“Wouldn’t that cost a lot of money?”
“Not much these days. Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get an exit visa. In 1988 it is a different story.”
We finished the bottle of Absolut and I played Yavarov my copy of Tabula Rasa.
A strange look flitted across Yavarov’s face. “Are you homosexual, Duffy?” he asked.
A momentary hesitation before I answered: “No.”
The strange look vanished. “I like this music, but it is so sad.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t put on the Shostakovich.”
It was after one, so I showed Yavarov to his bedroom at the back of the house. The room with the weirdly unobstructed view all the way to the massive cranes of Harland and Wolff shipyard eight miles distant across the lough.
“I’ll leave you to it then, Pytor. Bathroom just down the hall.”
He offered me his hand and I shook it. “You’re a good man, Duffy. A good man. I would help you if I could. But I cannot,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“My duty is to protect a Bulgarian citizen. Her interests must come first.”
“Did she tell you something about her husband’s murder?”
Yavarov shook his head.
“What did she tell you? Did she see who did it? Did she do it?”
“She did not do it and she did not see who killed him,” Yavarov said emphatically.
“Then what?”
“Nothing … I am drunk.”
“You’re as drunk as me. What did she tell you?”
“She told me nothing. She does not know anything. She did not see anything. I am just talking. I am drunk. I am not a good Bulgarian. I get drunk very easily.”
He yawned and swayed there for a moment until he found a convenient wall. He picked up the cat and put it down again when it gave him a dirty look.
“I will tell you Bulgarian joke,” he said.
“No jokes, tell me what she told you.”
“A squirrel is in a pine tree, when all of a sudden, it starts shaking. He looks down, and sees an elephant climbing the tree. ‘What are you doing? Why are you climbing my tree?’ the squirrel calls down to the elephant. ‘I’m coming up there to eat some pears!’ the elephant responds. ‘You fool! This is a pine tree! There aren’t any pears up here!’ The elephant looks perplexed for a moment, and then says, ‘Well, I brought my own pears.’”
Yavarov burst into laughter and I smiled at him. I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’d tell me if you knew anything, wouldn’t you, Pytor? We’re old pals now,” I said.
“Old pals,” he agreed. “Inspector Duffy of Belfast who has Swedish vodka and listens to Estonian classical music. And Pytor Yavarov, the son of Alexander Yavarov who was for a time in 1943 an attaché to King Boris III.”
“King Boris, eh?”
“Much maligned man, Tsar Boris. History does not forgive but I say this: only two countries under Nazi occupation in all of Europe save every one of their Jewish citizens: Denmark and Bulgaria. Yes?”
“OK, mate, I believe you. King Boris – good egg. I gotta go to bed. The bathroom’s down the hall, there’s some spare pyjamas in the linen cupboard, don’t fuck with the paraffin heater – that thing’s dangerous.”
I left him to it and went to my room. I was too exhausted to write the conversation down and indeed I forgot all about it until a few weeks later. It had been a bloody awful day on the whole. And my head would be a bear in the morning.
9: DAADD KNOWS BEST
Downstairs to get the milk before the starlings got to work on it. Too late: the gold top sipped from, the silver top stabbed.
Frost on the ground. Blue sky above the Antrim Hills. Mooing of cows, baaing of sheep, growling of diggers as Greater Belfast pushed deeper into the Irish countryside …
I took a deep breath. In a couple of years Coronation Road wouldn’t be special any more. When I’d first moved here it was the last street in Carrick before the wild country of County Antrim began – country of the Ulaidh and Finn and Sweeney among the nightingales … But with all the construction going on now, by 1990 Coronation Road would just be part of the Greater Belfast sprawl.
Moving wouldn’t be so bad. Beth was probably right.
The cat strolled up the garden path and meowed at my feet. I showed him the vandalised milk bottle.
“See this? What do you do to earn your keep around here? Keeping the starlings away from the bloody milk is your—”
A silver Jaguar was driving up Coronation Road. I put down the cat. A tall pinched man in a corduroy jacket and flat cap was driving the Jag, slowly looking for parking as if he owned the place. Who knows? Maybe he did. Maybe he’d built this street and named it back in 1953.
I clocked the number plate to confirm my worst fears: “JAG-7” it said.
“Shite,” I muttered, closed the door and brought the milk in.
Yavarov was in the kitchen eating toast and drinking coffee and wearing my old red pyjamas.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning. I made coffee, have some,” he said.