The Traveller and Other Stories Page 6

  “They’d got a boatload of weapons in from South Africa. Rifles, he told me, pistols, all sorts. Dozens of them, he said. They’d got some stupid so-and-so to store some of them, but they needed to put up a false wall and none of them knew where to start. So they came for you father.

  “There was a building supplies place they could take stuff from. Timber, plaster, whatever it was they needed. Took your father all night, but he got it done. They gave him fifty pound and two hundred fags for his trouble. Wasn’t bad for one night, I suppose. But he didn’t like it. He’d never got mixed up in that sort of carry on, but he put it out of his head and just got on with things.

  “Then we were at our tea one night, maybe you remember it. The news came on the wireless, and they said they’d gone into a wee grocery shop on the other side of town and shot the owner dead. His daughter came out from the back, so they killed her too. They put out a statement saying the owner was in the IRA, but the police said that was nonsense. Anyway, your father said nothing, just put his knife and fork down and got up from the table, left his food sitting there.”

  Jason remembered. It had been summer, light outside as they ate, gammon and chips, slices of tinned pineapple rings on the kids’ plates, fried eggs on their parents’. His father’s seat suddenly empty for no reason, his mother silent and far away. He didn’t remember the news. The killings happened so often, almost daily, that they barely registered. Just another dead girl he didn’t know.

  “So he went to the police?” Jason asked.

  “Aye,” Margaret said. “Not straight away. It took him a while. He was very quiet those few days, hardly spoke, didn’t eat. Then he went out one evening, and when he came back he told me what he’d done. That he’d gone to the police station and told them everything, where the guns was hid, who had brought him there, all of it. Next evening, on the news, they said about the raid, showed the guns all lined up on the television. Said they’d arrested five men.

  “We got the first bullet in the post a couple of days later. I went down to the shop at the end of the road for milk and they refused to serve me. Every job your father had lined up just disappeared. You and your sister never knew about any of that. I made excuses to keep you inside so you wouldn’t realise the other wee’uns weren’t allowed to play with you anymore. He told me that weekend that he had to go, that the police or MI5 or whoever had got him a place in London, and we couldn’t go with him. I begged him not to leave us, for all the good that did me. And away he went.”

  Jason sat quiet for a time, staring at the picture on the postcard. The Strand at Portstewart, sand and sea stretching away into nothing. He remembered paddling there, the water splashing up around his knees, as his father held his hand. Hard skin and bones, the fingers yellowed by nicotine.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked.

  “Tell you what? That your father was a tout?”

  “He did the right thing.”

  She shook her head, her mouth downturned as if tasting something burned and bitter. “There’s nothing right about turning on your own sort. No matter what they done. You don’t turn on your own. And you don’t run off on your family.”

  “Did you ever hear from him?”

  “Just the once,” she said. “That first Christmas. A card came with a hundred pound in it, saying get something for the wee’uns. I threw it on the fire.”

  Jason felt the familiar ball of hate in his chest, the same one he’d carried for thirty years. It weighed as much now as it had before he’d found the postcard, regardless of the truth he’d learned. But it weighed a fraction of the hate his mother carried; he could see it on her, feel the heat of it.

  “I’m going to find him,” Jason said.

  Margaret said nothing.

  “I’m going to find him and bring him home.”

  “Don’t bring him anywhere near me,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Jason said, standing. “I won’t.”

  They exchanged no goodbyes as he left her there.

  The man who had once been Long Dan the Handy Man walked through the morning crowds on his way to the little newsagent on Lupus Street. His name was still Dan McCoubry, they’d never given him the option of changing it, but no one here had ever known him as Long Dan. He remained slender, but his shoulders had slumped, his back hunched, so that nobody could see the tall man he used to be. And that was just as well, probably.

  It was Imran behind the counter today. Sometimes it was his older brother, occasionally his father, but Dan liked Imran the best of them. The father was a decent sort, but the older brother was surly and watchful, as if every customer was a potential thief. There was a Tesco Express up the way a little, much closer to Dan’s flat, but he didn’t like the self-checkout.

  “Good morning, my friend, how are you today?”

  Imran smiled as he spoke the same eight words with which he always greeted Dan.

  “Not too bad, not too bad.”

  Always the same reply. And the same two packets of cigarettes waiting on the counter, forty Mayfair, the same Daily Mirror along with them. Dan handed over the twenty-pound note, waited for his change, and said his thank yous and goodbyes.

  Dan McCoubry had become a man of small routines and rituals, his days shaped by a strict schedule that rarely varied. Fags and paper in the morning. An hour in the gardens of St. George’s Square if the weather was dry, back home in the kitchen with a cup of tea if it wasn’t. Cheese on toast and an apple for lunch. The William Hill bookies by the tube station at two, then over to the White Swan on Vauxhall Bridge Road for a pint at three. Maybe a second pint, but never more than that. After that, he’d head home for his tea, apart from Fridays, when he’d buy fish and chips on the way. Then an evening spent with four cans of Guinness and a few whiskeys. As often as not he’d fall asleep on the couch, the TV spewing whatever shite was on, and he’d wake in the early hours and stagger to bed.

  Routines and rituals, every day much like the last. Which was why, this morning, Dan became aware of being followed along Lupus Street on the way to St. George’s Square.

  He kept his head down as he walked, his paper tucked under his left arm, his right hand in his coat pocket, holding the two packets of cigarettes. Don’t run, he told himself. Then he gave a quiet laugh. Run? At his age, and in his shape? Jesus, he’d collapse before he got ten feet.

  Dan paused at the top of Ranelagh Street, looked around to check for cars turning into the corner. He waited for a van to exit the junction. Checked again, saw the man slow down, trying to look casual.

  Forty-ish, Dan thought. Tall and dark-haired. Casually dressed, good clothes. He wasn’t a paramilitary, he was almost certain. They would never wear good clothes unless it was a disguise. He didn’t have that look about him, whoever he was. Maybe a cop? No. Not that either.

  He crossed the junction and kept walking, weaving among the other pedestrians. All suits and designer handbags. Pimlico had been a shithole when he moved here thirty years ago, given one of the council flats in Churchill Gardens. Back then it was ordinary people, decent people, who lived and bred and died there. Now it was full of rich bastards pushing out the poor bastards like him. Gentrification, they called it. There was nothing gentle about it.

  Dan found himself getting angry. For a moment, he thought it was at the injustice of losing this neighbourhood to the fuckers with the money. Then he realised he was angry at being followed, at being found. Not that he lived in hiding, but he’d always kept to himself, avoided drawing attention.

  His first months in London had been spent in near constant fear, so bad that he’d had to go to the doctor with his nerves. Every man on the street had a pistol hidden beneath his coat, every shadow held a watchful spy, every footstep behind was a quickening approach. But he got over that fear. He had to. There was no choice in the end. He changed in that first twelve months, was hardened by it. Neith
er the cops nor the MI5 people would look out for him. He had to do it for himself.

  Now he reached the pedestrian crossing at the stop of Clavenden Street, the green man already flashing, no need to stop. Which was a pity, because it would have been an opportunity to look around, get another gander at the man who followed as he was forced to draw close.

  No such luck. He kept going, keeping his space as steady as his age would allow. Short of breath now, but not struggling. Not yet. He felt his heart knock, breathed in deep through his nose, out through his mouth, getting all the oxygen he could.

  The crowds thickened towards the crossing at the Square, the church across the way. People heading for Pimlico tube station, the fancy offices on Vauxhall Bridge Road, or across the river. They bunched beneath the lights. Dan turned his head, tried to get one more look at the follower, could only make out a vague shape at the edge of his vision. He was smart, holding back, but not too far, being polite, letting others step in front of him. The light changed, and Dan let a few people stream past him until their annoyed excuse me, pardon me, do you mind, became too much.

  Dan crossed knowing that if he stopped right now, in the middle of the road, the follower would probably slam into his back. He considered it for a moment but changed his mind. Don’t show your hand too soon, he thought. Fewer people on the pavement leading down the long side of the gardens. Hardly any at all, and now the follower’s footsteps rang clear because there were no others to hide them. Dan slowed. The footsteps slowed. He sped up. So did they.

  He reached the gate halfway down the gardens, the one that opened onto the path, the path that led to the fountain at the centre, surrounded by benches. That was where Dan most liked to sit, smoking a fag, reading the paper, listening to the flow and bubble of the water.

  But not today.

  Today was different.

  Jason paused at the gate as it swung shut behind his father. Yes, it was definitely him. Long Dan McCoubry. Not so long now, slumped with age as he was. That had thrown him when he first saw the old man two days ago. All these years, his father had been fixed in his mind at young middle age, hair still black and thick with Brylcreem, always flopping over his eyes to be pushed away with hard thin fingers. Jason summoned that image. The shirtsleeves rolled up. A cigarette behind his ear. Skin red from working in the sun.

  But this old man. His skin was almost as grey as his hair, his face sunken. The pallid, lined face of a smoker, his thinning white hair yellowed at the front by the nicotine.

  It had been easier to find him than he’d expected. He’d had all sorts of notions about witness protection programmes, new identities, but in reality they’d just set him up in a flat here thirty years ago and let him get on with it. Jason had gone to an old school friend who was now a detective inspector in the PSNI, given him the full name, date of birth, and the knowledge that his father had gone to London. Less than twenty-four hours later, his friend had come back with two men by that name. A little checking, including a peek at the DVLA database, and the one in North London was discounted, leaving only the man Jason had followed to these gardens.

  Two days he’d been watching. Just to be sure. No, that was a lie he’d been telling himself. It had nothing to do with certainty, it was beyond certainty. The truth was that he was afraid.

  Of what, exactly?

  That he’d got the wrong man? The worst that could happen would be a shrug, a sorry, you’ve got the wrong bloke, mate. No, that wasn’t the worst. The worst would be if he had the right man, but the right man told him to go, leave him alone. Jason didn’t know if he could take that. Didn’t know how he might react, tears or rage or both.

  Open the gate, Jason told himself. Open it and walk through. Catch up with him. Tap his shoulder. Call his name. Call him Dad. Whatever, just do it.

  He pushed the gate open, let it swing closed behind him, and walked along the path, heading back towards the church. His father stepped beneath the shadows of the trees, his pace slowing, as if he knew Jason was there.

  Jason quickened his own steps, a light jog, until the old man was within arm’s reach, and now he saw just how old he was, how sloped his shoulders, how bent his back. He felt a chill as the shade of the trees covered him. He reached out, a hand on his father’s shoulder.

  “Da—”

  Dan McCoubry turned, quicker than Jason would have thought possible, his face cold and empty, no recognition. Jason felt something at first cold, then searing hot, by his navel. Pain followed. Then another cold stab, and another, and another. More of them, cold, hot, pain, then something warm spreading across his belly and down his thighs.

  “Da—”

  His knees folded, and he landed on his hip, then onto his side, his head resting on the path. So very warm here. The ground so soft. He wanted to sleep. Close his eyes and let the earth swallow him. But he needed to say it.

  Dad.

  The word never left his mouth.

  Dan McCoubry turned and walked away, heading to the church, folding the blade and slipping the knife back into his pocket. Not too much blood. He glanced down, saw a spot the size of tuppence coin on his shoe. Pity, he’d have to get rid of them. But not too bad otherwise.

  No one had seen. He was sure of that. It had been quick, silent. The bastard had tried to say his name. But Dan had been ready with the knife. He was always ready. Had to be. If he wasn’t, he’d have got a bullet between the eyes. Like that time nearly thirty years back, when the man with the Belfast accent had found him taking a drunken piss in an alley. He’d zipped up, turned, heard the man say, “How’re ya, Long Dan. The boys back home say hello.” The man had raised a revolver, pulled the trigger, and nothing happened, just a dry click. The man’s expression dropped and Dan took his chance. A brick did him in. He had run home and washed the pieces of skull and brain off his hands.

  This had been no different. Get him before he gets you. Don’t think, just do it. If he hadn’t, he’d be the one lying with his life bleeding away into the grass.

  By the time he’d slipped around the back of the church and out the other side of the gardens, he knew what to do. Walk to the river, get rid of the knife. Get back home, get cleaned up, get rid of the clothes. Maybe some CCTV had got him entering the park, maybe it hadn’t. He’d kept his head down like he always did. Nothing to be done about it now.

  Dan McCoubry re-joined the crowds, the good people going about their good business, no one watching him, no one recognising him. Whatever happened later, right now, on this pavement, among these people, he was safe.

  London safe.

  Queen of the Hill

  Cam the Hun set off from his flat on Victoria Street with fear in his heart and heat in his loins. He pulled his coat tight around him. There’d be no snow for Christmas, but it might manage a frost.

  Not that he cared much about Christmas this year. If he did this awful thing, if he could actually go through with it, he intended on drinking every last drop of alcohol in the flat. He’d drink until he passed out, and drink some more when he woke up. With any luck he’d stay under right through to Boxing Day.

  Davy Pollock told Cam the Hun he could come back to Orangefield. The banishment would be lifted, he could return and see his mother, so long as he did as Davy asked. But Cam the Hun knew he wouldn’t be able to face her if he did the job, not on Christmas, no matter how badly he wanted to spend the day at her bedside. He’d been put out of the estate seven years ago for “running with the taigs,” as Davy put it. Still and all, Davy didn’t mind coming to Cam the Hun when he needed supplies from the other side. When E’s and blow were thin on the ground in Armagh, just like any other town, the unbridgeable divide between Loyalist and Republican narrowed pretty quickly. Cam the Hun had his uses. He had that much to be grateful for.

  He crossed towards Barrack Street, the Mall on his right, the old prison on his left. Christmas lights sprawled across the fro
nt of the gaol, ridiculous baubles on such a grim, desperate building. The Church of Ireland cathedral loomed up ahead, glowing at the top of the hill, lit up like a stage set. He couldn’t see the Queen’s house from here, but it stood just beneath the cathedral. It was an old Georgian place, three storeys, and would’ve cost a fortune before the property crash.

  She didn’t pay a penny for it. The Queen of the Hill had won her palace in a game of cards.

  Anne Mahon and her then-boyfriend had rented a flat on the top floor from Paddy Dolan, a lawyer who laundered cash for the IRA through property investment. She was pregnant, ready to pop at any moment, when Dolan and the boyfriend started a drunken game of poker. When the boyfriend was down to his last ten-pound note, he boasted of Anne’s skill, said she could beat any man in the country. Dolan challenged her to a game. She refused, but Dolan wouldn’t let it be. He said if she didn’t play him, he’d put her and her fuckwit boyfriend out on the street that very night, pregnant or not.

  Her water broke just as she laid out the hand that won the house, and Paddy Dolan’s shoes were ruined. Not that it mattered in the end. The cops found him at the bottom of Newry Canal, tied to the driver’s seat of his 5-Series BMW, nine days after he handed over the deeds. The boyfriend lasted a week longer. A bullet in the gut did for him, but the ’Ra let Anne keep the house. They said they wouldn’t evict a young woman with newborn twins. The talk around town was a Sinn Féin councillor was sweet on her and smoothed things over with the balaclava boys.

  Anne Mahon knew how to use men in that way. That’s what made her Queen of the Hill. Once she got her claws into you, that was that. You were clean fucked.

  Like Cam the Hun.

  He kept his head down as he passed the shaven-headed men smoking outside the pub on Barrack Street. They knew who he was, knew he ran with the other sort, and glared as he walked by. One of them wore a Santa hat with a Red Hand of Ulster badge pinned to the brim.