After ten minutes Catherine began to slow up and run out of steam. She lifted her tea and slurped. Ward took his time. He needed to let it settle. Let everything come to rest before trying to talk to her. The two of them drank their tea in silence. Finally Catherine spoke.
‘Sorry to throw all that at you.’
‘The course of true love,’ Ward said, then paused. ‘Sounds like it had been brewing for a while.’ He looked round the kitchen, taking in its domesticity.
‘He needs you, you know.’
‘He needs the job. Let’s not kid ourselves. That’s all he needs.’
Ward slowly shook his head. ‘That’s not true. And I think you know it’s not. He needs you. He needs this place. He needs Sarah. He needs those frigging tennis balls,’ Ward rolled his eyes, laughing softly. ‘He needs to know that there’s five more minutes and then it’s bath time. He needs to know there is more than chasing after some guy, trying to get a charge, a confession, something so it will all make sense.’
‘You might know that, but he doesn’t.’
‘That’s because he’s young, because he’s stupid, because he’s trying to prove himself. Because he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. That he knows better than everyone. You’ve got to understand, Catherine. It’s what makes him a good peeler.’ Ward took a breath. ‘But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need you. You and Martina Navratilova out there.’
Catherine smiled. Ward went on, telling her about his thirty years, about the other detectives he’d seen, guys like O’Neill. Stubborn. They’d bite on to something and never let go. Great cops. But they needed something else, something to come home to, something normal. Otherwise, it was them against the world. They’d go out on a limb. Start taking risks. Nothing to lose. Half the time they didn’t even know they were doing it.
‘Jack, it’s the job he cares about. Not us. He isn’t capable of both.’
‘I don’t think you really believe that.’
Catherine had thought about giving John an ultimatum: us or the job. But she knew her husband, knew he couldn’t stand being told what to do. Not by her, not by anyone. He’d leave in a moment of anger, just to spite her.
The front door opened. ‘That’s me in,’ Sarah shouted, pounding up the stairs.
Ward grinned at her voice and the thunder of her steps. ‘She’s a great kid, that one.’
Catherine sighed.
‘She needs him, Catherine. And I think you need him too. But I’ll tell you something else: we need him. The job needs him.’
Ward searched his thoughts, trying to get his head round it, trying to explain it to her.
‘The police here have changed, you see. I’m not saying it was perfect before, far from it. But at least it was full of peelers. Nowadays the place is run by glorified secretaries and accountants. Bean-counters.’
‘Careful,’ Catherine joked. ‘You’re talking to one of those bean-counters.’
‘Yeah, but you’re not a cop. It’s all about paperwork these days. Filling in forms. These guys wouldn’t know their way round a suspect if he walked into the station and wanted to confess. John’s different though. You can see it. He’s got instincts. He can read people, read the street. He knows the score. You put him in a room and in five minutes he’ll tell you who beats his wife, who steals from his boss and who’s done two years for GBH.’
Ward took a drink of tea.
‘This probably sounds like a load of rubbish to you. But Catherine, I know. I’ve been around — I’ve seen it. That is what gets the job done. This is what puts people behind bars. Muggers. Murderers. Rapists.’ Ward paused. ‘Paedophiles.’
Catherine nodded, acquiescing slightly. She’d been married to a peeler long enough to have heard the romance before. The thin blue line. She hadn’t met a cop yet who didn’t believe themselves to be the only one who knew what was going on out there. She knew what they told themselves. Half of her wanted to laugh at it, the other half believed it. She gazed out the window, thinking about what kind of a world Sarah would grow up in.
‘We were on our second date, back before he joined up. He’d taken me to the pictures and we were walking down the Dublin Road. Three guys had started into some fella on the other side of the street. They had a load of drink on them. The next thing, the guy was on the ground and they were kicking lumps out of him. I’d pulled John beside me, telling him to leave it. He couldn’t though. He ran over and the three of them started on him. I thought he was going to get killed. They never got him down though, and after a while they realized he wasn’t going anywhere. They just gave up and ran off, jeering as they went. John just stood there, his face bleeding, standing over the guy.’
Ward could picture O’Neill, running across the road, piling in.
‘A black eye, a bloody nose and four stitches,’ Catherine told him. ‘That’s John. Never happier than when someone is beating the crap out of him. Always giving a shit, even when it’s not his turn. Tell me, Jack, when is it ever someone else’s turn?’
Ward didn’t know the answer. Catherine paused, taking a drink of her tea.
Ward could sense the fondness for her husband starting to resurface. He could feel the story beginning to melt some of the ice from the previous six months. He stood up, saying he needed to get back, and thanked Catherine for the tea. He asked her just to think about it. That was all.
Heading back to Musgrave Street, Ward wondered if he had done enough. There was a chink of light, a glimmer of hope. It was something, at least.
THIRTEEN
He was twenty minutes late. The lift hummed up towards the fifteenth floor of the anonymous glass building on Bedford Street. Lynch wondered if Burton would still see him. He had been early, but found himself doing another lap of the block, toying with flagging it altogether. He didn’t need a shrink. Lynch told himself it was the sleeping tablets. They’d helped. A few hours of broken sleep was better than nothing. So if it took another trip to Burton to get another prescription, then so be it. He could sit and listen. Tell the doc what he wanted to hear. Spin a few stories.
He was lying to himself though. He knew it. The truth was, he was curious. Curious and hopeful. It wasn’t a great combination. Lynch knew you could end up in a lot of shit on the back of those two. He tried to ignore his better instincts. He wanted to know how Burton knew. About the Brits. About the gun. He’d thought all that was long gone. A distant memory. Pure history. Turned out it hadn’t gone anywhere. It was there, hidden away, lodged in the back of his mind. He’d spent the week having flashbacks — the faces, the taste, the smell. Pupils dilating, palms sweating, heart racing. Lynch wondered what else Burton might know about. What else he might uncover. Could he tell him why he felt like a ghost walking round inside his own body, like a stranger in his own town?
Lynch stepped out of the lift into the plush reception area. The leather sofa was empty. To the left of the receptionist’s desk, Burton’s door was open. The blonde girl looked up from her computer as he approached.
‘Joe Lynch. .’
She nodded at the door. ‘You can go right in.’
Lynch stepped forward, pausing in the doorway to Burton’s office. The room was exactly as he’d left it. Beige carpet, neat furniture and the vista, out over Belfast. The doctor sat behind his desk, writing on a piece of paper. He looked up at Lynch who was momentarily framed in the doorway.