The Bloomsday Dead

10: THE LOTUS EATERS (BANGOR-JUNE 16, 9:15 P. M.)

The police barracks was a fortress. Twenty-foot-high redbrick walls reinforced with concrete layers and steel piles. On top another fifteen feet of fencing angled outward so that grenades and handheld bombs would slide off. The gate was shipyard steel, running on rollers that could open quickly to let a vehicle in or out. A guard tower watching the entrance was surrounded by sandbags and in front of the barracks and all the way around the wall there were TV cameras and mirrors. The road leading to the station was shut on three sides and the fourth had speed bumps every fifteen feet. Even with all that, in the old days, the police station got attacked about once a week. Sometimes with mortars fired over from the nearby housing estate, sometimes by kids with coffee-jar bombs thrown in a night attack, and occasionally, a sophisticated terrorist would fire off a Libyan-assembled Russian rocket. There would always be collateral damage and for every cop there’d be one or two civilians hurt too.

But that was then. A lot had changed in Belfast since and the cops had gotten fat, lazy, and inattentive, no longer dressing in full riot gear or carrying submachine guns. But still, you’d think after today’s incident the peelers would be on high alert. For all they knew, the failed RPG attack on their colleagues could be the herald of a big break-down in the six-year-long IRA cease-fire. Dozens of attacks might be on the way this very night. A major IRA assault with bombs, guns, rockets-it could be the start of the Northern Irish civil war. So either they’d gotten information from O’Neill and the IRA brass that the RPG attack was nothing to do with them or they were even more bloody complacent than I thought. Probably the latter. The peelers inside the gatehouse didn’t even notice when I knocked at the bullet-proof window. They were drinking tea, laughing, and watching a football game on a portable television.

“Hey,” I said, and knocked even louder to attract their attention.

“What is it?” an irritated copper yelled through the glass.

“I’m with Bridget Callaghan,” I said. “She’s supposed to be here?”

“You’re late. They’re all here already,” the policeman said.

“Ok, where am I supposed to go?” I asked.

Man. United scored a goal on the telly. One peeler cheered while another one groaned, reached into his pocket, and gave him a fiver.

“Bridget Callaghan?” I tried again.

“Oh, aye. Across the yard, present yourself at registration,” a copper said. I hesitated at the gate and went in. They didn’t even want to search me. So here I was, walking into a police station in Belfast with a handgun in my pocket.

I skipped around the puddles in the courtyard, entered the main barracks. A sergeant with a walrus mustache was flipping through the Sun and talking to a young constable. Both purposely ignored me as I walked up to the desk.

“You see, that’s why so many Americans are dying in Iraq. If a Humvee gets hit by an RPG, it just sits there and blows up. A Land Rover or any other high-sided vehicle will roll over and the impact will be much, much less. The low center of gravity actually works against the bloody Humvee,” the sergeant was explaining.

“Is that so?” the constable said, concealing a yawn.

“Aye, it is, that’s why our boys survived today’s incident,” the sergeant said.

“They weren’t even in a Land Rover, they were on foot patrol,” the constable said, rolling his eyes, as if he’d heard this and similar crazy arguments too many times before.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“What do you want?” the sergeant asked, glancing over the topless woman on page three.

“I’m looking for Bridget Callaghan,” I said.

“Did you kidnap her wean and now you’re turning yourself in?” he asked deadpan.

“Aye,” I said. “That’s exactly it.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I work for her, I’ve got some information.”

“Interview room three, she’s with the chief super. Chief super, indeed. We’re pulling out all the stops for her even though we had four officers attacked today,” he said with obvious distaste.

“Thanks,” I said and walked down the corridor.

“Aye, you go to your fucking hoodlum bitch boss,” the sergeant muttered under his breath.

I stopped, turned, went back to the desk.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said your boss, Bridget Callaghan, is a fucking American hoodlum bitch, who we should be fucking deporting, not helping,” the sergeant said.

“Take it easy, Will,” the constable said.

“Take it easy? Take it easy? Four good coppers nearly topped today and some snatch from America has us running through hoops because she’s lost her fucking slut of a daughter. I mean, Jesus Christ, talk about priorities.”

I stared at the sergeant. Even if the other peelers around here weren’t upset about the RPG attack, he was old enough to remember when such things were a daily occurrence. It was really sticking in his craw. Still, that was no bloody excuse.

“Listen, mate, you might not like Bridget Callaghan, she’s not exactly my best friend either, but you better take back what you said about her kid.”

“Or you’ll what?”

“Or I’ll tell her what you said,” I said, grinning, to show I meant it. The sergeant thought about it for a moment. He didn’t want to lose face in front of the constable, but even so, Bridget had a reputation. He hesitated for a second or two and then looked down.

“No offense meant,” he said quietly.

“None taken,” I replied, and hurried down the long beige hall.

A door was open to one of the interview rooms. I knocked and peered inside. Two peelers watching a porn movie, writing things down on clipboards, a stack of fifty more tapes on the floor. On TV a heavyset German woman beating a naked German man. “Ach, ach, mein Schwanz,” the man protesting.

“Bridget Callaghan?” I asked.

“Next door on the other side of the corridor,” one of the peelers said.

I crossed the hall and knocked on the door.

“Enter,” a voice said.

I went in. A bunkerlike room with no windows and big Ordnance Survey maps of Belfast plastered over the flaky white concrete walls. An oak table with coffee cups, ashtrays, and several phones. Three uniformed female cops, two uniformed male cops, half a dozen plainclothes detectives, Moran, Bridget, the two goons from the elevator, the goon from the Crown wearing a bandage, a female assistant, a priest, and the chief superintendent, who was a forty-year-old high flier with a leather jacket, purple silk shirt, purple tie, and a blond ponytail. I could tell before he said anything to me that he was a wanker. He was explaining something to Bridget. No one saw me come in. I let him finish the sentence before I walked over to her.

Bridget looked up.

“Michael.”

“How you doing?” I asked.

She smiled a little, thought about the question, closed her eyes, and then her body slumped forward slightly. She almost fell off her seat. Moran, the chief super, and I all made an attempt to steady her, but Moran nodded to one of the goons, who got between me and her. He placed his hand discreetly on my elbow and kept me from touching her. Moran and the chief super grabbed Bridget, helped her regain her composure. Moran looked at me furiously. I wasn’t to touch her. Not now, not ever. I nodded to show that I understood him. There was no point making a scene.

“Michael, what happened to your face?” Bridget asked, her eyes widening with what in the old days one might have thought was concern. It threw me for a moment. Bridget brushed the red hair from her forehead and waited for an answer.

“I fell down a set of stairs, I’m fine.” I said.

“Who are you?” the chief super asked, looking at my damaged leather jacket and Led Zeppelin T-shirt.

“I’m just a friend.”

“Yeah, well, you and all your other mates better keep out of it. They’re calling in ten minutes,” he said.

“How do you know when they’re calling?” I asked Bridget.

“They phoned the hotel and told me to get on over to the police station. They’re going to want street closures and full cooperation from the police. They want the police to assure them they’re going to back off. But it’s ok, Michael, they just want the money, they don’t want any trouble, they’re going to let Siobhan go as long as we cooperate,” Bridget said, her eyes brightening with hope.

I nodded. The kidnappers weren’t so dumb. They appreciated that if the police were running things there was less chance of a cock-up. Bridget’s men might fly off the handle or do something unpredictable, but the cops would not. All in all, sensible policy. But then what? How do you do it? How do you keep the peelers from following Bridget? How do you ensure that you get the cash and get away with it?

“Ms. Callaghan,” the chief super said. “If I could get your attention, please…”

Bridget gave me a dismissive wave and began talking to him again. She was wearing jeans and a black sweater. She was beautiful. As devastating as ever, despite the circumstances. She couldn’t help looking sexy. I couldn’t help thinking that she looked sexy. Those eyes, those cheekbones.

Bridget would be a flame at seventy.

Moran approached me, took me to one side.

“What have you got, Forsythe?” he asked in a low tone. My ribs were killing me. I ignored Moran, grabbed a cold cup of coffee, swallowed one of the morphine pills I’d taken from O’Neill.

“What have you got, Forsythe?” Moran asked again.

I looked at him closely. What was his game? Could he be trusted? How many angles was he playing at once?

“I’ve got a name,” I said. “A man called Slider.”

“What about him?”

“He might be part of the gang that lifted Siobhan. But if not, he might be involved somehow. I’m really not too sure,” I said, deciding to be honest with him.

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“It’s a bit fucking vague, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not much of a lead, but-”

“Do you see what time it is?” he interrupted.

I looked at my watch. It was almost nine o’clock.

“Nearly nine,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. He’d given me the chance to do something, to pull myself out of the trough. A narrow shot at redemption and I hadn’t come through.

“It’s too late. It’s over. Can’t afford any interference. Everybody’s rolling now,” he said.

“What do you want me to do with the name?”

“You’ve got the name of somebody who somehow might be involved. Terrific. Tell the cops after the exchange. After the exchange. We can’t have them or you messing things up, as per fucking usual.”

“I never messed anything up in my life,” I said.

“You haven’t fucking messed up? You killed my brother and Sunshine and Darkey White and ratted out the rest of the fucking crew,” he said with fury.

“Yeah, that wasn’t a fuck-up, mate, that was deliberate,” I said.

His fists clenched, his face reddened, and he gave me a look of cold, calm hate.

He was about to say something else but just then the phone rang. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked at it ominously. Bridget picked it up, the chief super nodded to a peeler next to a bank of electronic equipment, signaling him to begin recording the conversation and put it on the speaker. He put his finger to his lips and nodded at Bridget.

“Hello?” she said.

It was the switchboard.

“I have a call for Bridget Callaghan,” the switchboard operator said.

The chief super leaned into the speakerphone.

“Put them through to interview room three, keep the line open, and start the traceback,” he said.

Static, a long pause, and then a voice:

“Hello?”

“Hello,” Bridget said.

“Bridget Callaghan?” the voice asked. A foreign accent, and there was something about it that immediately tweaked me. It sounded European, Spanish maybe. Very old. A man in his late eighties or nineties.

The interview-room door suddenly opened and another young peeler came in; he gave the chief super the thumbs-up. The trace was on.

“I’m Bridget, I want to speak to Siobhan,” Bridget said, the way she’d been coached.

There was a silence on the line and a voice began to speak. This time, a different person. A young man, definitely from Belfast. North Belfast, if I had to guess.

“Your daughter is still alive, I can assure you of that. Now, about tonight-”

“I want to speak to her,” Bridget insisted.

“You’ll do as you’re fucking told,” the voice said.

“I won’t do anything until I speak to Siobhan,” Bridget said.

Another pause. Longer.

“Siobhan, say something,” the second voice finally demanded.

A brief silence and then a tiny “Mommy? Mommy?”

“Oh, Siobhan, honey, are you ok?” Bridget said, bursting into tears, barely able to control herself.

“I’m ok, Mommy, I’m ok, Mommy, I’m ok-”

“What have they done to you, have they been feeding you? Are you ok?”

“Um, I’m ok… I feel funny.”

“Oh, Siobhan, darling, it’s going to be ok, I’m going to see you in a couple of hours, be brave, honey, I love you so much,” Bridget said soothingly.

“Love you, Mommy,” the girl said dreamily.

Silence. Bridget choked down sobs and the second kidnapper came on again.

“Did you get the money?”

“I got the money,” Bridget said.

“Good. Ok, you know she’s alive, and you’ll get her back and everything is going to go very smooth if you fucking cooperate. Ok. I have a list of things to tell you. Tell the fucking peelers to write this down. The first thing is this. All helicopters in Belfast need to be grounded at eleven o’clock. If there’s one helicopter flying in the sky after eleven, the deal is off and the girl dies. Second, there’s a phone box at the Albert Clock. We’ll be calling at twenty to twelve. You have to come there alone with the ten million. If we see one peeler, or one of your fucking boys, the deal is off and the girl dies. Third, we are going to be bouncing you all over the city, so you better come in a car, and you better fucking know how to drive, because if we see anyone else in the car, the deal is off and the girl dies. Fourth, do not let anyone try to follow you, if we see anyone following you, the deal is off and the girl dies. Fifth, when you meet with the middleman, he is going to search you. If you don’t have the money or you’re wired up in any way, the deal is off, he walks away, and the girl dies. No GPS, no bugs, no transponders, no mobile phones. Have you understood these arrangements?”

“The pay phone at the Alfred Clock,” Bridget said.

“The pay phone at the Albert Clock. Twenty to midnight. There you’ll get your initial instructions. Bring a car and bring the fucking money and come alone. If you’re a fucking eejit, you’re going to lose your daughter; if you play it cool, everybody’s going to be happy.”

The line went dead.

The constable who had given the thumbs-up came back into the interview room.

“Well?” the chief super asked.

“Oh, we traced it, no problem, sir, but the bad news is that it’s from a batch of phones stolen from a shop in Larne. The cards were all canceled, but they’ve obviously reactivated them somehow,” the constable said.

“So you couldn’t find out anything?” the chief super asked.

“Well, they’re almost certainly calling from Belfast. It was a strong local signal. Tech boys say a radius of about five miles. That’s about all we can tell,” the constable said.

The chief super groaned.

While the two cops talked and the other peelers pretended to be busy, Bridget was quietly sitting there sobbing. Gone was the general, the bitch boss, all that was left was the frightened mom. I pushed past Moran and the goons and sat next to her. Gently I put my arm around her.

“Bridget, are you ok?” I asked.

She nodded, didn’t push my arm away, continued crying.

“Siobhan is still alive, it’s wonderful. I knew she would be, anyone with your genes is a survivor. She’s alive and she sounds good. And you’ll be seeing her really soon,” I whispered.

Bridget smiled.

“Oh, Michael, I hope you’re right,” she said.

The chief super began barking orders to the peelers, who were standing around gawking.

“Oliver, you see about the helicopters, get on to the army and the airports. Pat, get a team of detectives over to the Albert Clock; Erin, you see about a car for Ms. Callaghan, get a bug in it, get a camera in it if you can; Lara, you make sure Ms. Callaghan gets rigged up. Sam, he said no helicopters, but see if we can get a microlight up there with a camera. Ari and Sophie, find out the locations of all the phone boxes within a mile radius of the Albert Clock; we’ll stake out every bloody one of them if we can.”

Bridget stood.

“He said no cops,” Bridget said. “He said if he saw one cop, he’d kill Siobhan.”

“Don’t worry, miss, these will be plainclothes detectives; he won’t even notice us, it’ll be very discreet, I assure you,” the chief super said.

Bridget was angry now.

“No fucking cops. Ok? This is my show. I’m cooperating with those sons of bitches. Cancel your fucking microlight and call back those detectives,” she said vehemently.

The chief super shook his head, but her eyes turned him.

“Ok, if that’s what you want,” he said reluctantly.

“It’s what I insist upon,” Bridget said.

“At least let us put a bug in the car and on your person-”

“You can bug the car but not me, he was perfectly clear about that. I don’t want you Paddy fucks ruining this for me. You haven’t been able to find my daughter, you haven’t been able to do anything. So now it’s over, just keep out of it and let this go ahead. Once I get Siobhan, you can do what you like finding these bastards.”

The chief super was about to add something but bit his tongue instead.

“If that’s what you need, fine,” he said finally.

Bridget dabbed her eyes, took a sip of water.

“It is,” Bridget said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go to the ladies’ room.”

She got up. A female constable helped her out.

Moran stood behind me and hauled me to my feet. I would have smacked the fucker but for the presence of the Old Bill. I pushed his hand away from me.

“Keep your fucking paws off me. Touch me again and you’re a dead man, peelers or no peelers,” I snarled.

“Yeah, well, you heard the lady. You better pull the cord and get out of here, Forsythe, your services are no longer required,” he said.

“I have things to do anyway. Don’t be such an asshole.”

We stared at each other and one of the younger detectives came over.

“Is there a problem here?”

“No problem, run along, sonny, the adults are talking,” Moran said.

The cop couldn’t think of a reply and walked shamefaced back to his colleagues.

“Ok, Moran. Fine, you’re a big man. Great. It’s not midnight yet. You can tell me this-Bridget’s pretty emotional-was that definitely her? Definitely Siobhan?” I asked him.

“It was her,” Moran said.

“And that first voice, have you ever heard it before?”

“Nope.”

“It was foreign, wasn’t it? There was something about it,” I said.

“I told you, I haven’t heard it before. You’re trying my patience, Forsythe. Well, you won’t be trying it for too long. As soon as we get Siobhan back-”

“Aye, I know. Well, like I say, join the queue, I’m not exactly Mister Popular round these parts.”

“Price you pay for being a rat murderer,” Moran said.

Bridget came back into the interview room. She couldn’t stand now. Moran helped her into a chair. She blew her nose. She’d been crying on and off for hours. For days, really, but once again I was struck by her. She was haggard and she was older but she looked extraordinary. Age had only deepened her loveliness. It had removed the rawness of youth and replaced it with an elegance, a charm, a breathless quality. No longer a bubbling champagne. Now a cognac of the first reserve. Smoldering, earthy, vulnerable, pure.

And in a way, looking at her was like looking in a mirror. We had both done terrible things. We had both changed so much.

And I saw something else.

I knew I loved Bridget now. I’d always loved her, from that very first moment, and all through the years and even now when she was trying to kill me. I couldn’t help it. No one could. I could even forgive Darkey White for what he did to us, to me and Scotchy and all the rest. Our lives were worth it, for a chance of happiness with this woman.

A constable came in with a large briefcase full of money. It brought me back to my senses. Ten million in sterling and international bearer bonds. How much was that in dollars? Was Bridget worth that much? Of course she was. That and much more. She’d have paid fifty million to get Siobhan back. Kidnappers couldn’t be that savvy, then, or they would have known that. Or maybe they did know it, but wanted a sum she could raise quickly. Or perhaps there was more to all this than just the cash.

“Let’s get you a cup of tea and get you prepped,” the chief super said to Bridget.

“Ok,” she replied meekly, tired now, close to the edge.

She was led away by the chief super and one of the female constables. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to me. I stood awkwardly for a moment, wondering what to do next. Moran made his presence felt at my arm.

“Make yourself scarce, Forsythe. We’ll count to a thousand and then we’re coming,” he said. No smile on his face, just those brutal, vengeful eyes.

“Ok,” I said, stole his cigarettes and lighter from the table, and walked out of the interview room.

In the corridor I found the constable who’d been doing the trace. He looked keen and amenable; he might do.

“Listen, mate, I’m a private detective working for Bridget, can you do me a wee solid? I need the address of a Slider McFerrin in Bangor, he might be involved in all of this. I don’t know, but I think he might be the one that stole those phones of yours.”

“Do you now? Slider what?”

“McFerrin, he lives in Bangor.”

“Ok,” he said, but he didn’t rush off to go check it out.

“Come on, mate, quid pro quo, I gave you the name, tell me his address and I’ll check it out. It might be a dead end, but I promise I’ll give you everything I get,” I said.

“You’ll give who?”

“I’ll give you personally.”

“Fair enough. I’ll see what I can do, hold on there.”

I took a seat in the corridor and closed the door on the two peelers watching the German porn flick.

The keen copper came back.

“Slider McFerrin?” he asked.

“Aye.”

“James McFerrin, lives with his ma at 6 Kilroot View Road, Bangor. You think he’s mixed up in this?”

“He might be.”

“Well, he’s a player all right.”

“What can you tell me?

“I can’t tell you anything. Watch your step, though. Bad family. He’s one of six boys. Eldest was killed by his own side, the ma runs bootleg whiskey, and he’s done time in the Maze for murder, assault, and grievous bodily harm. He was released under the Good Friday Agreement. Nothing about theft, phones or otherwise, but he’s a bad ’un.”

“Cheers, mate.”

I walked out into the station car park. It was raining again now. The drains had been blocked up and narrowed to tiny slits so that a terrorist couldn’t crawl into the sewers and blow the police station up from underneath. The car park was flooding and a peeler with a foot pump was trying to get the water out of the bigger potholes. It was a sorry sight.

“You couldn’t give us a hand there?” the peeler asked, mistaking me for a plainclothes detective.

“Fuck, no,” I told him.

I left the cop shop, walked a few blocks, found a taxi stand outside the Ulster Hall. They were just letting out a revival preacher, a Dr. McCoy from the Bob Jones ministry in America. Revival meetings were popular in Belfast. From the airbrushing on his poster, Dr. McCoy seemed a wee bit more suspicious than most, and sure enough, the patrons had been so thoroughly fleeced that no one even had any dough left for a taxi. I skipped to the front of the line.

The driver of the black cab was glad to see me.

“Hanging about here for bloody ten minutes,” he complained. “I suppose the rest of your mates are waiting to get beamed up.”

I got the joke, told him the address in Bangor.

“I see you’re wearing a Zeppelin T-shirt. Did you know that the Ulster Hall was the very place where Zep played ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for the first time?”

I said I didn’t know, but there was an extra fifty quid in it if he shut up and another fifty if he drove to Bangor like the hounds of hell were after him.

A wind from the Arctic taking the black smoke from Kilroot Power Station and blowing it down over the bad facsimiles of houses in the dour northern part of Bangor. The shore and the oily sea slinking back into themselves and the smell of burning permeating everything. Ash on clotheslines and whitewashed walls and on almost all the wind-ward-facing surfaces, as if the golden head of the enormous belching chimney top was in some sinister coitus with the dank and cheerless settlement.

Kids out playing football, older folks sitting in deck chairs, chatting. It was a break in the rain, and in Northern Ireland you used those breaks when you could get them.

The people were Protestants. I knew this not because they were physically unlike or dressed differently from Catholics-indeed, anyone who says that he can tell a Catholic Irishman from a Protestant Irishman by looking at him is a liar, since a third of all marriages in Ulster are across the sectarian divide. Nah, I knew it because the curbstones had been painted red, white, and blue, there were murals of King Billy at the ends of the street, there was a painted memorial for the battle of the Somme on the side of a house, and the flags flying in this neighborhood were the Scottish saltaire, Old Glory, the Union Jack, the Ulster flag, and the Israeli Star of David. If there were Catholics on this street, they kept bloody quiet about it.

I knocked on the door of number six.

A kid answered. About ten, freckles, brown hair, patched sweater, cheeky looking.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Slider.”

“He’s away,” the kid said.

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who does know?”

“Ma.”

“Is she home?”

“She’ll be back in five minutes. Down the shops. Do you want to wait inside?”

“Well, are you sure that would be ok?”

“Aye. It’s fine.”

I followed the kid inside the council house.

A broken light and a narrow hall filled with a death-trap assortment of toys: skateboards, roller skates, cricket balls. The kid opened a door to the left and I followed him into the living room. Boards on the floor, bare walls, and some kind of grotesque papier-mâché statue in the middle of the room. Another kid, a little younger than the first, adding more wet paper to the statue.

“What in the name of God is that?” I asked.

“It’s the fucking pope, what do you think?” the first kid said.

I looked again. The Holy Father’s head was lying on some old plywood and empty vodka boxes. It was still crude, with black-marker facial hair and possessing only a hastily drawn lopsided grin, instead of the full black-toothed variety that would frighten even the youngest children. Just over six feet high and draped in a white sheet, it looked more like a Klansman than the leader of the Catholic Church.

“Do you not think it’s any good?” the younger kid asked.

“What are your names?” I asked the first.

“I’m Steven, he’s Monkey,” the first kid said.

“You’re telling me that that’s supposed to be the pope?” I asked Steven, looking at my watch.

“Aye, it is.”

“What’s it for?”

“Are you not from around here?” Steven asked.

And then I remembered. Of course. The Twelfth of July was coming up. The anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, when Protestant King William defeated Catholic King James, a victory celebrated every year by burning the pope in effigy.

The kid looked at me for an answer.

“No, I’m not from around here.”

I lit a cigarette and sat down on a ripped leather sofa. The kids demanded a share and so I lit a couple more.

“Well, what you think of the pope?” Steven asked, smoking expertly.

What I thought was that that was the whole problem with Protestant ideology in Northern Ireland. They had gotten it all wrong-the way to really preserve a culture was to celebrate and nurture the memory of a glorious defeat, not a famous victory. That’s why Gallipoli, Gettysburg, the Field of Blackbirds, the Alamo became the foundation myths for the Kiwis, the American South, Serbs, and Texas. Every year the Shi’a celebrate a massacre and, of course, Christianity is founded upon an execution.

“The pope doesn’t have a beard,” I said.

“See,” Steven told Monkey, shaking his head dramatically and dropping the ash from his cigarette onto the bare floor.

“What exactly are you saying, wee lad?” Monkey said.

“I told ya,” Steven said with satisfaction.

Monkey’s face went through a spasm.

“You told me he had a beard like Jesus in The Passion.”

“I did not,” Steven replied indignantly.

“Did so,” Monkey said, clenching his fists.

“Not.”

They had both forgotten I was there. They were about to come to blows and even if they didn’t, they were giving me a bloody headache.

“Ok, lads, give it a rest. Steven, here’s a fiver, away you go and find your ma for me,” I said.

The kid took the note and sprinted out into the street. The other wean looked at me suspiciously, puffed on his cigarette, and went back to his work.

“Are you from America?” he asked after a while.

“Aye, now I am,” I said.

“What’s it like out there?” he asked wistfully.

“Exactly like the movies,” I said.

The kid nodded. Just as he had suspected.

“I saw that Beyoncé Knowles the other day at the supermarket. Boy, is she a hottie,” I said.

“You saw Beyoncé at the supermarket? What was she buying?” the kid asked.

“She was with Madonna and J.Lo; there was a special on Rice Krispies, they all had their trolleys loaded up.”

“Beyoncé was getting Rice Krispies?” he asked, impressed.

“Uh-huh.”

But before I could build an entire cathedral of lies, the living room door opened and a breathless Steven brought in a plump fifty-year-old woman wearing a Yankees cap, a bright yellow dress with green hoops, and sand-covered Wellington boots. She had the circumspect dark eyes of a sleekit old cow, so I knew I’d have to go careful. Monkey had stubbed his fag in the ashtray, but the woman immediately began sniffing the air. She grabbed Monkey by the ear.

“Aow,” he said.

“Have you been smoking, young man?” she asked him.

“Nope.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, twisting the ear a little more off the vertical.

“I haven’t, honest.”

“You better not. Stunts your growth and you’re not shooting up as it is, so you’re not.”

That was a low blow and both boys knew it. They winced. I stood.

“Mrs. McFerrin, I was smoking, the boys weren’t smoking, it was me.”

She looked at the three cigarette ends in the ashtray and eyed me suspiciously.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about some business…” I began.

“Business, is it? Well, sit down, I’ll go to the kitchen and make some tea.”

“I don’t have time for tea. I’m in a rush to make a flight,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. Her face scrunched up impressively. She looked for a moment like an accordion that had fallen from the cargo hold of a 747.

“No tea, no business,” she said coldly.

I had clearly insulted her by declining her hospitality, and that in Ireland was a huge mistake.

“I would love a cup of tea, if you don’t mind,” I said. She went into the kitchen and I heard the kettle boiling. I looked at my watch. I really had no time for this shit, but I couldn’t beat the information out of her, not in front of her weans. The two kids went back to their pope.

“Maybe he needs a belt or something,” Monkey said as he looked at the effigy anew.

“You ever see the pope wear a belt?”

“What about those ropy belts that monks wear around their cas-socks?”

“Around their what?” Steven asked, and both boys cracked them-selves up laughing. I didn’t see the funny side of anything right now.

“Mrs. McFerrin, I have to get going,” I shouted into the kitchen, straining to keep calm.

She came back in with a teapot and a selection of chocolate biscuits. She poured some tea and I took a biscuit.

“Well,” she said finally in a whisper. “How much poteen do you want?”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You’re here to buy poteen, aren’t you?”

“No, no, I’m not, I’m looking for Slider, my business is with him.”

“Slider? I wouldn’t have a clue where he is. I haven’t seen him for two days,” she said.

My heart sank.

“It’s really important. Slider and I go way back, but you see the thing is, Mrs. McFerrin… um, I’ll tell you what it is, I was just at the Ulster Hall there, Dr. McCoy from the States was in town doing a revival, and the thing is, I’ve been born again, but now I’m going back to Beverly Hills. I work over there. And I want to clear all my debts now that I’ve seen the light. You see, I owe Slider a thousand pounds, and I want to pay him before I go.”

It was a crazy story, but this was a crazy house.

Greed lit up the fat lady’s face.

“Well, son, that’s a wonderful thing, you finding the Lord Jesus and everything. But I just don’t know where he is or where he’s been,” she said.

“Doesn’t he live here?”

“Not the last wee while; oh, but you know who might know, wee Dinger,” she said.

“Who’s Dinger?”

“He’s my youngest; he’s a wee bit, a wee bit, you know, special, that way… but Slider looks out for him. Takes him on trips and stuff. He’s been taking him somewhere all this week, just for the run in the car. So Dinger might know.”

“Where’s Dinger now?” I asked.

“Where he always is. On the beach,” Steven said.

“Whereabouts?”

“He’ll be the only one out there.”

“Well, it’s been great talking to you, thank you very much, Mrs.-”

“Houl on a minute, big fella, I get a finder’s fee, don’t I? I told you where Slider is, or at least someone who knows where he is, so that’s five percent. That’s fifty quid,” she demanded. I didn’t want her to kick up a fuss. I give her five tens. She smiled and put it in her pocket. I hope it chokes ya, I said to myself, and went outside to look for the youngest member of the clan.

The moon unhooking itself from the sea. The first stars. It was the gloaming now. The lingering summer twilight that in Northern Ireland and Scotland can last until nearly midnight at this time of year.

The tide was out and the sand was wet and freezing. Seaweed on the dunes. A few beached starfish and transparent jellyfish. You could see most of Belfast Lough spread in a big U-shaped curve, and from here in Bangor it was only about twenty miles across the water to Scotland. Tonight with the setting sun illuminating the hills in Galloway it seemed much closer.

Dinger was alone on the beach, gathering shells. I walked over from the seawall.

“Good shells?” I asked.

He dropped the collection with contempt and stomped away from me. He was in bare feet and jeans and a sweater too big for him. He had black hair and big eyes. He was about nine. He didn’t look “special” or any more special than his brothers or his hatchet-faced ma. When he was far enough away from me, he began singing. He drew something in the sand with a piece of driftwood. He looked behind him to see if I had gone yet, and then he picked up a length of seaweed and popped some of the float pods on the strands. They went snap and briny water came out of them, trundling down his fingers onto his sweater. Some of the weeds were covered with diesel and were slimy and difficult for him to pull up.

“Can I help you with that?” I asked.

“You’ll have to clean your shoes before you go in the house,” he began, and then ran from me again.

Jesus, this was going to be more difficult than I thought. I had trouble catching him with all my injuries and my fake foot.

Dinger stopped abruptly and sat down next to a dead seagull, its wings covered in what looked like a thick glue and its head completely black. Tankers occasionally came down this way on their journey to Belfast, so it was possible there had been a small slick or an illegal dumping.

“It’s dead,” Dinger said to me.

“Yeah, I see that, it’s very sad. You’re Dinger, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Everything dies,” Dinger said. He regarded the seagull for a moment. He picked it up by the wing and offered it to me.

“No, thanks. Listen, Dinger, I want to talk to you about your brother Slider,” I said.

“What’s that?” Dinger asked, pointing to a rock covered in the brown edible seaweed called dulse. Dinger crawled over to the rock, lifted up the dulse, pointed at it.

“You know what that is?” Dinger asked again.

“Of course, it’s dulse,” I said.

Dinger broke off a dry piece and offered it to me. I took it from him.

“Eat it,” he said.

I put it in my mouth. It was salty and revolting. I swallowed and struggled to keep it down.

“Thank you,” I said.

“What it taste like?” Dinger asked.

“You never tasted dulse?”

“No,” he said, his mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish.

“What it taste like?” he asked again.

It tasted like something that had been shaved off the bottom of a trawlerman’s seaboot and then matured by nailing it to the floor of a particularly nasty whorehouse for a couple of decades.

“It tastes ok,” I said. “You wanna try?”

Dinger shook his head. He wasn’t a complete fool. It started to rain. He pulled out a Glasgow Rangers hat and put it on. It was wool, so it didn’t do much against the rain but it kept the wind out of his ears.

“Dinger, I want to talk to you,” I tried again.

“Do you want to go on an adventure?” Dinger asked me.

“Dinger, I’d love to, some other time, but listen, I wonder if you could do me a favor? I’m looking for your brother Slider and your ma said that you knew where he’s been going all week. He’s been giving you a ride in his car, hasn’t he?”

“You talk to my ma?”

“Aye.”

“Huh. We go on an adventure.”

It was really getting late now and I wondered if I was wasting my time with this wean.

“If I go on an adventure with you, will you tell me where your brother is?” I asked him.

“Yes, I tell if you do dare,” Dinger said conspiratorially.

“I already ate the seaweed, isn’t that enough?”

“You do dare,” Dinger insisted angrily.

“Ok, ok, what’s the dare?”

“I dare you to walk along the pipe,” he said, pointing to a sewage outflow pipe that led from the shore to the lough. It didn’t look like a particularly dangerous task, even though it was covered with seaweed and barnacles. The tide was still out and the water was only a few feet deep.

“Ok. If I walk along that pipe for a minute, you’ll tell me where Slider is? Agreed?”

Dinger nodded.

“Shake on it,” I insisted.

Hesitantly and with a great deal of consideration, he put out his left hand. His fingers were crossed and I knew that he was trying to stroke me.

“Ok, Dinger, your right hand and no crossies,” I said.

Dinger frowned and put out his right hand instead.

I climbed on top of the sewage pipe and walked along it for a few paces. It had the worst smell in the world and a few sad-looking gulls flying about picking up complete turds from the water. The stench was too fucking much. I jumped off and walked back to Dinger, who was now petting a stray dog.

“Dogs hear things in ultraviolet. They hear everything high pitched, like Batman. No, it’s not called ultraviolet, it’s something else. Ultrasomething but not ultraviolet,” he said.

I grabbed Dinger by the arm and held him tight. I bent down so that I was eye level with him.

“Now, Dinger, listen to me. I kept my part of the bargain, I walked along the pipe. You have to keep your end. Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” Dinger said, tears coming into his eyes.

“Why not?”

“If I tell you, you’ll go away and I will have nobody to play with. Monkey and Stevey don’t play with me.”

“I’ll come back and I’ll bring Slider with me. You like Slider. Slider takes you places, doesn’t he? Slider takes you on adventures.”

Dinger’s face brightened.

“Slider takes me on adventures. He says secret missions like on TV.”

“Slider took you on a secret mission?” I asked, letting go of his arm and sitting next to him on the sand.

Dinger shook his head.

“Secret,” he insisted.

“Oh, you can tell me, I’m Slider’s best and oldest friend and I want to find him. We’ll all go on an adventure together, would you like that?” I said.

Dinger grinned.

“And we can go in Slider’s car?” Dinger asked.

“Of course we can go in Slider’s car, and we can get ice cream afterwards. You and me and Slider.”

“Yeah, and we don’t ask Stevey or Monkey.”

“No, we wouldn’t ask them. Just the three of us, you and me and Slider. Now, where is Slider?” I asked softly.

“He’s with the car.”

“Where did he go in the car? On a secret mission?”

Dinger nodded solemnly.

“Where in the car?” I asked.

“To the secret place. To the lodge, the old lodge with the arch,” Dinger said in a whisper.

“Where’s the old lodge, Dinger?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” I persisted.

“No.”

“Oh, that’s a shame, we won’t be able to get Slider and go on an adventure,” I said.

“We go adventure,” Dinger said, bursting into tears.

“Dinger, you think for a minute, where is the secret lodge?”

Dinger stopped crying immediately, closed his eyes, and held his breath.

“Orange Lodge,” Dinger said.

“Yeah, it’s an Orange Lodge, where is it?”

His brow furrowed and he touched his forehead onto the sand.

I knew hardly anything about the Orange Order, just the basics: it was a working-class Protestant secret society founded in the eigh-teenth century. It honored the memory of William of Orange, who had become king of Britain and Ireland after he defeated James the Second, the last of the illstarred Stuart kings.

Dinger stood up.

“Go home, Lucky, go home,” he said to the dog, who looked at him for a second and then ran across the sand. When the dog was definitely out of earshot, Dinger beckoned me close with his finger.

“I know where,” he whispered triumphantly.

“Where? Where’s the lodge?”

“Near that big monument,” Dinger said.

“What big monument?”

“The big monument across the water.”

“In Scotland?” I asked, stifling a panic.

“No, no, no, just over there,” he said, pointing out across the lough.

A monument over there.

I tried to see what he was pointing at, but it was so dark that you couldn’t see anything across the lough except the lights of Belfast, Rathcoole, and Carrickfergus.

And then it came to me.

“Jesus, you don’t mean the Knockagh Monument, do you, Dinger?”

The Knockagh Monument was a huge war memorial that had been placed on Knockagh Mountain near Belfast. I didn’t know much about it, except that it was a massive granite stone, which I think was carved with the names of the Irish dead from the two world wars. It was certainly enormous, and from up on top of the mountain you could see fifty miles in every direction. It was a makeout place for teenagers. A single road to the monument surrounded by forest and farms. An isolated, out-of-the-way spot. I didn’t recall any old abandoned Orange Lodges around there, but I didn’t know the area that well.

Dinger nodded excitedly.

“Dinger, let me get this straight. Slider took you to an Orange Lodge near the Knockagh Monument?”

“Bird kite, an eagle kite,” he said.

“You flew a kite at the Knockagh?”

“Aye. Knockagh, Knockagh, Knockagh. Slider said wait in car and we go see all of the world and fly the kite. Eagle kite.”

“He told you to wait in the car outside an old abandoned Orange Lodge near the Knockagh, right? And there was an arch outside the lodge?”

“Secret mission. Wait in the car at the lodge. Doink, doink, doink.”

“Did he ever mention a girl, a little girl?” I asked.

“We fly the kite, very windy.”

“Ok, forget the girl. Can you tell me anything more about the lodge?”

“We fly kite,” Dinger insisted.

“You went from the lodge to the Knockagh Monument and flew the kite?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dinger said, exasperated with all the questions. He started walking away from me. But I had enough.

“Thanks, Dinger,” I said and ran across the beach.

I digested the information. The kid might have made up the whole story and he was a bit of a looper, but Slider had been taking his kid brother somewhere this week. It could be that they were holding Siobhan in an abandoned Orange Lodge with an arched gateway not too far from the Knockagh Monument.

Slider tells Dinger to wait in the car while he delivers food or whatever to the rest of the kidnappers, and then immediately afterward he takes Dinger to the Knockagh, where they fly their kite.

Well, no good deed would go unpunished. Slider was only looking out for his retarded kid brother, but holy mother of God, I’d fucking kill him to get the girl.

And I really felt that I was close to her. This was a good lead. Slider was part of the gang. And if I were a betting man, I’d give you evens that Slider’s wee brother had just told me where they were holding the girl.

I might have to top you, Slider, but it’s your mistake, you’re not supposed to tell anybody. Nobody. Not your ma, not your da, not your bro. You certainly don’t bring him with you and tell him to wait in the car. Your mistake…

I ran off the beach and into the center of town. I saw a taxi. Flagged it down.

“I’m on a call, you can’t get in,” the driver said.

I opened the door and got in the passenger’s side. I gave him most of the money I had left in my wallet. Several hundred dollars and euros. I took the gun out of my pocket and held it in my hand. I didn’t point it at him. Carrot and stick.

“Listen, mate, I need your fucking cab. You’re going to tell the peelers that I hijacked ya, but you’re going to wait till after midnight. Ok? Do we have a deal?”

“You need my cab for a couple of hours and you want to pay me five hundred euros? Fucksake, mate, you didn’t need the gun.”

“So we have an agreement?” I asked.

“I won’t call the cops at all. But you’ve got to tell me, where are you gonna leave the car?”

“I don’t know. I have to go. Take the money, and if you’re calling the peelers, you better fucking wait till midnight. Ok? I won’t need it after that,” I said.

“No problem, squire, no skin off mine. Ratty old beast, just make sure you keep the clutch way down when you’re changing gears.”

The driver and I swapped positions.

I drove out of town.

The Knockagh was, of course, all the way on the other side of Belfast Lough. You had to go through the city to get there. I checked my watch. It was almost ten now. But that was time enough. More than time enough. No need to be reckless. I slowed from ninety to seventy-five.

“Hold on, Siobhan, hold on, ya wee skitter,” I said to myself. Words affectionate and reassuring. Affection for her and her wean. Darkey’s kid, yes, but half the genes belonged to her. And for Bridget’s girl I would move the Earth. I’d done a lot already. I’d do more.

And you behind the mask.

It’s already been decided.

Long before you or I was ever born.

Sit tight. In your bolt-hole a world away, a drive away, from here.

Do you feel that breeze on the back of your neck?

That’s me.

Aye.

Sleep soft, assassins. Embrace your loved ones. Kiss your wives. Drink your fill of the cool night air.

Your days on this world have been reduced by the thousand and the ten thousand.

For I am coming.

I am coming.