Divorcing Jack (14 page)

I didn't check out. I just walked out. Parker, off to meet Magee, had a good laugh at me and disappeared with my decent clothes.

Although it was before eleven the sun was blazing down as I took my first tentative steps along the Malone Road. It was the first time it had really felt like summer: car windows were down; T-shirts were on; summer frocks were being taken out of mothballs on the Sandy Row. By the seaside the last candyfloss seller in Ireland would be rubbing his hands. His day had come. It was the sort of day when anyone would feel good to be alive. Depressing, really, under the circumstances.

The McGarry murders had dropped to second place on the morning news: eight British soldiers had been killed when a lorry full of explosives exploded while passing a foot patrol in South Armagh; the driver, whose wife was held hostage while he was forced to drive his lorry past them, was blown to bits. It was the biggest single army loss for a couple of years and the news bulletin was extended to cover it. The McGarry murder story was little more than a re-hash of the night before. Margaret and her mum were to be buried the next day. Elsewhere overnight there had been rioting in West Belfast following the arrest of two Sinn Fein party workers out canvassing and three Loyalist bombers had escaped following a firebomb attack on a Dublin shopping centre because the Garda still refused to carry guns. The elections were nine days away. The Government had sanctioned an unprecedented weekend election to allow absolutely everyone the opportunity to vote at least once. Brinn was still well ahead in the opinion polls. His position, if anything, had been strengthened by the McGarry murders.

The further I walked, the more confident I became, Keith Moon on my heart began to ease off. People were looking at me slantily, glancing at my hair, my bruising, but being careful not to catch my eye; when they walked on most bore little smirks on their faces that said: ha, the fallacy of youth, but there was no hint of recognition, no flicker of fear. I walked past Queen’s University, looking dowdy in the sun, it’s old red brick walls smudged black by pollution, it’s lawns neglected by students now that the exams were finished, only the strawberries of graduation ahead.

I stepped into a taxi at the bottom of Great Victoria Street feeling pretty proud of myself. I had passed two police foot patrols and neither had given me so much as a second glance.

I shut the door and the Belle of Belfast City turned to me and said: 'What the fuck do you want?'

I went to open the door again, my heart in my mouth, but when I looked at her there was no hint of recognition in her eyes; it wasn't even anger; it was just her way.

'I want to go up to Jordanstown.'

'You got money?'

'Yeah.'

'Let's see it.'

I showed her a fiver. She started the engine, looked back. 'I've been ripped off by too many of you bastards.'

'Not me,' I said as she swung out into oncoming traffic. A roar of horns.

'Fuck off out of it, ya Fenian bastard!' She wailed out of her window.

It wasn't difficult to track Margaret's friends down. A list of the geology department's end of term results was pinned to a notice board in the quiet main foyer of the university. She'd passed, which was slim compensation for being dead. I noted down the names and crossed to the Students' Union where I was referred to an accommodation officer who was already working on the next term's housing shortage.

He was podgy. He had calculated that a black polo neck and black jeans with a two-day stubble would make him look cool but he had missed by a mile, although I was nobody to pass comment. He was maybe twenty-six and he had that relaxed air of somebody prepared to be an eternal student. I knocked on the table he was working at, his head down, double chins exposed. He looked up with a pained expression, mouthing a calculation. He said, 'Hold on,' went to write something down, then added, 'Oh fuck,' and put his pen down.

'Hi, John,' I said.

'Hi.' No recognition.

'Like the hair?'

He looked at the mess on my head and a smirk crept onto his face. He nodded. 'It's different,' he said. 'I'm sorry ... I. . . ?'

'Sorry ... nobody's recognizing me like this ... it's my summer look ... Phil.. . Phil Cameron . .. You helped me with that grant down in the Holy Land last year. Remember, the ceiling?'

He thought for a moment, nodding at the same time. 'Yeah, sure, yeah. What can I do for ya, Phil?'

He motioned me into a plastic seat before him and I sat, leaning in towards him. I looked briefly behind me and then said in a low voice, 'It's terrible about Margaret, isn't it?'

He leant forward, hooked already into my conspiratorial tone.

'Jesus, I know. Desperate. A great wee girl she was.'

'I've been walkin' around in a daze. How could anyone do that?'

'It's a madhouse this place. Total bloody madhouse.'

I sat back a fraction. 'Anyway, that's why I'm here.'

He moved back a little himself, then forward again as if I was about to divulge some great secret.

'You know the funeral's tomorrow?'

'Yeah. I can't go. Wish I could.' It was a can't go which was a could go, but won't go.

'No need, John. You know, she's gone now. It's only a ceremony, you know. But I thought it would be nice, you know, to get a wreath together and send it. As a mark of respect.'

He nodded morbidly, his chins resting now on his folded hands. 'Yeah, just right. I think the university's sending one though. I hear most of the staff are going.'

'Oh, I know that. I've been in touch with them. But I thought it would be nice to send a special one, you know, from her special friends, her classmates.'

'Yeah, sure, of course. Good thinking.'

'I'm sure they'd all like to contribute, John. The only thing is we've broken up for summer now and I didn't take any home addresses of the rest of the class. It's not the sort of thing you plan for really, is it?'

'God, no. '

'So I was talking to her tutor, and he suggested you'd probably have the addresses here.'

'Yeah . . . yeah, we do . .. although, like, it's not really my place to give them out

'I appreciate that, John. Do you want to check with her tutor? He said it'd be okay . . . it's just the urgency of it with the funeral tomorrow. It's a pity you can't go.'

He looked thoughtful for a moment.

'I have all the names here I think . . .'

I handed him a sheet of paper onto which I'd hastily copied the names from the exam results. 'Only a dozen or so,' I said.

He scanned the sheet. He nodded his head again, blew air out of his cheeks. 'Why the hell not,' he said finally and pushed himself back from the table, propelling himself across the room on the casters of his chair to a battered filing cabinet.

Ten minutes later I had all the addresses I needed, and a five-pound contribution towards the wreath.

He was very helpful, our John. I said: 'You couldn't do me a favour, could you?'

An exasperated look. I smiled cheekily. 'Only a wee un. There's no way I'm going to get round all these people today if I'm hoofin' it. Any chance of borrowing a phone for ten minutes, so I can call them? And a bit of privacy to make the calls? I'm sure the university wouldn't object, under the circumstances.'

Five minutes later he had me installed in a small office on the first floor of the Students' Union. It said Entertainments Officer on the door and there was something inscribed in Gaelic beneath it that had been partially scrawled over.

There were sixteen names on the sheet and I spent ten minutes with a telephone book and Directory Enquiries matching them to numbers. The first three I called weren't in. The fourth was a girl called Stephanie Murphy.

'Miss Murphy?'

'Yes?'

'Sorry to trouble you, Miss Murphy, this is Detective Inspector Boyle. I'm calling from RUC headquarters in Belfast.'

'Yes?' Her voice had the harsh Newry edge and there was a slight falter in her voice as she replied.

'I understand you were a classmate of Margaret McBride? That is, Margaret McGarry?'

'Yes, yes, I was. I... I didn't know her that well though.'

'We're following up several lines of inquiry into the murders. Miss Murphy, and we're trying to trace someone who may or may not be able to assist us.'

'I didn't really hang about with her much.'

'Were you aware of someone she may have known called Jack?'

'Jack?' There was silence for a moment. 'No. No one called Jack. In fact I don't think I know anyone anywhere called Jack.'

'You're sure?'

'There might have been one in primary school.. .'

'No, I mean, no friends of Miss McGarry.'

'None I knew of. Like I say, I didn't really hang about with her.'

I thanked her and tried another two or three; they were all in but not much help. The last one referred me to a girl called Colette Stewart who wasn't on my list but she said that she was Margaret's best friend at the college. She even furnished me with a number.

Colette answered the phone herself. She had a light Scottish brogue. I introduced myself again. She immediately burst into tears and I couldn't get any sense out of her for a few minutes. Finally she calmed down sufficiently to apologize.

'Nonsense,' I said, 'it's quite natural. I'm told you were one of Margaret's closest friends.'

'Yeah. Yeah. We were very close.'

'Are you aware of her having any enemies at college?'

'Margaret? Everyone loved her.'

'Somebody didn't.' I let that sit on her for a moment. 'What about outside of college, you hang about with her outside of school?'

'Yeah, of course, all the time. Except the last month or so with the exams coming up, I'd to spend a lot of time at home studying. I'm not a natural brain like Margaret . . . was ... I had to work at it; it always came so effortlessly to her.'

'What about boyfriends?'

She let out a throaty chuckle. 'Yeah, we'd . . . she'd lots of boys on the go . . . she was a very popular girl.'

'Anybody in particular?'

'Not since I've known her. Never more than a couple of weeks. Said she wanted her freedom. It was always her that ended things, if you see what I mean. Nobody dropped Margaret. I had an idea that she was going out with someone last week. She sort of dropped hints on the phone, but she wouldn't say. That usually meant they were married. She kept those ones quiet. I think it gave her a bit of a kick, you know? Intrigue.'

'Are you aware of anyone she would know quite well called Jack?'

'Jack? No ... in fact yeah, yeah, Jack.'

I could feel Moonie at my heart again.

'Jack who, Colette?'

'I couldn't honestly tell you. I didn't really know him, he was an old friend of hers from way back. I think they were quite close. From her pre-student days, a good bit older as well. Seriously weird individual Jack is.'

'Weird in what way?'

'I don't mean dangerous or anything, Inspector. Jack is . . . well, sure you've probably heard of him yourself. He's a comedian, literally. Semi-professional, I think - you know Giblet O'Gibber? Does a turn in the Abercorn every Friday? That's why the name threw me. Margaret always referred to him as Gib, you know, his stage name. He doesn't use Jack much himself, only when he's signing on, I think. Maybe I shouldn't say that.'

'That's okay. No one else needs to know that.'

I'd heard of him okay. I'd always steered clear of going to see him because I didn't like meeting people who were funnier than me.

'Mad as a brush. Inspector. Margaret knew him from the old days. She once told me he was quite a normal guy till one day he locked himself in a room with a copy of Disney's
Fantasia
and three hundred magic mushrooms. He was never quite the same after that.'

'You don't happen to know where he lives?'

'Sorry. No idea. Inspector, you don't think he . . . ?'

'We don't think anything at the moment, Colette. We just want to talk to him.'

I thanked her and asked her not to talk to anyone about our conversation in the interests of the investigation. At the end she said: 'Inspector?'

'Yes, Colette?'

'If you find whoever did it - killed her and her mother - will you kill him?'

'I will arrest him.'

'Kill him.'

She put the phone down.

I didn't need to wait long to meet Giblet O'Gibber. A small ad in that night's edition of the
Evening News
said he was performing at the Dolphin Hotel, one of the new buildings that had sprung up along Great Victoria Street during the property boom of the mid-eighties. The Dolphin liked to think it had an exclusive clientele, but what it really had was a moneyed clientele, and that was something entirely different. East Belfast gangsters in flashy suits and droopy moustaches crowded the bar, shouting bad-natured insults at each other, while their counterparts from the west of the city preferred to relax in round-table packs near the stage where they could cover each other's backs. Not that they needed to worry. Nobody ever went armed to the Dolphin. Any violence that broke out was settled with fists or pint glasses and forgotten by the next morning, but it rarely did. Even gangsters have to relax sometimes.

Relaxation was the last thing on my mind when I arrived. I'd met with Parker in the Botanic Gardens earlier and his news had not been good. Mike Magee had told him the word out on the street, both sides of the street and right up the dotted line in the middle, was that there was a pile of money waiting for anyone who could get me. He said that the word had come from the very highest echelons on both sides of the paramilitary divide: it had filtered down in code through the complex cell structure of the IRA, while the philistines of terror in the UVF and UDA had merely gossiped it around their minions. Like it or not there was an admirable sophistication and military proficiency about the

IRA, as long as you always remembered that they were murdering bastards. Magee said nobody on the ground actually knew why I was suddenly so popular: it was generally accepted that a blow against the Alliance was a good thing for both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries, who had everything to lose in a peaceful Northern Ireland, so why pursue the perpetrator?