The man I killed hasn't been identified. He rode a stolen motorbike and carried no papers. His dental work was Eastern European and he carried a fully automatic machine pistol stolen from a Belfast police station four years ago. His only other distinguishing feature was a small silver cross around his neck inlaid with a purple gemstone, chariote, a rare silicate found only in the Bratsk region of Siberia. Perhaps Interpol will have more luck.
Visiting hours are over but the nursing sister has let me in. Although flat on her back, staring at a mirror above her head, Ali gives me a bigger smile than I deserve. She turns her head, making it only partway before the pain catches in her throat.
“I brought you chocolates,” I tell her.
“You want me to get fat.”
“You haven't been fat since you were hanging off the tit.”
It hurts when she laughs.
“How is it going?” I ask.
“OK. I managed to stand this afternoon.”
“That's a good sign. So when can we go dancing?”
“You hate dancing.”
“I'll dance with
It sounds too maudlin and I wish I could take it back. Ali seems to appreciate the sentiment.
She explains that she has to wear a special cast for the next three months and then a canvas brace with shoulder bands for another three months after that.
“With any luck I'll be walking by then.”
I hate the expression “with any luck.” It's not a resounding affirmative but a fingers-crossed, if-all-goes-well sort of statement. What sort of luck has Ali had so far?
I pull a bottle of whiskey from a brown paper bag and wave it in front of her eyes. She grins. Two glasses are next, pulled from the bag like a rabbit from a hat.
I pour her a glass and add water from a tap in the sink.
“I can't really handle a glass,” she says apologetically.
Reaching into the bag again, I produce a crazy drinking straw with spirals and loops. I rest the glass on her chest and put the straw in her mouth. She takes a sip and gasps slightly. It's the first time I have ever seen her drink.
Our eyes meet in the mirror. “A Home Office lawyer came to see me today,” she says. “They're offering a compensation package and a full disability pension if I want to leave the job.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I want to stay.”
“They're worried you might sue them.”
“Why would I do that? It's nobody's fault.”
We look at each other and I feel grateful and undeserving all at once.
“I heard about Gerry Brandt.”
“Yeah.”
I watch the subtle change in her, a little shrinking created by a single affirmation. Something shifts inside me as well and I get a sense of how much pain she's endured already and the months of operations and physiotherapy still to come.
A swatch of her hair, shiny black, has come loose from a bobby pin. She drops her gaze and sets her mouth defiantly. “And you found Kirsten. We should drink to that.”
She takes a sip and notices I haven't joined her. “What's wrong?”
“I'm so sorry. It was a stupid, foolish quest. I just wanted . . . I just hoped Mickey might be alive, you know. And now look! You're here and people are dead and Rachel is grieving all over again. And tomorrow Howard is going to get his retrial. It's my fault. What I've done is unforgivable.”
Ali doesn't answer. Outside the sky is tinged with pink and the streetlights are blinking on. I rock forward and stare into the glass. She reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder to stop it shaking.
“It hurts all over,” I moan. “Why put a child on this Earth and give her seven years if you're going to allow her to be kidnapped, raped, tortured, terrified or whatever else happened?”
“There's no answer to that.”
“I don't believe in God. I don't believe in eternal life or Heaven or reincarnation. Will you ask your God for me? Ask him why.”
Ali looks at me sadly. “He doesn't work like that.”
“Well ask him for his grand plan. While he concentrates on the big picture, who looks after kids like Mickey? One child might seem petty and trivial among a few billion but he could start by saving one at a time.”
I down the rest of the whiskey, feeling the alcohol burn my throat. I'm already drunk, but not drunk enough.
A black cab drops me home. Fumbling for the keys, I stagger inside and up the stairs, where I lean over the toilet and vomit. Afterward I splash water on my face, letting it leak down my neck and chest.
Staring back from the mirror is a pallid, leering stranger. In his eyes I see Mickey standing at the bottom of the escalator and Daj behind the razor wire and Luke lying beneath the ice.
I seem to have no other memories. Missing children, abused children and dead children fill my thoughts. Babies drowned in bathtubs, toddlers shaken into comas, children sent to gas chambers or snatched from playgrounds or suffocated beneath pillows. How can I blame God when I couldn't save one little girl?
