Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (68 page)

Then a sheet caught her eye, the logo of MI6 prominent on its heavy cream surface. It seemed oddly out of place in the midst of all this dry and dusty correspondence. She pulled it out of the pile. The name leaped out at her at once.
Brian Riordan—
right there in the middle of the few paragraphs. She steadied her gaze and started at the top of the letter.

Dear Terence;

Pursuant to your letter of March 12
^th
in the matter of Mr. Griffin Waite, a former Senior Information Officer liased with the (here someone had taken a broad tipped felt and blacked out the words.)

In answer to your second question—at present no one knows the whereabouts of Mr. Waite, nor what his connection to the deceased—the Belfast Republican Brian Riordan—was. I think we must take the view in this matter that no news is good news, the longer Mr. Waite stays off the radar the better. It may be that he himself is deceased.

Grounds for a murder investigation were never fully established, and Mr. Waddell feels that no new evidence or any other consideration of substance has come to light that endangers this position. The matter is not worth pursuing. Should further questions arise, please deal with them in as summary a fashion as possible.

Again the black felt had slashed out a good two inches of print and despite holding it to the light, she couldn’t make any of the words out. However two lines further down it appeared the pen had begun to run out of ink, by squinting and holding it up to the flickering light she made out the tail end of a sentence that made the fine hairs on her neck stand up.

...trust that any trail in the Riordan case has gone sufficiently cold.

Pamela re-read the line four times—the Riordan case, what case? And why in heaven’s name was MI6 fielding questions about his death?

Unfortunately Terence I can only answer for decisions made during this Administration, these decisions you’ve inquired about were made under a previous Administration and therefore files or other information pertaining to this matter cannot be accessed by the current Administration.

Sincerely,

Arch Fielding

She flicked through the pages underneath but they bore no relation to the letter in her hand. She glanced over her shoulder at the door, it was still tightly shut but it was only a matter of time before someone came in for something and discovered her here.

She forced herself to go through the papers carefully, despite the shaking in her hands and the pounding in her ears that told her this was exactly what the note writer had wanted her to find. Why though? How could he know this? And what did the letter mean anyway? She bit her lip nervously and tasted blood. There had to be at least two thousand papers scattered on the floor around her, how on earth was she to peruse them before someone came upon her? She took a breath, she would have to try. She continued to leaf through them, laying each one face down and to the side as she finished scanning them. Half an hour passed in such a manner and she had found nothing, and her fear of getting caught was increasing by the minute.

A flick of blue had just caught her eye when she heard a key in the door behind her. She froze, paper cutting into her palms as she squeezed it tightly. Whoever was trying to unlock the door seemed to be having problems with the key as they were still fumbling with the knob. Her heart was threatening to come up through her throat when she heard Constable Frye’s voice outside.

“Murray, the sarge wants to see ye—ye’d best nip right quick, he was in a temper about ye lettin’ that girl go last night without questionin’ her. Nip along lad.”

Pamela let out the air she’d been holding and returned to the papers, knowing she only had another minute or two before she needed to be out of this room.

The flick of blue was a tab that had been attached to the top of the paper. The tag looked relatively new, the paper itself damp and reeking of mildew. The tag had been added recently. She picked it up and saw that it had a number in the top righthand corner. It was number six of ten, and looked to be part of a report. This particular page consisted of a list of names.

Thomas Jans- builder, Portadown

Desmond McMann- butcher, Markethill, Co. Armagh

Alice Robards- housewife, Belfast

The list went on to total up dozens of names. The one she was looking for was halfway down the page.

Brian Riordan- driver, Belfast

She’d known it would be there. This, after all, was what the note writer had wanted her to see. Yet something in her refused the knowledge the papers had given her. She laid the paper to the side on top of the heavy cream stationary of MI6. The rest of the papers she put back into the box, tapping, shuffling, and tamping them in until the whole lot fit. She returned the box to its place on the high shelf and turned back to where the two papers lay face-up with information she wasn’t sure she wanted to possess.

She folded the two papers and put them inside the waistband of her jeans, feeling sick even as she did so. Apart the two letters were little more than innuendo and half-truths, together they were damning evidence.

Casey and Pat’s father had been murdered.

PAMELA ENTERED PAT’S SMALL OFFICE space on a gust of chill wind, brown and gold leaves caught fast in her hair and on her scarf. “It’s like trying to get in to see the Wizard of Oz,” she said, removing her navy pea coat and laying it over the back of a chair. “Though I didn’t get the impression your gatekeepers were particularly enchanted with you. What are you doing?”

“Loadin’ up pamphlets. I finally got the results of that employment study, so we’re goin’ to blanket the city with it. Not that it contains any earth shatterin’ information,” he said wryly. “Catholics are three times as likely to be unemployed as Protestants,” his tone mimicked those of a pompous politician, “and are disproportionately represented in the poorest paid, least skilled and most insecure jobs—well tell us something we
didn’t
know.” He kicked an empty box across the floor toward her.

“Give us a hand then.”

She took the box and grabbed a stack of pamphlets. The paper was still warm and the ink fumes heady. Her hands were trembling and she suddenly found herself at a loss as to how to tell Pat about the papers she’d found. How did one begin? She couldn’t just blurt out that she was certain his father had been murdered, and yet there was no delicate conversational gambit to open such a topic.

“Out with it,” Pat said, shifting a full box onto the top of another.

“Pardon me?”

“Whatever it is ye’ve come here to tell me, ye’d best just say it, ye look as though ye’ve a fishbone stuck sideways in yer throat an’ won’t breathe easy until it’s out.”

She took the papers out of her inside pocket, where they’d felt like a brand against her chest for the last two days. She’d briefly considered not telling Pat but in the end hadn’t been able to live with the thought of keeping it secret from him. This was his father and he had a right to know.

He gave her a searching look as he took the papers from her hand and for a fleeting second she wondered if she’d just made a very grave mistake.

She watched him as he looked over the papers and read the letter again. His face was a blank slate, giving her no clue to what was going on inside his head.

“This paper,” he waved the list of names at her, “what do ye think it is?”

“A list of people that were designated as killing targets.”

He sighed heavily. “Aye, I thought as much. Do ye have proof of it though?”

She nodded. “I’ve done some checking and found at least seven other people on that list that are dead. Most weren’t made to look like accidents though. Some of the bodies have never been found, others were dumped in fields, another burned in a car. Some I simply couldn’t track down and I had to be careful about when I was using the file room and how often.”

He took a deep breath, dark eyes unreadable. “I never did think it was an accident.”

His statement surprised her; neither he nor Casey had ever spoken about the circumstances surrounding their father’s death. That in itself seemed odd enough, particularly when neither of them were men for avoiding the truth.

“I can see by the look on yer face that ye think it strange that I’ve never spoken of it before. Well I did, an’ I thought Casey was actually goin’ to take a literal strip off my hide for bringin’ it up. I think he’s always feared that Daddy did it on purpose an’ that to look too closely at his death would present him with facts he couldn’t bear.”

“Your father didn’t seem like a man who would take his own life.”

“He wasn’t,” Pat said quietly, folding the papers over and then unfolding them to look again at the undeniable message they relayed. “Ye see, nothin’ about this ever fit. He wasn’t depressed an’ the idea that it was accidental didn’t wash either. My da’ had a rare steady hand, he might have made a good surgeon in some other life. Ye’ll have noticed Casey’s the same, even when he’s carvin’ his wee birds ye’ll never see him slip, nor tremble. So if I had trouble believin’ the official version of my da’s death…well,” he shrugged, “ye can see why that might be hard to swallow.”

“Then why didn’t you go to the police?” She realized the naïveté of the question even as it left her lips. Even she had lived here long enough to know better.

“An’ what do ye think might have been the outcome of that? Considerin’ what ye’ve already found?”

“But you were both so young- you don’t think...” she trailed off as he shot her a dark look that was more than vaguely similar to his brother’s.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinkin’ that because they share their tea an’ cakes with ye, that they are good people Pamela. Granted some are, an’ then there’s plenty that aren’t, an’ ye’d best remember it. If ye don’t think most of them would welcome a clear shot at Casey, then think again.”

“I’m well aware that there is no black and white in this country Pat, there’s nothing but endless shades of gray. I’m more careful than you give me credit for.”

“Aye, I suppose it’s yer own business,” he said grudgingly. “Casey does say yer not a woman to be gainsaid when ye take a notion into yer head.”

“Does he then?” she responded tartly.

Pat merely cocked a dark brow at her as if to say he was well acquainted with her stubbornness himself and hadn’t needed his brother’s confirmation of the fact.

“So you’ve just lived with this knowledge all these years?”

“Aye well, it wasn’t what ye could call knowledge, an’ I was very young when he died. Then Casey went off to prison an’ I had other worries. Like survivin’ from one day to the next. But it was always there in the back of my mind, that someone else must have done it. It didn’t make any sort of sense that he’d have had gelignite there where he died.”

“Would he have known if someone other than him had been near,” she paused wondering if there was a delicate way to say this, and concluded there wasn’t, “the materials?”

“There are ways of tellin’, an’ my da’ was a careful man. He’d methods of makin’ sure no one was tamperin’ with his things. Sometimes it’s as simple as placin’ hairs in places where you’ll see if anything has been removed. Had anything changed in the slightest since last he’d touched it, he’d have known an’ not have made the mistake of dealin’ with it himself. Truth is, though, he wasn’t in the business of buildin’ bombs anymore, hadn’t been for a long time before he died. He’d distanced himself from the IRA. There was no reason for him to have explosives. Sure as hell he’d not have had it on the premises where one of us could have gotten to it, so ye see none of it made a damn bit of sense.”

“He died at home?” she asked, shocked by what he was saying.

“No, at a garage where he fixed cars an’ such on the side, but Casey an’ I worked there with him on weekends often.” Pat gave her a quizzical look, “Casey didn’t talk to ye about any of this?”

“He’s never spoken of it. He gets that granite face whenever I’ve asked. So I don’t ask anymore.”

Pat hefted the last of the boxes onto the pile by the door. “He’s not likely to speak of it. I think he’s tried to forget what he could, an’ lock the rest up tight. ‘Twas him that found Daddy, or,” Pat grimaced, “what was left of him.”

“Oh,” she said, and sat down feeling as though someone had taken the starch out of her knees. “I’d no idea.”

Pat sat across from her, hands ink-stained, nails rimmed in indigo.

“Well, if he was to tell anyone it’d be you, but I don’t think he could ever find words to describe what it was like, an’ how it was for him afterwards.”

“No, I don’t imagine he could,” she said faintly.

“I remember that night, ye know. He came in an’ sat on the side of my bed. I think he sat there for a long time before he actually said anything. I woke up an’ there was just this very still weight on the edge of the bed. I think I mumbled somethin’ an’ he said ‘’tis only yer brother’. The words seemed odd, an’ I think I knew somethin’ was very wrong just from his stillness an’ those words. An’ then he just said it, flat an’ soft—‘Da’s dead, Patrick.’” Pat shrugged. “It doesn’t take many words to turn a world upside down, does it?”

She shook her head, not wanting to interrupt his narrative.

“An’ then he told me what had happened, that Da’ had been blown up,” Pat took a deep breath, face oddly impassive. “An’ I knew it wasn’t the truth, that there was more to it, but I knew too that he wasn’t able to talk about it. There was still blood on his hands, he smelled strong of soap, but the blood was there in the lines of his knuckles an’ under his nails. Sometimes,” Pat’s long lashes swept down, covering his eyes, “I think, for him, it’s still there, an’ always will be.” His voice was soft, but a chill swept over Pamela at his words. They bore too closely to her own thoughts at times—that she’d married a man of blood, who wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d had vengeance. However, until now, vengeance hadn’t been possible, one couldn’t kill something that had neither form nor substance.

“He won’t thank ye for the information. Yer openin’ a can of worms if ye do this, an’ exposin’ yerself to all sorts of danger as well. He’ll do what he has to to protect ye, but he can’t be with ye twenty-four hours a day. There are people who’ll kill ye for lookin’ in the wrong direction at the wrong moment. If someone gets wind that yer pokin’ into a ten year old murder, ye’ll find yerself in more than one set of crosshairs.”