Falling Glass (22 page)

Tom hadn’t been quite there at the beginning, but almost the beginning. When Richard was getting out of prisons and into construction Tom had come on board and agreed to become Richard’s fixer.

None of it had really been legal work.

It was all dealing with paramilitaries.

A paramilitary negotiator was vitally important. No one could do business in Northern Ireland without making deals with (in order of importance): the IRA, the UDA, the INLA and the UVF. And after you’d paid off the paramilitaries, next you greased the union wheels and finally you grafted the cops. It was hard work and you had to creatively account for the revenue. (Not that the tax men ever pressed that hard – with businesses closing left and right Richard Coulter was one of the few people in the bleak north Belfast catchment area who could provide nongovernment jobs, and no one wanted to fuck with the golden goose.)

Tom had been Richard’s man in Belfast and, until a few days ago, Tom thought that Richard confided everything to him.

That obviously was not the case.

Tom sipped his coffee, received Viv’s text and texted Richard:

I AM HR. I KNW U R AWAKE.

Richard read the text and frowned. If Tom was here it was bound to be terrible news.

“Just give me a minute,” he said to himself and then added: “I wonder how those limes are doing?” He slid open the glass door and stepped inside
the closer of the two greenhouses. The smell in here was comforting: compost and expensive fertiliser. He turned on the mister and walked among the lime trees, looking with satisfaction at the budding fruit on all of them. They were hardy trees from the Basque country and next season if he wasn’t dead or in prison he was going to have them transplanted outside to the dell next to the oak grove. Northern Ireland got few days of frost and up here on the very mouth of Belfast Lough the Gulf Stream came right in. Jack, his gardener, said they had a good shot at surviving and what Jack didn’t know about horticulture wasn’t worth knowing.

He gave a wee squeeze to the biggest fruit on the biggest tree.

“A thing of beauty,” he said to himself.

He sat on the wicker chair he had set up in the corner, wiped condensation from the glass and looked out at the ashy North Channel, ashier Irish Sea and the blue waters of the Atlantic far to the north. The phone in his pocket was vibrating. It was another text from Tom.

“Fuck,” Coulter said to himself. The guy was going to keep after him and Tom knew he liked to come out here.

Richard scurried to the west door of the greenhouse, opened it, bolted into the kitchen garden and, keeping low, ran to the protection of the hedge that separated the house from the airstrip.

He walked along the hedge and slipped behind the Gulfstream’s hanger to the estate’s high stone exterior wall now topped with razor wire since the CIRA’s interest in him had become apparent.

He unlocked a steel gate and went into the sheep meadow behind his house – still technically his property but outside the grounds proper.

He walked along the salt trail to Bla Hole Lane.

It was windy and gulls were hovering over the cliff face, unbending and motionless in the stiff breeze coming off the sea. The clouds were scudding through the sky but in Scotland it looked clear. He looked back at the house and saw Tom’s car parked in his usual spot.

Fucking Tom, what fresh nightmare was he bringing news of now?

As if on cue the phone vibrated a third time.

He ignored it and kept walking along the lane. He was dressed in his
pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers and he hadn’t any money but since he was de facto lord of the manor in these parts none of that mattered.

And his watch alone could be pawned for a plane ticket anywhere. With his millions in secure accounts in the Bahamas and Switzerland, he could bugger off right now if he wanted. He didn’t need the publicity. He didn’t need the notoriety. He didn’t need Northern Ireland or his family. The thing that no one understood was that basically he was a loner and actually a bit shy. He had grown up in conservative, backwater 1940s Ulster. His da had been a teetotal, Gospel Hall attending, evangelistic, Paisley voting, dairy farmer. His ma was a sectarian nut who believed that the Bible was literally true and that everyone not of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland was going to hell, with a special place reserved for followers of the Bishop of Rome. Richard had five older brothers (three of whom had become missionaries in Africa) and no sisters, which meant that he had all the usual sibling hang-ups and quite a few idiosyncratic extras. And they were hardy stock, the Coulters – border warriors in Scotland and Ulster who had survived Flodden, Glencoe, Culloden, World War One and the Belfast Blitz during World War Two when a Luftwaffe Heinkel 111, miles off course, had dropped a bomb on their dairy.

Both of Dick’s parents were still alive and of course they and all his siblings believed everything they heard and read about their youngest son and brother. One of the reasons he often had to go on those ghastly morning shows in person was to defend his good name. He’d even promised his ninety-two-year-old ma that he, a Free Presbyterian, would beat Michael O’Leary, a Roman Catholic, to become the first Irishman in space.

ND TO TALK, Tom texted.

“In a minute!” Richard muttered to the phone.

The lane next to his estate wall was muddy and the tractor divots were filled with rain water and it was some job not to get his slippers drenched. However after five minutes of careful manoeuvring he reached the main road and the village of Knocknagulla itself which was precisely six houses and a shop.

The shop wasn’t yet open and the newspapers were piled up outside in bundles. He slipped a copy of the
Daily Mirror
from its pile. There was nothing about him in it, or the airline. Nothing in the
Express
or the
Star
and it wasn’t until he got to the
Daily Mail
that he found his own name mentioned in an editorial from Peter Hitchens, something about how travel narrowed the mind rather than broadening it and how Coulter Air was responsible for British people seeing how rotten Europe was and how lucky they actually were to live in glorious Albion. Coulter read it twice and really it was almost a kind of compliment.

He put the
Mail
back on its pile.

His phone was vibrating yet again. He called Tom back. “Okay, okay, can you come and get me? I’m at the newsagents just down the road,” he said.

The soles of his slippers were soaked in mud so he scraped them clean while he waited. He sat on the pile of newspapers, putting his slippers up on the Scouser- and Coulter-Air-bashing
Sun
.

Tom pulled in. He was driving the VW Touareg.

Richard got in the passenger’s side. “What were you doing out here?” Tom asked.

“Reading the papers,” Richard said. “Let’s go for a drive. I don’t want to go home just yet.”

“Okay,” Tom replied and turned left on the A2 which would take them north along the coast.

“So what’s up?” Richard asked.

“Got a call from Sean this morning. His bloodhound has found your girl.”

“Has he now?” Richard said, excited.

“Aye. I suppose yon boy knew what he was about after all.”

“Of course he did. I liked him.”

“Aye, well, I didn’t. Fucking tinker.”

“Would you listen to you. You’re worse than Mrs Lavery,” Richard said.

“It’s not racism, it’s fucking experience, mate. I’ve been crossed once too often.”

“Okay, so where is she?”

“In a lake.”

“Drowned?”

“No, no. Sean won’t say exactly, which is sleekit of him, but our boy’s got her trapped on one of those islands in Lough Erne. He’s getting the ferry over at eight and whenever he makes a positive ID, he’s gonna call Sean to inquire about further instructions.”

Richard stroked his chin thoughtfully and looked furtively at Tom as they drove along the Larne Road through the village of Magheramorne.

“‘Further instructions’,” Richard muttered and looked at Tom, whose eyes were firmly on the road. Was Tom speaking in euphemisms?

“The instructions are easy. Get the laptop and the girls. One less problem to worry about. Two less problems. Tell him that. Get the computer, get the girls, give her something to remember us by so she keeps her big fucking mouth shut,” Richard said.

Tom said nothing.

“Alex says you’re doing the Radio 4
Today
show tomorrow?” Tom said conversationally.

“Oh, I didn’t know,” Richard said. Alex was always scheduling things like that. He didn’t mind as long as he could do them over the phone, he hated flying to London for these things. It was just more bullshit.

They drove south and began to hit the Belfast traffic.

“You know, we should discuss how this is all going to go down,” Tom said.

“With Rachel?” Richard said, surprised that they were back to this again.

“At the very least we’ll have to pay her a vast sum of money,” Tom said.

“Pay her? Pay her what? She’s lost. We found her. Her play’s over. We’re already paying the tinker half a million. Half a million. Jesus. Thank God for insurance.”

Tom looked at Richard and shook his head. “For one thing, I’m almost certainly not going to claim this from the insurance company. The last thing we need is an investigation.”

Richard looked at Tom incredulously for a moment before he conceded the point.

“Okay, so half a million of my money for my own kids. And you want us to pay more?”

They drove through Knocknagulla and Kilroot before Tom continued with his point.

“Richard, we both know that we can’t let things end here. We’re going to have to discuss how we keep Rachel quiet.”

“What are you talking about? She’ll be quiet. She keeps quiet about the laptop or we release the fact that she used heroin when pregnant with Sue.”

Tom shook his head.

“She told me she’d thought about killing herself. She’s erratic. Unbalanced. She’s probably using drugs again. You really think we should bet our entire future on Rachel’s continuing good will? It’s luck and luck alone that she hasn’t gone to the press already. The
Sunday World
is clearly gunning for you, mate. Did you read last Sunday’s?”

“Of course I fucking did,” Richard said, irritated.

“So there’s that. And it’s also lucky that she didn’t, in fact, top herself.”

“Why?”

“Because when you shoot yourself in the head someone generally calls the peelers and the peelers would have come and found the laptop and you my friend would be in a white-celled interrogation room right about now.”

Richard’s eyes narrowed.

“So you want to pay her off?”

Tom didn’t answer.

Richard looked at him. Tom felt the look but kept his eyes on the road.

Richard shuddered. They’d been dirty over the years.

Very dirty.

But pay-offs were one thing. Doling out cash to paramilitaries, bullying unions, dealing with protection rackets and the worst political class in western Europe.

This though…

They sat in silence while Tom took them up the M5, across Belfast and onto the Bangor road.

They still hadn’t said a word when they reached the Bangor marina, the biggest one in the north of Ireland.

There was a shirt and shoes rule but the security guard knew Richard of old and let him down onto the pontoon.

They went onboard and down below to the chart room.

His yacht,
White Elephant
, was modest. A fifty-five-foot twin masted ketch without a lot of prettying. Below decks was spacious enough and it was fully automated so that in theory you could sail her across the Atlantic solo. Not that Richard had. He’d gotten it for Rachel and they’d only ever been as far as Belfast Lough on calm days.

The last time he’d been out in it had been with her. Were the kids with him?

No, no kids. Just him and her.

It was late winter or maybe early spring, it was cold anyway.

Two, maybe three years ago.

They’d sailed over to the Copeland Islands. A big Russian tanker was anchored at the mouth of the Lough. “
Lena
– St Petersberg” it said on the stern. He remembered that. That and the trace of a hammer and sickle still painted on the ship’s funnel. They’d put up the jib and the main and sailed past the massive anchor chain and sad men in wool caps had waved to them and she’d waved back and they’d given her some kind of intercourse symbol with their hands.

She’d laughed but when he’d launched the dingy, she’d been nervous. It’s going to be okay, he told her and it was. The water dark and moody and the sky as blue as it ever gets out here. They’d rowed to one of the forbidden Copeland islands, off limits to people, and the fat seals had howled at them from the shore. The whole island was a nature reserve.
You had to have express permission before landing, but there was no one there to enforce the rule. They’d pulled the dingy up onto the shingle beach and everywhere there were birds and grass and wildness.

This is wonderful, she’d said and kissed him. And he had held her and thought that moments like these would be happening his whole life.

His whole life.

Richard fished in the
White Elephant
’s chart locker and produced a bottle of Glenfiddich. He looked around the interior of the forecabin until he found a couple of coffee mugs.

He poured two stiff measures and slid a mug across the chart table to Tom.

Richard drank and then Tom drank.

The boat rocked gently on the pontoon and the smell was sail cloth, paraffin and beeswax. Not unpleasant.

Tom looked at the time on his phone. It was nearly eight now. The ferry on Lough Erne would be up and running. They’d be hearing from Sean very soon. They had to make a decision.

Tom knew what that decision was going to have to be because he was on the laptop too.

If Richard was unable to get this done, then Richard was going to have to be bypassed…

There was no choice.

“That’s why we brought Michael’s man in, Richard, the Starshyna. You know why he’s here,” Tom insisted.