Slip of the Knife

II

Paddy knew that if she went roaring over to Pitt Street and demanded to see Pete before his tour of the cells he’d know something scary was happening, that the man in his father’s house had been there for him, not for Sandra’s jewelry. So she and Dub went to the Press Bar.

McVie had put three hundred quid behind the bar and ordered McGrade to line up whiskey shots all along it, just to start the drinking off on a nice, mental note. Most of the attendees were Protestant and had never been to a wake. They didn’t understand that the idea was to drink until the misery evaporated and tell stories about the dead person, remember them as a companion, celebrate their life. All they knew was the tradition was Irish so they’d better get hammered and fight each other. And so they did.

By the time Paddy nudged the car into a far corner of the full Daily News car park the noise from the bar was deafening and the crowd had spilled out into the street. She stood next to Dub, looking at the shabby brown-tiled exterior, at the men smoking on the step outside and the general hubbub, and decided, fuck it, they’d go and wait in the lobby at Pitt Street until a decent amount of time had passed. At least they’d be near Pete then. Paddy was pulling out of the dusty car park when she saw the khaki man crossing the road in front of her, heading towards the bar.

She wound down her window and shouted over to him but he didn’t hear her, just kept his head down and sidled through the crowd at the door.

Dub nudged her. “Go on after him. I’ll park.”

“Sure?”

“Go on. I’ll park the car and wait.”

The khaki man was at the bar when she got in, the only person there with no one to talk to, standing uncertainly with a whiskey shot in his hand as the choppy crowd drank their way to gale force. She kept her head down and made for him.

“Hello,” she said, refusing a whiskey from McGrade.

“Oh, hello.” He gave her a look as if she’d interrupted something terribly important. “You were the first speaker, weren’t you? Very good. Moving. Great speakers, the Scots.”

“Thanks. So you knew Terry in Lebanon?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He saw that she wanted him to elaborate but misunderstood and gave her a potted history of his own career, sipping at his whiskey shot as if it was sherry. He was terribly clever, seemed to be the gist of it, cleverer than other people. He named a couple of other Middle Eastern correspondents, big national names, and told her why they were wrong and foolish.

“But to get back to Terry. What was he doing there?”

Terry had been sent to Lebanon by the national editor when the usual guy’s wife was having a baby. But he hated it, said it was impossible to write up a Lebanese bus timetable without having a first in history. Khaki Man paused there, nodding a heavy prompt that suggested he did have a first in history, if only she would ask.

She pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it carefully on the bar. The toner was crumbling at the folds but McBree’s face was still recognizable. “Did you ever meet this guy?”

“Martin McBree? Yes, he was in Lebanon, everyone knows that.”

“Did Terry ever meet him?”

“Sure. Everyone did. We all did. He was at a dinner organized by a Reuters agency man from Hong Kong. Samkeh harrah. Very good.”

“Sammy Hurrah, is that the guy’s name?”

He smirked. “No. It’s a Lebanese dish.”

“Was Terry at the dinner too?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he and McBree have a fight or anything?”

“No.”

Khaki’s absolute certainty that there was never once a jostle at a urinal or an argument over a bowl of peanuts on a bar was getting on Paddy’s nerves. “How can you be sure?”

“McBree was much more interested in established Middle Eastern correspondents. He talked to me for over half an hour. Was very interested in my analysis of the Camp Wars. Terry really struggled to understand the interests of the different factions out there, he couldn’t-”

“For fucksake, I’m not asking whether Terry was more important than you, I’m asking if he ever fought with McBree.”

Khaki sipped at his whiskey again, an insult to a host in Scotland. He rolled the microscopic portion around the back of his throat before swallowing and his mouth stayed puckered when he spoke. “Young lady, you’ll find politeness and a pleasant manner will get you further-”

She was spluttering angry. “Oh, shut up, you utter cock.”

McGrade grinned at her from behind the bar. He reached over, handing her a brimming whiskey shot, and she downed it in one, slammed the glass on the bar, and gave Khaki Man a parting piece of advice.

“You keep talking like an arsehole and you’ll leave this bar with a sore face.”

She heard later that he flew back to London with a splint on his nose and an arm in plaster.

THIRTY. SLIP OF THE KNIFE

I

The Pitt Street reception area was busy. Police officers, uniformed and plain clothed, bustled by, all with the same military-precision haircut and shoulders-back bearing. They greeted each other, waited for the lift, disappeared through doors behind reception or took the stairs, never pausing to consider Paddy and Dub, both in funeral clothes, both scruffy and frightened, waiting anxiously on the black leatherette chairs, sweating with the desire to see their boy.

The receptionist was a young man this time, officious and cold, anticipating their annoyance by deadening his eye every time they asked when the questioning would be over, when they would be able to see Pete. Burns was still being questioned. Pete and Sandra had been taken for a tour of one of the stations nearby but Paddy and Dub needed Burns’s say-so before the police could let them see him.

Paddy sat back, twitchy and sickened, thinking that it was a good thing really: she might have been an agent for McBree; they were keeping her boy safe.

Resting her head on the back of the chair, staring up at the stained polystyrene ceiling tiles, she tried to clear her mind. It had been a declaration of war. She had named McBree at the memorial service and some of the journalists who had been there would pick up on it. She’d given them his name, they’d make calls, he’d hear about it. He had the prints and the negatives but Knox would have told him that she had been brandishing photocopies. He had to come for her now. If he didn’t get the last few copies the IRA would kill him for his betrayal.

What she couldn’t understand was why McBree had turned. He was a lifelong Republican; it was his devotion and his career. He was a hero. It must have been his whole identity. The clippings said a bomb had gone off near his family home while he was in New York, she remembered. He’d left his wife and family to deal with the consequences of his commitment to a cause, while at the same time he took money and protection from the enemy. She didn’t know what the security services had over him but it must have been compelling. Blackmail was usually about sex or money.

McBree and Paddy came from the same background. She knew that with rigid moral laws all it took was a stumble on the path, a slip of the knife, unrepented, to put a person on the outside forever, looking in on their