Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) (5 page)

“No serious person believes IQ tests anymore. And the ninety-ninth percentile, five billion people on Earth, at least fifty million people with that score. No shakes there, mate,” I said.

“And your A-level results?” Douglas said with a smile.

“What about my university results? That throws a spanner in the works, doesn’t it,” I said. “I was a total failure at university. I flunked out in my second year.”

“Your mother was dying throughout your second year at university. I would say you were distracted.”

“Well, ok, so I’m the original Jesus Christ, what exactly—”

“You worked on fourteen cases in your first two years as a detective and all fourteen were broken. That represents a fifty percent higher success rate than the RUC’s norm. You solved two closed-book homicide cases.”

“Yeah. You know, I’m not being modest here but you’re from England and you probably think the quality of peelers over here is equivalent to what it is over there, but it’s not, mate. Most of the coppers I worked with were hoodlums, drunks, thickos, the other day I was in a bloody bar fight with two of them, it really—”

“What I’m suggesting, Mr. Lawson, is that you were destined to rise very high in the RUC and yet for some reason, out of the blue, you resigned. I checked, you’d just passed the sergeant’s exam. Hell, you could have been a detective inspector by thirty. It makes no sense. There was no reason given in the report. But I want to know. Why did you resign, Mr. Lawson?”

“Look. I’d had enough, I had two really ugly domestic violence cases. Murders. I had one where a child was killed. That doesn’t take much solving, but it takes some time to get it out of your head. I had just had enough.”

“Lies,” he said, stubbing the cigarette violently into Mum’s pot.

“What?”

“I am not a very patient man, Mr. Lawson,” Douglas said, angrily.

“Look it up, that’s in your files. That was my case, Donovan McGleish, had him arrested. Life imprisonment they gave him. In the Kesh. Don’t call me a liar.”

“You’re too young to be a burnout. That’s not why you resigned,” he said, stroking the mustache. He picked up his clipboard and read something. His cuff went up on his shirt. There was a tattoo on his wrist. A pair of wings. An ex-paratrooper. A hard case. Just great.

“After two and a half years as a detective constable, you were assigned to the drugs squad,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Correct.”

“Did you ask to be transferred?”

“I did, I told you I’d had enough of homicide.”

“You solved not one case in the drugs squad, and then mysteriously you resigned.”

“Not mysteriously, nothing mysterious about it, I had had enough. Many peelers quit after their very first year or blow their brains out. Look up the suicide rate for RUC men, I think you’ll find that it is—”

“Mr. Lawson, your behavior is just not fucking cricket. But you are going to cooperate with me and I will explain why. As part of the Samson Inquiry, I have extremely wide-ranging powers. Arrest. Summoning before a magistrate, prosecution of uncooperative material witnesses. Contempt of court. You name it. I will have you arrested, I will throw you in jail.”

Now I was starting to sweat. Not an empty threat. He didn’t make empty threats. I could see it in his eyes. Cold, indifferent. All business. He lit himself another cigarette.

“There’s an old Belfast rule for when you’re being questioned by the police—whatever you say, say nothing,” I announced, attempting levity. He wasn’t impressed.

“I’m not sure yet what happened with you, Mr. Lawson, or what you found out in the drug squad, but I do know that a meteoric detective does not suddenly resign for no reason. I will get to the bottom of this and I will make you talk. I want the names and I’m going to get the names. If you were intimidated, we can give you protection.”

“Protection. Ha. Not as smart as you look. What do you think? I’d uncovered a big bloody plot to flood Ulster with drugs? Some enormous protection racket? You’re way off base, mate. You think they would have forced me to resign and that would have been it? They would have fucking killed me already. There’s no plot, no racket, I don’t know anything. I resigned because I was sick of it.”

“Who is they?”

“What?”

“You said ‘they.’ Who is ‘they,’ who would have killed you?”

“There’s no ‘they,’ there’s no mystery. You don’t get it, mate, I resigned because I’d had enough policing for a lifetime. Fed up. Forget your plots, forget your conspiracies. They don’t exist. People like you and Samson believe in the conspiracy theory of history, well I believe in the fuck-up theory of history. Stupid things happen for no reason.”

Douglas sat for a moment, listened to the sound of the rain on the rooftop. He looked at me and a wave of disgust seemed to go through him. His face contorted with rage. What was he doing here? I knew what he was thinking. These fucking Micks. Even the so-called smart ones, bog stupid. Eight hundred years England had been entangled with this awful place. Eight hundred bloody years. And he was a paratrooper, he’d probably been over here in the army and taken all kinds of shit. This time he stamped his cigarette out on the carpet.

He seemed to make a decision, got up, came over, grabbed me by the lapels of my dressing gown and pulled them so tight that he was effectively choking me.

“Now you will listen to me, you Paddy fuck,” Douglas said, leaning in close. His breath stank, he was grinning. I gasped for air.

“You’ll listen to me, Micky boy. I will fucking break you. I will have you, you Paddy piece of shit. I want the names. I am not someone to be fucked with,” he said.

“I can’t breathe—”

Douglas tightened his choke hold, I really couldn’t breathe, seeing stars, blacking out, I grabbed at his big wrists, tried to push them off, but it was no good.

“Listen to me, bastard, fucking potato head. We will arrest you. We will force you to testify. I personally will make sure you do hard time for whatever it is you’re hiding.”

Suffocating. Choking.

“Stop it, I’ll tell you,” I managed to get out.

He eased up on the stranglehold, let me fall back to my chair.

“Speak,” he said.

I took a couple of big breaths.

All policemen in Northern Ireland go on a survival course, and one aspect is how to respond if you’re kidnapped by the IRA, tortured, questioned. At the first stage of the interrogation you say nothing, then you let them break you to the second stage, where you give them a lie and then, if the torture continues, you let them break you to the third stage, where you give them a story that is nearly the truth but not quite but close enough, so they’ll think that that’s finally it and they’ll buy it. I had already told two stories about my resignation, so unfortunately I was at the third stage quicker than I would have liked. Nearly the truth.

“Ok, look, Douglas, here it is. It’s the oldest bloody story in the book. I was an undercover cop. I had to pretend to be a junkie. I started taking heroin. It got ahold of me, took over, I really was a junkie, I was taking heroin from the police evidence room to support my habit. One time they caught me. The RUC found out and they made me resign. They were nice to me, they didn’t prosecute me for theft, they just made me resign. No conspiracy, no corruption. I just fucked up. I know it’s the bloody cliché of the narcs squad. But it’s true.”

He stared at me for a moment. He wasn’t sure. He sat back down in the chair and lit another fag. He smoked nearly the whole thing. Thinking. I tried not to show that my fingers were crossed. He coughed, weighed his words.

“Mr. Lawson, I’m disappointed in you, I’d guessed that that was the story you would tell me, but I thought you’d be more creative.”

“But it’s fucking true.”

“Part of it may be true, Mr. Lawson. Pathetic, I’m sure. But I don’t want part of the truth, I want all of it.”

He sighed melodramatically, got up again, walked over, suddenly grabbed both my wrists with one hand, and then pinned my arms with his knee and body weight. He smiled at me and brought the hand holding the cigarette up to my face. I started to yell but he shoved his free hand over my mouth. His knee and entire body forcing me into the chair. I struggled. He brought the cigarette to my eyebrow and let the ash singe it. I tried to wriggle away from him, but he was too strong. Strong and obviously a real psycho. He let the cigarette burn me for five agonizing seconds, then he let me go.

I gasped for air.

He stood. He picked up his briefcase, his clipboard.

“I’m flying back to London tonight. It’s not just fucks like you we have to deal with. Other cases, too. That’s why I have no time for your shit. But I’ll be back two weeks from today. Yours is the most interesting. Monday the twenty-second. Keep your appointment book free. It’s a good thing. Give you time to think. You will cooperate or I will shit upon you from a great height. I will destroy your fucking life. I will see you do ten years in Wormwood fucking Scrubs. And they will know that you were a copper. Oh yeah. I will see you fucking broke, you pathetic little shit. I’ll see myself out.”

He walked across the living room, turned, grinned at me, spat, and left.

I leaned back in the chair, got my breath back, tried not to puke. I heard the front door bang. Dad came in.

“What was that all about? Did he touch you? Are you ok?”

“Dad, how much money do you have?” I gasped.

“Nothing. I told you. I used it all for my deposit in the election but I do get it back if I win. Are you ok? What happened?”

“So, in other words, you’ve nothing.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No, but I might have to go somewhere for a while till the heat cools down.”

“Who was that man, what did he want?”

“A policeman. He wants me to rat on my brother officers.”

“Is he part of that Samson thing? But you’ve done nothing wrong,” Dad said.

“I know, but he’s going to persecute me, I’ve got to go somewhere.”

“Your brother would put you up in London.”

“England’s no good. Besides, he wouldn’t put me up anyway.”

“He would, Alexander. Look, what’s going on?”

I got up and went into the hall. I climbed up into the attic, I felt I was nearly going to cry. I was pathetic. Douglas was right. I stopped myself, found my coat, came back down the ladder.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked.

“Out.”

I knew what I had to do, I had to get to the water. I had to get to my place. Raining again. But I had to get down there. That’s where everything would become clear.

“Where are you going?” Dad insisted.

“Nowhere.”

“Do you want some tea? You have to eat, Alex, you never eat,” Dad said, shaking his head, worried.

“I’ll get something.”

I put on my coat and hat and ran out the door.

Pissing down. Hard. Bouncing off the stones and making lakes on the tar macadam. My wool hat was drenched in a minute. My place. Not going to panic. My place. Close, soon. Yes. Think. Think, man. Maybe John could lend me some money. Maybe Dad would come through. In any case, I had to lie low. Where? My brother and sister, in England. Hardly talked to them since the funeral. We weren’t that close and Mum had been the glue holding the family together. And wasn’t I right? They’d find me.

I shook my head. No. No money for a bus ticket to the airport, never mind an airfare. My left eyebrow hurt, everything hurt. What to do? Keep out of the shit. I could lie low. I had enough ketch for a couple of weeks. I could avoid Spider until then. Yeah, everything be fine. Yeah, all work out somehow. Douglas, looking at my personal file. Bastard. What does he know? Used me. Buck McConnell used me. Transferred me to narcotics because they knew I’d been arrogant. Curious. Knew I’d pursue the leads wherever they went. So stupid. Messed up. They were smarter than me. Thank God for ketch, ketch saved my life….

The railway lines. The beach. The heroin. Thank God.

Everything in my coat pocket. Lunch box. Dry. I find my spot under the tiny cliff. Out of the wind, out of the rain. Open the lunch box. Ketch in a cellophane bag. Needles and syringe. New needles as important as supply. Can’t share needle, ever. AIDS, hepatitis B and C. Death. Distilled water. Cotton balls. Some people use citric acid to make it dissolve better. Basic safety. New needle, alcohol swab, cotton filter. Spoon. Heroin so pure now some smoke it. Smoke it off aluminum foil. Eejits. Get brain damage, lung cancer. Injection safe. Safe as houses. Spoon, water, heroin, lighter under spoon. It boils. Ketch, beautiful. Check it’s a vein. Draw it in. Draw it in….

The beach.

The beach is not a beach. The sea is not a sea. The clouds are not clouds.

The beach is a slick of seaweed, jetsam, garbage, and shopping carts embedded in the sand like abstract sculpture. The sea, a tongue of lough. The clouds, oil burn-off from the smokestacks at the power station, two chimneys that fuck any residual hope of loveliness in the Irish landscape.

Belfast just across the water, its yellow cranes, its ferry terminus, its back-to-backs, its poison of estates. Everything dissolves. The rain stops. The sky clears. The world ceases to spin. Time slows. The power station vanishes into the sludge of history. The sky quiet. Birds. Gray seals. Sun. It’s Ireland before people came. Before that Viking bark, that pine coffin of this morning, before the coracle. An Eden. A meditation of hill and forest. I stand there—an anachronism. A dead girl walks past me, in bare feet along the golden shore.

“Hey, you’re a Christian really. What was all that Hindu stuff you were always going on about?”

“My heritage.”

“You’re really beautiful.”

“Death doth improve my face.”

“No, it never needed improving. But it is true, you are dead.”

“I am and you’re what, now, a junkie?”

“Why does no one understand? I’m not a junkie, you have to really try to become a junkie. I’m not a functioning heroin addict, because I’m not an addict.”

“Sounds like you have that all rehearsed.”

“Did you come here to give me a hard time?”

“I didn’t come here at all.”

“Oh yeah.”

“It’s just you and me on the boat.”