Resurrection Man (8 page)

Sundays in the city were still and vacant with flat grey skies or watery sunshine. It was the silence of the empty quarter, the uplifted quivering palm, the silent howl. In the morning
congregations
gathered outside churches and meeting halls then dispersed as if their acts of worship were a preliminary to greater assembly, a preparation towards some fervent
communal
act of expiation. Ryan’s impression of this was reinforced by the long Sunday afternoons when it seemed that the population had deserted the streets and gathered
dramatically
on a hillside outside the city, hushed and expectant.

There had been no further knife killings and he had been avoiding Coppinger. They passed each other in the lobby with no sign of recognition. There was dark talk about the circles that Coppinger was moving in. He had become a centre of rumour and his actions were discussed with the kind of hostility normally reserved for immigrant Indians and Chinese in the city. See how dirty. Ryan thought that Coppinger had achieved the burning belief of a despised prophet. His reports, precise and factual, were frequently rejected. There was something frightening about them. They read as if they had been stripped down and ordered according to an unimaginable necessity. They had the dry powdery feel of bones dried in the sun.

The bars in the city were closed on a Sunday. It was only possible to get a drink in a club or in some of the hotels. Ryan took a taxi across town to the York Hotel on Botanic Avenue where he rapped on the front door with a coin. He waited for a
few minutes, then a man in a white shirt came to the door and scrutinized him through the glass. He unlocked the door silently and held it open. Ryan realized that there had been a time when he would not have passed this type of examination. He had somehow acquired the psychic credentials of the drinker, the sad, proclaiming spirit.

There were four or five men at the bar. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn across the windows and the lights were on. Ryan liked the atmosphere, redolent of self-forgiveness and gracious moments of reprieve.

The man in the white shirt moved behind the bar where he stood waiting. Ryan ordered a whiskey. Turning, he realized that Coppinger had been standing at the bar beside him. Concealed by the practised stance of anonymity. Ryan noticed how his eyes had changed. They seemed to be a sniper’s eyes, deeply sunk, accustomed to range and distance.

‘It’s a funny thing about these city centre bars,’ Coppinger said, ‘the way they’re neutral zones. People take a break from the practice of bitterness. They’re protective about the status of the place.’

‘An element of sanctuary,’ Ryan suggested, ‘weapons piled at the door.’

‘Could be. There must have been a declaration, a decree handed down from some obscure council.’

‘Something I keep noticing coming through the city centre on a Sunday is wee old men standing on street corners. Every corner has one. They talk to you when you pass them. They’re the only people about. They make a point of sharing
reminiscences
with you.’

Ryan stopped. He realized that Coppinger and himself had always talked like this, exchanging observations about the city, developing small themes and drawing them out to their limits. It was an attempt to create new levels, to resist the city’s definition of itself as violent, divisive, pitiful.

He knew that there were also depths of parody in these
conversations, a sideshow for good-humoured crowds at the place of execution.

‘I was wondering,’ he said hesitantly, ‘did you hear
anything
more about the knife killings?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Do you think it was some kind of aberration?’

‘What do you mean?’

I’m not sure. An enthusiastic amateur or something.’

‘What about O’Neill’s then, that some sort of aberration?’

‘Happens all the time. Your classic armed robbery gone wrong. I can see the statement now. “Guns started going off, I just pulled the trigger.” Suspect begins to weep with genuine fear and bewilderment. No one knows how it got to the point of guns going off and bodies on the floor. They never really meant to kill anybody.’

‘You don’t believe that.’

‘Somebody might have got carried away.’

‘Shite. The word is that somebody’s squealed, made a statement but refused to name people, and from what I hear of that statement nobody fucking panicked. Anyhow if you don’t want to pursue it just forget it.’

‘I want to pursue it. I can’t forget it.’ The words were out of Ryan’s mouth before he realized that he had spoken them, and he was aware of a pressing fear.

‘You look shook,’ Coppinger said.

‘I can’t explain it. It’s like you close your eyes and see the whole thing in flashback.’

‘You been down at the magistrates’ court lately? They bring these wee bastards in. Seventeen, eighteen years old. They’ve already spilled the beans and you get this detective reading out their statement. They all say the same thing. “It was like a film.” “It was like something out of the pictures.” Like they’re not really shooting anybody.’

‘They’re absolving themselves of blame. Like as soon as they run away the victim’s going to stand up, dust himself off.’

‘I don’t reckon that’s it. I think that’s the way they
remember
it. Frame by frame. The look of terror on the victim’s face. The pleading eyes. Throwing up their arms in slow motion as the bullet enters. It’s all got to do with memory. It’s the way you remember sex or violence.’

It was the way Ryan remembered the night that finished his marriage. One of those long drinking evenings, moving through the strata of the marriage with a kind of calm professionalism. Reminiscence, speculation, resentment – these were the zones of marginal yield, half-heartedly indulged until they reached the rich vein of betrayal and hostility. She would often decide to leave the flat then, depriving Ryan of a focus for his anger. She ran to bus depots, railway stations. Once she rang Ryan from the airport, drunk and weeping. There was
something
in large, echoing public buildings which satisfied her. She was calmed by place-names being spoken over a Tannoy, the solace of destinations. When he drove to the airport that morning she was sitting on a bench listening to
announcements
of departures and arrivals with her eyes closed and a smile on her face, sunk in some private rapture which lasted until they got back to the house in Stranmillis where she went to bed and was asleep in seconds, still smiling.

But what he remembered now was the night he tried to stop her leaving, following her into the bathroom where she was holding her hair back with one hand and tying an elastic band around it with the other.

‘Fuck’re you going?’ he said. He always felt intimidated by her acts of preparation in front of the mirror, her lips pursed, as though the body in the mirror belonged to someone else who was teaching a sequence of feminine gestures which must be followed precisely.

‘I’m only going out for a walk. Go to bed.’

‘You always walk off. Spoil a good argument.’

‘You always,’ she mocked.

‘Never fucking stay.’ He felt uncouth and mumbling. She belonged somewhere with this white light, taut and estranged, of formica and porcelain. He had a sudden vision of the next day. The shame and sense of amnesty. Mean what you said? The contrite words, grateful subterfuges, promises. Both accepting the reprieve, waking late and dehydrated, drinking pints of water in bed. Forgiveness.

‘You never,’ she said, walking past him out of the
bathroom
. ‘You always and you never. You shit. You fuck. Pitiful fucking you. Pitiful fuck.’

He hit her under the eye, her head striking the doorframe. She slid on to the floor and held her face in her hands. After a long time she turned her head to look at him. They said nothing. It needed time to realign themselves to the event. A moment to be replayed, savoured, not spoken of.

‘Where does that leave us?’

‘I think the man we’re looking for is doing time somewhere. He’s either on remand or he’s been interned. The atmosphere is different somehow. It’s like there’s a variation in the rhythm, but the theme’s going to re-emerge somewhere like something monstrous with kettledrums and all.’

‘How come you’re so fucking brainy Coppinger?’

‘Piss off and order us a drink.’

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the bar locked into discussion of the knife killings and the O’Neill murders. Rumours were beginning to surface of paramilitary and British Intelligence involvement in a boys’ home on the outskirts of the city. There was talk of politicians and senior civil servants being filmed or recorded in bed with teenage boys. No one seemed to know what uses this information was being put to. Coppinger claimed to know examples of nervous
decision-making
at high level which could only be put down to some potent encroachment on government thought. Ryan was
sceptical
of this, but Coppinger stressed the importance of rumour,
the complex networks of dubious information that influenced every major event in the city. Riots, assassinations, the overnight flight of whole streets. Rumour was the means by which society confirmed its own worst suspicions. Dark
mutterings
. Coppinger said that it was always the primal response to instability. It was an essential factor in historical events, situations which lent themselves to powerful fictions:
soothsayers
, exhausted riders at the city gates with tales of strange happenings, signs and portents.

‘You’re probably thinking this is fanciful shit,’ Coppinger said. ‘Poor fucker’s been out in the wilds so long his fucking porch light’s gone out on him. But this is where we’re looking for our man. We’re not going to find this fucker asking questions on doorsteps. Excuse me, missus, but did you see a man walking down the street with a bloodstained knife in his mitt like. You got to get right to the source of all the rumours, the fear.’

‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘you’re supposed to be a journalist, how many things have you found out about him?’

‘Fuck-all except what I read in the papers.’

‘Exactly. Nobody knows what’s going on. Everybody’s got a different version. There’s a heap of intelligence agencies got their fingers in the pie as well as the usual players. None of them co-operating and all of them spreading different versions of what’s going on, spreading the story that suits them and not telling anybody else. When nobody’s in control watch out my son.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘Sit tight and wait for him to get out.’

‘What if he’s been put away for twenty years?’

‘He hasn’t.’

‘Do you know something you’re not letting on about?’

‘It’s not that, just a feeling you get from talking to people. I suppose if he’d been put away for a good long while people would be telling you more. You get the impression that they’re not looking over their shoulder as much, but that it’s a
temporary thing. I tried going through the names of internees and remand prisoners but there’s millions of the bastards. Don’t worry, we’ll know when he gets out. Give you something to look forward to.’

‘There’s a problem with waiting. By the time he gets out you and me’ll probably not have any jobs any more.’

Both of them knew that they were in trouble at work. Coppinger because his copy was being rejected. Ryan because of missing days and arriving into work drunk or hung-over. He knew that his appearance had changed. He went for days without changing his shirt. There were stains on his trousers and jacket. He could detect pity from those at work. He felt as if he was experimenting with the concept of a man in
disintegration
, moving through the stages of personal neglect as if it were an exact science with observable phenomena of decay, nuances of futility.

There were other factors in their feeling of insecurity. Both of them were experiencing difficulty in defining their jobs. Somehow the state of civil unrest in the city had made them feel obsolete, abandoned on the perimeter of a sprawling technology of ruin. Coppinger said that he was experiencing a new species of information. Paramilitary organizations
operating
under cover names. Politicians issued ambiguous
statements
of condemnation. In court unidentified witnesses gave evidence from behind screens. The facts were equivocal and it had become impossible to pin down responsibility. Each time Coppinger wrote up a killing he felt that the report acquired implications which he had not put there. It hinted at something covert, unexplained, dissatisfying. Several journalists had been shot, many had been threatened.

The bar filled quietly over the afternoon. No one raised their voice. There was an air of serious business, transactions being carried out in the medium of comfort, mercy. Ryan was reminded of funerals, the soft instructions whispered by
undertakers
,
the murmurs of condolence. They were both drinking whiskey.

Night had fallen when they left the bar. They walked towards Shaftsbury Square. There was no one else about. A Belisha beacon flashed at a pedestrian crossing. There was the sound of a helicopter coming from the North of the city, a melancholic stirring of the air, dark, hinting at calamity.

At the bottom of Dunegall Pass they were stopped by an army foot patrol. One of the soldiers asked for their names and addresses and their destination. The others crouched in doorways scanning the rooftops, their faces doubtful, as if the buildings themselves, the form and structure of the city, were untrustworthy, possessed of a dubious topography which required constant surveillance.

The soldier taking their names spoke in a low Scottish accent. He transcribed their names carefully, asking each man to spell his surname. He had difficulty with the addresses so that they had to correct him several times. Ryan had seen this before – people in trouble taking infinite care over spellings as if they were eager to implicate themselves. Coppinger started to discuss the upcoming Glasgow Rangers game with the soldier. The soldier’s answers were short. He had been in the city long enough to recognize a breach of propriety, a deviation from the careful hostility which was supposed to accompany such interviews. Coppinger had abandoned the terse recognized forms. The soldier shifted his rifle to hold it across his chest. Ryan saw a threat in the gesture but Coppinger continued to speak urgently, his words acquiring the imperative cadences of a football commentator, the voice pitched above the roar of the crowd, striving to make the audience identify with events on the field, the floodlit and solitary exertions, the last-minute transcendence of suffering. The soldier began to swear at Coppinger. Ryan stepped in between them and Coppinger stopped talking, hanging his head and breathing lightly. Another member of the patrol across the street whistled and raised his arm at the other.
They had spent too long in one place. They had a schedule to follow. Streets to be crossed at a crouching run. Nervous drunk men to be questioned. With a last angry look at Coppinger the soldier turned and followed the others down the street.