by Derek Fee
The chill in the apartment was several degrees lower than that outside. Kate and Helen were both up and considering the early hour, that was a first. As was now usual, the buzz of conversation died as soon as he appeared.
‘I need a shower,’ Wilson said and headed for the bathroom. He stood under the hot water. There were two options. He could be patient and ride out the storm, or he could grab the bull by the horns and demand that he and Kate sort out their problems. He wasn’t a great fan of counselling but if that was what they needed. Whatever it was, something would have to break, and it would have to break soon. Their relationship had turned into a festering sore that needed treatment. He towelled off and selected some clothes from his part of the closet. He made his mind up. Kate and he would have a long talk and try to work things out. He strode towards the kitchen with that new resolve. Helen was sitting alone at the breakfast bar cradling a cup of coffee in her hands.
‘Where’s Kate?’ He knew there was an edge to his voice.
‘Off to work,’ Helen said.
‘Shit,’ Wilson said under his breath.
‘Have you and Kate thought of taking a break from each other?’ Helen asked.
‘Kate and I are not on speaking terms at the moment.’ Wilson made himself a cup of coffee. ‘Or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘It’s a pity that Kate is so busy. It’s beautiful in Antibes this time of year. Can’t you take a break?’
Wilson thought of the bodies piled up in the morgue and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ Helen asked.
‘Yesterday, I was investigating two possible murders.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Today, it might be three.’
‘What?’ Helen shuffled uneasily on her stool and spilled some of her coffee.
‘Guy took a flier out of a fifth-floor window in the Tannery Building. We don’t think he did so on his own volition. Anyway you can read all about it in the Chronicle this morning. Jock McDevitt was on the scene.’
Helen looked at her watch. ‘Gosh, is that the time?’ She climbed down from the stool and left in a hurry.
Wilson surveyed the empty kitchen. It was kind of a ‘where did it all go wrong’ moment. He hadn’t missed the point of Mrs McCann’s message. The whispering and colluding was heading in one direction. Kate and he should take a ‘break’. Whatever was going on in Kate’s head wasn’t going to be solved by him being patient. The resolve he’d had in the shower might be fleeting. Or it might lead to an explosion. He had learned in life to expect the unexpected. Something was coming down the line, and whatever it was, his life was going to change, again.
CHAPTER 35
Wilson had divided the whiteboard in the murder squad room into three sections before the briefing began. He had also locked the door to the squad room.
‘For a start no information on these briefings is to go outside this room,’ he started. ‘Moira, briefing on the events of last night.’
Moira explained the scene at Francis Street the previous evening. She had already obtained a photo of the body on the car, and it was appended to the whiteboard.
‘You’ll note that I’ve divided the whiteboard into three sections. One is for the Grant murder, the second is for last night’s victim Mark O’Reilly, and the third is for a young man named Brian Malone. Moira, sketch in what we know about Malone.’
Moira came forward and picked up the felt pen. She outlined what she had learned about Malone, and wrote it beneath his name on the board.
‘Boss,’ Harry Graham interrupted. ‘Why haven’t we heard of this Malone guy before?’
Wilson explained that Reid was certain Malone had been murdered, but that he hadn’t been convinced. He’d asked Moira to take a look at the case unofficially.
‘And now you believe her?’ Graham asked.
It was a question that Wilson didn’t want to answer. ‘We have three lines of enquiry. I’d prefer less but maybe there’s an advantage here somewhere. The lives of these three people, one an accounts analyst in the Infrastructure Agency, another a Belfast Councillor and the last an accountant with a prestigious Belfast accountancy firm, have intersected at some point in time. The reason behind that node is possibly the reason why they had to die. We need to find what binds these men together, then I’ll answer Harry’s question.’
Peter Davidson shuffled uneasily. ‘How far back do we go? Three lines of enquiry means lots of hours looking through agendas, timelines, phone calls. These people might not only have met socially. They could have seen something they shouldn’t have seen, heard something they shouldn’t have heard. You know better than all of us, Boss. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘One last piece of information,’ Wilson said and gave the team the information McDevitt had given him.
Eric Taylor whistled. ‘Interesting. Someone didn’t trust the local deadheads. Moving upmarket costs money, and there are only a few locals who have the ability to go to the mainland for hitters. But it means we’re dealing with some pretty serious people. There might be connections that were made during the “‘Troubles”’.’
‘Someone should thank Reid,’ Graham said. ‘They might have got away with it, if she hadn’t spotted that Grant had been murdered.’
‘You can thank her yourself Harry,’ Wilson said. ‘I want you to go over to the Mortuary at the Royal Victoria for O’Reilly’s autopsy. It’s due to start at ten. You don’t have to be there when it starts, but I’d like to have the result as soon as possible.’ He looked at Moira and saw that she was smiling. There would be no confrontation with Reid today. ‘One small conclusion on the O’Reilly death,’ he continued. ‘It lacks the subtlety of the other two murders. That makes me think that it’s a local hit. It’s very Belfast to toss someone out of a fifth-floor window.’
The team laughed.
‘OK,’ Wilson continued. ‘We’re thin on the ground, and we’re going to have to divide our forces. Harry you stick with O’Reilly. After the autopsy, go to his office and find out if he was working on anything special. Then check with Forensics. If it was a Belfast job, there’ll be either fingerprints or DNA. Our bad boys tend to be forgetful about traces of their handiwork behind. Timeline over the past few days, emails, agenda, phone calls if possible. Check the CCTV from the Tannery. Look for something that links him to either Grant or Malone, either a contact or somewhere they were at the same time.’
‘Moira you stick with Malone, same procedure as for Harry. We look at the timeline, the contacts, agenda and phone records.’
‘I’m working on it,’ Moira said.
Wilson turned to Davidson. ‘Peter, you lucky boy. Put in a travel request. You’re going to Glasgow. I know you dealt with the guys over there before. I want you to follow up on McDevitt’s tip. See if there’s any truth in it, and if so, what do the local guys think about the mechanics. They may have come by plane. Check with Belfast International and get our colleagues there to provide you with photos of everyone who checked in for a flight to Glasgow on the evening of Grant’s death and the next day. You can pick up the photos on your way to Glasgow. Eric, you and I are going to concentrate on Grant. His brother says that his computer is missing. Is it backed up anywhere? Can the boffins find out whether he’s on the Cloud? What about CCTV? Something tells me he’s the central character in this little drama.’
There was knocking at the door to the squad room. Eric Taylor detached himself from the team and went to the door. The Desk Sergeant was standing outside. He passed a copy of the Chronicle to Taylor. The front page had a picture of a man lying over the bonnet of a car. The headline read: Did he jump or was he pushed? The Desk Sergeant was pointing at the ceiling.
‘Boss,’ Taylor said. ‘I think you’re wanted upstairs.’
CHAPTER 36
Deputy Chief Constable Royson Jennings was sitting at his desk examining a copy of the Chronicle’s front page. He had been fixated on the lead article for the past half hour. He prided himself on having the best contacts in B
elfast. For God’s sake, he was both a Mason and a senior member of the Orange Order. He was a member of the Royal County Down Golf Club, although he could barely swing a golf club. He supped regularly with the great and the good, and yet he had the feeling that events that Lattimer and Carlisle had set in motion were going to seriously affect his career and social standing. He could not dispel the feeling of impending doom. He had cancelled the first part of his morning. He looked again at the headline in the Chronicle, picked up his phone and dialled Jackie Carlisle’s number.
It was a beautiful spring morning in Hillsborough. Although the air outside still had a touch of winter in it, the low sun had already penetrated the conservatory where Jackie Carlisle sat drinking his early-morning coffee. The cancer cells entangling his spine like an anaconda had led him to appreciate even more the magnificent nature of the garden that surrounded his house. He should have been enjoying the view through the windows of the conservatory, but his concentration had been on the front page of the Belfast Chronicle ever since the paper had dropped through the letterbox. His wife generally joined him for coffee, but she had seen the black aspect to his normally pallid face, and had discretely disappeared to the kitchen. He couldn’t believe his eyes, although he had recently told himself to expect the worst. The events in Francis Street had Sammy Rice’s signature all over them. Sammy was out of control. Carlisle’s life was draining away and dealing with the likes of Rice would only make it drain away faster. If it hadn’t been for his children and grandchildren, he would have left the Province in the hope that a less stressful life might lead to a prolongation of it. For Helen McCann and the rest of the Circle, Sammy Rice and his behaviour would be on him. He had guided Sammy’s paramilitary career, and while he wasn’t responsible for his descent into criminality, he had used Sammy’s skill set and his contacts to further both his own and the Circle’s agenda. So, he would have to shoulder some of the blame for creating a hopped-up monster like Sammy. The problem was that Rice wasn’t the only monster out there. The futile experience known as the ‘Troubles’ had created a generation of monsters on both sides of the sectarian divide. The men who created them were dying off, but the Frankensteins they made were still wandering the streets. He wondered whether men like Sammy would be his legacy for Ulster. It hadn’t been his intention. He had wanted to preserve Ulster as a Protestant entity within Britain. He chuckled. When he started out in politics, he wanted to be as big as Castlereagh, or maybe even Edward Carson. That’s how deluded he’d been. He should have been happy to stand on the shoulders of giants. In comparison to the greats of Ulster politics, he had simply been a pigmy who had been an attendant at a bloodbath. Where was the honour in blowing the legs off women in the Abercorn, or in murdering people on the street in Enniskillen? Where was the honour in tossing some poor fool out of a fifth-floor window in the Tannery? Maybe Helen was right, they should have kicked the decision on Grant and Malone upstairs. But Rice wasn’t stupid, and his remark about the biggest monkeys being at the top of the tree had some validity. The die had been cast. There were two main questions. Would there be any more violent deaths, and what was going to be done about Rice? He drained his coffee cup and looked out of the window. Sunlight was spilling over the larch and silver birch trees at the back of the garden; a rowan was showing its spectacular red foliage. Normally, he would have soaked in the beauty of the scene but his mood was dark, and he saw only the ugliness of the world beyond his garden. A man needed to leave a legacy. A tear crept out of his eye as the phone rang.
‘Jackie,’ Jennings’ voice was an octave higher than its normal pitch, ‘I assume you’ve seen the Chronicle?’
‘Good morning, Roy.’ It was anything but, Carlisle thought. Jennings was the quintessential shivershite. He was always the first to run for the hills.
‘What do you know about the events at the Tannery last night?’ Jennings asked.
‘Only what I read in the Chronicle,’ Carlisle replied. ‘The question is, what do you know about it?’
‘I’m trying to get both Spence and Wilson, but they appear to have gone dark together. I have gleaned that there is indeed evidence to suggest that this man O’Reilly was assisted on his way out of the window. I never heard his name before. I hope to God he has no connection with the Grant business.’
‘This phone call is over,’ Carlisle said. ‘We were all decimated by what happened to poor David.’ He kept his voice calm. That fool Jennings was going to drop them all in it with his panic. ‘It’s beautiful here in Hillsborough this morning. You really should come and visit sometime.’
There was a silence on Jennings’ side of the conversation. ‘Thanks very much for the invitation, Jackie,’ Jennings said after a pause. His voice was more normal now. The penny appeared to have dropped. ‘I’ll clear my desk and call back to arrange a time to visit.’
‘I look forward to seeing you.’ Carlisle cut the communication. He slumped back in his chair. He wondered whether such incompetents had surrounded Castlereagh and Carson.
CHAPTER 37
Harry Graham hated autopsies. It wasn’t the sight of dead people. He’d seen enough cadavers in his career not to be freaked out by inert bodies. It also wasn’t the sight of blood; he wasn’t the sort to fall over at a pool of the red stuff. For him, it was the noise the scalpel made as the incisions cut deep into the chest. It was also the whirr of the saw cutting through the crown of the head and exposing the brain. He wasn’t too keen on watching the organs being withdrawn, weighed and eventually put back. He’d watched a programme on the Discovery Channel about how the Egyptians treated their dead. The corpse was eviscerated pretty much as the pathologist would do today. The internal organs were removed and put in a jar, and the organless body was sown up and mummified. It didn’t look like medicine had advanced that much in its treatment of the dead. He parked outside the morgue at the Royal Victoria and steeled himself for the performance ahead.
Stephanie Reid tried not to show her disappointment when Graham entered the autopsy room. She knew that she was being pathetic, hoping against hope that Wilson would show up. She wanted to get the man out of her mind, but she wasn’t succeeding. She always had a healthy sexual appetite, but lately she had been off her feed. Before she’d come across Wilson, she hadn’t given up the search for the ‘one’ but she was getting pissed off at having to kiss so many frogs without having found the prince. Now she had met someone who she considered could very well be the ‘one’ only to find out that another woman already had her claws into him. And Kate McCann wasn’t just any other woman. Reid had been told too many times that she was beautiful not to believe that she was the equal of any other woman. But she would be the first to admit, reluctantly, that McCann was also beautiful. Add to that the fact that she was one of the United Kingdom’s top barristers, and the package was pretty complete. She knew she should give up the quest but something inside wouldn’t let her. She wanted that damn man, and would have done anything to get him. She greeted Graham coldly and told him to get his scrubs on if he was going to stand beside her. From the way he shuffled around, she got the impression that autopsies weren’t his thing.
‘You can watch from the observation room if you prefer,’ she said. The temptation to make Graham suffer was great, but she was essentially a fair person, and it wasn’t Graham’s fault that his boss had wimped out.
Graham nodded and made his way slowly to the observation room.
Reid whipped the cover off O’Reilly’s body. The professional in her suddenly took over. She pulled down the microphone and spoke. ‘The body is that of a male of approximately thirty years of age.’ She picked up a scalpel and made the first incision.
DS Moira McElvaney wished that there were more than twenty-four hours in the day. She looked at the list of things she had to do. Although viewing the CCTV was important, she had shelved it in favour of an interview with Brian Malone’s boss at the Infrastructure Agency. She had also arranged to interview one of his friends. She and Brendan
had stayed on in Cosgrove’s after Wilson’s departure the previous evening. The topic of conversation had been the now usual one of whether she was going to join Brendan in Boston. She had put off the decision for as long as she could, but since Brendan’s departure was imminent, she was going to have to bite the bullet soon. Brendan had stayed the night, and she had to admit to herself that she was coming to the conclusion that she couldn’t envisage life without him. Where did that leave her job in the PSNI, and her loyalty to Wilson? Maybe she could delay joining Brendan until this case was completed. Then there was the Cummerford business. She would certainly be called to give evidence, and maybe she would be needed if McIver ever came to trial. It was all very complicated. She was still running through combinations and permutations when she arrived in front of the Northern Ireland Infrastructure Agency office. She looked up at the concrete and glass edifice and decided that it was not going to win any architectural prizes. It was shaped like a concrete box with similar-sized windows inserted in both horizontal and vertical rows. It was the ideal government building, designed for function rather than aesthetics. After checking in with reception, Moira was directed to the lifts and instructed to go to the sixth floor where a secretary would meet her. Moira did as she was told and was led to the office of Dr Simon Healy, the director in charge of the accounting function. As she walked along the corridor on the sixth floor, she passed by small individual offices containing one desk, two chairs, one filing cabinet, one lamp and one computer. They reminded her of why she had abandoned her job in the Department of Social Welfare and joined the PSNI. She was kept waiting in an outer office for ten minutes before being invited into the inner sanctum of the director’s office.