Twisted Agendas (7 page)

“She does Irish stuff as well.” Todd turned toward Danny. “You like her, huh?”

“She’s smart, and pretty and… ”

“You find her hot?”

Danny didn’t think it smart to tell him what he thought. “Tell me, whereabouts is the LSE, exactly?”

“I think she’s hot. She’s also mine. And the LSE’s in Houghton Street.”

When he got back to Chumley Street after eleven, he found the living room curtains drawn and the lights turned on. Coldplay’s
Yellow
belted from a radio upstairs.
He opened the living room door and peered cautiously inside, saw a man’s lightweight bomber jacket laying on the back of the sofa, its arms outstretched as if its owner had shimmied out of it
while still seated. On the coffee table was a duffel bag. Beside it lay a knife, pair of kitchen gloves, a short piece of wood, and what appeared to be a lump of flecked, light-tan coloured
putty.

He stepped inside. The door slammed shut. Before he could turn around, an arm wrapped around his neck and squeezed hard while he was simultaneously propelled across the room. To protect his face
from smashing into the wall, Danny stuck out his hands. The fingers of his right hand struck the edge of a fisheye mirror above the mantle. It slipped off the nail securing it to the wall and
smashed to pieces on the hearth tiles.

“Who the hell are you?” came a Northern Irish accent.

“I’m staying here.” Danny tried to pry the man’s arm off by grabbing at his wrist, “Piper invited me… ”

“She’s in Ireland.”

“I gave her a lift back.” Upstairs, he heard the toilet flushing. “My name’s Danny Connolly. I come from Northern Ireland, too.”

“Connolly, eh? A fenian.” The man released his grip. “I thought you were here to rob the joint. My mistake. Sorry about that.” He nodded toward the window. “A place
down the street was broken into three weeks ago.”

Feet pounded on the stairs and then the door flung open. “Why the hell’d you shut the door, Pat?” A woman came inside. In her early thirties and stocky like his assailant, her
small mouth puckered into an ‘O’ when she saw Danny. “Who’s this?” She glanced over at the items on the coffee table.

“He’s a friend of Piper’s. She’s come back early.”

“She has?”

“Where you from back home?” Pat asked, his chummy tone in bizarre contrast to the prior ruthlessness.

“Near Strabane.”

“Get away,” the woman said. “I’m from the Bogside. Who’s your people?”

While he explained, Danny massaged the sides of his neck, the harsh shock of the attack weakening to mild queasiness.

“Another fenian living in London,” Pat said. He put the putty, knife and other articles into the duffel bag. “The English don’t like our type much so we all have to stick
together here. Isn’t that right?”

The question hung suspended in the thick atmosphere as both watched Danny intently.

“If you say so,” he said.

“Bloody right I say so, young fella.” Crooked front teeth flashed when the man smiled. “Sorry again. I didn’t mean to hurt ye, like.”

His expression of remorse intensified Danny’s unease.

“I’m fixing a friend’s window and came back to get some things I need.” Pat tapped the duffel bag and laughed, but the attempt at levity sounded as artificial as his
apology. “Tell Piper I’ll see her right about the mirror.”

“Don’t tell me you broke that?” the woman said, glancing over at the fragments. “That’s seven years bad luck.”

“Aye, but whose?” Pat snorted.

“Was it you broke it, Pat?”

“Technically, Danny here did,” he said, as he slipped on his bomber jacket.

“Oh, thank God for that.”

Her friend’s false teeth separated from her gums with a tiny sucking sound every time she chewed on the ginger snap. At sixty-eight-years-old, Agnes was twelve years
younger than Martha, their friendship starting because their late husbands had been close friends since their service in the Royal Navy. Agnes’ marmalade cat padded into the living room with
his bent tail held high. He stopped abruptly as he was passing by Martha and began to sniff, his head lifting higher and higher until it disappeared beneath her skirt.

Agnes rose hastily and brought him back to her chair. She’d just treated Martha to lunch at her favourite café on King Street, a weekly outing both women looked forward to, but it
had not been pleasant. Martha smelled and the young waitress made it obvious without actually saying a word that she didn’t want to serve them. A proud woman who’d always been
fastidious about her appearance, Martha had begun of late to forget to bathe and her clothes reeked of stale perspiration. It pained Agnes to see this and decided she must come over to
Martha’s flat more often and help her out.

“You’re ever so lucky to be living across the river now, Martha. Things have changed on this street and not for the better. That hussy next door is forever entertaining and
she’s so noisy. The council won’t do a thing when I complain.”

“Young people today have no respect.”

They fell silent, the ticking clock and Martha’s moving teeth the only noises in the room.

“You need to keep your appointments with Doctor Berg,” Agnes said. “She works for the National Health Service and could report you as a no show and you know what kind of
trouble that might bring.” She sipped her tea. “They could send out a social worker and they do like to interfere.”

“Why does Blair allow doctors that don’t speak like us to work over here?”

“It’s all to do with the European Economic Community.” Agnes recalled what her husband used to say, how the Germans lost the war only to get their companies and people into
England when it joined Europe. “Charlie and your Norm always said we should never have joined the E.E.C.”

“Poor Norm,” said Martha. “I always thought I’d be first to kick the bucket.”

“Women last longer.” As she leaned toward her friend, she caught a whiff of body odour. “You know what, Martha? I’m in the mood to reset that barnet of yours.”

“Nothing wrong with my bleedin’ hair.”

“A new do will be as good as a tonic.”

“Not today.”

“Why not? We’re not doing anything. What I’ll do is go upstairs right now and run you a nice hot bath. After you’ve soaked, I’ll nip in and wash your barnet. And
while I’m at it, I’ll pop your things into the washing machine because I’m just about to do a load.”

As the silence stretched, Agnes wondered if Martha’d guessed what she was attempting to do. A car drove up quickly outside. The driver began to park in the vacant spot beside Agnes’
house. She approached the window and drew back the net curtain half-an inch with her finger.

“Speak of the devil and she appears.” Agnes drew the curtain back a fraction more. “She’s got three with her today. A blonde woman I’ve been seeing a lot of lately
and two blokes.”

“Who, dearie?”

“That Ralston slag.”

As she watched Julia take a case of beer from the car and hand it to one of the men, Agnes wondered how she could ever have considered the tart a match for her son and make his dream of
combining both houses a reality. The sale of the house devastated him, reopening the festering wound of his having been passed over for a funeral director position at his job and the catalyst
resulting in his hastily leaving Agnes to take a position at a funeral establishment in a bleak South Yorkshire town.

She hadn’t needed to use the fake journalist’s pass she’d tucked in the pocket of her skirt to get into Westminster Palace. Security hadn’t even
inspected her backpack. Having once served as a Congressional page while a high school student, Piper had experienced negotiating political establishments albeit the workings of Westminster and
Capitol Hill very different.

Locating Paisley’s office wasn’t as easy. When she arrived at the bustling Central Lobby, the tall arched hallways of polished marble ran off in several directions. Clusters of
people were gathered chatting spiritedly to Members of Parliament and their staff. She asked an old man dressed in a cute, old-fashioned uniform, who turned out to be a member of the Commons
security, and he’d helped her.

Before she entered Paisley’s office, Piper whipped out the journalist’s pass and slung it around her neck. A member of his staff sat at a desk in the reception area, his face and
pristine white shirt striped like a zebra from the rays of sun streaming through the adjacent venetian blinds. He looked up as she approached.

“Sheila Doughty,
New York Times
.” She held out her hand. The aide shook it very tenuously. “I’m here to see Mr. Paisley.”

“Doctor Paisley’s not expecting any reporters,” he said, in a nasal Northern Irish accent, the kind she’d used to think was Scottish but now knew as Ulster Protestant.
“The procedure is to call and request an interview. Even for American journalists.”

She let the sarcasm slide. “I’ve been here interviewing another MP and thought I’d drop by on the off-chance.”

“I take it ‘off-chance’ is part of your journalistic armoury, Miss Doughty.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the member’s name?”

“Excuse me?”

“The member you interviewed.”

“I don’t disclose that kinda information until my story’s in the can.”

“Quite.”

He was a cold fish. Changing tactics, Piper flashed him a bright smile. “Is it really not possible to ask if Doctor Paisley would see me for a few minutes, Sir? I’d be really
grateful.”

“Nothing I can do.”

“I tried to meet with him when I was over in Northern Ireland but he had to cancel.” She smiled again. “Please.”

The aide sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. He’s leaving in an hour to catch a flight back to Belfast. I’m sure you know Doctor Paisley’s busy dealing with issues
relating to the upcoming elections.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m assuming that’s what you want to talk to him about?”

“Of course.”

Telling her to take a seat on one of two chairs placed adjacent to the door, the aide disappeared down the nearby hallway. Dust motes agitated by his departure floated in the shafts of sunlight.
Down the hall she could hear phones ringing and people talking. Her own mobile phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket.

“Can’t talk for long, Todd.” She kept her eyes on the hallway entrance. “I’ve bagged him. You owe me big time.”

When she’d told Todd about her plans to get an interview with Paisley by posing as a journalist he’d said she didn’t have the nerve to pull it off, even bet her five pints of
the most expensive draft beer that she wouldn’t go through with it. She knew now how real journalists in the field felt when they got a scoop. It made her think she should more seriously
consider becoming a journalist, either here or on her eventual return to the States.

If she did become one, Piper knew she’d work only for a prestigious outlet. One of the big networks if television or
The New York Times
if print. She could never do the regional
beat with its incessant flurry of shootings, road accidents and fires. Her mind’s eye skipped to her
New York Times
job interview and she pictured herself revealing the ruse
she’d played to get to Paisley, backing it up by handing the interviewing editor a copy of her dissertation containing his comments as the evidence.

Footsteps started down the hallway. “Gotta go.”

The aide approached. “Doctor Paisley will see you shortly.”

“Thank you so much.”

Minutes later, a middle-aged woman whose glossy smile proved incapable of extinguishing her natural frown lines appeared at the opening to the hallway. Her head jerked back slightly as she
scrutinised Piper, taking in her face, clothes and backpack in one incisive sweep. She turned to the aide, said she needed to speak to him immediately and walked away.

Alert to the sinister vibes, Piper rose and watched them pass along the corridor and go through the second doorway. She sneaked down the hall. The first office was empty, as she heard the
woman’s urgent voice in the next office.

“My instinct’s never wrong,” the woman said. “I’ve dealt with too many media types to know that woman’s no reporter, never mind one from
The New York
Times.

“She did seem a bit young,” said the aide.

“She could even be dangerous. Didn’t you see her rucksack?”

“Security would have checked that.”

“Security here’s not like in Stormont.” A phone rang. The woman answered. “Make it fast.” The receiver slammed down on its cradle. “The police are on their
way to question her. Go out and stall her till they get here. Tell her… ”

Piper fled down the hallway and out the door as fast as her six-inch heels and pencil skirt would permit. She ripped off the journalist’s pass as she scuttled along the outside corridor,
expecting at any moment to hear the screech of alarm bells, a security code or even an alert blared from the banks of latent speakers she knew must be mounted within the building’s nooks and
crannies. Arriving at the stairs, she attempted to negotiate them in twos but couldn’t. Two policemen came up the last flight of stairs, one carrying a walkie talkie, the other a machine gun.
Her heart stopped but her feet clicked onward and she whipped out her mobile and pretended to take a call. Affecting an English accent as the policemen drew closer, she said, “It’s
simply got to be struck from the bill. It’s got to. If it isn’t, Tony won’t be happy when I talk to him, believe you me.” She nodded perfunctorily as they passed by,
cringingly aware of her grimy backpack. The men nodded and continued up the stairs.

The policeman’s walkie-talkie crackled to life just as she exited the stairs. She walked at a brisk pace, the back of her heels on fire because the thin leather ankle strap had rubbed her
skin raw. She hoped she was headed in the right direction. Moments later, she arrived at the hexagon shaped Central Lobby and threaded her way through knots of people toward the Saint
Stephen’s entrance. A group of school children, the girls in grey pinafores and boys in shorts, shuffled in pairs toward the exit. Piper joined them. Someone touched her right shoulder. She
spun round to see a liver-spotted hand with a shiny wedding band.