I Hear the Sirens in the Street

27: HIGH MASS

Coronation Road was the last street in Greater Belfast before the country began and the field behind it felt like another world. A littoral. An Interzone. A DMZ. I put a barley stalk in my mouth and listened to the commingling of music from radios and stereos and from far up the lane a piper practising his scale. The gable graffiti said “God Save the Queen”, and “No Pope Here”, but on this particular April evening Coronation Road belonged to neither Queen nor Pope but to a Jewish girl from Brooklyn called Barbra Streisand. The current UK no. 1 album Memories was warbling from several underpowered hi-fi speakers with most of them repeating the title track, but one preferring Streisand’s melancholy duet with Neil Diamond: “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”. We could be over-egging the theoretical custard here, but for me these torch songs were desperate cries for help from Coronation Road’s female population. Streisand’s mezzo soprano expressing what they couldn’t express from their marriage prisons: longings about foreign travel and roads not taken and above all about their men who were once buoyant and funny and now were aged characters brought low by unemployment and sickness and the drink.

I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten as an act of contrition. Tonight I would take the sacrament of penance and in a state of grace I would go to America.

It was dusk now and the colours were from another latitude: the barley a bold yellow, the sky an epic Sicilian red. I walked past two children playing hide-and-seek behind a burnt-out car. The field had become a dumping ground for bombed vehicles, and these warped and twisted hulks of steel and aluminium possessed a strange, minatory beauty. I touched the side of a Reliant Robin that had been turned inside out by the apocalyptic power of Semtex. A kid put his finger to his lips. I nodded. I won’t turn you in, son.

I reached the street and said hello to my two terrace neighbours, Mrs Campbell and Mrs Bridewell, while Barbra brought her rendition of “Memory” to a histrionic, emotional climax and the ladies dabbed at their cheeks. The sky, the song, the tear: the moment carved with such precision that I knew that it would scratch the iris of my mind’s eye decades from now. If the Lord spared me…

I checked under the Beemer and drove to the chapel.

Revenge is the foolish stepbrother of justice. I understood that. I had lived with that thought for eight months. Ever since that night on the shores of Lake Como. What I had done then was a crime, and it was also a sin. No one cared about the crime, but tonight I was going to confess to the sin. To the act itself and to the feeling of satisfaction I got when I thought about what I’d done.

I parked the car and got out.

The chapel was ancient and barely used, covered in moss and yellow ivy. It lay now in the shadow of Kilroot power station. Only in Ulster could a charming piece of coast like this have been blighted with such a Soviet-style monstrosity. “Kilroot” is a derivation of the Irish Cill Ruaidh meaning “church of the redheads”. The Redheads were the local Celts and supposedly Kilroot had been founded as a parish in 422 AD, which predated St Patrick’s mission by a generation. At that time Ulster, and indeed Ireland, was a land of pagan, poetry-loving, warring, tribal kingdoms. Not much had changed.

Father O’Hare was only twenty-two. He was nine years my junior, but he was an old soul. In defiance of Vatican II, and for the benefit of the five other aging parishioners, he conducted the mass in Latin.

The ancient words comforted us.

When the service was over I entered the confessional.

Father O’Hare saw old Mrs McCawley to her car and returned to the chapel.

He entered his side of the booth.

He slid across the partition.

Only the carved wooden lattice protected me now.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I told him. “It has been nearly a year since my last confession.”

I confessed to the mortal sin of murder and the venial sins of pride, lust and adultery. I confessed that I did not regret what I had done and I told him that I would do it all again.

He listened and did not approve.

Technically, he should not have offered me absolution until I had explained that I was sorry for these and all the sins of my past life, but Father O’Hare was no sea lawyer and couldn’t afford to be too harsh with his tiny congregation.

“Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam ternam,” he said. “Indulgentiam, absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum tuorum tribuat tibi omnipotens et misericors Dominus. Amen. Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat: et ego auctoritate ipsus te absolvo ab omni vinculo excommunicationis, (suspensionis), et interdicti, in quantum possum, et tu indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

Outside the confessional it was a different world and we exchanged unembarrassed pleasantries.

“It was the lovely day today, wasn’t it?”

“Aye, it was indeed, Father, although I heard it was going to be cold tomorrow.”

“Oh, and my roses just coming through!” he said, and shook his head.

“I won’t see it. I’ll be in America.”

“America? A holiday?”

“Something like that.”

I drove home and, absolved and at peace, I called McCrabban.

I told him about the mirror and the note and what I was planning to do. He was silent for a long time.

“Don’t do this, Sean. The whole thing smells. Pass it up the chain of command,” he said, finally.

“Why did you become a detective, Crabbie? Truth and justice, right? If we pass this up the Yanks will take it, the Brits will take it. We’ll never get the truth. Never.”

“This is a game being played on another level, Sean. A game you play carefully. Pass it up and our job is done.”

“You know what will happen, Crabbie. It’ll vanish. The higher ups and the Americans will make it vanish and we’ll never find out what happened to Mr O’Rourke.”

“You don’t know that for certain, Sean.”

“You said it yourself, mate, this whole thing stinks.”

“At least tell the Chief.”

“The Chief’s a company man, I won’t be out of his office before he’ll be on the phone to the FBI.”

Crabbie hung on the receiver for a long time, thinking. I knew he was conflicted. He wanted to talk me out of it, but he wanted to know, too.

“So, what’s your plan?”

“Find out what Mr O’Rourke has hidden away in that safety deposit box and retrieve the evidence. Fait accompli, mate. No interference from Special Branch, goons, FBI or anyone else.”

“And then what?”

“Depending on what I find, we’ll take it from there.”

“Let me go with you,” he said suddenly.

I considered it for a second or two. It would be great to have him with me, but it would selfish to drag him into the black pit of banjax if it all went wrong.

“No, Crabbie, if this shit fucks up, it’ll be my head on the block and mine alone.”

“What could go wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s why I should go with you. You need me, Sean.”

“I do need you, Crabbie, but I don’t need you catching any flak from this. I’ll retrieve the evidence from the box and see what it is and then we’ll talk.”

“I’m your mate, Sean, I should be there to help.”

I was touched. “I know, Crabbie. And that’s why I want to keep you out of it. You’ve got a family to look after.”

Another long period of silence before a hurt and worried and confused McCrabban said: “Okay.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“No.”

“Take care, Sean.”

“I will.”

I hung up the phone.

Coronation Road was quiet. I poured myself a pint of vodka and lime. I flipped on the UTV news: a shooting in Crossmaglen, a suspicious van in Cookstown, an incendiary attack in Lurgan – nothing that serious. I went upstairs, packed and set the alarm for six.