Crossfire

Her face fell. 'I was hoping you might have. That wife of his — you've met her?'

'No.'

There seemed to be no love lost there.

'Well, she says he's taken a break. You know, clearing his fucking head or something. She won't say where he is, when he's coming back.' She raised her hands in frustration. 'I'm trying to run a news organization here.'

'Has he done this before?'

They dropped back on to the table. 'No — but, then, he hasn't had a cameraman killed before either. That bloody wife of his, she knows where he is.'

'Did he say anything about filming in the city before we left?'

'He's my war correspondent. He doesn't do new one-way systems. That was just the fucking cameraman trying to get some expenses out of me. Old habits die hard.'

She sat back, her hands stretched out on the desk. The spiders' legs flashed up and down. 'Perhaps we could arrange some extra work? Here in the studio? We've got a great story, all this great footage, but no one to follow it up. We could get massive exposure on this. All the outlets have been clamouring.'

She looked at my arm. 'You're a film star now, Nick. What about you giving an interview, just talking to camera, nothing hard, telling us what happened? You could talk us through it. They're hungry out there, Nick. People want to know the pain you've gone through. It would be a lasting tribute to Dom's cameraman.'

Moira couldn't have pulled off concerned if there'd been a gun to her head.

I stood up and so did she. She was waspish. 'You're wasting an opportunity to tell the world what happened. If you don't do it, there are others who will.'

I had to put her right there and then, before she barged her way into their lives and fucked them up even more. 'Do not go near Pete's family. They've had enough shit already. If you do I'll go to the BBC — in fact, any fucker — and do the interview with them.'

Her face went red with anger, which was quite an achievement, given the thickness of her makeup. 'Then your invoice will take a fucking long time coming through, that's all I can say.'

I walked out.

Kate had been hovering outside. She followed me to the lift. As the doors closed, she jumped in.

'Mr Stone, I knew she wouldn't pay you if you said no, so here… I prepared.' Out of her bag came a wad of euros and a receipt for me to sign.

'You'll burn in hell for this, Kate. Thank you.'

She smiled, then got embarrassed and looked down. 'She's already asked Peter's family.'

'What did they say?'

'They said no. I think that is good thing.'

'So do I, Kate. So do I.'

We shook hands by the steel waterfall and I headed for the door.

'There is one more thing, Mr Stone.'

I turned.

'She really didn't believe Peter's invoice. But he had been filming in St Stephen's Green. You wouldn't believe how tight she is. She wouldn't reimburse Dom for his donation to the refuge either.'

'The one in their documentary?'

She nodded. 'It's very close to his heart.'

33

'Herbert Park in Ballsbridge.'

The cab edged out into traffic.

'One of the embassies, sir?'

'Nah, just an old mate who's moved there. Smart area, is it?'

He chuckled. 'On the Dublin Monopoly board, the roads in Ballsbridge are the fockin' big bucks squares.' He threw a newspaper to me. 'Here, have a read of that. We're going to be stuck in the rush-hour for a while.'

He wasn't wrong. We were surrounded by commuters with their heads down and telephones to their ears as they made their way home.

The street-lights glowed on the paper through the rain-stained windows. I opened it up on a big spread about extraordinary rendition. A cleaning woman had boarded a supposedly empty American plane to find a prisoner handcuffed, hooded and wearing an adult nappy. The Irish government were hugely embarrassed: they'd given public assurances that war-on-terror 'rendered' prisoners didn't come anywhere near the place on their way to Guantánamo Bay or the CIA's secret prisons in Afghanistan, Pakistan or wherever their interrogators had been able to set up shop.

The piece said:

The practice has grown sharply since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now includes a form in which suspects are illegally arrested, sometimes straight off the street, and delivered to a third-party state. There, the suspects are tortured by many means, including 'waterboarding'…

We used to do it out of this very city, only it wasn't called rendition in those days. They were just lifted. It got me wondering if Special Branch had ever used waterboarding. We never hung around at the castle long enough to see what went on. Better not to know, and have a clean pair of hands.

I checked the property pages but there was nothing for sale in the whole suburb of Ballsbridge, let alone Herbert Park.

'What do the houses go for round here?'

'Put it this way, last time you were here you could have picked up one of these little beauties for fifty thousand punts. Last one I saw advertised went for well over seven million euros. We're nearly there. Which end?'

I folded the newspaper. 'Drop us off here, mate. I'm going to walk down and surprise them.'

I paid him thirty euros and walked along Herbert Park in the rain, looking for number eighty-eight. Actually, it wasn't really rain, not even drizzle, more a mist that soaked everything through. I pulled up the collar of my bomber, hooked my bag over my shoulder and started walking.

If Pete had done good, Dom had hit the jackpot. These were substantial four-storey red-brick houses set back from the road, with large rectangular windows, designed for the grand and merchant classes during old Dublin's previous heyday. Raised stone staircases led one floor up to very solid and highly glossed front doors. The ground floor was reserved for the servants. Either Dom had married into money or the Polish celeb mags paid much more than I'd imagined for their double-page spreads. Or the Yes Man hadn't been talking bollocks.

Lights were on in several of the houses, and curtains were open to display the gilded furniture and big chandeliers to best effect.

I was still trying to work out what to say to Siobhan. Did she know Dom was an asset? I wasn't sure how that worked with spouses. I'd never been put to the test.

I walked past 6 Series BMWs and shiny 4x4s.

For all I knew, Dom could be sitting at home with his feet up watching telly, and Siobhan was putting the kettle on to make him a brew.

I neared number eighty-eight. The hall light shone through a glass panel over a wide, shiny wooden door. I couldn't see any movement through the front windows or upstairs. There were no milk bottles on the front step, empty or full, but that meant nothing nowadays. There was no condensation on the windows, but I wouldn't expect it. This was no minging old council house with poor heating and no ventilation.

I carried on past. Keeping a mental count of the houses, I reached the end of the street. The last time I'd walked past so many brand-new cars I'd been in a Kuwaiti showroom. This place was awash with money. I picked up a flyer from the pavement advertising a luxurious spa with a helipad on the roof in case you needed some emergency work on your cuticles.

I turned left at the end of the terrace and worked my way round to the back of the houses. There was a small service road about four metres wide that the gardens on each side backed on to. I walked past all the wheelie-bins and counted up to sixteen. Each property had a six-foot brick wall and either an old wooden gate or a fancy wrought-iron one. Mature trees towered over the gardens.

The lights were on at the back of eighty-eight on the first floor.

There was movement in what looked like the kitchen, but the blinds were half down. I couldn't ID the shadow, but it seemed too small to be Dom.