‘ Why do you?’
‘ Because Amelia needs space to grow’.
‘ Oh puh-lease! She needs a five bedroom house to grow in? Come off it, Lynne’.
‘ My little princess needs to grow up in comfortable surroundings’.
Mark rolled his eyes up to the heavens. Her little princess would grow up to be the most obnoxious spoilt brat.
‘ Well anyway’ said Lynne. ‘ Anyone on the scene?’
Mark picked up his chopsticks and sighed. ‘ No’.
‘ Well get yourself down to Canal Street. You’re bound to find someone there. I mean, you gays can go sniffing round and find sex anywhere. You’re like dogs in that respect’.
‘ I beg your pardon?’
‘ Well you are’.
Mark had been wondering a lot lately why he stayed friends with Lynne. When they met they’d clicked from the outset but the more he’d got to know her the more he’d realised how much like all the others she could be at times. More often than not these days an edge of tension crept into the time they spent together. He didn’t know how they related to each other anymore. To Lynne life was all about shopping and grasping for more and more and more. It was all a whole universe away from where he looked at life.
‘ Lynne, I could go down to Canal Street and find sex but I want more than that’.
Mark had never had much of a problem finding sex. It was finding the right relationship that sometimes kept him awake at night. The thing was he wanted a bloke, a man who didn’t conform to all the usual gay stereotypes and could do the gardening, fix the car, plumb the washing machine. He didn’t want some pretentious Queen who looked down his nose at everyone from up his own arse. Mark had no time for much of what gay culture was about. He thought it was totally naff. He felt like a stranger in a culture that made heroines out of tantrum-throwing divas and which celebrated tragedy. Mark didn’t feel tragic at all. He was gay and he didn’t think there was anything tragic about that and he had no desire to wallow in torch-song crap about survival in a hostile world.
‘ There is someone I’ve got my eye on’ he confessed.
‘ Oh yeah? Well tell me about him then’.
‘ No way’ said Mark. ‘You know I don’t like to tempt fate’.
Whenever Mark passed the building site at the end of his road each morning on his way to the tram stop, the big, tough, handsome builder in the hard hat and yellow waistcoat stopped whatever he was doing and played his dark eyes on him. Straight men don’t look at you like that unless they liked to play. But he didn’t think that was the case with Mr. broody builder. There was something else coming out of those eyes.
‘ Well does he work at the bank?’ Lynne wanted to know.
‘ No. So you won’t be able to find out unless I tell you’.
‘ I’ve never asked you this before but what do you think your Mum and Dad would’ve said about you being gay?’ As soon as her words were out she watched the look in Mark’s eyes change to the sadness she often saw when Mark talked about his parents.
‘ I’ll never know now’ he said ‘ But I think they’d have been alright. They were pretty cool about everything’.
‘ And you still miss them?’
‘ Every single day’.
Ian got a late night call from Alice.
‘ Pretty girls like you should be in bed at this time’ he said after letting her in. He watched her going down his hallway. She had bright eyes and shoulder length auburn hair. She had a good figure on her too. What was she doing messed up in all this shit?
‘ Shut up and pour me a scotch’ she said, all straight faced and striding into his place like she owned a part of it.
Ian followed her into the lounge where he poured them both a scotch and handed one to her.
‘ So have you come to award me my latest brownie points?’
‘ It was a clean kill, Ian’ said Alice, fixing him with her usual stare. ‘ My superiors are pleased as always’.
‘ Yeah? Well I’m still waiting to be included on the Queen’s honour list’.
Alice let her face crack into a cynical smile. ‘ You and me both’.
‘ Sit down’ said Ian ‘ Rest your weary bones for a bit. If you want you can stay the night. I’ll sleep here on the sofa and you can have my bed. I know you’ve often fantasised about being in it’.
‘ You cheeky bastard’ said Alice who had indeed wondered at times what it would be like with Ian although she’d never tried to find out, mainly because she knew she was the wrong gender for him. ‘ And thank you for your very gallant offer but I’ll head back down to London. If I set off within the
hour I’ll be home by about two’.
‘ Home?’ mused Ian. ‘ I sometimes wonder what that’s all about. What will you do when you get home, Alice? Curl up with a good book?’
‘ I’ll feed my cat and then get into bed’.
‘ How exciting’.
‘ It’s in the nature of the job’ said Alice ‘ It’s the choice I’ve made. Anyway, what’s with all the introspection?’
‘ I’m just … a guy in my late thirties without much of a life’.
‘ You mean an intimate life’.
‘ Yeah, that’s what I mean’.
‘ You’ve always known how lonely this would turn out to be’.
‘ I have’ said Ian ‘ But maybe I’ve had enough’.
‘ You can’t just resign from a job like this, Ian’.
‘ I can do whatever I like in a free country’.
‘ You gave up some of that freedom’.
‘ I don’t remember having much of a choice’.
‘ Ian, Derek Campbell is out of gaol’.
‘ So, we get to the reason why you’re here. Should I be concerned by that news?’
‘ I think you should keep an eye over your shoulder, yes’.
‘ But why if he doesn’t know where I am?’
‘ You’re right, he doesn’t know where you are but he might have ways of finding out. All I’m saying, Ian, is watch yourself and be careful. That’s all’.
The evening presenter on Sky News read out the headlines at seven and then crossed to the channel’s political correspondent who was standing on St. Stephens Green, outside the Houses of Parliament, with a breaking news story concerning the resignation of an MP from the Ulster Democratic Party.
‘ Thank you, yes, Peter Irvine, one of the Ulster Democratic Party’s senior M.P’s, he was first elected in 1987, has resigned from the UDP and formed his own party which he’s calling the True Unionists. It’s rather soured the note of jubilation at the scenes last week at Stormont when the leaders of the main Unionist and Republican parties sat down to devolved government in the province. Peter Irvine is with me now’. The correspondent then turned to his guest and said ‘ Peter Irvine, what do you hope to achieve by this dramatic move today?’
Peter Irvine was in his usual grey suit, blue shirt, red and white striped tie. He’d just turned fifty and leaned forward with the stature of age, trying to avoid looking at the camera just off to his right.
‘ Justice for the unionist people and an end to the Good Friday agreement which is the granting of a republican wish list. It’s time to smash these aspirations once and for all and end the minority dictating to the majority. I believe very strongly that what happened last week was a sell-out to terrorists and will lead us ultimately into a united Ireland which is totally against the wishes of the unionist people’.
‘ You really think that the UDP would countenance even for a second any move towards a united Ireland?’
‘ I believe that the UDP has abandoned its responsibilities to its constituents and the wider
unionist community by joining a government with Sinn Fein IRA’.
‘ So you’re totally opposed to progress and unwilling to make the necessary compromises for peace?’
‘ We are not opposed to progress but we will never agree to progress solely on republican terms’ said Irvine. ‘ We need the IRA’s army council to make an announcement confirming that it has disbanded before we can trust the process’.
‘ But you know they’ll never do that’.
‘ That’s their choice but I could not remain a member of a party that is happy to sit down to government with former terrorists’.
‘ Peter Irvine, what do you say to those who brand you as out of step with the majority of unionists in Northern Ireland who just want a normal life without all the sectarian divisions that have prevented that from happening until now?’
‘ I say that judging from the support I’ve received in phone calls and emails today, those people who attack me in that way need to go out and listen to the unionist people who are fed up with the unrelenting fulfilment of republican wish lists’.
‘ Okay, but what about all the loyalist guns in Northern Ireland?’
‘ That’s not the issue at this particular time’.
‘ But in the last year there have been twice as many incidents of violence committed by so-called loyalist paramilitaries than republican ones. The figures are in the public domain and speak for themselves, don’t they?’
‘ In terms of an agreement on a devolved assembly it’s republican weapons that matter to unionists and that’s who I and my colleagues in the True Unionists represent’.
‘ So what do you want your former boss, the leader of the UDP and the new First Minister of Northern Ireland, to do now?’
‘ Resign and call fresh elections but they won’t dare because they know I’m right’.
‘ And what will you do in the meantime?’
‘ Campaign in whatever way I can to bring about justice for the unionist people in our beloved land of Ulster’.
CHAPTER TWO
The thing he liked about the coast road was that there were many tracks off it that led to places that either people didn’t know about or had no inclination to go to. Detective Inspector Graham Armstrong of the Police Service of Northern Ireland pulled up at a spot where he could afford himself a view of the sea whilst he waited. He was only a few metres down from the road but there was enough of a ledge to hide his car from view of the traffic above. People didn’t tend to look straight down anyway. They looked out to the view across the Irish Sea and the cliff itself didn’t mean much unless you were planning to use it to rid yourself of this world in the hope that something better would be in the next. Many had done that along this stretch.
He looked down the coast to the town of Larne which was only about five miles away. Larne was the town in County Antrim through which some of the ferry passengers were travelling for more sinister reasons than visiting the relatives or going to the mainland to look for work. He’d made several snatches down at the terminal over the years. Some were common or garden criminals who thought they’d cut themselves a piece of the big time and some would claim to be either defending Ulster or doing their best to sell it out to the free state. The good and bad, the right and wrong had all been easy to identify when he was a young P.C. But these days it was getting harder to work out who your enemies really were when former godfathers of the IRA were sharing power at Stormont with protestant hardliners. Graham was glad of what was called the ‘peace dividend’ that would mean that his children wouldn’t have to grow up in the kind of brutalised uncertainly that his generation had been subjected to. But to call it all progress? He wasn’t sure about that. The republicans seemed to have got all they ever wanted short of a united Ireland and that wasn’t permanently off the agenda. He’d tried his best to open his mind to the new situation but it was difficult when he‘d been passed over for promotion by the Catholic Jimmy Kent. The DCI job had come down to a choice between himself and Kent and nobody would ever be able to convince Graham that Kent had got it for any other reason than the powers that be needed to demonstrate
their commitment to a ‘more representative and inclusive force’.
The sea looked wild today. Graham thought it must be rough for those on the ferries as the waves crashed against the shoreline. He had no sea legs. He threw up even in calm waters. He’d once taken the family on holiday to the Isle of Man and for some unfathomable reason he’d booked the ferry from Belfast. He’d spent the entire journey, both out and back, throwing up and the kids had never let him forget it. Now when they went on holiday it was always either by air or, in the case of crossing the border into Donegal or Sligo, by car.
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. His contact was late. He hated it when people didn’t pay attention to punctuality. Then, when he was starting to get irritated, he heard a rustle behind the car. He instinctively placed his hand on his gun that was inside his jacket and looked through the rearview mirror. Jamie came out of the undergrowth and straddled up to the car. He was dressed in his usual hooded jacket and jeans and Graham thought he was the wrong end of his twenties to wear that kind of clobber but no matter. There was no dress code in dealings of this kind. Jamie opened the passenger door and got in.