Northern Spy(14)

A single telephone pole stands halfway down the road. Wires radiate out from the pole to each of the houses, connecting them in a web. Rain mists the windscreen. From inside the car, I stare at the telephone wires. I don’t really need to make a decision about what to do next. Someone will see me. It’s only a matter of time before someone raps on the window and says, Tessa, I thought it was yourself. How are you?

Already one of our neighbors is coming down the road, squinting at me from under an umbrella. Before he draws level with my window, my phone rings. “I need to speak with you,” says Fenton. “Can you come to the station?”





7


THE VIEW FROM THE interview room is charcoal today. Plumes of steam rise from the smokestacks at the edge of the harbor, and traffic slides down the wet roads. Fenton brings me tea, finds a pen, starts the tape recorder. He has been outside recently, his suit trousers are speckled with water.

“How long has Marian been a paramedic?” he asks.

“Six years.”

“What was her state of mind after being called to the Lyric?”

“She was beside herself.”

Last year, a loyalist paramilitary group attacked the Lyric theater. Marian’s ambulance was the first to arrive. Inside the theater lobby, six of the victims were bleeding out. Marian wouldn’t be able to reach all of them in time, and didn’t know when the other ambulances would arrive. The police hadn’t yet stopped the gunmen, they were continuing the attack on Stranmillis Road, and some of the first responders were being sent there. She had to decide who to treat first, knowing that whomever she chose would have the best chance of surviving. Some of the staff from the restaurant next door ran in to help, and Marian shouted instructions at them. I had her show me exactly what she’d told them to do, so I’ll know if I’m ever in their position.

“More than on other occasions?” asks the detective.

“Sorry?”

“Marian had responded to other incidents with multiple casualties,” he says. “Was she more distraught after the Lyric?”

“She has been distraught after every one of them.”

“Why hasn’t she quit?” he asks.

“Because they keep happening.”

“Did Marian know any of the victims in the Lyric attack personally?” he asks.

“No.”

The detective keeps looking at me, and my stomach drops. “What, did she?”

He says, “When you talked about that day, did she describe any of the victims in particular?”

“No. She would have told me if she’d known one of them.”

“Who rode in her ambulance?” he asks.

“A man. She told me he survived, but nothing else about him.”

Fenton pauses to write this in his notepad. That it was a man might be unusual in itself, the medics might normally start with women. I drink my tea while he writes. Below us, cars on the Westlink have their headlights on against the rain. Our conversation seems uninterrupted from last night, giving me the sense that I haven’t actually left the police station yet, that I haven’t been home to see Finn.

I miss the detective’s next question. My mind is busy with this awful sensation of having neglected Finn, or been away from him for a long time. This morning, with the baby eating a bite of pancake from my fingers, doesn’t seem real.

“Can you repeat that?”

He says, “Has Marian seemed more tired lately? Or had any loss of appetite?”

“No.” I remember our most recent dinner, at Sakura, and Marian bolting down a giant bowl of ramen with an extra portion of noodles.

“So she hasn’t shown any symptoms, then?”

“Of being radicalized?”

“Of being pregnant,” he says slowly.

I feel my face flush. “No.”

“Is she having a boy or a girl?” he asks.

“She won’t know until the twenty-week scan.” I force myself to hold the detective’s eyes, while he raps his fingers on the table. He can’t prove that my sister isn’t pregnant, not without her here.

Outside, the rain slows to a stop. Fog blows over Cave Hill. Fenton clasps his hands and frowns, deepening the lines across his forehead. He seems limitlessly patient. I like him, which is an odd sensation, liking someone who so clearly considers you a liar.

He takes a sip of tea. “Why does Marian have a burner phone?”

“She doesn’t, she has a smartphone.”

“In January, Marian bought an unregistered mobile from a newsagent’s in Castle Street,” he says. I shake my head, and he passes me a photograph of a scratched Nokia. “Have you seen her with this before? Or seen it in her house?”

“No.” I consider the dented plastic. “It must have been for her job.”

“None of the other paramedics have burner phones.”

“Who did she call on it?”

“Other unregistered numbers,” he says. “The lines have all been disconnected.”

“It must not be hers.”

“We found it taped inside her fireplace.”

I flinch. I picture her fireplace, its tin surround, the laurel wreath embossed in the metal. Marian burns pillar candles in the grate. On my last visit, I watched her strike a match and kneel to light them. A burner phone couldn’t possibly have been taped inside the chimney then, out of sight.