Controlled Explosions (3 page)

‘Come on, feck’s sake.’ The boy bundled Catriona off down the street, with a last slitted-eye look at Paula that made her feel sick.

‘You know him?’ said Aidan, looking after them.

‘N-no.’ She was trying to blink back the angry tears in her eyes.

‘Peadar O’Keeffe is the name. Nasty wee fecker. Year above me in school.’

Catriona’s brother, then. The whole family must be out to get her.

‘You OK?’

‘Fine.’ She couldn’t meet his eye. Though his mother and hers had been best friends, Aidan never talked to Paula if he could help it. ‘What’re you even here for?’ She saw he’d parked his Clio, a present from his adoring mammy for his eighteenth birthday, outside the door of her house.

‘Ma sent me – you know.’ He waved his hand in frustration at the plastic container under his arm. Pat O’Hara had been sending food ever since Paula’s mother disappeared five years ago. As if that was the main thing missing from their lives – Irish stew and lasagne. ‘Said your da’d be busy with all these riots, so maybe youse’d need dinner.’

‘Oh. Right so. Yeah, em … bring it in.’

They trudged to the door, keeping a foot of distance between them. Aidan was in the grey uniform of St Luke’s, the boys’ school, his tie loose, blazer over his shoulder. He’d be going off to university in a few months – he’d applied to Dublin, she knew. Pat kept Paula up to date with his life, and she’d see him out and about the odd time, but they’d never been friends. Sometimes that was the way of it, when you knew each other from when you were wee kids. The last time Aidan had spoken this much to her was at her mother’s memorial service.

Don’t think about that.

She put her key in the lock, trying not to let him see that every day she came home and opened the door, it happened again for her a little bit. Every single day. As if one day it would be different. Maybe – no, of course not. Her mother hadn’t been there on that last day in 1993 or any other day since. And she wouldn’t be here today.

Paula put the food container in the fridge. It looked like some kind of stew, too hot for the weather. Aidan stood leaning against the counter, flicking his curtains haircut. She could smell his aftershave – Lynx Africa – and cigarettes too. Of course he smoked, all the cool boys did. She thought about bolting upstairs and bucking on some more Impulse O2. ‘Eh … do you want some tea, or – like, coffee or something?’

‘Don’t drink it.’

Neither did she. There was a total of one coffee shop in town, and it was the kind of place that served it in little metal pots with leaking lids.

She looked in the fridge. ‘Juice?’ Her dad wouldn’t buy minerals. Her mum hadn’t allowed it.
Think of your teeth, Paula.
They were both still trying to keep to Margaret’s rules, long after she was gone.

‘OK.’

She poured him a glass of Kia Ora and one for herself, and they stood drinking them in silence. It was a hot day and she felt sweat trickling down her back, under her pink shirt and plain M&S bra. Paula had been buying her own bras since she was thirteen – her mother had gone before she’d even needed to wear one. It was Pat who’d taken her that first time, hugely embarrassed but hugely kind. Pat, Aidan’s mother. Oh God. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him. He wouldn’t be interested in any of the crap she talked to Saoirse about, mostly TV and which boys they fancied. Neither of them had said anything for a minute. Two minutes. Paula started to panic, opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Aidan cleared his throat. ‘Eh … you going to Magnum’s Saturday?’

‘Dunno. Maybe.’ She was officially too young to get into Magnum PI’s, the local disco, but they usually turned a blind eye if you were seventeen and had a provisional driving licence.

‘It’s shite, but like it’s the only place round here.’

‘Yeah, God, it’s awful, isn’t it?’ She loved Magnum’s. She loved the cheap sugary cocktails, she loved the music, S Club 7 and Steps and Spice Girls, and she loved dancing with her friends in a big circle, too loud for anyone to ask her about her missing ma or her cop da, too dark for anyone to recognise her as
that wee Maguire girl, you know, the one whose mother …

‘Might see you there then.’

She breathed in, hard. ‘Yeah, might do.’ God, he was practically
asking her out
.

Aidan was moving now, rearranging his hair again. ‘You don’t have a mobile, do you?’

‘Nah.’ Some people at school were getting them now, but not her yet. PJ wasn’t keen on the idea or the expense.

‘Well. If anything happens … get me at school or something.’ His school finished ten minutes later than hers. They did it to keep the girls and boys apart, which didn’t work at all. ‘You know … if they give you shit again.’

‘OK. See you.’

He didn’t look at her as he went out the door, jiggling his car keys in his school trouser pocket. ‘See ya.’

OH MY GOD. She was ringing Saoirse right now, before
Neighbours
came on.

‘Sergeant Hamilton, I’m sorry—’

‘What is it?’ Bob didn’t turn around from where he stood, gazing out of the high windows of the incident room at the town below. In the afternoon sun, it looked like it was still on fire, though the riot had been broken up for now and the device made safe. That’s what they called it. Making safe. As if such a thing was possible.

‘Sir—’

The admin girl was trying to get his attention. Aoife or something her name was. Why could none of them spell their names right? Let them go and live in Eire if they wanted, with too many letters in the words and not enough money, the potholed roads full of donkeys and unlicensed drivers. It was a mystery to Bob. You gave people benefits and free dentists and roads and hospitals and all they did was complain. You sent your soldiers, your sons, in to protect them, and they blew them up in the street. And now what? You let the terrorists out of prison, while the police officers who’d bled and died to keep the peace … you fired them. Bob wasn’t stupid. He knew all about the list.

The List.
That was the word going round the place, whispered through the walls, gusting under the bottoms of doors, lurking in the car park. The list of officers who’d be put out when the Policing bill went through. A condition of the Good Friday Agreement. They’d been weighed, the RUC, and found wanting. Up there with parades and prisoners, an abomination, a part of the peace process that the other side had demanded gone before they would stop their shooting and bombing. And it had been agreed. They were going to scrap the uniform, the staff, even the name. All those dead officers, killed by cowards in the dark – this was how you rewarded them. You swept them under the carpet of history. You made them shameful.

‘Sergeant Hamilton!’

‘What is it, Miss Riordan?’ He wouldn’t say her Christian name. His mouth couldn’t mould to those letters. ‘I’m busy here. We’re going out on an operation first thing tomorrow.’

‘But you’re wanted on the phone.’

‘I’m busy.’ Busy watching his town burn.

‘It’s your wife, sir. There’s been … I really think you should come.’

Everything was burning.

‘Linda?’ She never rang him at work. Never. She knew better, none of these personal calls in work time that the younger officers were always getting.

‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have bothered you except—’

‘What’s wrong, love?’

‘Bob, I’m up at the place. I …’ She didn’t want to ask but he could hear it in her voice. ‘I know you’re busy, but—’

‘Is it Ian?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Bob …’

‘I’m coming. Just wait there for me.’ He wrenched open the door to the incident room. ‘DC Maguire?’

PJ was at a desk, waiting for the phone call to say they were authorised to go out in the morning. ‘Aye, sir?’ He was always polite. You could never accuse him of being insubordinate, not in his words or his actions or anything concrete. Bob just wished things were different. So much bad blood there. Robinson, and Bob getting the sergeant job over PJ’s head, and everything that happened in 1993, that terrible year. No wonder he couldn’t meet PJ’s eyes.

‘I need to get away. Can you take over?’

PJ had a wee girl of Ian’s age. Seventeen. Bob remembered the daughter – terrible height for a girl, and all that red hair. She’d be going to university next year, off out of the town like all the kids did. Whereas Ian …

‘You’re away?’ PJ was surprised.

‘Aye. Can you handle things here?’

‘Well, aye, sure I can handle them, but—’

‘Right so.’ Bob was aware he was moving quickly, gathering his jacket and wallet and radio. It didn’t come naturally to him, to be quick. Important things took time, but sometimes there wasn’t any. His car was in its parking space and he was trotting over to it so fast he almost forgot to check. But you had to, whatever the emergency was. Remember what happened to Robinson. Remember the blood on the windows. He got down and peered under it, then stood up, breathing hard. Had to keep breathing, drive slow. No sense in having an accident. He started the engine and nosed his car into the heavy lunchtime traffic.

As he drove, slow, so slow, he found he was thinking of the woman. Her red hair, her pale face. Bob didn’t like to think of Margaret Maguire if he could help it. It hadn’t been good, that time, for any of them. He’d done his best, but sometimes the fact was people were better off not being found – maybe because they didn’t want to be, or maybe because finding them would be worse than losing them. The case was filed away in some drawer now, thank God, but PJ wouldn’t let it rest. And Bob could see the looks PJ gave him. So full of blame. Sometimes Bob would have liked to shout at him –
you think you knew her, but you didn’t, you didn’t know her at all
– but he never would. Not in a million years. He’d take the blame, and it was no more than he deserved.

People thought policing was about finding the truth. Bob could have told them it was often in fact about
managing
the truth, keeping it damped down so it didn’t rise up and burn the place to the ground. Fire-fighting. His job was closer to that than people knew.

He didn’t know why he was thinking about these things. It passed the drive, he supposed. Stopped him thinking about what he’d find at the end. Anyway, he was there now and parking, shocking prices they charged these days. He could claim it back as police business – some would do that, but not him. The rules mattered. He hadn’t even asked Linda what ward they were on. His feet took him there anyway. Acute medicine. So many years trailing up to the hospital, ever since the day in 1980, a summer’s day, hot and clear as butter, and he wasn’t meant to be there – you didn’t go, in those days – but suddenly the station phone was ringing and they were saying,
is that Mr Hamilton
, and he wanted to tell them
it’s DC
, but he didn’t, and they were saying,
could you come please, come now, there’s been some complications with the birth.

Complications. He’d always thought of it that way after. Ian wasn’t well. Ian had complications.

Ian would be eighteen next month. Other weans, like PJ’s girl, for example, they’d be getting cars, having parties, smoking, kissing, driving their parents to distraction.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Linda, as he went in. ‘You were busy.’ She’d been saying sorry since the day Ian was born, half-dead herself as she was.
I’m sorry, Bob, I tried, I tried.
When it wasn’t her fault at all, it was—

Ian was on the bed. He was a big lad, despite it all. He’d be taller than Bob if he could stand up.

‘Hello, son. Are you all right?’ They always talked to him. It was more for each other than for him. Bob had often wondered what his son’s voice would sound like. It didn’t seem right that they’d never heard it.

The breathing tube was in Ian’s nose again, his skin that sick yellow colour of wax. His breathing like a wet sponge.

Linda looked haggard. ‘Another one?’ he said. That was how many this month – three? The seizures were getting worse.

‘Aye. We’ll need to up his medicine, they said. He—’ Her shoulders shook, just a wee bit. ‘He stopped breathing for a long time, Bob. Nothing worked. I had to do the mouth to mouth. I … it wasn’t working.’

He dropped his hand onto Linda’s shoulder, feeling the wool of the cardigan she wore despite the heat. Her hair was nearly all grey now, and lines ate into her face.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You brought him back, love. You did it again.’ He wasn’t sure what he meant by that, whether he was praising her or whether it was something else.

The corner of her Ash poster was peeling off, distorting Tim Wheeler’s handsome face. Paula stared up at it. It was ten to seven – her alarm would be going off any minute. She could hear her dad moving about downstairs, clearing his throat, clattering dishes. She didn’t know if she’d been to sleep at all.

Why was this happening now? Her mother had been gone nearly five years, five years in October. Of course there’d been comments at the time, people staring when she got on the bus or girls whispering behind her back as she got changed in PE, but she was only just thirteen then and she didn’t understand. She’d thought bad people had taken her mother. What other explanation could there possibly be? The police would find her, and she’d be fine and back home making breakfast in the kitchen. Even in the worst moments, when Paula had heard her dad up late at night on the phone, his voice thick with terror, or when they’d found the first body that could have been her mother, but wasn’t, she’d only begun to think about funerals and that kind of ending to it all.

She’d never thought it could be five years on and they’d still just know nothing. Nothing at all.

The alarm beeped. She blinked a few times, trying to clear away thoughts of Aidan, and Catriona and the look in her brother’s mean eyes. She’d never be able to concentrate on her Sociology mock today. It didn’t matter. She could pretty much do it in her sleep, and that was the truth. She got up and washed, put out her uniform for the day, the scratchy maroon skirt and socks, the pink blouse, the heavy blazer even though it was the hottest week of the year. Thank God she’d only another year of this. Aidan would be out soon, of course. Away to Dublin. She wondered how that would work if they …