Resurrection Man Read Online Free Page B

It was not the first time this had happened. Ryan thought he detected a failure of nerve, a reluctance to admit the terrible news.
    After work he went to the Europa hotel. It was one of the first places to introduce body searches at the entrance. The hotel was bombed regularly. It had most-bombed-hotel status. Ryan had noticed increased local awareness of the value of such detail. Most-shot-at police station. Contempt was expressed for quiet areas.
    Ryan went into the Horseshoe bar and ordered a drink. He watched the foreign correspondents come in. Photographers in khaki shirts with big pockets. Older men in safari jackets who looked continually dazed. It was said they had trouble distinguishing between assignments. One of them had told him that other wars kept creeping into his reports. His memory was swamped with incident. The presidential palace is surrounded . Armed gangs are roaming the commercial sector. There were long silences when he read these reports down the phone to his night editor in London. At a nearby table another group of English journalists was drinking heavily.
    ‘I saw the bomb in Woolworth’s today.’
    ‘It’s his first bomb.’
    ‘You stand around for hours and then it goes off. The building just collapses silently and then the sound hits you. There’s something comic about it.’
    ‘It’s a sonic delay. The blast travels faster than the sound. The blast is over by the time the sound gets to you.’
    ‘The fucking building collapses and there’s no noise. Then boom. It’s like it was staged. Like Buster Keaton was going to walk out of the dust or something.’
    ‘Did you ever smell gelignite. It smells exactly like marzipan . Cake mixture.’
    ‘There was a lot of dust. I never thought of dust. Flames yes.’
    ‘Women in aprons. Orange peel. Glacé cherries.’
    *
    Coppinger came in and ordered a pint of Bass. He’d been drinking in Tiger Bay. Listening to stories about the Blitz, Kingdom Brunel in Belfast, the construction of the Titanic in the shipyard. He said that a cousin of his father’s had accidently been sealed in the Titanic ’sdouble hull and the body had never been found. It was a haunted ship, he said. There was a ghostly tapping below the waterline.
    Ryan followed his gaze towards a small group of men in a corner of the bar. Two of them he recognized as paramilitaries. The other two were unfamiliar but they had a military air about them. They could have been arms dealers. Ex-army steeped in counter-terrorist lore. The effect of rapid fire in an urban warfare situation. Arranging consignments of weapons from Rotterdam warehouses in crates marked machine parts. Kalashnikov . But Coppinger pointed out that the clothes were wrong.
    ‘A quartermaster’s notion of what you wear drinking in a hotel bar. Sports jackets, two, tweed. Ties, matching.’
    Meetings like this were taking place all over the city. Fields of operations were defined. Documents of safe passage were granted. Information was exchanged. At official level these meetings did not take place. Accusations of army collusion with paramilitary groups were vehemently denied but the army continued to negotiate at ground level. People were aware of levels of duplicity being created. Irrational guilt complexes were being reported by doctors. The level of heart disease and road death was under investigation. Coppinger said he had difficulty in maintaining an erection. Teenage suicide was on the rise.
    Ryan’s thoughts turned back to the knife murderer. He considered the idea of an evangelist with burning eyes, a seeker after fundamental truths. Stripping away layers with a knife to arrive at valid words. Please. Kill me.
    ‘Place is coming down with pros,’ Coppinger said, indicating a fair-haired girl standing at the bar. She saw him and moved towards them. There were freckles between her breasts and her nipples were visible beneath her blouse.
    ‘Your headlights is on,’ Coppinger said when she came up beside