Ли Чайлд - Belfast Noir

Windsor Park Drive, Lisburn, Panasonic HS-DC1, 9:15 p.m., 28/05/13

They fetch Kay at home in Lisburn. A neat estate. A neat house. Diamond-pane windows in PVC. A neighbour comes out with a VHS, starts to record. Follows them up the path. The neighbours’ gardens are bare. This one is subtropical. There are moon lilies. There are giant ferns. Pale orchids. Lorna. The man filming the arrest tries to get closer.

The house shows little of Lorna. There is a submarine photograph framed in the hallway. Men in singlets sport on her decks. They put their arms around each other and smile up at the camera.

Kay is sitting at the kitchen table. Kay is ready for them. She is wearing a coat and scarf. She stands up when they come in. It’s not right, she says. It’s not right. A man and his daughter. It’s against nature. McCaul holds her by the arm as he leads her down the path. The crime scene people are parked beside the squad car. They’re walking up the path in dust suits. They look like ghosts beside the pale ghostly lilies. A stench of decay in the air. What the fuck is that? one of them says. McCaul tries not to gag. The smell seems to go to the heart of everything, the god-rot at the centre.

Amorphophallus konjac. A tuberous plant of the arum family. At nightfall the sexual parts of the plant expand, emitting a smell of decaying flesh.

Nepalese lilies, Kay says, voodoo lilies. She doesn’t break stride or look around. They were Lorna’s favourites, she says. She liked filthy things like that. She was drawn to them. The amateur cameraman gets too close. A uniform pushes him away. The camera yaws, falls to the ground. Stays there, lens open to the night as the owner scuffles with the police.

On the way McCaul rings CID. Check what Lorna studied at Belfast Met. They come back. She studied horticulture and botany.

Belfast Harbour Airport Departures, security cam, 10:15 p.m., 29/05/13

Michaela’s in the queue for the eleven p.m. departure to Riga. She takes out her phone.

Donegall Pass PSNI Station, evidence room cam, 10:45 p.m., 29/05/13

McCaul can see himself on the monitors writing in the evidence book. He signs out the VHS of home-movie footage that the evidence team has taken from the Donnelly house. The very fact that you are on camera makes you look furtive, up to something. Other cameras are recording. The rain-lashed station car park. The wildly tossing trees. The Westlink camera records leaves whirling across the empty traffic lanes. The harbourmaster’s camera records the passage of ships outward bound into the storm-tossed shipping lanes, the North Channel, and the darkness beyond.

His phone rings. Michaela. He told me stories about being in submarines, she says. He fooled me. I was sleeping with him. He left bruises on my body. Lorna saw us together. She came into the bar that night. She was going to tell Kay about Michaela and him. He told Lorna what would happen to her but she didn’t believe him. Michaela says that he is a very violent man and she is afraid of him. McCaul tells her that she has nothing to be afraid of. He asks her where she is. He tells her to come into the barracks in the morning and make a statement. She says she will. She promises.

Belfast Harbour Airport, Stand 2, airbridge cam, 10:45 p.m., 29/05/13

Michaela walks down the airbridge. She steps into the aircraft. She likes McCaul. But then she liked Norman as well. She runs her hand along the dented alloy then steps into the aircraft and the camera loses her. There are weather fronts sweeping down from the north. Soon she will be aloft, storm borne.

HMP Maghaberry, remand wing security cam, 11:10 p.m. , 29/05/13

The landing is empty. You see only the cell doors. Norman is locked down. Norman is dreaming of subs moored at Holywell, the streaked plating. Subs under the ice pack. The stressed hull, veined and streamlined. Ghost wolf packs hunting in the frozen northern seas.

Ravenhill Reach apartment complex, stairwell cam, 12:10 a.m., 30/05/13

McCaul walks up the stairs to his apartment door. He lets himself in and then he’s alone. Alone in an empty flat. He looks at his phone. He thinks about ringing his ex-wife. They are on good terms. He can visit any time he likes. He lifts the phone and puts it down. She would smell it off his clothes. He can see her backing away from him. The odour of the night around him. The corpse flowers. He’d heard church bells in the city all day. He doesn’t know what they’re for. He gets up and goes to the window. The lights of the city glow orange on the underside of low clouds to the east. Ascencion. He sees his reflection in the glass, ashen, exhausted. An apostle of bad faith. He goes to the cupboard under the stairs and takes out the VHS and sets it up. He doesn’t know what he’s going to see.

Memory Lane Photographic Studios, Crumlin Road, 04/08/04

The Memory Lane people have added a fancy intro. A Day at the Beach , featuring Kay Donnelly and Lorna Donnelly, directed by Norman Donnelly.

Kay and Lorna come into the shot. Norman working the camera. You’d say Lorna was eight or nine. She’s wearing a swimsuit with a short frilled skirt attached to the waist. The film stock degraded, chemicals leaching off. Nothing lasts. She has sand grains stuck to her legs. Kay is sitting on the sand wearing a one-piece swimsuit. Her black hair is cut in a bob. She is wearing dark glasses and a sun hat. You can tell she doesn’t like the camera being pointed at her. She hunches her shoulders, gathers herself in, and waves it away. There was a time when she would strike poses for him. Do some risky things for him. But not today. She understands the importance of not leaving traces. She senses what’s coming down the line. Lorna dances for the camera. It’s a trick of the light, maybe, but Norman doesn’t seem to be able to get her into sharp focus. She runs into the waves then back up the beach and into the sand dunes. She turns to look down at her mother and father. The sun dazzles. Impossible to get a clear shot of her. Then she ducks down behind a dune. You can’t see me, she calls out.

You can’t see me.

You can’t see me.

PURE GAME

BY ARLENE HUNT

Sydenham

Ed pulled his Renault to the kerb beneath a tattered Union flag on Island Street and turned off the ignition. He sat listening to the engine cooling, to the rain beating against the roof, the hiss and rumble of traffic from the M3 motorway a quarter of a mile away. He forced himself to inhale slowly and deeply, trying to quell his jangling nerves. The meet had been set up three weeks earlier, and even though he had been assured that his credentials would hold up there was always that fear in the pit of his gut that this time, this one time, someone would throw a spanner in the works, and he’d never see another dawn.

Six p.m. came and went, then six thirty. He cranked the window down a little, felt the winter air against his skin, heard the Bangor train rattle past on the other side of the redbrick industrial buildings. A plane took off from the airport, its lights climbing into the black, probably headed for London Gatwick. Another two circled overhead, ready to land.

Where were they? He wiped the condensation from the glass with his sleeve and glanced at the dash clock. Almost seven: maybe they weren’t coming. Maybe something had spooked them? It was more than possible. These men could not have gone under the radar for this length of time without being paranoid and wary. Someone opened the back door, jumped in, and slammed the door shut.

“What about ye?” a voice said in hard-core West Belfast.

Ed’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. He took in the face of the man grinning at him: young, shorthaired, midtwenties, cracked lips, ugly. Sean Lavin. Dangerous territory for him, the east of the city, unless he knew the right people.