Divorcing Jack (31 page)

During working hours they interviewed me. During lunch I interviewed Maxwell. 'Who decided to let Brinn die?' I asked. He shrugged. We both picked at our hospital food, a wooden tray each. We sparred between swallows.

'The decision was made.'

'How did you know there was a bomb in the car?'

'There wasn't a bomb in the car. There was a bomb in the cassette recorder. The unusual aspect is that the bomb was designed only to go off as the play button was activated. I mean, there was no timer or anything. That's the only thing that set it off. Could have gone off anywhere. Coogan's sense of humour, I imagine. Not something I can very easily relate to. Perhaps he knew Brinn that well that he could depend on him playing the tape. But he could very easily have gotten away.'

I had clothes. My own clothes. Members of his team brought them from the house. I felt the same sort of bond with the clothes Alfie Stewart had given me as with the denims Parker had bought me. None. It was an amicable divorce in which I got fashion and Oxfam got back what was rightly theirs.

Maxwell handed the clothes over to me personally. A black sports jacket, black jeans, a white shirt, black Oxford shoes. The shirt was expertly pressed.

'Do this yourself?' I asked.

'No,' he said, and after a moment added, 'Your wife did.' I looked at the clothes again. 'Recently?'

'Day before yesterday.'

'You mean she's home?'

'She's home.'

'And she didn't come to see me?' Maxwell shook his head. ‘I see.'

He stopped shaking his head. Just watched me.

'Any message from her?'

'No.'

'But she did press my shirt, so there's hope for me yet.'

'Perhaps. You've put her through a tough time.'

'It wasn't intentional. Maxwell. None of it was.'

'So very little of it ever is.' It was a cryptic turn of phrase, but I was prepared to let it pass.

I sat down on the bed and began to take my pyjama jacket off. All of a sudden he looked a little sad, as if his own revelation that not everything always went according to strict plan had rebounded on him, wounding his bureaucratic sensibilities. 'What's wrong. Maxwell? You're not suggesting there was a cock-up on your side as well?'

He sat on the bed beside me, which made it impossible to get my arms into the shirt, but I let him be. I could sense a confession coming on.

'We lost a very fine agent over this.'

I nodded beside him. We both looked at the ground for a while. 'Parker was a good man,' I said.

Maxwell's head twisted sharply towards me. The kind of twist that would give me a crick, but he was a well-oiled machine. 'Parker? God, no!' He spluttered. 'He was an incompetent of the highest order. Blundering about like . . . like...' He opened his arms, waved his hands with an exasperated flourish. 'Like you . .. Starkey ... and we have an excuse for you. He was supposed to be a professional . . . no, I'm talking about a very fine man who died along with Coogan.'

I have never seen my own brows furrowing, but I could tell that they were. 'With Coogan?' Their faces flashed towards me. Whole faces. Noses. Cheeks. Eyes. Skin. None of them burnt. An identity parade of the dead. There was only one logical candidate. Only one who had shown any sign of intelligence or compassion.

'Malachy Burns? Your own man was Malachy Burns?'

Maxwell shook his head.

'Not Seanie,' I exclaimed, aware of the shrillness in my voice. 'He didn't have the brains of . . .' He shook his head.

I looked him square in the eye. 'You're not serious.' It wasn't a question. It was a statement.

He let out a little chuckle; it sounded like an empty Coke can rolling down subway steps. 'Like I say, Michael Angus, Mad Dog to you, was a very fine man. Very professional. Very brave. He trod a very thin line.'

'Jesus.' I shook my head. 'He didn't give much away, the last time I saw him he gave me the fingers.'

'Like I say, he was very good.'

'He was very good, but you were prepared to let him lie.'

'No. Not quite' Maxwell clasped his hands before him, although they weren't quite set for prayer. 'Starkey, you see, in the information game, you can never quite know it all. Ultimately, it's what you don't know that makes it interesting. One door leads to another, or one door leads to a whole block of flats. We knew about Coogan's bomb for Brinn and were prepared to go with it. We didn't know about Brinn's bomb for Coogan. We were quite happy to have Coogan still around, he had his contacts with the IRA which Mad Dog could pick up on easily enough, and at the same time he was a divisive element in the Republican movement. But Brinn slipped that one past us. Someone supplied him with the bomb; I couldn't tell you who yet.'

I stood up to complete my dressing. 'The same way as you
can't tell me who killed Margaret? Coogan thought it was Billy McCoubrey'

He unclasped his hands. 'I think it would be fairly safe to say her killer came from the Loyalist persuasion. But naming someone? No. Again, not yet. It will surface one day. Quite possibly it was McCoubrey or one of his soldiers. I doubt we'll ever be able to prove anything. But we'll know, as we so often do. I know it's not much compensation, Starkey, but these things do have a way of working themselves out. Eventually,'

'Like Brinn.'

'Like Brinn’

And then it was time to go. Maxwell booked me a taxi. He never mentioned paying me for all my hard work with

Parker. I wasn't up to asking in case he hit me with the bill for a nationwide manhunt.

He didn't say goodbye. One of his men told me the cab was on its way and I was free to move on. So I stood in the sun waiting for it to arrive, a soldier on guard duty motionless and quite possibly asleep beside me. Wispy white clouds flecked the blue. The excited cries of children enjoying their summer holidays all but drowned out the steady hum of traffic outside the meshed wire of the Musgrave Park Hospital's military wing. The half-circle frontage of the King's Hall across the way advertised a gospel revival show. I was free. But not free. Healthy but scarred. Happy but desperately sad.

The taxi drew up in a diesel roar. I climbed into the back and the Belle of Belfast City grinned round at me, her yellowed teeth sharp as a shark's. Her voice was a sea elephant's bark: 'Thought I recognized the name. How the fuck are ye? Yer gob's been all over the box this last few weeks, hasn't it?' She roared out into the traffic. She lit a cigarette, turned right, spoke into the radio and spat out the window all in the one graceful movement. 'The wee man at home told me I shoulda called the fuckin' peelers about givin' ye a lift once before, but I sez to him, "Billy, fuck up". I don't squeal to the fuckin' peelers about nothin'.'

'I'm grateful.'

'Never you bother yer head thankin' me, mate. Long as ye pay yer fare you're okay in my book.'

Musgrave Park is only ten minutes in heavy traffic from the Holy Land, but in the daze of my release it felt longer. I tried to imagine how I used to be, coming home from a shift on the paper, or sitting at home trying to be literary, waiting for Patricia to come home from the tax office. Did I get a little tinge of excitement every time I saw her? Did I welcome her home with a kiss and a hug and a 'missed you dreadfully'? I couldn't really remember. But I suspected not. What did I do, storm through the door, open a can and flop in front of the box with barely a hello? Did she charge through, moaning that I hadn't put the dinner on? Dinner, beer: normality. I couldn't imagine it. How long since I'd sat down for dinner with my wife? How long since we'd made small talk over my burgers and her salad? Was she the love of my life any more now that I had slept with Margaret and she had screwed Cow Pat Coogan? What if I came through the door and she gave me that most terrible of all male'female murder phrases, the demotion with shame to the lowest of the low: I want us just to be friends. She would say it with alarming alacrity, flaunting her femininity and new-found independence. She would ask me to move out of our house, but she wouldn't be nasty about it. In my own time.

And then I thought of my shirt, crisply ironed. If all was not forgive and forget, would she have ironed my shirt? If there was hate she would have found some means to express it through the shirt: she would have ironed a rubber snake into the top pocket or removed a paunch-revealing button. But it was clean and smelt good and fitted me like a glove, or, indeed, a shirt. She would be there to greet me. We would fall into each other's arms, swop apologies and declare undying love. We would make love and neither of us would think of our dead, fleeting partners, or if we did, it wouldn't show. They would be consigned to memory with all the other horrors of the previous days. We would begin to live again.

I did not think of politics or the state. Of Brinn and the lionization that was already roaring into place. I did not think of the book I was to write that would make the propagators of his false martyrdom an endangered species. I did not think of the senseless deaths and the needless cruelties. I thought of Patricia. I thought of Margaret saying, 'The best part of breaking up is when you're having your nose broken.' Of telling her, no matter what, that I loved my wife. I'd always been honest about that. I thought of Margaret again in her cold grave in a field of death, a gentle slope on the outskirts of Belfast, and of the day I would go to see her, to say farewell, to say sorry - sorry for something. But only when things were right with Patricia. She came first. She had always come first, even if I hadn't always known it.

The Belle brought the taxi to a halt. She was a couple of doors short but I didn't have the gumption to tell her.

'It's taken care of, by the hospital, I take it?' I asked.

She looked back. There was at least an inch of ash on her cigarette; as she spoke the fag shot up and down in her mouth, but the ash stayed in place, as if it was scared of falling off. 'Aye,' she said, 'the fare is.'

I nodded and opened the door. I got out, then leant back in. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I've no money on me at all.'

Her yellowy eyes bore into me, miniature, distant suns that were too close for comfort. I wrenched myself free of their hold and slammed the door. I heard her words clearly through the window: 'Big fuckin' head, tight fuckin' arse.'

She was gone in a flash, her taxi belching one last insult back at me.

I had no key. I stood and looked at the door. I thought briefly about how to knock it - three quick, urgent thumps to summon her quickly; or a tune - turn, tumtumtum, turn turn, turn - to let her know it was me, back from the wars, all in one piece? As I stood there, the door opened, and she looked out. 'I heard the taxi,' she said. They told me you were coming.'

I nodded and tried to read her eyes. I had forgotten how to read them. Emotionally dyslexic. She wore jeans, blue, faded, housework jeans. A black jersey with a white T-shirt underneath. Her face was pink: a mixture of make-up and embarrassment, an odd concoction that reminded me of an animated marshmallow. Patricia all over: sweet, soft, full of calories and bad for your health but absolutely loveable. 'Are you going to come in?'

I nodded again and she stood aside. I crossed the threshold. The house was cool. A nice breeze blew through the kitchen window, into the hall and round the house. It smelt of polish.

I went into the living room. Tidy. Records neatly stacked. Elvis Costello was singing 'Good Year for the Roses'.

'Is that for me?' I asked.

‘I couldn't find "Eve of Destruction",' she said. No smile. I nodded again. I sat on the settee. She sat beside me. We leant back.

'Anything much on the TV later?' I asked.

'No,' she said.