Driftnet (8 page)

Chrissy waited
until he finished then said, ‘I need to speak to you, about
Patrick.’

Neil looked at
her curiously. ‘You mean your brother. The big one with the
brains?’

Chrissy
nodded.

Neil got up and
went back into the kitchen and came out with his glass filled
again.

‘Lucky night,’
he said, toasting her. ‘Better than that Buckfast piss anyway.’

He sat down
again and pulled out a cigarette packet and offered her one. She
shook her head.

‘Always were a
good wee Fenian lassie.’

‘You were an
altar boy,’ Chrissy reminded him.

‘Aye.’ Neil
blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘It was Father Riley that taught me all
I needed to know in that wee back room of his,’ he laughed again,
bitterly this time and looked at Chrissy to see if he had shocked
her.

Chrissy was
past being shocked. She hadn’t been allowed in the back room of the
chapel with or without Father Riley. It seemed being a good wee
Catholic girl had had its blessings after all.

‘Somebody’s
blackmailing Patrick,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘He’s gay.’

‘Fucking stupid
word,’ Neil said. ‘None of the ones I meet are any fun. Just queer.
So what do you want me to do?’

‘I want to know
who it is.’

‘And you think
I can find out, being in the business myself, you mean?’

Chrissy didn’t
know how to answer that one so she kept her mouth shut. Neil looked
at her shrewdly.

‘Got any
money?’ he asked.

She took out
the hundred she’d taken from the cashline machine.

‘A
picture?’

He took
Patrick’s picture from her and the money and then leaned back on
the tipping couch and took a long draw at the cigarette.

‘It’s not a
crime to be gay, you know.’

She gave him a
look that said it all.

‘Oh I see, once
a Catholic always a Catholic. Eh, Chrissy?’

‘I don’t care
about all that. It’s his job at the Catholic school. If the Marist
brothers found out about this, he would have to leave and my dad
and my brothers... they hate that sort of thing. If my dad finds
out Patrick’s gay, he’ll ban him from the house and my mum wouldn’t
get to see him.’

‘Happy
families, eh? Did you bring the note?’

She took the
note from her pocket and handed it over.

He read it and
whistled.

‘Patrick hasn’t
seen it,’ she said. ‘It came to the house and my mother opened it.
I told her it was just somebody jealous of Patrick.’

‘Your big
brother’s running with the wrong people, Chrissy. He wants to get a
nice steady boyfriend.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Okay. If I get
you a name what are you going to do then?’

She shook her
head because she didn’t know. All she wanted at the moment was a
name. That was enough.

Neil looked at
his watch, then got up and went to the door. ‘You’d better go now,
unless you’ve changed your mind about that shag.’

Chrissy handed
him the lab phone number.

‘I know where
you work,’ Neil said, stuffing the bit of paper in his pocket.
‘I’ve seen you from the park.’

When Chrissy
reached the street, it had started to spit. She stopped and
fastened her jacket and turned her collar up. A big car was parked
along the road under a street lamp, its soft velvet grey touched
with drops of rain. When she reached the corner she turned to see
Neil open the back door of the car and slip inside.

Neil MacGregor
had lived along the road from Chrissy until his father finally
chucked him out of the house for good. His father was a wide boy
himself and there wasn’t room for two wide boys in the same house.
Mrs MacGregor had enough on her hands looking after one.

Neil’s father
liked a wee drink. A wee drink taken frequently and especially on a
Thursday night when half the population of the street was in the
pub while the other half were at the bingo; or in Chrissy’s mother
case at something in the chapel.

If ever a man
was prayed for, Chrissy thought, it was her father.

Chrissy’s
mother called Neil a wee toe-rag, but there was something about him
that would ‘get him a jeely piece at any door’.

When Neil’s big
brother joined the parachute regiment and was sent to Belfast,
Neil’s mother and Chrissy’s mother had their own line of candles in
the chapel for him. It didn’t stop him being killed, his stomach
blown out and splattered on a woman with a pram who was walking by.
Neil’s father liked a wee drink even more after that and Mrs
MacGregor lost sight of Neil in her endless trips to the
chapel.

Chrissy laid
her face against the bus window and watched the drops of rain skid
off in annoyance. Neil hadn’t changed much. The dark hair and blue
eyes (shanty Irish her mother used to call him), and the grin that,
in another city, might have made him a movie star.

The bus began
to crawl up through St George’s Cross and onto Maryhill Road. On
the right a block of flats loomed out of the rain.

Chrissy and
Patrick had been two of the few on her street ‘to make good’,
outside the ones that joined the army. Chrissy’s three other
brothers existed on handouts from her, Patrick and the State.
Sometimes she thought they were the lucky ones. If she hadn’t been
giving away so much of her wages she could have moved into a flat
of her own and she would have been headed there now instead of
sitting on the bus back to Maryhill.

Chrissy knocked
her head against the window. If there was one thing she’d learned
in chapel, it was to suffer in silence. Father Riley had taught the
weans that well. Even Neil had kept his mouth shut. Old Riley was
gone now. Not to a better place but to an old folks home for
retired priests. Not much chance of a wee fuck in the back room
there.

When the bus
stopped at the terminus, Chrissy sat until everyone else got out.
She didn’t want to walk along with anyone and have to talk. She
needed time to rehearse her speech to her mother about how the
letter about Patrick was all bullshit (she’d have to find another
word for that because she wasn’t allowed to swear, even in a house
that had heard the word ‘fuck’ more often than the Pope said his
prayers). Patrick was seeing a girl, that’s what she would tell her
mother. She’d met her, and he was even talking about bringing her
up to the house soon. Her name was Teresa, so she must be one of
us. If Chrissy got it right her mother could miss her
candle-lighting trip tonight and maybe even sit down with a wee
sherry and watch the telly.

Convincing her
brothers, Chrissy knew, would be another matter.

Chapter 9

Sean was gone.
All that remained was the clatter of his feet on the stairs, the
bang of the outside door and the retreating hum of the taxi. Rhona
stood silently in a room that still echoed with his anger.

‘This is
stupid, Rhona. First you’re not going, then you’re going, then
you’re not going. What the fuck is going on?’

‘I don’t want
to go, that’s all.’ She knew she sounded unreasonable.

‘But you told
Chrissy you were going. You took time off to go.’

‘I’ve changed
my mind.’

‘Why?’

She didn’t
answer. Couldn’t answer.

‘If it’s about
the woman in the Art Gallery...’

She didn’t want
to talk about her so she interrupted. ‘I can’t leave the lab. We
haven’t finished the murder tests yet.’

‘Fuck the
murder tests.’ He came towards her.

‘Don’t!’

‘Don’t what
Rhona?’

‘Don’t touch
me!’

He stopped in
his tracks and the look he gave her froze her chest. She hadn’t
meant to say it like that. She didn’t want him to touch her because
it would make her go with him and she couldn’t go and she couldn’t
tell him why.

She had never
seen him angry before. He turned from her and headed for the
door.

‘Sean,’ her
voice was a whisper.

His was cold,
remote. ‘I’ll phone you when I know where I’m staying,’

She had nodded,
unable to argue any more. Now she felt suddenly bereft. She didn’t
want him to go like that, didn’t want him to go at all. She wanted
him here. She wanted to tell him what was really wrong. Tell him
about this nightmare. Let him talk sense into her. But that would
mean revealing herself. And she couldn’t do that. Not now. Perhaps
not ever.

Her heart was
drumming in her chest. The cat dropped from the back of the couch
and wrapped itself around her legs, miaowing. She bent to stroke
its head and its neck stretched to run with her hand.

As usual,
everything important has been left unsaid, she told herself. She
had simply created more ghosts between them.

Sean hadn’t
believed her excuses about the tests. He knew she was lying. They
weren’t short-staffed any more either. Tony was back from his
holiday in Mexico. In fact it was something Tony said that had
given her the idea, that she might pretend to go to Paris with
Sean.

‘I agree with
Chrissy,’ he’d told her. ‘You look like shit.’

‘Thanks
Tony.’

‘You need a
break. Go with lover-boy to Paris, have endless sex and leave me to
run this lab the way I want. For a week at least.’

So she’d
agreed. She told Chrissy she would go. She even went out with her
after work on Thursday to buy new underwear for the trip.

But it was all
a lie.

She had lied to
Sean, made him think she was going. Until the last minute. The
cruelty of her actions frightened her. She made excuses, saying to
herself, if he could see another woman on the quiet, she could keep
the truth from him.

Rhona switched
on the gas fire, sat down on the couch, picked up a cushion and
hugged it to her. The cat jumped up lightly and rubbed itself
against the cushion, manoeuvring it into shape before it plopped
down on top. Rhona stroked the velvety ears and the purring settled
into a pleasant drone that began to calm her. If she had tried to
tell Sean about the nightmares, she thought, she would have to
explain why the boy’s death haunted her. He had been with her long
enough to know that dealing with death was not normally a problem
for her. She would have had to tell him about Liam. And she had
never told anyone about Liam.

So she phoned
the number the hospital had given her. A woman answered. Sensing
her reluctance to speak and the likelihood that the phone would be
put down, the woman suggested calling in to talk things over with a
counsellor. Rhona made an appointment.

When the time
came, she’d managed to find a million reasons why she couldn’t go.
Instead, she waited for an evening when Sean was playing at the
jazz club, and phoned Edward at home. She explained about the
murder and the birthmark and told him she had to know what had
happened to their son.

The silence at
the other end was as deep as the chasm between them. Edward cleared
his throat. He didn’t think that would be wise but, and here he
interrupted her angry reply, if she insisted on this line of
action, there was someone he knew who might help. Rhona must agree
to say nothing about any of this to anyone, not even her
Irishman.

And she had
agreed.

‘I’ll phone you
back,’ Edward said.

‘When?’

‘I don’t know.
Sometime this week. And Rhona? If you’re not in, I’m not leaving a
message about this on an ansaphone.’

‘You won’t need
to. I’ll be here.’

So she told
Chrissy and Tony she was taking the week off to go to Paris with
Sean and she told Sean she couldn’t go with him because she was too
busy at work.

Rhona moved the
protesting cat from her stomach and reached for the remote. She
switched the television on, flicking through channels until she
found the early evening news. She sat impatiently through the usual
political headlines, then at last the announcer stated that there
would now follow an appeal by the mother of the Glasgow murder
victim. Flanked by two Detectives and surrounded by newspaper men,
sat a small, dark-haired woman. A woman who looked nothing like the
murdered boy.

Rhona leaned
back on the couch while the camera moved in, as if it needed to be
closer to hear her whispered words, so close that Rhona could see
the red swollen eyes, the skin sagging with distress. The woman
became suddenly aware of the camera and drew herself up, taking a
deep breath, she began.

My son has been
murdered. Her voice pierced Rhona’s heart. He has been murdered by
a madman. A madman who preys on boys. My son was a clever boy. A
boy with a future. I loved him. Please help the police find Jamie’s
killer. If you have children you will understand. Her voice began
to falter. Please, please tell the police anything that might help,
before this madman kills again... The words petered out and the
camera moved aside, as if embarrassed by so much grief.

Now it was the
turn of the policeman on her right.

Bill looked
exhausted but he was as professional and cogent as ever. He evenly
explained that the murder victim, James Fenton was a student of
Computing Science at Glasgow University. A quiet hard working
student, who kept himself to himself. The police had in their
possession a curtain that had been spread beneath his body. It was
their belief that the murderer had left in a hurry and that he
would otherwise have taken this curtain with him. Someone might
recognise it.

The camera
swung to the left. After the greyness of grief, the bright swirling
colours of the curtain dazzled Rhona’s eyes.

Rhona spent the
next day sifting through forensic journals for articles she had
promised herself to read. She went out briefly for fresh milk and
bread and hurried back, worried that Edward might phone in her
absence. But it was Sean who phoned first. He always sounded more
Irish on the phone, as if distance marked out who he was more
clearly.