John Brennan - Dead And Buried

‘How about you?’ she said. It seemed to Conor she didn’t even try to hide the tension in her voice. ‘Anyone special in your life?’

Conor’s stomach knotted up. He thought of Kipenzi, and that night on the savannah, and all the things they’d told one another – and he thought of the day he’d met Christine, and the breaking Belfast dawn when he’d kissed her for the first time, and their wedding day at St Dunstan’s.

‘Me? No. No one special.’

I’m sorry, Kip, he added, in his head.

Then the telephone rang in the hallway. ‘I should get that,’ Christine said.

Left alone, Conor sat back in his chair and let his gaze drift around the familiar kitchen. He’d sawed and fitted the worktops himself, liking the feeling of building something for his family with his own two hands – he and Christine had turned up the handsome Belfast sink in a reclamation yard out Antrim way – the old-fashioned wine glasses arranged on a shelf by the window had been a wedding present from Christine’s grandmother. ‘They’re no use to me,’ she’d said, ‘since the doctor said I’ve not to drink so much wine any more’ – and Christine had told him later that the old girl had taken the doctor at his word, and switched to gin.

But the last time Conor had been here the chimneybreast had been crowded with framed family pictures. They were gone now, except for a pinned-up snapshot of a teenaged Ella, blonde and tousled and smiling in a sunlit meadow – Fermanagh, near Christine’s parents’ place, Conor guessed.

Something on the windowsill caught his eye. A shell, a cockleshell. Deep-ridged and the palest sea-blue. It wasn’t anything special, you could’ve found one pretty much the same on any Atlantic shore from Inishowen to Mizen Head. Only Conor knew where this one came from. He’d picked it up on Carrickfinn beach in Donegal. He’d rinsed the sand off it in the rolling white surf, and he’d given it to Christine. Christine had admired it, and stroked her thumb across its sea-blue surface, and slipped it into her skirt pocket. Then she’d kissed him.

Their honeymoon. Twenty years since.

Conor shook his head sharply and drained the bitter grounds in the bottom of his coffee cup. He couldn’t let himself think like that. There was too much at stake.

Christine came back into the room and with an irritable sigh dropped wearily into her chair.

‘Something up?’

‘Just college stuff,’ she said, a little abruptly.

‘Just asking.’

‘I know. It just makes me tired talking about it.’ She pushed a hand through her uncombed blonde hair. ‘Makes me tired thinking about it.’

‘Students bothering you?’

She nodded. ‘I wouldn’t mind if they were asking for extra tuition or asking me to check the spelling on their job applications or whatever – but this is something different.’ Another sigh. ‘Two girls have dropped out of class.’

‘Not so unusual, is it? Maybe they went home, to, to…’

‘Maybe,’ said Christine. ‘They’re wanderers, these kids – they go wherever they can get work, and money, but I thought they might have said goodbye.’

‘Do they owe you money?’

‘The opposite, which makes it weirder. Both had paid up till the end of the month.’

‘Teenage girls can be difficult to predict.’

Christine smiled. ‘You’re telling me.’

When he left, there was no kiss goodbye. Christine just smiled half-heartedly and said she’d see him around – he said he hoped so, and left her to her paperwork and her cold cup of coffee.

Turning the corner out of the estate, he spotted Lisa Galloway’s black car parked up on the opposite side of the junction .

She’d pushed the Marsh connection hard, but that didn’t mean she knew anything.

Whoever killed Jack Marsh…

Conor switched on the radio to block out his thoughts.

1994

‘RIGHT – all of you together. Say “cheese”.’ Click, whirr. ‘And another one for luck – ah, wait – the sun’s gone in – let’s wait for the light to be right…’

‘Gets a posh digital camera and he thinks he’s David Bailey,’ Christine heckled from the back of the posed group of graduates.

‘Just want to do you justice,’ Conor grinned.

The college had laid on a few bottles of white wine after the ceremony, and Christine’s class had made short work of them. Conor helped himself to a couple of glasses, too – ‘Photographer’s fee,’ he winked at the steward with the tray. It was good to see Christine letting rip: three years of college was hard enough work without taking eighteen months out to have a baby. She’d earned this.

It was getting on for evening by the time the rest of the new teachers had finally drifted tipsily away. Conor linked his arm with Christine’s and produced a bottle of Prosecco from his rucksack. ‘Reinforcements,’ he said.

Christine whooped. ‘My hero,’ she said, and, aiming for his mouth, kissed him on the nose.

They shared the bottle of tepid, slightly fizzy wine under a sycamore tree in Ormeau Park.

‘We’re proper grown-ups now,’ Christine said, resting her head in Conor’s lap and looking up into the branches of the tree. ‘A teacher and a vet.’

‘More than that,’ Conor said. He turned a curl of her blonde hair round his forefinger. ‘We’re a family.’

‘Yeah,’ Christine sighed.

Little Ella was with her uncle Martin and her auntie Hazel. Auntie-to-be, anyway. Martin and Hazel were set to be married in the spring. They sipped the wine and watched the slow sun set and talked about the future – the things they could do, now they were grown-ups.

‘We could go abroad. How about that? You could teach English.’

‘South America would be nice. Or Africa. Think you’d be good with elephants?’

‘Sure. They’re nothing but oversized cows.’

‘Or the Galápagos Islands. You could look after the tortoises and I could teach English.’

‘To the tortoises?’

‘ No . To the Galápagese. If there are any. Are there any?’

Conor shrugged. ‘Dunno. Never met any.’

‘I’d find it hard without my family, though.’

A scowling image of Mags Maguire crossed Conor’s mind.

‘I think I could live without mine,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Well, I couldn’t. I’d miss our Patrick too much.’

Patrick . A name he’d been trying to avoid. Patrick the petty crook, Patrick, with his little jobs for Jack Marsh, Patrick the killer, Patrick the butcher.

Patrick, the little bastard who’d made Conor into a liar and – and worse.

‘You’d get used to it,’ he managed to say.

‘I wouldn’t like to have only tortoises for company,’ Christine insisted.

Better a tortoise than a snake, Conor thought. But God, don’t let that little swine spoil today. He ruffled his wife’s hair affectionately.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘time I was off. You’re meant to be meeting your fellow beaks at the Havana in ten minutes, remember?’

They walked hand-in-hand to Ravenhill Road and Conor helped Christine into a cross-town cab. He flagged down a second cab for himself. He was surprised when he tripped over his own feet climbing into the back seat – more pissed than he’d thought.

‘Home, James,’ he told the driver. ‘Rembrandt Close, Sydenham. And don’t spare the horses.’

On the way, Conor found himself explaining to the driver in detail exactly why it was the right time for Billy Bingham to step down and by hell if a team can’t beat Lithuania on its own damn turf it has no business going to the World Cup.

And then he found himself standing in the dusk on the pavement outside his house.

He was surprised, on opening the front door, to hear the sound of male voices laughing in the living room. Had Martin got the boys round for an evening’s baby-sitting?