Divorcing Jack (13 page)

The bulk of the rest of the story concentrated on the double murder itself, the
Telegraph
having been well beaten to that one by the morning papers, and speculation on why it might have happened. It had clearly been written by a different reporter before the news about Patricia broke. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary the blame was laid clearly at the feet of the paramilitaries, although as the McGarrys were an Alliance family and were clearly neither Loyalist nor Republican, neither grouping was singled out as guilty. It was padded out with more of the usual condemnations from all shades of political and religious opinion. An opinion column on page three castigated the terrorists for carrying out such dastardly murders in a deliberate attempt to cause the maximum amount of heartbreak and upset in the days before the elections.

I lay back on the bed and took several deep breaths; they were hard to come by; it felt like there was an acorn lodged in my windpipe.

A number of things were clear from the story. Patricia was alive when she was abducted. The police had been closing in on her and were also after me. Nobody had any idea what any of it meant, but they thought it might have something to do with the elections. I agreed. I had no idea what it meant either.

The phone beside my bed rang suddenly, like they do, jolting me out of my thoughts. A young girl's voice. 'Mr Cook?'

'What?'

'Mr Cook?'

'Oh. Yeah.'

'This is Janice from downstairs.'

'Downstairs?'

'The manageress. Janice. There's a Mr Al Jolson down here asking for you. Is it okay to send him up?'

Parker didn't look anything like Al Jolson. For a start, Al Jolson was white.

Parker was far from white, although when he entered the room there was a desperate hint of paleness about him.

'Have you any idea how difficult it is to lose people in this city when you're my colour?' He asked. He sat on the bed, pushing the newspaper onto the floor. Little beads of sweat stood out on his brow and he was making a concerted effort to take shallow breaths which were barely enough to sustain life. He took three or four major breaths, held the last, then exhaled slowly. 'Four hours ago I left the hotel to come here and I've been dodging shadows ever since.'

I sat on the windowsill with my back to the Malone Road. There was a quiet hum of traffic behind me. 'You're not getting paranoid, Parker, are you?'

'Even...'

'Don't say it.'

T know I was followed, Starkey. You're big news.'

'Patricia?'

'Sorry. Nothing.'

'Oh, well,' I said. And dryly: 'No news is good news.'

'So they say.'

Parker didn't actually have to do any legwork of his own to find out what was going on. They'd queued at his door.

Neville Maxwell was the first to get to him. He was all flustered. He insisted that Parker make no mention in any of his stories that he had been accompanied to the meeting with Brinn by me. Parker nodded without promising anything.

'He seemed very jumpy. Too jumpy.'

'He doesn't like bad PR.'

'No. It was more than that. Jumpy.'

'You've never met the man, Parker. He could always be like that.'

'You have - is he?'

'Well - no. But I don't know him that well.'

'When I told him about being shot at he said something very curious.'

'Like?'

' "There's something very curious going on."'

'That is curious.'

'I'm serious.'

'I know.'

'Sometimes I can't tell when you're being serious.'

'I know. It's curious.'

'When he said, "There's something very curious going on," he didn't say it to me, it was an aside really, to himself. People who talk to themselves worry me. Either way, he wouldn't elaborate on it.'

'He asked you where I was, of course.'

'Of course. I said you'd run off after the gunfire and I'd no idea where you were.'

'And he believed you?'

'He didn't seem concerned. He said you'd be picked up one way or another. Oh yeah - he said he hoped it would be by the police. That mean anything to you?'

'I presume he means the same people who got Patricia might be after me.'

'That's what I reckoned. He recommended that I leave the country. He said things would probably get worse before they got better.'

'I don't think they can get much worse.'

'I don't think he particularly meant for you. He implied that I was in some danger myself.'

'So you're taking him up on his recommendation?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't know. That's why I'm asking.'

'I think he's trying to scare me off so I won't write about the lunch with Brinn or look any further into this thing.'

'So you're staying.'

'I can't go back with a half-written story, Starkey.'

'Good.'

'Then I had the Royal Ulster Constabulary come visit. They interviewed me for about an hour and a half. They were perfectly pleasant.'

'That's always a bit worrying.'

‘I know. They made it quite plain that they thought I knew where you were. The senior officer, a captain, I think, or what is it, a detective inspector? He warned me that I could be kept in custody for up to seven days and then be charged with withholding information. The other guy kind of spoilt the threat by saying that of course as an American citizen they wouldn't do that to me. The captain gave him a withering look.'

Parker began rummaging in his inside jacket pocket. He produced a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to me. 'Then I had a reporter, said he worked with you. Mike Magee mean anything to you? Gave me this number and said it was important that you call him.'

'Important for me or for him?'

'A bit of both, I suspect. He seemed genuine enough.'

'I hate genuine. It's so false. Magee works with me on the
News.
But he also does some stuff for Maxwell.'

'So then I got followed.'

Maxwell, police and Magee, or representatives of such?' Parker shrugged. 'Magee I spotted. Police, I think, out of uniform.'

'Difficult to miss.'

'Like myself. And skinheads. Skinheads everywhere. I couldn't make up my mind whether they were following me because of this business or because I'm black. Or both, the way things are going.'

'Don't worry about the skinheads. By and large they're not as dangerous as they look. You can spend your life crossing roads to avoid them, then some twit in a nice blazer with a college scarf round his neck flattens you. You've heard of lager louts? It's the Liebfraumilch louts you've to watch out for.'

Parker looked up at me, squinting slightly as the dying sun's rays invaded the room around me through a late break in the clouds. 'Why do I get the impression that you're thinking up bright comments for your column as you go along? You're not in a very funny situation, Starkey.'

'It's the only thing that keeps me sane, Parker. And if it was happening to someone else, it would be very funny. In a tragic sort of way.'

'It takes a remarkable man to keep smiling through this, Starkey.'

I shrugged.

'Or a very sick one,' he added.

Parker brought a number of things back with him. He had a copy of the
Evening News.
Its story was much the same as the
Telegraph's
only it made even less of my involvement and there was no photo of me even though they had access to dozens. The editor. Big Frank, had not flinched in the past from making capital out of colleagues who got into trouble, so I could only hope that he had held off using my picture out of some kind of particular loyalty to me or perhaps in the hope that I would reveal all to him when the time was right. Either way it gave me a little extra time the police would doubtless have a photo, and if they had terrorists would have one, but at least I didn't have to worry yet about some idiot trying to make a citizen's arrest.

He also brought a change of clothes, washing materials, and three six-packs of Harp. For himself he had brought half a dozen bottles of Rolling Rock. We sat and drank.

He said: 'You can't stay here for ever.'

'I know. Just tonight. Tomorrow I start finding out what's going on.'

'And how do you do that?'

‘I was thinking about it this afternoon. The one clue we have to go on is that last thing Margaret said to me. Divorce Jack. We've got to find out who Jack is.'

'You think it's that important?'

'It was the last thing she said on this planet. It has to be.'

'It could be gibberish. You don't know what goes through a person's mind when they're just about to die.'

'It has to be important. What else have we got?'

'If only she'd said "Klatu barada nikto" we could have blamed it on aliens and been done with it.'

'The Day the Earth Stood Still?'

'The same. Then I'd really have a story.'

'This isn't getting us anywhere.'

'I know. So how do we find out about Jack?'

'I'll phone Magee tonight. But you go and meet him. I'll tell him it's too dangerous for me to come out of hiding. If he's assigned to the murders then he'll have done some work on Margaret's background; see if there's a Jack in there somewhere, without letting on that you're that interested. I'll take a dander round her university, see if I can track down any of her friends.'

'Is it not too dangerous to go out, Starkey?'

'I'm going to have to do something about my appearance.'

I stood up from the windowsill and crossed to a cracked mirror set in the gloomy alcove above the dressing table. I was still bruised about the face, but the swelling had gone down considerably. I reached up and pulled my hair tight back against my skull. 'You think I'd look good as a skinhead, Parker?'

'Well, you wouldn't look any worse.'

'Thanks. Margaret once said I reminded her of James Stewart.'

Parker looked incredulously at me. 'I suppose you do. If you're mad.'

'I'll need some denims. Jacket and trousers. Old. You can get me some in the morning from a charity shop, okay?'

'Okay.'

'And no flares on the trousers. I'm not wearing flares.'

'You're a murderer on the run. You can't afford to be fashion conscious.'

'I can and I will. I'm not wearing flares for the same reason I won't get a curly perm in my hair.'

'Which is?'

'I'd look like a spastic'

I borrowed some scissors from downstairs and went into the shared bathroom to cut my hair. It's impossible to give yourself a proper skinhead without a set of shears, but I gave it a good go. When I had finished my hair was short and tufty and I looked as if I was suffering from radiation sickness. But at least I looked a little bit less like the Dan Starkey everyone knew and loved.

As I was leaving Lenny was coming up the corridor. He said: 'Jesus, I'd see a barber about your head, mate. Did you fall and break your hair or something?'

'Very funny.'

He had a towel in his hand. He said: 'You finished in here? Going for my weekly bath.'

'Sure. Go ahead. Did you not go out?'

Aye, I did, but you know what Belfast's like during the week. Dead as a doornail.'

I smiled and let him pass. I lingered outside my room until he locked the bathroom door and then walked down the corridor to see if he'd left his door unlocked. I tried the handle. The door opened and I peered in. The room was in darkness. I switched the light on and went in. I was pleased to see that he'd tidied it up a bit. Boredom had never yet driven me to tidiness, but each to his own. I found what I was looking for on the floor beside his bed: a bottle of henna for my hair. The final touch. His suit was on a hanger behind the door. I checked the pockets and found his wallet. I pulled out his driving licence and studied the photograph; it was fuzzy and indistinct and could have been anyone. I stuck the licence in my pocket and put the wallet back. He only had ten pounds in it, which I left, so that he could buy himself a new bottle of henna.

Later, when I'd reoccupied the bathroom and dyed what was left of my hair, Parker gave me a once-over. 'You've managed to dye part of your skin as well,' he said. He reached across and rubbed some colour from below my ear. Then he examined his fingers, rubbing the dye between them. 'You looked like you were wearing make-up, Starkey. Terrorist face powder. Or Khmer Rouge.' He smiled broadly.

'We'll make a writer out of you yet, Al,' I said and went to admire myself in the mirror.

'You look like a punker.'

'A punker? You mean a punk, I take it.'

'Whatever. A sick punk.'

'I don't care if I look like Winnie the Pooh, just as long as I don't look like Dan Starkey.'

'You look like a punk version of Dan Starkey. But you might get away with it if they don't look too closely.'

After he was gone I prayed for Patricia and asked God to lead me to Jack. He didn't reply, but then He was probably busy moving in mysterious ways. Up there, He was probably having a good giggle.

There is no experience quite like walking the streets as a fugitive. Fear claws at your heart like a circus tiger claws at its trainer, closer, closer each time, until one day, in an unguarded moment, it strikes home. How to be alert, yet natural. Assume everyone is your enemy, and friend. Everyone recognizes you but nobody knows you. A friendly smile is a knowing smile. A blank expression is a mask of fear. The pump of a horn is a signal. The screech of brakes an ambush.

In fact, all eyes were upon me, because I looked so bloody ridiculous. Parker hadn't done too bad a job with the denims. Although the trousers clearly weren't flares they were somewhat less than straight: bell-bottoms was the term they were afflicted with in their heyday. He found them in a nearly-new shop on the Sandy Row, and knowing that part of the city well, I could easily believe that they were. Fashion and thuggery have never gone hand in hand. My hair had not benefited further from a fitful night's sleep. It looked like toffee poured into an icicle mould, brittle and unwieldy. The bruising on my face, all but invisible in the yellowed light of my room, was more noticeable, but ignored, as most everyone was too busy looking at my jaggedy hair. My skin was pale and chalky and my eyes red from an alcohol sleep. They wouldn't have sold me glue in a DIY shop.