‘A friend of yours,’ Lennon said. He thought about taunting the lawyer with the tales Roscoe had told him, that Toner was so scared he couldn’t get it up any more. He decided against it.
‘Bollocks,’ Toner said. His eyes glittered.
‘Maybe I can help,’ Lennon said.
‘Bollocks.’ Toner tried to stand, but his legs couldn’t hold him upright.
‘I can help,’ Lennon repeated. ‘
Toner snorted. ‘Protect me? Jesus, I wouldn’t need protecting if it wasn’t for them cunts. You’re not here on official business, are you? If you’d told anyone you were talking to me they’d have warned you off.’
‘Who would?’
‘Who do you think?’ This time Toner’s legs held him. The table shook as his thighs squeezed past it. Your fucking bosses. Special Branch and the Brits. You want to know what’s happening, talk to them, not me.’
Lennon reached for his wrist. ‘Patsy, wait.’
Toner pulled his arm away and opened the door. ‘Talk to your own people, see what they’ll tell you.’
‘Marie McKenna,’ Lennon said. ‘Her daughter.
Toner froze. ‘Jesus, that’s who you are. You’re the cop Marie took up with.’
‘That’s right,’ Lennon said.
The waitress appeared over Toner’s shoulder, a group of young professional types behind her. ‘I need the snug,’ she said.
Toner ignored her. ‘You want to know where she is?’
Yes,’ Lennon said.
‘I don’t know,’ Toner said. ‘Nobody does. She’s better off out of it. So are you. Don’t go stirring things up. That’s all I’ll tell you, and that’s too much.’
‘Excuse me,’ the waitress called.
‘Just a second.’ Lennon took a card from his pocket and pressed it into Toner’s hand. ‘If you want to talk.’
‘I won’t,’ Toner said, handing the card back. ‘Leave it alone. Will you do that? Leave it alone. It’s best for everyone.’
Lennon lifted Toner’s lapel and tucked the card into his inside pocket. ‘Just in case,’ he said.
Toner suddenly looked very old. ‘Leave it alone,’ he said. He turned and headed towards the exit.
Lennon slipped the waitress a fiver and thanked her. He went for the door, taking his time to let Toner melt away. There was no sign of the lawyer when he shouldered his way out onto Great Victoria Street, taxis and cars and buses blaring horns at one another as they fought for space under the shadow of the Europa Hotel.
He remembered the resolution he’d made last night and checked his watch. It had only just gone six-thirty. He’d forgotten to text his sister, but it would hardly matter. Most likely nobody would bother with visiting his mother on a week-night. If he got a hustle on he could be in Newry before eight, sit with her for an hour, and be back in Belfast by ten.
Lennon walked towards the car park on the Dublin Road, his mind flicking between a frail old woman, a frightened lawyer, and a little girl who didn’t know his name.
For the third time in twenty minutes, Lennon told his mother who he was. For the third time, she nodded with only a vague hint of recognition on her face. She fussed with her dressing gown for a moment before looking back up at the wall opposite her bed.
Every visit was like this, a string of bland exchanges punctuated by bouts of confusion. He came anyway, perhaps not as often as he should, but enough to be noticed. It wasn’t that he begrudged her the time. Rather it was that he hated to see her like this, even though she’d disowned him years ago. He hated that he’d had to wait for her mind to go before he could see her again. She was little more than a shadow of the woman who had giggled like a girl when he and his brother danced with her at weddings and confirmation parties.
‘The evenings are fairly drawing in,’ she said, looking to the growing darkness beyond the window. ‘Next thing you know, it’ll be Christmas. Who’s having Christmas this year?’
‘Bronagh,’ Lennon said. ‘It’s always Bronagh.’
Bronagh was the eldest of his three sisters. It was she who had told Lennon to leave and never come back all those years ago.
The day before Liam went in the ground, Phelim Quinn, who sat on Armagh City and District Council, called at Lennon’s mother’s house. He took the mother aside, expressed his condolences, and reminded her it wouldn’t do any good to talk to the police. Sure, they’d do nothing for them anyway. Liam had paid for his mistakes, and it would be best for everyone to just put it behind them, move on. In a very quiet voice, Lennon’s mother told Quinn to get out. As Quinn walked down the path to the small garden gate, Lennon caught up with him.
‘Liam wasn’t a tout,’ Lennon said. ‘He told me.’
Quinn stopped and turned. ‘He told me the same,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t make it so.’
Lennon’s throat tightened, his eyes burned. ‘He wasn’t. He said someone was covering themselves, putting the blame on him.’
Quinn came close to Lennon, the councillor’s whiskey breath souring the breeze. ‘Watch your mouth, son. Your family’s had enough grief. Don’t give them any more.’
Tears fought for release. Lennon forced them back. No way he’d cry in front of this bastard. No way. ‘You got the wrong man,’ he said. ‘Just you remember that.’
He turned and went back inside to where his mother and his three sisters huddled together. Still he held the tears back, the sting of them scorching his eyes as they tried to get out. He swallowed them, and he’d never cried a single tear since.
The day after Liam went in the ground, two uniformed cops came. Bronagh kept the mon the doorstep for ten minutes before her mother intervened and let them in. Lennon watched the cops from the living room doorway. They spoke in flat tones, their questions bland, their responses perfunctory. They knew they were wasting their time, Lennon could tell by their faces and their postures. Their visit was nothing more than a formality, a T to be crossed so that the case could be filed away with hundreds of others that would never be solved for lack of cooperation from the community.
Lennon stopped them in the hallway.
‘Phelim Quinn,’ he said.
‘What about him?’ the sergeant asked.
‘He did it. Or he knows who did it.’
The sergeant laughed. ‘I know who did it,’ the sergeant said. ‘Constable McCoy here knows who did it. Every other bloody person on this street knows who did it. The second any one of them will go on record, then we’ve got a case. Until then, we might as well go after Santa Claus.’
He put his hand on Lennon’s shoulder. ‘Listen, son, I’d dearly love to be able to put the bastards that killed your brother away. I really would. But you know as well as I do that’s never going to happen. Christ, if there was any chance of collaring them, it wouldn’t be lumps like us calling to see you, it’d be proper detectives. We make the notes, we fill out the forms, and that’s as much as we can do. Best thing you can do is stay out of trouble and look after your ma.’
The sergeant and constable left Lennon in the hall and closed the door behind them.
Over the following weeks, the house seemed frozen, everyone locked in grief, anger and fear, with no way to express it. As Lennon lay awake at night, now alone in the room he and his brother had shared, he considered the implications of his decision. He had filled out the forms, giving the address of his student digs in Belfast. He was back at Queen’s, starting his psychology Master’s, when the call for the first test came. The relief at getting away from his fractured home was tarnished by the fear of what he had embarked upon. Six months of interviews and physical exams followed while he worked part time as a porter at the Windsor House mental health unit at the City Hospital. All the time, he kept it secret, even from his friends at Queen’s.
Lennon spent fewer weekends at home, driving down from the city to the village in the second-hand Seat Ibiza he had inherited from his dead brother. The empty bed in his room seemed like a shrine to Liam, and its presence would allow him no sleep. He asked his mother once if he could remove it. She slapped him hard across the cheek, and he did not ask again. Bronagh began to exert more control over the household, organising meals, doling out chores to her younger sisters, while her mother spent her days staring at air.
