The Truth Commissioner Read Online Free PDF Page A

concrete from which sprouts every type of wild flower. Leaving, above all, the infinite desolate sense of space emptied of whatever begat it. A few of the flowers he looked at bore no resemblance to any that he had ever seen, as if they were phantom mutations of raw metal, sparked into life by some long-dead welder’s fiery fantail, their filaments as if iron: their stamens the shred of steel. When he arrived there had been no sunlight and the waters of Belfast Lough and the sky had met in a seamless meld of grey. Now the river has weakened and the sky lifts itself a little higher and tries to imprint the water’s surface with a new pattern but it resists and seems to hug its own coldness. The lurid yellow of the enormous cranes strikes an attempt at defiance but they look like nothing so much as giant hurdles waiting for a Finn McCool to jump them.
    And already they are talking of restoring this place in the city’s favourite passion of self-consoling mythology. It will, no doubt, be a giant theme park where they will build a facsimile of the great ship, construct hotels and exhibitions, hope to bring in the tourists from Japan, from America, from everywhere, for an exclusively virtual experience. It saddens Stanfield to think of the vulgarity that will be unleashed, the way he imagines this place will become the equivalent of some casino town in the Nevada desert. There is one memory from his childhood that he suddenly recalls and it’s being in his father’s car on the other side of the river and following an open grain lorry, pigeons swooping on it. The sour sweet smell of the grain. Swinging around across the bridge and more birds. Great shifting parabolas of starlings shading the sky in charcoal. It must have been at the end of the afternoon for suddenly the bridge itself is black with the released shipyard workers, lunch boxes in their hands, heels clacking, voices calling like the boys selling newspapers on street corners.
    The curse of memory. Scabs on the soul. Even with most of his life behind him he thinks only of the future, of what can still be savoured. Of what experiences still await. He looks across the water and smiles. Nothing amuses him quite so much as the city’s gauche attempts to reinvent itself as a cosmopolis, nothing makes him smile more genuinely than to see its newest makeover. So on the other side of the river, in front of the wasteland of book depositories, tyre depots and warehouses, and on the water’s edge, sit some of the city’s more recent buildings, styled with features that echo Venetian palazzos but look as if they have been constructed out of a child’s building set. Behind him Beckett coughs and he remembers his driver doesn’t have the benefit of a coat as he turns to look at him. Beckett’s face has reddened in the wind as if worn raw and his hair is a sudden flash of colour as if a match has been struck in the greyness of the morning.
    â€˜It’s cold,’ Stanfield says, ‘we’ll drive back round and watch the arrivals.’ Beckett doesn’t answer but simply nods and holds the door open for him to get into the back of the car. Stanfield notices the broad wedding ring on his finger but in the car he can’t be bothered to attempt further conversation.
    The arrivals are in full flow now with the files and papers being carried into the building where they will be catalogued and stamped with their delivery date. Some come in file boxes but most are in manila or green folders tied with string. A few have clearly been rehoused inside new covers but most wear the marks of their age and use and are badged with grubbiness – the circles of cups, the scribble of ballpoint, the greased or sweated fingerprints of those who perused them. Some of them bulge at the seams and corners of papers loll like tongues out of mouths. Some are carried inside plastic bags – the type used to remove evidence from crime scenes. He