by Chris Petit
Cross gave McMahon a rudimentary version of what he knew about the next killing. When he mentioned the likely day and the age of the victim McMahon asked how he could be so specific.
‘I’m not in a position to say.’
McMahon nodded and thought for a moment.
‘Is this anything to do with those two women that were killed?’
‘I’m way off the record even telling you this much.’
He passed over a list of children of the right age so that the Provisionals policing their various areas could at least give the relevant parents some warning. With luck a lot of irate teenagers would be kept in that evening.
McMahon studied the list and put it away, thanking Cross.
‘I presume we’ve never had this conversation. Now what is it that you want?’
Cross was reminded of McMahon’s ability to wrong-foot him and smiled.
‘I need to know who killed John McKeague.’
McMahon spread his hands, as if to say who mightn’t have killed him.
‘We all remember McKeague. His gangs evicted hundreds of Catholics from their homes in the 1969 riots. Of all the Prots he was the likeliest for a public lynching.’
‘Was he an asset of the Brits?’
‘Name me a Prod that isn’t,’ McMahon said sourly. ‘In answer to your question, it was the INLA.’
‘But they didn’t identify themselves in the usual way when they reported the killing.’
‘I dare say, but it was the INLA. I know of the men who shot him.’
So much for a conspiracy between the UVF and the security forces, thought Cross. Without that, there was a big hole in what Stevens had surmised was Warren’s argument.
‘What about Heatherington?’
‘Why are you so interested in Heatherington?’
‘I don’t understand the reason behind the Heatherington operation.’
McMahon stared at his tea.
‘Why?’ asked Cross, with a feeling that for the first time in ages he was reaching towards some kind of truth. ‘Why go to all that length of putting an agent on the inside just for the sake of mischief?’
‘It depends on your definition of mischief. There are those who say, and I would be one, that the Heatherington operation did more harm to the Provisional IRA than any other single event of that time.’
Cross frowned, sure that McMahon was exaggerating. ‘But you knew pretty much straight away it was a hoax.’
‘You have to ask yourself, what in the end did the Heatherington operation achieve? What was its goal?’
‘Panic, destabilization.’
‘And the result—’
Cross shrugged. He didn’t know. McMahon continued slowly, like he was spelling out a lesson to a backward child.
‘At the end of that year there was the usual Christmas truce, which at the beginning of 1975 was extended into February and from there on indefinitely. It held until the following year.’
This was the truce Molly Connors had talked about, though she had discussed it in terms of its incidental results: the Provisionals had ganged up with the emerging INLA to settle old scores with the Officials. Cross still wasn’t sure of McMahon’s point and said he couldn’t see what the truce had to do with Heatherington.
‘When Heatherington turned up in the Crumlin Road gaol, the Provisional leadership had no interest in negotiating, not that the Brits were by any means agreed between themselves on the question of negotiation. But some did want it and were putting out feelers. We weren’t interested at the time. Categorically.’
‘But you were after the Heatherington operation?’
‘There are many who say that that time was the Provisionals’ darkest hour. It led to four years of feuds and sectarianism.’
‘All because of Heatherington?’
‘The Heatherington operation discredited a hard-line leadership. The men that took over were older, with less of a stomach for the long struggle. They were prepared to deal.’
‘Who were they dealing with?’
‘The politicians, ostensibly, but we all know they’re not the real men. Part of the problem with the Brits is that they are divided among themselves. We think of them as being united, but most of the time the left hand’s feuding with the right.’
Cross wondered if McMahon was telling the truth or offering a subtle lesson in propaganda.
‘One lot wants unconditional surrender,’ McMahon continued, ‘while another group, much smaller, seeks a negotiated settlement.’
‘Who?’
‘MI6, I’d say.’
‘And MI5?’
‘They want to grind us to bonemeal.’
Cross was starting to see how seriously Warren might have got himself out of his depth. He thought of something else that had been troubling him.
‘Do you remember Gregory Brown?’
McMahon cocked his head. ‘Heatherington named him as part of the gang that killed Tommy Herron.’
‘A gang run by the British?’
‘Yes.’
‘Brown’s name was passed on by you to the loyalists.’
McMahon shrugged, neither confirming nor denying it.
‘So Brown’s name was used to help establish Heatherington’s credentials.’
McMahon nodded.
‘But,’ Cross continued, ‘why jeopardize another agent?’
McMahon shrugged again and stood up. ‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘Either Brown had become expendable or he was deliberately sacrificed for the sake of Heatherington’s cover.’
‘Tell me,’ said Cross. ‘Were you part of Heatherington’s debriefing team?’
McMahon looked around, pretending he hadn’t heard. When he returned his attention to Cross he tapped his lapel with the rolled-up newspaper he was carrying.
‘There is, of course, another explanation about your Mr Brown.’ McMahon looked mischievous.
‘What?’ asked Cross.
‘His name might have been planted deliberately.’ He milked the pause, making the most of Cross’s curiosity. ‘To discredit someone else’s operation.’
38
Belfast, April 1975
‘HERE you are working for me and still shooting Taigs,’ Breen said to Candlestick with a laugh and continued laughing all the way to Belfast.
Breen was using him as an assassin in a sectarian war. Candlestick knew that now and confronted him during one of their drives to the city. Breen just laughed, as usual, and blamed the ceasefire. With the Provisionals’ Christmas ceasefire extended there was no one left to fight, except each other.
‘It’s a fuckin’ mess out there,’ said Breen. ‘You don’t know how well off you are.’
It was true, his own position could not have been more straightforward. He lived in something resembling harmonious isolation with Becky. She continued to work in the library and he on the next door farm. He’d bought an unreliable rusted old Datsun which he sometimes drove up to Belfast where he spoke to his intelligence handler, Danny. It had been several months before he had been confident enough to contact him. He suspected that local telephone boxes were monitored by various parties in the area where he lived.
From Danny he learned that Breen was deeply involved in the foundation of a new terrorist group whose existence was still secret. It was, as far as anyone could tell, the military arm of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, a breakaway from the Officials. The split had quickly turned acrimonious. By his own reckoning Candlestick was responsible for eight retaliatory killings, not including Bunty.
Candlestick looked out of the car window. He liked these drives. Breen always kept the car well heated. Not that he minded the coldness of the farm, though once in a while it was a relief to escape its damp.
‘You’ve an away match today,’ said Breen.
‘A Proddy?’
‘Not just a Proddy, a peeler Proddy.’
He had not shot a policeman yet. It was to be a doorstep job, his first since the young Catholic barman he had
killed for Tommy Herron.
‘The great thing about a doorstep killing,’ said Breen, ‘is that it violates the sanctuary of a man’s home.’
He was full of the fact that Protestants went in for them much more than Catholics.
‘At the start of the Troubles the Orangies used to stiff whoever came to answer the door. Your Provie preferred to shoot a fellow getting in and out of his car, or just bomb the fuck out of him and have done with it, but then you have to watch and see if he drives the kids to school. The problem with a doorstep job is that if your man doesn’t come to the door then you’re having to go in after him and that involves his family, which is no good. Are you superstitious?’
Lots of gunmen were about entering the house. They saw it as bad luck.
‘No,’ said Candlestick.
‘Good, because if you can get away with it and stiff the copper in his home, that’s really the ticket. It demoralizes all the other peelers each time they put their feet up, thinking that if the doorbell rings it’s going to be a bullet with their name on. Me, I think they’re stupid to even think of answering the door.’
They drove to a safe house where Candlestick was given a change of clothing – a denim jacket, jeans and Doc Marten boots.
‘They always wear them Beatle boots,’ said Breen, looking at Candlestick with approval. The jacket was covered with Rangers football badges, another detail that announced what he was. ‘You look a right little Prod.’
He was shown a photograph of a man in uniform. Candlestick thought he looked a bit clumsy, or maybe it was the crooked way the picture had been taken.
The constable’s home was on a neat estate of houses with green roofs and tidy front lawns running down to the road. It was a place of such little activity that any passing car was an event. His driver, an agitated youth, was convinced that everyone was staring at them.
‘We’re dead obvious. They’ll see us a mile off.’
It was strange, thought Candlestick, this belief that Catholics and Protestants looked different. He remembered it from his loyalist days, the business of smelling a Taig, of just being able to tell. It was all rubbish. Several of the Shankill victims who had been snatched off the streets turned out to have been Prods.
The driver was reluctant to park and wanted to circle the block while Candlestick did the job. Candlestick made him stop right outside the house, and stuck the gun in his ribs to see him sweat.
‘And lead us not into temptation,’ he said, taking the keys.
Candlestick rang the bell. He could have been the milkman, he thought, for all the nerves he felt these days. Pulse and breathing normal.
The man who answered was in shirtsleeves and Candlestick did not recognize him at first out of uniform. He was carrying a newspaper, his thumb stuck in the middle to mark his place, and showed no surprise at the stranger on his doorstep. In the kitchen at the end of the hall his wife and noisy kiddies sat at the table. The smell of fried tea hung in the air and the television was on.
‘Lights out, mister,’ said Candlestick.
He swung up his arm. Two shots to the body and the coup to the head straight after he was down. The doormat next to the fallen body had written on it: not you again. Now that was funny, he thought.
No one did it better. It was over so fast that the wife and children hardly had time to scream. That night he would have scrupulous sex with Becky. She would approach him cautiously and he would treat her gently. Their sex, like their relationship, was modest, like he was protecting her from the thoughts that lay at the back of his mind, thoughts of Maggie and how it had been after shooting Tommy Herron, and how he missed the vibrant chaos of the long nights of the summer of 1972.
39
STEVENS phoned, sounding edgy, to apologize for missing their Europa appointment.
‘We can meet later tonight?’ he asked.
‘Not if you’re wasting my time,’ Cross answered tetchily.
‘I’m not. I’m bringing Niall’s stuff.’
There were traffic delays because of roadblocks. Sirens wailed in the distance and, closer to, Cross could hear burglar alarms ringing shrilly. He hoped Stevens was held up too.
He arrived ten minutes late. Stevens wasn’t there so he waited in the car. It was parked facing the deserted wasteland where Mary Ryan had been found. It was an odd choice of rendezvous, he thought.
Poor Mary Ryan. There were no neat conclusions, he decided, unlike in the detective stories of his boyhood with their mended destinies. Reality was different, a loose amalgamation of dangling relationships, unspoken conversations, injustices, omissions, a gradual falling away of interest. Even his outrage at Mary Ryan’s death was ebbing.
Half an hour went by and still Stevens had not come.
Cross wanted a cigarette but not in the car so he strolled to where Mary had been found, to pay his respects. If life were fair, he thought, this would be where he found the clue that would lead to her killer.
It was a starless night, cold and dry. He scuffed the earth with the toe of his shoe and smoked. Unusually it had not rained in a week. A car passed slowly in the background. He resolved to sort things out with Deidre, to cut away everything that had become atrophied. It was a time for resolutions. Giving up smoking would be a start. He threw his cigarette away unfinished.
He didn’t remember locking the car and took it as a sign of his increasing forgetfulness. As he reached for his keys some peripheral movement alerted him. Then his head exploded and he thought he’d been shot. A second burning pain dug deep into his back. As he fell he took with him a brief glimpse of ski masks. Two, he thought, but the blood in his eyes made it hard to tell. He tried to say something and a boot smashed into his face, then into his throat.
The next morning, the Friday when the killer was due to strike, Westerby reported to the special operations room that had been set aside for the day. Extra phone lines had been installed and there were maps on trestle tables, with little wooden bricks that Moffat could move around to show where patrols and roadblocks were set up. Moffat looked pleased at having so many troops at his disposal. By the time Westerby’s shift started the operation had already been in progress since the previous midnight. The windowless room smelled of smoke and male sweat. She watched Moffat and Cummings in whispered conference, along with an army colonel acting as military co-ordinator, and was wondering why Cross was late when Nesbitt arrived and said he had an announcement.
He described the attack on Cross as an act of unparalleled brutality. Cross had been found just before midnight, he said, and his condition was critical though stable. Westerby was aware of one or two people looking at her. She thought she might faint. Even Nesbitt appeared shocked by the severity of the beating.
Soon afterwards she was relegated to the main office with a couple of dozy reservists while everyone else was absorbed by Moffat’s operation. Her demotion to messagetaker felt like punishment. She was dazed and did not know how she would get through the day.
At the end of her shift, aching with anxiety and boredom, she was about to leave when Hargreaves told her that she was needed in the operations room. Her first task was to organize tea and coffee for everyone. Moffat had his jacket off and had loosened his tie. The atmosphere was both stale and tense. There had been no murder and the feeling now was that there wasn’t going to be. Events had reached that stage where everyone was subconsciously wishing for one, just to break the monotony.
When she served Moffat his coffee, he glanced at her and spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘Of course, you realize that if nothing happens there’s no way of proving this isn’t all a wild goose chase.’
‘DI Cross always said that it could be either this Friday or next.’
Moffat snorted. ‘Or the one after that or the one after.’
He closed down the operation at quarter past midnight and thanked everyone for a successful day.
‘Come with me,’ he said to Westerby.
He took her to an office next door.
A desk was covered with copies of the classified pages, ringed in red ink.
‘There never was going to be a murder,’ he said.
‘If you say so, sir.’ She was too tired for Moffat’s games.
‘Look at the fucking papers. They’re full of religious advertisements, three or four every day, sometimes as many as six. Of course there’s going to be one on the Friday before the murder or the day before or the day after or even on the fucking day itself.’
‘Are any of the others from the Psalms, sir?’
‘Are all yours from the Psalms? Well, are they?’
‘That’s not—’
‘Well?’ Moffat was shouting now, red in the face. ‘How many are from the Psalms?’
‘Five, sir.’
‘And how many aren’t?’
Moffat looked hopped-up on something, a combination of caffeine, nicotine and Benzedrine, probably, and would vent his frustration on her regardless.
‘One, sir.’
‘Which one?’
‘The first.’
‘The first! And what kind of theory do you call that?’
He turned away in disgust before she could answer and picked up a fistful of papers and waved them at her.
‘Psalms are two a penny. Go back to last year and you find the fucking Psalms cropping up at least three or four times a month. Are you trying to tell me they’re related to the killings?’ Moffat banged his fist on the table.
‘But these are all false addresses!’
Westerby was shouting too. Moffat stepped forward until his face was inches from hers. She could see his carotid artery pulsing with anger.
‘And what do you make of that? That they’re the work of the same person?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘And how many people has this person killed?’ Moffat asked facetiously in a sing-song voice.
‘Six,’ said Westerby in a whisper, knowing what was coming.
‘You have nothing to connect Breen’s death to any of the others except a hotchpotch of initials and a coincidence of age. Breen’s is the only body where any advertisement was found. Am I right?’