Ли Чайлд - Belfast Noir

David Torrans has been a figurehead in the Belfast, Northern Irish, and wider Irish crime-fiction scenes for two decades. His bookstore, No Alibis, has been featured in media around the globe.

PART I

CITY OF GHOSTS

THE UNDERTAKING

BY BRYAN MCGILLOWAY

Roselawn

It’s the one thing they’ll never stop,” Brogan said. “A hearse. Think about it. Not only will they not stop you, they’ll probably halt the traffic to let you past.”

Healy nodded, unconvinced. The room was sharp with chemicals; the new embalmer, Mark Kearney, was learning the ropes and was still too heavy-handed with the fluid. Not that Healy had had any choice with that particular apprenticeship.

To their left, two women whispered in a hushed sibilance next to the coffin, one with her hand laid proprietarily on the satin-covered edge of the wood. Occasionally, Healy noticed, one finger would extend slightly, just touching the ends of the dead man’s hair. It wasn’t his wife; she’d been in twice to straighten the flag that was draped over the lower half, drooping in the middle under the weight of sympathy cards being laid there.

“You’d have nothing to do,” Brogan said. “Pick it up from an address in Dundalk, bring it to the pub. We’ve the back room hired for the day for the ‘wake.’ Bring it in, leave it a few hours, then take the coffin back to your own place. You get to keep the box, and you’ll make a few pounds.”

“I don’t know, Brogan. What’s in it anyway?”

Brogan stared at him, his mouth a tight white line. “You know better than to ask.”

“I’ll be the one driving it,” Healy said. “It’s my business we’re talking about.”

He felt Brogan grip his arm, just at the crook of his elbow. “Your business? How much has your fucking business earned from all the burials we’ve brought you? Like fucking state funerals, some of them.”

Not to mention all the other burials they’d caused, Healy thought, but said nothing, nodding lightly. “I know,” he managed finally. “And I appreciate the trade.”

“Your fucking business could burn to the ground some night, if you’re not careful.”

“I know,” Healy said, raising a placatory hand.

“Or, God forbid, that cute blondie you’re shifting could fall down the stairs and damage her skull. Not that there’d be much to damage in there, judging by what Mark tells me.”

“Leave Laura out of it!”

“I hope to,” Brogan said. “That’ll be your choice.”

Just then, a heavy man lumbered through the doorway, chest wheezing from the exertion of climbing the stairs. When he saw the two men standing, he raised his chin briefly in greeting, then limped his way across to the coffin. He offered a perfunctory blessing, laid his hand, not on the dead man’s, but on the flag beneath him, then raised the fingers that had caressed the material to his mouth, kissing them lightly.

Healy could feel the floorboards beneath them bounce as the man approached, extending one stocky hand.

“Bad day, men,” he said.

“It is, John,” Brogan offered.

“The last of the old guard,” John said gravely, glancing toward the coffin as if to reassure himself that the man in question was still there.

“Fucking stand-up guy,” Brogan agreed.

“He never turned. Not once. Even was dead against decommissioning, back in the day.”

“They don’t make them like him anymore.”

“Fucking watery sell-outs sitting on the hill now wouldn’t understand the meaning of country.”

Brogan nodded his head. “Country,” he repeated, snorting.

“So, how’s my boy doing?” John asked. “I appreciate you giving him a start.”

“Mark?” Healy asked. A bit too fond of the embalming fluid, personally and professionally, he wanted to say. “Great,” he did say. “A natural.”

“At handling the dead? He’s a chip off the old block!” Brogan said, slapping John lightly on the bicep. John reciprocated with a bark of laughter, causing the two women at the coffin to turn and stare at them, like incensed librarians.

“So, are you in?” John asked, quickly regaining his solemnity, regarding Healy through two narrowed eyes, the pupils pinpoints. Like piss holes in snow , his father used to call them. John clasped his hands in front of him, his nostrils flaring.

Healy glanced at Brogan. Brogan might threaten to burn down your business or hurt your girl, but Big John Kearney—well, everyone knew he wouldn’t threaten, he’d just turn up someday with the petrol can and matches and make you do it yourself. And stiff you for half the insurance claim as compensation for the inconvenience you’d caused him in making him come to your house.

“I’ll help out any way I can,” Healy said. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt with whatever it is I’m driving.”

John laughed, the ripples spreading across the shirt taut on his belly. “Hurt? Since when did undertakers become so fucking squeamish?”

Brogan joined in the laugh, though mirthlessly, his grip on Healy’s arm tightening. “He’s only taking the piss. Isn’t that right, Healy? He’s in. Aren’t you? Aren’t you? ” The repeated question squeezed through gritted teeth.

Healy saw it now. They all had their jobs to do to keep Big John happy. He’d have to collect the coffin and bring it up to Belfast. Brogan’s job had been to convince him to do it.

“I’m in,” Healy said, already feeling his stomach sicken, even as the grip on his arm relaxed and his sense of shame in himself ballooned.

“Good man,” John said, slapping him on the shoulder. “We knew we could count on you. Don’t worry. It’ll be nothing that could hurt you. So, no panicking.”

* * *

Flu season was always busy, but this one was no joke. Three bodies were lying downstairs. Healy had had to ask Laura, his girlfriend, to come in and do makeup on the ones that weren’t too badly damaged. He’d had to promise her a shopping weekend in Dublin as a thank you, despite the fact she’d made her first attempt, an eighty-five-year-old woman with heart failure, look like she was on the game.

“That’s the modern style,” Laura had protested when Healy told her to thin down the thick black eyebrows she’d drawn on.

“For whores maybe,” Healy had snapped. “She’s not going out for the fucking night, Lar, she’s being buried. I’m sure God won’t mind if her eyebrows aren’t the most fashionable when she reaches the big gates.”

“She doesn’t have any fucking eyebrows!” Laura had screamed. “That’s why I needed to give her some. Imagine your eyebrows falling out. I hope I don’t live to be old aged.”

Healy stopped himself from warning her that old age might be too optimistic a target if she didn’t shut up and get working on the bodies. Mark Kearney, the son of Big John, sat beside a particularly badly mashed-up guy who’d fallen off a roof, trying to shift his Sky satellite dish, a book on cosmetics in one hand, a lump of skin-coloured putty in the other. To his left was an older man, most of his face missing from a self-inflicted shotgun wound.

“This one will be a bastard to make look like he’s still alive,” Mark said. “Can we just put a Halloween mask or something on him? Who would he like to look like?”

“He’s being cremated anyway,” Healy said. “Just get him embalmed and shut up the coffin. There’s no wake.”

“That’s sad,” Laura opined from across the room. “No wake?”

“He must have been a sad bastard,” Mark said. “Shooting himself in the face.”

“He was Jack Hamill, actually. He taught me,” Healy explained. “I started out working for him. He owned the undertakers on the Ormeau Road. He worked some of the worst shit of the Troubles. Reconstructing people who’d had parts of their heads blown off, limbs missing, multiple shootings. He gave it up, couldn’t take it anymore. All the dead bodies.”