The Truth Commissioner (17 page)

‘How did they get these stones up here?' he asks as his hand traces the boulders in the wall.

‘Some job all right. And look how steep it is up there.'

Alec turns his head to the section of wall that leads the way to the summit. ‘And that's where we're going?' he asks.

‘You up to it?'

‘A few minutes' rest and I'll be right as rain,' he says, pulling up the collar of his fleece as he feels the colder air beginning
to snake around him.

‘You need to watch your health, Alec. It's a hard job to stay healthy in – too much riding round in cars all day or sitting
in over-heated offices with computers and fluorescent lights blasting you. Too many snatched meals.'

‘Maybe I should sign up for the bicycle squad – have you heard about them? A couple of guys patrol the city centre on bikes
– apparently volunteered for it. Can't imagine the stick they must get about it.'

‘We'll go to the top when we've had something to eat. It'll only take another half an hour. Have you got anything in that
rucksack?'

‘A Mars Bar, a packet of crisps and a bottle of Fanta.'

‘Just as well I made extra then,' Fenton says, pouring two cups of steaming tea and opening a plastic container of cheese
sandwiches.

They huddle tightly against the wall, their backs pressed in whatever niche they can find, their rucksacks pulled like blankets
against their knees. Fenton knows now that it's almost time to let the mountain hear what it is has made Alec come all this
way. He feels safest hearing it here, hoping that whatever it is will fritter and fragment in the face of the mountain's indifferent
magnitude, that whatever it is will seem small and inconsequential, quickly blown away by the rising wind.

‘So, Alec, why are you here? You didn't come just to admire the view.'

‘Is it so obvious?' he asks, cupping his tea in both hands for warmth.

‘I haven't gone senile since I retired.'

‘I know. But it's not an easy one.'

‘So it's bad then?' Fenton asks.

‘It's not good, it's not good.'

‘Well, you've had plenty of practice in giving people bad news. Comes with the territory, doesn't it?'

‘This is personal. I'm not giving it to a stranger – makes it harder.'

Fenton looks up at the dropping, scouring cloud that he knows will rob them of the view from the top then watches a raven
sharpen its wings against the cutting edge of the wind.

‘Tell me,' he says quietly and finally.

‘In a couple of weeks' time you will be called to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It will be the case
of Connor Walshe – the boy whose body has never been found.'

‘Why are they calling me?' Fenton asks. ‘What can I tell them?'

‘The family want to know the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. They want to know as much as possible about what
led up to it and what happened to him. They want some form of closure.'

‘We all know what happened to him,' Fenton says angrily. ‘The IRA said he was a tout and shot him, then disposed of his body
somewhere. How will that help them find closure? And what about my closure? When am I allowed to walk away and put it all
behind me?'

Fenton stands up and leans against the wall, pushing at the bottom stones with his foot.

‘Sit down, James, I have to talk to you.'

‘There's more?'

‘Yes, there's more,' Alec says but falls silent while a couple of walkers pass them. This time he does not look up or make
eye contact with them. ‘This is very difficult and you're not going to like it but I've been asked to talk to you by important
people.'

‘Who?'

‘People I don't know and don't want to know. Men in suits, the heavy brigade … I don't know.'

‘And what do these people want you to tell me?'

His companion hesitates. ‘They don't want Gilroy's name mentioned. They want him kept out of the frame.'

‘Kept out of the frame? It was Gilroy who killed the boy. He may not be the one who pulled the trigger but he was the one who gave the order, the one who arranged it.' At first there's no answer and Fenton watches him pick up some white pebbles and throw them aimlessly. ‘I suppose it wouldn't look too good, even in this crazy country, if the Minister for Children had a child's blood on his suit. Just maybe some people would think that wasn't quite right.'

‘I suppose not.'

‘Let me get this right,' Fenton insists, his anger bursting open so that his words hammer home like hailstones. ‘They took the badge, they took the name, any kind of respect that was owed, and now they want to take the truth and twist it into whatever shape they think suits them best?'

‘It's hard to grasp,' Alec says. I don't claim to fully understand it but it's got to do with protecting the institutions, safeguarding the future. With bringing people inside the system and making sure they stay there. Trying to build something better than we had in the past.'

‘You believe that?'

‘I don't know what I believe but listen, James, these are important people and this is important to them. They could make things difficult.'

Fenton stands up again, his face pinched and white in the cold. ‘You listen: I've had a lifetime of being threatened by thugs, of looking under my car every day, so I'm not scared of a bunch of public-school boys. Who are they? MI5? MI6?'

‘I don't know who they are but they could help you, too. They know about the work you do for the orphanage.'

‘They told you to say that?'

‘They don't say anything directly – the words just slip out the sides of their mouths and hang in the air. They leave you
to piece it all together, work out what they mean.'

Fenton walks from the wall with his face upwards and lets the wind stream against it. His eyes catch the raven drifting and
free-falling in a great wheeling arc. He throws the dregs from his cup then walks back to where his companion is now standing.

‘I've never asked anything of you, Alec,' he says, ‘and there's been times when I've helped you so I'm asking you now – if
there's any way of me not appearing before the Commission I want you to find it, do whatever you can to find it. Will you
do that?'

‘Of course I will, I'll do everything I can. I promise I will.'

Fenton picks up his rucksack. He is going to the top now. His sense of responsibility is too great to tell his companion to
make his own way down so he hopes he will wait where he is until he returns but Alec asks if he can finish the climb.

‘If you like,' he says, shouldering the rucksack into position, ‘but there'll be no view.'

‘So you won't throw me off the top then?' Alec asks, scurrying to keep up, but there is no reply as Fenton lowers his head
and pushes himself into the steep walk to the top. He hugs the stones close to the wall and soon without looking back he knows
he has left the younger man behind. Sometimes he has to pause but only for a matter of seconds before pushing himself on again.
A few drops of rain touch his face when finally he reaches the top where on a clear day can be seen the Wicklow Mountains
beyond Dublin and the Gallo­way Hills of Scotland. Then without taking off his rucksack, or pausing to rest, he prowls about
the summit looking for a view but everywhere is blinded by mist and cloud and in every direction he looks he sees only the
face of a boy, the frightened face of a boy.

The transit van is packed to the gills. There is not a single inch of wasted space. The van itself is donated and regularly
serviced by a member of his church who owns a garage and all its contents have been supplied by local businesses or bought
from funds raised by the congregation. Piled high are blankets and new clothes; pots, pans and cooking utensils; cleaning
materials and anti-bacterial wipes; shampoos and soaps; tinned foodstuffs; writing pads, pens and colouring pencils; children's
games; packs of nappies and basic medical items. The final things to be loaded, delicately placed in any space between everything
else, are the shoe boxes – one each for the eighty children in the orphanage – supplied by the children of the local primary
school and jam-packed with personal gifts.

This will be the first time he will make the long journey on his own – on the three previous occasions he shared the driving
with another church member – but if he's honest he prefers this prospect to the awkward shared intimacy of someone else's
company and the constant compulsion to make conversation over the thousands of road miles. He has planned the route carefully,
opting to combine prearranged hospitality, set up for him through police contacts, with sleeping in the van. He's equipped
with a good-quality sleeping bag that's already laid out on top of a pallet of soft clothing. It's not possible to know precisely
the duration of the journey and in some parts progress will be determined by the seemingly random whims of border security
and customs. On a previous trip they spent eight hours sitting on the Hungarian border before getting an all-clear. The orphanage
itself is only a couple of hundred miles inside Romania, buried deep in a remote, heavily wooded region of the country. The
first links with it had been established post-Ceause
ş
cu when the media had competed with itself to find and reveal existing
conditions.

He carefully checks the
Auotorizatie
and the fat sheaf of required papers, the seemingly endless documentation. He checks he has the requisite certificates for
clothing, food and medical hygiene then stores it all in a document wallet which will stay close to his side all through the
journey. After staying south of London with an old police contact from the Met, he crosses into mainland Europe via Calais
and settles quickly into the rhythm of the road. There is a comfort in driving far away from where he's known and a feeling
of unaccustomed lightness, remote from all human contact. Through France, Belgium and into Germany, toll roads and the fierce,
unforgiving relentlessness of the Autobahns. A thousand miles and the only connection with the rest of the world is through
a passing glance from a fellow traveller or in the eyes of the dark-haired, dark-eyed children whose faces are pressed against
the rear glass of ancient beat-up Volkswagen campers which carry Turkish migrant families and what looks like all their worldly
possessions. Sometimes one of the children will raise his hand but he doesn't respond. Past the random straggling remnants
of cities, like tattered ribbons blown stiff by the wind. Glimpses of suburbs flecked and smeared by light in the consciousness
of dawn and through towns and deserted small villages softened by the twilight where the only sign of human life is a momentary
flicker in a window or the smouldering embers of a dog's eyes. Heading south across Europe through thickly wooded terrain
towards Vienna and south again into Hungary.

The boy rests his head on the pillow of his arm as if its weight is too heavy for him, so only the side of it is visible.

‘Sit up now, son, and be a man,' he tells him but the boy doesn't move. It allows him to notice the white squiggle of a small
scar on his shaven scalp like a nick in the white of new wood.

‘I want to go home,' the boy says, still not moving.

‘Well sit up now and we'll try to find a way to let that happen.'

‘You can't keep me here – I haven't done nothin'.'

‘Maybe you'd like a slap, son,' Briggs says, standing behind the boy and jerking his head up by the hair.

‘Get off, ye bastard!' the boy shouts, swinging his arm vaguely in the direction of Briggs in that favoured gesture of aggression
that Fenton knows he uses to hide his fear.

‘Sit up now, Connor, and we'll talk this through,' he says, patting the boy on the shoulder even though he squirms at the
touch. The boy raises his head for the first time. There is a red imprint on his cheek where it was pressed against his arm.
His face is pale, thin boned and pinched like a greyhound's. He has red sores round his mouth, the badge of a glue sniffer.
If he were to stand up and take off his shirt Fenton thinks that the full cradle of his ribs would be visible.

‘I haven't done nothin',' he repeats, holding both sides of the desk as if it's about to take off.

Briggs suddenly lowers his face level with the boy's and watches his eyes blink out a Morse code of fear. ‘Yes, but you have
and you have to stop telling lies about it, you little toerag.'

‘You broke into that old-age pensioner's bungalow and stole her pension money,' Fenton says. ‘You also threatened her with
a knife.'

‘That's not a very nice thing to do,' Briggs says, standing at the boy's shoulder where he can't be seen. ‘And you've done
other bad things as well, like stealing cars and thieving off your own.'

Walshe slumps back in the chair, letting go of the desk. His body suddenly looks as if it's been de-boned like a fish and
that at any moment it might slither to the floor. He turns to look at Briggs.

‘I know where you live. I'm goin' to tell the Ra on you. See if you're a big man then.'

‘So you know the Ra then?' Briggs asks. ‘Well you must be a real big shot. Tell the Ra on me? I'm scared shitless. I'll have
to move house now and I've just put up new wallpaper.'

‘Think you're funny,' Walshe says, his voice full of defiance but his eyes blinking again.

Fenton wishes the younger Briggs would refrain from obscenities. He considers it disrespectful to the force, thinks it reduces
everything and all of them to the same level, but he says nothing, knowing that younger officers see some things differently.

‘Well think of this, Connor, my brave boy,' Briggs says, bending his knees with a loud creak, lowering his face level again
with the boy's, ‘maybe we'll tell the Ra about you. Tell them how you broke into that old woman's house and assaulted her.
Tell them how you held a knife to an old woman of eighty and stole her pension and her rings. Stole the old woman's wedding
ring.' He straightens up and walks a circle of the table. ‘You know what's going to happen then, don't you, son? They'll shoot
your kneecaps off – no, wait, maybe they'll decide not to waste the bullets and use a baseball bat. Bullet's always cleaner,
not so many bits. And no doubt because you're such an expert I'm sure you've heard they're starting to use ones with nails
in them. Makes a desperate mess, as you might imagine.'