“You can have five minutes,” he said. “I’m a busy man.”
We went inside his office, which was a tastefully decorated job overlooking the River Foyle. Big comfy leather chairs, nice big desk, nice watercolours. You could do good work sucking money out of the Brits in this office.
“So what is it now?” Selden asked.
“I suppose you already know that after we had our little chat I was abducted by the IRA.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, looking me, rather impressively, straight in the eye. He held my gaze but only for a three count and then his gaze shifted to his feet.
Christ, the guy was no poker player. Give me two days with him in an interrogation suite and I’d have him singing “When The Saints Go Marching In” and the name of every girl he necked in the back row of the Regal Cinema. Lifting a Sinn Fein councillor wouldn’t be easy though, without any evidence. Not impossible, of course, but not easy.
“Well, as you can see, your chums weren’t able to give me a hole in the back of the head.”
“No? How’d you escape? Magic powers?”
“Just a bit of luck, actually.”
“You should write fiction, inspector.”
“Fiction is redundant around here, don’t you think? Reality is so much worse. I was kidnapped, probably at your orders.”
“You’ve a great imagination, pal.”
“I’ve got a terrible imagination. That’s why I’m living in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Anybody with any imagination would have hightailed it out of here long ago.”
“Yeah, well, you can piss off now.”
“What’s the next trick? Another smear attack in the press, or you going to try and get to me in Carrick?”
“I despair, really, I do,” Harry said and gave Lawson and McCrabban a sigh. “Can youse talk sense into him? I’ve looked into this case of yours. I don’t for the life of me see why you are trying to drag me into it. I was in hospital in Derry with blood poisoning when they shot this drug dealer fella in Carrickfergus. Teleportation is not one of my gifts.”
“Your car was in Carrick tailing the dead man.”
“My stolen car.”
“There can’t have been many Catholics in the B Specials back in 1968,” I said.
“Oh it’s back to this again, is it?”
“It’s back to this again.”
“You’re one to talk about Catholics in the police.”
“Touché, Harry. What did you and Frank Deauville get up to together in the B Specials in 1968?”
“I never heard of this Frank Deauville before you started bleating on about him.”
“That’s not what your file says,” I attempted.
A smile flitted across his lips.
He knew. He fucking knew the files were gone. His file. Deauville’s file. Harry knew.
“What file’s that?” he asked.
I said nothing and as I guessed he would, he filled the dead air with more nonsense: “Are you talking about my old police records? What do they say?”
I got up from the comfy leather sofa. Lawson and McCrabban got up too.
“We’ll see ourselves out,” I said.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“You’ll be hearing from us again,” I said.
“No I won’t. That’s harassment. Next time you want to talk to me, you can talk to my solicitor first.”
I nodded, said goodbye to the secretary and walked down the stairs with Lawson and Crabbie.
When we were safely back in the Beemer, Crabbie shook his head and lit his pipe.
“Aye,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“What?” Lawson said. “What did I miss?”
“He knew about the missing file. The question is how?” McCrabban said.
“How indeed?”
18: INFERNAL AFFAIRS
Home to Coronation Road. Emma excited to see her Da-da-da, Beth in good form reading Ubik while I made the tea: spagbol for everyone, Chilean red and garlic bread for me and B.
After dinner we took Emma up the road for a walk.
“The man in that house builds ships. The man in that house was a prisoner of the Japanese. The man in that house has a pet lion,” I said.
“The woman in that house makes gin in her bathtub. The woman in that house is divorced and has a huge crush on Daddy,” Beth said.
I put Emma to bed and when I came downstairs Beth was thumbing through my albums.
Time for The Talk.
Don’t mention the kidnapping or the promise of being burned alive or the dead man or shooting a girl in the back.
Don’t mention the fear.
The fear in the chair.
The fear in the walk up the hill.
The fear that the men will, in due course, try it all again.
Secrets.
Secrets were poison. Especially in the six counties: a fake world built on fantasies, secrets and dissimulation.
But sometimes you needed to dissimulate.
“Is this Robert Reich any good?” she asked, holding up a record.
“Do you like xylophones?”
“God no!”
I took the record from her. “Listen, Beth, there’s this threat thing that has come down from intel. It’s against my life. Nothing to get panicky about but it’s against me personally not just against the police in general. We don’t know if it’s real or not, but I’d prefer it if you and Em moved back in with your folks for a few days.”
“We only just moved back here!”