A Secret Worth Killing For. Simon Berthon

the familiar gruff voice was on the line.

      ‘Yes, boss.’

      ‘Billy, your great age is finally going to come in useful. Early- ’90s disappearances – I want the almanac.’

      ‘Christ, I thought we’d left all that behind.’

      ‘To the contrary. We have a new body in a field without a name.’

      ‘Ah, a ghost is coming alive.’

      ‘Ghosts indeed,’ said Carne. ‘That’s your department, Billy. Let’s get resurrecting him.’

CHAPTER 5

       October 1993

      It’s the same boy who was in the library two days ago, the one she gawped at, the one she’d never seen before. Only this time he’s got there first and taken her seat. Maire wonders if it’s coincidental or deliberate, then chides herself for being so soft. He’s probably not given her a thought. Nor should she give him one. That’s not what she’s here for, and not what she’s spent the last two years for.

      This is the final year – the year she will propel herself on the future that will transport her from home, family, place, class. From the past. It’s the year she’ll get away. For twenty-six months – she counts them – she’s stuck by the rules she agreed with her brother and devoted herself like a nun. No distractions, no entanglements, head down. No staring.

      But two days ago it was impossible to avoid the curl of brown hair falling so silkily on his collar, seeming to surface from nowhere. She’s buried in the close print of an American court’s judgement not to return an IRA killer of a British soldier because it’s a political act. It excites her. Law is not just dry argument or sterile litigation: it can bring political change, too.

      She relaxes to let the moment of revelation sink in. Her eyes settle idly, unintended, twelve feet away on the other side of the study table and somehow lock onto him. He sits ramrod straight, head forced downwards with an awkward angularity, glued to the thickly bound volume on the rectangular oak slab, a statue of concentration. She reckons he’s in his mid-twenties, glinting brown hair falling in soft waves over his ears and neck – and that one curl in particular. His pencil is held tight between his teeth – good, white teeth. She can see part of one leg encased in weathered blue jeans crossed over the other. He still has a black leather jacket on – it outlines broad shoulders and a flat stomach. He reads on. She stares longer than she means before rebuking herself and forcing her eyes back to her book. He never looks up – not that she notices, anyway. Thank God!

      Now he’s back.

      She’s suddenly conscious of the beads of sweat on her flushed cheeks, invisible to others, a torrent to her. Outside it’s a balmy autumn’s day, the early mist clearing, the sun breaking through. As she skirted the river on her twenty-five-minute walk to the library, warmth seemed to rise even from the water itself, the trees alongside glowing islets of deep ochre. Right now, the perspiration is an embarrassment, which only seems to feed the sweat.

      She’s hung her overcoat on the hooks outside. Within the overheated library, she raises her arm to remove her jumper. It sticks to her T-shirt, raising it above the waist of her jeans. She quickly pats down the shirt to cover herself. The jumper removed, she shakes her hair – and uses the movement as a cover to cast him the quickest of looks.

      Where to sit? She can’t go too near him and places her books at the opposite end of the table. But, if she raises her eyes, she will be forced to look inwards, unable to escape him as there is nothing beyond except the unbreachable wood panelling of the library walls.

      She sits down.

      His eyes seem held by an invisible glue to the thickly bound legal volume. After a few minutes, she glimpses him running his hand through his hair and furrowing his brow. She feels him straining to understand the complexities he’s buried in. She trains her own eyes to her book.

      A vibration in the table hints at his repeating the action. Twice. Each time, she holds her face down. Then, a furtive glance. Like two days before, he doesn’t respond. As if he hasn’t even seen her.

      The minutes pass, she sticks in a frozen immobility. She takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh. No reaction. She feels her concentration wavering – unusual for her. She restrains herself for what must be a full hour, but then can’t help a peep at him. She senses him lifting his chin and turning towards her. It’s a tracer bullet, stunning her into dropping her head. Flopping from the executioner’s blow. Her cheeks burn – she must be colouring like a strawberry.

      Shortly after midday, she closes her volume, restores it to a shelf and makes to go. She turns her back and has an instinct he’s watching her. She doesn’t look round to check. She half hopes he is. Avoiding, as always, the library canteen, she heads outside, up Dawson Street to her regular sandwich bar in a lane just off to the right. Arriving there, she tells herself to catch on.

      Routine is restored. She orders her usual toasted cheese-andtomato sandwich with a pack of crisps, which she sits on a stool beside a long Formica shelf to eat. She will then get a coffee and head out for a quick breath of air and her one piece of shopping before returning to the library. She is unusually hungry as she licks stray strands of melted cheese from her chubby fingers and off her light-red, varnished nails.

      He’s coming through the door.

      ‘Hey!’ he exclaims.

      She tells herself not to jump or shriek, but the sound of her heart beating drowns the words they exchange. ‘Oh, hi.’

      ‘I didn’t know you used this place,’ he says.

      She must stay cool. ‘I was gonna say the same to you.’

      ‘Ah well.’ He turns back, orders his own sandwich, then looks round at her again. ‘Fancy a coffee?’

      ‘I gotta go to the chemist. Then head back.’

      ‘Can it wait?’ She frowns. ‘Tell you what,’ he continues, ‘I’ll cancel my sandwich. Let me get the coffees and I’ll walk with you.’

      ‘OK.’ The word seems to have auto-popped out – he’s already ordering the coffees and she’s suddenly walking down the street beside him.

      ‘You’re a Brit!’ It’s almost a shriek – she can’t help herself.

      ‘Does it matter?’ he asks innocently.

      ‘Does it matter? Christ!’ She pauses. He shrugs his shoulders, as if to convey that it’s nothing to do with him.

      ‘Course it doesn’t fucking matter,’ she says. ‘Why would anyone think that?’

      He feels an idiot. ‘Sorry, I—’

      ‘But you’re a bit of a posh Brit,’ she interrupts. ‘Whaddya gonna do ’bout that, then?’ She’s putting on the full accent and idiom of the working-class girl from the North. She doesn’t know why. But transcending both is the restored timbre of her voice. Pure and unfiltered, the clarity of mountain water.

      ‘I’ll take lessons,’ he replies.

      ‘Hope you’re a fast learner.’ His apparent discomfiture makes her laugh.

      She finds herself behaving skittishly, pricking him with tiny taunts and conveying nothing of the blast of pleasure she’s feeling. Why can’t she be herself? He doesn’t seem to mind and, almost quaintly, stretches out his right hand with a theatrical show of formality and introduces himself.

      ‘David.’ And then, hesitantly, his surname. ‘David Vallely.’

      Shaking the hand with a mocking delicacy, she responds with her own introduction.

      ‘Maire McCartney.’

      ‘Moira. Nice name,’ he says, mispronouncing it. ‘I thought