driver asked.

‘No,’ Lennon said.

‘What you doing here?’

‘Nothing much,’ Lennon said.

The driver’s friends reached the Audi’s rear. One of them leaned on the boot, ran his hands along the back, looking for the release to open it.

‘Where you from?’ the driver asked.

‘Somewhere else,’ Lennon said. ‘Tell your mate to take his hands off my car or I’ll break his fucking face.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

The driver snorted. ‘Here, Darren? C’mere!’

Lennon let one hand slip inside his jacket, released the catch.

Darren lumbered around from the back of the Audi. He was tall and heavy-set, with red cheeks beneath pig-like eyes and a blond crew cut. ‘What?’

The driver pointed at Lennon. ‘He says he’s going to break your face if you don’t leave his motor alone.’

Darren put a hand on the Audi’s roof and leaned down to Lennon, his breath smelling of the cheap fortified wine all these toe-rags drank. ‘You what?’

‘Get your dirty hands off my car or I’ll kick your face in,’ Lennon said. ‘You and your mates. Now fuck off.’

‘Your car?’ Darren asked. He pulled a knife from his pocket. ‘This is my car. Now get the fuck out of it.’

In one smooth motion, Lennon seized Darren’s wrist with his left hand and pressed the Glock 17 beneath his chin, the Glock 17 that had been in his right hand since the driver had first called his friend over.

‘Drop the knife, you stupid fat fucker,’ Lennon said.

Warm liquid splashed on Lennon’s ankles as a dark stain spread on Darren’s tracksuit bottoms. The knife clanked on the kerb and disappeared beneath the Audi. The driver sprinted for the Peugeot. The third youth called after him, ‘What? What’s wrong?’

The Peugeot’s overburdened engine coughed into life, and its tyres screeched as they fought to put the power down on the road. It roared away from the kerb, barely missing the Audi. Lennon followed it with his eyes until it disappeared around the corner.

Darren cried. The other youth came closer, saw the pistol, and ran like hell.

‘Just you and me, then, Darren,’ Lennon said.

Darren whimpered. He smelled of stale sweat and fresh urine.

‘You and your mates,’ Lennon said. ‘I suppose you’d call yourselves Loyalists, right?’

Darren didn’t answer. Lennon pressed the Glock’s muzzle harder into the loose flesh beneath his chin.

‘Answer me.’

‘Yeah,’ Darren said.

‘Funny, that,’ Lennon said. ‘Your mates don’t seem too loyal. Tell me, who are you loyal to?’

Darren’s nose dripped snot on Lennon’s sleeve. Lennon pushed the muzzle deeper into his flesh until the pressure against his windpipe made the stocky kid cough.

‘Answer me.’

‘Don’t know,’ Darren said, his voice a watery croak.

‘Are you loyal to your friends? Your family? Your neighbours?’

‘Don’t know,’ Darren said.

‘Shit-bags like you,’ Lennon said. You steal off your own people, you intimidate them, you keep them quiet with your threats and all this bullyboy shit. You don’t give a fuck about anything but trying to be the big men, lining your pockets, leeching off your own community. And you can call yourselves Loyalists because the arse-wipes who should be keeping you in line haven’t got the brains or the balls to do it. And people wonder why the Republicans ran rings around your lot all these years.’

‘Please,’ Darren whined.

‘Please what?’

‘Please don’t shoot me.’

Pity and contempt and anger fought one another in Lennon’s gut. ‘Give me one good reason.’

Darren’s mouth opened and closed as he searched for something that could save his life. ‘I’m … I’m sorry,’ he said, his face contorting like a child desperate to escape punishment.

‘Sorry for what?’ Lennon asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Darren said.

Lennon’s laughter died in his mouth, dry like paper. ‘Cunts like you made sure there was no one left around here to go to the cops, to speak up. No one sees anything, no one hears anything. You know what that means?’

Darren shook his head as best he could. His trembling grew to a crescendo, his weight pressing harder against Lennon’s grip. His legs would go soon, Lennon could sense it.

‘It means I could blow what little brains you have all over that wall, and no fucker would know a thing about it. Nobody to hear it, nobody to see it. And do you think your mates would stick their necks out and go to the cops?’

Darren sniffed a line of snot back up his nose. ‘No,’ he said. His weight shifted forward, and Lennon pushed him back.

‘Get the fuck out of here.’

Darren stumbled backwards until he hit the wall. He stared at Lennon, his chest heaving, his eyes wide.

‘Go on, fuck off,’ Lennon said as he tucked the Glock away.

Darren retreated, shambling at first, then gathering speed. When he was ten feet away, he put his head down and sprinted as fast as his bulk would allow. He didn’t get far before he tripped and landed face first on the pavement. Lennon grimaced as the boy puked. Darren picked himself up and lurched off again.

Arsehole,’ Lennon whispered to himself as the boy rounded the corner. ‘Fucking stupid arsehole.’

He couldn’t be sure if he meant himself or Darren.