22. The Last Interview
CHAPTER 22
THE LAST INTERVIEW
Middle of the night. Cold sweat. A noise in the living room. Gun under pillow, check on Beth, check on Emma, walk down the hall.
Living room overlooking the black sea. A man in a balaclava sitting on the sofa, holding an AK-47.
“Well, this is overly dramatic,” I said.
“Aye, it’s not the Odessa Steps sequence, but it’ll do. Do you know how easy it was to get in here?”
“What do you want to do, kill me?”
“That’s not a serious question, is it? If I wanted that, you’d already be dead.”
“So what do you want?”
O’Roarke took off his balaclava. “You’re naive, Duffy. Do you think twenty miles of sea can protect your family from a mishap?”
“What’s my family got to do with it? I didn’t come after your family.”
“No. But we’re different men, aren’t we?”
I sat up in the bed, completely awake, drenched with sweat. I hyperventilated for a minute and a half before my breathing regulated and I calmed down. I removed the Glock from underneath the pillow and sat on the edge of the bed for some time. I took a hit on my asthma inhaler and went into the living room. There was no one there. I cleared the house and checked on Emma. She was sleeping deeply. Even the cat was sound asleep in his basket.
I sat down next to him and stroked his head.
“You won’t protect us, that’s for sure,” I said.
He purred, grew irritated with the stroking, and tried to bite me.
Music would wake the whole house, so I turned on the TV, but it was that dead time when nothing was on but the Open University. I turned it off again. I was restless, troubled. My subconscious knew something that I hadn’t quite processed yet.
I had made it personal with O’Roarke.
I was on his radar now.
I was a legitimate target.
As a Catholic policeman, there would always been a bounty on my head until the day I retired—hell, even after I retired, but few gunmen would take the trouble to come over to Scotland to off one Fenian peeler.
But O’Roarke would, wouldn’t he?
I’d annoyed him.
And he’d tried to get me and squibbed it.
And he would try again.
Damn it.
I poured myself a glass of Bowmore and opened the French doors.
Salt and cold and a sea breeze that was coming from the north. I was still spooked, so just to be on the safe side I went outside onto the street. Quiet. The lights on both neighboring houses were out. It was so quiet, I could hear every curl of the sea on the shore.
Into the back garden with its view of the North Channel.
And there across the water was the Kilroot Power Station chimney, and the lights of Whitehead and north Down. The angle isn’t quite right to see Coronation Road, but with a good telescope you could see Carrickfergus Police Station. In fact, you can even see Lawson’s office window.
This stretch of water was nothing to a man like Brendan O’Roarke, and finding out my home address would not be difficult for him.
I sat down on one of the garden chairs damp with dew. I rested the Glock on the glass tabletop.
I never get dreams like that, and it had unnerved me.
O’Roarke wouldn’t do the actual killing himself. He’d send one of his assassins if he wanted me dead. If he could spare one of his assassins, because someone had been going around killing those very assassins, getting closer every day to killing O’Roarke himself. One way of looking at it was to think that the person was doing me and everybody else who wanted peace in Ulster a favor.
But that’s not quite the way I looked at it.
They’d committed a murder.
On my patch.
And he’d killed a cop right in front of me.
And if I still could, I’d bring the bastard down for it or help Lawson or Special Branch bring the bastard down.
I’d protect my family, but I’d bring him down.
I finished the Bowmore and had no more reflections or insight or anything else. I just didn’t know what to do, and for someone who’d had a little bit of power for eighteen of the past twenty years, this feeling of impotence was new and unpleasant.
Have to get used to it. When I retired properly, I’d be handing in my gun, and although I got on well with the Dumfries and Galloway cops, I knew they wouldn’t tolerate a rogue peeler in their parish, so I’d have to be on my best behavior. No gun, no bullying the neighbors, no heroics. There were millions of us forty-year-old men going to seed in contemporary Britain. Getting fatter, getting slower, complaining about the music.
“Fuck it,” I said, and went back to bed.
The next morning, Emma got me up and I made everyone scrambled eggs and toast with butter and marmalade. I kissed Beth goodbye and walked Emma to kindergarten.
A few of the other parents nodded at me as I walked her into the playground, but of course, in that Scottish way, no one tried to engage me in conversation.
I went back to the empty house. I put on Radio 3 and tidied up.
The Scottish day: warm with a pink sky like crab apple blossoms, and a highland breeze bringing pine and hawthorne and all the Pictish consonants.
Radio 3 was in the middle of a Brahms marathon, so I switched to Atlantic 252, one of the pirate stations broadcasting from the Irish Sea. They were playing “These Days,” which was a nice little song only partly ruined by Nico’s weird tone-deaf singing.
I turned off the radio and sat in the quiet living room.
I picked up one of Beth’s Wooden Boat magazines and started flipping through it.
Beth had circled a listing for a River Nile tour that was taking place in October: “Join us for eleven incredible days exploring the Nile’s finest ancient maritime attractions with renowned Egyptologists Colleen and John Thompson. This century-old paddlewheeler remains a symbol of the golden age of river travel and carries her passengers in belle epoque luxury and comfort...”
Beth had underlined day four of the tour, which was a “visit to the boat yard servicing an active fleet of Aswan feluccas.”
The phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” Beth said. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Reading.”
“Whatcha reading?”
“ Wooden Boat magazine,” I said. “You’ve circled the Nile cruise thing.”
“Oh, my God, doesn’t it look incredible?”
“Well... could we afford it?” I asked, thinking of the grand I had just spent forging two Picassos for the Special Branch property room.
“I think so. I have a few shares that I’d like to get rid of.”
Beth, I knew, came from money. But how much money she had was not something I had pressed her about too deeply. We had a joint account, but she still had money in her building society and she had her shares. For all I knew, these shares could amount to a couple of hundred quid or fifty grand...
“Well, if we’ve got the money, would we all go?”
“Of course.”
“What is a felucca, anyway?”
“It’s a shallow-draft sailing boat with usually two lateen sails.”
I held the phone away from my head and thought about it. Maybe not a bad future, Beth leading me from ancient shipyard to ancient shipyard. Forget Ulster. Forget the war. Develop other interests. My obsession with O’Roarke was in danger of becoming Melvillean.
“Is that why you called?”
“Oh, no, I almost completely forgot. You got a call from a Bob Urquhart, from the Dumfries and Galloway police. They’ve confirmed your range time for ten this morning.”
“I’ll head over there now. Give me something to do,” I said.
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking, if you’re determined not to take up golf.”
“I am determined not to take up golf.”
“Okay, then. Must dash. Bye, sweetie.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the phone.
Beth worried about me on my downtime. She worried that I would get bored having nothing to do twenty-four days out of the month; hence the hints about golf and reminders to go to the range and trips to Egypt...
I went to the range and shot paper targets.
Targets don’t shoot back at you.
But range time can often be clarifying.
“Beth. I’m sorry about this. I have one loose end to tie up. Have to go back to Ireland, but I’ll probably be back tonight, I promise,” I said making it sound casual.
The ferry to Belfast.
An easy passage over the chilled out Irish Sea.
The drive from Belfast to Newry.
Over the border yet again.
Through the Mourne Mountains to Dundalk.
The bowling club. No sign of our boy.
“Brendan’s not in today?”
“He is not,” a caretaker said.
“Where is he?”
“He’s at home.”
“It’s that big house on Point Road, yeah?”
“No he moved from there. On the Shore Road now, you can’t miss it.”
Brendan’s big house on the Shore Road. A big modern job overlooking the water. A red-brick castle with a turret at the back, and everything.
I parked the Beemer and took a deep breath.
Do you really want to do this?
I don’t know.
I walked up a gravel drive and rang the doorbell.
Brendan answered it.
“Saw you coming through the TV camera,” he said.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure. Follow me to the lounge.”
I went inside.
It was like a Ken Adam set from a late sixties Bond flick with maybe more high key spotlights. Brendan had a full bar off to one side, and the oversize speakers for his stereo setup might have given Ozzy Osbourne pause.
I sat on a white sofa next to a white rug over hardwood floors. Brendan handed me a bottle of Guinness Extra Stout and a bottle opener.
“Do you need a glass?” he asked.
“Are you using a glass?” I asked cagily.
“Of course. I’m not a barbarian.”
“Then I’ll take one.”
He handed me a milk tumbler, and I tilted it three degrees from the horizontal and poured in the Guinness.
There was only a moderate head, which seemed to mollify Brendan a little. I was a traitor copper from the north, but at least I could pour a pint of beer like a man.
“Huh,” he grunted.
We sat in silence for a minute.
“Nice finally to have a drink with one’s real enemy. Not Man City, but one’s real enemy,” he said.
I knew he was looking at me. The peat fire crackled. A cat rubbed itself against my legs. From upstairs there was a strange, muffled thumping that could be anything from the boiler playing up to an informer being beaten to death with a blackjack.
“You find you need a fire in July?” I asked.
“It’s freezing here all the time. House is too big. Can’t heat it.”
“Blame the builder.”
“I am the builder.”
“I know.”
“I heard you’re a bit of a music lover,” Brendan said.
“I can take it or leave it.”
He rummaged through the record stacks, found the album he was looking for, and took it out of its sleeve. He cleaned it with an antistatic brush and carefully moved the needle to the fifth track.
“What do you think of this?” he asked.
It was Ella Fitzgerald singing Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon” over a full string orchestra. When the song was over, he carefully lifted the needle from the turntable and put the record back in the sleeve.
“That was very—” I began, but Brendan cut me off.
“Not yet!” he said.
He put on another record. It was “Blue Moon” again but a different version. Slightly slower, with only a guitar. The voice was unmistakably Julie London’s. One of my grandmother’s favorites. I hadn’t heard this particular track before, although I was familiar with London’s version of “Cry Me a River,” which my grandmother had played over and over.
When the song ended, Brendan put it back in its sleeve and sat down again.
“Which did you prefer?” he asked.
It was probably a trick question. You’d be a fool to go against the great Ella Fitzgerald, who had one of the sweetest voices of the twentieth century, but just this time I’d actually preferred the London version.
“The second one. Julie London.”
“Not the first one?” he asked.
“No. Ella’s got a beautiful tone, but somehow Julie London just nails this song.”
Brendan smiled with satisfaction. I had given him the correct answer.
“Yes,” he said, and finished off his Guinness. He got up, went to the kitchen, and came back with two more bottles, but just then his wife, Elaine, came down the stairs.
“This is Sean Duffy, from the north, originally a Derry man. Sean, this is Elaine, my wife. She’s from Fermanagh.”
We shook hands. “Lovely part of the world, Fermanagh,” I said.
“It is,” she agreed. “How’s he treating you? He can be a bit odd with visitors.”
“He played me two versions of ‘Blue Moon.’”
She looked horrified for a moment. “Not Elvis and Mel Torme?”
“No. Julie London and Ella Fitzgerald.”
She sucked in her breath. “And what did you say about them?”
“I said that Ella Fitzgerald had a beautiful voice, but for some reason, I liked the Julie London version a little better.”
She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “You dodged a bullet there.”
I smiled at Brendan. I’d dodged quite a few of his bullets. And his bloody mortars.
“Well, you boys chat. I’ll see about lunch. Do you like sandwiches, Sean?”
“Love ’em.”
When she’d gone, I finished the bottle and put it on the tabletop. “I looked for you at the bowling club.”
“I don’t go every day.”
“What makes you tick, Brendan?”
“I’ll tell you.”
He told me.
The poor man did not depart from his well-beaten track: evil Brits, Thatcher, the famine, Bloody Sunday, and so on.
I wondered after a time if he had forgotten to whom he was speaking. This was the boilerplate one churned out for visiting Irish American dignitaries, not inspectors of the police from either side of the border. Did this traditionally wearisome diatribe ever impress anyone?
Finally, he even got bored with it himself and stopped.
He had made me angry now. This man had killed one of my colleagues. A kid, really. A frightened kid. And he was giving me bloody music exams and talking crap about Cromwell as if I were some dimwitted Kennedy just off the plane from Logan?
“What was the purpose of this visit, Inspector? To warn me or to threaten me?”
He had me there.
I didn’t know the answer.
“I wanted to let you know that I am not investigating you. I’m off the case. Our paths won’t cross again.”
“Then what are you over here for?”
“I had a dream you came into my house to kill me and my wife and child.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“No, but you know people who would. Who would do it for you if you gave the word.”
“So what is it that you want?”
“I want your promise that you won’t come for me or for my child or for my wife. Especially not them.”
“And in return?”
“We leave each other be.”
Brendan thought about it.
He stared at the fireplace. The turf logs charcoaling white.
“It’s the fucking Tories. North and south. We’re playing into their hands. They want the working classes at one another’s throats because they know that if we’re ever united, it’ll be the fucking Tyburn gibbet for the lot of them.”
Brendan’s face was red and he was getting all worked up again.
“Do you have any kids?” I asked him.
“No. I had a son. Didn’t make it. Leukemia. This was a long time ago. It’s curable now. His type. Curable, but not then.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“Do you want another record? If you guess this one, I’ll be very impressed.”
He put on “Music, Maestro, Please” by Tommy Dorsey. It was obvious from the third bar. I pretended it was a hard one and only told him what it was at the end.
We had a third bottle of Guinness, and he walked me to the door.
“I won’t come after you,” Brendan said. “I had my chance and I blew it. Every dog has his day.”
“Who do you think’s been killing your people?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. But something tells me it’s not local.”
“Spooks?”
“Maybe. I thought you were off this case.”
“I am. I’ll get in trouble if I start nosing around.”
“Sean Duffy is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” he said, paraphrasing the book of Job.
He offered me his hand and I had no choice but to shake it.
Outside the house, I wiped my hand on the back of my trousers.
“Cop killer,” I muttered, and spat.
I drove to the Garda station and let them know I’d been by. They weren’t pleased to see me. Very few people on this island are pleased to see me. But these people were getting sick of my ugly mug around the place. Who was this high-handed RUC goon who kept coming into their parish to tell them their business and point them in the direction of a bad man?
An RUC goon who had gotten himself blown up on the wrong bloody side of the border, creating an international incident.
An RUC goon who had—according to the files—somehow fucked up a prosecution against a Finnish national that the Garda had arrested on a murder rap and transferred into this goon’s custody. I was a walking disaster area. And what’s more, I was a part-time, nearly retired burned-out walking disaster area. They were so annoyed with me in Dundalk Garda that I wasn’t even offered a cup of tea.
I got the message: See ya later, lads, on the other side of the river.