by John Steele
Then the door opens and a man stands in the entrance. Solid build in a Barbour jacket with faded black jeans. Cropped black hair, heavy stubble.
He looks at Rab on his knees, then Jackie.
Jackie looks at him.
The man begins reaching into the pocket of the jacket.
The next second is filled with Jackie levelling the .357 Magnum revolver at the intruder, exerting pressure on the trigger and firing a round at a range of around seven feet.
The recoil punches Jackie hard, a shockwave shuddering up his right arm. The bullet rams home in the man’s abdomen, opening a small geyser of blood. The sound is deafening, the muzzle flash a lightning strike. The man goes down, crumpling like a collapsing tent.
Jackie never sees him hit the floor.
Rab swings both hands hard and hits Jackie’s gun-hand like a hammer, sending the .357 flying into the wall and landing just inside the threshold of the room. Just behind the screaming, writhing stranger on the floor.
Rab is silent as he goes to work and rugby tackles Jackie, toppling him in the centre of the room, then aiming a couple of vicious blows at his temple, driving a knee into Jackie’s throat and raining blows onto his face. Jackie feels the dull thud of cartilage against cheekbone as the rigid knots of Rab’s knuckles connect. Rab’s face is all concentration and Jackie is already finding it difficult to breathe, the weight of the knee crushing his larynx. He is bucking and writhing under Rab but can’t shake him. Something sharp is stabbing in Jackie’s side. His fists slap against Rab’s thighs to no effect. Panic seizes him.
He can hear the shot man moaning and crying, ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ He hears the pain and fear, the accent broad and local.
Rab is grunting, picking his shots. He glances a blow off Jackie’s left eyebrow, leaving a throbbing ache in its wake. He then draws back his hand, taking aim, and lands a hard, sharp punch on the bridge of Jackie’s nose. The cartilage gives way with a thick liquid sound.
It provides some clarity. Jackie pulls his arms close to his sides, working them up as far as he can under the inside of Rab’s thighs. He breathes in deeply and leverages his fists upwards, connecting – with all the force he can muster – with the soft groin. There isn’t much in the blow but it’s enough. He grabs Rab’s bollocks in his right hand and with a force born of fear and madness wrenches with everything he’s got. Rab’s face seems to collapse in on itself and he yells.
‘Ya bastard!’
Jackie twists and throws Rab off, rolling away from him in the process.
They form a ragged triangle, the three of them. The mystery stranger is the tip, now whimpering quietly near the doorway, the gun just beyond him on the cusp of the hall. Jackie is leaning against the wall opposite the window, breathing hard. His face is a mass of throbbing pain sewn deep in his skull. Rab is coming to his feet in the centre of the room, his back to the window, smiling a hideous, rictus leer. There are a couple of yards between them.
Jackie moves away from the wall and Rab comes at him, ducking low as Jackie throws a right. The Claddagh gouges Rab’s ear along with Jackie’s finger. Rab grabs Jackie’s jacket and hauls it up over Jackie’s head, pulling it down to trap his arms. The toe of Rab’s boot connects with his hip and more pain blossoms. Something is now stabbing at his right shoulderblade from inside the jacket and he vaguely remembers the hotel screwdriver. Pulling Rab down, he begins throwing punches upward, connecting anywhere he can. His fists find stomach, ribs and, as he hauls further at the neck of the fabric, Rab’s face. The ring bites into the skin above Rab’s left eye. They are hot now, and Jackie’s knuckles are slicked with sweat from Rab’s face. He hopes there might be some blood on there too.
They dance, locked in close embrace for a moment. Jackie has the better position, punching hard at Rab’s stomach and face, although the weight of the jacket is tiring him. Rab’s tactic has backfired and he can only hammer at Jackie’s shoulders and back. Without a weapon, he can do limited damage.
So he finds one. Rab grabs his keys from the floor. He pulls Jackie’s T-shirt up and, holding the keys by the fob, slices the skin of Jackie’s side, like a kid scraping a car door. Pain sears into Jackie’s side and he slackens his grip on Rab’s T-shirt, giving the other man a chance to shove him. He loses balance and lands hard and awkwardly on his back, his jacket bunched up around his shoulders.
Rab looks at Jackie, then the gun lying just beyond the fallen stranger. His face is shining with sweat and blood. A cut has opened up above his eye and his lip has a wicked split. Jackie tastes blood and realises it’s leaking from his nose, which is surely broken. His side is on fire. His left eye already feels as though it is swelling up and his strength is waning.
Rab smiles, his perfect teeth red, awash with blood, and lunges in the opposite direction of the shot man and revolver. At first Jackie thinks it’s a feint and drops to the floor, scrambling for the gun. It’s still out of reach when Rab brings a wooden dining chair crashing down on his back. Jackie arches in pain as Rab brings the chair down again, this time across his right hip.
Jackie yells. He’s frightened. He can’t reach the gun. He’s winded and tired and the jacket seems to weigh a ton, dragging him down. He twists on the carpet, enough to have another blow of the chair glance off his kneecap with a ringing sensation. It gives him a sight of Rab’s feet and he traps Simpson’s ankles with his own, his legs like pincers. Rab loses balance and falls with a grunt.
But he falls on Jackie. Jackie lands a good, hard right on Rab’s jaw with a satisfying crack and follows with a left, connecting with the man’s neck but doing little damage. Simpson batters a couple of vicious blows into Jackie’s face, but he hardly feels them now. He can read Simpson’s eyes: he knows the end is in sight. Rab’s fingers lock around his throat.
He claws at Rab’s arms with his left hand, but it’s useless. He is gasping and the crushing pressure on his throat is too much. He tenses his body, trying to find a surge, but he is slipping away. He tries to shout to Sarah, his da, his ma in his desperation. He knows his sister and her family are doomed by his failure, but he can’t make a sound beyond a wheezing gurgle. His right hand dances in spasms on the floor as though playing a keyboard. The edges of his vision are blurring and he wonders if he’ll meet his father when he dies. Rab laughs in triumph, his mouth a yawning chasm. Simpson is growing hard as he straddles Jackie’s stomach.
Then Jackie finds the screwdriver on the floor to his right. The object that has been digging into him throughout the fight and has just fallen from his jacket pocket. He grips it and rams it, with the strength of the damned, like a stiletto blade into the gaping hollow of Rab Simpson’s mouth. He feels the soft tissue give under the sharpened bite of the metal tip. The palate is ripped in two and Rab’s grip goes instantly slack. He stares, his eyes, wide with triumph a moment before, now wide with disbelief. The screwdriver is hanging from his open mouth like a lever to be cranked. Jackie’s breath comes in harsh, ragged sobs. He is aghast at the sight of the obscene handle, blood now running down its length. Rab is gurgling, but his jaw remains locked open as blood fills his mouth. He can’t swallow; he can’t close his throat because of the metal shaft and some gore is bubbling and spitting from his mouth.
Jackie pushes Rab to the ground and, to end it, he grips the handle of the screwdriver – but his hand slips on the blood and saliva. He finds purchase again and pushes deep and hard. The screwdriver shudders and scrapes into Rab’s cranium slowly. More blood bubbles and blurts from his mouth in small geysers.
Rab won’t last long, but he is still not dead. Neither is the stranger lying on the floor beyond them, although he is still. Jackie detects shallow breathing.
It is a question of whether anyone heard the initial gunshot now. The house is set back a small distance from the street. The blast-proof windows and reinforced door may have helped quell the sound but a Magnum is loud. Jackie’s clothes are flecked with blood and he gags, a sharp pain tearing at his side. He swallows hard
, then steadies himself against the table as though he’s downed a string of doubles at the bar. He tears the lining from the pockets of his jacket and wipes down the .357, then places it in Rab’s hand. With the lining wrapped around his right hand he searches the pockets of the mystery man and finds another handgun, a Beretta semi-automatic. He places it in the stranger’s hand. Returning to Rab, still quietly bubbling on the floor, he wrenches the screwdriver back out of his mouth. It is grim and tiring work, the blood and gore sucking at the metal shaft as he strains. Once the screwdriver is free, Jackie takes off his blood-stained jacket and wraps the screwdriver in it. He grabs the plastic bag of photos and goes to the hall. He takes one of Rab’s jackets from the small cloakroom under the stairs and throws it on. He searches the kitchen and finds a sports bag, then places his bloodied jacket with the screwdriver wrapped inside, and the plastic bag of photos, in it.
Running upstairs, he locates the case under Rab’s bed and sifts through the contents as quickly as he can with the pocket-lining ‘gloves’. The shot of Cochrane’s wife, Rab straining behind her in the reflection of the mirror, is near the top of the pile. He is about to close the lid when he spies more photographs beneath. These are of other couples in various positions, all rutting on a double bed in a simple, threadbare room. There is an older, faded, worn quality to these and the room is not in Rab’s house. Jackie grabs them and throws them in the sports bag, then closes the case and slides it back under the bed. Returning to the dining room, he shoves the tin foil in his pocket and ensures the window is firmly closed. Rab and the stranger are still not dead, each lying in a pool of blood. There’s about to be more.
Jackie hauls the stranger over to Rab’s side and fishes the man’s wallet and mobile from his coat pocket. Danny McCardle from the Short Strand. Jackie would put money on Danny being an associate of James Cochrane. He scrolls through the contacts list of McCardle’s mobile with interest and pockets it, then thinks better of it and returns it and the wallet to the man’s coat. He retrieves Rab’s mobile from the corner of the room and pockets it, then wraps one of the pocket linings around the tip of Danny McCardle’s trigger finger. He pulls and the semi fires twice into Rab’s mouth, obliterating traces of the screwdriver’s damage and some of the upper face. The noise is deafening in the confines of the sealed house. The shots leave powder residue on both men’s hands and a ringing in Jackie’s ears. Rab’s catalogue looks are consigned to history.
The bodies are left, finally dead, sprawled on the carpeted floor. With luck this will pass as a drug meet gone wrong. Chances are the PSNI will be less than convinced but the narrative will suit their agenda. Two players gone, one of them a celebrity in paramilitary circles.
Then Jackie zips up Rab’s jacket to cover his blood-stained shirt, slings the sports bag over his shoulder and steps out into the chilly autumn light, slamming the front door shut behind him.
CHAPTER 23
1993
They were in bed, the three of them: Jackie, Eileen and Billy Tyrie. No matter when they got together, Billy’s presence was always looming somewhere in the background.
It had begun with the ring. The Claddagh. Everyone was fascinated by it in some way. Rab detested it as a symbol of papal idolatry. A lot of the younger lads had no idea what it was but liked the look of it, the style. The crown on top appealed to your average true blue loyalist, too. Eileen was romanced by it, by the sentiment. And now she was holding forth on how Billy loved it, and loved Jackie wearing it. Apparently, it made a statement.
‘Rab and Ruger keep saying it’s a Catholic thing, but Billy says that’s not true at all. He says the man who made the first one, some Joyce guy from Galway, was even a friend of King Billy.’
‘There’s a story,’ said Jackie, ‘that Joyce came up with the Claddagh and then got himself enslaved by Algerians. William III demanded his release. At the time he would have been a subject of the crown.’
Eileen was delicately fingering the silver, turning it gently on Jackie’s finger.
‘Billy’s right,’ he said. ‘The Claddagh has nothing to do with religion. I’m hardly the pious type, am I?’ With that, he cupped her left breast in his hand and stroked the dark swirl of nipple. Eileen pulled the ring from his finger and began rolling it between thumb and forefinger. He continued, ‘But it is Irish. I think that’s why Billy’s so keen on me wearing it. He’s big on the Prods having their place in Ireland.’
Eileen flipped the ring, the tip of the heart facing inward towards Jackie’s wrist, and began sliding it back onto his finger again. He took his free hand from her breast and placed it on her arm, gently putting a stop to her.
‘No.’
She looked up into his face and saw his expression, then drew back and said, ‘Sorry.’ She turned away, ostensibly to search for cigarettes.
The ring was a gift from his mother, a religious woman in the best sense of the word, all God is love and ripe with forgiveness. But she was also fiercely superstitious, growing up in the country town of Saintfield where such sentiments were respected, and would have baulked at him wearing the tip of the heart inward when not married.
Jackie and Eileen were in a small hotel on the Antrim shore of Belfast Lough and they smoked while listening to the gulls calling to each other outside. Eileen ran her fingers over the skin at the sides of her mouth.
‘Am I getting old, Jackie?’
‘What?’
‘Am I getting old? Are these lines longer? Deeper?’
‘Not at all,’ he said. He saw a woman who knew she had made poor choices, and was only now waking up and realising that the world turns on and won’t always be falling over itself to keep her happy. But she was still beautiful and probably always would be.
‘What’s brought this on?’
‘Nothing.’
He could see she already regretted showing the chink in her armour, and was turning inward.
‘Is Billy having an affair?’
As soon as he said it, he mentally slapped himself. Subtle as the proverbial brick, he leaped into a mental trench and prepared for the onslaught.
But instead, she said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You suspect him?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t know if you’d call it an affair. Or just the odd fuck. Always with the same person.’
He almost recoiled at that. What was he, if not the odd fuckwith the same person.
‘How do you know he’s been with anyone?’
‘A wife knows.’
‘Not always. Archie Nelson was at it with his case worker for a couple of years before Gertie found out.’
‘This wife knows.’
‘Well, this fella has to get back to Belfast,’ he said. ‘We’d best be going.’
He got out of the bed and began searching the room for his boxer shorts. It was cowardice, changing the subject, but he was hardly qualified to counsel her. He looked at her as he pulled the boxers on and could see she was somewhere else entirely.
#
Death was waiting for Jackie when he got back to the Ravenhill Road. He’d dropped Eileen off at York Road station in the north of the city, then driven on to the outstretched finger of the Albert Bridge. When he pulled up to the kerb in Bendigo Street, a young guy of around sixteen approached and told Jackie that Sam Rainey was waiting to speak to him in the Park View Bar.
Jackie walked a couple of streets towards the Ormeau Park, a beautiful mess of greenery, and entered the pub. It was mid-afternoon and, aside from a couple of oul’ lads watching the racing on TV, deserted. He ordered a Coke and was just settling at a table by the wall when Sam Rainey entered.
He scanned the place and gave Jackie a quick nod, then went to the counter and ordered himself a pint of heavy. Settling his bulk at the table he said, ‘What, you sick or something?’ with a look of distaste at the untouched Coke.
‘Bit early for me, Sam,’ said Jackie. ‘I can’t handle it as well as you, mate. You’re a machine.’
&nb
sp; Ruger smiled and sank half of his pint in three gulps. His face flickered in satisfaction, then assumed an aspect of concern.
‘Where have you been? The boys have been worried about you.’
‘I went up the coast road for a drive,’ said Jackie. ‘I took that wee girl Leanne home the other night and I needed to clear my head this morning.’
‘I know where you’re at, mate. My wee honey’s the same. Mad about her, like, but does my head in. Boys like us, we’re hardly the pipe and slippers type.’
More the pipe bomb type, thought Jackie.
‘Now,’ said Rainey, ‘I have to talk to you about Saturday night. I don’t know when you left the party but at least now I know you were with this wee girl, Leanne.’ Ruger was turning the pint glass in circles on the table top, agitated. ‘A young lad about your age was walking home on the Woodstock Road about half twelve on Saturday.’ Ruger took another swig from his glass. ‘Apparently, a Cortina pulled up next to him on the road and two gunmen jumped out, shot him about six times, then took off in the car. Probably to the Short Strand.’
‘And the punchline is?’
But Jackie knew what was coming and it was no joke.
‘It was the Provos. A source in the peelers tells us you were the target.’
Jackie downed his Coke. The fizzing gas burned the back of his throat.
‘Any idea why I’m being targeted?’
‘Haven’t got a handle on that yet.’
‘And your source in the peelers is sound?’
‘As a pound,’ said Rainey. Then he drained the dregs of his pint and walked to the counter for a refill.
Jimmy Brevin had been in his early twenties and the only child of two doting parents. He’d left school at sixteen and taken an apprenticeship in welding at the shipyard but, as the contracts dried up, so did the work. The Jericho fish and chip shop on the Woodstock Road was owned by a couple with a strong Christian faith who were friends of the Brevin family. They’d given Jimmy what hours they could to help him out and he’d been walking home from the late shift when he was murdered. The Provisional IRA released a statement declaring their sympathy with the grieving parents, and sorrow at the case of mistaken identity.