The Psalm Killer

by Chris Petit

  In the general confusion there were occasions when the army thought it was fighting the UDA only to discover afterwards that it was their own undercover soldiers they were shooting at. In one such battle, which Candlestick heard about from Lena, over a hundred rounds were fired, two soldiers were shot and a wounded plainclothes man was seen being executed with a bullet to the head.

  Herron laughed loudly when Candlestick told him this and laughed even louder when he retold the story to Breen until there were tears of laughter running down their cheeks. Herron also passed on to Breen the information that the Brits were running a republican massage parlour, just in case he was thinking of using it himself. Breen laughed at that too. Candlestick warned Lena of this, casually and in such a way that she understood he could say no more. He thought she seemed regretful when he left. Afterwards he missed her animal smell.

  Belfast became a city in which Candlestick blossomed like blood in water. He recognized that everything was spiralling out of control. The months ahead would become one long drunken killing spree. The phrase ‘licensed to kill’ would be one of the season’s jokes – a reference to Protestant bars being used as interrogation and killing centres.

  During that heady vigilante summer he became a law unto himself. He produced a pistol in the Strathaven Bar in the Shankill and stole the till money, which he put in his own pocket. As far as Herron was concerned, Candlestick answered only to him, or so he thought. He answered to Bunty too – and another man Bunty didn’t know about – but in the end the only one he answered to was himself.

  He carried a fragment of a song in his head, lodged there like a splinter of shrapnel: Hit him on the head with a rolling pin, Jump back, baby, jump back.

  People stood aside for him these days. He wore his violence like a halo.

  He walked purposefully through late-night streets on his way to kill a waiter from an east Belfast hotel where Herron and other loyalists gathered. Herron had him down as an informant, and decided to pursue the matter even though the lad was about to transfer to another hotel.

  Candlestick was told that he would receive his instructions from a top UDA man. It turned out to be Eddoes, who had disliked him since their initial disagreement over the protection rackets. Eddoes said to make sure he shot the boy in the head so that even if he lived, brain damage would make identification impossible. Candlestick, who knew about these things, said nothing and measured up Eddoes for when it would be his turn.

  Using a .32 pistol taken from a UDA arms dump, he made his call, banging on the waiter’s door, thinking, as he heard the lad get up, how stupid can he be. He suffered a moment’s anxiety, wondering what he’d do if it wasn’t the boy that answered.

  His hair was sticking up where it had been slept on and he was still struggling to put on his dressing gown, which had tartan lapels. He was dopy with sleep and when he turned to run Candlestick grabbed him and with one fluid movement slammed him against the wall, twisting the boy’s head sideways to see the eye. He liked watching its little clicks of emotion as it registered growing disbelief, then panic, terror, and the full horror, all in less time than it took for him to level the gun.

  Candlestick felt his awareness fine tuned to an exquisite pitch. It was one of those killings where each detail was so clear that it could be recalled at will and replayed, as fresh as when it was done: the squeeze on the trigger, the muzzle flash and how the skull opened up – with a soft thwap! that he swore he could hear beneath the boom of the unsilenced gun – then the way the body collapsed like a felled animal. He took in the missing bits in the floor mosaic by the boy’s head, and felt the tingle of the gun’s recoil.

  He fired twice more, point blank behind the ear. Dead easy, he thought, laughing at his joke. If they were marking out of ten he’d be a gold medal – action, interpretation and execution perfect. The angle of the arm as the coup was delivered, the slight cock of the wrist. He felt the adrenalin pumping through him, hoping that when his turn came he’d get someone as good as him. Hit him on the head with a rolling pin, Jump back, baby, jump back.

  16

  THE tyre tracks at the scene of the accident were from an old type that conformed to a comparatively small range of cars. By calling in favours, Cross borrowed enough personnel to reduce the list to a dozen. One of these was an old Austin van registered in the name of Berrigan. The address turned out to be false, but the previous owner was traced through vehicle records and, from there, the garage the van had been sold to. It was in a village near Strabane, close to the Donegal border.

  Cross was on the phone to the Republic when Hargreaves walked in, looking grim, with the news that the Divisional Commander wanted to see him.

  DC Nesbitt, widely known as King Billy because of his energetic loyalist views, was a burden that Cross had been spared since reinstatement. He had been away on policing courses in the United States, swotting up on riot control and lecturing on the hazards of Northern Ireland. He liked to point out that his men stood twice the risk of being shot than in El Salvador.

  Nesbitt was having a shouting day. He was a big man with the turkey cock mannerisms of someone much shorter than his six foot three. Hitler on Stilts was another of his nicknames.

  ‘We’ve got a hundred and twenty unsolved murders in this division alone, why not one more?’

  Nesbitt always took a pragmatic approach, calculating the importance of any murder to its effect on the community. The Mary Elam case was of some consequence because children had been left parentless. Nesbitt claimed he was not a heartless man. He argued for priorities. With a divisional murder squad of ten detectives and two hundred murders to solve each year, they could not afford to spend long on marginal deaths, and the anonymous vagrant was a case that should have been already closed.

  ‘A murder is a murder, sir.’

  ‘That’s the whole bloody point. You don’t know if it is a murder. Not for sure.’

  ‘With respect, if the body was frozen—’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘What’s the bloody cause of death, man?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Quite. Maybe the bugger fell into a deep freeze when he was drunk and died. Maybe he deliberately shut himself in the bloody thing because he was going to be dead any minute anyway. It’s not clear it’s a murder and if it’s not clear, you’re wasting time.’

  ‘What about the wrist scars?’

  ‘What scars?’

  ‘In my report.’

  Nesbitt glanced at Cross’s report then dropped it back on his desk. ‘Three more days, then forget it. And no extra personnel. What about this Elam woman thing?’

  ‘We think she had an arrangement with a landlord who let her use a room over his bar.’

  ‘What does that add? I thought she wasn’t seen in any of the pubs on the day she disappeared. How many pubs are we talking about?’

  God, the old bastard was being difficult. ‘Three or four.’

  ‘Which? Four or three?’

  ‘Four. She used three regularly, which we knew about, then a relief driver at Bennett’s Taxis told us just this morning he remembered she once wanted to go to another bar but he refused.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was over in the Shankill.’

  Nesbitt groaned. They had all assumed until then that Mary Elam had only hung out in Catholic places, with Catholic men.

  The Strathaven Bar was a red brick corner building on the edge of Shankill, with a Union Jack painted in the window. There were the usual elaborate murals on the gable-ends of houses with their blunt statements of political allegiance: ONE FAITH/ONE CROWN, IN GOD OUR TRUST, NO SURRENDER. Cross also spotted a familiar bit of loyalist graffiti, 6 into 26 won’t go, a reference to the six counties of the North standing in defiance of the twenty-six counties of the Republic.

  It was soon after morning opening when Cross and Hargreaves arrived, and there were only a couple of old men sat on wooden chairs, their b
eers in front of them on formica tables. They looked up with watery eyes. Their black suits were baggy and shiny with age, and one had his military medals pinned to his chest.

  The landlord was a large man, his frame filled out from drink, his handsome slab of a face smoothly razored and smelling of Brut. He grunted at them and told a German shepherd that lay growling disagreeably at his feet to shut up.

  ‘Search me,’ he said dully when Cross showed him the photograph of Mary Elam.

  ‘The dead woman that’s been in the papers.’

  ‘We think she came in here,’ added Hargreaves.

  ‘It’s not a crime.’

  Cross noted the tattoo on the man’s forearm, a heart and dagger with the words ‘Ulster Forever’ and a separate banner with ‘Mum & Dad’. Another sentimental bully, he thought, with a record probably as long as his arm.

  He stonewalled their questions until Cross in exasperation asked to use the telephone and was referred to a pay phone in the corridor.

  When he returned he leaned forward, speaking low enough for only the three of them to hear.

  ‘McElwaine, B.D. Grievous bodily harm. Assault. Possession of stolen goods. Need I go on?’

  The dog at McElwaine’s feet growled up at Cross.

  ‘Shut up, Puzi.’ He looked at Cross. ‘I don’t remember saying anything about my name.’

  Cross sighed. ‘Brian David McElwaine, licensed victualler. You’ve a sign over the door in big letters for anyone that cares to read.’

  McElwaine stared at the two policemen huffily. ‘What you’re talking about’s ancient history.’

  ‘Still enough to hold you for questioning in connection with this woman’s death,’ said Hargreaves.

  They were interrupted by the old man with the medals shuffling to the bar for two more beers, which allowed McElwaine some respite.

  ‘All right now, Billy?’

  ‘Ah, not bad, not bad.’

  ‘Billy’s our most famous regular,’ McElwaine announced, suddenly full of landlord’s bonhomie. ‘Survived the Somme. Thirty-sixth Ulster Division. How many went down that day, Billy?’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Billy and McElwaine, grinning, had to repeat himself.

  ‘July 1st 1916,’ recited the old man in a tremulous voice. ‘Two thousand of our lads alone and over twenty thousand of us altogether, in the one day.’

  ‘It was Billy’s birthday that day too.’

  Cross wondered if Billy had been a member of the original Ulster Volunteer Force, many of whom had fought at the Somme, and in whose memory the present paramilitary outfit was named.

  ‘Puts today’s troubles in the shade, eh, Billy?’

  But Billy was caught up in a loop of his own.

  ‘There was twenty of us in my class. We all went away and only I came back. It gave me the pick of the girls, I have to say.’

  He giggled feebly and went off, slopping his pints with shaking hands, leaving thin beer trails on the floor. The interlude let McElwaine forget his humiliation and he continued in his role of expansive landlord.

  ‘She drank here a bit,’ he volunteered.

  ‘On her own?’ asked Cross.

  McElwaine made a show of thinking, then nodded.

  ‘Describe her.’

  ‘Well, you’ve seen her.’

  ‘Not alive.’

  ‘You noticed her. She liked a laugh.’

  For all McElwaine’s false cheer Cross thought he detected a strain beneath.

  ‘Was she friendly with any of your regulars?’

  ‘You’d have to ask them that.’

  ‘Did you notice her with anyone in particular?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  McElwaine was starting to sound truculent and his mood was visibly eroded.

  ‘What did she call herself?’

  ‘I don’t think she did. She was just a face. We called her luv because that’s what she called everyone.’

  ‘You didn’t know she was called Mary?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘And what would you have done if you had known she was?’

  ‘Names are all the same to me,’ he replied, unconvincingly.

  ‘I don’t suppose you get many Catholic Marys coming in here, do you now?’

  McElwaine leaned meaty arms on the counter, his mask slipping to reveal the latent hostility. ‘I run the bar. I mind my own business, so a fellow can enjoy a drink and forget the cares of the world.’

  Hargreaves took over. ‘Did you know she was a left-footer?’

  ‘Like I said, so long as nobody causes trouble, they’re welcome. I don’t care if they’re the Queen of Siam.’

  ‘Did she have any arrangement with you?’

  McElwaine stared at him with his pale blue eyes and asked exactly what Cross was getting at.

  ‘Mary Elam depended on men for favours.’

  ‘There’s no law against that.’

  ‘Technically not. All I’m saying is that if she was using this bar to pick up regulars then this would not be happening unless you were agreeable.’

  McElwaine started polishing a pint glass with a cloth. ‘What my clients get up to is their business.’

  ‘Do you have rooms upstairs?’

  ‘It’s where I live.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘If you want to look get a warrant.’

  Afterwards Cross told Hargreaves to do just that and to check on McElwaine for paramilitary links. He wondered if there was more to Mary’s movements than met the eye.

  Cross was checking under the Volvo when the telephone rang and Deidre called out that it was for him. She looked annoyed as he took the receiver. It was a Saturday and the family was about to go shopping.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Donnelly.’

  Cross couldn’t place the name.

  ‘In Ballybofey.’

  It was the Irish policeman he had talked to about the van registered by Berrigan.

  ‘We’ve located this Berrigan fellow, or at least a fellow by the name of Berrigan.’

  This was good news, but Cross’s excitement was curbed by a background squabble between his children.

  ‘He sounds quite promising,’ Donnelly went on. ‘He lives on a farm in pretty remote parts, about ten, fifteen miles from here.’

  Fiona started crying and Deidre spoke sharply to Matthew, who joined in the chorus of wailing. Donnelly asked if it was a good time to call. Cross said he was just going out but to carry on.

  ‘He lives by himself, from what we can tell, and according to the Revenue he’s an upholsterer, though he’s not exactly what you’d call a figure in the community. A man up that way had barely heard of him: “Is that the fellow who lives up on Crosshead Farm?” he said. “Keeps pretty much to himself.”’

  Cross was amused by Donnelly’s lazy delivery and accent. He pictured him sitting at his desk at the station, feet up and in no hurry, his Saturday shopping in plastic bags beside him.

  ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’

  Deidre, having quelled the children, was rolling her eyes to say that he should get a move on. He was tempted to tell her to go on without him. It was only her parents they were seeing after the supermarket.

  ‘Can you have him picked up?’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Donnelly jauntily and Cross couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  ‘I could get over first thing Monday.’

  ‘What’s murder, Daddy?’ asked Fiona in the car.

  ‘Just a part of my work, nothing very interesting.’

  ‘It’s when you shoot somebody,’ said Matthew, pointing his finger and making gunfire noises.

  ‘That’s enough now, Mattie,’ said Deidre. Cross caught her sidelong glance: if looks could kill, he thought.

  After a fractious trawl round the supermarket he managed to cry off going to Deidre’s parents. In his job pressure of work could always be claimed and Deidre knew that she was in no position to object. She seemed relieved at the pros
pect of his not going with them.

  Once he was ensconced in his office, he tried calling Donnelly. Ballybofey police said he was at home. Donnelly was in. Compared to earlier, he sounded brisk.

  ‘I’m pretty sure Berrigan’s your man, but he’s not there and it looks like he hasn’t been for a while.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Given the state of the place, months even. Your man’s not exactly one for the housekeeping. The good news is the van’s there and the tyres look right. And I found a deep freeze in a shed at the side of the house.’

  ‘Big enough to hold a man?’

  ‘Big enough.’

  They agreed Monday for him to come over and look.

  On the way home Cross got caught in a traffic jam and only then remembered the seven o’clock appointment with Vinnie. He was already late and by the time he cleared the army roadblock that was the cause of the hold-up another half-hour had gone.

  There was no sign of Vinnie outside the station. Cross waited, cursing his negligence, then returned to his silent household. A terse note from Deidre said that she and the children were staying the night with her parents.

  He felt curiously stranded without her and was annoyed at how much he had come to rely on their ailing relationship. He stayed up drinking and staring at the television without being able to say what it was he was watching. Images of Deidre’s infidelity blipped through his mind, as regular as the rhythm on a cardiograph.

  17

  ON the motorway it started to rain. By Omagh poor visibility made driving treacherous and Cross’s speed was down to forty. The lorry ahead threw a dirty spray, which his overworked windscreen wipers couldn’t clear. He spent several miles nudging the Volvo out from behind the truck, trying to overtake, but the road, usually empty, was busy. He had to pull back when an approaching vehicle loomed out of the murk, headlights flashing and horn blaring.

  It had taken longer than he had wanted to get away. Administration and briefings had occupied half the morning. He had also faced the unpleasant task of phoning Blair to say he needed to talk to Vinnie once more. He felt bad about breaking his appointment and not giving the boy’s dilemma much thought. He made a hash of calling Blair, who was reluctant to co-operate.