“And now?”
“What?”
“Do you think you could be with him now?”
She shrugs again.
“Do you still love him?”
Danielle bites her lip and looks up at her brother, and that’s all the evidence she can give before the doorbell goes.
****
Parking down by the Belfray Hotel, I pull my hood up and cross the road before trudging the half mile uphill to the house. It’s late, really late, and I’m only met by three cars making their way towards Belfast, my back to them. The lights give way to their presence before I hear them, and I pull the right side of my hood over my face further and look at the ground as they whizz past. Begging for none of them to stop and ask me what I’m doing. No one I know would be travelling around here at this time on a weekday night, but I can’t be too careful. I can’t be seen.
I dodge past all the cones and men at work signs, judging every step so I don’t end up in some hole. That would be subtle. All I need. Having to answer questions on why I’m stuck down there and what my intentions were at this time of night. As I round the corner to the old house, I gasp. They’ve already started work. I didn’t think it would’ve been so soon. They still have a good bit of the road behind me to work through yet. Part of the garden is under construction, no doubt to level it out for the new road and get rid of the hill leading up to the house. Through the darkness, the mass of machinery which will be used to bulldoze the house stretches out into the sky above me like dinosaur silhouettes in a film I definitely watched when I was younger. I don’t have much more time. My ears perk, alert, as I hear voices coming from the house. Who the hell could that be?
Stepping into the trees surrounding the left-hand side of the house, where it runs down to the pavement I just recently vacated, I nuzzle onto the ground, army crawling through the low hanging branches until I bypass all the roadworks machinery by the road and climb the steady hill and see the house head on. Carefully lifting a branch out of the way, I wait for my eyes to adjust to the moonlight beaming down on the garden. After a few seconds, I see three figures by the wall furthest from me. One looks like he’s keeping dick, as he continually looks around at his accomplices and spits something that I can’t hear from way over here. What I do hear are rattles and then hisses.
Cocking my head further out into the open, I now know what the sound is. Spray cans. Paint, presumably, as I see the graffiti on the darkened side of the wall, hidden from the moonlight by the jutting out of the entranceway’s shadow. One of them is spraying over sectarian slurs in black, but it doesn’t look like they’re do-gooders, as another is spraying out the ‘London’ in ‘Londonderry,’ and obstructing reading the name of the, presumably, opposing party’s organisation below. Charming. How long will they be? What a weird place to congregate. I assume they must’ve spotted the original graffiti from the roadside and decided to return to correct it. Are they dangerous? Or just a pile of youths? Chavs from surrounding council estates angered by the hateful comments sprayed so openly on the main road linking two of Northern Ireland’s biggest cities.
My thoughts are caught short as I almost exclaim aloud. A piercing cough just came from my right, at the bottom of the garden where it meets the roadside. A towering figure with a large coat and baseball cap, barely identifiable beside the machinery. How long has he been there? The cough echoes through the garden, making the three figures curse before spreading out and bolting it in the opposite directions, throwing the spray cans at their departing feet with two loud clangs. Towards the open fields that will eventually lead them to the Tamnaherin direction, their meetup point, I can guarantee. I expect the figure to barrel after them, pursue a chase. But instead, it stands watching them retreat.
After a few moments of me holding my breath, the figure begins climbing up the garden to the house, staring at the new graffiti, before shaking its head and sliding towards me. I start to panic, inching backwards unnecessarily because I know there’s no way it can see me. But before it reaches my hiding place, it turns at the side of the house retreating to the back before disappearing altogether. I count to 100 before slowly making my way back the way I came. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to stick around to find out. Too spooked by the ominous figure. I’ll have to return another night.
Chapter Seventeen:
The door is opened by a boy and girl in their late teens or early twenties. It doesn’t take a genetics specialist to see that they’re the eldest wains of Aaron and Nuala Parker. The boy has Aaron’s strong jawline, and the girl has her mother’s eyes, the same eyes protruding from the face of the youngest girl, Michelle, last night behind her dishevelled hair. McNally coughs and tries to stand to his tallest.
“Hello there, is your mother home?”
They nod and stand back to let him through, where he has to slide between them. He instinctively goes through to the living room whilst the girl
