Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“I still don’t understand,” I said.

He looked at me, disgusted. Took off his cap. Spat on the floor.

“Thought you had that big IQ. They fitted him up. Samson has been arrested, for corruption. Ironic, eh? Oh, aye, and they even threw one at him for having sex with his sixteen-year-old baby-sitter. His career is over, the inquiry is over, you won’t be forced to testify. The story will break on today’s evening news. You fucked us. You sneaky Paddy bastards, I don’t know how you did it, but you fucked us.”

I sat for a while. The RUC, or MI5, or the Home Office, or someone else entirely had seen that Samson was going to blow the lid off corruption within a section of the police in Northern Ireland, had seen that it could jeopardize Northern Ireland as a political entity in and of itself, had therefore begun digging for dirt on Samson himself, had found enough to bury him. His whole inquiry was compromised, useless. He was just like me now, the poor bastard.

And it really was over. No one would compel me to testify. Nothing to testify about. I was what I’d always been. A drugged-out, worthless, wasted cop. I was safe.

“Tell me one thing,” Commander Douglas said.

“What?”

“Off the record, Lawson, why did you resign?”

I believed him. I didn’t mind telling him.

“It’s very simple. Buck McConnell was my mentor in the peelers, he pulled me along. He used me. He put me in the drug squad, figured I’d shake things up. I did. I found out that several senior RUC officers were allowing the IRA and UDA to traffic heroin and e, protecting them, regulating the market, I could have blown the lid off a dozen big careers, but they found out about me. They weren’t sure if I was loyal or if I was going to go to Special Branch. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to Special Branch. I didn’t want to be killed, I didn’t want to live in fear in some witness-protection program, so I took a third way out. I destroyed my credibility. I injected myself with heroin, enough times to convince them I was an addict. Then I stole heroin from the police evidence room, I got myself caught stealing, they said they wouldn’t prosecute if I resigned. I resigned in disgrace.”

Commander Douglas grimaced, stamped his cigarette out.

“Very clever, Lawson, you made yourself a pariah. Sneaky. You’re all alike. I don’t know why we stay in this bloody country. It’s like the fucking Raj and you’re the niggers.”

I said nothing, Douglas rubbed his hands over his face. His eyes narrowed, closed. A comic effect in a man incapable of comedy. He sighed, nodded to himself.

“Well, you fucker, you don’t get off that easy,” he said.

He pulled out his gun and pointed it at me.

“You were lying,” I said, surprised.

“No, I wasn’t lying. It’s all true, you’re off the hook, with Samson, with the Brits, with your own side. Off the fucking hook with everyone. Everyone except me.”

“But you can’t do anything, the investigation’s over.”

He nodded in agreement. Sighted the revolver.

“You fucking bastards, ruin a good man like that, you just sitting up here waiting for your pals to do the dirty work. You fucking coward. You fucker. Biding your time. Well, Paddy, let me tell you about this gun. It’s not a cop gun. It’s off the books. If I shoot you, no one will ever know who did it.”

I looked at him, looked at the gun, saw that he was serious. Did I want to die now? Now that I was free? Things were different. I wasn’t sure. Douglas got up and walked over toward me. He put the gun against my temple. Was he really this fucking crazy?

The touch of the cold steel. This is not how I want to go. Every second of every day someone dies. Every minute someone’s murdered, someone’s murdering. But not now, not me. Not this place.

“I could kill you, Paddy,” he said, furious. “I could fucking kill you easy. A squeeze of this here trigger. Nice gun. Browning. Yes. I’d enjoy it. I would.”

His face was dispassionate, resolved. He meant to do it, he would do it. His eyes, ice. It was a decision he had made in advance.

He took a step back so the blood spray from my skull wouldn’t get on his clothes.

I knew he’d do it. For I was everything he hated about this country. I was the distillation of all that rage. I was the symptom and the disease.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“What do I want? What do I want? I want what I’ve always wanted. A fucking bit of cooperation. One fucking Paddy who knows right from wrong. I want to know the name of the copper running the heroin, I want to know his name. Give me that. Fucking give me the name. I don’t care if they fucking kill you. I don’t care if the investigation has collapsed. I want that fucking name. I’m going to count to three.”

For emphasis, he clicked the hammer back on the revolver. One slip of his finger and I was dead.

“One,” he said.

The barrel and the sweat. This little room. The sea outside. His mouth fixed, resigned, one way or the other, it didn’t matter. If I didn’t give him the name, he’d top me.

“Two.”

That face, that scarred hand, the paratrooper wings on his wrist. That gun. Would this be the last impression in my retina, the last memory in my brain?

I gagged. I was afraid.

No.

“Thr—” he began.

“John,” I said.

“What?”

“John Campbell. Big guy, blond hair, only a constable, part-time RUC. He’s the one you’re after. Carrickfergus Police Station. You won’t find him, though. He’s already run. He’s in America. But he’s the one, he ran all the drugs, he was the kingpin. Low-key character. He’s the one you want. Constable John Campbell, smart guy, wouldn’t even take promotion. Stayed out of the limelight. He’s the one all right, the one you want.”

I swallowed, felt sick.

Douglas looked at me for a second. Revulsion crept over his face. He knew mentioning that name had cost me something. He believed me. What a coward I was. Douglas spat. And I hated myself. Doing down John like that to save my skin.

Another betrayal.

Douglas nodded, took his finger off the trigger.

“Piece of shit,” Douglas said, put the gun in his pocket, picked up his hat, walked out of my life forever.

The river begins on the roof of the world. All the great rivers of Asia are born there. The Hindus believed that their gods were born in the Himalaya and went there to die. The Tibetans felt that the air was so full of spirits that not even the clean vision of the Buddha could purge it.

The plane flying over the Hindu Kush. Over the opium fields of Afghanistan. I look out the window. The Flower of Joy. I remember. Sip my orange juice.

A round-trip ticket from London to Delhi costs five hundred pounds. I didn’t have that kind of money. But Dad did. Dad, amazingly, had gotten fifty-eight votes in the local council elections. He got his deposit back, for the first time ever. And he promised me he’d lend me the dough if he got the money back. I held him to his word. India? Why not. What else was there? The plane flying over the hazy brown Indian subcontinent.

Touching down. The Morris Ambassador taking me from the airport. The heat, the orange sky, the pollution so palpable it coats your tongue. Child beggars at the traffic stops, filthy and in rags.

“Jao,” the taximan says, which means piss off.

The insane streets around Connaught Place. Connaught — the wildest of Ireland’s four provinces, an appropriate name for central New Delhi.

The hotel. Pancakes from southern India. Delicious. All the food, in fact, incredible. And if you put a lot of spice on and don’t drink the water, you don’t get sick.