Blood Whispers (24 page)

As he raised his gun, she suddenly flicked her hand out in front of her.

Andrej felt an intense, stabbing pain and reeled backwards, clutching at the knife embedded in his throat. As he sank to his knees, gasping for air, his Glock slipped from his grasp and clattered noisily to the floor.

Andrej watched helplessly as the brunette slowly made her way towards him and picked it up. In a last desperate attempt to save his life, he lunged at her and tried to grab the gun from her hand‚ but his clumsy effort failed and he fell heavily, face down on the floor.

As he drew his hands alongside his chest and tried once again to push himself upright he felt the tip of the gun barrel being pushed into the back of his neck.

Andrej screwed his eyes tight shut.

A handgun this close would be loud when it went off.

Niamh walked the wide, tree-lined stretch of the Champs Elysées until she came to the Place de la Concorde. With the illuminated Luxor Obelisk behind her she cut down towards the river heading for the Pont Royal, where she crossed the Seine and continued left along the Quai Voltaire towards Rue des Beaux-Arts.

The hotel, called L’Hôtel, had a restaurant, called Le Restaurant. Niamh booked a table for supper at reception and ordered two whisky sours to be sent up to her room.

Thirty minutes later, with one sour drained and the other almost finished, she stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror running her fingers gently over the raised mounds of skin left by the bullet wounds. The small, crater shaped scars had healed over completely now and were no longer sensitive to the touch.

She turned her hands – palms upward – and stared at the two thin lines, like red pencil marks, on each of her wrists. After a while she lifted her glass and downed the rest of the sour.

The empty glass clinked loudly as she placed it beside the auburn-brown wig on the marble topped bathroom cabinet. The sample bottle of Sellar’s blood sat alongside. Using the tip of her metal nail file, she’d scratched a question mark into the white label wrapped around it.

Niamh closed her eyes then brought her wrists together and started rubbing them until the only sensation she was aware of was the warm contact of skin on skin and the slight, almost imperceptible bump as the scars crossed each other’s path.

When she was finished, she let her head droop forward and slowly raised her arms out to the side in the shape of a cross.

Niamh McGuire and her mother Orlaith left the Bridge Bar in Newry, County Armagh, and crossed the busy road, turning left on to Upper Water Street. They both wore sober black suits, opaque black tights and black-veiled hats. They walked past a terraced row of shuttered shop fronts: each building in turn painted a pastel shade of blue, pink or yellow. At the Phoenix Bar they turned right into Margaret Street, then left at Margaret Square into Hill Street. Nothing had changed in the twenty years since they had last set foot in their hometown, but everything was different. The streets, the shops, the shoppers all looked exactly the same, but the Troubles were over, and the sense of danger that had been so much a part of life growing up there had disappeared.

Life had more or less returned to normal.

Niamh stopped when she saw the twin, grey-granite spires of St Patrick & St Colman Cathedral half a mile or so along the narrow one-way street. Her childhood had died just a few miles from here in the house where she had killed a man. She knew even then that her life would never be normal again. She had been taken to the cathedral immediately afterwards. It was there that they had washed the blood from her face and stripped and burned the clothes she was wearing in an attempt to destroy any evidence of the crime. She remembered the cold flagstone floor beneath her bare feet, where she had stood shivering under a blanket as Father Anthony handed her a change of clothes that smelled musty and damp. She remembered the murmur of whispered conversations when the doctor arrived and tended to her uncle Danny and her father, Sean. She remembered the hot tears streaming down her face and believing that they would never stop. The ghost of her childhood was waiting behind the doors of St Patrick & St Colman and the time had come to take it by the hand and set it free.

‘Are you okay?’ asked her mother.

Niamh gave a slight shrug. ‘Better after that whiskey, but it feels like there’s a flock of seagulls in my stomach planning a jail break.’

‘Should have had a double,’ said Orlaith, taking her hand.

‘I did, but I could have drunk the bottle.’

Niamh looked at her mother’s face. The worry lines were etched a little deeper and her skin was pale and tired, but she still looked beautiful. ‘Are
you
okay, Ma? This can’t be easy for you either.’

‘Don’t be worrying about me, darling, I’m grand.’

‘When I was over seeing Father Anthony the last time, he gave me a diary that Sean had kept when he was in America. Gran told me about it. She didn’t want me to tell you, I don’t know why. I think she thought it might upset you to know that she’d had it all those years, I’m not sure. At some point, can we sit down and talk about what happened? I want to know who he was. I want to know what you went through. I need to find out who I am. I’ve never asked before because I always thought of it as your story; it didn’t belong to me. But I want it to be our story now, Ma. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.’

Orlaith pulled Niamh towards her in a tight embrace and whispered quietly in her ear. ‘I’ve never told you, because you never asked. But, you’re right: it is time to let go. Let’s get today over with, then I’ll tell you everything you need to know.’

As they approached the steps leading up to the entrance of the cathedral they saw Father Anthony waiting for them.

‘I was getting worried you wouldn’t come.’ He reached out to greet them both with a warm handshake.

‘Sorry if we’re a wee bit late, we stopped in the Bridge for a steadier.’

‘You look a lot better than you did the last time I saw you. You had us all worried there for a moment.’

‘A few gunshot wounds, Father. Nothing serious.’

‘I admire your attitude. It’s good to see you looking so well. And Orlaith – you look younger than ever. If I didn’t know any better I’d say the two of you were sisters.’

‘It’s the tears I’ve cried: keeps my skin well moisturized.’

‘Aye‚ I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it! Now we’ve a difficult day ahead of us, but together we’ll get through it.’ He led the two women up the steps. ‘Before we go in, I should just warn you that word of the service spread around. You know what it’s like here. If you burp on the streets of Newry the whole of Armagh turns to beg your pardon. So there are a few more people than you might have expected.’

Niamh gave her mum an anxious glance.

‘How many are we talking?’

The priest held open the large mahogany door that led from the entrance lobby into the cathedral and ushered them through.

‘It’s more or less full.’

The mosaic-tiled floor of the central aisle, with its brown and white Celtic banding pattern, stretched out in front of Niamh and Orlaith towards the altar. A sea of nearly one thousand heads filled the light oak pews on either side. Small garlands of white lilies hung from the end of every pew and the area in front of the altar had two large arrangements in tall fluted vases.

The two women bowed their heads and let Father Anthony lead them down the central aisle. As they passed each row in turn, the congregation rose to their feet like a gentle wave rolling silently to shore. Someone near the back started to clap, followed by another, then another, growing louder and more intense with each person that joined in. By the time Orlaith and Niamh had reached their seats on the front row every person in the cathedral was standing and clapping in a spontaneous show of support.

Father Anthony made his way to the altar, where he waited quietly for the applause to die down.

It rumbled on for nearly five minutes before it started to fade, then the priest raised his hands for silence and gestured for everyone to be seated.

‘We are gathered here today, not only to commemorate and celebrate the life of Kathleen McGuire, but to remember all the victims of the conflict that has blighted our country for so many years. Every single person in here has suffered a loss and I think it says something, not only about how far we have come, but about what sort of person Kathleen McGuire was, that as I look out at the congregation, I see members of both sides of our community – both faiths, whether they be Catholic or Protestant – standing side by side, united by their own personal grief, united by a collective sense of loss and drawn together to give thanks for this remarkable woman’s life. Some of you already know that Kathleen herself lost both her sons to the Troubles. She also lost her husband early on and struggled to bring those boys up as a single parent. Twenty years ago she had to flee, along with her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter, and start a new life elsewhere. But these trials and tribulations are not what set her apart from everyone else. When she lived here, Kathleen McGuire ran an open-house policy. I see many faces I recognize who have benefited from her kindness and compassion. She was always on hand to help. If she had money she would lend it, if she had food you would not go hungry, when she ran out of time, it was as if she could wind the clock back and make more. She carried the stresses and strains of these troubles with dignity and pride. A humble woman, who took nothing for herself and gave everything of herself: and
that
is what made her remarkable. I was lucky enough to know her, not only as a parishioner, but as a friend. Now, many of you have asked to give eulogies today so, for the moment, I will say only this: I spoke to Kathleen just before she died and also to her granddaughter Niamh – of whom she was very proud. Niamh told me that her grandmother’s final wish was to be cremated and her ashes scattered over the graves of her sons Sean and Danny. Kathleen herself told me that she would like a piper to play at her funeral, although, as she put it, “Not one of those fecking eejits in a tartan skirt. It’s the uillean, or nothing.”’

There was a peal of laughter from the crowd of mourners.

‘Kathleen also asked that I should choose a piece of music and I can think of no better piece than “Róisín Dubh”: the Dark Rose. “The Erne shall rise in rude torrents, hills shall be rent, The sea shall roll in red waves, and blood be poured out, Every mountain glen in Ireland, and the bogs shall quake Some day ere shall perish my Little Dark Rose!”’

A piper emerged from a door to the left of the altar and slow marched his way to stand facing the congregation at the head of the aisle. The characteristic cry and drone of the Irish pipes reverberated round the cathedral as he played the lament.

Father Anthony looked down at the two women sitting in the front row and felt a burning at the back of his eyes.

Niamh stared straight ahead with her hands clasped between her legs, the scars on her wrists pressed firmly together. Orlaith stretched her arm around her shoulder with a gentle squeeze and watched as the tears streamed down her daughter’s pale cheeks.

The man sitting outside Café Piazza, opposite the entrance to the cathedral, finished his coffee, peeled a twenty from a bundle of notes and slipped it under the saucer. He cleaned his thick-rimmed reading glasses with a napkin and carefully placed them back in their case. He tugged thoughtfully at his beard as he watched the two women and the priest disappear behind the cathedral’s large oak doors. Pulling his Birmingham Barons baseball-cap down to hide his face, he left the table and walked across the road. The black and gold wrought-iron gates to the left of the cathedral’s front entrance were open, allowing access down the side of the main hall.

He made his way past two tall granite gateposts until he came to one of the smaller oak side doors, where he stood and listened.

When the pipes started playing ‘Róisín Dubh’ he crossed himself, then turned and slowly headed back out on to Hill Street.

The sky had just clouded over and the first smattering of rain started peppering the pavement in small‚ dark grey dots.

The man smiled to himself and raised his hand to hail a cab.

‘Where ye headed mister?’

‘Airport please: Belfast International.’

‘Ye off home?’

‘This
is
home,’ replied the man.

I would like to thank the following people for their help and influence – whether directly or indirectly – in the writing of
Blood Whispers
.

My brother-in-law John McGovern for his patience and for introducing me to Gerry Sweeney on what turned out to be a very informative afternoon (albeit a brief one). Both John and Gerry are busy lawyers working at the coalface of crime in Scotland. As I sat in Gerry’s office and listened to them chatting with one another, I realised two things: first, that their depth of knowledge and expertise on matters legal was quite overwhelming, and second, that mine wasn’t. Any legal references contained in this book may have been inspired by their conversation, but the accuracy and application of the references is entirely the fault of the author.

A Slovakian friend of mine told me once that ‘history, literature, philosophy and the Arts illuminate the human condition, but it is teachers who are the torchbearers’. With this in mind I would like to thank June Mitchel and Isobel McNaughton who, at the time, were enduring the trials of teaching English at Victoria Drive Secondary School in the suburbs of Glasgow. Between them they helped foster an appreciation of the arts in myself and some of my fellow classmates, treated us like adults and steered us through the madness that is adolescence. Without their influence I would not have experienced many of the highlights in my life and for that I will be eternally grateful. This is just to reassure them both that some of us were listening.

Thanks also to Hannah Griffiths and my editor Katherine Armstrong (who can magically transform incomprehensible ramblings into readable prose) at Faber & Faber, to my agent Robert Caskie at Peters Fraser & Dunlop and to the great god Google for giving me access to the world from a hut at the bottom of my garden.

Thank you Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Hermann Hesse, Mick Rock and Hector Berlioz (you may have guessed that these names fall into the indirect category).

And finally one huge singular thank to my wife Shauna for her forbearance and for making a convincing show of looking interested whenever I attempted to unravel the complexities of a particular plot point by talking it through with her. The expression on her face (for my benefit) was of one intrigued, but I suspect she was secretly thinking ‘chocolate’.