Love My Enemy (8 page)

'You snap like a puppy,' he retorted.

She stuck out her tongue at him and wished instantly
she hadn't. What age was she for heaven's sake? What
was she doing here alone with him anyway? Just when
she'd got her head straight, here he was, scrambling all
her good intentions.

'What I meant,' he said sourly, 'was, would you like
to go home, Zee?'

She knew she should but instead she said, 'We've
only just escaped Hazel Grove, haven't we?'

'Coffee, then?'

Panic sprinted down her spine. Coffee meant tables
for two, soft music, candles. It was all happening too
fast. She had to keep control of things. 'We could hang
out in the shopping mall,' she suggested. 'By the
fountain or something.'

'I
hate
shopping malls,' he said.

'Oh. Gary hates them too.'

'So he and I have something in common after all?'

'Aye, shopping malls and a tendency to wind people
up.'

'Me?' Conor looked offended. 'Dunno know what
you mean.'

'Liar. Didn't you think Tasha was having a bad
enough day? What got into you, stirring it up like that in
the taxi?'

'Sorry.'

'It's Tasha you should apologise to,' she said tartly.

'I will.' He sighed. 'Would you rather I hadn't come?'

'No!' She felt a rush of warmth towards Conor and
her cheeks tingled. 'I'm really glad you came. I thought
you were dead brave standing up to your dad too. He
doesn't want you anywhere near me, does he?'

'I only told him the truth.'

'How d'you mean?'

'Well, we are just friends . . . aren't we?'

Their eyes collided like cars and her stomach felt as if
it had been punctured by flying metal. She spun on her
heel and started walking fast.

'So where are we off to?' asked Conor, falling into
step beside her.

'The docks. I love it there – I go quite often.'

'A nice girl like you?'

She laughed and he put his arm around her waist, and
Zee took one huge breath and put her arm around him.
She felt thrilled, almost dizzy, as they walked through
the streets. Strangers passing them by would assume
they were a couple.

It wasn't far to the docks. Old undeveloped dockland,
not the fashionable, fling-away-a-fortune apartment area
for rich folk who wanted the whole world to know they
had finally arrived.

Arm in arm they walked, the shifting smells of oil and
rope and salt rippling over them, mixed up with the
smells of fish and rain and diesel. Old dockland had a
charm all its own. The narrow streets were cobble-stoned
and dusty. Ramshackle cottages that had once
housed whole families leaned into each other now, their
windows boarded up. They had long since been vacated
and now they were only used as sheds. Outsized
padlocks hanging on the doors radiated messages of
crime. At night the dark streets would swarm with
prostitutes and drunks.

'Fantastic, isn't it?' said Zee as they crossed a
concrete wharf. 'You can smell the excitement.'

'All I can smell's the pollution,' said Conor.

It was noisy too. Cranes, dump-trucks and fork-lifts
were busy shifting boxes of cargo. Men with clip-boards
and hard hats shouted instructions. Engines stopped and
started. Horns blared. They were loading a black and
white Scandinavian ship registered in Stockholm. Thick
steel ropes lay coiled at the ready, orange canvases were
pinned firmly down and the blue deck was still
glistening from being scrubbed.

'Smart outfit,' remarked Conor and smoke belched
self importantly from the black and white funnel.

'I think she's agreeing with you,' laughed Zee. She
caught his arm. 'Look! There's the ferry for Liverpool.'

They walked round to it, dwarfed by its high sides and
the rows of portholes stretching in front of them and
way behind. Zee peered down into the oily water under
the gangway and shivered. 'I wouldn't fancy falling in
there.'

'Sure I'd come to your rescue – I'd swing down that
rope with a box of Milk Tray in me hand.'

'Eejit! Sometimes I do think about doing a bunk,' she
confided. 'Stowing myself away and going to London. I
could be office dogsbody on a newspaper. Does that
sound daft?'

'Yeah, it does,' he said.

It wasn't the answer she had wanted somehow. She let
go of his arm and pushed him away playfully.

'Would you really go off and leave your whole
family, Zee?'

'Everyone has to take the plunge sometime.'

'Aye, but we don't all go across the water.'

'It's only the Irish sea, not the Atlantic. England's
not far.'

Sometimes she did wonder how she would cope, then
she imagined the relief of living without her mum's
sadness and Gary's moods, poised above her like big
black clouds.

'There's a whole world out there, Con. I'm gonna go
places, do things, meet people!'

'Send us a postcard then, won't you?'

Suddenly he was irritating her. 'What is it with you,
Con? Do you want to be stuck in this backwater for the
rest of your life? Listening to politicians bicker on the
radio?' She jerked an imaginary microphone up to her
mouth. 'So is there peace or isn't there, Mr Adams?
When is a beating not a beating? When is a riot a riot?'
She dropped her hand in disgust. 'They don't know if
they're coming or going. They're all nuts! What's there
to stay for?'

'I want to live where I can do some good,' said Conor.
'How's Ireland ever going to change if all the decent
folk leave? Tell me that.'

'Do you think I care? Look what happened to my dad.
I'm not going to stick around and watch that happen to
one of my kids in a few years' time.'

'Shush up, Zee.'

'What do you mean, shush!'

Conor turned and held her gently by the shoulders.
'The last thing I want to do is argue. I want to make the
most of you while I can.'

She stared at him. Her emotions felt about as stable as
a wave on a beach. One part of her wanted to surge
towards him, another part was sucking her back. 'As
long as you realise,' she started, 'that I'm . . . I'm not
going to be in Belfast for long and—'

'Shush,' he said again.

'But—'

'I really like you, Zee, I can't get you out of my head.'

'It'll have to be secret,' she blurted. 'Otherwise Ga—'

'No four lettered words,' he said.

'But we need to talk.'

'No, not just now we don't.'

He cradled her face between his hands. 'Girl with the
laughing eyes,' he said. 'That's how I've always thought
of you. I never really believed I'd get the chance to tell
you so.'

'Always? You mean . . . '

'Have I fancied you from afar? Yeah . . . forever I think.'

Words seemed to be sucked away from her. Thoughts
vanished too and all she was left with were her feelings.
It felt scary and magical and weird all at once. Zee
Proctor, was this really happening to her? She had been
out once or twice with boys before but it had never felt
like this. Not this bellyache of excitement, not this
longing like a sickness, not this disbelief, the whole lot
shaken about as if she was on a fairground waltzer, and
laced with that same intoxicating fear.

So different from how she had felt with Des. The
wind whipped Conor's hair back from his shy eyes.
They were the colour of shiny new chestnuts and as soft
as pools. Deep enough to drown in, wasn't that what
people said?

They brushed lips and he kissed her nose, her cheeks,
her forehead. When she smiled he pulled her gently
towards him and her lips searched again for his. Their
arms closed around each other in a circle and suddenly
the wind was dancing around them, not between.

The cranes, dump-trucks and fork-lifts carried on as
normal and the Liverpool ferry hooted and sailed away.

The afternoon heat welded Gary's shirt to his back.
Before him stretched the Newtownards Road and in the
distance towered Belfast shipyard's two huge cranes,
Samson and Delilah. 'Slow down, Des!' he gasped. 'I'm
sweating like a racehorse here.'

'More like a bloody donkey.' Des eyed Gary's thick
winter jacket with disgust. 'Fancy wearing a donkey
jacket when it's seventy-five degrees.'

'I needed pockets, didn't I?' Gary's fingers trembled
around the brown paper parcel in his pocket. 'Don't know
why you can't carry this thing – it was all your idea.'

'Because you're less likely to get lifted,' snapped
Des. 'Why didn't you use a sports bag, dumbo? Nothing
like making yourself conspicuous.'

'D'you really think the RUC wouldn't bother
searching me?'

''Course. There isn't a policeman in Belfast who
didn't know your dad, is there? Drop his name into the
conversation and they'd soon leave you in peace.'

Gary wasn't so sure but Des was off on one of his
rants again.

'Do you remember the time we were in his patrol car
and he got called to that bank robbery?'

'Of course I do.'

'We must have done ninety that day!' Des laughed.
'And when we got there he just pulled his gun and went
straight in. Mr Cool or what?'

'There was back up,' said Gary.

'Aye, but he was The Man. When he came back out
with those two robbers, do you remember how everyone
cheered?'

Gary could recall every detail. The flashing blue
lights, the radios crackling, even the stains on the paving
stones he had stared at, willing his dad to reappear. And
Jack Proctor had come back – that time.

'What a hero!' shouted Des. 'He stopped those Fenian
gits. He knew he had to and
we're
just doing the same
thing.'

'I don't think he'd see it that way.' Gary was feeling
less and less sure of this plan. He took off his jacket and
slung it over his shoulder and the weight of the package
pulled it to one side. 'I wish I knew what was in this
thing,' he muttered.

'We're nearly there.'

The rendezvous point was in a park edged with roses.
There were folk sunbathing, a sweaty jogger and
mothers pushing buggies. They were to wait at the third
bench on the left-hand side of the pond. At least that was
vacant, thought Gary, but there was no sign of the two
men they were supposed to meet.

'Where the hell are they?' he said nervously.

'Stop panicking – they'll be here.'

Gary folded his jacket and put it down carefully on
the bench. Then he took out a hanky and wiped his face.
The sweat soaked it through at once.

'We should have brought some cans,' said Des lightly.
'Had ourselves a picnic.'

'Have you ever tried running when you're pissed?'
retorted Gary.

'Will you chill out? We won't have to run, everything's
going to be fine.'

Gary tried a shrug but his shoulders were too tense.
'Jimmy and Ben give me the creeps,' he said, remembering
when Des had introduced them in a pub.
'Especially that Ben – he's a real headbanger.'

'It's cash in hand remember. Just you leave
everything to your Uncle Des.'

Gary was about to put Des in his place when he
noticed a group of teenagers in the distance. There must
have been fifteen of them. They were too far away to
pick out individually but he recognised the two who
detached themselves and started walking towards them.

'Jeezus, no! It's Tasha and Zee. What are they doing
here?'

'Calm down. Jimmy and Ben won't come near us if
they see them.'

'I hope not,' spluttered Gary.

Des raised his arm and shouted. 'Fancy meeting you
here!'

'I knew something would go wrong.'

'Will you stop worrying? You've been trying to speak
to Tasha all week, haven't you?'

'Aye, but not here, not now!'

Gary's heart was pounding like the timer on a bomb.
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief again and
thrust it back in his jacket pocket on the bench.

'Well, girls,' Des called as they approached. 'This is
an unexpected pleasure.'

'The pleasure's all yours,' said Zee sourly. 'I haven't
seen you here before.'

'You come here often then?' asked Des. 'I'll have to
do a spot more sunbathing. Who's that lot?' he added,
nodding at the group in the distance.

'Just mates,' she said shortly.

'From school? Lots of little beauties, eh?'

'Nobody I'd want to introduce you to.'

'Hear that, Gary? Your sister wants to keep me all to
herself.'

Gary ignored Des. He was watching Tasha who so far
hadn't even looked at him. 'How you doing?' he asked
her. 'I've been ringing you all week, Tash.'

'Have you?' Her voice was high and brittle. It made
her sound even posher than usual.

'I left loads of messages on your ansaphone.'

'Miguel usually plays that back,' said Tasha. Her face
had turned a dull red and she was trembling.

'What's wrong?' he pressed but she shrank away from
his touch and even started to gulp back tears.

'Now see what you've done!' Zee scolded him like a
nanny. She must have spotted the hanky in his pocket
because the next moment she had whipped it out for Tasha.
It was followed, a split second later, by the package.

Thwack! It hit the ground and Gary and Des drew
breath sharply. Des even bounced back a step. Zee's
eyes expanded like balloons.

'What is that?' she demanded, suspicion all over her
face.

'Nothing!' They answered together and Gary
whisked the parcel back into his jacket before anyone
else could move.

'Nothing? Look at the pair of you – guilty as sin!'
Zee's hand shot to her mouth in horror. 'Jesus! You're
carrying packages for someone!'

'Shut up, will you?' hissed Gary, but luckily there was
no one close enough to hear her.

'Are you mad? You could get yourselves killed!'

'It's not what you think,' lied Gary. 'It's . . . CDs for a
friend.'

'CDs?'

'Aye, honest.'

'Why would you wrap CDs up in brown paper? Why
would you tape them up like that? Why would you meet
someone here to hand them over?'

If Gary hadn't been so worried himself he would have
lied more convincingly. He heard himself fumbling for
words. 'The guy I'm giving them to works, so he does.
This park's on his way home.'

'Prove it,' said Zee bluntly.

'What?'

'Open the parcel and show me the CDs.'

'Don't be soft! Sure I've only just wrapped them up.'

'Liar! Eejit! What'll Mum say? It'll kill Mum.'

'No, it won't,' said Des, catching her wrist.
'Because you won't tell her, will you?' Zee pulled
hard but he held his grip. 'Be a good girl now and
promise me that you won't tell.'

'All right!'

He let her go slowly. Zee looked as if she might spit
at Des but instead she spun round to face Gary. 'You
don't know what you're getting yourself into!'

'It's all right, sis.' He hadn't called her that for years.
Usually he treated her like something the cat had sicked
up. 'I'll be careful,' he promised.

'How can you be? Dad told us – they just
start
by
asking you to carry packages. Soon they'll be telling
you to drive cars and hide guns. Then they'll want you
to shoot the guns. Is that what you want, Gary? What
you really want? Because those guys don't let people
just up and leave them – Dad told us that too. You
could end up in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in your
knee at the least.'

Gary was torn. He didn't want to bottle out but Zee
was only saying what he knew himself.

'Get outa here, girls,' growled Des. 'We've business
to do.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Gary saw a BMW pull up
at the park gates. Jimmy and Ben clambered out then
stayed put, weighing up the scene. Zee looked over at
the two heavyweights and it was enough to silence her.

'Go on,' said Gary. 'You'd best leave.'

Tasha had been looking on, bewildered, but now she
turned to Zee. 'Lord knows what Gary and Des are up to
but I'll bet my best earrings they're not going to listen to
you!' She put her arm round Zee and started walking her
towards an exit.

Gary stared after them. It was a long time since he'd
seen Zee that upset, and as for Tasha, there was something
irresistible about her.

'Will you pay attention?' Even Des sounded scared
now.

Gary picked up the donkey jacket as the two men
approached and every muscle in his body seemed to lock.

'They your girlfriends?' asked Jimmy.

'I wish,' said Des. 'That's Gary's sister and her mate.'

'Only they didn't look too happy – not interfering
were they?' Jimmy was the less Neanderthal of the two
but he still looked as if he could go a few rounds with an
orangutan, and he was after an explanation.

'Nah! She just wanted money,' said Des, adding, 'we
didn't give her any, of course.'

Gary added, 'We just bumped into them.'

'Next time,' said Ben, staring hard at them, 'make
sure you don't bump into anyone. Right?'

His voice reminded Gary of a snake slithering
through frosty leaves. He wished more than ever that he
had said no when Des came up with this crazy moneymaking
scheme.

'Hand it over then,' said Des out of the corner of his
mouth.

Gary glanced round quickly, then pulled out the
package and slipped it to Ben.

The man's eyes flashed like missiles. 'Next time put
it in a bag, dumbo.'

Gary nodded; his mouth seemed to have had dried up
completely.

'Er – you said a ton . . . ' muttered Des.

'Fifty.' Jimmy pulled out a wallet and peeled off five
tenners. Even Des wasn't going to argue. 'Don't spend
it all in one shop.'

'And . . . next time?' asked Des. 'You said, next time.
When'll that be?'

Gary felt his stomach turn over. 'Forget it, Des.'

Ben's eyes glittered as he looked Gary up and down.
'Has golden boy here got a yellow streak up his back
then?'

'Nah, just an honest streak,' Des said quickly. 'His da
was a cop.'

'Was?'

'Aye, killed by the IRA.' Des sounded proud, his
chest had practically puffed out. Anyone would have
thought he was talking about his own father.

Ben looked at Gary with some sort of sinister approval.
'That so?' he said quietly. 'No surrender, right?'

Suddenly Gary felt sickened. Des could keep their
filthy money; he wanted no part in this. These guys were
thugs, plain and simple. His father would have locked
them both up, and here was he, behaving just like them.
A bit of Fenian baiting was one thing but getting
involved with the likes of Jimmy and crazy Ben was
something else entirely.

'What's in that package?' Gary asked quietly.

Silence went swirling around like poisoned gas. Des
backed off and, for a moment, Gary thought his best
mate was about to bolt.

'Does it matter what's in it?' asked Jimmy coolly.

'Mebbe.'

'Gary. . . ' warned Des, 'leave it!'

Gary drew a deep breath. 'If it's explosives, yeah – it
matters.'

Ben barked a bitter laugh. 'When was the last time you
heard a bomb in Belfast?' he asked. 'More's the pity.'

'We've a right to know,' Gary pressed. 'We did the
dangerous bit, we picked it up from that locker at the
sports stadium. We carried it all the way here.'

'Doesn't he know the rules?' sparked Ben angrily.

'Shut up!' hissed Des. 'Have you totally lost it?'

But Gary couldn't stop. 'Or mebbe it's drugs?
Is it
?'

Ben's fist came up fast and exploded like a firework
in Gary's stomach. For a moment Gary couldn't breathe
at all. Doubling over, he saw the bulge of a big knife
beneath Ben's shirt.

Des grabbed him and pulled him away backwards.
'Too much sun,' he told them apologetically. 'He
doesn't mean it – sorry!'

Jimmy and Ben didn't speak, they just kept on staring.

'
I'm
still up for work,' mumbled Des. 'Trust me.'

Ben shook his head doubtfully. 'Don't hold your
breath,' he said.