Woman of State

by Simon Berthon

  ‘If that’s Carl or Henry, I wonder what Henry or Carl’s like,’ whispered Poots.

  ‘Don’t worry, Billy, they won’t fancy you,’ Carne reassured him. ‘Just remember it’s legal now. Both sides of the border.’

  ‘How d’you know I wasn’t fancying him?’ whispered Poots.

  ‘You’re surreal.’

  They reached the bar. ‘What can I get you two gentlemen?’ asked Carl or Henry. The accent was Dublin soft, a touch of the lyrical.

  ‘I’ll take a glass of that nice-looking Viognier,’ said Poots. Is he winding me up, or them? Carne asked himself.

  ‘An excellent choice, sir. And your young friend?’ Carne reddened as Poots ordered him a Bacardi and Coke.

  ‘Place has changed a lot since I was last here,’ said Poots.

  ‘Terrible state when Henry and I took it on,’ replied Carl, as he had now to be. ‘Windows rotted, render blown inside and out, roof letting the heavens in, the clients had fled. We must have been mad.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’ asked Carne.

  ‘Nearly ten years now.’ He beamed with pleasure at the shining wooden tables and antique prints on the walls. ‘We’re finally getting there.’

  ‘Any customers from the old days?’ wondered Poots idly.

  Carl pointed to an old man in a cap, propped at the end of the bar over a scarcely sipped pint of Guinness.

  ‘Larry,’ cried Carl, ‘these two gentlemen are interested in the old days here. Can I introduce them to you?’

  The old man raised his head and exposed a mottled, red face and scrawny chin. Unkempt grey hair hung over his collar. ‘You do that, Carl, so I can tell them to fuck the fuck off.’

  Carl beamed at them. ‘You’re in, gentlemen. It’s not many who get as friendly a welcome as that.’

  Poots walked over to him. ‘Do you remember the night they had the ruckus, Larry? When the Brits took McCartney. And the lads took the Brit.’

  ‘What the fuck’s that to do with you?’

  ‘My mate here’ – he nodded to Carne – ‘he was a Brit soldier. Friend of the boy they took. Close friend. You understand what I mean? He’d like to find out what happened to him.’

  Thank you, Billy, thought Carne. It might be a gay pub now but it was not a condition of entry.

  The old man eased himself up from his seat. At full stretch, he was well over six foot, looking down at Carne through his rheumy eyes.

  ‘By Jesus,’ he rasped, ‘you were Brit military.’

  ‘Only a squaddie,’ replied Carne. He had no choice but to play along with whatever game Billy was setting up. ‘Just the poor bloody infantry.’

  ‘By Jesus,’ the old man repeated. ‘Fucking exploited like the rest of us. By Jesus.’ He offered his hand. Carne took it and shook it. Poots cast him a smug glance. ‘Don’t mind you being one of them,’ confided the old man in hushed tones. ‘I’ve known plenty.’ He took slow steps to the door, opened it and waved them to follow.

  The car park was a large, smoothly tarmacked square. ‘Used to be the heads there.’ He pointed to the far corner of the rectangle. ‘No one used them, smelt like skunk piss.’ Carne and Poots exchanged quizzical looks. ‘Heads’ was a nautical expression for toilets. ‘I was on leave. By Jesus, it happened in a flash.’

  ‘What exactly happened?’ Carne asked gently.

  ‘Went by like a bolt of lightning and clap of thunder. Group of the boys were here. Celebrating something. Can’t remember.’

  ‘A birthday?’ suggested Poots.

  ‘Aye, a birthday, don’t know who. The boys leave. There’s two big’uns giving the orders. The others hangers-on. I’m sort of watching. Bit cut. The two big’uns are talking, unfriendly, gesticulating. One breaks off, crosses the road. Takes a leak. Turns back – a fucking great thing speeds in, lights flashing, horn blaring. They all freeze. They snatch the big’un from the lay-by. They shoot off. A thousand miles an hour. By Jesus, that motor. Never forget that.’ The old man’s face shone, brought to unexpected vividness by the memory. ‘By Jesus, I’ll never forget that,’ he repeated. He stared down the road in silence, immersed in dreams of exhaust fumes and burning rubber.

  Carne hesitated to break into the reverie. ‘And after the jeep sped off . . .?’

  ‘Eh?’ His eyes had retreated deep inside their sockets.

  ‘What happened then, Larry?’ Poots cut in.

  ‘By Jesus, it was bedlam, it was. Guns firing, screams, wails. “They got Martin,” the other big’un says. And then a bloke’s scarpering down the road. The boys chase him. They’re firing. Bring him down. The big’un says, “Any of youse not involved get back inside the pub. That’s an order.” So we go back. Next I hear is cars taking off.’

  He looked up at his two interrogators, his voice exhausted. ‘That’s it. Now you buy me a fucking drink.’

  As they followed the old man back inside the pub, Carne turned to Poots.

  ‘Get any of that, Billy?’

  ‘Don’t worry, boss, we’ll deconstruct in a minute.’

  The old man settled back on his perch, Poots bought drinks and left a hefty tip at the bar. ‘Just going to have a mooch around, Carl. OK with you?’

  ‘Of course. And don’t you worry,’ he said with a stage wink, ‘mum’s the word.’

  Poots paced the car park, pub frontage, road width, lay-by length and width, the bush and field behind it, and called over measurements for a diagram Carne was drawing.

  ‘OK,’ said Carne, ‘the old man says a large, fast vehicle – some kind of SUV presumably – speeds in, stops and snatches Martin McCartney as he’s crossing back over the road after taking a piss. Assuming it’s a stake-out, that implies very precise timing. So the spotter, who is Wallis, must be right by the action – there’s just about enough cover in the hedgerows. And the snatch car must be close to achieve that precision.’

  ‘Are you assuming the target was McCartney?’ asked Poots. ‘Or didn’t they care whether they got him or Kennedy?’

  ‘I’m not assuming anything,’ replied Carne. ‘Maybe they’d have got both if they could.’

  ‘When you were up your hill with the buried bodies, I just happened to find a nice wee pub in a village along the road.’ Poots had slipped into his storytelling mode. Carne told himself to be patient. ‘I become a historian doing some genealogy and know there’s a branch of the Kennedy family that comes from round there. Unlike these fruits, the landlord is local, been raised there, came back when the violence was dying down. So I find myself having a chat with him. You know, the weather, crops, shite Irish beer. Then I say, “Isn’t this where that big lad, Joseph Kennedy, came from?” Christ, he fair leaps on me. “Best not mention that name round here,” he says. “Oh,” I say, all innocence, “why’s that?” He leans over and whispers in my ear, “They say he was a traitor. Disappeared. Never came back. Family disowned him, excommunicated him. Give you some advice: don’t mention that name in these parts.”’

  ‘What are you implying, Billy?’

  ‘You and I know the problem, boss. You can never trust stories and rumours. And Kennedy was on the losing side of the argument.’

  ‘Sure. Doesn’t stop us shuffling the pieces of the jigsaw.’ Carne looked up and down the road. It had been resurfaced and its markings repainted since 1994 but there was no reason for its course and foliage to have changed. They drove up and down it, a mile in each direction. There were enough verges, a couple of field entrances and, in one direction, a lay-by obscured from the Black Hat car park. Plenty of cover for the snatch car to wait out of sight. They stopped at the lay-by.

  ‘So . . .’ began Carne.

  ‘So,’ continued Poots, ‘they’re waiting within five hundred yards at the closest, a mile at the outside.’

  Carne interrupted. ‘And make it to the car park inside twenty seconds if the vehicle’s souped up.’

  ‘OK,’ agreed Poots, ‘we’ll work on twenty seconds.’

  They returned to the Black Hat and positioned
themselves at the lounge bar exit.

  ‘Right,’ said Poots. ‘The party’s leaving the pub. Let’s say six or eight of them, Kennedy and McCartney in front. The two big’uns as the old man calls them.’

  ‘Assume they’ve had a few . . .’ said Carne.

  ‘But they’re still being careful . . .’

  ‘Unless tonight their guard is down.’

  ‘McCartney says he wants a piss . . .’

  ‘Is that the cause for the argument? Or discussion? Or whatever it is?’

  ‘Too petty. Unless McCartney’s so paranoid he wants someone to go over and stand over him while he does his business.’

  ‘Unlikely. Maybe they’ve been arguing in the pub.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll never know that.’

  The two men walked halfway to the middle of the car park.

  ‘Imagine their car’s here,’ said Carne. ‘Could be closer to the road, could be further.’

  ‘Best we can do,’ agreed Poots again.

  ‘You play Kennedy and wait here. I’ll be McCartney and cross the road for the piss.’ Carne waited for traffic to pass and crossed. At that point the hedgerow was set back a good fifteen yards. He walked towards it, his back to Poots, then turned round.

  ‘Most blokes,’ he shouted across the road, ‘would want to piss nearer the hedgerow than the road. We’ll assume that.’ He turned back to the hedgerow and, injecting realism, had a piss.

  ‘Count seconds from now!’ he yelled. Carne tidied himself below, did up his zip, turned round and, with no traffic to interrupt him, crossed the road into the car park, rejoining Poots.

  ‘About fifteen seconds, boss.’

  ‘That’s tight, bloody tight.’

  ‘So, to get the timing right, the spotter’s got to be close enough to see precisely when he’s ending the piss.’

  ‘It’s dark. He can be hiding in the hedgerow. From there his eyeline takes in the pub, the car park, and the toilets beyond.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have known about McCartney, coming over to piss.’

  ‘Christ, if he’s in the hedgerow, he must be shitting himself.’

  ‘But if Wallis’s the spotter . . .’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘And he’s done this before . . .’

  ‘So not shitting himself.’

  ‘OK, but what he, and they, are expecting is the party to walk out of the door into the car park, head towards the car, or cars, and McCartney and Kennedy to get into one of them accompanied by a couple of the hangers-on.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Intercept and seize the two of them presumably.’

  ‘Or track their car, maybe?’

  ‘Christ, they were taking some bloody risk, weren’t they?’ exclaimed Poots.

  ‘Maybe they had no choice,’ replied Carne. ‘And were up against a deadline.’ He took in the 360-degree view from where they stood. ‘But the end result is that Wallis’s friends in the snatch car make off with McCartney and Wallis is hunted down and taken by Kennedy and friends.’

  ‘Wallis’s compatriots seem to make no attempt to rescue him.’

  ‘’Cos they’re confident he’ll get away.’

  ‘He’s always done it before.’

  ‘Surely they’d try to pick him up?’

  ‘Maybe they did try. But too much was blowing off. Remember from what Kennedy later tells the girl – Maire – he and McCartney are on the watch-out by now.’

  ‘Which the Brits know.’

  ‘And they know Wallis is a survivor.’

  ‘Not on this night,’ Poots concluded grimly.

  Carne thought of the skeleton in the field. The clear blue of midday was giving way to dark, rain-filled, late afternoon clouds. ‘We’ve seen enough, let’s go.’

  A few miles along the main road, they turned right at a crossroads north of the border town of Crossmaglen. Set back from the road was a memorial to the nine IRA hunger strikers who died in 1982. Nine neat crosses set into polished marble and lovingly precise engravings of their names. It could have been a roll of honour recalling young men anywhere in the world – Thiepval, Whitehall, Mons, the D-Day beaches – fighting for that they saw as their country and a just cause. Yet, to most of the world beyond, these men were convicted terrorists from the dregs of history. Carne was unexpectedly moved at the list of names. Were they ghosts from a dead conflict or lying in wait for its resurgence? Was that what Joseph Kennedy was all about?

  The hills that had been so piercingly clear earlier in the day were now swathed in a coat of drizzle. Clarity giving way to confusion.

  ‘If McCartney was the key target, it fell neatly for them,’ said Carne. Poots, driving, said nothing. ‘Didn’t it? The geography, I mean. The layout,’ persisted Carne.

  ‘Aye, boss.’

  ‘You wonder what kind of bedlam there’d have been if they’d had to carve through the group to snatch both the big men.’

  ‘Aye,’ repeated Poots.

  ‘Gone dumb, Billy?’

  ‘Aye.’ Poots was peering through the windscreen wipers and gloom with studied deliberation. An excuse not to talk.

  ‘Though I suppose,’ continued Carne, ‘they didn’t have to go through with it that night. Maybe it wasn’t even the first attempt. Just waiting for the right chance. Whenever it came.’

  ‘Aye, you could be right, boss.’ Carne gave up. No chance of extracting any blood from the stone beside him.

  ‘Boss,’ said Poots.

  ‘You’re alive. Thought there was a robot at the wheel.’

  ‘Something’s been gnawing at me. It’s a bit awkward, like . . .’

  ‘Don’t hold back, Billy.’

  ‘Aye, maybe . . .’

  ‘Don’t bottle it in.’

  Poots pulled in at the side of the road and cut the engine.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ said Carne.

  ‘Aye, boss.’ He paused. ‘It’s the girl. Maire. Anne-Marie. Whatever she calls herself.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You like her, boss. Grown fond of her.’

  ‘That’s irrelevant.’ More silence. ‘Say what you mean.’

  ‘It’s just that all this has come from her. Hasn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean, Billy?’

  ‘The account of the night we’ve been working from comes from her. From what she says Kennedy told her happened after they’d fetched her.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Partly. But we have facts. Wallis was captured, his body found over two decades later. Kennedy disappeared, body found hanged in the here and now. McCartney disappeared, body never found. Same goes for O’Donnell and Black. And we’ve got the old man’s recollection of the ruckus in the car park.’

  ‘That could be folk memory,’ said Billy. ‘We’re in Ireland. Land of legends.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s consistent.’ This time, Carne hesitated. ‘You’d best tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘It’s just that we, you, are taking the girl on trust.’

  ‘You think she’s leading me on, is that it? You reckon I’ve gone soft on her.’

  ‘It’s what I said earlier. When I was playing us as the poofters. Appearances. You can’t always trust them.’

  ‘I’ll bear what you say in mind, Billy,’ said Carne coolly.

  Just short of Newry, they turned onto the A1 to Belfast. Not a word had been spoken, a rare unease tugging at them. Carne reached for the radio and tuned to Radio 3.

  ‘Do you mind, Billy?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t imagine you’d like marching bands, would you, boss?’ replied Poots. Carne grinned at him and the tension vanished with the music.

  An hour later, they drew into the dull, flat buildings of Castlereagh police station. It was early evening; Poots said that, for once, home and wife beckoned more attractively than office and colleagues. Carne headed into CID headquarters alone. The desk officer intercepted him.

  ‘The boss wants to see you, sir.’

  ‘What about
?’

  ‘Didn’t say. Only that it was urgent and I should catch you as soon as you were back.’

  The boss was Assistant Chief Constable Raymond Walsh – a local man, Catholic, Queen’s University first, younger, and in the fast lane. Carne did not actively dislike him, if only because the surface was too smooth to get your teeth into. He knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in.’ The voice was soft, the appearance formal. Dust, mark, and dandruff-free uniform – the last an exception within the force – hair trimmed and parted, glasses designer and narrow-framed.

  ‘You asked to see me, sir,’ said Carne.

  ‘Yes, thanks for looking in, Jon, I know how busy you are,’ replied Walsh. The courtesy was a mask.

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘I’ll come to the point. There’s been some murmuring . . .’

  ‘Murmuring?’

  ‘Aye, whispers from across the water. Unhappiness with your interventions in the Joseph Kennedy case. It’s the Met’s case, not ours.’

  Carne bristled. ‘He’s relevant to the Wallis case. Maybe to three other disappearances, too.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Murder is murder, sir.’

  ‘You’re never going to convict anyone.’

  ‘I have witnesses.’

  ‘Well, that may be an issue too, Chief Inspector.’ The switch from first name to rank was a signal. They had moved onto formal territory. ‘I understand that you have been – how shall I put this? – cultivating one particular witness. Now a prominent person.’

  ‘You mean Ms Gallagher. She is relevant to the inquiry.’

  ‘I’m not doubting that. But this cultivation has been irregular. Meetings at her flat. Chats over glasses of wine. Assurances that may be inappropriate from a professional detective.’ Carne felt a dryness in his throat and sweat in his palms. The strip light on the ceiling came in and out of focus, casting an unsteady glow. He tried to calm himself and understand.