Collusion

7

The doormen at Lavery’s nodded as Lennon entered. The bar looked cleaner these days, lighter. The smoking ban might not have helped turnover, but it certainly sweetened the air. Belfast’s traditional student haunt seemed to draw an older crowd, now. No tang of cannabis tickled Lennon’s nose, the haircuts were less exotic, the dress code not quite so grungy. He allowed himself a small ripple of nostalgia as he took a stool at the bar, thinking of his student days when he and his friends blew their grants on cider.

Lennon had studied psychology at Queen’s, managed a decent degree. He might have got that MSc, maybe even gone after a doctorate, if things had been different. As it turned out, he didn’t even attend his own graduation ceremony. His mother had bought a new dress for it, gone all the way from her home in Middletown, near the border, to Marks & Spencer’s in Belfast. She had borrowed money from the Credit Union to pay for it.

He remembered her parading up and down the living room of the old house, asking again and again if it was a good fit, did the hem hang properly, was it slimming on her. Lennon and his elder brother Liam exchanged weary looks as they told her once more it was beautiful on her.

‘But the money,’ she said, chewing her lip in worry. ‘I wouldn’t spend the money if it’s not right.’ She wagged a finger at them in turn. ‘Don’t you dare tell me it’s right if it’s not.’

‘It’s lovely on you, Ma,’ Liam said as he rose. His big shoulders stretched the fabric of his shirt tight. He still sported a black eye from the hurling match a few days before when he’d caught a stray swipe from a teammate’s stick. At least that’s what he’d told his mother. ‘Stop fretting about it. It’s only money.’

‘Only money,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘Listen to him. Wait till you’re raising wee ’uns and tell me it’s only money. Sure, it cost me every penny I had, and every penny I hadn’t, to put that one through university. And he spent the lot on beer and cider and chasing after women.’

She pronounced it wee-men.

Lennon feigned offence. ‘It was the rent,’ he said. ‘The grant hardly covered it.’

‘My arse,’ she said, the closest she ever came to swearing.

A little more than a week later, a day before she was due to wear it to the graduation ceremony, she took the dress back to Marks & Spencer’s. She exchanged it for a black one so that she could bury what was left of Liam.

Lennon remembered carrying his brother’s coffin. It weighed hardly anything. Sixteen years ago, and the silence of the mourners still came to him when he least expected it.

He pushed the memory away, and scoped the bar. Early yet, plenty of room for improvement. He’d spent an hour at the station’s small gym, gone home to shower, blasted a ready-meal in the microwave, and then headed out. He had reason to celebrate. A meeting with DCI Gordon had been arranged for the morning, and he had a good chance of being back on an MIT before the end of the week. He ignored the sick bubbling at the pit of his stomach when he thought of Dandy Andy Rankin getting off with GBH. But he could live with it, drown out his own conscience, if it meant getting back into an MIT.

No tourists in Lavery’s tonight, only midweek drinkers trying to recapture their student days. He caught the barmaid’s attention, a thin wisp of a girl with dyed black hair.

‘Pint of Stella,’ he said, dropping a fiver on the bar.

A duo tuned guitars in the corner; a woman one-two’d into a microphone. She was tall, looked almost as tall as Lennon, with a mass of blonde curls. The blackboard outside had said ‘Nina Armstrong’. He sized her up, and the followers that gathered around her. Too many men vying for her attention, too much work. Pity. She looked good in a hippie kind of way.

They started to play. She could sing, her voice clear and sinuous, and the guitarist wasn’t bad. More punters drifted in, pairs and larger groups. The Stella burned his tongue. He studied the women, found their weaknesses.

A hacking smoker’s cough woke Lennon. Hard fingers of sunlight found his headache. He forced his eyes open, squinted at her, as the queasy pain pulsed inside his skull. She stood in a camisole and thong, a lighter in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He wondered what she intended to use as an ashtray for a moment before he noticed the half-full wine glass on the bedside locker, three butts already doused in it.

‘Fuck, look at the state of you,’ she said. A chesty laugh turned into a barking cough.

He scrambled for a name. Something Irish. She wasn’t a Prod. Siobhan? Sinead? Seana? He rubbed his eyes, willing it to come. All he could remember clearly from last night was her shouting in his ear, telling him she was a nurse at the Royal, while he stared down her top.

‘Morning,’ he said.

Jesus, rough as biscuits, she was. I must be losing my touch, he thought. The idea frightened him. He reached out. ‘Give us a drag.’

‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’

‘I don’t.’ He clicked his fingers at her.

‘Just one, right? I’ve only a couple of fags left.’

She approached the bed and placed the filter between his lips. He sucked, inhaled, felt the heat, coughed, let it charge his brain. ‘Fuck,’ he croaked.

She laughed, her breasts jiggling inside her camisole. She had a Celtic knot tattooed on the left one. He saw it through watering eyes, smelled tobacco and sex. He wondered if he could muster another go, but decided against it. He craned his head so he could see the clock past her hip. It had gone eight. He was supposed to be in DCI Gordon’s office at nine.

‘Fuck,’ he said, throwing back the quilt. ‘I need to get moving.’

‘You can run me home, can’t you?’

‘Where?’ The wooden floorboards chilled the soles of his feet, clearing a little of the fog behind his eyes.

‘Did you not listen to a word I said last night?’ She pointed to her chest. ‘Or were you too interested in these?’

He sighed. ‘Where?’

‘Beechmount Parade. Off the Falls.’

‘No. I’ve to be at work for nine or I’m in shit. I can’t get all the way over there and back again.’

‘At work?’ She stood with one arm across her stomach, her other hand pointing the cigarette at him. ‘You told me you were an airline pilot.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yeah, you fucking did.’

‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘So, what are you? You’re hardly answering phones in the call centres if you can afford this place.’ She walked to the window and pulled back the blind. ‘River view and everything. Fucking nice. What do you do?’

‘Look, take a taxi.’ He pointed to his jeans, bundled on the floor. ‘Take the money out of my wallet.’

‘Fucking typical.’ She scooped up the jeans and dug for the wallet. ‘All big talk. Get your end away, everything’s all right, never mind me. Fucking arsehole.’

She found the wallet, opened it, and smiled. The smile turned to a frown. She turned the wallet face out to him, showing him the photograph. ‘Who’s this?’

‘My daughter,’ he said.

The smile flickered and returned. He could tell she begrudged it. ‘How old?’ she asked. A year?’

‘Five,’ he said. ‘Coming six.’

‘Jesus, could you not take a newer picture?’

He thought about answering the question, that he’d take a newer picture if only Ellen’s mother would allow him to know his daughter, that she never would because it was how she punished him for what he’d done, that they’d moved away months ago, that he’d been trying to find out where they’d gone since then.

Instead, he said, ‘Ten quid ought to do you.’

‘All right, big spender,’ she said as she looked for the money. ‘I get the message. I’ll be out of your way in—’

She stopped talking.

‘There’s bound to be a ten in there,’ he said.

She stared at him, and he understood.

He raised his hands, said, ‘Look, I—’

‘A fucking cop?’

‘I—’

‘You’re a fucking peeler?’

She threw the wallet. It slapped against his chest and fell to the floor. She looked down at it. She stooped, picked it up, pulled out two ten-pound notes, threw it again. This time he caught it. He tossed it on the bed beside him.

‘Jesus, if anyone knew I’d gone home with a cop,’ she said. ‘Fuck me, I’d be burnt out of my house.’

Lennon smiled. ‘Then tell them I’m an airline pilot.’

Arsehole,’ she said, gathering bits and pieces of clothing. ‘Jesus, I knew peelers made decent money, but a place like this?’ She pulled her jeans from the chair in the corner, disturbing the jacket underneath. ‘How much is your mortgage? Or do you rent? Must be a fucking—’

Something heavy dropped to the floor. She stared down at the leather pouch.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

He shrugged and nodded.

She kept her eyes on it as she slipped her jeans on and tucked the money into her pocket. She picked it up. She turned it in her hands, slid the pistol from its sheath. ‘What make is it?’ she asked.

A Glock,’ he said. He watched her drop the holster to the floor. She had chips in her nail varnish.

‘You ever shoot anyone?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. The lie was well practised.

‘That scar on your shoulder. You said you got it in a car crash.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He didn’t answer.

She traced the Glock’s lines, brought it to her nose, smelled it. Her tongue brushed her upper lip. ‘It’s heavy,’ she said. ‘Is it loaded?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Shouldn’t you tell me to be careful? Shouldn’t you take it off me?’

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘There’s a safety catch or something, right?’

‘No,’ he said. He made a gun with his fingers and aimed at her. ‘You just point it and pull the trigger. Simple as that.’

She looked up from the Glock. Her eyes couldn’t hold his. She walked slowly to the dressing table, cradling the pistol like it was made of tissue, and set it down. It hardly made a noise against the wood.

She said, ‘I should go.’