Dead And Buried. John Brennan

too – ‘Photographer’s fee,’ he winked at the steward with the tray. It was good to see Christine letting rip: three years of college was hard enough work without taking eighteen months out to have a baby. She’d earned this.

      It was getting on for evening by the time the rest of the new teachers had finally drifted tipsily away. Conor linked his arm with Christine’s and produced a bottle of Prosecco from his rucksack. ‘Reinforcements,’ he said.

      Christine whooped. ‘My hero,’ she said, and, aiming for his mouth, kissed him on the nose.

      They shared the bottle of tepid, slightly fizzy wine under a sycamore tree in Ormeau Park.

      ‘We’re proper grown-ups now,’ Christine said, resting her head in Conor’s lap and looking up into the branches of the tree. ‘A teacher and a vet.’

      ‘More than that,’ Conor said. He turned a curl of her blonde hair round his forefinger. ‘We’re a family.’

      ‘Yeah,’ Christine sighed.

      Little Ella was with her uncle Martin and her auntie Hazel. Auntie-to-be, anyway. Martin and Hazel were set to be married in the spring. They sipped the wine and watched the slow sun set and talked about the future – the things they could do, now they were grown-ups.

      ‘We could go abroad. How about that? You could teach English.’

      ‘South America would be nice. Or Africa. Think you’d be good with elephants?’

      ‘Sure. They’re nothing but oversized cows.’

      ‘Or the Galápagos Islands. You could look after the tortoises and I could teach English.’

      ‘To the tortoises?’

      ‘No. To the Galápagese. If there are any. Are there any?’

      Conor shrugged. ‘Dunno. Never met any.’

      ‘I’d find it hard without my family, though.’

      A scowling image of Mags Maguire crossed Conor’s mind.

      ‘I think I could live without mine,’ he said thoughtfully.

      ‘Well, I couldn’t. I’d miss our Patrick too much.’

      Patrick. A name he’d been trying to avoid. Patrick the petty crook, Patrick, with his little jobs for Jack Marsh, Patrick the killer, Patrick the butcher.

      Patrick, the little bastard who’d made Conor into a liar and – and worse.

      ‘You’d get used to it,’ he managed to say.

      ‘I wouldn’t like to have only tortoises for company,’ Christine insisted.

      Better a tortoise than a snake, Conor thought. But God, don’t let that little swine spoil today. He ruffled his wife’s hair affectionately.

      ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘time I was off. You’re meant to be meeting your fellow beaks at the Havana in ten minutes, remember?’

      They walked hand-in-hand to Ravenhill Road and Conor helped Christine into a cross-town cab. He flagged down a second cab for himself. He was surprised when he tripped over his own feet climbing into the back seat – more pissed than he’d thought.

      ‘Home, James,’ he told the driver. ‘Rembrandt Close, Sydenham. And don’t spare the horses.’

      On the way, Conor found himself explaining to the driver in detail exactly why it was the right time for Billy Bingham to step down and by hell if a team can’t beat Lithuania on its own damn turf it has no business going to the World Cup.

      And then he found himself standing in the dusk on the pavement outside his house.

      He was surprised, on opening the front door, to hear the sound of male voices laughing in the living room. Had Martin got the boys round for an evening’s baby-sitting?

      In the living room he found Hazel, rocking Ella in her arms, and Martin, on the settee, and, standing arms folded with his back to the fireplace, Patrick Maguire. Like a summoned spirit.

      ‘Daddy’s home,’ Hazel cooed to the baby.

      ‘Half-cut, by the look of it,’ Martin laughed.

      ‘Hiya, Conor,’ Patrick smiled.

      Conor sobered up in the time it took him to say, ‘Hello, Patrick.’

      ‘Christine’s not here,’ said Conor, feeling stupid.

      ‘I came to talk with you actually,’ Patrick said. ‘Business. You mind if we take a drive?’

      Another night, another car racing through the Belfast suburbs. But this time it was Patrick driving, and Conor all nerves and nausea in the passenger seat. And, thank God, no body on the back seat.

      Hazel and Martin had just shrugged and smiled and said yeah, that was fine, they didn’t mind keeping their baby niece company for a little while longer.

      ‘Going to tell me where we’re headed?’ Conor asked.

      ‘Just wait and see.’ Patrick chuckled, not taking his eyes off the road. ‘Calm head, Con.’

      Easy for you to say, you smart little bastard.

      The kid seemed to be playing games with him: feinting to stop the car outside some run-down bar or club, then moving off – signalling, to Conor’s alarm, to turn onto the Falls Road, just at the junction with Coleraine Road, but then wheeling the other way, into the city – even pulling into the staff car park at Grosvenor Road police station, for Christ’s sake, before quickly, laughingly, three-point-turning the car back onto the road.

      ‘Are we taking the scenic route?’

      ‘Just enjoy the sights, Con.’ Patrick was lounging low in the driver’s seat, one arm hanging out of the window. ‘God, this is a fuckin’ beautiful city.’

      At first Conor thought Patrick was just trying to wind him up – he didn’t know why, but then who knew why a nutcase like Patrick Cameron did anything?

      Then he realised. This wasn’t for his benefit. It was for Patrick: Patrick needed to feel in control, strong, smart – needed to psych himself up.

      For what though?

      At last the kid pulled the car onto a sliproad, took the road down by the Opera House, and then dropped into a dark entryway under an out-of-order traffic barrier. A car park beneath Bankmore Street. The rooflights were all broken or on the blink. Someone’s been watching too many B-movies, Conor thought.

      Patrick spun the wheel. The car’s headlights scoured the concrete columns, the deserted bays, the forbidding signs – ‘no smoking’, ‘no pedestrians’, ‘no exit’ – as he steered the car to a lower storey and eased into an out-of-the way space. He killed the engine and the lights died.

      ‘So are you going to tell me why we’re here?’ Conor said into the silence.

      Patrick gave him a look that told Conor what he already knew.

      Jack Marsh was half a head shorter than Conor but his waist was slender and his tailored grey shirt was tight around his shoulders and biceps. His face was marked with scars – could’ve been from scrapping and shrapnel, could’ve been from teenage acne. His pale eyes bulged slightly. His pupils were restless and he blinked frequently, sharply, always re-sighting, refocusing. He carried his jaw high. His hair had been trimmed to a military crop.

      ‘Dr Maguire,’ he said, with a smile. Ten years in Belfast had done nothing to wash the sound of the Mersey out of his accent.

      ‘Mister Maguire,’ Conor corrected him. Reluctantly he took the hand Marsh held out. Marsh’s handshake was quick, firm, unconsidered – the shake of a man who didn’t have to impress anyone – a man who knew full well what you thought of him, and didn’t give a damn.

      They stood facing each other in the gloom of the car