Chief Inspector McArthur blabbing away the whole flight. Only Lawson was listening to him. I was ignoring him and Crabbie was pretending to be asleep.
Touchdown at the UDR base in Woodburn.
Car back to the barracks.
Grins all around. Lofty talk: the UTV news, maybe the BBC, certainly print media …
Agree. Agree. Agree.
Sanctuary of my office with its view of Belfast Lough and Carrick Castle.
Next morning I volunteered for riot duty just to get some action. No one could see the bandage under the riot helmet.
A day of riding in Land Rovers. Of shields and formations and Molotovs. Cop banter. Milk bottles filled with piss or petrol tumbling through the air. Seen it all before. Too bored even to describe it.
Home. Dinner. TV. Two Ronnies. EastEnders. Wogan. Newsnight. The National Anthem. No sleep.
Time went by. Bed. Breakfast. Another day at the office. Lawson’s face peeking round the door.
‘Cup of tea, guvnor?’
‘Aye, why not?’
‘Sergeant McCrabban wants to know if it’s OK to clear the incident room. Start putting things into boxes …’
‘Yeah, good idea. Not the basement, though. Keep it handy. The lawyers will want to start extradition proceedings asap and God knows what they’ll need.’
Lawson came back with the tea.
Good lad. Two sugars, McVitie’s plain chocolate biscuits.
‘Thanks, son,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome, sir.’
Standing there. Gormless. Crooked smile – he’s not going to ask for a transfer, is he?
‘Yes, Lawson?’
‘Quite a forty-eight hours, sir.’
‘Indeed.’
‘My first time in a helicopter.’
‘It’s exciting, isn’t it?’
‘Very. When do you think we’ll actually get him, sir.’
‘For the trial?’
‘Yes. I know you don’t like us to take it personal, sir, but I can’t wait to see that bastard in the dock of the Crown Court.’
‘It’ll be months, Lawson, maybe even years. His lawyers will fight it all the way and extradition from the North to the South and vice versa is never bloody easy.’
Lawson seemed downhearted.
‘Don’t worry, young Lochinvar. He can delay it, but he can’t stop it. We’ve got a good case here and even a dozy old judge is going to see that.’
More prescience. More Mystic Meg.
And, as usual, I was wrong.
Two days later.
Back home from the chippie and the offie with a pastie supper and a six pack of Bass.
Mrs Campbell from next door standing on my doorstep.
‘Used my spare key to get in, your bloody phone was going mad. Ken couldn’t sleep and you know he’s on nights, so I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Uh, well …’
‘It’s OK, I answered it. It was a boy from down South. Burke, his name was. Said he would try you later. I asked if he could wait until tea time, when Ken should be up and he said OK.’
‘Uhm, thanks Mrs C.’
I called Burke’s office number, but he’d gone for the day. I tried him at home, but he wasn’t there.
I waited by the phone. Ate my dinner. Drank my beer.
Something was cooking, but what?
I called Crabbie at the station, but as far as he knew, all was quiet.
TV and records. Finally a late-night phone call.
I wasn’t in bed yet.
Bring-bring, bring-bring, bring-bring …
Into the hall.
‘Burke?’
‘It’s not Burke, it’s me, McArthur. Did I wake you?’
‘I was still up, sir.’
‘Aye, no doubt, were you watching the snooker?’
‘No, sir, I was listening to a record.’
‘Yeah, well, I hope you’re sitting down. You’re not going to believe this, Duffy. He hasn’t opposed our request. Nothing. Full cooperation. He’s on his way up right now.’
‘What are you talking about? Who is?’
‘Ek.’
‘What?’
‘He didn’t object to the extradition request. He’s on his way up tonight.’
‘He didn’t object to the – Are you sure?’
‘Perfectly sure. I’ve just been tipped off by newly promoted Chief Superintendent Strong.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘It makes sense if he wants to get the trial over with.’
‘Only if he thinks he can win, and he’s not going to win.’
‘Are you positive?’
‘You’ve seen the evidence, sir,’ I said, not completely confidently.
‘And if he’s planning to cop a plea, Duffy?’
‘Cross that bridge when we come to it, sir.’
‘No, we can’t be blindsided. We need a policy in place, now. You and me. We need to have this figured out before Strong gets on the blower again.’
I held the phone away from my head.
My thoughts of two days ago.
We didn’t want him to get away with it but could I really risk taking that video to a jury? All it needed was one ignorant fuckhead on the panel to say that one peeler in a boiler suit looked like every other peeler in a boiler suit.
‘I want him for premeditated murder, because that’s what it was, but if he confesses, I could give the DPP a recommendation of guilty of manslaughter, rather than murder, because of diminished responsibility.’
‘How so, diminished responsibility?’
‘He was in four wars. That’s bound to do something to your head.’
‘Right. OK. I’ll see you tomorrow. They’ll be taking him to Castlereagh. Presumably the detectives there will give us an interview first thing in the morning. And then we’ll need to go to court to oppose bail. So dress up, Duffy. A suit.’
‘I’ll do that.’
He hung up. I called Crabbie and Lawson.
They couldn’t figure it out, either.
Why would Ek and his lawyers not oppose extradition? He could have held this thing up for years … Every defence lawyer knew that it was always better to delay: the evidence goes stale, memories go bad, all the more opportunity for introducing reasonable doubt.
I had two fingers of Laphroaig to help me sleep but it didn’t work.
I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep.
My unconscious knew something my consciousness didn’t quite appreciate yet: the devious Mr Ek was up to something.
29: KAMI NO ITTE – THE DIVINE MOVE
Clouds over the Knockagh monument. A storm over the condemned city of Belfast. Elemental rain: cold and tinged with hail. Lightning, thunder, End of Days stuff … the usual. The three of us in the Land Rover driving up to Castlereagh Holding Centre in East Belfast – the main and most secure remand centre for all suspected criminals in Ulster.
McCrabban was driving and I was up front with him. Lawson was sitting all by himself in the back. Rain drumming on the steel roof. Window wipers on full tilt. Hypnotic.
My mind drifting. None of this made any sense. As the Robot in Lost in Space was wont to say: this did not compute.
Castlereagh Holding Centre wasn’t far from Mount Stewart, the ancestral seat of Lord Castlereagh himself. Ill-omened place. Ill-omened man. Byron said of his grave in Westminster Abbey: ‘Posterity will ne’er survey/A nobler grave than this/Here lie the bones of Castlereagh/Stop, traveller and piss.’ Shelley said: ‘I met Murder on the way/He had a mask like Castlereagh.’
Murder on the way, indeed.
We drove up the A23, through rainy East Belfast, until we hit the front gates of the notorious Holding Centre. In the bad old days of the 1970s suspects here had gotten the rubber-hose treatment and it still had a horrible reputation. Recently the Chief Constable had taken Amnesty International and the American media on a tour, but all the old suspicions and rumours died hard. Not that Ek was going to get anyth
ing but the absolute by-the-book treatment. Even the stupidest reservist wouldn’t want to mess with his legal representation.
We showed our passes at the gate and parked the Land Rover by the ‘bomb-proof’ outer wall.
We got soaked in the car park, went through the double doors and were met by a man with a clipboard.
‘Inspector Duffy?’
‘That’s us,’ I said.
‘This way, if you please.’
He led us to a desk sergeant who made us not only sign in, but wear name badges and surrender our weapons, too, which was a first. An unpleasant first. Naked without a sidearm even if it was useless against the most likely form of attack up here: mortars or coffee-jar bombs chucked over the wall.
A long green corridor covered with wanted posters and government warnings about honey traps and booby traps and mercury tilt switch bombs.
Stairs down to the basement. Buzzing strip lights added to the ominous feeling. Another corridor, another level. Strobing fluorescent lights sending us messages from the future. What messages? Bad stuff. It’s always bad stuff.
‘Here,’ the constable with the clipboard said.
We entered the room.
Bog-standard RUC i/v room. Desk, chairs, tape machine. Three Castlereagh detectives, an RUC stenographer and a woman who appeared to be the tea lady. Ek was sitting there with his Dublin lawyer, FitzGerald, and a local lawyer, a QC called Sir Evelyn Grimshaw, whom I knew from the telly and the front pages of the Belfast Telegraph. Grimshaw was establishment: Inst, QUB, the London Bar, the Belfast Bar. He was a glum-looking bloke with a Deputy Dawg face and a droopy brown moustache; but looks were definitely deceiving in his case – he was a take-no-prisoners silk who’d worked both sides of the court. Two years back, an RUC motorcycle cop had tried to get him for speeding and Grimshaw had fucked with the man so badly he’d ended up getting demoted and posted to Strabane.
‘It’s quite the throng in here,’ I said. ‘You think we could maybe clear the room a little?’
We managed to kick out the stenographer, the tea lady and two of the Castlereagh coppers. Lawson and McCrabban retreated behind the mirror, but Ek insisted on keeping both of his lawyers, or rather, both of the lawyers insisted for him.
Ek said nothing. ‘Your show, Duffy,’ one of the Castlereagh detectives said, and smiled.
I looked at the remaining Castlereagh detective who offered me the lead interview chair opposite Ek.
I sat down, turned on the tape machine, told it who was in the room, the time and date.
I offered Ek and the two lawyers a Marlboro. They all refused. I lit one myself.
‘Mr Ek, you’ve voluntarily waived your objections to extradition and have thus been brought here this morning to face murder charges in the case of Miss Lily Bigelow. You are being charged with premeditated murder with malice aforethought. Do you understand the nature of the charge that is being levelled against you?’
Ek nodded. ‘Before you begin your questions, detective, I wish to make a short statement.’
I looked at the two lawyers. Grimshaw was practically begging me to kick up a stink, but I couldn’t care less. ‘Go ahead, Mr Ek, be our guest. Say what you like.’
Ek gave me a little nod.
Could this be it? The confession? Maybe he wanted it over and done with. Sooner or later, they all wanted it over and done with.
Ek pointed at the microphone and the lawyer moved it closer.
‘My name is Harald Ek, I wish to state for the record that I intend fully to cooperate with the authorities in Northern Ireland in their investigation into the death of Miss Lily Bigelow.’
He nodded at Grimshaw, folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
‘You’re not confessing?’ I blurted out.
‘I do not wish to confess to a crime I did not commit,’ Ek said.
‘Do you deny that’s you on the video?’ I asked.
‘It is not me on the video, because I was not there. Clearly you suspect me of being guilty of this crime and have tampered with the evidence to produce this tape.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said.
‘Yeah the RUC’s never fitted up a suspect before, especially not here in Castlereagh … oh, and for the record, that was sarcasm,’ Grimshaw said. ‘Mr Ek came here because he wishes his part in this sorry affair to be done with as quickly as possible, so that the RUC can find the real perpetrator or perpetrators of this crime.’
‘You are denying that that’s you on the tape? That’s going to be your defence?’ I asked, incredulously.
‘That isn’t my client on tape. It can’t be, because he wasn’t there,’ Grimshaw said.
All this time, Ek hadn’t taken his eyes off me, a sad little smile on his thin lips.
The room was spinning and I could feel this little pro forma hearing running away from me. But as Muhammad Ali would say: a great boxer makes his opponent fight his fight, on his terms. I had done this a hundred times, he was in my arena. Ek was in the chair. My fucking chair. In my fucking room. In my fucking city. I stubbed out my cigarette, leaned forward, whispered: ‘We know it was you, Ek. And the jury will take one look at that videotape and they’ll know that it was you, too. Do you really want to spend the next twenty-five years of your life in the Maze Prison? Since you’re not a paramilitary, you’ll be in your own wing. All by yourself. Like Rudolf Hess. Twenty-five years of grey walls and grey food and grey rain while you go quietly mad. Is that what you want, Mr Ek?’
‘That is what you want, detective. I want the truth about Miss Bigelow’s death to become known, which is why I have surrendered myself.’
‘You’ll have a bail hearing later on today, Mr Ek. The RUC will oppose bail and you’ll be remanded in custody. You’ll be taken to prison and tonight will be the first night of those long twenty-five years.’
‘You seem to be suggesting an alternative, Inspector Duffy,’ Grimshaw said.
‘If Mr Ek were to plead guilty and give us a full confession, the RUC would recommend to the Director of Public Prosecutions that he be charged with manslaughter rather than murder, the lesser charge due to diminished responsibility on account of Mr Ek’s traumatic military service in multiple combat theatres.’
‘Involuntary manslaughter, with no minimum custodial period,’ Grimshaw said quickly.
‘We can discuss that after the full confession,’ I replied immediately.
Grimshaw looked at Mr Ek who still hadn’t taken his eyes off me.
‘What do you think?’ Grimshaw whispered to his client.
Ek said nothing.
‘We’d like a few moments alone with our client, if we may,’ FitzGerald said.
‘Certainly, we’ll give you the room,’ I said.
‘A different room. Without a two-way mirror and a tape recorder,’ Grimshaw said.
‘Outside, perhaps?’ Ek asked. ‘I think it is going to snow.’
The Castlereagh boys led them to a small inner courtyard with a stunted apple tree, a couple of benches and a pond with sad-looking fish in it.
Ek sat on the bench with his two lawyers while we watched them through the window. All three men in expensive overcoats, expensive scarves, expensive shoes. They talked. We said nothing, waiting behind the glass. Ek turned to look at us staring at him. He smiled and stood and examined the early apple blossom on the tree and then, to his evident delight, it did begin to snow.
Snowflakes like the morning of the murder.
‘They’ve had enough fucking time,’ I said and pushed the door open and went outside.
‘Right lads. Parley’s over. Back to the interview room.’
Ek shook his head. ‘I will go back to the cell and wait for my appearance in court.’
I looked at Grimshaw. ‘What the fuck is this?’
‘My client will plead not guilty this afternoon. See you in court, Inspector Duffy.’
I restrained a sudden urge to scuff up the leather of his shoe with the mucky bottom of my DM.
‘That you will, Mr Grimshaw, that you will.’
Belfast Central Criminal Court, two hours later.
In fight speak: round 2.
All three of us again: McCrabban, Lawson, me.
Three of them: Grimshaw, Ek, FitzGerald.
But the odds weren’t even remotely as close as that. A recommendation against bail from an RUC detective inspector would, in most cases, be enough for the judge to remand a defendant in custody.
‘The Crown opposes bail. Mr Ek is from a wealthy family and is clearly a flight risk,’ the Crown prosecutor said.
‘Mr Ek has voluntarily surrendered himself to this jurisdiction,’ Grimshaw said.
‘Mr Ek did no such thing. He was extradited from the Irish Republic under an international arrest warrant.’
‘Mr Ek did not oppose extradition.’
The judge looked at the case notes. ‘The RUC opposes bail?’
‘We do, your honour,’ I said.
‘Considering the nature of the charges against the defendant, bail cannot be set at this time,’ the judge said.
Round 2 to me, I think.
And yet …
And yet, the bastard was still smiling as they led him away in handcuffs.
I didn’t like the smile.
I didn’t like that smile one bit but it was over to the prosecutors now.
We drove back to the station.
The snow, as it nearly always does, had turned to rain.
I was uneasy all afternoon. I sat in my office, watching the lough furtive with the movement of birds. The taste in my mouth was acrid and metallic.
‘Tea?’ Lawson asked.
I drank tea, ate McVitie’s digestives, nursed two fingers of Jura whisky.
The clock ate segments of my life on its way round to five o’clock. The day shift went home. I sent Lawson and the reservists home. McCrabban was duty detective but I stayed with him.
Waiting.
For the bell announcing the next round.
The bell I knew was coming.
Pasta for dinner.
A beer and another whisky or two for me. Lemonade for McCrabban.
At seven, Lawson came back in. ‘Feeling jumpy, boss. Couldn’t stay at home.’
Darts in the rec room. Me on double forty to win the game. The phone ringing in the incident room. McCrabban put down his pipe and ran to get it.
Rain Dogs Page 29