When Mrs Collins arrives Catherine immediately regrets having phoned her. The woman is kind, but too kind, you know, she’d smother you with kindness, and now five seconds in the door she’s already hard at it. After a while Yvonne arrives and takes over, thankfully – even though the first thing she does is whip the glass of vodka away from Catherine, saying a shot or two is fine, for your nerves, but you don’t want to overdo it. The cops’ll be here soon, she says, and you’ll probably have to go somewhere to identify the body, and anyway there’ll be plenty of time for drinking later. Then she puts the kettle on – the kettle, the fucking kettle.
Catherine hates the kettle.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ Mrs Collins says, looking uneasily into the kitchen after Yvonne, ‘a nice cup of tea.’
The ‘nice’ really grates on Catherine’s nerves. To distract herself, she glances over at the framed photographs arranged on shelves in the corner of the lounge. She stands up and walks across the room to get a closer look at them.
She can’t believe this. She was eighteen years old when Noel was born, and just look at her. She was fucking gorgeous. Every bloke in the area wanted to ride her and wouldn’t leave her alone, so it was no surprise when she got pregnant – but of course it did have to be with a mad bastard like Jimmy Dempsey. Not that it mattered though. Once she had the baby, she didn’t care, and was even relieved when Jimmy fecked off to England. Noel was her baby. He wasn’t a Dempsey, he was a Rafferty – and a Noel Rafferty at that, just like her brother.
The photos are arranged in order and she gazes at each one of them in turn.
Oh God, she thinks, biting her lip – the little fella. Look at him there – as a baby, a boy, a teenager. That’s his life… all of his life now.
Starting to sob again, she turns away. Yvonne approaches her with a cup of tea. Catherine wants to say Fuck off, would you, I don’t want tea, but she doesn’t, she takes it.
The doorbell rings.
Noel.
As he comes in through the hallway, Catherine rushes out from the lounge to meet him. They stand there locked in a tight embrace for up to a minute.
Catherine has always adored her brother, even though in recent years they haven’t seen each other as much as they used to, or anyway as much as she’d like. Noel has been up to his eyes with work, spending every waking hour, it seems, locked away in meetings, off on foreign junkets or just stuck on building sites. However, there’s more to it than that, and it hits her now, what she’s known all along but hasn’t ever wanted to admit.
With her son’s growing profile, mentions in the paper and so on… had he become something of a liability as far as her brother was concerned, a potential embarrassment?
Meaning what?
Catherine doesn’t know, but in her confusion she allows the thought a little space to breathe. As she stands there in Noel’s arms, stroking the silky texture of his suit and losing herself in the haze of his cologne, she wonders if maybe, at some level, he isn’t relieved to have his young nephew permanently out of the picture.
But once the thought is formed, she flinches from it, and confusion quickly gives way to shame.
Noel is the first to extract himself from the embrace. He then holds Catherine’s face in his hands and stares into her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Catherine,’ he says.
Her face crumples again and they re-embrace for a moment. Yvonne comes out from the kitchen. She and Noel acknowledge each other with silent nods. Somehow, they all move into the lounge and end up sitting on sofas. But it feels weirdly polite, like it’s some kind of formal occasion. There’s a tension in the room, and no one seems to know what it is.
Then Mrs Collins stands up and it becomes clear.
‘I’ll just slip away,’ she whispers, nodding at Yvonne and then at Noel. She glances at Catherine and cocks her head sideways. But suddenly she’s gone and it’s just the three of them.
Family.
But this doesn’t last very long.
The doorbell rings again and Catherine’s heart lurches. She thinks maybe it’s Michelle or Gina.
As Yvonne goes out to answer it, Catherine and Noel remain still, looking across the room at each other in silence, listening.
The door opens.
‘Good evening, ma’am.’
It’s a deep voice, an accent – a fucking culchie.
Noel stands up. ‘The guards,’ he says quietly.
He goes out.
Catherine listens to the shuffling in the hallway as two or maybe even three of them come in. Not much is being said. She imagines some pointing going on, faces being made, heads nodding. Then comes the moment she dreads. She looks up as two uniformed guards step into the room. Over their uniforms they have on those yellow reflective jackets that make them look like Teletubbies. They both have hangdog expressions on their faces, and are followed by a plainclothes detective, a shorter, older man in a navy suit. This isn’t the first time the guards have been to the house, but it’s the first time they’ve ever been let in the door. Catherine feels a flicker of indignation. She knows how Noel would feel about this. But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have the will. There are too many other things going on in her head, vying for her attention – memories of Noel, images, snatches of things he said. She’d love another hit from that glass of vodka.
Where did Yvonne leave it?
‘Mrs Rafferty?’
Mrs? She’s not even going to correct them on that one.
She looks up. They’re standing around awkwardly. No one tells them to sit down.
‘What?’ she says.
The detective steps forward. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you, Mrs Rafferty.’
She realises he’s only doing his duty, that it’s a formality, but she can’t help thinking what Noel would be saying if he was here now, he’d be saying, ‘Listen, you stupid fucking bogman, tell us something we don’t know.’
4
On Wicklow Street, parked near Louis Copeland’s, Paddy Norton sits slumped in his BMW, staring at his mobile phone. He has just walked back from the hotel, not the better yet of Noel Rafferty’s sudden appearance in the bar forty-five minutes earlier.
What in God’s name does he do now?
He hesitates, and then places his mobile on top of the folder lying on the passenger seat beside him. He reaches into his pocket and produces a small silver pillbox. He opens it and taps two Narolet tablets out into the palm of his hand. He raises his hand, knocks the two tablets into his mouth and swallows them back dry. With the booze he already has in his system these should kick in pretty soon, help him to calm down.
It’s fairly cold outside but he’s sweating. He draws the back of his hand across his upper lip.
He shifts his considerable weight in the seat. The car is spacious, roomy, but Norton gives it a run for its money all the same.
He looks down at the phone again.
It was enough of a shock having Noel turn up unexpectedly in the first place, but what was the story then with him rushing off like that – pale all of a sudden, barely a word, no explanation? And who had that been on his mobile? Was it a tip-off of some kind?
Hardly.
There’s nothing for it. Norton has to talk to Fitz. The arrangement was no direct contact for at least a week, but clearly that doesn’t apply anymore, not in these circumstances.
He picks up his phone again, selects a number and hits Call.
As he is waiting, he feels the first, vague stirrings of the Narolet in his system.