Dead And Buried

Patrick’s wide-eyed gaze drifted to the corpse on the floor. Thinking, Conor guessed, of who Colm was, and who he, Patrick, was – wondering, maybe, how the hell all this happened. Maybe David felt the same way as he stood over the body of Goliath, Conor thought. Only that was the end of that story, and this was just the beginning of this one. ‘I guess I did.’ Conor noticed that Patrick had to bite down hard on his lower lip to keep it from quivering. He knew the kid was thinking the same thing he was: what happens now?

Because you couldn’t kill a man like Colm Murphy and just walk away. It wasn’t like a gangland hit, a kingpin knocked off in a turf war – it wasn’t just business. Murphy didn’t live in a world where everything had a price and a ten grand kickback to the right person bought you absolution. Murphy’s world was tough, sure – but the people who moved in it mattered to him, and he mattered to them – hell, Murphy was a god on the Falls Road, on Conway Street, on Workman Avenue. Every Republican in Belfast loved the man, and even the people who hated him at least hated him good and hard.

Murphy would be missed. Conor thought of the Lieutenant, Lefty McLeod. If he knew what Patrick Cameron had done – if any of Murphy’s boys knew…

When Conor was a kid, he’d heard that Neil Burke, a lad a couple of years above him at school, seventeen or eighteen he would’ve been, had been picked up by Murphy’s boys one afternoon and driven out to an industrial estate beyond Ballynafoy. They killed him, shot him dead – but before they did that they ran roofing nails through the palms of his hands.

Burke had nicked the wrong guy’s car and gone joyriding with it in the wrong part of town. That was all it took, sometimes. They called it justice. Maybe they even thought it was justice.

But what they did to Neil Burke would be nothing compared to what they’d do to the man who killed Colm Murphy. Come to that, Conor thought, Jack Marsh wasn’t likely to be too happy, either, about one of his hirelings putting so much heat his way.

Patrick was staring at him with wide wet eyes. He’d shoved his hands into his pockets to hide his shakes but Conor could see him shaking anyway. Trembling all over.

‘What’ll we do, Con?’ he quavered.

Conor ran a hand through his sandy hair. Here and now, he told himself. Focus on what’s here in front of you.

‘I guess we have a job to do,’ he said.

He was stooping to pull aside the tarp covering Murphy’s body when he heard Patrick say, ‘I mean I didn’t even know it was Murphy’s house.’

Conor’s head jerked up. ‘What’s that?’

‘It was just a house, I mean a big house, sure, and a nice car in the drive, but still, I just thought it was—’

‘You went to his house? Is that where this happened?’

‘Jack just said there was some money there or something, a good few grand, and a cut of it for me if I could lay my hands on it…’ Patrick was gabbling now, his tongue running loose as his fear built. ‘He came out, in the garden. I swear I thought no one was home, I thought it was empty, God I swear I didn’t even know it was his house—’

‘Wait.’ Conor raised a hand. He could feel the blood thump in his temples. ‘So. You went to his house to rob him. And when he didn’t like it, when he didn’t let you just waltz away with his money, you shot him. Have I got that, Patrick?’ Patrick just stared at him. ‘You know,’ Conor said, ‘that Colm Murphy has a wife and three kids in that house? What were you thinking, Patrick? Were you ready to kill them too?’

In half a voice Patrick muttered, ‘It’d be no worse than some of the things Murphy did in his time.’

Conor had never hit anyone in his life but in that moment he was damn near to breaking Patrick Cameron’s neck for him. He breathed hard out through his nose. Then he turned decisively away and walked towards the workbench that ran along the left wall of the outhouse. He could feel Patrick watching him as he spooled a length of electric flex off its wheel.

‘What’re you doing, Con?’

‘See the furnace?’ Conor gestured without turning round. The black furnace stood in the opposite corner. ‘See the size of it? It’s four foot across, three foot deep.’

Patrick didn’t answer. Conor heard him swallow and shuffle his feet. He tried to concentrate on unwinding the flex.

‘What would you say Colm was, Patrick? Six-three, six-four?’ He couldn’t remember when he’d felt so angry. He cursed himself: it was a brutal anger, a stupid anger – but still. Colm Murphy was dead and Conor wanted Patrick to pay. ‘Death,’ he said, turning round at last, ‘hasn’t made him any smaller.’ He leaned across the bench and slotted the plug of a powerpack into the plug socket in the wall.

Patrick’s mouth was hanging open.

‘There’s plenty of time.’ Conor gestured again at the furnace. ‘The thing takes a while to get hot enough.’

‘You mean we have to—’

‘Not we,’ said Conor, hating himself even as he said it, even as he reached under the bench to draw out the powersaw they used for heavy ops, bull bones, horse bones. ‘Not me. You, Patrick. You.’

He flicked the switch on the plug socket from white to red. The powersaw began to sing.

Within two minutes their green veterinary overalls were soaked through. His hands and forearms were a brazen blood red – Patrick’s a deeper red even than that.

At first, Conor could hear the kid whimpering as they worked – and it was work, this, with the heaviness of the saw, the stubborn bulk of flesh and bone, and the mounting heat from the thrumming furnace. Conor helped where he could: now redirecting the swaying saw-blade – ‘Not there; here, here the cut’ll be cleaner’ – now wiping Patrick’s face with his cuff when the sweat and tears and blood ran into his eyes and made him blind. And Conor was kidding himself if he thought the wetness on his own face, the salty taste on his own lips, was nothing but sweat.

They’d lifted Murphy’s body onto the table to do their work. Just a piece of meat, Conor insisted to himself, just another dead thing to dispose of – but all the same they kept Murphy’s face covered with the tarp.

When they got near the end, Conor noticed that Patrick was no longer crying. He could no longer hear his sobbing over the whine of the powersaw. He looked at the kid’s face, and wished he hadn’t. Patrick was still bone-white – but now his jaw was set and his eyes were clear – and, when he glanced up to meet Conor’s eyes, you could almost have said there was a smile on his skinny face.

‘You saved my life tonight, Con,’ Conor heard him say. He said it while he pushed down on the saw, while the sawblade dug into the flesh of Murphy’s shoulder – said it over the pattering of the spurting blood and the thick sound of the blade’s edge meeting bone, and biting. ‘I’ll remember it, you know. I came to you when I had nowhere else to go. And there you were.’ He glanced up again – there, again, the sickly, cold, crooked smile. ‘I’ll remember this,’ he said again.

All at once he threw the lever to kill the powersaw and the song of the whirring blade subsided to a deathly silence. Blood dripped in a syncopated rhythm from the tabletop and in between the tiles on the floor. They were both breathing hard; they both looked down at the tabletop, at what they’d done – at what’d once been Colm Murphy.

The furnace topped twelve hundred degrees when it was fully heated. It was fully heated now: its breath stung Conor’s raw eyes as he drew open the heavy doors.

‘In he goes?’ Patrick paused, panting.

‘In he goes.’

The legs went in first, heavier than they looked, like the foundations of a Colossus. Next they fed the arms, the elbow joints stiff already. The Catholic church didn’t burn bodies. No, they’d rather you waited till you got to Hell for that, Conor thought grimly. And now here were the mortal remains of Colm Murphy – not buried, not blessed – no, just burned, without a prayer said, without a candle lit. The torso went next.

‘Ashes to ashes,’ Conor murmured as he fastened the doors closed. The words felt empty. Conor looked at Patrick, his hair black with sweat. It was a scared, stupid kid who walked in here two hours since, Conor thought, as he began peeling off his overalls. Patrick followed suit. Not a kid any more. Then what? A man? Not yet.

In the bleak electric light the two of them silently stripped. Their bloodied clothes, their shoes, their overalls, the drenched tarp: all followed Murphy into the furnace. Last of all, the head – bagged up, the features pressing through thick plastic. Conor worked over the table and floor with a jet hose and the last of the Colm Murphy’s earthly remains was washed down the drain. Patrick, meanwhile, dug out fresh boots and overalls from the storeroom.

Then, outside in the first grey glow of dawn, they stood and watched the cold stars fade. Conor breathed deep, told himself that the air was clear here, that each new breath was making him better, cleaner, more innocent.

Patrick sucked on a cigarette and said through the smoke, ‘What now?’

Conor thought fast.

‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Clean the car. Not too clean, though – don’t draw attention. Find a backlot somewhere, do it there. Throw a blanket or something over the back seat – those bloodstains won’t come out easy.’ He looked hard at Patrick. ‘Don’t talk to anyone; not about this, and not about anything. Go to bed and stay there. Lay low. Forget everything.’

Patrick nodded slowly, then ground out his cigarette with his heel.

‘Right you are,’ he said. He squinted up at Conor. ‘I’m sorry about, y’know’ – a vague wave of one arm – ‘all that with the gun.’

‘Good.’

‘Suppose I was out of order.’ Patrick nodded again, thoughtfully. ‘You saved my life tonight, Con.’

‘Yeah. You said.’

‘I mean it.’ Patrick put out a hand. ‘I won’t forget this.’

Conor paused – he thought of Colm, and he thought of Christine, and he thought of what they’d just been through, him and Patrick, and he thought of how fucking tired he was – and he shook Patrick’s hand.

‘But forgetting this,’ he said warningly, ‘is exactly what you’ve got to do.’

An hour later Conor stood in the shower letting the scalding water rinse the sweat and blood from his skin. He didn’t cry. He felt like he was empty of everything except memories. He heard Christine banging on the bathroom door. It must’ve gone six; she’d be wanting to get ready for work. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the streaming hot water.

But closing his eyes didn’t help – all he saw was Colm Murphy’s face.

‘Ten years old – that’s a grand old age.’ A younger Murphy, this – even stronger, even louder, even bolder. His eyes sparkling. His arm round Conor’s shoulders. ‘Where’d’you play, Con? Right wing, is it?’

‘Aye.’

‘A wee Jinky Johnstone, are you, then?’

‘No,’ brave Conor said. ‘I’m Davie Provan.’

‘Davie who?’ Murphy laughed. ‘God, I’m behind the times. I can’t keep up. Well, Davie Provan, happy birthday to you – and I s’pose you’ll be needing this.’ And with a flourish Colm wrapped him in a thick cotton shirt – a shirt in green and white, with hoops and a proper shamrock badge and all – a Celtic shirt.

‘Wear it with pride,’ Colm said.

Now, in the searing shower, Conor reached out a trembling hand and turned the temperature dial, turning it up so that it was too hot to take – and then he just stood, taking it anyway, feeling his white skin burn red.

Present Day

THE HORIZONS seemed too narrow: everything seemed cramped, hemmed in, somehow. And there was too much bloody traffic. Still, Conor thought: this is Belfast. Even if it’s not the same Belfast you left behind, he added to himself.

He swung his Land Rover into a parking space outside the Cherry Tree pub, killed the engine and wound down the window. He could hear music coming from inside. A young lad with a ribbon-wrapped present under his arm walked by and went in through the rear door of the pub; before the door swung closed, Conor heard voices, music, laughter. Sounded like a good do. He wondered which voice was Ella’s.

Felt like his necktie was strangling him. Not used to it. He loosened his collar button uneasily and glanced at his reflection in the rearview. Look at yourself, Maguire, he thought – white as a sheet. What’s to be afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen? Two months ago you were handling a lion that came out of its anaesthetic earlier than it should’ve – and now you’re scared to death by the thought of a teenage girl’s birthday party. Get a grip.

But he couldn’t deny it. Again he glanced in the mirror – scared, and old. Hair starting to grey at the temples. Crow’s feet creasing the skin around his eyes. You look, he thought, like a middle-aged man. You look like a father.

He’d chatted to Ella a few times over the web. But how much can you learn about someone that way? – especially when you’re in an internet café in the arse-end of Mombasa and too busy fighting with a dodgy dial-up connection and shooing away the kids trying to sell you postcards to listen.

His daughter, he’d painfully come to accept, was practically a stranger to him. And then there was Christine. God only knew how she’d react. It was a miracle she’d even agreed to have him there.

Gathering up his card and gift – a handmade necklace he’d picked up in Nairobi – Conor struggled to think of the positives. Well at least his own family wouldn’t be in there. The Maguires didn’t stoop to socialising with Protestants. Hadn’t his own mother stayed home the day he married Christine? ‘That Prod woman’ was one of the nicer names old Mags had for Conor’s ex-wife.

Not that he wasn’t looking forward to seeing that crowd later on – his ma, and Martin, Robert – maybe his sister Patricia would be up from Cork, even. But he was glad they weren’t here. There was enough potential for trouble already without adding the Maguires to the mix.

He got out of the car and took a breath. Shot his cuffs, straightened the lapels of his corduroy jacket. Here goes nothing, he thought.

A thumping bass beat rattled his eardrums when he stepped through the door of the pub. That’d take some getting used to, after the deep quiet of the savannah. He paused and surveyed the room – God, it was full of kids.

Only they weren’t kids. They were sixteen, seventeen, like Ella – they were young men and women. Wondering who this jetlagged old bastard is that’s just come in through the door. He couldn’t see his daughter, so he headed for the bar. A pint would take the edge off his nerves. He pushed his way through a crowd of laughing young people: a redhead in a black minidress, an Asian guy with a punk haircut and chainstore suit, a blonde in a blue halterneck, a skinny guy with glasses and bottle of beer…

‘Guinness, please, pal.’

He leaned on the bar and watched the barman draw the black beer into a straight-sided glass. Now you know you’re home, he thought. You had a job on even getting the stuff in bottles out in Kenya. He was lifting the glass to his lips when the girl in the blue halterneck half-turned, and he caught her profile. His stomach flipped.

Christ Almighty. Ella.

Conor had half a second to notice with angry disapproval that the skinny kid in the glasses had his right hand resting in the small of Ella’s back, and another half a second to tell himself not to be so stupid, that she wasn’t twelve years old any more and that he’d given up his right to play the protective dad quite some years ago.

And then she saw him, came to greet him, Ella, his daughter, a perfect smile splitting her freckled face, a delighted shriek ringing out even over the racket from the sound system. She threw her arms round his neck – and Conor thought: what the hell were you so worried about, man? As he held her close he could smell her perfume, something fresh, delicate, a grown-up’s scent – but beneath that he could smell her: her skin, her hair, her own scent, the way his daughter used to smell, all that time ago.

With her hands on his shoulders, Ella took a step back to look him full in the face. She was a beautiful girl, he could see that. A beautiful, seventeen-year-old girl with his wife’s blue eyes and his baby daughter’s smile. She was lightly made-up. God, the rows she and Christine had had over the lippy and eyeliner his daughter had pinched from Chris’s dresser, when she was eleven. And she was tall, taller than Christine. Her hair was styled in an asymmetric fringe, the rest of it collected with a slip at the back of her head.

‘I’m so glad you came,’ she said.

‘Hello, Ella. Happy birthday.’

‘Look at you, Dad – with your tan. Call yourself an Irishman? Where is it you’ve been again? Marbella?’

‘Close. Exclusive little resort you wouldn’t have heard of.’

‘Ooh, some chichi spot full of the filthy rich and fabulous, was it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Rich widows and cocktails on the veranda?’

‘Try vultures and endemic malaria.’ He grinned. ‘Hell, it’s good to see you, darling,’ he said.

Ella nodded and blinked and he saw her pinch her lips together, gulping back a sob. He reached out a hand, but Ella had turned away – and now she had the skinny kid by the elbow, and was saying, with a sudden forced bubbliness, that his name was Kieran, that he was her boyfriend, and Conor found himself shaking the skinny kid’s hand.

‘Hi, Kieran,’ he said, doing his best to be friendly. This was uncharted territory.

Kieran’s shake was confident and unhurried. ‘How about you, Mr Maguire,’ he said. ‘So you’ve been away?’

‘Yes, I have.’ Conor said, tucking his hands into his pockets. He felt daft talking about it. ‘Africa. Kenya. I’m a vet,’ he added.

Ella slapped his arm. ‘You needn’t sound so apologetic about it,’ she told him, with a what-are-you-like wave of her hand. To Kieran she said, ‘He’s a great vet. You have to be, don’t you, Dad, to treat, you know, lions, cheetahs, bloody elephants…’

Conor shrugged. ‘They’re all asleep by the time I have anything to do with them,’ he said. ‘I don’t chase them down personally.’

‘Makes a change from goldfish and guinea pigs, anyway, I bet,’ Kieran put in, and Conor laughed – but a part of him cringed, waiting for the question, waiting for Kieran to ask: so why’d you leave?

But Kieran only swigged his beer and said, ‘Africa, so. Not been there yet.’

‘But you’ve travelled?’ asked Conor, happy to change the subject.

‘Oh sure, sure.’ Kieran winked, startlingly. ‘Wanderlust,’ he said. ‘Itchy feet. I’ve been places, all right. Italy. The States.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Portmuck.’

Ella laughed. Conor was surprised to find that he’d finished his pint. That was the nerves. He might even start to enjoy this party, after all.

‘You’re looking beautiful, Ella,’ he said. ‘You look…’ he paused, thought twice, and then said it anyway, ‘you look like your mother.’

And it was true. The blonde hair, the freckles, the sea-blue eyes as big as the world – the look that could freeze you solid just as well as it could melt you to a puddle. Ella smiled.

But then Conor heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. Ella’s eyes went wide. He turned, knowing already who he’d see.

‘Holy mother of god,’ said Christine, and dropped a tray of drinks. The partygoers around her scrambled to get out of the way of the smashed glass – more drinks were spilled, more dresses wine-stained, more neckties sloshed with Guinness. The spilled drinks fizzed and frothed across the floor.

Conor glanced at Ella over his shoulder. ‘You never told her I was coming?’

Ella bit her lip. ‘Oops,’ she said, but her sea-blue eyes were laughing.

Christine hadn’t come alone. As a grumpy-looking member of the bar staff swept up the broken glass, she turned to the man lurking behind her.

‘This is Simon. He’s a teacher – a lecturer, I mean.’ Another handshake. This one wasn’t so warm. ‘And this is Conor,’ Christine added. Her tone said no further explanation was necessary.

Conor and Simon exchanged glad-to-meet-yous. God we’re a pair of lying bastards, Conor thought. He supposed Simon was thinking the same.

Simon was slender, lightly bearded, casually dressed in grey cords and a polo shirt. Dublin accent. His salt-and-pepper hair was swept back. He carried himself loosely, lazily, like an athlete at rest. Conor didn’t like the way he dangled an arm around Christine’s shoulders – but then, of course, that was exactly why Simon was doing it.

Christine remembered about the spilled drinks. Simon promptly volunteered to go to the bar for replacements. Conor proffered a twenty-pound note – ‘I was the silly bugger that made her drop them’ – but Simon waved it away, made it clear that he was the one who bought Chris’s drinks now. Conor and Christine were left alone.

He hadn’t spoken to her since the day she threw him out of the house. After that, the only relationship they’d had had been one conducted through solicitors’ letters.

‘He seems like a good guy,’ he tried, lamely.

Christine had her arms folded defensively across her chest. ‘He is,’ she nodded.

Conor groped for words. He wanted to say that she looked beautiful – he wanted to say that he was sorry – oh, Christ, he wanted to say so many things, but not one of them could you say over drinks at your daughter’s 17th birthday party.

So he gave up. ‘A lecturer, eh?’ he said. ‘Impressive.’

‘It is. He is. Modern languages. Five languages, he speaks.’ She smiled distantly. ‘Remember what you were like in Paris that time? Took you half the weekend to pluck up the courage to say bonjour to the hotel doorman.’

Conor had to bite back a retort – he wanted to explain to her that he’d changed (and he could explain it in Swahili if she wanted, or in Kikuyu or Maasai) – he wanted her to see that he was different, that his world was bigger now, that this place, Belfast, it wasn’t what he was about any more.

But all he said was: ‘And even then I got it wrong, remember?’

‘You did. Bon jwah!’ Christine smirked. Then she looked away, and then down at the floor, and then she looked him in the eye. ‘How’s the family?’ she said.

And Conor was glad that at that moment Simon came back with his hands full of drinks. He was glad because the only thing he could think of to say in reply was: you’re my family.

IT WAS dark outside the mullioned pub windows and Conor was settling into his fifth pint of Guinness and was kidding Kieran good-naturedly about his support for Glentoran – ‘Do they still have a football team even? When I left, Glentoran was the place Nor’n Irish Under-21s went to die’ – when someone jostled his elbow and a voice at his ear said, ‘So where is she? Sorry I’m late. Where’s the birthday girl?’

A wave of nausea hit him hard. This was a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time – a voice he’d hoped he’d never hear again. Conor noticed Kieran eye him curiously, and struggled to hide his feelings, keep his grip. His felt his hand begin to tremble and he stuffed it quickly into his jacket pocket.

Everywhere I turn, Conor thought – everywhere I look there’s a ghost from the past. Or – God, he hated the thought – but maybe, Conor, he told himself, you’re the ghost here. The ghost at the feast.

He drained his glass and turned. ‘Hello, Patrick,’ he said.

But Patrick was already gathering Ella into his arms, telling her happy birthday, flattering her dress and her haircut, and now he was kissing Christine, joking with Simon, saluting Kieran with a forefinger cocked sharpshooter-style – quite the fucking life and soul, Conor thought.

What was Patrick now? Pushing forty, surely, but he didn’t look it. His suit was well-cut to his slim-hipped figure, his urchin pallor replaced by a healthy tan, his necktie silk, his narrow shoes new-looking, his smile wide and white and wealthy.

Eventually he caught sight of Conor. If he was surprised he didn’t show it.

‘So!’ he cried. He seized Conor’s hand with his right and his left gripped Conor’s elbow. ‘Not just a birthday, but a homecoming! A double celebration.’ He lifted his chin and made an unshowy gesture towards the bar. Then he turned back to Conor. ‘I put a case of Roederer behind the bar,’ he said.