Safe House (4 page)

His da never goes to church services. He spends the last Sunday morning of his life over at Maloney's Pub earning a bit of extra money helping Declan Maloney install new toilet bowls in the two lavatories.

In the evening, after Liam gets home from Youth Circus, they sit down to one of Liam's favorite dinners: tuna casserole. Canned tuna is cheap and so is packaged pasta. Throw in a handful of chopped broccoli, finish with a golden cheese crust, and enjoy.

They talk. His da asks Liam about his day at Youth Circus and about his friend Nicole. Liam blushes. His mum rescues him by asking his da about his day working at Maloney's Pub, and his da asks her if there is any more of the casserole left in the dish because a man gets remarkable hungry on his knees all day installing toilets.

Their last meal together.

For his mum and his da it is their last meal ever.

He lay on the Cassidy couch with his eyes closed, foot throbbing, ribs aching. Thinking about his mum and his da made him want to cry, but he couldn't cry. It was like there was something inside that was wound up tight and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't let it go.

Rory answered the telephone. “It's the police,” he told Liam. “They're on their way. Ten minutes.”

The police arrived. Just one, in plain clothes. He did not take off his hat. He asked Liam a few questions about the men who had killed his parents. Liam told him what he knew. The policeman didn't ask about the man who had shot at him through the Cassidy kitchen window. Instead he told Liam to put on his shoes and coat and come with him to the police station; Inspector Osborne wanted to ask him a few questions.

Delia Cassidy, back from the church, said to Liam, “Jack and I will go with you. Rory will mind the house.” She packed clothing and a sandwich in a packsack. “You had better take this. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the police decide to keep you out of sight for a while.”

The policeman drove them to the police station.

The small office was crowded with only five people: Inspector Osborne, Jack and Delia Cassidy, a pleasant-faced young woman named Miss Tovey from the Children's Welfare office, and Liam.

Osborne. Protestant name, Liam guessed.

When the inspector had finished introducing everyone he sat behind his desk and turned his attention to Liam, seated in front of him on a hard chair.

The expression on the face of Delia Cassidy, seated beside her husband and to the side of Inspector Osborne's desk, seemed to say, “Never trust a policeman.”

Inspector Osborne was a tall man, slim, with blue eyes, short gray hair, and a neat ginger mustache stained by the nicotine of many cigarettes. He wore a smart bottle-green police uniform with a white shirt and black tie.

Liam hated uniforms: They usually spelled trouble. This uniformed police inspector intimidated him.

The inspector tried to put Liam at ease, smiling encouragingly. “Now, Liam, tell me what happened exactly as you remember it. Take your time. You were asleep, you say, when two men broke into your home.”

Delia Cassidy said, “Filthy butchers. Animals are what they were, not men.”

The inspector raised an eyebrow. “Liam?”

“What kind of men would massacre two innocent people in their bed?” asked Delia Cassidy.

The inspector turned to her politely. “I would like to hear the story from the boy, Mrs. Cassidy, if you don't mind.”

Liam was very tired. He talked haltingly. Inspector Osborne listened attentively, quietly interrupting to ask an occasional question.

After Liam was finished, the inspector, amid interruptions from Delia Cassidy, asked him further questions about the two killers, especially the big one who had taken off his mask.

Liam described him.

“You say that this same man, the one with the mole, later tried to kill you in the Cassidy home?”

“The window will need to be replaced,” said Delia Cassidy, “and the wall is destroyed with…”

“Please, Mrs. Cassidy!” Inspector Osborne glared at her.

Liam said, “He shot at me through the window. I ran out of the house and he came after me on a motorbike. I spent the night hiding in the cemetery.”

“The individual who shot at you, did you see his face?”

“No.”

“The man on the motorcycle, did you see his face?”

“No.”

“Who else could it be?” asked Delia Cassidy. “Wasn't it the devil himself?”

The inspector's patience had come to an end. “Mrs. Cassidy, I will have to ask you to be quiet or you must wait outside. How can I interview the boy if you insist on interrupting?”

“Hmmph!” said Delia Cassidy.

“So, Liam, you cannot actually say that the man who fired at you and the man who chased you on the bike was the man with the mole on his face, the same man who was responsible for the deaths of your parents?”

“No, but it was him, I'm sure.”

The inspector turned to include Jack Cassidy and Miss Tovey. “When it comes to proving something, when it comes to saying that you know it was the same man, that you recognized him, well, the courts are very reluctant…”

Liam said, “You don't believe me?”

“Yes, Liam, I believe you. I think it was the same man. But thinking and knowing for certain are horses of a different color, you see?”

“No, I don't see.”

The inspector sighed. “Liam, you are obviously in great danger. If you stay where you are then he is sure to try again.” He turned to the Cassidys. “You must leave things in my hands. I will take care of the boy. You cannot protect him. Your home is a dangerous place for him now. I want him under police protection. Do you agree, Miss Tovey?”

“Miss Tovey nodded. “Of course, inspector. Liam comes first. We must protect him.”

The inspector directed the same question at the Cassidys.

Jack Cassidy said, “It's the only way.”

Inspector Osborne turned back to Liam. “I want to send you to a safe house.”

Liam must have looked alarmed because Miss Tovey, with a sympathetic smile, said, “It's a secret house in the city, Liam. You will be perfectly safe there, I promise.”

Inspector Osborne said, “You will live there until we have the killer in jail. Miss Tovey is right. You will be safe there. Nobody will know where you are. Nobody. We tell no one, not even Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy. Not even your family.”

“Got no family now.”

The inspector's eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No grandparents?”

Liam shook his head.

“No aunts or uncles?”

“Nobody.”

Delia Cassidy looked at her husband with raised eyebrows. Jack Cassidy nodded to her.

“He has no one but us,” said Delia Cassidy.

The inspector pulled a face and bit his lower lip. “In any case, the only ones who know where you are will be myself, the police driver, and the two staff members who work in the house, Fergus and Moira Grogan. They are entirely trustworthy.” He stopped and narrowed his eyes. “They would be like an aunt and uncle. How do you feel about that?”

Liam shrugged. He had never had an aunt or an uncle, so he didn't know what they would be like.

Inspector Osborne stood. “I will have you taken to the safe house. But first I'd like you to spend a few minutes with our identification man. He will work up a picture on the computer from your description of the man with the mole.” The inspector fingered his mustache and said to the Cassidys. “He is sure to belong to one of the militant Loyalist gangs. If all goes well we should have these killers in custody by the end of the month.” To Liam he said, “Do you think you can pick your mole man out of a line-up?”

“That's when you line up a bunch of people and—”

“He wouldn't see you. You would be in a separate room looking through a one-way window. What do you say?

Could you do it?”

“Sure.”

“Good boy. And if we can persuade him to talk, we will have the other one too.”

…safe house…

The computer identification procedure over, he waited in the inspector's office for a car to take him to the safe house. Jack and Delia Cassidy sat with him; Miss Tovey had gone.

The inspector was out of the room.

Delia Cassidy said, “Tell the boy, Jack.”

Jack Cassidy put an arm round Liam's shoulders. “When this is all over, when they catch these killers, we want you to know that our home is your home. It will be waiting for you. Understand?”

Liam nodded. “Thanks,” was all he could say.

Jack Cassidy handed him a worn leather wallet. “Here. Keep this. It has a little money in it for emergencies and our telephone number, in case you forget it. Call us if there is anything you need and we will see you get it. Will you do that?”

Liam nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

The police inspector came back and the Cassidys said goodbye. Delia Cassidy said, “The inspector promised me you will want for nothing at the safe house: new clothing, soap, toothbrush, books to read, everything.” She hugged him. “Be brave, lovey.” Jack Cassidy smiled sadly, started to say something, but stopped and squeezed Liam's shoulder. They left.

Liam and Inspector Osborne were alone in the office. The inspector sat down behind his desk. “The car will be here any minute.” He smiled.

Inspector Osborne seemed an okay person, but Liam still did not quite trust him: He was a policeman, after all, and a Protestant. A Protestant Loyalist: loyal to the queen of England. Which was the same as English, not Irish. You couldn't be English and Irish: one or the other but not both. But he felt less intimidated, especially if he made an effort to see the man and not the uniform. He said, “Why did they kill my mum and da? Do you know? They never did anything to hurt anyone. They were good people. It makes no sense.”

“You're right. It makes no sense, Liam. Your parents are two of five retaliation killings in the past week. We think a paramilitary group is out to revenge the killing last month of John Spencer in the Maze prison. You have heard of the Maze prison?”

“Yes.”

“Spencer was a Loyalist paramilitary chief, sent to jail for his crimes. An IRA prisoner stabbed Spencer to death in the prison yard.”

“But my da had nothing to do with that!”

The inspector sighed. “True. Retaliation killings make no sense. Those seeking revenge don't really care who they kill as long as it is one of the ‘enemy.' Do you understand?”

Liam thought he understood. So the killings were more or less random. They could have targeted any Catholic; it would have made no difference to the killers.

Inspector Osborne said, “Dan Fogarty was well known. He was a community leader and a peacemaker. Everyone knew your father. The price of fame in Belfast is sometimes death.”

That was what Jack Cassidy had said, Liam remembered. There were Prods who did not want peace, who only wanted the Catholics out of the North of Ireland.

Liam hated the killers. The hate was a deadly cold snake inside him, aching to strike. His father was the best of all fathers, the best in the whole world, the sort of man who wouldn't do a bit of harm to anyone, always happy, even when he had nothing much to be happy about. Liam knew only a little about his da's activities, about how he spoke out for the rights of the poor and unemployed in the North of Ireland, no matter whether they were Prods or Catholics; he knew that his father saw no important differences between them. They were all doing their best, he always said, Protestants and Catholics alike, to find work and bring up their families. It was just a few who were to blame for the violence and the hatred, a handful of ignorant thugs who knew no better.

His da tried to reason quietly with young hotheads who believed that tit-for-tat violence in the North of Ireland must go on day after day, month after month, year after year, who believed that things would never change. “There's an old Irish saying,” his da would say to them with a smile. “If nothing ever changed there would be no butterflies.”

He tried to see the good in everyone; he was a man who seldom lost his temper, not like Liam's mother Fiona who became upset and angry every time someone was killed by a gang of terrorists, or by a car bomb, or by the police, or by the British army soldiers. Her anger expressed itself in tears and explosive wails of distress that left her eyes red. His da would comfort her in his calm, quiet voice, and a reassuring arm around her shoulders.

He would have his own room, Inspector Osborne said.

The police driver drove him around the city, north, east, south and west, before finally pulling up at a big old house. By now it was dark. “Got to make sure we're not followed,” the driver explained to Liam, who was half-asleep on the backseat. It had been a long day, and with no sleep last night in the Ludlow sepulcher, he was exhausted. They entered the house quietly by the back door, Liam carrying his small backpack.

The Grogans seemed okay, but not a bit like he'd imagined an aunt and uncle, serious and stiff instead, but that was to be expected of people whose job it was to run a secret police house where there were so many rules. The man, Fergus, wasn't a member of the police, but he acted like he was. He was a mixture of bossy and friendly, an older man, balding and stockily built, with a narrow brown mustache. He already knew about Liam's parents. “Sorry for your trouble,” he muttered as he shook Liam's hand with a thick paw.

His wife Moira was ordinary looking: medium build, light brown hair with some gray, a chain-smoker. She nodded at him. “Sorry for your trouble,” she murmured but didn't shake his hand, flashing him a tight little smile instead.

The house was twice the size of Liam's house in Ballymurphy, and it had been updated, with fresh paint and newly sanded and varnished hardwood floors, though Liam noticed none of this.

Fergus sat Liam down at the kitchen table and went over the rules with him. He was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open to read the big capital letters on lined yellow foolscap paper. Fergus said, “You cannot go out. That's number one. You stay inside and you don't show yourself to anyone. You got it?”