Belfast Girls

by Gerry McCullough

  But the PSNI man gave her an unpleasant smile and answered “Haven’t you heard of the Special Powers Act, love? We don’t need any search warrant. We have reason to believe this place is being used for criminal activities ...”

  He was interrupted by a triumphant shout from the front room.

  Phil peered past him as he strode through the doorway. The top half of the sofa had been dragged off the springs. One of the men was stooping over it, taking something from its hiding place there.

  As he stood up, Phil could see that it was a gun and a square box. The lid was torn open. Inside were neatly parcelled bags which Phil could see were full of a white powder.

  “Good,” said the man who had spoken to her. “That’s all we need. Hutchinson and Donnelly, you two stay here and finish the search – be thorough, mind. Fred, you come with me. We’ll take this girl down to the station and see what she has to tell us.”

  Phil’s face was white.

  She remembered Davy’s warning to her. The flat was being used as a halfway house for storing drugs in transit.

  Why had she been such a fool as to ignore his words, to come here and put herself at risk?

  “I know nothing about it,” she stammered. “You’re making a mistake.”

  The first man, the tall thin policeman with the moustache, took hold of her by one arm.

  “You can tell us all about that down at the station. Get your coat.”

  Phil’s coat was hanging in the hallway where she had dumped it last night. Dumbly she lifted it from the hook. The policeman released her arm long enough for her to put the coat on, then took a firm hold on her again.

  “Have you a bag?” he asked.

  Phil shook her head. She was at a loss what to say. She felt as if the sky had fallen on her with a crash.

  The second policeman, a smaller, more burly man, took her other arm.

  Between them they marched her down the flights of stairs to the front entrance, and out into a police car.

  Phil’s thoughts whirled.

  What was she to do? What to say?

  They had found a gun and a large consignment of what was

  probably, she thought, heroin. The fact that she was in the flat tied her to the discoveries.

  How was she to explain away her presence there without involving Davy?

  Phil felt tired and sick.

  It was the same old problem, all over again.

  But surely Davy would be involved anyway. The flat was in his name. The police could find that out straight away from the agent.

  Phil stared out through the window of the car, unable to bring herself to speak as they raced through the traffic and down to the nearest police station in Donegal Pass.

  Once there, she was taken into a small room and a police woman was left with her. They sat on either side of a plastic-topped table on wooden hard-backed chairs.

  The police woman was middle-aged and reminded Phil a little of Sheila’s mother, Kathy Doherty. She was comfortably plump and of a large build.

  She seemed disposed to be friendly, at least to start with.

  “Cup of tea, love?” she asked Phil, looking at the girl’s tired face with some sympathy.

  Phil realised for the first time that it was many hours since she had eaten anything.

  “Yes. Yes, please.” she said faintly. She longed to lean her head on her arms but was afraid of going to sleep before she knew what was happening.

  The police woman put her head out of the door and called to someone, and presently the offered cup of tea arrived. Phil sipped it gratefully. She found that she was shivering.

  “I’d like to make a phone call.” she said presently.

  “All in good time,” the police woman said. She looked at Phil speculatively. “You haven’t been charged with anything, have you? Just brought in for questioning, I was told. So what’s the hurry?”

  “I don’t know,” Phil said.

  “Drink up your tea and I’ll get someone to ask the sergeant what’s happening about you,” the police woman said. She went out of the room for a few minutes.

  When she came back, the friendly expression had vanished.

  “If I’d known what you were here for, you wouldn’t have got that cup of tea,” she snapped at Phil. “People like you are scum. My daughter got hooked on drugs when she was just a kid, it ruined her life. I tell you, you people deserve anything you get. Sit there and be quiet, and no more whining about phone calls. The sergeant will talk to you when he’s good and ready.”

  Phil stared at her in surprise. Catching the look of cold hatred in the woman’s eye, she looked hastily away. There was no human kindness left there. She had been identified as the enemy and would be treated accordingly.

  For what seemed like a long time, Phil sat silently with the now hostile policewoman, waiting. What she would say when the time came, she did not know.

  She would have liked to speak to her parents, or even to her brother Gerry, now a qualified lawyer working in a Belfast solicitors’ office as a trainee solicitor. There seemed, however, no chance of that. She would have to rely on herself.

  When the sergeant came to question her, she still had made no decision.

  He came in briskly, the tall thin man with the sandy moustache who had brought Phil to the station.

  “My name is Sergeant John Glover,” he said. “I am going to question you about the presence of a handgun and a quantity of heroin in your flat, 3a Thomas Street, discovered there at 10.43 am today. You are not being charged with anything at this point in time, merely being asked a few questions. Do you understand?”

  Phil nodded.

  “First of all, your name, please?”

  “Philomena Mary Maguire.”

  “Address?”

  “3a Thomas Street,” Phil heard herself saying.

  “So the flat is yours?”

  “Rented,” Phil said.

  The sergeant looked pleased.

  “Have you any explanation of the presence of a handgun and

  illegal drugs on premises which you admit are rented by you?”

  “No,” said Phil desperately. “I don’t know how it got there. I didn’t put it there. It isn’t mine.”

  “It may not be yours – but does it belong to someone you know?”

  Phil hesitated, fatally – then said “No, it doesn’t!”

  “I suggest that it does. That you know the owner and that you were hiding the drugs and the gun for that owner as an accessory to criminal activity, i.e. drug dealing and smuggling.”

  Phil stared at him. “No,” she said. “No!”

  “The gun has been traced by Forensic,” said Sergeant Glover. “There is evidence that it was used in a hold-up at a petrol station last November and in a shooting incident last July. How do you explain its presence in the flat you rent?”

  “Someone else must have hidden it there,” Phil said.

  “No-one could have hidden it there without your knowledge,” interrupted the sergeant. He raised his voice to a shout. “You knew all about it. You helped these drug dealers by hiding their weapons and probably by hiding consignments of drugs! Perhaps you took part in some of the shooting incidents yourself. Perhaps it really is your own gun!”

  Phil felt bludgeoned by the loud, angry voice, by the moustached face, contorted with fury which was thrust into hers. She pulled away, leaning as far back as she could in the chair.

  “Well? It is your own gun, isn’t it?” shouted Sergeant Glover.

  “No! No! I don’t know anything about the gun or the drugs! I don’t know how they got there!”

  Phil felt like weeping. Only her innate stubbornness prevented her from breaking down. More and more she longed for the support of her family.

  “Does anyone else share this flat of yours?” asked the Sergeant.

  “No,” said Phil quickly. Without conscious decision, she knew that by no word of hers was she going to involve Davy. “I took it over at the start of September.”<
br />
  Would they check with the estate agent? If so, she would say that it had been an unofficial arrangement, that the previous tenant hadn’t bothered to change it into Phil’s name. Perhaps she could get away with that.

  “So whatever is there is your responsibility?’

  “I wasn’t there over Christmas,” Phil said. “I went home. So anyone could have got in and left the stuff.”

  “A rather unlikely thing to do, surely? Why should anyone hide a gun and drugs worth a fortune in the flat of a complete stranger? You’ll have to come up with a better story than that, Maguire, if you expect us to believe you.”

  Phil had to admit the truth of his words.

  As much as anything else, she found that she was upset by the sergeant addressing her as “Maguire.” It seemed to show that to him she was already a criminal in the dock.

  “I don’t have any other explanation,” she repeated. “I don’t know how the stuff got there, or when. It could have been there for years.”

  “You forget,” Sergeant Glover pounced, “this gun was used in an incident in November. A time when you were already renting this flat. It was put into your sofa sometime after that. You must have known it was there.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Phil buried her face in her hands. She had nothing else to offer by way of excuse or explanation.

  “We have reason to believe,” said Sergeant Glover weightily, “that this flat has been used for drug dealing and smuggling. We have other information, apart from finding this gun. We need names, Maguire. Give us some names.’

  “You won’t believe me. I don’t know. I tell you, I don’t know.”

  Sergeant Glover looked at her for a moment, disbelief patent on every feature.

  Then, with a shrug, he began to ask the same questions over again.

  As the hours passed and there seemed to be no sign of the interrogation ever ending, Phil went through the point of complete exhaustion, out the other side, and back again. She slumped in the chair, white-faced, drifting in and out of sleep, constantly woken on the point of dozing by the loudness of Glover’s voice. The sergeant was replaced at regular intervals by other men in uniform, but there was no respite for Phil, and at last she reached a pit of tiredness which defied all her interrogators’ attempts to keep her awake and coherent.

  “Okay,” said Sergeant Glover at last. “Take her away and lock her up for the night. We’ll go on in the morning.”

  She woke hours later to realise that the interrogation had been resumed.

  In the short breaks when no-one was asking her questions, Phil reflected miserably that although she knew nothing about the gun or the heroin, she had withheld knowledge which might have saved lives. The guilt at times threatened to overwhelm her. The only thing which kept her from breaking down and telling Glover everything was the iron hard determination to keep Davy out of it if this could possibly be done.

  Looking back later on the nightmare, Phil could never remember if she had been in the cell for two days or three when Glover finally read her her rights and charged her.

  Phil at once rang Gerry at his office.

  She felt unable to deal with her parents’ reactions if she rang them from the police station.

  Gerry would be able to give them some support when he broke the news. And with his legal training, he would be able to advise her. Or at least get a solicitor for her who could tell her what she should do.

  But Gerry, horrified and dismayed at Phil’s position, found that his efforts to have her released were of no avail. The charge had been made. Phil would be brought to court in a matter of weeks. Charges against drug dealers were always pushed ahead quickly.

  The most he could do for Phil was to see that she had the best legal representation he knew of.

  He was thankful that in spite of the lengthy interrogation, she had admitted nothing. At least they would not be coming to court with a confession to deny.

  But he had to admit to himself, although not to Phil or to his parents, that from every other point of view, the position was bad, even hopeless.

  Chapter Sixty

  Sheila left hospital soon after her interview with Constable Kirk. As she had told Francis repeatedly, there was nothing really wrong with her. Before she left, she inquired about Pat Fitzwilliam and was allowed to call in to see him for a few minutes.

  Pat had a broken leg and several cracked ribs, but the most severe of his injuries was the blow on the head which had knocked him unconscious for a dangerously long time and left him weak and shaken.

  He was lying in bed with the leg strapped up in plaster and a rakish looking bandage round his head. When he saw Sheila, he brightened up at once and grinned at her.

  “Hello, Pat,” she said, coming over to the bed and looking down at him gravely. “How are you?”

  “All the better for seeing you, me darling,” Pat responded in stage Irish. “You’re lookin’ good, Sheila – as always!”

  Sheila had arrived at the hospital the previous night in the tattered remains of Delmara’s ice blue and feathered creation. Her mother had brought her in some fresh clothes to wear, but since they dated from a year and a half ago when she had first moved out, they were not what she herself would have chosen to be seen in.

  As she pulled on the neat navy skirt and white blouse which her mother had selected from the clothes she had left behind, Sheila hoped quite seriously that there were no photographers lurking. Pat’s cheerful compliment reassured her a little.

  “Tell me about it,” Sheila requested, sitting down on the edge of the bed carefully to avoid Pat’s injured leg.

  “I can only say that I courageously attacked the gunmen and really thought I was getting somewhere when the world ended – or that’s what it seemed like. I’m told I was knocked unconscious by the butt end of one of their guns. The doctors were a bit worried about that for a while, but I’ve been X-rayed and they tell me there’s no lasting damage to my first class intellect! The leg and the ribs will heal up before too long, so there’s no big deal. I asked them if I’d be able to play the saxophone afterwards but the nurse said only if I’d been able to before, so that was a let-down.”

  Sheila groaned politely. “Very witty. But what about your driving, Pat? You’ll be out of it for a while, yes?”

  “Not too long, I think,” Pat answered her seriously. “Six weeks at most if the leg heals up as it should. And then I’ll keep that promise, and take you round the track at Kirkistown.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Sheila lightly. “I’m going home now, Pat. See you before long. All the best.” She rose and bent forward to kiss him on the forehead, and went, leaving a scent of spring in the air behind her and a young man unsure whether he felt wonderful or miserable on her account.

  Sheila rang her mother, promised to come round later and managed to choke Kathy off from an immediate visit to the hospital. Then she made her way to her new riverside apartment near Delmara’s main workshop. She had been living here when home in Belfast between fashion shows.

  It was a small apartment, best suited for one, but fitted up very comfortably, even luxuriously. One wall of the front room consisted of windows, with patio doors in the middle, looking out over the River Lagan.This gave access to a small balcony where Sheila kept some pot plants. The carpet was a thick, soft beige and the comfortable sofa and chairs were in a flowery pattern of beige and blue. The walls were painted in pale, subtle shades against which a few modern pictures in bright colours stood out dramatically.

  Francis Delmara, a frequent visitor to the flat, often reflected that Sheila’s highly coloured beauty flamed like the sun against the pale background. There was a tiny fitted kitchen in more pale colours and a softly carpeted bathroom with bidet, shower, and corner bath, as well as the more usual fittings.

  Sheila’s bedroom alone struck a discordant note. Piled high with clothes of all colours and descriptions, with books and furry toys from her pre-model existence, and with a dressing
table where every square inch was covered in bottles and boxes of make-up and other accessories, its pale colour scheme was scarcely visible beneath the accumulation of Sheila’s life. She kept her clutter to the bedroom and the rest of the flat was consistently immaculate and sparkling.

  On this late January morning there was a chill in the air in spite of the weak winter sunshine which came and went fitfully. Sheila remembered that she had not been home overnight to turn on the central heating and flicked a switch as she closed the front door before sinking down into her favourite chair placed, as always, to overlook the river. Her face was drawn. She fell to reflecting on her life and the changes a couple of years had brought.

  As so often still, John Branagh was in the forefront of her mind.

  She kicked her shoes off and drew her feet up beneath her in the big, soft armchair. The doorbell rang. Could it be John?

  Her face fell when she opened the door and saw Francis Delmara standing there, his arms full of flowers. Hastily she summoned up a welcoming smile.

  “You’re looking good, beautiful,” Francis drawled. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Yes, of course,” Sheila said vaguely. “Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “I’ll make the coffee,” Francis corrected her. “I know where everything is. And I’ll put these things in water.”

  “They’re lovely. Thanks.” Sheila bent her head to sniff hopefully at the hothouse freesias and roses, but of course they had no smell.

  Francis disappeared into the kitchen and Sheila retired to her seat in the window.

  The fleeting sunshine gleamed for a moment on the lightly moving ripples on the river’s surface. The bank was edged with grass and a tree stood up bare-branched at the edge of Sheila’s view. Suddenly, with a stab of pain, she was back again walking along the higher reaches of the Lagan with John Branagh.

  She wondered what John was doing now, where he had gone after the police arrived, whether she would ever see him again.

  As it happened, John Branagh was engaged at that moment in a process best described as tearing up the Royal Victoria Hospital by the roots in an attempt to find out what had happened to Sheila Doherty.