by Dee McInnes
“Freeman used to love the bones of our Maeve, before my sister went and opened her big mouth. She and her cousin, Noreen O’Reilly, are cut from the same cloth. I told Maeve to keep quiet, but she had one drink too many and couldn’t resist goading him. Shootin’ her mouth off. Anna-Rose reminded Freeman of his sister. Now he’s lost the two of them.” Mac gulped his beer down. “Two more over here Rab, whenever yer ready,” he shouted.
Viv tried to work out the logic. Dermott lost… his daughter? What had Maeve done? Goaded him about what? If she could keep Mac talking, and drinking, she hoped she could eventually work back to the time period she was interested in. The mid-eighties.
She remembered the motorcycle tyre marks, identified at the rear of the car park where her father’s assassins had hidden. A Kawasaki ‘muscle bike’. She couldn’t recall the model number. Mac’s scooter didn’t have the ‘wow factor’, but it could have been a different story, twenty-four years ago. She glanced at the dial of her Breitling, willing herself to have patience. “How was Dermott’s daughter lost? I don’t understand what you mean,” Viv said. “I thought it was his sister who died, many years ago?”
“It’s a long story,” Mac said. “You have to go right back to Cara’s death, if you really want to know what makes Freeman tick.”
“I’m in no hurry,” she said.
“Freeman and Cara spent a lot of their childhood at their Grandparent’s house on Rosemount Street, where Maeve lives,” Mac said. “After school, we used to play in an old air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. It was under a grass covered mound, like a giant potato exposed to the daylight. Their Grandfather, Pat, dug it out after the Belfast blitz, when everyone lived in fear of Nazi air-strikes. Cara was always sick with something or other. After she was born, when their Da was still about, Cara spent a long time in the special baby unit. Their Ma, Mary, worked morning and night to keep the two of them clothed and fed.
Freeman spent a lot of his time looking after Cara. For her seventh birthday, their Granny gave Cara a gold bracelet, set with green and blue stones, that had belonged to their Aunt, who was with The Order at St Brigid’s. That’s a holy place. Cara had a fringe of straight, black hair. Her skin was always pale. She wore the bracelet above her elbow, like an Egyptian princess. It was supposed to protect her from harm.”
Mac cleared his throat and stopped to take a drink. Viv didn’t say anything, paying close attention, committing the story to memory. Mac rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth and took a deep breath.
“That summer, the summer of seventy-six, I had just turned thirteen. Me and Freeman were going over to a friend’s house up in the heights. Kevin was a schoolmate. He has a whole brood of his own we’uns now, I think. Freeman left Cara in the back garden. On the spur of the moment, Freeman brought along his grandfather’s World War Two gas mask that was kept in the shelter. Kevin’s older brother was mixed up with a bad lot. They were always causing trouble. Kevin said the Special Constabulary might fire baton rounds that’d burn our eyes and airways if things kicked off. I had an old football scarf I used to cover my face. Kevin’s brother was known as T.P, The Protector. Like Freeman, he went by the Irish meaning of his name.”
An alarm bell sounded at the back of Viv’s head.
“T.P and his gang were intent on causing trouble. They had rows and rows of milk-bottle crates lined up behind the walls of the gardens. Each bottle filled with fuel and a rag. There was an annual Orangemen’s parade through the town. We could hear the high-pitched whistle of their flutes and the thump of drums. T.P told us to follow him, we had no idea what we were getting into. It was just a bit of fun at first. We joined the rest of them on our own people’s march to the flashpoint, where the Specials would try to keep us apart. To keep the peace.”
T.P had been a prime suspect in her father’s murder. The intelligence report, at the inquest in eighty-seven, had said T.P was a leading member of the IRA’s South Derry brigade, fronted by the mysterious Sherriff. She wondered if Mac could hear her heart thumping. He seemed lost in his memories, oblivious to the effect his words were having.
“When T.P gave the signal, the rags were lit. We threw the missiles from street corners. Bricks had been stockpiled. We were buzzing, daring, triumphant. Over a thousand canisters of CS gas were fired that day. I can still remember the loud report of the launchers and the distant shadows of the forces dressed in their black and green beyond the battle lines. They did their best to force us back, away from the parade. There was the constant clatter of empty cylinders bouncing off the street. Folks shoutin’ and cursin’. Freeman was alright, behind the Perspex. That old gas mask was still good for purpose. Who knew it’d be used to defend ourselves from our own?
We spent the night at Kevin’s house, forgetting all about Cara. No-one could get in or out, past the barricades. It was a war zone. How were we to know she thought she’d be protected by that feckin’ trinket? The next day we went back. Mary was up at the hospital. We discovered that Cara had followed us halfway to Kevin’s place, before she was overcome. Freeman told me that he and his Ma sat on either side of the bed, watching Cara take her last breath. A combination of guilt and anger propelled us further and further into the conflict.”
Mac drained his glass. “So that’s what happened to poor wee Cara. Will ye have another drink? One for the road?”
Viv was slow to realise he had asked her a question. “Could I get a cup of coffee, please?”
Mac shouted the request across the bar. “An’ what’s happened in the kitchen?” he added.
“Yer food’s just comin’,” Rab called back. “Keep yer hair on, would ye?”
“So, ye understand,” Mac said, staring at Viv across the table. “Freeman had Cara’s death around his neck. Anna-Rose is the image of her… thankfully not as sickly.”
“That must have been…very hard for him to live with,” Viv managed to say. “And the two of you carried on, working for Kevin’s brother. For The Protector?”
“You say that like we had a choice,” Mac said, rubbing his beard. “The Cause is like that American rock-song, ye know the one that goes, ‘you can check-out, but you can never leave.’ We were young and didn’t know any better. Before we knew it, we were in over our heads. As the years went by, things quietened down, after the Peace Agreement was signed, but a lot of T.P’s activities went underground. I mostly catch Doggies out there,” he said, inclining his head towards the window, and the steel-grey water beyond. “Dogfish, or Mud Sharks. They’re bottom feeders, hiding in the dirt, preying on the little fish. The ones smaller and weaker than themselves. You’ll never change their nature. T.P is the same. He would have been a bad’un regardless. I’m tellin’ ye all of this on the quiet,” Mac said. “As ye seem keen on Freeman, and he on you. But don’t breathe a word of this to anyone else.”
“Is Kevin’s brother still alive? Wasn’t there someone called The Sherriff, who was in charge of things?”
Mac lowered his voice to a whisper. “Shh. Did Freeman tell you that?” Mac glowered at her from underneath his eyebrows. Rab was behind the bar, polishing glasses and two male customers were craning their necks at a small television set, suspended above the counter.
“Don’t speak that name out loud. These walls have ears. I tried to get out of their clutches not long ago and got a sharp reminder. Do ye want to know the rest? The final straw. What makes Freeman trawl for answers at the bottom of a whiskey glass?”
“Go on,” Viv said, not really wanting to have any more reason to extend her sympathy to the man across the table or to Dermott Donnelly, Freeman, or whatever name he went by. Her father’s assassin. But she needed certainty. She needed to know who had given the order. Who had decided that her father was fair game. “Dermott mentioned that the two of you worked together and you drove him to his first… assignment. Sometime in the eighties I think, nineteen eighty-six?”
“That sounds about right. I had a beast of a machine back in them days,” Mac s
aid, looking out the window at his moped. “Not like that pathetic excuse out there. I used to ride a Kawasaki road bike. The GPZ900, the Big Muscle. She went like shit off a shovel. Sixteen valves. The only woman I ever loved.” He gave a hollow laugh.
“Excuse me for a minute,” Viv said, pushing back her chair. “I need to use the bathroom.” She sat on the toilet seat and fought the tears back before she unlocked the door and splashed her face with water. She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the grimy wash basin. You can do this, she told herself.
Mac was still at the table, tucking into pie and chips. “My sister was a looker, back in the day,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of food. He continued the story as if Viv had never left the table. “Men swarmed around Maeve, like bees to a honeypot. She set her cap at Freeman. We were in our twenties and she was just seventeen. I had an inkling about what had been going on, but I kept my mouth shut, something I now regret. They married and Anna-Rose arrived seven months later. I was the best man. Everything was alright for the first few years…maybe you can guess the rest?”
Viv picked at the soggy piece of battered fish on her plate. “She cheated on him?”
“Freeman used to joke that he had fathered one child, so they just needed to keep on practising. He was desperate for a big family. When he found out he was firing blanks, he was devastated. Maeve was forced to admit that Freeman wasn’t Anna’s father, and worse still that it was T.P who got her pregnant. I’ve never seen Freeman so low. I feared for his sanity. He packed a bag and walked out. He still sees Anna-Rose, to keep up appearances. After all, she wasn’t to blame. Maeve never got another penny. Word got out, to people like Noreen O’Reilly. I guess Maeve told her own version of the story. I hope all his… baggage hasn’t put you off?”
“No, quite the opposite,” Viv said. She forced herself to eat a few mouthfuls.
Mac offered her another drink, but she pulled her cuff back and looked at her watch. She wanted to have time to call in with Carmen before she took Pete’s car back and was keen to find out if he had made any progress in finding Karol.
“Would you have a contact number for Dermott, please? I need to get back to Belfast.”
Mac looked the up the number and she saved it onto her phone.
“His Ma lives just up the road from Maeve. Number twelve, Kingsfort,” Mac said. “If I hear tell of Freeman, I’ll be sure to let him know you’re chasing him.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Viv was sure that Carmen would only try to persuade her to hand the information over to the police. Viv had waited twenty-four years for the opportunity to track down those responsible for ambushing her father. Mac had more or less confirmed that he and Dermott, aka Freeman, were outside the Blackthorn Inn on the night of the murder. She’d assumed that Dermott was riding pillion, that he had climbed off to fire the fateful shots and set the booby trap. Closing her eyes, Viv could picture her father behind the steering wheel, running the engine, the heater up full blast, waiting for the condensation inside the windscreen to clear. Unaware that he was about to meet his death.
Viv told Carmen the amended version of the story - that she had gone to the City Hotel with Dermott, but that he’d passed out before anything could happen. “It was a total anti-climax. So, I just got a taxi back. Cuds hasn’t come home with you?” Viv asked.
She was sitting opposite Carmen at her kitchen table.
“No, they’re starting work on the post-production - once they’ve recovered from their hangovers. I came back on the coach with the others. We had to stop twice along the way. For once, I was very glad I hadn’t been drinking,” Carmen laughed.
“Are you okay?” Viv said, conscious of the purple, egg-shaped bump on Carmen’s forehead.
“Never felt better. I walked down to the shops after I got back, and they said my car will be fixed by the end of the week. I spent the afternoon slaving over a vegetable curry. You could stay and eat it with me if you’ve not got a better offer?”
“I’m meeting Pete later, to hand his keys back.”
“He’s probably terrified he’ll never see his Astra again,” Carmen smiled. “I’m not sure which of you he cares about the most.”
“Hey, I’m a careful driver. He’s been out with his cousin, trying to track down whoever was behind the incident on Saturday.”
“Leave it to the proper authorities,” Carmen said, confirming Viv’s earlier assumption. “You’re investigative journalists, not Holmes and Watson. By the way, you left this here on Saturday.” Carmen nodded at the black and red ‘Whatever Happened to the Heroes’ print that Viv had bought at St George’s Market. The print was propped up against the leg of the table.
“Have you got any wrapping paper? I could give it to Pete before I go back to London.”
“You should have bought him a matching cape…any idea when you’re leaving?”
“Mitch is being sentenced on Thursday, so probably Friday or Saturday latest.”
“I’ll miss you, and so will Pete,” Carmen said.
“I know.” Viv hadn’t had time to think about what Pete had said on the riverbank. She was still furious with Mitch. Her mood alternated between regret - that she hadn’t had the courage to press the pillow over Dermott Donnelly’s face and finish it, once and for all - and a new, niggling sense of empathy. People got hurt and paid it forwards. Hell, as the do-gooders claimed, wasn’t a cosmic space, but a place of suffering inside your head. Inside your heart. A place of self-inflicted torment, as hot as a furnace, hard as stone, cold as ice. Grief was an infinite darkness, a black pit where you could stumble endlessly looking for answers and explanations. In her story about the McVeighs, Viv had spoken out against perpetuating the cycle of hurt… but that was easy to say when the damage wasn’t personal.
After they’d eaten, Carmen cleared the plates and they video-called Adele who had emigrated to Connecticut. Adele and her husband were Asset Managers at Prudential Financial, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. They had been in the USA for the past eighteen months. Adele was at home and they spent a long time chatting. It was almost ten o’clock before Viv realised.
Viv left Adele and Carmen making plans for Christmas.
The last train had departed fifteen minutes earlier. Viv’s boots echoed across the deserted concourse. Most of the station staff had already dispersed. The cafeteria was closed. A male cleaner in a blue overall came out of the Gent’s toilet, carrying a mop and bucket. His colleague was lining up a row of yellow anti-slip cones across the station exit. Viv paused on the other side of the doors and sent Pete another text.
At the end of the passageway, an orange security light glimmered above the newsagent’s kiosk. Its shutters were pulled down. There was a man with a peaked cap leaning against the corner of the kiosk, his hands in his pockets. From a distance it looked like the homeless man from earlier in the week. Viv fished some loose change out of her pocket. The man must be desperate to be loitering around after the station had closed. Presumably he had nowhere else to go. She normally ignored beggars on the streets of London as most of them were career scroungers who drove into the city every morning to man their regular pitches. She had investigated their lifestyles and written a feature after three vagrants had been knifed in separate incidents.
The man outside the kiosk had a scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth. The whites of his eyes shone in the dim, orange glow. She remembered what he had said to her, after she had dropped the coins into his tin. Nothing could convince her that a benevolent God existed.
The homeless man had dissolved into the shadows. She could s
ee the streetlights outside and hear the sound of traffic and a distant siren. She was looking forward to the warmth of the pub and Pete’s company. She was several paces from the doors onto the street when a figure stepped out and jabbed something hard into her ribs.
“You need to stop poking yer nose where it’s not wanted,” a male voice said urgently. Her assailant smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke.
“What?”
The man backed towards the street, blocking her escape route. He was slim and of average height. His face obscured by the scarf and hat pulled low. He stood with his legs apart and arms extended holding a black, snub-nosed weapon in a double handed grip. It looked a lot like a starting pistol, but Viv didn’t think it would be firing blanks.
“Someone could come through that door at any minute,” she said. “Look, behind you.”
“D’ya think I was born yesterday?” the gunman said in a low voice. “I’m not flyin’ solo.”
A bulky figure blocked the exit, facing the street. ‘Security’ was stamped across the back of his coat in reflective silver. Viv realised the guard wasn’t there for her protection.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said.
“You were always feisty. Don’t think I won’t pull this trigger,” the man said, holding the barrel steady.
“You’d shoot an unarmed woman. That’s about right,” she retorted, her anger threatening to boil over. She forced herself to take a deep breath. This was just a warning. If he’d intended to kill her, she’d be dead already. Right? She shuffled backwards, trying to increase the distance between them.
“Ye’ve still got some nerve, I’ll give ye that,” the gunman said. “I just wanted to let ye know, it was nothin’ personal. Let’s leave it at that. Alright?”
What wasn’t personal? Was this linked to the Haslett case, or to more recent enquiries? Pete’s warning that she’d chosen to ignore, flashed through her mind. There were at least four people who could have alerted T.P or The Sherriff, to the fact that she’d been asking questions. Taking a renewed interest in the activities of the South Derry Brigade. Her money would be on Maeve or Noreen. Hadn’t she told one of them that she was staying in the Europa? Maeve would do anything for money, and Noreen couldn’t keep her mouth shut. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.