Ли Чайлд - Belfast Noir

Despite Big John’s warning, panic got the better of him as he neared Banbridge. Seeing the turnoff for the Outlet shopping complex, he indicated and pulled in, watching the PSNI car continue on along the Belfast Road. Aware that a parked hearse with a coffin in the back—especially one festooned with a floral arrangement to Granda —might attract some attention, he parked up at Burger King and went in for fries and a burger to make it appear that lunch had been his primary reason for stopping, rather than an attempt to lose a police tail.

“Should you leave that out there unattended?” the pimpled teen who had taken his order asked, nodding out to where the hearse sat. “With a dead person in it?”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Healy managed, blushing at having used the line.

“True that,” the teen offered, then turned to fetch his food.

Despite having already eaten lukewarm lasagne barely an hour earlier, Healy managed the food until he went back out to the hearse and spotted, at the far end of the car park, the same silver Vauxhall, parked, its occupants seemingly having gone to Starbucks for their lunch.

He turned and went back into the fast-food restaurant, heading straight for the toilet. He pulled out his phone and called Mark.

“This thing of your dad’s? I’ve company following me up the road. Can you check what he wants me to do? Should I still go to the pub with it?”

Kearney grunted and hung up. Healy forced himself to pee, lest someone come into the toilet and wonder what he was doing in there.

He was zipping up when Mark called back.

“He said bring it here. Wait until it calms, then take it to the pub.”

“Take it there?” Healy protested. “My own premises?”

“Aye. We’re flat out here, by the way, so get a move on. And we’ve that cremation at two for the saddo you knew, so someone needs to take him across. Tony said he’d do it. You should be back by then, anyway.”

Healy bit his lip, annoyed at being ordered about by Mark Kearney, a youth with such a startling sense of entitlement that he’d deliberately failed every GCSE he’d been entered for, telling his teachers that he didn’t need GCSEs for what he’d be doing. Healy suspected reconstructing dead people’s faces had not featured on his list of future careers.

He strolled out to the car park again, feigning nonchalance, scanning the parking bays for the silver car, which had vanished once again. He began to wonder if indeed it had been the same one at all. Perhaps it had been a different police car. Or just some dick with really heavily tinted glass on his windscreen.

He was fairly certain it was the same one though, when it picked up his tail again just outside Lisburn. This time it held steady, three cars behind him, all the way onto the Westlink and into Belfast.

* * *

He pulled into the parking bay of his premises, shouting for Kearney to close the shutters behind him as quickly as possible and to get the coffin out of the hearse.

He ran to the toilet and brought up both his lunches in four heaving gasps. He was sitting on the ground, his face pressed against the cool ceramic, when he heard someone tapping at the door.

“I’m in here!” he snapped.

“I know,” Laura called back. “That’s why I’m knocking! The cops are here to see you. They’re upstairs.”

A fifth heave, bringing up nothing but yellow spittle.

* * *

There were two officers waiting for him when he went up. Both were in uniform, right down to the peaked caps.

“Officers,” Healy said, his mouth acrid with the taste of bile. “Everything all right?”

“Are you all right?” one, the elder of the two, asked. “You look like death warmed up.”

“I’m fine.”

“Better hope they don’t mistake you for someone should be in one of your own coffins,” the other offered, laughing good-naturedly, like they were old friends.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“You collected a coffin this morning, in Dundalk?”

“Is that a question?”

The officer nodded. “It is.”

“I did. That’s right. I’ve only arrived back with it.”

“Do you know the person in the coffin?”

Healy shook his head. “No. The order came in over the phone. Someone called Martin Logue.”

The officer nodded his head, as if this was as he’d expected all along. “Was he the person who ordered the collection or the person in the box?”

“He was the deceased. Sorry, who are you, exactly?”

“I’m Inspector Hume,” the man said. “This is Sergeant Fisher. We’ve reason to believe that you’ve been transporting illegal cargo across the border.”

“Why?” Healy asked.

“That’s what we hoped you’d tell us,” Fisher said.

“No, why do you think I was bringing across something illegal?”

“You recently employed Mark Kearney as an apprentice here, is that right?” Hume asked.

“Again, why?”

“We know you did. I’m sure you know who Mark’s father is? You were speaking to him the other night at a wake house.”

“I know of him,” Healy said.

“Is Mark here at the moment?”

Healy swallowed back a sudden rush of sour water that filled his throat and went across to the top of the stairs.

“Mark? Can you come up here?”

A moment later, Kearney appeared at the top of the stairs, wiping his hands on a cloth, as if he were a mechanic completing a job.

“Yes?”

“Officers Hume and Fisher would like a word.” Healy widened his eyes meaningfully in a way he hoped Kearney would understand, though the message of which he was himself not entirely sure.

“What?”

“Martin Logue? The deceased remains which just arrived here. It was your father who arranged their transport, is that right?”

Kearney raised his chin defiantly. “What of it?”

Hume smiled. “So that’s a yes,” he said. “What’s your father’s interest?”

“Martin was my uncle,” Kearney replied. “Whatever the fuck it’s got to do with you. Dad wanted him brought home. Offered to handle the wake and burial.”

Healy tried not to look at Kearney lest his respect for the alacrity with which the boy was lying was apparent. Instead he nodded, his hands clasped in front of him, head lightly bowed. From below, he heard the thud of the metal shutters closing and wondered whether Hume and Fisher had been a distraction upstairs so that a second PSNI team could enter the workroom unseen below and search the coffin without their knowledge.

However, Hume had clearly heard it too, for he looked beyond Healy to the staircase with concern. “Where is Logue at the moment?” he asked.

“Where I left him. Downstairs,” Healy said, glancing at Kearney who nodded.

“We’d like to see the coffin.” Hume opened the fold up top of the reception desk and stepped behind it to where Healy and Kearney stood.

“You’ll need a warrant,” Kearney said. “That’s my uncle’s coffin you’re desecrating.”

This time Healy couldn’t stop himself staring at Kearney, both for his unexpected audacity and his vocabulary. Thankfully, whether he realised it or not, he was taking responsibility for the coffin. Whatever they found in there, Kearney and his father would have to answer for it, not Healy.

“Lucky we have one, then,” Hume said, handing a copy of the document to Healy, still the man nominally in charge of the place, and passing on out through the doorway that led to the staircase.

Healy followed, handing the sheet to Mark Kearney, assuming he’d have a better working knowledge of what it should contain. He felt sick again, felt the ground lurch to one side as he walked. The stairs seemed to shift under him, so much so that he needed to hold the rail with both hands to keep himself steady.