2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (28 page)

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Boma knows fine who they are and why they’re here, but he makes them produce their badges at the front door, as a matter of habit or a point of principle, and very likely both.

The 2005-vintage Boma is a more muscular beast than its eighties prototype, but there’s still no mistaking the model. He looks as cadaverous as ever, a hollow gauntness about his face, made all the more sinister by his honed bulk beneath, the better to manifest the cruelty behind his eyes. He’s lost much of his hair but the difference is minimal because the ingrained image she has of him is with a close-shaved bullet crop. It was around Primary Five, when he threw mud in her friend Helen’s face. Karen didn’t see the incident, but kept an eye open for the perpetrator thereafter. Safe to assume he’s done a lot worse since.

They say they need to talk to him to try to work out what was behind his father’s death. They know he’s going to tell them nothing, but they have to go ahead with it anyway. It’s like a courtship dance. To the outsider, it might look daft and even pointless, but important—if tiny—details could still be communicated.

Boma stands by the fireplace, arms folded, like he’s guarding the living room. His eyes look heavy. He’s knackered, burdened, and may even have shed a private tear. Right now, though, he’s all shaped up and strictly in character. They are enemies and they are in his father’s home. Every query is rebuffed, treated
as a
means of casting aspersions on the dear departed rather than an attempt to understand why he died.

“My da was a victim, no a suspect,” he says several times. He is particularly indignant on this point when they ask if there is any reason he can think of why someone might have wanted his father dead. It’s like his defence of the man has to be all the more effusive now, because he wasn’t there to watch his back when it really mattered.

Outrage on the issue of who chibbed his wee brother is conspicuously lacking, an observation that causes Karen to notice another omission. Old Johnny liked his family photos. There are several along the ostentatiously grand marble mantelpiece and perched on top of a widescreen TV vast enough to be one model down from a Jumbotron. Still more adorn prominent spots in a display cabinet, others atop floor-standing speakers and the window sills. Siobhan, the only daughter, makes the most appearances, closely followed by the late Mrs Turner. Boma and Joe are well represented too, in images spanning three decades; you could probably date each one fairly accurately by the style—or latterly sponsors—of the Celtic jerseys the boys are wearing in almost every pose. Robbie’s face does not appear once.

Karen makes a show of looking at them all, turning to take in the whole room, and then lifting one from a side-table. It’s of Siobhan, a wedding photo.

“Your sister must have been the apple of her daddy’s eye, eh? Beautiful girl.”

“Whit aboot it?” Boma asks, rendering it close to one syllable.

“She lives abroad now, doesn’t she?”

“Aye. Canada. She’s flyin back, but. Gets in today, I think. Might be here already.”

“Must have been rough for your dad. Daughter away, then Joe inside. No wonder he’s got so many photos. None of Robert, though. Why is that? Or did you take them down?”

“If I say aye, does that mean I reckon he killed my da and I went and stabbed him for it?”

“How could it?” Karen says. “You were away fishing somewhere. Where was it? Perthshire?”

“Sutherland. But I know how you cunts think.”

“
Do
you think he did it? He and your dad had their issues, didn’t they?”

“I don’t know what happened. And I never touched any photies.”

“Fair enough.”

Tom picks up a shot of Boma and his dad in Celtic tops and sombreros, arms around each other’s shoulders.

“This Seville?”

“Aye,” he says, looking for the first time slightly vulnerable. Well played, DI Fisher. “Put it doon. That’s precious noo.”

“Aye, must be,” says Tom, placing it down gently. “Quite a memory. A European final. Eighty thousand folk. Wonder where that eighty thousand were when Macari was in charge. Lot of folk awfy busy on Saturdays back then.”

“I’ve always went, thick or thin,” he insists, taking the bait. “My season ticket is for roughly the same spot where I used tae stand in the auld Jungle. If it’s glory-hunters ye want to talk aboot, go tae Ibrox an ask where aw thae cunts came fae after Souness arrived.”

Tom puts up his hands. “Wasnae havin a go, pal. I’m a Tim myself.”

Karen’s mobile rings. She reflexively reaches for the ‘Busy’ button, but pauses momentarily as she notes the caller. It’s Martin Jackson. Maybe the Perry Mason wannabe is calling to bust the case wide open. Mustn’t mock too much, right enough. The way it’s going so far, anything he’s come up with will be an advance on what she has.

Tom continues chatting about football for a few minutes, but Karen knows he’s already got what he wants. It’s now an exercise in covering his tracks. Boma isn’t being seduced by the fellow-Tim line, however. As has been the case all along, he’s letting the polls do all the talking, and answering with the utmost bristling, begrudged brevity. Model crook; his father would have been proud.

Her mobile vibrates again, this time receiving a text message. Like the call, it’s from Martin, and the bugger
has
come up with something. Isn’t that just like the class smart-arse? She scans the lines a couple of times to be sure she’s grasped what he’s getting at, training and self-discipline working hard to suppress a smile, then turns to Boma.

“Just before we go, Brian, can I just ask you…when was it your dad decided to sideline into property development?”

“Property development? I don’t have a scooby whit you’re talkin aboot,” he says. But before he says it, there is the merest pause, the briefest flash of anxiety, and it’s enough to confirm a direct hit. She won’t get anything more out of him, she knows, but this will most certainly do to be getting on with.

A
ll of First and Second Year are down in the dining hall for Mass because it’s a Holiday of Obligation. Karen wishes that meant it really was a holiday, because at least you’d get a day off school in compensation for having to sit through another service. She thinks it would be fairer if, to balance things out, there were also holidays
from
obligation, so that for every weekday you had to go to Mass, you got a chapel-free Sunday in exchange.

Karen’s resentment is compounded by two factors, the first of which is that she’s missing double art for this. Talk about unfair. Carol and Michelle in 1S2 are missing single maths and single RE, the jammy cows. Single RE is when any kind of school Mass ought to be scheduled, Karen decides. It’s time already allocated to the subject, and it being a single period would keep the service down to a maximum of thirty-five minutes. Right now she’s looking at an hour and ten, which means loads of miserable hymns and a long sermon from Father Flynn, during which he’s bound to tell them all for the hundredth time about the oppressed people in Poland. Karen’s been watching John Craven’s
Newsround
since as long as she can remember, and, between that and the annual
Blue Peter
appeals, has been made aware of dire circumstances in Bangladesh, Biafra and Cambodia. She doesn’t recall any of the priests ever mentioning these, nor even Poland until they got a Pope from Krakow. Since then, it appears to have become the clergy’s number-one international priority.

The second factor is that she has been picked to give a reading. It is her ‘reward’ for being one of the few in her English class who can read aloud a passage from a book without sounding like a malfunctioning Dalek. Mr Flaherty announced yesterday that it would be her ‘honour’ to do the first reading, and she’s been dreading it ever since, as well as cursing the fact that Flaherty, her English teacher, is also the head of RE. Her
honour
. Aye, right. More like her downfall. What better way to get yourself pegged as one of the goody-goody sooks—and even worse, a holy-holy goody-goody sook—than standing up at the makeshift altar and reading from the Bible in front of two whole year groups. Might as well turn up tomorrow in a habit and wimple.

Karen doesn’t have anything against goody-goody sooks because in her experience they don’t exist. Helen gets called it just because she’s good at her work, and made out to be dead square by folk who don’t know the first thing about her. Helen had a tape of
Dirk Wears White Sox
back in primary school when all the professed Adam and the Ants fans in her year were still listening to the
Grease
soundtrack. Okay, it was through her big sister Nicola, but it’s the same difference.

What’s annoying is that there
are
a few holy-holy sooks—such as Bernadette, who goes to eight o’clock Mass every morning before school; and that Second Year, Francis Devine, who is an altar boy—so Karen detests the idea of anyone thinking she’s like that, too.

She hates RE. Hates it. Other folk don’t mind it because it’s a comparatively easy lesson with no tests and no homework, but Karen would rather be in maths, that’s how much she hates RE. It’s hard to say exactly why, but a big factor has to be that something about it makes her feel as if she’s back in primary school, under that crabbit boot O’Connor or that dried-up old shrew Harris, both of whom would have happily taught nothing
but
RE all day, every day, if all that pesky reading and writing nonsense hadn’t got in the way. She likes being at St Grace’s, and doesn’t spend the whole week looking forward to Friday afternoon like she did at St Elizabeth’s. It’s the variety of subjects, mainly, as well as little things like being expected to follow a timetable yourself, rather than being shepherded about by a teacher all the time. She especially loves art. There’s no wrong answers in art, and the teachers never shout at anybody. Her art teacher is Miss Munro, who is the best teacher Karen has ever had, maybe because she’s so unlike any other teacher Karen has ever had. She wears crazy clothes and has beads in her hair and manages to find something to praise or encourage in everybody’s work. Karen thinks maybe she’d like to be an art teacher when she grows up.

It’s really not fair that she’s missing art for this. Karen can’t think of anything more boring than Mass, not even
Crossroads
. You just sit there listening to a monotonal babble of words that don’t seem to mean anything. The priest reads from the Bible, but it’s never any of the interesting bits like you see on telly, such as Moses or Noah’s Ark. It’s always the First Letter of St Paul to the Boredstiffyins or whatever. Only the Gospel ever has a story she can relate to, but that accounts for about five minutes out of the whole thing.

Having it in the dining hall is even worse than at the church, because it gets really stuffy with so many people crammed into it and you can still smell whatever yuck was for school dinners. Plus you have the likes of Flaherty and the First and Second Year heidie, Mr McGinty, patrolling at the sides on the lookout for misbehaviour, with a zeal that suggests they’d be disappointed if they didn’t find any.

Karen isn’t getting to sit with her pals, or even well positioned for a bit of people-watching to pass the time. She’s right down the front, alongside several teachers, as well as Bernadette, the Holy Wilma who’s doing the other reading; Rachel Andrews, who’s doing the Bidding Prayers; and Francis Devine, Boy Wonder to Father Flynn’s Caped Crusader, though he’ll only need the seat when he’s not kneeling, ringing bells or jockeying the chalice.

She feels a bit sick, nervous about what she has to do. She’s not worried about the possibility of making an arse of herself. She’s worried because simply by doing this at all, making an arse of herself is guaranteed.

Father Flynn’s got his arms spread wide as he says one of the opening prayers. He likes to go all the way with the postures and showmanship, especially here, perhaps to make up for the fact that there’s no stained-glass windows to lend ambience, and that his ‘holy altar’ had six plates of mince and tatties sitting on it less than an hour ago. “Let us pray,” he intones, in that half-singing voice, then he pauses, closing his eyes to let you know he’s saying some secret priesty-prayer to himself before getting back to ministering to the mortals.

Somebody rifts, unable to resist filling the reverent silence. Quite a few folk giggle, and there are lots of hands over mouths. McGinty is on his feet in a flash, looking around with an angry face to warn the anonymous burper against a repeat. Then he looks back at Father Flynn, by way of both apology and giving him the nod to proceed.

“Let us pray,” he tries again, followed immediately by another rift. It’s a weird one, more like a big belly rumble than an open-mouthed belch. Karen remembers—who could forget?—that assembly at St Lizzie’s when Momo was driven even madder than usual by someone farting at will. It was Harry Fenwick who got the blame, but she later learnt it was Rab Daly who had the dubious talent.

McGinty leaps to his feet again. “Excuse me, Father,” he says, which usually means the stakes have risen and the whole Mass is on hold until he’s caught the culprit, or at least blamed somebody he doesn’t like anyway. “Okay,” he says. “I won’t ask who it was, but if it happens again, every last one of you will get a punishment exercise.”

He stands with his hands on his hips, looking round the hall for effect. A third rift punctures the silence and this time he stomps towards the source, which seems to be near the back. Everybody looks round. They’ll get told to face the front in a second, they know, but it’s automatic. There’s some sort of urgent kerfuffle in one of the rows, with one of the boys rummaging in his schoolbag. It looks like James Burns, one of the year’s out-and-out headbangers. Before McGinty gets there, Burns gets up and scrambles along the row, where he starts scuffling with John-James (or is it John-Jo? She can never tell which is which). Flaherty approaches from the other side and they wade in to separate the pair, who appear to be wrestling over the smaller one’s bag. It ends up a tug-of-war, with the teachers hauling from opposite ends while each pupil hangs on to one strap of the scruffy Adidas holdall.