Suddenly Hepburn smacked down his drink and got to his feet. ‘For Jesus sake, Gilmour! Keep your guard up. Try and
look
as if you mean it. Move your feet. Move your feet.’
The big guy paused to absorb these instructions, his red and white face tilted blankly in our direction, and the little guy stepped in with a body combo – rat-a-tat jabs to the ribs – and a big looping head shot. Gilmour pitched forward. He tipped over like a bucket and stayed there on his elbows and knees, a rope of mucus swinging from his lip.
‘Aw, for fuck sake!’ Hepburn turned away in disgust. The barman looked up and grinned, hunching his
shoulders
and rubbing his palms together.
‘How much?’ I said to Hepburn.
‘Fucking score. And you –’ the barman made a show of stifling his grin – ‘get us a real bloody drink.’ They both looked at me.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, putting my hand over my glass.
When the drinks arrived – a whisky for Hepburn and another water for me – there was a twenty on the table. The barman palmed it. He whistled something jazzy under his breath.
‘Fucking flyman.’ Hepburn looked sourly round the gym. Then he looked straight at me. ‘What did you want to talk about, son?’
‘I thought John had told you. It’s a mutual
acquaintance
. Guy called Peter Lyons.’
Hepburn relit his roll-up. He looked at the Dictaphone when I set it on the table.
‘I don’t think so, friend.’
I lifted the Dictaphone and stowed it in my pocket, but I thumbed ‘record’ as I did so.
‘You don’t know him?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘But you don’t want to talk about him.’
He studied his glass.
‘What did you see me for then?’
‘A favour. Young Rose out there is a family friend. I knew his daddy.’
‘No other reason?’
His eyebrows rose coyly. ‘You mean do I know your work? Am I a
fan
? Sorry to disappoint, Mr Conway.’
‘That’s all right. I’m not a big fan of your own work. It must take you back a bit.’ I spread my palm towards the table – the notebook and drinks. ‘When did you last do this? It must be a while.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Since someone found you worth interviewing.’
He snorted. ‘You think I’ve missed it that badly? Is that what you think?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I think. You used to run this estate, from what I hear. What did you call yourself: brigadier? Battalion commander? Nowadays? I’m not sure you even run this gym. Of course you miss it. That’s what the will he/won’t he stuff was about. That’s why you’re dicking me around right now. You probably don’t even know Peter Lyons, you can’t even place the name.’
Hepburn was smiling. ‘Very good, son. This is where I lose the rag, is it? Give you the starting prices on Peter Lyons. You think we don’t know the techniques? We wrote the fucking manual, son.’
I tipped my chair back and stared at the ceiling. The chair legs cracked on the floor when I leaned forward. ‘Frankly? Who gives a shit any more? Wrote the manual! I’m not in the market for anecdotes. Tales from the
H-blocks
. I’ve got the fucking History Channel if I want that. I came to you for help. Either you’ll help me or you won’t. Right now it looks like you won’t. That’s all right. Thanks for the drink.’
The barman was looking up from his console. He was too far away to hear my words but he didn’t like the tone. Hepburn looked over and shook his head and the guy eyed me levelly and went back to his game. Hepburn
wetted
his finger and thumb and doused his smoke with a tiny hiss. He let out a sigh.
‘He’s done well for himself, hasn’t he?’
‘Lyons? He’s doing OK.’
‘What is he now?’
‘Justice Minister. Prisons and police.’
Hepburn laughed. ‘Prisons and police. Fat lot he’d know about that. And what are you after him for? What’s he done?’
‘I was hoping you might tell me that.’
Hepburn nosed his whisky and set it down untouched.
‘You think he’s done something but you don’t know what.’
‘We got a tip-off.’
He stopped his glass halfway to his lips. ‘Should’ve let you buy this after all. Must be a queer load of money in the Scottish papers. You’re over here on the strength of a tip-off.’
‘It’s not just a tip-off.’
‘I know it’s not, son.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got a photo of some guys in fancy dress. It’s not
much
more than a tip-off, is it?’
I looked at the door.
‘Don’t blame him. He lives here. You fuck off home tomorrow or next week; he’s got to eat.’
I took a drink of water. I didn’t say anything.
‘I’m in it too, I hear. Captured for posterity. Do you think I could see it?’
I took it out and slid it across the table.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Hepburn grinned. ‘That fucking tache. I thought it gave me a military bearing, like a wing
commander
or something. I look fucking gay.’
He shook his head and passed the photo back.
‘How well did you know him?’ I said.
Hepburn was still shaking his head. I thought he hadn’t heard, so I asked him again.
‘Do you know what a tout is, son?’ He fished the
roll-up
– it was barely an inch long now – from his shirt
pocket
.
‘I’m not asking for his life story. I just want to know what he was like, what brought him to Belfast every other week. What he did with you guys.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He was lighting it now, tilting his head to keep the flame from singeing his moustache. ‘That’s all you want is it? Let me tell you something.’ The voice was quieter now, but the guy in the vest was paying attention. ‘Let me tell you something, friend. I did sixteen years. I did sixteen years in a British jail. If I’d talked when they pinched me, I needn’t have done a day. I could have walked right out the door. But sixteen years is what I did. So why would I talk now? Why would I do that? If you want to ask about the prison thing, in general terms, with no names mentioned, I’m happy to oblige. If you want my own story, I’ll talk about that. But I can’t talk about anyone else. I don’t know what John Rose told you, but that’s not what we do.’
The boxers had finished showering. The big guy looked tougher with his street clothes on. He paused at our table. Hepburn jerked his chin at him.
‘How you doin’, kid?’
‘I’m sorry you lost your bet, Mr Hepburn.’
‘Don’t worry, Gil. Next time, eh? Watch the right.’ He feinted a little, poked the air with two short jabs.
The big guy nodded. He hung around for a few
seconds
, as if Hepburn might do the intros. Then he hitched his shoulder bag.
‘I’ll see you again, Mr Hepburn.’
The door banged behind him.
‘Good kid,’ said Hepburn. My face must have betrayed me since he added in a regretful undertone: ‘If a fucking donkey.’
‘I’ll get going as well.’
Hepburn got to his feet, held out his hand in that regal backhand grip favoured by pontiffs and mobsters.
‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off, son. I’m sorry I can’t help. Anyway, it’s twenty years ago. I couldn’t tell you what I had for my tea last night, let alone twenty years ago.’ He took a card from his wallet and tapped it into my breast pocket. ‘You might need some help over the next few days. If that happens, you let me know.’
The barman looked up from his Brain Training,
watching
me over his reading glasses.
‘Thanks. I’ll do that.’
In the car park I turned my phone on and it rang straight away.
‘Gerry. Thank Christ. I thought you’d vanished.’ It was Martin Moir. ‘Lyons has been in. He’s trying to get a hold of you.’
‘Yeah?’
‘He came by the office. He knows you’re on to
something
.’
The rain came down just then – big spare bulbous drops that spotted the dry ground. I held out my arm and watched the splotches bloom on my sleeve.
‘Shit.’ I ran through the possibilities. ‘Maguire? Neve McDonald?’
‘That told him? Who knows? Stick a pin. The thing is, he’s on to us.’
‘Yeah, but what does he know?’
‘I’m not sure. What do
we
know? He knows you’re in Belfast, Gerry; that’s enough. He knows you’re not over for the Walk.’
The rain was pleasant on my scalp, the big droplets bursting in cool hard slaps that pasted my hair to my crown.
‘It’s not so bad. Rix never liked him anyway.’
‘There’s that.’
Moir paused. He seemed to be holding his breath.
‘What? What else?’
He breathed out. He said evenly, ‘Tennant was in.’
Barbara Tennant – houndstooth-suited, spike-heeled and burnished, the harpy with the weathergirl gloss – was a new appointment to the
Tribune
’s board, where she’d taken her late husband’s seat. The board met once a month in Edinburgh. You only ever saw a board member in the building when something was wrong. Tennant was trouble. She was also a partner in Lyons’s law firm.
‘She see Rix?’
‘What do you think? Half an hour. Forty minutes maybe.’ Moir sighed. ‘He’s going to need to see
something
, Gerry. Soon. He needs a result.’
The rain was easing off now, just a few dark plashes spotting the ground.
‘Yeah? Would tonight do, do you think?’
‘Really? You’ll have something by tonight?’
‘I’ll have something by tonight.’
‘Great. I’ll tell Norman. I’ll tell Rix. I’ll bell you later.’
I climbed in beside John Rose. He lodged the sudoku book in the glove compartment and turned the ignition.
‘You forget there were so many,’ Malachy said. ‘Nearly thirty. And they have this makeshift morgue with the bodies covered in blankets, old curtains, anything. And the blood. You see this guy, he’s literally mopping it up, it looks like footage of a flood, a guy with a bucket and mop.’
‘Jesus.’ Simmonds shook his head. We all took a sip of our pints. There was a daytime talk show on the telly and I wished someone would turn it down or off. We all kept glancing at the screen and feeling bad about it. At least I did.
‘It was bad,’ Malachy said. ‘The footage. But know what was worse? They played audio tapes. Jesus. The screams and the wailing. These pitiful shouts for help. Like fucking lost souls, the moans of the damned.’
We were in the Duke of York. This was the last of the journo pubs that Rose had promised to show me. Malachy Kane was Ireland correspondent for one of the London dailies. He was just back from Belfast High Court. For the past two weeks he’d been covering a trial. One of the big bomb blasts back in the nineties. The criminal case had collapsed a few years back. Now the victims’ families had brought a civil suit against the
suspected
bombers.
‘You’ve never heard a noise like it. It’s worse than the visuals: you’re trying to imagine what could cause people to produce a noise like that.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ the tall guy said. Tall and bald, a face like a boxer’s. He’d been introduced as
Down-in-the-mouth
Macpherson. ‘I was there. On the day. We got there within the hour. All I really remember is the shoes. Shoes all over the main street. The blast had knocked out a shoe-shop’s windows. But it wasn’t just new shoes. And both kinds – the new shoes and the old ones – were all mixed up together, on the pavement and the street.’
‘You do remember,’ Simmonds said. ‘You think you don’t remember but you do. It’s all in there,’ he tapped his temple. ‘And it’ll all come back. Believe me. You’ll wish you didn’t remember.’
‘Cheers, Willie.’ Macpherson raised his glass. ‘That’s a cheery fucking thought.’
Simmonds shrugged. ‘I’m just saying.’
Macpherson and Simmonds ran the Northern bureau of the
Sunday Citizen
. The
Citizen
was a Dublin-based red-top that specialised in exposés of organised crime. The Northern edition had a narrower brief: go after the paramilitaries. Macpherson was editor and Simmonds his chief reporter. Most of the journalists I’d talked to over the past few days had no interest in the Troubles, they didn’t even like to waste time talking about it. Macpherson and Simmonds talked about bombs and assassinations the way an exile talks about home. They looked like they could stand here talking all day and sometimes, according to John Rose, that’s what they did. Dublin gave them a pretty long leash. Certainly, the
prevailing
interpretation of lunch-hour seemed spiritedly vague. Another round of beers appeared on the bartop.
‘Excuse me a minute.’ My phone was ringing. ‘I need to take this.’
I walked on up to the pub’s far end.
‘Gerry, what’s the word?’ Fiona Maguire was sounding upbeat. ‘That couldn’t be a
pub
I hear in the
background
?’
‘Listen, I can’t talk, Fiona. I’m with someone.’
There were pictures on the bare brick wall, a line of caricatures, middle-aged men with drinker’s faces. The little sign above them said
The Twelve Apostles
.
‘You’re not just sitting in the Crown drinking Guinness?’
‘The very thought. I’m in the Duke of York.’
‘Just tell me you’ve got something, Gerry. There’s a big hole in Sunday’s paper with your name on it.’
I told her I’d file something by Thursday or Friday. ‘I’m on the case.’
When I rejoined the group they were talking about Hepburn.
‘Kiwi was different,’ Simmonds was saying. ‘Kiwi’s got class, a bit of style. There’s a bit more up here –’ he tapped his head again ‘– than your average bear.’
Macpherson was looking at the ground, grinding something with the toe of his brogue. He looked up.
‘Why don’t you ask Gerard Dolan about Hepburn’s class.’
Simmonds shook his head.
‘Who?’ I said.
Macpherson kept staring at Simmonds.
‘Gerard Dolan,’ Malachy Kane said, in an undertone to me. ‘Kiwi shot him in eighty-one. Before he did your man in Ardoyne.’
‘Shot him in the stomach,’ Macpherson said. ‘
Eighty-two
, not eighty-one. In front of his wife and wee lad on the Springfield Road. Took him ten hours to die. This guy’s a nightwatchman, not too bright.’ He turned to me. ‘He’s practically special needs. And Hepburn calls him a top Provo. Shoots him in the belly.’
‘I’m not saying he hasn’t done bad things.’
‘You think they’re different? Because what. Because they sent guns to Spain in the thirties? You think they’re good socialists because a couple of guys on the Shankill have read
The Motorcycle Diaries
? They’re a People’s Army? Are they fuck. O’Neill had it right: a sordid
conspiracy
of criminals.’ He tugged on his broken nose with his finger and thumb and tapped the bartop. ‘A sordid conspiracy of criminals.’
‘Isn’t he retired, now?’ I said. ‘Isaac Hepburn. I met him yesterday. He looks like Father Christmas.’
‘You’ve met Kiwi? Send him my regards.’
‘You know him?’
‘I’m joking, big lad. He hates my guts. He likes John, though.’
We all looked at Rose.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘He told me he knew your father.’
Rose looked at me and looked away.
‘It’s more than I did.’
‘What?’
‘No, it’s just: my dad died when I was a baby.’ He swirled the dregs of his pint. ‘I never knew him at all.’
I didn’t know what to say to that and neither did anyone else.
‘Jesus.’ Simmonds waved a twenty at the barman. ‘Let’s get another round in before we depress ourselves to death.’
‘No wonder,’ Macpherson said. ‘No wonder, Willie. The whole thing’s fucked. And it’s the prisoners. If we could have taken the prisoners, shipped them all to Greenland, we might have had a shot. We might have turned this place into somewhere halfway normal. But after Good Friday here they all come. These raging
fucking
egos. They’ve got no trade, no skills. They’ve never worked a day in their life, most of them. And they think they’re owed, for the time they’ve spent in jail. Me, I think jail time’s what you pay for the stuff you’ve already done, but they see it different. So who pays them?’ He tapped himself on the chest. ‘We pay them. You and me. All these grants and subventions. Funding schemes for community projects. Let’s call it what it is. It’s a bribe: we’ll give you money if you keep on not killing people.’
‘Is Hepburn involved in this?’
‘Have you seen his motor?’
I waited for Macpherson to smile but he didn’t.
‘What do you drive? He drives a new Saab–’
‘It’s not new,’ someone said.
‘He drives a new Saab on the profits of a crummy
boxing
gym? Fuck off. The government pays for the gym and how does he pay for the rest? The suits and cars and what all else.’
‘Let him enjoy it while he can,’ Malachy said. ‘It’s not going to last much longer.’
‘How’s that?’
‘The money’s running out.’ Malachy turned to me. ‘The government money? The money for these projects? It comes from Europe, mostly. And we’re not a priority any more. There’s other places with better claims. Plus, here’s the other thing. Bribing the hard men not to kill people? People will just about stomach that. But the hard men have to toe the line. Where’s the mileage in bribing someone to be a good boy and he’s out cracking heads and breaking people’s legs with a bat full of six-inch nails?’
‘That’s why he hates us,’ Macpherson said. ‘Because we tell the truth about what he gets up to. And then the politicians start cutting the funds.’
‘Is Hepburn going to lose it?’ I asked. ‘The funding for his club?’
‘If I’ve got any say in it?’ Macpherson swirled his last inch of Deuchars and downed it. ‘Fucking right he is. Come on …’ He punched my shoulder. ‘I’ll show you the office.’
*
‘Nice shop,’ I said, as we left the pub. ‘It’s not the Crown, though.’
‘Yeah.’ Macpherson was checking his mobile for
messages
. ‘It’s been blown up twice. Probably you figure you can skimp on the decor.’
After the roar of the pub the Cathedral Quarter was eerie. It was darker than I remembered, mazier, with its arcades and entries, its dog-legs and closes. For all his bulk, Macpherson moved nimbly and I struggled to match his pace as he barrelled down side streets and under archways, skipping up and down from the kerb to dodge pedestrians. I was short of breath when he jouked down an alley and fished for his keys.
‘This is us.’
I stepped back to get a proper look at the building but the alley was narrow and dark. A blank facade of blind red brick. The beer heaved in my gullet and I belched stertorously. There was no neon sign, no lettering over the entrance, no glossy plaque by the door. Beside the intercom button, on a tiny ellipsis of clouded plastic, was a printed sticker. It was about the size of the joint on my little finger, white lettering on a red background:
Sunday Citizen
. (Our own place in Glasgow has a Zeppelin-sized sign, blinding the commuters on the Kingston Bridge.)
Macpherson’s electronic key fob released the lock and he shouldered the heavy door. I climbed behind him in a smell of damp sacking to the outer office, where the fob set a green light blinking on the lock. While we waited out the ten-second delay, Macpherson rapped the glass with his knuckle. ‘Bulletproof.’ I nodded.
Inside there were six or seven terminals in a sad narrow room. The light was bad – the alleyway clogged the
daylight
and the strip lights blinked in their baking-tray
fittings
. It looked like an office corridor out of working hours. ‘Come here.’ Macpherson was stood by the door. He was swaying a little. ‘Come here and look at this.’ There was a plaque on the wall, between ruched red
velvet
curtains. The plaque bore the name Brendan O’Dowd and a date in 2001. You could comb your hair in its
polished
glare.
‘Aren’t you meant to be at peace here? Wasn’t there a ceasefire or something?’
Macpherson peered at the plaque. He rubbed out a thumbprint with the cuff of his jacket. ‘Yeah but
we’re
not on ceasefire. We keep writing the news.’ He tapped the black lettering. ‘That was our Special Reporter. Guy with three kiddies. They shot him in the head. That’s what they do here.’ He turned now and looked at me accusingly: ‘They shoot people dead for telling the truth. It was Loyalists killed him but both sides
are
as bad. Both sides are as bad. They’re scumbags, Gerry, a shower of murdering bastards. But the good people won, thank God. The good people won in the end.’
They hadn’t won much, I thought. Our third-floor storeroom at the
Trib
was bigger than this office. But Macpherson walked me between the terminals and
flourished
his wrist and swept his arm in demonstrative arcs. There was nothing to see. At one point I paused by the water cooler in murmurous wonder till Macpherson urged me on with a spell-breaking grip of my shoulder. Macpherson was bright-eyed, euphoric. He was proud of what they did here. People were willing to kill him for the stories produced in this room.
‘We’re not white knights.’ We were back at the ruched velvet curtains, the tour having drawn to its close. ‘We don’t wear our underpants outside our trousers. But I’ve never shot anyone. I’ve never hit someone with a baseball bat. I’ve never blown up a building. The lines are pretty clear here. The good guys and the bad. It’s not hard to tell where you stand. These
are
the good guys.’ He swept a hand towards the terminals, where three silent staffers pecked at their keyboards. The nearest of these – a
dark-haired
girl with a weak chin – caught my eye and raised her eyebrows.
‘I’ve got no delusions,’ Macpherson said. He frowned at the staffer. ‘I’m a hack, Gerry. I’m not a journalist. We know our limits here. We do touts and paedophiles. That’s what we do. Sex and Semtex. Come here.’ There was a pile of papers fanned out on a table by the door. ‘Here’s this week’s paper. Take it with you.’ He thrust it at my belly. I scanned the headline: ‘SWINGER QUEEN’S DAD WAS UVF BOSS’. ‘And this is last week’s. It spun like a movie headline as he tossed it towards me. ‘BORDER BUTCHER: TOUT GUNNED DOWN BY REBEL HOOD’. Is that enough? You want some more? Let you see what we do. OK. We’ve got a file on your man, too. Mr Hepburn. Jen?’ The girl raised her head from her screen. ‘Could you get the Kiwi Hepburn file, please? Run a copy off for Mr Conway.’
I flicked through the papers. Jen came up and handed me a cardboard folder. ‘Thanks very much.’ I folded the two papers and stuck them inside.
I had a couple of twenties in my hip pocket.
‘Can I make a contribution to the Christmas fund?’
‘Get yourself to fuck, big lad. If I’m ever in Glasgow you can do the same for me.’
He buzzed me out of the time-lock door and I clumped on down to the alley. I was about to take a piss against the wall when a car drew up at the alley’s far end.