Hostage to Murder. V. McDermid L.

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      Morning rain on the Falls Road, grey sky only half a shade lighter than gunmetal; a comparison that still came too easy to too many people in Belfast. Ceasefires, peace deals, referendums and still it caught people by surprise that the disasters on the news were happening some other place.

      A black taxi pulled up outside a betting shop on a street corner. These days, sometimes a black taxi was just a taxi. This one wasn’t. This one was bringing Patrick Coughlan to work. To his official work. When he went about his unofficial work, the last thing he wanted to be seen in was IRA trademark wheels. In the days when he went about his unofficial work rather more frequently than of late, he had always gone under his own steam, in any one of a dozen nondescript vehicles. Of course the security services had almost certainly known Patrick Coughlan was a senior member of the IRA Army Council, but they’d never been able to catch him at it. He was a careful as well as a solid citizen.

      The cab idled for a full minute by the kerb while Patrick scrutinized the street. If someone had asked what he was looking for, he’d have been hard pressed to answer. He only knew when it wasn’t there. Satisfied, he stepped out of the cab and across the pavement. A man in his early fifties, obviously once very handsome, his features now blurred with slightly too much weight and high living, his walk betrayed a sense of purpose. His hair was a glossy chestnut, suspiciously so at the temples for a man who had lived his particular life. In spite of the laughter lines that surrounded them, his eyes were dark, shrewd and never still.

      He pulled open the door on a gust of stale air and stepped inside. To the uninformed eye, just a busy Belfast betting shop, nothing to differentiate it from any other. Odds were chalked up on whiteboards, sporting papers pinned to the walls, tiled floor pocked with cigarette burns. The clientele looked like the unemployed, the unemployable and the retired. Every one of them was male. The staff were working hard behind metal grilles, but not so hard that they didn’t all glance up at the opening of the door. The smoke of the day’s cigarettes already hung heavy in the air, even though it was barely eleven.

      Patrick crossed the room like the lord of the manor, nodding affably, waving a proprietary greeting to several regulars. They returned the greeting deferentially, one actually tugging the greasy brim of a tweed cap. It had never struck anyone as odd that so avowed a Republican should behave quite so much like an English patrician.

      Patrick continued across the room towards a door set in the wall by the end of the counter. One of the staff automatically slid a hand beneath the counter and the sound of a buzzer followed. Without breaking stride, Patrick pushed through the door and into a dim corridor with stairs at the far end.

      A door in the wall opened and a young woman with hair like a black version of Ronald McDonald and skin the blue white of skimmed milk stuck her head round it. ‘Sammy McGuire was on earlier. He said would you give him a call.’

      ‘I will, Theresa.’ Patrick continued down the corridor and up the stairs.

      It would be hard to imagine how the office he walked into could have been more different from the seediness downstairs. The floor was parquet – the real thing, not those pre-glued packs from the DIY superstore – with a silver grey Bokhara occupying what space wasn’t taken up by a Regency desk that looked almost too much for its slender legs. The chair behind it was padded leather, the filing cabinets that lined the wall old mahogany buffed to a soft sheen. Two paintings on the wall, both copies, one of a Degas and one of a Stubbs, both featuring horses. The only thing that let the room down was the view of the Falls Road.

      He’d thought of having the window bricked up and replacing it with another Degas. But it didn’t do to let people think you weren’t keeping an eye on them. Information had always been a commodity in Belfast; and if you didn’t yet have the information, it was almost as important to make it look as if there was no reason why you shouldn’t. So the window stayed.

      Patrick lowered himself gingerly into the chair, a martyr to his back as well as his country. Settled, he reached for the phone and pushed a single button on the speed dialler.

      ‘Sammy?’ Patrick said.

      ‘Patrick. How’re ye?’

      ‘Well, Sammy. And yourself?’

      ‘Ah well, no complaints, you know?’

      ‘And the family?’ The rituals had to be observed.

      ‘They’re all doing fine. Geraldine’s got herself a nice wee job with the Housing Corporation.’

      ‘Good for her. She’ll do well there, so she will. So, Sammy, what can I do for you?’

      ‘Well, Patrick, it might be that I can do something for you.’

      Patrick opened the humidor on his desk and selected a King Edward half-Corona. ‘Is that so, Sammy?’ he said, tucking the phone into his neck while he lit the cigar.

      ‘Have you still an interest in Bernadette Dooley?’

      Patrick clenched the phone in his fist. Only a lifetime of dissimulation allowed him to sound unruffled. ‘Now there’s a name I’ve not heard in years,’ he said genially. But his heart was jittering in his chest, the surge of memory flashing a slideshow of images across his mind’s eye.

      ‘Only, when she went missing, I seem to remember you were pretty keen to find out where she’d gone.’

      ‘I’m always concerned about my employees, Sammy. You know that.’

      ‘Oh aye,’ Sammy said hastily. ‘I know that, Patrick. But I didn’t know if you were still interested?’

      He couldn’t maintain the pretence of disinterest any longer. ‘Where is she, Sammy?’

      Patrick heard the sound of a cheap lighter clicking. ‘I was in Glasgow last weekend – a cousin of the wife’s wedding. Anyway, I went into a supermarket to get some drinks in, and I saw Bernadette. Not to speak to, like, but it was definitely her, Patrick.’ Sammy spoke rapidly.

      ‘Was she working there?’

      ‘No, no, she was walking out with her shopping. I was at the checkout, in the middle of paying, there was nothing I could do …’

      ‘What supermarket would that be, now?’ Patrick said, as if it were a matter of supreme indifference.

      ‘I’m not sure of the name of it, like, but it’s right at the top of Byres Road. Behind the Grosvenor Hotel. That’s where the wedding was, you see. I didn’t know if you were still interested, but I thought, no harm in letting your man know.’

      ‘I appreciate that, Sammy. There’s a twenty-pound bet for you in the shop next time you’re passing.’ It would cost him nothing. Sammy McGuire was one of life’s losers. ‘Take СКАЧАТЬ