“Are we over time?” I hear my voice say.
“No, we’re bang on,” he says.
Marian has something in her hands. She is leaning down and pulling it toward her. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m watching, as her hair and then her face seem to disappear. When she straightens, she’s wearing a black ski mask.
3
IRUSH OUT OF BROADCASTING HOUSE and turn north toward the police station. If I were to run in the opposite direction, toward her flat, Marian might answer the door. She might stand there, under the yellow paper lantern in her front hall, and say, Tessa, what are you doing here?
I sway on my feet, trying to make a decision. Her house isn’t far. Marian lives in south Belfast, on Adelaide Avenue, a quiet row of terraced houses between the railway line and the Lisburn Road. I could be there in twenty minutes. The pedestrian light flashes and I force myself to cross the road. Her flat will be empty, she’s meant to be on the north coast through Friday. She isn’t answering her phone. On my way out of the building, I rang mam and Marian’s best friends, but none of them have heard from her.
The police station stands behind a tall corrugated steel fence. I speak to the desk officer seated behind a bulletproof window. Distortions in the glass ripple over his face, and I can’t tell if he understands, if I’m making any sense. A woman outside his booth, in tears. The officer must be used to it, he doesn’t seem at all alarmed by my distress. He rests my license in a slot on his keyboard and slowly types in my name. He doesn’t hurry, even though someone might be watching from across the road. The IRA always seems to know when someone from the community has gone to the police. If anyone asks later, I’ll say I came here for work, for an interview. I dry my face with the back of my hand, then he points me toward an antechamber.
Two soldiers with automatic rifles order me to remove my shoes and bag. I hold my arms out at my sides, barefoot, in a linen summer dress. The soldiers’ faces are blank. It occurs to me that, in this moment, they might be more scared than I am. If I had a bomb strapped under my dress, they’d be the first in the station to die.
“Hold out your hands,” says one, and wipes them for explosives residue. I have a sudden fear that I might have touched something, at some point in the day, that there will be flecks of gelignite or Semtex on my palms. The soldiers wait until the machine sounds, then unlock the antechamber door. A constable escorts me across the courtyard and up to an interview room in the serious crime suite.
The room has a panoramic view over the city, the roofs and construction cranes, to the dark shape of Cave Hill in the distance. I’m watching clouds surge behind the hill when the detective arrives. He is in his fifties, in a crumpled suit, with an expressive, lined face.
“DI Fenton,” he says, shaking my hand. “We’re glad you came in, Tessa.”
He opens a notepad, searches his pockets for a pen. The disorganization might be a tactic, I think, a way to put people at ease.
“I understand you’d like to talk about Marian Daly,” he says, and I frown. He says her name like she’s a known figure. “Can you state for the tape your relation to Marian?”
“She’s my sister.”
“Do you know where Marian is at the moment?” he asks.
“No.”
I want to say, Actually, we do know where she is, she’s on the coast near Ballycastle, she’s out hiking along the cliff path, she’s on her way to visit Dunseverick castle.
“She arrived at the service station in Templepatrick in a white Mercedes Sprinter van,” he says. “Have you ever seen that vehicle before?”
“No.” Marian drives a secondhand Polo, with an evil-eye charm hanging from the rearview mirror. Nonsense, obviously, but you can’t blame her, her ambulance has been at the scene of enough road accidents, she has spent hours crouching on broken glass at the edge of a motorway.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” I say, my ears still ringing.
“When did your sister join the IRA?” he asks.
“She’s not in the IRA.”
The detective tips his head to the side. Past the window, thunderclouds ripple behind the council blocks. Slow traffic moves along the Westlink.
“She participated in an armed robbery this afternoon,” he says. “The IRA has claimed it.”
“Marian’s not a member of the IRA.”
“It can come as a shock,” he says, “to learn that someone you love has joined. It can seem completely out of character.”