Where the Rain Gets In (18 page)

Fucking hell, Katie – come on; think
this through. Nobody knows about Bruno. It was twenty years ago. If he was ever
found, he couldn’t be recognised. If he could have been recognised they would
have done so at the time and traced him to Katie and not to Mike. She was the
one travelling with Bruno. She was the one sharing a room. They may have paid
cash, but the hotel had Katie’s correct name from her passport. The airline had
her travelling alone next to Bruno’s empty seat. It was so traceable a
connection, it would have taken days – hours even – to find Katie. This case
was closed; except maybe not now if they were looking for the money?

They had Mike; without Mike, would they
find Katie? Did they know where the money had gone? Surely Mike was clever
enough to move the money around to cover his tracks? Or was there a direct link
between Mike and Bruno’s money? Take away Mike and what did they have on Katie?

What did she mean – take away Mike?
Killing Bruno was one thing; even that she’d messed up, big time. Why did she
take that stupid model of the MGM Grand back from the car to Bruno’s body? It
was like saying – here, you probably can’t recognise this person, but I’ve left
you this clue to let you know where he was staying. Oh, and by the way, that’s
what I used to kill him!

Fucking idiot! Why? Bruno was still
alive at the time; Katie thought he was dead, but he was still alive. He might
have died out there in the desert, but there was nothing on Bruno – no
passport, no tickets – so why did Katie go back to the body? It didn’t make any
sense, unless it was to make sure – unless she had wanted to kill him.

Katie felt absolutely no remorse at killing
Bruno; what she regretted was losing the run of herself at the time. It was
like a maths equation – Bruno did this thing so Katie had to kill him – a
simple equation with absolute logic. She knew she would do the same again; but
if it was so straightforward, why did Katie mess it up at the time? She
obviously wasn’t very good at it and here she was, thinking of doing it again.

Was her life that good? Was Katie so
happy with the life she had that she’d do anything to keep it?

She wasn’t going to kill Mike. She’d
only killed . . . she’d only killed Bruno because of what he tried to do.

Maybe it wasn’t her fault? Maybe what
happened wasn’t her fault?

Katie checked in her bag for her
passport. If she had to run away again then so be it, but she couldn’t just
keep running away.

It made sense to see Mike first, to see
what he knew. But was she strong enough? And did it leave her exposed?

Katie stood up; she’d made her decision.
She had to find out why Mike was in Dublin. Once she’d done that, she could
decide what to do next.

She picked up her coat and bag and
walked out her office. She told Carmel she was leaving for the day; she could
see that Carmel approved.

Leaving the Financial Services Centre
during the day was like stepping from one world into another. Behind Katie were
the banks and the offices and, further back, the enclosed apartments of the
reclaimed docks – all very nice. To her left was the Customs House, isolated in
its grandeur by the traffic that converged from several directions at once. The
trucks still arrived from Dublin Port on the north bank of the river, looking
to cross over to the south side and then on through town before heading west.
They preferred to pay the charge for travelling through the city than to take
the tunnel in the wrong direction and queue to pay a toll. Traffic from Amiens
Street waited to cross the river; traffic from Gardiner Street waited to cross
the river; traffic from the north quays did a loop-the-loop around the Customs
House, and waited to cross the river. You couldn’t have dreamt it up; such a
crazy scheme could only have evolved over many years, and nobody ever seemed to
ask why.

In front of Katie was Busáras, the award
winning building that housed the bus station – only the SIPTU building was as
ugly. She crossed over the road and cut behind the station on to Gardiner
Street. The street was dominated by Bed and Breakfast businesses that sold
themselves on being so close to the city centre. If you checked their location
on a map, you would see they were right but you wouldn’t see why they were so
cheap. This was where a lot of visitors to Dublin stayed, and this was where a
lot of visitors to Dublin were mugged; it’s what they called a tourist
industry. Up Gardiner Street to the right and you were in Summerhill; up to the
left and you were on to Parnell Street – one of the nastiest places Katie had
seen in the world, let alone in Dublin.

She crossed over the road and walked up
Talbot Street towards O’Connell Street. Loudspeakers announced the bargains to
be had inside the shops, proud of their tackiness and sure of their market.
Piles of refuse sacks stood outside the fast food joints; a guy walked past
pulling an open cart of collected rubbish, but he didn’t do the sacks – that
was someone else’s job. Another guy with a huge vacuum cleaner thing made his
way along Talbot Street in the opposite direction, but still the street was
filthy. The path was splattered with discarded chewing gum – how long before
the dirty white stuff, spat from people’s mouths, was allowed to cover the
whole pavement?

Katie turned into O’Connell Street.

This city is a shit-hole, she thought.

What was wrong with her? This wasn’t why
Katie had come to live in Ireland. She used to love this country.

Katie stepped into the Gresham Hotel;
here at least was some escape from the toilet that was Dublin. She crossed over
to the reception desk, but saw Mike towards the back of the foyer, sat in an
armchair reading the paper. He still looked like Mike, a little fuller perhaps
but with the same fresh, young man’s face. She always associated Mike’s face
with the Antrim coast above Belfast – not that she’d ever been there, but still
that was how she thought of him.

As Katie walked across towards Mike, she
could see he was lost in thought and not in the newspaper; but then, knowing
Mike, he could have seen Katie and was putting on an act.

“Hey, Maguire,” she said.

Mike looked up and smiled. The greeting
was the same one he’d called over to Katie when he’d first seen her walking
along Oxford Road, on her way to the library in the middle of the night.

“Hey McGuire,” he said. “How are you?”
Mike stood up from the armchair and they hugged.

Katie was surprised by how much Mike put
into the hug; she was a little ashamed that she didn’t feel the same rush of
emotion.

“Thanks for coming,” said Mike. “I
appreciate it, really, I do.”

“You gave me little choice,” said Katie,
and sat down.

“Can I get you anything – a drink, or a
sandwich maybe?”

“I’m fine for now, thanks,” she said.
Katie was determined not to stay, or rather, to stay only as long as she needed
to. She was uncomfortable with this and said as much to Mike.

“We had a deal,” she said, “and you
broke it.”

Mike looked down at the ground.

Still so young, thought Katie.

She might have had only a couple of
years on Mike, but there was something refreshingly naïve about how easy he was
to read – a terrible face for a card player, when you got right down to it.

“You’ll see why,” he said, “when I tell
you. And I’m not putting you in any danger by being here. Gosh, it’s good to
see you.”

“Gosh?” asked Katie.

“Yes, gosh,” said Mike, and smiled. “You
look well, very well in fact.”

“Thank you,” said Katie. She decided it
was pointless to rush this. She realised her emotions were all over the place –
what else could explain that agitated walk from the office? She needed to
gather herself here.

Katie called over to a passing waiter.

“I will have a drink, after all,” she
said to Mike. “I’ll have a vodka and orange,” she ordered, “and . . .?”

“Just an orange juice, no vodka,” said
Mike.

“Are you driving?” she asked, once the
waiter had left them.

“No, just a long day ahead and yes, I
suppose, when I get back to Manchester I have to drive home from the airport.”

“You moved back to Manchester, then?”
asked Katie.

“Yes,” said Mike. “More or less
immediately after college. I was never going to settle in Belfast, so a few
months after Vegas I decided Manchester was . . . ”

“The place for you?”

“The place I felt most comfortable
with.”

The mention of Vegas came too soon – neither
Katie nor Mike were ready to talk about why they were here just yet.

“What about you?” asked Mike. “When did
you move to Ireland? I thought you had that job lined up in London?”

Katie suspected that Mike knew exactly
where she’d been for the past twenty years; she was tempted to say as much to
him, but she let it go.

“Yes,” she said, “I took that job in
London. I actually delayed starting work for a few months so I could travel a
bit – make up for lost time, maybe.”

“So where did you go?” asked Mike.

“Oh, mainly around Europe at first,
throughout that summer after college, but then further afield once I’d started
work. It came to be my thing – you know, extended holidays to far off places. I
used to take the bulk of my holiday allowance in one go; it was all I needed it
for anyway.”

“So,” asked Mike again, “where did you
go?”

“Oh, India, Africa, Australia, Asia;
some places were nicer than others.”

“And do you still travel to the same
extent?”

“No,” said Katie, “I’ve kind of stopped
ever since moving to Ireland. Living here seemed to soothe the travel itch. But
I’ve been thinking about South America recently; it feels like I might be
picking up the bug again. I’d want to do it properly though, learn the
languages and everything, and stay for long enough to make it worth my while.”

“And when did you move to Ireland?”
asked Mike.

“At the end of the Eighties. I’d really
done the London thing and I liked the sound of what they were trying to do here
– you know, setting up the Financial Services Centre, kick-starting the economy
again, that sort of thing. It was either here or New York and . . . ”

And she wasn’t going to set foot in
North America again, was what she’d thought at the time. She let it go now
without saying as much to Mike.

“I’d changed companies a few times by
then,” said Katie, “and I was offered the chance to set up an office here.”

“It sounds as though you’ve done well,”
said Mike.

“We all made a lot of money, if that’s
what you mean. But I was ready for a change; I was sick of England and
everything it had become.”

“They were pretty nasty times,” said
Mike.

“Nasty times, yes,” said Katie. “Fairly
clear-cut times, as well; it seemed you were either on one side or the other,
and I didn’t really like the side I was on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, at the time of the Poll Tax
riots, for example, I was living in London watching this pitched battle on TV;
it was just a few miles away, but for all the world like it was on another
planet.”

“You mean you had money and they
didn’t?”

“No,” said Katie, “it wasn’t just that.
It was – well it wasn’t a riot for a start. It wasn’t even a pitched battle. It
was mounted police charging and batoning crowds of people – unarmed people,
disenfranchised people if they didn’t pay the tax and I didn’t like it. So, as
I say, fairly clear-cut times.”

“It wasn’t pleasant,” agreed Mike.

“I didn’t feel as though I belonged to
either side,” said Katie. “Certainly not with the police and the government. I
just didn’t like the way things were going.”

“So you got out?”

“Something like that; only now I don’t
know whether it was England I was fed up with or London. I do know I was glad
to leave when I did.”

“And there was me thinking Maggie’s
Britain would suit you just fine.”

“The money suited me,” said Katie, “but
I didn’t like what it was doing to society.”

“There’s no such thing as society,
remember?”

“Who could forget?”

“And will you stay in Ireland?” asked
Mike.

“Who knows?” said Katie. “Where’s he
gone with our drinks, do you think? I’m ready for my vodka now.”

“He’s probably still trying to open the
carton of orange juice,” said Mike. “Have you seen those new openers – where
you have to twist off the top and it rips your hand to pieces?”

Katie laughed.

“I mean, how difficult can it be?” asked
Mike.

“To design an opener that actually
works?” said Katie. “And pours out the juice without spilling and dripping,
everywhere but into the glass? Come off it, Mike – you ask for too much.”

“Maybe he’s squeezing fresh oranges for
us?” suggested Mike.

“Right,” said Katie, “this is Dublin,
remember?”