by Derek Fee
This was the point of return. Whatever was said next would lead to either an argument or a reconciliation. ‘You need to see someone,’ Wilson said.
She turned to face him, red streaks colouring her pale face. ‘I’m the one that needs to see someone.’ She spat the words out. ‘What about you? Maybe you should see someone who can teach you how to display a little bit of sensitivity. Don’t you feel grief? Has that stupid job you love so much stripped you of the basis of humanity? Don’t you feel?’
‘Of course I feel.’ He made to move towards her, but she recoiled.
‘I don’t see it,’ she said. ‘Show me how you feel. Show me your anger, your depression. Do you have nightmares about our dead child? Do you feel panic? I feel all those things. I’m angry with God, I’m even angry with the doctors at the hospital for not saving our child, but most of all I’m angry with you.’ She marched towards him and started to beat on his chest. ‘You great unfeeling brute. You don’t have a sympathetic bone in your body. And you think that I should see somebody.’ She slid down his body and ended up crying on the floor.
Wilson was stunned. What amazed him most was that he had no answer to her accusations. He had already accepted the fact that their child was dead. He didn’t really grieve or feel anger. He had flipped through the process and had already reached the end. He simply accepted that their child had never existed. That was perhaps the dichotomy between men and women. Now the question was, how could they work their way through this period? He bent to pick her up and felt a pair of hands on his shoulders moving him out of the way. He started to resist and found Helen McCann had re-entered the room.
‘Leave this to me,’ she said softly. ‘Kate is still raw, and you’re not the one who can apply the salve.’ She picked Kate up and cradled her in her arms. Then she led her to the bedroom.
Wilson fell back into the club chair. He bent his head and held it in his hands. Through the picture window, the sun was setting over the Lagan River and the city beyond. Wilson was oblivious to the sight. He had always considered himself a problem solver. However, he had learned that one could only solve the problems that one owned. He would give anything to have Kate back the way she was. But that would have to be Kate’s decision, and he was beginning to realise that he might not be part of the solution.
CHAPTER 11
Sammy Rice lifted his head and snorted hard to get all the cocaine into his nose. The white powder had an almost instantaneous effect. Deep in his brain the drug interfered with his chemical messengers, the neurotransmitters that nerves use to communicate with each other. It blocked norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and other neurotransmitters from being reabsorbed. The result was a chemical build-up between nerves that caused euphoria. ‘Yes,’ he shouted as the high hit him. Rice had been using more and more cocaine since the death of his mother. As a major supplier of drugs in Belfast, he had always steered clear of his own product but over a period of a few months, he had gradually become his own best customer.
Big George Carroll and Rice’s new number two, Owen Boyle, watched as their chief strode up and down the living room of the house he occupied in Ballygomartin Road in West Belfast. Neither man dared speak. Rice had always had a hair-trigger temper, but the cocaine had led to an increase in his irritability and paranoia. He was the godfather of a major crime ‘family’ in West Belfast. The core of the family had been established during the ‘Troubles’, and that core had segued without difficulty from terrorism to criminality. In the process, Rice and his lieutenants became wealthy men.
‘What the fuck do you mean by it goes further?’ he shouted at Boyle.
Owen Boyle was as hard as they come but he wasn’t overjoyed at working for a man who would kill as quickly as he could praise. He cleared his throat. ‘We’ve had some smart arse look at the stuff we took from Malone’s and Grant’s places. It looks like Grant went outside for some financial advice. He passed all the shit that Malone gathered on to some accountant friend of his to do a forensic audit.’
‘Forensic audit my arse,’ Rice shouted. ‘I told you to clear this fucking mess up, and you told me that you’d done it.’
Boyle could feel his sphincter loosen. He looked at Big George and saw the spaced-out look on his face. Big George always seemed to be on another planet. Maybe that was the best place to be when Rice was on the rampage. ‘We thought that we’d got to him before he’d had time to do anything about the papers but we were wrong. The bastard had digitised everything that Malone had taken from the Infrastructure Agency and Grant had already emailed them to his mate.’
‘Digitised,’ Rice looked confused. ‘What the hell is digitised?’
‘He turned it into a computer file,’ Boyle explained.
‘So it could be rambling about out there.’ Rice stood directly over Boyle. ‘Does that mean we have to kill every bollocks in Belfast before we’re safe? Those papers get out, and I go to jail. Do you understand that?’ He grabbed Boyle by the throat and lifted him out of his chair. ‘And I’m not going to jail.’
Boyle stared into a pair of dilated black pupils. He was surprised at the strength of the hold that Rice had on his throat. He was about the same height and weight as Rice but he wasn’t about to fight back. ‘We know who the guy is.’ His voice was a squeak.
Rice released his grip on Boyle’s throat. ‘If you want something done, you have to do it yourself. I can trust no one. What’s the fucker’s name, and where do I find him?’
‘Why don’t you let me handle this Sammy?’ Boyle’s voice was reassuring. ‘We’re in the clear so far. Malone and Grant are out of the way, and no one is the wiser.’
‘Bloody bitch,’ Rice said returning to the table where another line of cocaine was waiting to be snorted.
‘What?’ Boyle asked. This was the new Sammy Rice. You never knew where Sammy’s brain was these days.
Rice rolled up a £50 note. ‘Bloody bitch of a wife, she’s down in Spain shagging some no-talent golf pro. The boys in Malaga are laughing up their arses at me. As soon as we clear up the mess here, I’m going to go down there and give both of them concrete boots.’ He smiled then bent and snorted the remaining line of coke.
Boyle watched as the coke hit Rice’s brain. His eyes followed Rice as he moved around the room. He wondered how much longer this could go on before their operation would be affected. Neither he nor many of the men in the organisation wanted to work for a drugged-up crazy.
Rice whirled around. ‘What’s his name and where do I find him?’
Boyle was confused. He wondered were they talking about the accountant or the golf pro. Since he had never been to Spain, he assumed it was the accountant. ‘His name is Mark O’Reilly and he works for Watson Accountants in Windsor House in Bedford Street.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘Apartment on the fifth floor of the Tannery Building in Castle Street.’
Rice smiled. ‘Perfect. I have something in mind for Mister O’Reilly. Is he a Taig?’
‘I don’t know,’ Boyle said. ‘We’ll have the lads over from Glasgow again?’
‘No need. I’ll take care of this myself.’ Rice pointed at the figure of Big George sitting stoically in the chair. ‘Myself and George’ll handle it.’ He walked over to the table and cut another line of coke.
Police Constable Jimmy Corr and his partner Rebecca Higgins were about to go out on patrol when Moira intercepted them. ‘You’re going to be a little late this afternoon,’ she said showing her warrant card.
Corr raised his eyes to heaven. He was geared up for the evening, and he obviously didn’t want whatever it was Moira was offering. He made a big deal of examining her warrant card. ‘Big time detective, eh! Call my sergeant and he’ll arrange an interview.’
‘Detective Sergeant,’ Moira said sharply as she thrust her warrant card into Corr’s face. She looked at Higgins and saw a pained look on her face. Nobody liked being paired up with an arsehole.
‘What?’ Corr said pulling himself
up to his full height of six feet two.
Better men than Corr had tried to intimidate Moira. He was the old-school RUC man, big and broad and bluff. His face was craggy and what people called ‘lived in’, while the purple streaks on his nose indicated the sign of a little too much whiskey having been imbibed. She could imagine him yearning for the old days when he could bash a Catholic’s head in with impunity. Thankfully, those days were gone. Higgins was maybe fifteen years his junior. She was wearing a bulky stab vest, but Moira could see that beneath it she had an athletic body. She was not exactly pretty, her chin was a little too square and manly, and her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. ‘You address me as Sergeant, and if I want to interview you now, I’ll interview you now. I’ve arranged with your Sergeant for the soft interview room. You can lead the way.’ She saw Higgins smile.
‘What’s the problem?’ Corr asked when they had installed themselves in the easy chairs of the soft room.
‘David Grant.’ Moira took a notebook from her pocket. ‘I asked for your report, and they gave me this.’ She held up a copy of a report sheet and dropped it onto the table.
‘The sexual deviant that hung himself,’ Corr laughed. ‘That was some fucking sight.’ He looked at the paper on the desk. ‘So, what’s your problem?’
Moira smiled. ‘It’s what they might call “report lite”. You’re not exactly Charles Dickens in the description area.’
‘We followed up on a call,’ Corr said. ‘When we got to the house, the occupant was dead having hung himself. The doctor was called, and that was the end of our involvement. It was cut and dried. What else was there to say?’
‘Tell me everything and I mean everything,’ Moira said. ‘From the moment you picked up the radio call until you left to resume your patrol.’ She turned to face Higgins. ‘Anything he leaves out, feel free to interrupt.’
Corr removed his notebook slowly from his breast pocket and flicked through the pages. ‘We received the call from dispatch at ten thirty. One of Grant’s colleagues rang in to say that he hadn’t turned up at a meeting, and they were worried about him.’
Moira made a note to enquire with the dispatcher as to the name of the colleague. ‘Go ahead,’ she said looking up from her notebook.
‘We knocked on the door and got no reply,’ Corr continued. ‘Then I looked through the letterbox and saw the body hanging at the end of the hall.’
‘The light was on in the hallway?’ Moira asked.
‘Yes,’ Corr replied. ‘The place was lit up like a Christmas tree.’
‘What did you do then?’ Moira asked.
‘I kicked the door in, so I did. Took it right off the hinges.’ Corr’s chest puffed out.
‘Was there a deadbolt on the door?’ Moira asked.
Corr looked at his partner. ‘We didn’t see one,’ Higgins said.
Moira made a note. ‘Okay, you’re inside. What did you do next?’
‘It was pretty obvious that the man hanging at the end of the hallway was dead,’ Corr said. ‘His tongue was protruding, and his face was purple. I didn’t want to disturb anything in case the scene wasn’t kosher.’
‘Something bothered you about the scene?’ Moira asked.
‘I’d never seen anything like that before,’ Higgins interjected. ‘You couldn’t put your finger on it but it looked off. Maybe it was because it was my first time. It looked a bit staged. I don’t know.’ She looked at her partner. ‘We were both a bit shook up.’
‘So you didn’t check for a pulse?’ Moira asked.
Corr and Higgins looked at each other and didn’t answer. After a delay, Corr said, ‘The guy was dead.’
Moira could understand their reluctance to check the body. ‘What did you do then?’ she asked.
‘Constable Higgins went to the car and radioed for the doctor and the ambulance,’ Corr said. ‘We secured the front door and waited for the doctor.’
‘Did you check the remainder of the house?’ Moira asked.
Corr and Higgins exchanged a look before Corr said, ‘No.’
‘What happened when the doctor came?’
‘She gave us a bollocking because we called her out,’ Corr answered. ‘Said we should have called the GP.’
‘She seemed pretty professional,’ Higgins added. ‘Did some of the things that we should have thought of, like taking photos with her mobile phone.’
Corr shot her a look.
‘What happened next?’ Moira asked.
‘She examined the body,’ Corr said quickly. ‘By then the ambulance crew had arrived and were waiting for her to finish.’
‘Did she take down the body?’ Moira asked.
‘The ambulance crew did that,’ Corr answered. ‘When they took the body out, we secured the door. We put a call in to the station to have someone come out and finish the job properly. It wouldn’t take long for some villain to suss the place out and remove whatever was saleable.’
Moira made another note. If Grant had been murdered, the scene had been well and truly compromised but that would be up to the chief of the forensics team to conclude, if the investigation ever got that far. ‘Anything else?’ she asked.
The two constables exchanged a look and shook their heads in unison.
Moira closed her notebook and replaced it in the pocket of her coat. She took two business cards from her pocket and handed one to each of the constables. ‘If you remember anything, contact me.’
‘So it was murder then,’ Higgins said taking the card.
‘We’re looking into the possibility,’ Moira said.
‘Whether murder or not the man was engaged in a wicked act, maybe he deserved to die,’ Corr said putting the business card into his breast pocket.
‘Judge not and ye shall not be judged,’ Moira said just loud enough to be heard as she made her way to the door of the soft interview room.
CHAPTER 12
Peter Davidson watched the barman pull his pint of lager before setting it in front of him. He was sitting in the Rex Bar in the middle of the Shankill Road. One pint wasn’t generally enough for him to get a buzz on, that would be three pints down the road. Davidson had spent the afternoon and early evening looking up contacts from his former life as a member of the Vice Squad. It had been two years since he had switched to the Murder Squad, but many of the denizens of the demimonde of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism were still alive and kicking, and none of them had ever run across David Grant. It was a walk down memory lane that Davidson didn’t particularly enjoy. Like many who have to deal with the seedier side of life, he had partaken of the forbidden fruit himself, and it had cost him his marriage. His five years in Vice had led directly to him sitting alone in this bar waiting for the moment when the level of alcohol hit that critical point that banished all memories.
‘DC Davidson as I live and breath.’
Davidson turned and gave a half smile. ‘I heard you were back in town.’
‘Aye, they couldn’t get along without me. After that Cummerford woman stained her panties, my phone was ringing night and day with offers to replace her.’
‘It’s nice to be wanted.’ Davidson nodded to the barman. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘My shout,’ the man said quickly. ‘After all the Belfast Chronicle is paying.’
‘Two double Jameson,’ Davidson said to the barman. He didn’t like the Press much but his new companion was a horse of a different colour. Jock McDevitt wasn’t just a journalist; he was a drinking buddy from the old days. Davidson had been a contact who had become a friend. McDevitt’s great skill was that he could get a rock to talk. He stood only five feet six in his stocking feet and weighed sixty-five kilos soaking wet, but his open face exuded empathy. When you talked to Jock, you felt that you were the only person in the world for him. His concentration on you and your problems was total. ‘I see you didn’t overdo the deep fried Mars bars when you were in Glasgow,’ Davidson said.
McDevitt smiled, and the glow of that smile was
hed over Davidson. ‘I never took to the deep fried Mars bar. Can’t say that I didn’t enjoy Glasgow though. Same type of villains we have here in Belfast but a lot more of them. However, the Chronicle found my weakness, they offered me a lot more money than I was making. It appears that Miss Cummerford did substantial damage to the reputation of the paper. Not so good to have a serial killer on the payroll. At least, I haven’t killed anyone. Well, not yet anyway.’ He smiled and touched his glass of whiskey to Davidson’s. ‘To the good old times.’
‘Maybe they weren’t so good.’ Davidson took a sip of his whiskey. It could be a coincidence that McDevitt had strolled into the Rex, but Davidson didn’t believe in coincidences. McDevitt was the best newshound he’d met, and he’d landed on Davidson for a reason. DS McElvaney’s words of caution were rambling around in his brain.
‘Being alive is the good times.’ McDevitt smiled. ‘What are you up to these days?’
‘Murder Squad.’ Davidson decided to keep his answers as short as possible.
‘Beats Vice. You guys have been busy lately. I hear Cummerford and McIver are up for trial soon.’
‘You said it.’ Davidson took a slug of his whiskey and chased it with a mouthful of lager. He was beginning to feel good.
‘Anything else of interest?’
‘As in?’
‘A little bird tells me that you’ve been a busy boy this afternoon,’ McDevitt said nodding at the barman and indicating the empty glasses.
‘What kind of little bird would that be?’ Davidson asked.
‘The kind that wears a studded leather bikini and likes to administer punishment to bad boys.’ McDevitt took a £20 note from his pocket and dropped it on the bar.
‘I didn’t know you moved in those kinds of circles.’ Davidson looked at the double Jameson that had arrived before him. He was entering dangerous territory. He recalled McElvaney’s threat. He had no doubt that she would carry it out.