Glenn Patterson - Gull

‘ Twice? ’

Stevens shrugged. ‘Three times. We will hook you up with our real estate people in Detroit, find a property out in Bloomfield Hills.’

The martini arrived, lemon rind bobbing like a kiss curl.

Stevens addressed his glass to it, but stopped short of drinking. ‘You have to remember, John is a gambler… Oh, not with his own money… His instinct is to keep raising the stakes — scares people off: he must have something . But sooner or later someone will call him on it, and then…’

‘A whole lot of people in Belfast will lose their jobs.’

‘Well, that’s true too, although John wouldn’t be alone in thinking of workers as chips.’

‘Chips!’

Stevens tilted his head a little to one side. He seemed almost embarrassed by the reaction.

‘I’ve got to say I didn’t have you pegged as the sentimental type. It’s the product that has to be protected, the brand. That goes, it creates a void and there’s no telling what will get sucked in. I wouldn’t want to be standing too close to the edge.’

Randall nodded. For all kinds of reasons it was time for him to put as much distance as possible between him and DeLorean Motor Cars Limited. He nodded again, more firmly.

Dan Stevens smiled and went to take a drink. He didn’t like what he saw in his glass, or what he didn’t see. ‘What do you say we have another of those?’

Randall made a show of looking at his watch. ‘Sure,’ he said.

*

Stevens returned to Detroit with the promise to ‘start the ball rolling’, though discreetly for now, and Randall a couple of days later travelled down the I-495 to the Quality Assurance Centre in Wilmington. The cars in the compound on Ferry Road, right on the edge of the Delaware River, were the first DMC-12s he had seen since leaving Belfast. He told himself that pang he felt was only natural: he had no quarrel with the cars themselves.

The guy who met him wore shorts with socks pulled up to just below his knees, which flexed as he stood before Randall talking, like a pair of sensate potatoes (where did that come from?) struggling to escape the neck of a sack. Randall was relieved when they started walking to the workshop — ‘Lead the way,’ he said, and the knees did — and he was able to relax his face, strained from the effort of not looking.

‘I’m not going to lie, it was pretty hard going the first couple of days,’ the guy said over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know how many times I had to step in to stop a fight breaking out. Mostly your guys accusing our guys of going out of their way looking for problems, taking a wheel off just to check it had been screwed on right kind of thing… It’s settled down a bit since then.’ He turned with his hand poised to open the workshop door. ‘Don’t tell them I said this, but they are good workers.’

Good workers and, it appeared, genuinely pleased to see Randall walk in the workshop door, crowding round telling him this thing they had discovered about the alternator, this other thing about the door hydraulics. Even invited him out for a drink with them that night.

‘Probably not what you’re used to, like,’ said the one they called Washers, he of the winks of understanding at the airport. ‘You have been warned.’

‘I don’t know what you think I’m used to.’

A dive bar, a couple of blocks from Riverfront Market, beer by the pitcher, a stage at one end of the room on to which in due course a young woman in satin hot pants walked and without preamble pulled off her T-shirt to reveal shamrock nipple tassels. The law of supply and demand made barely covered flesh.

No one seemed to object to the failure to give a more rounded interpretation of northern Irishness (two of the women did pick up their purses and head for the door, but only, as they said, because there was a fella doing the same thing down the street, and no tassels) and when a tape recorder belatedly struck up ‘Danny Boy’, a group standing by the corner of the bar formed a circle and ignoring the now twirling shamrocks entirely sang along into one another’s faces, glasses raised and touching.

‘I needn’t ask if you have been enjoying yourself here,’ Randall said to the guy nearest him.

‘This? Sure it’s a bit of fun, isn’t it? But I have, aye, I’ve been enjoying it rightly. Be glad all the same to get back.’

‘Homesick?’

‘Not exactly. I’m not just saying this because you’re standing there, but I miss the work, you know, the cars constantly coming down the line at you — keeps you on your toes.’

There was a loud cheer from the front. The satin hot pants had come off now too. A pair of even smaller pants underneath, Slainte! across the behind, which was presented in a swift, toe-touching finale.

‘What about you?’ the worker said. ‘Will you not be sorry when you have to head back to Belfast again?’

Randall frowned. The man drew his head back. ‘Wait, you are coming back with us to Belfast, aren’t you?’

And the look in his eyes, it was as though he fully expected the answer to be no, because that was what life had taught him to expect, that just when things seemed as though they might actually be starting to go well something always happened to throw them into doubt.

Randall slipped out of that look by turning to the bar and ordering another pitcher. Pitchers all round, make that.

*

It was quite possible that he was still drunk the following afternoon when he rang Dan Stevens. Certainly the woman whom he had rung a couple of minutes before thinking he was ringing Dan Stevens told him that he was, or at least she did the second time. ‘Read the goddamn number, or get someone sober to read it for you.’

(It was the third three, for some reason he kept seeing it as an eight.)

Stevens cautioned him not to be too rash. It would be understandable if he was feeling a little conflicted. Hell, if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be the man Dan took him to be. So by all means vent some spleen — let rip, in fact — but promise Dan this, that he would call back in a couple of hours when he was…

‘I am fine just as I am.’ He held up a random selection of fingers in front of his face. Three, not six, or eight. He thought maybe he let a laugh escape, much to Dan Stevens’ audible displeasure.

‘I am bound to tell you you are doing a very foolish thing. Some doors you will find do not open twice.’

‘I appreciate your concern, Dan, really, but what can I tell you? Turns out I am the sentimental type after all.’

He was betting his stash on the same square as DeLorean.

*

There were still army-issue hoses in the corridors of the administration building when he got back to Dunmurry, sand-filled fire buckets stationed outside the doors, one of which now bore the name Bill Haddad.

Whatever had happened to change his mind in the days since Randall had spoken to him in his office (the funeral pictures might not have been incidental), DeLorean had decided that the image of the factory at least was under threat and accordingly had dispatched Haddad from New York to oversee PR. Randall had not seen him since the un-festive Christmas drinks in the Waldorf Astoria, in the course of which Haddad had repeatedly pulled rank, dropping names (mostly Kennedys) and boasting of his in-depth knowledge of the Northern Irish political scene. So obviously he reacted to actually being there as though it was some sort of punishment.

Or that at least was the impression he gave at the meeting that Don, at Randall’s suggestion, called between management and unions to try to minimise the impact on production of any future hunger strike deaths.

‘Let’s not beat about the bush here,’ said Randall, ‘how many more do we think are going to die?’