Sacrifice of Fools (31 page)

‘But you’re Shian.’ And he regrets that too, though he had to say it.

‘Have I ever lied to you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How can I prove to you that I am worthy of your trust?’

‘Tell me what
Sacrifice of Fools
means.’

She hesitates. Just an instant, but it’s enough for Gillespie to know that her answer will not be the truth.

‘It is a story. A thing made up to frighten and entertain, like your vampires and beast-men. It is nothing real, nothing that can harm us.’

‘You’re lying.’ Andy Gillespie says very simply. ‘You are lying to me.’

‘Mr Gillespie…’

‘Mr Gillespie nothing. You are fucking lying to me; all of you; all you’ve ever done is lie to me. Fuck you! Fuck you to hell!’

Ounserrat lays her hands flat on her thighs.

‘Then this partnership is dissolved,’ she says. She opens the door and gets out. ‘I shall make my own way home. Please have the car back at the depot by seventeen thirty.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s twenty miles and it’s pissing down. Have a bit of sense!’ But she’s already halfway to the main road. ‘I’m the one’s lied to and you get to storm off in anger!’ he shouts at her. ‘Jesus, you people!’ He starts the car and drives beside her. ‘Come on, will you?’ She does not acknowledge his presence. She breaks into a jog. Gillespie matches pace with her. Her clothes are clinging to her bones but she will not look at him. She can keep this hunter’s lope up for hours and miles.

‘OK then, we’re finished,’ Gillespie shouts and then shrieks the engine and spins the wheels like he’s a twentysomething in a Ford, and not a late thirty something, and drives off.

F
UCK HER. FUCK THEM
all. Fuck them and their secrets and their lies and their law that says it’s better to deceive a friend than betray a client. Even a dead client. Fuck them and their sneaky creepy chemicals that get into your head and turn it all inside out so that a man doesn’t know what he is any more, let alone what he thinks he knows. Fuck them for having to come to this world, out of all the worlds around all the stars, as if it wasn’t complicated enough with just people on it. Fuck them for making everything we do look mean and crude and smelly and brutal and stupid. Fuck you, Ounserrat Soulereya.

But he didn’t. And he wanted to. And he still wants to, and he almost turns the car around to go back for her, but only almost and that isn’t enough to put out his anger. So he turns on the radio instead and it’s that same bloody station that has to play a Tina Turner track every hour, and this is that track, and after it, the Mystery Record.

‘Bryan Adams,’ he says after just the intro. ‘ “Summer of Sixty Nine”.’

Answer after four. By then he’s into the Belfast traffic. He sort of wonders where Ounserrat’s got to. Wet. They’re supposed to hate getting wet, like cats. Well, I’m really really surprised no one got the Mystery Record, the DJ says in his dumb Ulster-American accent, I’d’ve thought it was obvious: ‘Summer of Sixty Nine’, Bryan Adams. Gillespie could have won the Top Twenty CDs. He didn’t know they still had a Top Twenty. Of anything.

He uses one of his last fifty pees on a meter and then does a thing that he’s never done before. He voluntarily goes into a police station.

As the desk sergeant is in the back calling up DS Dunbar, Gillespie sees a figure he knows coming towards him along the corridor. His Sunday suit is crumpled, his jaw is shadowed, his hair is tousled, he looks like shit. Gavin Peterson sidesteps the sprinkler drip and in that moment sees and recognizes Gillespie.

‘Gavin.’

‘Gillespie.’

‘Looks like they’ve had you in the prime suspect suite.’

‘They think they can make a conspiracy charge stick. Do you know how many top-ranking policemen are members of the Dissenting Presbyterian Church?’

‘Conspiracy?’

‘Come on, Gillespie. The NIPS set you up with that Outsider bitch to break our leverage operation. I must be getting old; back then, I’d’ve seen through you like that.’

He holds Gillespie’s gaze, snaps his fingers.

‘You won’t believe me, but I don’t have a fucking idea what you’re talking about, Gavin.’ Gillespie is not intimidated by Peterson’s smile.

‘You keep saying that, Gillespie. Keep saying that, and keep looking in mirrors, over your shoulder. You keep your eyes open. Someone will get to you with a little message from God.’ He forces a laugh. ‘I see someone already has. Just keep looking back, Gillespie. God is not mocked.’

He brushes past towards the security door and the street.

‘Haven’t you heard, Gavin?’ Gillespie calls. ‘God is dead!’

‘His civil service is still working,’ Peterson says.

He’s been threatened in a police station, but Gillespie feels pity for Gavin Peterson. Now God’s hard man understands what it’s like to lose the thing that gives your life goal and spirit. Gillespie’s still staring at the street door when Roisin Dunbar arrives. She looks greasy and tired and very very pissed off.

‘You look rough,’ Gillespie says.

‘Rich coming from you. You still not want to press charges?’

‘I’ve other ways of getting back at Mr Gerry Conlon and his porno video operation.’

‘OK, I can give you two minutes,’ Roisin Dunbar says, opening the door to interview room three. Gillespie slides the disk across the formica-topped table to her and starts to talk. It takes more than two minutes but Roisin Dunbar isn’t watching the clock any more.

‘Jesus,’ she says when Gillespie has finished. She makes a call upstairs on the intercom. ‘Boss, I’ve got Andy Gillespie down in interview room three. I think you should hear what he has to say. Oh, and bring Littlejohn too, if he’s still around.’

‘I’m on a pay and display,’ Gillespie says.

‘I’ll pay your ticket,’ Dunbar says.

Willich comes into the room, Littlejohn following. Gillespie notices Dunbar’s expression. It says she’s going to enjoy making Littlejohn eat shit. He doesn’t like it. Littlejohn is a smug beardy bastard who wanted Gillespie for a devo serial killer, but Gillespie doesn’t want anyone to have to eat police shit. He takes a deep breath and tells it all again and then sits back and listens to the police lay into Littlejohn about how he was so sure that the killer couldn’t be a Sheenie, couldn’t possibly be, biologically impossible, wasn’t that it? And here’s the man you profiled for us as prime suspect telling us he knows who the killer is. It’s not nice. It’s not good to hear. Police are supposed to be noble and upright and heroic, and not vicious bitches when they get it stuck up them. Not
people.
Not
men and women.

Willich bangs out of the room with the disk. Two seconds later, Dunbar goes after him. Littlejohn and Gillespie are left in interview room three, sitting on adjacent sides of the God-ugly table.

‘Sorry about that,’ Gillespie says after a time.

Littlejohn looks at him.

‘Xenology is not an exact science,’ he says.

Gillespie smiles.

‘I need your help,’ he says after another time.

‘Are you sure you can trust it, Mr Gillespie?’

‘What do the police know?’

‘What, indeed?’

‘Do you speak Hot Narha, Mr Littlejohn?’ Gillespie asks.

‘I know its grammar and syntax and vocabulary and I could name you fifteen classical song cycles composed in it, but speak it? I take it you do.’

‘I’ve learned some of the words, but I can’t speak it.’

‘You know,’ Littlejohn says, ‘there’s something decidedly not kosher in the world when I spend years setting up the first xenology department in Ireland, learning a language with seventeen tenses, seven genders including two potential forms used exclusively for pubescent children, five modes and which completely up-arses itself twice a year into an entirely different language, and you swallow something and wake up with it in your head the next morning, word fucking perfect.’

‘You mean, a wee glipe like me,’ Andy Gillespie says. ‘Like you say, it’s not a fair world.’

Littlejohn smiles and Gillespie realizes that he is trying to be friendly. This is as nice as he gets.

‘I heard something in Hot Narha today, but I don’t know what it means.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Sacrifice of Fools,’
Andy Gillespie says. Littlejohn frowns.

‘Give me that again.’ Gillespie repeats the phrase. ‘Your accent is flawless. Who taught you Hot?’

Gillespie cups a hand against the breast pocket of his jacket.

‘It’s just the way they do it,’ Littlejohn says. ‘Care to introduce me to him or her for a few advanced language lessons? This expression, where did you hear it?’

‘From Saipanang Harridi.’

‘You didn’t tell the officers.’

‘It wouldn’t mean anything to them. Does it mean anything to you?’

Littlejohn shrugs, sighs.

‘It’s a very formal mode. Hot Narha is a nightmare of modes: they’ve got modes for addressing sexual partners and non-sexual partners, and each has a different gender form. This is in Hot Dream Mode, the spiritual language the
hahndahvi
speak in the
kesh
cycle.’

‘It chimes with other words in my head, but I can’t make any sense out of them.’

‘I’d need to check back at home. It does sound vaguely familiar though, I might have come across it in one of the eddas, or maybe a research student brought it up in a meeting. You think it’s important?’

‘It cost him a lot to say it.’

‘You know better than me, their motivations are nothing like ours. We understand each other more by luck than affinity.’

Gillespie thinks of Ounserrat Soulereya, soaked to the bones but doggedly pushing on through the rain. Twenty miles to home, and she won’t even slow down. Pride isn’t it, nor anger. Humiliation, despair, arrogance. Human names, human feelings.

‘Tell you what,’ Littlejohn continues, ‘I’m neither use nor ornament here. You can see what the Northern Ireland Police Service think of me.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Gillespie says.

‘Life’s a learning curve or it’s a flat line, my friend. Come back to my place and I’ll see what I can find about your Sacrifice of Fools. At least it’ll show these smug police bastards I’m still good for something.’

‘Could we go by way of McAusland’s car hire?’ Gillespie asks. ‘I’ve ten minutes before I go into an extra day.’

Gillespie could see himself living in Littlejohn’s house. Big early Victorian terrace backing on to the Botanic Gardens, but the wall tall enough to prevent the cider drinkers from throwing their bottles over. High ceilings. Big rooms. He likes the plaster mouldings, and the little glass cupola on the return. So what if it leaks? This is a house that suits the rain. Looks good in it. Upstairs living room. Dining room at the front. Class. He could go some of this. Not like those executive estates out at Upper Malone, with two feet between the red-brick mansions so they can feel detached and islands unto themselves. Arranged in closes and cul-de-sacs. Pseudo California. They don’t suit the rain. They look like surfers caught in a downpour. You’d think we’d been colonized by the Americans, not the Shian.

But he can see himself in this place, yes, if things had turned out differently from how they did.

‘Drink?’ Littlejohn’s study is at the back of the house, looking out on to a closed yard cluttered with rusting gardening tools and terracotta planters filled with the rotted straw of last summer’s annuals. A red plastic bird feeder half full of peanuts swings from the washing line. ‘Not much else than gin, but there might be some beer at the back of the fridge.’

‘Beer would be good.’

Gillespie studies the study while Littlejohn rummages in the fridge. He’s always wanted a room furnished with books. One wall, nothing but books. The books on Littlejohn’s wall are all about the Shian and look new. New subject, new books. He leans over the shelf and sniffs. He’s always loved the smell of fresh book. Lamps are lit against the gloom; that’s the way to light a room, Gillespie thinks. Photographs on the wall facing the books. His graduation, her graduation. Their wedding. Kids, growing through baby shots and school photographs and high days and holidays. Did girls really dress like that in the nineties? Were boys’ hair-cuts that grim? Memory is kind, photography brutal. Their graduations. Their weddings. Their baby shots. On the desk beside the computer, a silver-framed photograph of a handsome woman.

‘When they went we discovered they were all we had in common,’ Littlejohn says, handing Gillespie a tin of Caffrey’s and a glass. ‘Classic empty nest syndrome. Just because you can describe it to five decimal places doesn’t prevent you from becoming a victim.’

‘Sorry,’ Gillespie says.

‘Don’t be.’ He sets his gin on his desk and himself behind the computer. ‘This could take a while. I may have to uplink to the Fifteenth Fleet Colonial Library and it’s difficult getting satellite time booked.’

‘Isn’t that expensive?’ Gillespie pops and pours his beer and watches the head surge out of the creaming liquid.

‘Appallingly. However, best efforts of my children and my wife’s lawyers notwithstanding, I am fucking rolling in it. More than I know what to do with.’

Gillespie sits back in the cat-clawed chair and sips his beer and watches the rain outside the window and Littlejohn moving across the plane of streaked grey, fetching a book here, a file there, a magazine somewhere else. The click of the mouse is loud and metallic. The screen lights Littlejohn’s face. Fifteen minutes pass. Half an hour.

‘Nothing in the main dictionaries, but I wasn’t really expecting anything,’ Littlejohn says. ‘We learn enough new words and phrases and modes to bring out a new dictionary every other week. The formal mode might make it worth having a juke at religio-social studies. The trouble with these people is that they cut right across our established academic disciplines.’

Back to the mouse-clicking. Gillespie picks a book off the shelf. It’s not everywhere he feels comfortable enough to read. This house, this room, this man, are the life he once imagined. Alternative Andy Gillespie. The book’s a survey of the better known Shian
hahndahvi.
It’s a popular work, with plenty of pictures. Gillespie flicks over the glossy pages. They smell good. He pauses over some of the more bizarre avatar masks. Imagine these things walking in your dreams. An open-mouthed face, painted with white spirals.