by John Steele
His face has always been dangerously easy to read, and his surprise is scrawled all over it.
Mrs McCauley says, ‘You know him, then. I suppose you would, considering your past. Aye, he’s changed a bit but it sounds like you saw Shanty McKee.’
#
Roselawn Cemetery is the home of thousands of departed souls, a city of the dead. In among the graves of the good citizens of Belfast can be found the odd headstone engraved with the crest of the Royal Ulster Constabulary or a British Army unit. Look hard enough and graves bearing UDA, UVF and other terrorist groupings markings can be found. Their opposite numbers in the republican IRA and INLA are housed over in Milltown Cemetery in the west of the city.
Samuel Shaw is laid to rest on the outer reaches of the graveyard in a fresh row of plots. His wife, Jackie and Sarah’s mother, is at rest in Dundonald, in a grave too shallow for a second burial. Even in death, Sammy is alone.
Jackie can see a woman standing a few graves away but focused intently on the small group of mourners. She is a striking figure, in a black winter coat. Her hair is like a dark waterfall streaming down the sides of an olive-skinned face. Even with this distance between them, he can see that she has lost none of her beauty.
Once the minister has given the last blessing, Jackie thanks him and excuses himself for a moment. Eileen Tyrie waits for him a short walk away, attempting to dim her radiance with a subdued expression. It’s a losing battle.
Once he reaches her, he is lost. He simply says, ‘Eileen.’
‘Jackie. I’m very sorry about your father.’
‘You know, I always used to scoff when people would say things like “At least now he’s at peace” at funerals. But I really pray that’s true of my da.’
She smiles. ‘And you? Are you at peace these days?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m not fighting any good fights.’
‘I knew you weren’t dead. I just knew.’
‘Look, Eileen …’
‘It’s okay,’ she says, urgent, ‘whatever it was, you must have had good reason. Anyway, what were we going to do? We couldn’t have gone on behind Billy’s back like that forever.’
No, he thinks. He remembers the body, sectioned in bags at Cooey’s Wells. They stand in silence and Jackie looks back towards his father’s grave, signalling to Sarah that he’ll be over in a minute.
‘Will you come back to Sarah’s for a wee while? For the wake?’
‘No, I’d better not.’
She looks at her black-gloved hands for a moment, fiddles with the strap of her handbag. He is about to make his excuses when she speaks, a resolve in her voice.
‘Take my mobile number and give me a ring,’ she says. ‘If you want to.’
He punches her number into his own mobile and she tells him to call in four hours: she should be alone then. Billy doesn’t know she is here, at Roselawn. A wave of nostalgia washes over him, followed by a bubbling foam of anticipation. They part, but as he is walking back to his sister and her family, he sees a familiar face, a Slavic face, watching from next to a mausoleum, some distance off.
CHAPTER 11
1993
He got back to the house on Bendigo Street around ten to find it empty. Sarah was probably out with her boyfriend but she had been busy. The living room was clean and tidy and there were fresh vegetables in the fridge. His father was probably in one of the bars, pissing away the little pay he still picked up at the shipyard. Jackie collected his unemployment benefit regular as clockwork, but shipyard work had been drying up for years. Opportunities for his da to grab a couple of hours’ paid labour were increasingly unpredictable.
Much like the daily movements of IRA commander James Cochrane. Jackie knew that the men and women of Northern Ireland’s police force, the RUC, routinely avoided routine in order to make assassination attempts more problematic. Cochrane had followed suit. The bulk of surveillance had been done by Tommy thus far, since he was an unknown face in the area and more at liberty to move around. Jackie had observed the target to a lesser degree and Rab had sat back, waiting until the actual hit. He was a known quantity among republicans in East Belfast and a liability when it came to surveillance.
A short time ago, Jackie had been sitting in a Vauxhall on Mountpottinger Road watching Cochrane visit his estranged wife and daughter. They lived next door to Cochrane, three doors down from the local RUC station with its blast walls and towering reinforced gates flanked by sangar security posts – huge concrete blocks with a single observation slit in each.
Now Jackie sagged in an armchair and lit up a cigarette, drawing deeply and letting his head rest on the back of the threadbare cushion. He was relieved his father wasn’t home. The two of them circled each other like boxers in a ring, their daily chatter harmless sparring while both ducked the knockout blow: Jackie’s connections and the threat they presented. Awkwardly, he took a handgun from his waistband and laid the ugly weight on the floor next to him. Sitting exposed like that in the car, in a republican area where, at any moment, someone could walk up to the side window and put a bullet in his face, had sapped his energy. He’d been living on his nerves for days now. His thoughts turned to the call he had to make and he dragged his weary frame to the phone and dialled the same number he’d dialled out the back of Castle Court. The number he’d dialled after talking to Eileen yesterday. The number he’d committed to memory, like the combination of a safe containing the secrets of his life. The key to his precarious existence.
#
Jackie parked his Ford Escort in the small car park at the foot of the path up to Scrabo Tower and switched off his lights. The tower stood like a stone lightning rod on Scrabo Hill overlooking Strangford Lough. He sat in the late-night darkness, ten miles from Belfast, and waited. He could not see another soul. A restless mob of clouds blocked the moon and threatened a downpour. The gravel car park was a web of deep shadows surrounded by gorse. It was almost midnight. He was tired, his eyes raw from lack of sleep. He knew that tired wasn’t good. Tired meant careless. But he was sure he hadn’t been followed.
As sure as he could be after a couple of Black Bush on five hours sleep.
After five minutes, another car eased into the car park and came to a stop at the opposite end of the gravel enclosure. A small torch inside the car flashed: Oscar-Romeo-Romeo. Jackie tucked the 32 ACP Walther PP into his jeans, took a deep breath and opened his car door. He sprinted across to the waiting Astra, its back door already open.
Once inside, he lay across the back seat while the driver leaned over and closed the door.
‘Jackie, how are you?’
‘I’ve been worse, yourself?’
‘Can’t complain. BRC passed your call on yesterday, said you’d phone today when you had the chance.’
‘Sorry about the hour, Gordon. I hope Rebecca wasn’t too pissed off at me.’
‘It’s hardly the first time. Better you than some asset who’s a player.’
‘That’s ninety per cent of your job.’
‘Aye, I suppose. But she sees me take the Astra and she breathes easier. She knows I wouldn’t be driving soft-skinned if I wasn’t confident about a meet.’
Not that Jackie wouldn’t have been happier in an armoured vehicle. Still, he knew it was hard on Gordon’s wife, Rebecca, being married to a police officer. Wives and kids struggled with the thought of their husbands and fathers being 24-hour targets for republican terrorists. Thanks to Gordon Orr handling ‘assets’ – or agents – in the UVF and UDA, he was a target for loyalists too.
‘Sorry about the beating you took at the Lagan Lodge. The sergeant is a transfer from D Division, took a bit of abuse in Tiger’s Bay and Mount Vernon. Rubbed up against some bad apples colluding with the UVF, so he has a thing about loyalists. He’s out to prove a point.’
‘He’s an arsehole is what he is.’
‘That’s no sort of language to be using about a colleague.’ So said the Burning Bush: Gordon Orr, evangelical conscience of Spec
ial Branch East.
Colleague, thought Jackie, a good word. A word with gravitas and a sense of respectability, the very qualities expected in a police officer. Not like undercover, with its clandestine, cloak-and-dagger connotations. ‘At least they got the time and place right,’ he said. ‘And we prevented the kneecapping and got Rafferty. That’s a result.’
‘Sounds like you got Rafferty senior.’
Gordon, his partner in E Division Special Branch, East Belfast, was a tall, broad man in his late forties with a shock of rapidly greying hair and a trim moustache clinging to a generous mouth. A devoted husband, father and churchgoer, Gordon was the moral guardian of Special Branch East. Jackie often wondered at how he had navigated his way through the murk of the Branch for over a decade and kept his integrity intact. He had run various assets, including one IRA member in the Short Strand, and did his best to keep Jackie sane during meets.
Sane in an insane position: Jackie was wedged between the huge, well-oiled policing machine of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the largest terrorist organisation in Ireland, the UDA. He was the only undercover RUC officer that Gordon worked with. In fact, Jackie was the only undercover RUC officer that he knew of inserted in a terrorist organisation in E Division. Probably in Belfast. He wasn’t even Special Branch. He was on secondment after a superior who liaised with SB had mentioned him to one of their officers.
Born and raised on the Ravenhill Road, Jackie had known some of the players since his days kicking a football up and down Bendigo Street and coughing on stolen Benson & Hedges in the alley behind his parents’ house. He’d gone to the Army, then the Constabulary out in the country regions, and effectively disappeared from the community. His father was a private man and hadn’t discussed his son, no matter how much he loved the drink. His sister, Sarah, had largely been absent. Jackie was perfect material for an undercover operative in the local paramilitary cell. He’d come home, drawn the dole, drunk in the bars, and made the right noises until an approach was made. Now, beyond the highest ranks in Branch, Gordon was the only living soul who knew the truth of Jackie’s association with Rab Simpson and the rest. No other officers could know he was police: the risk of a leak was too great. And if the UDA were to discover he was RUC there’d be baseball bats, cigarette burns and, after a long, painful ordeal, a bullet in the head.
The austere big man facing Jackie was his sole friend, his confidant, counsellor and minister.
Gordon said, ‘Do I smell whiskey? Tell me you didn’t drive here under the influence? Do you know what would happen if you were stopped at a VCP and the uniforms picked you up?’
‘Relax, Gordon, I know what I’m fucking doing.’
‘And I meant it about the language. You’re not in one of those holes drinking with Tyrie and Simpson now.’
‘You want to try going to some of them holes yourself. Get out of Divisional HQ and spend a bit of time with the players in their natural environment.’
They sat in silence for a minute, Jackie clenching and unclenching his fists and jaw. He thought of insults he could hurl at Orr, interspersed with hurling a little self-loathing at himself. Gordon was right, he didn’t behave like a policeman. He didn’t feel like a policeman, Special Branch or otherwise.
He knew Gordon was waiting until he calmed himself, like a father with a tantrum-throwing child. It was textbook handling for a volatile asset, someone who was a violent and unstable player, a terrorist, informing on his comrades. Is that what I am now, he thought, one of them? Even through the dense gloom he could see concern on Gordon’s face. Was Jackie more at home now in a dive like the Lagan Lodge, knocking them back with Tyrie, Simpson and the rest?
‘Look, I can’t begin to know what it’s like being with them; being them. But it’s undercover, son. It isn’t real, you’re playing a character. Your warrant card and dress uniform is still at E Division HQ. You’re still a policeman. One of us.’
Jackie exhaled with a whistle, scratching his head a little too aggressively, like a junkie without a fix. He was dying for a cigarette but Gordon forbade smoking in his car.
‘I’m all right.’ He relaxed a little. ‘I’m all right.’
He took a small notepad from his hip pocket, sparked up his cigarette lighter and squinted at the book as he related the protection run at Maguire’s, Simpson’s violence and threat to the shop-owner, and suggested intrusive rather than static surveillance of Maguire in case of further intimidation.
‘I think it’s to our advantage to keep Simpson in play for now, so a decent uniform presence around the Cregagh Road, the shop and Maguire’s house. Enough to scare Simpson off doing something rash.’
Next, he gave an account of the altercation with Peter Rafferty, how he had been forced to confront the man in order to maintain his cover. He had used non-lethal force and established further credentials with Tyrie, Simpson and Rainey. Gordon wasn’t happy. Rafferty was in bad shape and wasn’t the type to forgive or forget. However, it had boosted Jackie’s credibility and standing within the Ravenhill group.
They covered Shanty McKee and how Jackie had seen him checking out his car. Why would he be doing that? Did he recognise Jackie’s Ford from another, previous meet with Gordon?
‘I’ll have DRU look into him and ask CID if he’s come up anywhere in their files recently,’ said Gordon, ‘but I doubt it. You were driving your car when you picked him up for the kneecapping. He probably just recognised it from that night.’
Jackie knew the Divisional Research Unit probably wouldn’t find anything. CID had likely never heard of the kid.
‘There’s an arms bed in Cregagh Glen,’ he said. ‘Big gear: an assault rifle, explosives and handguns.’
‘How do you want to proceed on that one?’
‘I’d go camera surveillance for now; there’s no harm to the public that I can see. It’s buried well off the hiking path and the bed is pretty deep. The explosives are Powergel, useless without a precursor to mix them with. The guns aren’t loaded, but the ammunition is stored in the same dump.’
He wondered if any of the weapons had been marked for use on James Cochrane.
And there it was. The elephant in the room; or in Jackie’s head, at any rate. There was a plan to kill a senior commander in the Provisional IRA, a guy who would love to put a bullet between both Jackie’s and Gordon’s eyes. Jackie remembered a colleague, John Wilson, blown apart in a rocket attack on the sangar at Mountpottinger station. It could have been Cochrane holding the launcher. Jim Magee, shot in bed with his wife wailing next to him and his kids screaming in their bunk beds in the next room. Might have been Cochrane pulled the trigger.
But Jackie should tell Gordon about the hit and prevent his death? Save the bastard?
He cleared his throat and said, ‘Any information for me?’
‘Not much at this end,’ said Gordon. ‘We think something must be brewing because Tyrie hasn’t responded to the Ravenhill bomb yet, but we have nothing in terms of intel.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Rainey is seeing some girl somewhere near the Shore Road. We got that tidbit from SB North. D Division passed the intel on.’
‘Vera won’t be too happy if she finds out. And a wee girl? He’s well into his forties, the dirty oul’ clart.’
This was much of what they did on meets: gossip like a couple of bored housewives. So much of surveillance was observing routines and looking for anomalies in everyday existence, the tiny exception in the unexceptional, wading through so much daily grind. Jackie pushed Cochrane further to the back of his mind.
He said, ‘There’s a new face working with Tyrie’s crew now. Name’s Tommy, apparently from North Belfast. Mount Vernon. Don’t have a surname at present. Young, about five foot seven, 120 pounds, fair hair, pale eyes, clean-shaven and boyish in appearance, although I’d guess he’s in his early twenties.’
‘I’ll look into it.’ Gordon checked his watch. ‘Take care of yourself.’
‘All right then. Cheers.’
Jackie open
ed the door again and sprinted back to his car. By the time he was settled in the seat and turning the key in the ignition, Gordon Orr’s Astra was gone and Jackie was, once again, alone.
#
The sex was ragged and frantic.
They hadn’t fucked for weeks and, like binge drinkers, they gorged on each other. And after she had drained him, they lay back on sheets soaked in their sweat and retreated into their own lives for a moment.
Jackie had risen late and run through the Ormeau Park to get the booze out of his system and allay the feverish anticipation of her time, her body, her. She had boarded the train for a shopping trip in Dublin, as she had told Billy she would, then disembarked in Portadown, where he had picked her up and driven to Newcastle.
Now they lay in a queen-size in the Slieve Donard Hotel, named after the greatest of the Mourne Mountains, which stood watch over the town. Jackie rolled onto his left side and took in the smooth, glowing body lying next to him.
‘You could go, you know,’ he said.
‘I thought we just came, Jackie.’
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘You could just go. Across the water, away from all this shite. At least until it’s all over.’
She laughed. Too hard and loud. It sounded cruel.
‘What, the Troubles? I’d be in a wooden box when I came back. This is never going to end.’
‘It could end for you. You have money. Go to England. Scotland.’
Eileen propped herself on her right elbow.
‘Are you trying to save me, Jackie?’ She reached out and touched his face.
As always when he was with her, he felt younger than his years, awkward and foolish.
‘I just think you’re better than Billy, better than the life you have now.’
‘Jackie, I left school with hardly a qualification to my name. I don’t know how to do anything other than what I do now, and that’s make all the right noises when Billy climbs on me after a night in the bar, or look good for the man when he wants me on his arm. I can read him, I know him, and he can protect me because he’s the head of the pack. Call me cynical but this is the best I can do.’