by John Steele
And then, it was over.
The sergeant said, ‘Youse are gangsters. You’re animals, just like the IRA. Youse might have some friends in the force, but they’re the same as youse: scum. And I’d give them the same if I got my hands on them.’
They held him under-arm and dragged him out of the Land Rover, leaving him lying in the alley where he’d stood guard not thirty minutes ago. He couldn’t lift his head, but through the dull throbbing he heard them clamber into their vehicles, and the heavy growl of the engines starting. Then they were gone and all that was left was pain, cold and the pulsing drone of the helicopters watching the city as it tore itself apart.
#
There were sixteen shootings across Belfast that night. The highest body count was in a bar in the Ardoyne area where UVF gunmen walked in and sprayed the place with automatic weapons, killing six and injuring two. A taxi driver and his fare were shot dead in the Woodvale area by IRA gunmen, and an off-duty policeman was gunned down by republicans as he returned home from the cinema with his kids in Dundonald. He was badly wounded but not fatally. An undercover British Army unit passed by a bookies as three armed robbers ran out the front with the late shift’s takings. Unluckily for the criminals, the soldiers mistook them for armed terrorists and, after the getaway car was rammed, all three were shot as they scrambled from the vehicle. One survived to stand trial for his crime.
Some time later, Jackie Shaw stumbled home after his beating. He was sore and stank of beer, fags and the piss of the alley. No one from the bar had come out to help him. In the house belonging to his father, he washed his cuts and bruises with freezing water in the kitchen sink, then rinsed his mouth with some Bushmills he found in a cabinet. The whiskey-burn was harsh and he winced as he forced the liquor down. The kitchen and living room were clean and orderly: Sarah had paid a visit. As he staggered to the foot of the stairs he passed his father, snoring in his favourite armchair, lulled to sleep by the soft clink of ice and the swirl of hard spirits.
CHAPTER 6
Thursday
As he drives past a gun-toting mural, Jackie takes comfort in the fact that he is now, at least, armed. A handgun is stashed under his seat, with two magazines stored in the glove compartment.
He is driving through another estate, Tullycarnet, on the edge of East Belfast, bordering the satellite town of Dundonald. The rows of council housing and blocks, set at sharp right angles, are laid out like bigger, boxy versions of the Quonset huts in old prisoner-of-war films. Viewed from the air, much of the city has that regimented order, whether snaking lines of terraced housing or the maze-like patterns of housing estates.
Soon he is in Dundonald. He was born in the Ulster Hospital here. His mother’s funeral was held in the Presbyterian church, and now his sister lives in the town.
#
He accepted Rab’s proposal because, well, what else could he do? He’d likely be dead by now if he’d refused. And, although family hadn’t been considered fair game in the old days, he knew Rab would think nothing of carrying out his threat against his sister and her kids.
As he’d received a Ruger SR9 semi-automatic and pre-paid mobile phone not an hour ago, he heard from Rab how it was thought Jackie had been killed on ‘active service’. There had been a few instalments of financial help for Jackie’s da, Sam, and the ‘funeral’ had been taken care of by Billy Tyrie. A couple of fellow volunteers had been killed on the same night and similar assistance had been provided for their families. Billy had even respected Sam’s request for no paramilitary trappings at the funeral. Rab told him the UDA hadn’t bothered his father when suspicion fell on Jackie’s ‘disappearance’, or when suspicion for the other members’ deaths had fallen on Jackie. By then the ceasefire was on, players were making money and political capital, and the disappearance of one missing rogue volunteer wasn’t much of a concern. It was assumed any damage that could have been done to the organisation would have already been inflicted and, with prisoners released and tacit pardons for past sins flying like red, white, blue, green and orange confetti, nobody cared much about the Shaw family.
But the rules had changed and, if Rab could use his sister as leverage, then he was happy to threaten Jackie with her killing. Anything to get the job done.
The job being the killing of Billy Tyrie.
Billy had always been one of the most dangerous men in the UDA, because Billy was a believer. Back in the day, many of the UDA brigadiers and hierarchy in the east of the city were seen as soft and complacent by the rank and file. They lived in a Protestant heartland, separated from much of the vicious epicentre by the River Lagan and with only the small enclave of the Short Strand providing a republican threat. By contrast, the UDA in West and North Belfast lived almost cheek by jowl with their republican counterparts. Only the peace walls and a few street junctions separated the two terrorist factions, and the West Belfast boys were very real targets for IRA and INLA violence, occasionally being picked off by republican terrorists.
But Billy was a different animal altogether.
An animal, to be sure, but different to his counterparts in the east. For a start, he was loath to see Catholic civilians hurt in actions under his command. Jackie had seen him order the knee-capping of his own men when a random Catholic had been injured in a local UDA action, even after the Ravenhill bomb in 1993. Not that it was a matter of conscience.
‘Irish nationalism’s all about self-pity and playing the victim,’ Billy used to say. ‘Better not to give them any more fuel for the fire.’
He also didn’t rate the British.
‘The Brits are cunts. They persecuted the Irish nationalists for long enough. They massacred Presbyterians among the United Irishmen in ’98. We gave them a bloody nose at the Battle of Saintfield and they slaughtered us for it at Ballynahinch.’ He’d lean in close, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But here’s the thing, Jackie. The republicans keep portraying this conflict as Irish against British. We well know, it’s Irish against Irish, son. We’re as fucking Irish as they are, or George Washington wasn’t a fucking Yank, he was a Brit. Can’t sell that line to the Americans though, can they? And sure we built their fucking country for them as well.’
Billy would stare at the tip of his cigarette. ‘We just came along a bit later. We don’t conform to their idea of what an Irishman should be. We’re not beholden to the Catholic Church. We’re not fucking moaning about British persecution the day long, even though we have our own axe to grind in that department. We have our own identity and that’s what I’m fighting to preserve, not some fucking union. I’m not a loyalist, I’m a survivalist.’ Finally, he’d take a drag on his cigarette, the dramatic flourish of a quick swig on his beer. ‘We’re Ireland’s loyal rebels. The unpalatable truth.’
Another unpalatable truth was that Billy Tyrie had sanctioned the murder of not a few of his fellow Irishmen, many of his own people for ‘antisocial activities’, failure to pay protection or simply perceived lack of respect.
He must be in his early fifties by now, thinks Jackie. He had been utterly ruthless in his actions in the UDA and Jackie doesn’t suppose age has mellowed him.
#
‘Only ten minutes late. Could be worse.’
‘Better late in one place than early in the next.’
‘No,’ says Sarah, ‘you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to quote him. You don’t get to put on that show: “Ach my da and his country ways.” You haven’t earned that.’
‘It’s not about earning anything, Sarah. He was my da as much as he was yours.’
She looks him square in the eyes. ‘But you weren’t his child as much as I was, because you just weren’t there,Jackie.’
This is going well, he thinks. Together five minutes and we’re already sniping at each other.
Sarah is right, of course. At seventeen he’d taken off to New York with a ticket saved for with a couple of years of part-time wages. The dishes he’d washed for that fare would probably
stretch all the way to America itself. His parents had thought he’d be back in a month: he stayed – overstayed – in the States for a year before his mother got sick and he came home. At nineteen he’d disappeared again, this time to the Army. His mother was gone and with her, the centre of the family. He didn’t keep in touch beyond a couple of phone calls each year and his father couldn’t keep his hands off the bottle. In the meantime, Sarah started seeing Thomas, now her husband.
Five years later he was back in Ravenhill and running with the paramilitaries. His father, already numbed by drink, took to self-medication with renewed vigour.
‘He was a culshie from the country though,’ says Jackie, his tone light.
‘At least he knew who he was,’ says Sarah, real venom in her voice. His attempt at levity lies crumpled between them like an unwanted gift.
Stop trying to lighten things, he thinks, it’s just baiting her. She is looking at him intently and he realises he is chewing on his lower lip. It’s a habit he’s had since childhood, something he does when scolding himself for a careless word or deed.
The ghost of a smile steals across her face. She throws a lock of auburn hair behind her ear.
And it is a ghost. He thought the Sarah that could smile at him was long gone.
‘At least he didn’t sound like he was English. What the hell happened to your accent?’
It isn’t much, but it’s enough. The dig about his accent, the smile, is enough to remind them that they are brother and sister. They begin to talk and trade a couple of stories about Da. Do you remember how he always hid his fags from Mum if she came home early from church? How he always sang in silly voices when he’d had a few? How he used to do a jig with us when he was in a good mood at a party? It made them remember that they had once been close. They had once shared a roof, a bedroom, a school, the same friends. And the same parents. At least until the mortar that had bound them together, their mother, was taken by the spectre of cancer, leaving the family in a pile of broken rubble.
Then Jackie had moved away – run away – after that bloody night twenty years ago. The calls to home, the brief awkward chats between father and son had slowly petered out. Two men bound by blood and blighted by the past with, finally, nothing to say to one another. He had kept up occasional contact with his sister but, he knew, far from enough.
He has to admire Sarah. She is the only one of them who had the strength to create her own family while he and his father ran to violent crusade and drink respectively. The only one to fight for a normal life; a real life. As they talk he sees a softening in her, and he feels a desperate need to protect her, to protect Thomas and her kids, Daniel and Margaret. Her kids, once suspicious little strangers peering around their mother’s legs, now surly teenagers, glaring behind mobile phones and tablets.
The mobile phone given to him by Rab chimes.
Sarah hears it, pausing so that he can read the incoming text. He ignores it. She gives him a look but, like him, doesn’t want to complicate the moment and so continues.
They discuss tomorrow’s funeral arrangements. The service will be held in a funeral home as it is many, many years since his father crossed the threshold of the Presbyterian church. Those in attendance will then proceed to Roselawn Cemetery, followed by a modest wake at Sarah’s house. Their father had been a gentle and respected man despite the drink. Sam Shaw’s wife was taken by a disease he couldn’t understand. His son was taken by wanderlust, the Army, and then an organisation that broke many a family and claimed many a son.
Jackie can see he isn’t alone with his guilty conscience, that Sarah has her own regrets. She was there every Saturday in Bendigo Street, some weekday evenings too. She cooked meals and Sunday dinners for her father, changed his sheets and relayed the odd tidbit of news from Jackie whenever he called. But she had left too.
Finally she says, ‘Will you stay for your lunch?’
There is a plea in her eyes that he can scarcely bear. Worse still is the hope in her voice. He realises he is dying for a drink.
‘I’m sorry, Sarah, I can’t today.’
The disappointment makes her look young again and he is back in Bendigo Street, fighting with her as their mother shoos them away from her kitchen. He wants to stay, wants to break bread and be the brother she hasn’t had for all these years. Even now, her capacity for forgiveness and love shames him.
‘I just have to deal with something but, once it’s done, I swear I will stay for that dinner. If you’ll have me.’
She doesn’t like it. He can see the muscle of her jaw working as she reaches for a civil answer. But they’ve spoken longer today than in a couple of decades and Sarah won’t let that amount to nothing.
‘Okay, Jackie,’ she says, ‘but stay away from them. They were scum back then and, if anything, they’re worse now that they don’t have a cause to hang their violence on.’
‘I know,’ he says. It’s keeping them away from you that’s the trouble, he thinks.
Sarah says, ‘Do what you have to do and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow, Sis.’
#
Rab’s text is an address on the solidly middle-class street of Ravenhill Park: Tyrie’s house.
Jackie is back in the Toyota en route to the La Mon Hotel when his own pre-paid mobile rings.
The road is through typical north Down countryside, rolling green hills undulating away from the narrow strip of concrete. His mother used to refer to the county, with its myriad drumlins, as a ‘basket of eggs’ and the road peaks and dips like a rollercoaster. There is no other traffic that he can see as he glances at the mobile in his hand and sees the words unknown caller on the screen. He taps answer and puts the phone to his left ear.
A voice says, ‘Jackie Shaw, as I live and breathe.’
It’s a rasping voice with more than a hint of amusement. His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. He crests a rise and sees the road sweep down to a low gully before climbing to another peak. He begins to brake as the car gains momentum on the downward slope.
‘Are you there, Jackie Boy?’
The car is climbing again, easing up the slope towards the next crest in the road. He is accelerating, urging the engine to match the steep incline so that, when the car guns over the rise and he sees a makeshift roadblock some thirty yards away, he has to brake hard and turn into the resultant skid, halting side-on to the group.
Fifteen yards away, two cars are blocking the road with six men ranged in front of them. The men wear jeans and Barbour jackets. Two of them are standing in the classic bouncer pose, left hand around right wrist in front of the body. The right hands are wrapped around the butt of automatic handguns. The others are lounging against the cars, feigning an air of indifference – but Jackie can see the tension in their arms, like metal rods, and their faces, set in stone. Two of them part and open the door of the car on the left, a black BMW Gran Turismo. A stocky man clambers out with some difficulty and takes a handgun from one of the men. He strides up to Jackie’s car. The man’s casual air says he’s no stranger to violence: he carries the weapon like it’s an extension of his arm.
The man taps the driver’s-side window of the Toyota with the gun, and now Jackie can see the owner of the voice that was on his mobile phone moments ago.
He lowers the window and smells the tobacco and whiskey stink of Billy Tyrie.
CHAPTER 7
1993
He couldn’t take his eyes off the chair. It sat in the corner like a bad omen, chipped and discoloured. Jackie could guess what had caused the stains. The wood floor around the chair had the same clouds of dark brown, with one large crusted pool surrounding the splintered legs like an ugly birthmark.
The others were engrossed in an account of Marty Rafferty’s stay in Crumlin Road Prison. It seemed Marty’s stretch after being lifted in possession had become a little more perilous in recent weeks. He’d been targeted by a couple of members of the UVF in the Crum who had an axe to grind with h
is da from way back. The sins of the father.
Shanty McKee’s Jack Russell sat next to Rab Simpson, who fed it the occasional snack and gave it a pat from time to time. Also in attendance was Sam ‘Ruger’ Rainey, a heavily overweight man with thinning brown hair, compensated for with a bushy moustache. His face had a pugnacious quality, like a bulldog in constant readiness for a scrap, and he packed a solid mass of muscle under rolls of fat. A young man new to the group was sitting next to Rainey. His slim, almost delicate frame and choirboy looks were a contrast to Rainey’s haggard appearance, not to mention the young man’s shock of dirty fair hair.
At the head of the table, a large, silent figure sat picking splinters out of the table top. He worked methodically, patiently, and once he’d pried a wooden scab off the surface, he placed it in a neat pile. His broad, powerful shoulders made small rhythmic movements as he worked on the splinters, like a Doberman pawing at its kill. The hulking presence had been silent since the meeting began but everyone in attendance knew he was listening intently. The man weighed every remark, calculating the worth of suggestions and the consequences of reports. Those around the table were being assessed, too, judged on their contributions. No one wanted to disappoint.
Billy Tyrie looked up into the light and stole a glance at Jackie. The bare lightbulb above revealed the twisted scar tissue that tore at the right corner of Tyrie’s upper lip.
Jackie had mostly recovered from the beating he’d taken in the Land Rover. To his amazement, his nose remained intact. A little purple bruising around his left eye and a healing cut on his lip were all that remained of his wounds. That and the prestige. He’d earned a new level of respect from the men sat around the table for keeping his mouth shut. There was a discernible change in how Rab spoke to him and Billy gave him more time when they were in the same room. And now he’d been invited to this meeting above a small drinking club in the Lagan Village area. It was the first time Jackie had been there, and meetings involving organisation members were being rotated around several venues since the East End Video bomb. No one was taking any chances that the Provos might try another attack.