Cause of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  She had just enough energy to kick off her shoes and flop back on the bed before she fell head first into the land of sleep and dreams.

  The Belfast Incident

  After the meeting with Cowboy, Macallan headed for HQ to report the planned attack on the inspector. The room doors in the E Department corridors were closed, as usual. A door left open where men and women were poring over intelligence reports from agents and bugs could cost someone their job. They’d learned through bitter experience that the security of secret material had to be absolute. Agents had been killed after poorly handled meetings in public places or sensitive material being handed over by rogue elements in the service. The problems had been taken on, and no excuses were accepted for loose talk or failing to protect the information that had saved lives in both Ulster and the mainland.

  Macallan pleaded with her commander to extract Cowboy. ‘He’s coming apart, sir. I just don’t think he can survive scrutiny from the team looking for the source.’

  The man opposite her was a bear. Born and bred in Ulster, he feared his Protestant God but nothing else in this world. He’d fought the paramilitaries who’d made two attempts on his life and always regarded him as a top target. It would have made most men lose the odd night’s sleep, but not him, and he took it as a compliment that they bothered to try. Macallan didn’t impress him at all. He felt that this was a man’s war; they could put women on the front line, but as far as he was concerned they were passengers who caused more bother than they were worth. This one was even worse – an academic record in law and to his mind she should have become a lawyer, where she could have spent all day in a wig defending the indefensible.

  He sipped a fresh tea and made sure that she’d not been offered one.

  ‘Chief Inspector Macallan, I think the problem is that you’ve been handling this agent too long, and to an extent that’s our fault. He was just too good, and in the past we’d probably have pulled him by now, but times have changed. The war’s over. It’s just that some of those boys don’t know it yet. To be honest, it’ll finish with or without him and the push from London is to get whatever results we can. When this is over I’m going to retire and plant vegetables, so I’m not going to argue with them about it.’ His voice rose a tone and some colour crept through his normally pale cheeks. ‘I really don’t care about this agent. We’re nearly done with him anyway, so let’s just get what we can from him. If he ends face up in the gutter with flies laying eggs in his dead eyes then so be it. Is that understood, Chief Inspector?’

  Macallan knew a lost cause when it was explained by a police commander who was close to his God. ‘That’s clear, sir, but I would have been failing in my duty not to bring this to your attention.’

  The colour in his cheeks deepened, and he thought that she was just too smart. ‘Your duty, Chief Inspector, is to close the door on the way out and hopefully we’ll have a good result tonight with another two locked up or apologising in front of their Maker.’

  She gave up and tried not to scream as she left the room.

  Macallan opened her eyes and thought she was back in Belfast before recognising it was just the dreams again. She was soaked with sweat and realised she must have left the heating on. She swore tiredly, struggled out of her clothes and dropped them in a heap next to the bed before she padded into the tiny bathroom – described by the estate agent as ‘nicely proportioned’ – and splashed water on her face.

  ‘It’s fine, Grace,’ she mouthed into the mirror.

  She slept again and didn’t dream.

  5

  Setting up the new unit was just what Macallan needed. It gave her something to bite into before O’Connor arrived.

  Gradually the new team drifted in, a few at a time. It was ever thus and the good ones had to be prised out of the hands of their old bosses. When someone didn’t turn up on time, it was normally followed by a call from their gaffer explaining why they needed to keep them for a while. But Harkins, like a member of the old Royal Navy press gangs, would pull on his jacket and come back a few hours later with the missing man or woman in tow. Whether it was true or not, the story was that Harkins had the goods on the vast majority of ranked officers and wasn’t afraid to use a bit of friendly blackmail. Macallan thought it was probably his powers of persuasion, but she knew that the legends worked to his advantage so no one was sure what was true. She was certain he’d started some of them himself, just to keep in the canteen headlines.

  The new squad room started to buzz with the energy of so many young men and women who just wanted to get out and do the job. In some cases, the ambition was to be another Harkins, although in the modern service that was probably best discouraged.

  Macallan stared out of her office window, feeling the energy of something new. Her emotions lifted by the day. She knew enough to realise that they were close to starting their operations, that there would be tough days ahead and, in fact, tough would be okay. It was avoiding Mr Fuck Up that was the real trick.

  She folded her arms, closed her eyes and, as she did almost every day, thought of her mentor and friend Bill Kelly, and her promise to him. He had been her inspector when she’d first joined the RUC, eventually rising to the rank of assistant chief constable. He had transferred from the Met as a young man looking for a challenge. He got it and was shot by a PIRA gunman after only a year in Northern Ireland. He was one of the lucky ones – he survived and was back on the job after only three months, though the gunman still visited him in the odd dream. He’d known when he met Macallan as a raw recruit that she had something – the bonus was that she was a thinker in a war that lacked thinkers. His advice was always given quietly, and through time she had come to rely on him when she had a problem that needed a wiser head. She’d never felt any physical attraction to him, just absolute trust in his friendship and his ability to fill in the gaps left by her father. He was the only man in her life who’d never let her down, and he’d kept her sane in the darkest days of the sectarian war.

  She opened her eyes, took a deep breath and called Harkins into the office. As always, he kept her waiting; it was all part of the ritual to show the troops on the shop floor that he actually ran the squad.

  ‘Grab a seat. I just wanted to get your thoughts on how ready we are if the sky falls on us.’

  ‘We’re good, almost there, got some good people and a great mix. The surveillance and investigation units are ready now, although we’re still waiting on some intelligence analysts, but they’re on their way.’

  ‘Good. I’m going along to see the chief and tell him where we are. I know there are a pile of jobs the divisions want to pass to us, and requests for joint operations with other forces and agencies.’

  The door opened and John O’Connor walked in.

  ‘Mick, I thought they would have jailed you by now. You might actually make your pension.’

  Harkins shook his hand, but O’Connor was already turning to Macallan. ‘You must be Grace. I’ve heard so much about you – it’s great you’re on the team.’

  He pushed his hand out and she had to admit to being impressed. He looked more like a city lawyer than a working detective, and standing next to Mick, the contrast couldn’t have been more striking. The shoes were actually polished, while it was hard to tell if Mick’s were suede or just dirty. The suit was designer, the greying hair side-parted and just a bit old-fashioned. He was a big man, and she could see how he would dominate a room. What worried her was that he reminded her of someone in Belfast . . .

  Macallan had only had a few brief relationships in Northern Ireland and kept them away from the job. The boys in the RUC were fit but they faced danger every day, sometimes having to scrape up the remnants of a human being after a bomb blast. They saw their friends maimed and killed, and tried to squeeze as much life into any time off as was humanly possible.

  When she had finally become involved with a man it had been unexpected – overwhelming. She’d first met Jack Fraser through the courts. He was a
barrister, and a good one, working for the Crown Prosecution Service in Belfast. She’d bumped into him a couple of times at functions and his body language had told her all she needed to know. He was attracted to her but he was married, although it seemed to be common knowledge that the marriage was in trouble. He was physically attractive, tall and a lifelong rugby player, so built to please. His nose had been broken on the rugby field, but if anything that just added cream to the cake. He was everything she wasn’t: upper middle class and educated at the best school money could buy. If there’d been a problem it was vanity, but she’d known that this type of package came with vanity built in to the genes. She could forgive that. The big bonus was that he could make Grace Macallan laugh – and that was no easy feat. He’d eventually asked her to go for a drink, and they’d become lovers by the end of the first evening. She’d regretted going that far that quickly and had thought it would just be one of those one-night stands that she’d so carefully avoided. She hadn’t realised that he’d recognised her as someone different from the pack and had heard through his RUC connections what had made her stand out in the dirty war being fought in Ulster. She’d never been involved with a married man, but she’d believed him when he’d said his relationship was all but finished. The Troubles meant that he could always find an excuse to spend a night with her and they’d started to discuss a future together. She warmed at the thought of those nights sharing a bed. She’d adored those times after they’d made love, when he would lie behind her with those huge arms pulling her against his warm belly, his breath on her neck as they drifted off together . . .

  As O’Connor closed the door behind Harkins he smiled broadly. ‘Sorry I’ve arrived so late in the day, Grace. I’m not going to get in your road today. I just wanted to see how we were placed to start work. I’m going to see the Chief and if we’re not ready, I’d rather just tell him.’

  He made notes as she briefed him and she could see that this was someone who didn’t miss things. She promised herself only to lie to him when she was sure she could get away with it. He seemed to be impressed with her progress, and a little surprised that they were on schedule.

  ‘You’ve done a great job; it’s going to make my life a lot easier. To be honest, I’ve been in Germany for nearly three years and feel a bit out of touch, so I think we’re both going to be on a big learning curve. Is there anything I can do for you at the moment? And before you answer, I’m going to buy you a pub lunch tomorrow so we can talk a bit more.’

  She thought that his accent was pure public school, and a good one. The Scottish accent was still there but almost concealed beneath the small fortune his father must have paid for his education.

  ‘A pub lunch would be good for me. I honestly thought the canteen in Belfast HQ served the worst food on the planet, but this one runs it close. Otherwise I’m fine, and I have to say that Mick Harkins has been worth his weight – and we’ve not fallen out yet.’

  ‘That’s just him luring you into a false sense of security, Grace. Keep letting him think he’s the boss and you might survive without needing major surgery. I’ve had him on a few cases in the past and he keeps order among the troops when things get hard. I can tell you that he’s not got long to go and getting this lot beaten into shape will be a personal-pride issue for him. This is his legacy; I pity the poor detectives out there who don’t pull their weight. I’ll see you tomorrow for that lunch and pick you up here.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he was out of the door. Macallan tried to put her thoughts together and decide what she thought of O’Connor. He seemed to have breezed into the office and left, leaving her slightly dazed. He was that type though – big projected image and absolute belief in himself. No bad thing. Through the force of his personality, O’Connor would get resources where others might fail these days. She hated to admit it but he was attractive, and given her love life in Belfast, she realised that his type must push her buttons. Well, she wasn’t going there again.

  She decided to stop off and have a drink on the way back to her flat, so she headed down the short set of steps to the Bailie in Stockbridge, which had been a favourite drinking hole for a generation of CID and Crime Squad detectives. She felt relaxed in the semi-darkness of the bar and climbed on a bar stool as far away from the nearest drinker as she could get – she just wanted to read the paper in peace. She ordered a large glass of red wine, spread the paper on the bar, then shook her head and muttered at the latest antics in Westminster. On page four, she noticed a few paragraphs about a paramilitary attempt to kill a policeman in Londonderry. She locked into the text and felt her heart beat just a bit faster. It still had that effect, and although the attempt had been disrupted and arrests made, it stirred the memories . . .

  The Belfast Incident

  Cowboy had identified an arms stash to Macallan and said that two paramilitaries had picked up weapons from the dump to carry out the attack. There was enough firepower hidden in these streets to stop a train, and if there was a skirmish, then those Republican heroes would lose. That didn’t stop her worrying, because these operations never went to plan. She did what she always did in these situations: wondered what the fuck she was doing there in the first place. She was in a stinking disused industrial building and the only company she had was some dead pigeons and a security service officer with personal hygiene problems. She was tired of this war, but then everyone was. Peace, whatever that meant, had arrived in Northern Ireland, but there were still a few lunatics who couldn’t see what the smart paramilitaries had seen years before. Some still wanted to play the game – they just missed the war and what it gave to them.

  During the height of the Troubles, PIRA were disciplined and operated along military lines, but you just never knew what would happen with these nutters. She’d often thought about all those men and women she’d helped put in the Maze and Maghaberry prisons and whether it had done any good or just made the situation worse. She lit another cigarette that she didn’t want. HMP Maze – the name always brought a rueful smile to her face. Christ, the INLA even managed to hit the loyalist Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright in the Maze. You had to give it to them – they had balls! That stark collection of H Blocks had become an asylum taken over by the lunatics. Discos, Christmas parties with your choice of drugs thrown in and paramilitary parades in full uniform. It was all possible in there.

  The adrenalin pumped her back to reality as the radio hissed into life with a message from the surveillance team. The two targets were reported moving towards the car identified by Cowboy as the transport for the job. Macallan breathed more easily. That was a big boost. Identifying the car made their life easier. It had been bugged so that the surveillance team could keep well back until the arrest was made. She was only an observer, but her nerves were firing up – she couldn’t get Cowboy and his problems out of her head now that the operation had started.

  They listened to another message from the surveillance team. One of the targets had placed a heavy bag in the boot of the car. In Macallan’s mind another piece of information clicked into the picture. The bag had to be the ‘weps’, so it was going to plan, but they were dealing with a bunch of psychos – every time they were involved, the operation had to fly by the seat of its pants. It didn’t really make any difference; she’d delivered the information to the arrest teams and it was now out of her control.

  ‘Stutter’ Doyle placed the loaded bag into the back of the car as he’d been told to do by the paramilitary intelligence officer. His partner for the job was Bobby Connery, who closed the door of his small red-brick home in the Markets, blew into his hands and pulled the collar up on a paper-thin jacket that did nothing to keep out the cold. As he always did when he left his home, he looked all around the area for any sign of Peelers. Doyle was agitated, but then he always was. ‘Will ye move yer fucking arse, Bobby, and let’s get this done.’

  Connery smiled. ‘Yer a bad tempered fucker on a good day, Tommy.’

  No one called Tommy Doyle ‘
Stutter’ to his face, and the last man drunk enough to try it had lost an eye. Doyle got his moniker through a stammer that only got worse when his stress levels were high, which was most of the time. The stammer didn’t fool anyone who knew him though, and certainly not Connery, who often described Doyle as a ‘violent cunt’, which, coming from someone who’d delivered two men to their Maker and damaged a few others, was praise indeed.

  Connery walked over to the car and got behind the wheel. He was too confident by far for most, but he could drive a car with a blindfold on and was born to the trade. As a younger man, he’d driven on a few post-office robberies and made his name leaving a police pursuit vehicle on its roof after holding up a small bank on the outskirts of Belfast. After a couple of spells inside, he’d decided it would be more of a kick to get into the war. PIRA thought he was a nutter but welcomed him with open arms – he was their kind of nutter. He got on Doyle’s nerves and wherever possible he tried to ignore him.

  Doyle levered himself into the front passenger seat and slammed the door shut. His guts hurt again and the cold had drained his face of colour, apart from the roadmap of broken veins that testified to his weakness for cheap whisky. He couldn’t say he liked whisky these days; he just needed it to deaden the reality of what his life had become. He hoped Connery would shut the fuck up and not ask too many stupid questions, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen – certainly not on this night.

  ‘Have you figured out yet, Tommy, why we’re taking a bag of scrap metal for a run round Belfast in this fuckin’ weather, ’cause I certainly don’t know?’

  Doyle thought that Connery was too fuckin’ thick to work it out, but he knew full well what it was about, although the Big Man hadn’t told him. He lit a cigarette, which just annoyed the pain in his gut. He’d been in the paramilitaries a long time, done some years behind the wire and didn’t know anything but the war against the Brits, plus some feuding within the organisation itself that had taken a few lives to settle things down again. He was getting weary of it, just too old now, and for the first time in his life he worried about the future. The thought of peace terrified him, and he’d no other purpose or use in life. He couldn’t change a fuckin’ light bulb. He never had more than a few notes in his pocket, and when he did, it went on booze and the odd bet that just kept the bookies happy.