John Brennan - Dead And Buried

In the living room he found Hazel, rocking Ella in her arms, and Martin, on the settee, and, standing arms folded with his back to the fireplace, Patrick Maguire. Like a summoned spirit.

‘Daddy’s home,’ Hazel cooed to the baby.

‘Half-cut, by the look of it,’ Martin laughed.

‘Hiya, Conor,’ Patrick smiled.

Conor sobered up in the time it took him to say, ‘Hello, Patrick.’

‘Christine’s not here,’ said Conor, feeling stupid.

‘I came to talk with you actually,’ Patrick said. ‘Business. You mind if we take a drive?’

Another night, another car racing through the Belfast suburbs. But this time it was Patrick driving, and Conor all nerves and nausea in the passenger seat. And, thank God, no body on the back seat.

Hazel and Martin had just shrugged and smiled and said yeah, that was fine, they didn’t mind keeping their baby niece company for a little while longer.

‘Going to tell me where we’re headed?’ Conor asked.

‘Just wait and see.’ Patrick chuckled, not taking his eyes off the road. ‘Calm head, Con.’

Easy for you to say, you smart little bastard.

The kid seemed to be playing games with him: feinting to stop the car outside some run-down bar or club, then moving off – signalling, to Conor’s alarm, to turn onto the Falls Road, just at the junction with Coleraine Road, but then wheeling the other way, into the city – even pulling into the staff car park at Grosvenor Road police station, for Christ’s sake, before quickly, laughingly, three-point-turning the car back onto the road.

‘Are we taking the scenic route?’

‘Just enjoy the sights, Con.’ Patrick was lounging low in the driver’s seat, one arm hanging out of the window. ‘God, this is a fuckin’ beautiful city.’

At first Conor thought Patrick was just trying to wind him up – he didn’t know why, but then who knew why a nutcase like Patrick Cameron did anything?

Then he realised. This wasn’t for his benefit. It was for Patrick: Patrick needed to feel in control, strong, smart – needed to psych himself up.

For what though?

At last the kid pulled the car onto a sliproad, took the road down by the Opera House, and then dropped into a dark entryway under an out-of-order traffic barrier. A car park beneath Bankmore Street. The rooflights were all broken or on the blink. Someone’s been watching too many B-movies, Conor thought.

Patrick spun the wheel. The car’s headlights scoured the concrete columns, the deserted bays, the forbidding signs – ‘no smoking’, ‘no pedestrians’, ‘no exit’ – as he steered the car to a lower storey and eased into an out-of-the way space. He killed the engine and the lights died.

‘So are you going to tell me why we’re here?’ Conor said into the silence.

Patrick gave him a look that told Conor what he already knew.

Jack Marsh was half a head shorter than Conor but his waist was slender and his tailored grey shirt was tight around his shoulders and biceps. His face was marked with scars – could’ve been from scrapping and shrapnel, could’ve been from teenage acne. His pale eyes bulged slightly. His pupils were restless and he blinked frequently, sharply, always re-sighting, refocusing. He carried his jaw high. His hair had been trimmed to a military crop.

‘Dr Maguire,’ he said, with a smile. Ten years in Belfast had done nothing to wash the sound of the Mersey out of his accent.

‘Mister Maguire,’ Conor corrected him. Reluctantly he took the hand Marsh held out. Marsh’s handshake was quick, firm, unconsidered – the shake of a man who didn’t have to impress anyone – a man who knew full well what you thought of him, and didn’t give a damn.

They stood facing each other in the gloom of the car park. Conor couldn’t see anyone else but he was sure Marsh wouldn’t have come alone, even to meet a pair of no-marks like him and Patrick. How many guys did he have waiting in the shadows?

I could die here, Conor found himself thinking. At first he felt weirdly dispassionate about the idea. This guy, he thought, could fucking kill me, right now, just for the fun of it, and no one would ever know – it’d be like I’d just vanished into thin air.

Then he thought of Ella and Christine – of them waiting for him to come home, of Chris never understanding what had happened to him, of Ella growing up without him. He felt tepid sweat leach from the skin of his palms.

‘I’ve been wanting to thank you, Conor – I can call you Conor, can’t I? – for helping young Patrick here out with that bit of difficulty he ran into,’ Marsh said. ‘You’re a resourceful feller.’

Conor didn’t see the point in saying anything.

Patrick, anxious, leaned in between the pair of them. ‘I told him, Con, what you done for me,’ he said. Then to Marsh, ‘He’s a good lad, boss, is Conor.’

‘I know that.’ Marsh nodded approvingly. ‘Brave. Loyal.’ He lifted his chin to meet Conor’s gaze. ‘We can use men like you.’

Conor breathed in through his nose. It felt like his guts were in knots – like they’d twisted into a tight ball that now sat heavy as lead in his empty belly. He needed to piss. He clenched his fists. He knew what he needed to say – and he knew he’d have to be nuts to say it, here, now. His voice sounded like someone else’s. ‘You used me once,’ he said. ‘It won’t be happening again.’

Marsh smiled. Again Conor knew: this man could kill me – he could make me just disappear.

‘Is that a fact?’

Conor shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. ‘It is, aye,’ he said, and braced himself to take a blow, or to fight, or to run. If he lashed out and made for the exit, how far would he get? Christ, Marsh probably had guys on every door.

Marsh only smiled wider. ‘Can we talk privately?’ he asked, with theatrical politeness. He extended a hand to the open door of Patrick’s car. ‘In the vehicle?’

Conor nodded without certainty. He felt so fucking stupid. That night, he should have just gone to the police. All that crap about loyalty, about Colm, it was the darkness crowding him. He should have punched Patrick’s lights out, called the police, and been back in bed by dawn. Why hadn’t he? Had he really thought Christine would be angry for handing over her little brother? Look at him now – standing there like a bloody Jack Russell beside his master. If the smooth fuck wasn’t grinning too!

Conor didn’t have anything more to say. But then he’d known he was living on borrowed time. Marsh wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily. There was every chance he wasn’t going to let him off the hook at all. Get in that car, Con, he told himself, and you might not get out again. Again, he felt disembodied. Scared too, yeah, and…so damn disappointed with himself. You made this bed for yourself. You could’ve made it differently.

He slid again into the passenger seat while Marsh settled himself at the wheel, smartened his rolled shirtsleeves, smoothed an eyebrow in the rearview, adjusted the sit of his black trousers.

Through the side window Conor saw Patrick reach for the rear door handle. And he saw Marsh, with a negligent gesture, flick the central-locking switch in the driver’s door. Patrick tugged twice at the handle, then wised up. Shrugged. Stepped away.

Just the two of them.

‘Now look—’ Conor began, but Marsh held up a hand.

‘No,’ he said. A quick shake of his head. ‘ I talk first. I’m going to need you again, Conor. I’m going to need you to do a few more jobs.’

He didn’t look at Conor as he spoke. He looked at the wheel and the dash, as if he were reading from notes, from a script – or from a contract.

‘I—’

‘You’ll let me fucking speak or you’ll be talking through a mouthful of broken teeth. Interrupt me again and I’ll have your fucking tongue sliced down the middle.’ Now he looked at Conor. ‘Simple rules, simple courtesies,’ he said.