by John Steele
The mobile vibrates and he involuntarily jumps. He is thankful that the .357 trigger-pull is hard and he hasn’t taken out the rose bush a couple of feet away.
Simpson has replied: Be therein 20. Don’t fuck me about. Jackie’s mobile is pre-paid and he wasconcerned that Simpson wouldn’t be checking his own; the number from which Jackie had received his text after the funeral was probably one of several Simpson had at any one time. He takes cold comfort in realising he is a priority.
An upstairs window opens suddenly. Jackie retreats a couple of inches, flattening himself against the wall. Simpson has probably been in bed, and the sounds of a TV blathering loudly drift from the first floor. A short time later there is a clatter as the front door is opened and pulled roughly shut. There is a hollow growl as the Porsche grumbles to life and a minute later silence returns as the car takes off.
A couple of seconds later Jackie is crouched at the windowsill at the back of the house, peering into the rear room. All is quiet. Simpson’s desire for privacy and seclusion has afforded the time and space to work. Jackie places the revolver in the back of his waistband again and takes a folded sheet of tinfoil from his pocket. After some fiddling, he manages to slip it through the window frame. The house is old and the wood of the windows warped and callused by northern weather. The magnetic alarm sensors disable. Jackie takes the hotel screwdriver from his jeans pocket and begins to lever at the window frame.
As the wood at the bottom of the frame splinters and cracks, an image of a broken Shanty McKee lying dead in his own filth creeps into his mind and, for a moment, he is no longer in the cool light of a bleak autumn morning. Instead, he is in a dark, cold place and he knows he must clear his thoughts and focus his mind. As he slides the window up, he keeps the tinfoil in place and squeezes through into the darkened room. It is shaded from the sun, a dining room. He leaves the window open for a quick departure.
He should have around thirty minutes until Rab comes back, spitting fire at the waste of time. Jackie pulls the Magnum and makes for the first floor and the room he saw the window open from fifteen minutes ago. The smell of strong cologne seeps from the room, a bedroom. It looks like Rab was awake in bed when he received Jackie’s text. A couple of cigarette butts are clogging up a cut-glass ashtray on the unkempt duvet cover and the remote TV controller is lying on the pillow, like a priceless item presented in an auction room. Jackie begins to look through the drawers of the bedside cabinets, but it occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know what he’s looking for.
He is sure that Rab is responsible for Shanty’s murder and hopes he can find something here to use against Simpson: evidence, a skeleton in the closet, some kind of leverage. But, again, he has no idea what he’ll do with such an item. He could take it to Hartley, but doubts the Five man would be interested. The PSNI would take him in for housebreaking and he couldn’t protect Sarah and her family in the meantime.
He continues to search. The bedroom, like the dining room, is immaculate save for the dishevelled bed. Simpson lives in a virtual showhouse. The drawers reveal socks and underwear with a penchant for silk boxer shorts. Moving to the wardrobes, he finds a couturier’s wet dream. A gallery of shirts to rival Gatsby.
The next room has another double bed, an en suite and a large built-in wardrobe. On a shelf running the length of the wardrobe, Jackie finds an impressive collection of comic books. Most of them are American with a couple of old-school British war comics here and there. He picks one out to have a flick through it and spies a small leather case behind. It is the kind of case a small girl might keep trinkets or a diary in, with a small latch and keyhole. The case is locked. He grabs it and takes the screwdriver to the lid. It pops open to reveal its contents.
It reveals a lot.
Lots of skin, some pale, some tanned like Simpson himself. There are prints but the majority are Polaroids, taken in the bedroom where he now stands. There are wicked smirks to camera and coquettish grins. Some of the subjects are wearing masks, hiding identities and nothing more. He sees a tear-streaked woman’s face, her ass in the air striped red with violence. There is a girl in a choker necklace with a blank expression, her legs spread wide and sheathed in black stockings. A naked man gives a wolfish leer to camera, his knotted body slick and shining with oil. Simpson isn’t in any of the photos. Jackie supposes he is behind the camera, directing, orchestrating and consuming this flesh in front of the lens. The date of each shot is scribbled by hand on the back of each photo.
Jackie had never seen Rab Simpson with a partner. He’d never heard of a partner. The man’s social life back in the day had been male companionship within the UDA and the pursuit of violence. Now Jackie thinks ‘Homer’, with that sickly pallor and alarming overbite, must have been desperately lonely. And in the years since, he’d certainly made up for lost time. Thanks to the reconstructive surgery – thanks to a bullet in the face – he’d become the proverbial swan. Judging by these photos, he’d gone on a rampage of debauchery. Men and women. At least there weren’t any signs of bestiality, although Rab never had been much good with animals.
Jackie continues to flick through the images. Some are coiled bodies in aspects of intimacy, hands holding faces, inches apart as they couple. Others are cold, men wrapped in concentration pounding away at disinterested young women who look anywhere but at their partner in coitus. Some of the women could be from anywhere, others have a distinctly Slavic tinge to their features and Jackie remembers Petri and Ion in Belvoir Forest. Rab may have had more than Eastern European muscle in his employ.
The angles are different in later shots: more remote and fixed, rather than the closer, more intimate photos of before. There is a voyeuristic quality that suggests a hidden camera. The next photo seems to confirm this. A prominent unionist politician, eyes screwed sternly shut as he toils in the missionary position. The girl is staring at her reflection in a mirror propped on the wall to her left. The next image reveals a leading figure in Northern Ireland’s business community, a property magnate. He is bent over a young man from the rear, as though about to administer the Heimlich manoeuvre. The young man is craning his head back, a smile on his sweat-slicked face. There is a campaigner from the city’s Chinese community. Another business leader. Even a republican politician with a young girl wearing the hat of a PSNI policewoman, the rest of the uniform strewn across the bed. The irony, thinks Jackie.
He can look at no more and shoves the photos in an empty plastic bag in the bottom of the wardrobe. Beneath the photos in the case are a couple of football stickers, random players from random clubs in England. There are ticket stubs for Paris Disneyland, of all places, and a couple more Polaroids at the bottom. If he could access Simpson’s hard drive, God knows what he might unearth.
Ignorance is probably bliss, he thinks.
Jackie is about to replace the case on the shelf when he spots one more Polaroid, wedged up against the inner lining. He has to prise it out with a fingernail and takes a look.
A woman lies on a bed. She is naked and her body is contorted in embarrassment. This is not the playful bashfulness of some other shots, but sharp, cringing unease. Her left hand is in front of her face, a gold band visible on the ring finger. Despite the attempt at anonymity, an angry frown creases her high forehead and some of her long black hair is tangled in the fingers. He can see from the delicate creases around her mouth, apparent below a knuckle, showing that her mouth is turned sharply down. That skin is dulled by the Polaroid, almost a matte finish on the cheap print. But he can still see the rich olive hue. And despite the twisted aspect of the body, it is lithe and beautiful and familiar.
Eileen Tyrie.
Jackie sits in silence in a lotus position on the carpet, the photo in his right hand, the gun at his feet. His face is burning and his insides churn.
He sits like this for several moments.
Then he remembers where he is and checks his watch. Simpson left the house about twenty minutes ago. Jackie should leave.
He tucks the Polaroid of Eileen into his wallet and closes the clasp on the case, then replaces it on the shelf. He closes the wardrobe, shoves the revolver back in his waistband and the screwdriver in his jacket pocket, and grabs the plastic bag full of photos. He makes his way back to the stairs, holding the bag of photographs. Taking the stairs two at a time he reaches the ground floor of the house and walks down the hallway towards the front door. He wants to rifle quickly through a pile of post on a cabinet next to the door before slipping out the back window and making his way back to the Toyota. When he is a couple of feet from the front door a shadow appears in the frosted glass of its upper half.
Jackie just has time to wrench the Magnum revolver from his waistband before the door opens and Rab Simpson, murder in his eyes, is standing before him.
CHAPTER 21
1993
‘We need to put these boys away.’
‘We need to contain the violence.’
‘Gordon, they are the violence.’
They sat in Lady Dixon Park, on the southern outskirts of the city, side-by-side on a park bench. Despite being a warm spring morning, the park was virtually deserted at this time on a weekday. It was a fair whack out of the city, sprawling beside the suburb of Finaghy. Jackie took in the wide lawns, which would be flush with roses when the rose festival swung around in July.
Gordon said, ‘I know how you feel and no one wants these animals locked up more than me, but we can’t just move without the say-so from E Division. You know that.’
Jackie loved this time of year, when the greenery was returning to the trees. Leaves were bobbing in the breeze, but the branches weren’t yet smothered in them. If you were so inclined, you could count them on each towering tree.
‘And the fact is there may be another asset in the East Belfast Brigade. Maybe more than one and we can’t afford to compromise them if that’s the case. If they’re a protected bird, we need the go-ahead before they’re red-lined.’
Jackie lit up a cigarette to a look of disapproval and said, ‘Ach shite. Talk to Shanty McKee. Look the wee lad in the eye like I did. There’s a life forever marked. James Maguire: another life ruined. It has to end, Gordon. None of this “acceptable level of violence” bollocks.’
To give him his due, Gordon Orr was swallowing his disdain at the language and the smoking and was taking what Jackie said on board. A good man, earnest, he folded his arms, sat back on the bench and crossed his legs.
‘Okay, Jackie. One thing at a time. You’ve told me they cancelled another hit on Cochrane. They’ll try again, so let’s sort that out. Keep your ear to the ground and I’ll see what I can do about making a move on Tyrie and Simpson as soon as possible. Fair enough?’
It wasn’t fair enough, not really. Jackie was worried that he’d been excluded from planning the last attempt on Cochrane’s life, and there was Rab’s increasing hostility. He knew there was little Gordon Orr could do if MI5 were running an asset on the same turf. But he also knew the man was sincere and would do what he could. And Cochrane, despite what he was and what he’d done, was a husband and father: it would be another life saved if they could stop the hit. Probably a slew of lives if you considered the tit-for-tat that would follow. So he nodded and patted the older man on the elbow.
‘Okay, Gordon. Now I’ll treat you to an ice-cream.’
#
That night, the whole crew were in the Tartan Star Club off the Holywood Road. It was a birthday party held for James ‘Doctor’ Love, the top man in East Belfast, and the great and the good of loyalist paramilitary cognoscenti were there.
South and West Belfast Brigadiers were in attendance, although the north’s commander was conspicuous by his absence. Several representatives from the UVF had made appearances, along with a couple of faces from Scotland. Billy was at the bar next to Jackie, deep in conversation with a grinning Love about a forthcoming republican rally in the city centre and how they might disrupt it. Love was hammered with the drink and in a less than political state of mind. Hunched over a shot glass, Tyrie leaned into the much smaller man with an arm around his shoulders, like a Silverback with a small child. Sam ‘Ruger’ Rainey eased through the crowd to the counter, surprisingly agile for such a big man.
‘All right, Sam?’ said Jackie.
‘Ach, Jackie, what about ye? I haven’t seen you for a couple of days, like.’
‘Ach, I’m all right. Some bash, isn’t it?’
‘Sure, this crowd’ll take any excuse for a piss-up. Are you heading to the shebeen after? Wee Jonty’s organised one down Templemore Avenue.’
Jackie had no idea who or what wee Jonty was, and wasn’t really in the mood for a locked-door after-hours all-night boozing session with a crowd of vicious terrorists. But he said, ‘Aye, sounds like good craic. Here, how’s that wee girl up in – where is she – the Shore Road?’
Rainey was oiled up with alcohol, sweat glistening on his broad forehead as it creased with raised brows. Generally cagey about his sweet young thing up in the north of the city, now he smiled like the cat with the proverbial cream.
‘Ach, she’s great, like,’ said Ruger, sloppy with his shirt hanging out of his piss-stained jeans. ‘It’s the real thing, so it is. The two of us just, like, talk, you know. We’re up half the night gabbing but I don’t see the time going.’
A frown crossed the great expanse of his skull.
‘I still love ridin’ her, like. She’s a fantastic arse on her and a great wee pair of lungs.’
Jackie said, ‘Sounds like true love, Sam,’ and patted the big man on the arm before turning to head for the door. He was a twenty-a-day man, but the heavy cloak of smoke in the air was beginning to sting his eyes and he needed a breath of fresh air.
There was something else in the atmosphere, too. Despite a healthy smattering of women in the club, it was all testosterone, ego and booze with this crowd. Violence usually followed. He’d been at this kind of bash before, in the forces, and RUC too. It always included a barney between a couple of bulls the worse for wear, butting heads. Jackie was pacing himself carefully, a pint an hour at most. He’d been cradling his current lager for forty minutes already. At some stage, something would kick off and he’d have to be on his toes. When he spotted Rab Simpson standing alone by a wall, he counted another good reason to stay sober. Jackie wandered over to say hello and test the water.
Rab was fixated on something or someone across the room and was running his tongue along the rim of his upper teeth, jutting like the snowplough on an Old West train. Following his line of sight, Jackie saw Rab scrutinising the quiet man, Tommy.
Leaning on the wall he said, ‘Fancy a fag?’
Rab turned his head slowly. His eyes were bloodshot and seemed to drag the rest of his features down as though his face was melting. His entire lower jaw was lost in shadow. Rab was a living skull. He said, ‘Aye, go on then.’ His voice was thick and his words slurred.
At a loss for a better ice-breaker, Jackie said, ‘Some “do”.’
‘S’all right.’ Rab’s gaze returned to Tommy. His head was bobbing gently.
‘You going to Jonty’s shebeen after?’
‘Prob’ly.’
‘Yer man Tommy’s a funny one, isn’t he?’
The slack features turned back to Jackie again. ‘Oh aye?’
Jesus, thought Jackie, he looks like he’s had a fucking stroke. ‘You know, the way he’s so quiet. Never really says much. And he’s from North Belfast. Where’s fucking Gilroy tonight? We’ve Porter and Wilson, the only brigadier hasn’t shown is Tommy’s.’
‘He’s quiet, is he?’ said Rab. ‘And that’s a bad thing, is it? At least he doesn’t ask a load of fucking questions.’
A finger pointed like a stiletto blade.
‘Y’know, you’re a sleeked one, Shaw. You’re always watching. Just watching. Then you ask your fucking questions. Jesus, you’re like a fucking peeler.’
Jackie felt a shot of adrenaline, like a belt of whiskey, and gri
pped his pint glass a little harder.
‘And you’re soft. You won’t do what’s necessary. Look at you with that cunt Maguire. I’d have put his eye out and he’d never have missed a payment again and he’d never fucking forget me. I know you were raging about McKee too, what I done to him. But he’ll not forget me either. And you, Shaw. You’ll not forget me. You’ll see.’
The glass smashed with a heavy, liquid explosion in Rab’s face. His forehead was lacerated, his eyes blinded by the stale lager as Jackie yanked and gouged, tearing at Rab’s shredded skin. And you’ll not forget me, you bastard!
And then Jackie was back in the room and the brief fantasy was over. There were those who might back him, stand up for him at a UDA tribunal, but glassing Rab Simpson in a crowded club during the Brigadier’s birthday party probably wasn’t the way to go.
‘C’mon Rab, what’s the bother, eh? Relax and we’ll have a drink.’
Rab moved a step closer. ‘You think you’re too fucking good for us. You think you’re better. But the taigs aren’t decent. They’re fucking killers, and if we don’t match them, they’ll win and we’ll be gone, driven into the fucking sea.’ The purple lips had receded behind snarling, jutting teeth. The Great White shark look Jackie had seen in Maguire’s shop. Except now it was directed at him.
Rab looked dully at Jackie’s hand gripping the glass. For an awful second, Jackie thought Simpson was reading his mind. Then Rab said, ‘You and your fucking Fenian ring.’
Then a hand settled on Rab’s shoulder. A slender, delicate hand. A quiet, measured voice said, ‘All right Rab, Jackie?’
There stood Tommy, cigarette in mouth and glass of Bushmills in hand, an easy grin plastered across his face.
‘There’s some wee girl here asking after you, Jackie. Leanne. Nice-looking girl. You might want to go and have a chat with her.’