by John Steele
‘I don’t think he’s at home. The wife was talking to a neighbour a few minutes ago and she looked happy enough. She looks pissed off when he’s there.’
‘She wouldn’t look pissed off if I was her man. I’d fucking give her one, so I would.’
‘Well, you can step in and give her a shoulder to cry on when Hubby isn’t around any more.’
Jackie gunned the engine and took off, doubling back a few streets later and driving to the Lagan Lodge on the lower Ravenhill Road. Danny headed off for a bite to eat and unwind after his shift and Jackie walked into the bar, a smattering of hardened drinkers chasing their pints with shots at the counter. In a small room above the main bar, he found Rab playing pool and Billy looking over the Belfast Telegraph while drawing on a pint in the corner.
Rab sank a stripe in the middle left pocket, and said, ‘Well?’
‘Nothing. I don’t think he was there, the missus was in too good a mood.’
‘Fenian bastard. We’ll never fucking get him at this rate. He must be over in the west or north half the time.’
‘He’s wily enough. You don’t survive as a commander in the ’RA in this part of the town without having some smarts.’
‘No,’ said Billy, ‘our colleagues are just too fucking lazy to put the effort in. Easier to go out and shoot some poor fucker on his milk-round.’
‘Aye, some Fenian fucker,’ said Rab.
‘But not the right Fenian fucker,’ said Billy.
Jackie said, ‘We’ll get a break. We just need him vulnerable for a few minutes.’ He was freaked by the genuine enthusiasm in his voice.
Rab lit a cigarette and took a drag. He leaned over the table, cue in hand, and eased another striped ball into the top left pocket. ‘That fucker Maguire is another one,’ he said. ‘We can’t get near him for RUC patrols. The wee shite probably called the Black Bastards after I near skinned him.’
Jackie said, ‘Sure, leave him. Wait’ll we’ve sorted Cochrane.’
‘Fucking wee shite,’ said Rab, loud and shrill. ‘Fucking wanker.’
Changing the subject Jackie said, ‘Here, where’s Shanty’s dog? I haven’t seen it in a while.’
Rab tipped some ash on the floor and coughed up a chunk of phlegm.
‘Sure, I shot it,’ he said.
‘You what?’
‘The fucking thing was yapping away at me so I took it to the park in the middle of the fucking night for a walk. Must have been about one, had to climb over the railings with it and everything, but when you’re drunk, you know …’
No, I don’t know, thought Jackie. I’ve never executed a Jack Russell when I’ve had a couple.
‘I had a gun with me because you hear all these stories about the park at night, you know: fucking sickos running about. And it was still yapping and I was tired. So I put my coat over the dog’s head and shot it.’
Jackie tried to keep his expression neutral while his mind raced for something, anything to say.
Billy Tyrie to the rescue.
‘Enough,’ said Billy. ‘Ruger will be here in a wee while and we can discuss Cochrane. Jackie, away and get yourself a drink from downstairs.’
And so it was that twenty minutes later they were standing around the pool table
‘I know youse are champing at the bit to get at Cochrane,’ Billy said, ‘and I know youse are frustrated. It’s over a month since the East End bomb and it grates even more that the ’RA bastards who did it were looking to hit us, UDA command. But we have to do this right.’
Rab fingered a cigarette burn in the green baize.
‘Do you hear me, Rab?’
Rab nodded, not taking his eyes off the burn. ‘Right,’ he repeated.
‘It doesn’t look like we can hit him at his house,’ said Billy. ‘Rab set up a couple of video cameras when Danny took him up on a rooftop a couple of nights ago. Cochrane’s place is under constant guard, probably because they expect retaliation. We don’t want the car surveillance drawing any unwanted attention, so we’re knocking it on the head.’
Jackie breathed a sigh of relief. He hated watching from the ‘taxi’, literally a sitting target. He wondered at Rab’s hidden talents for electronic surveillance, though.
Billy continued, ‘Now, youse haven’t seen Tommy for a couple of days because he’s been doing a bit of work for us over in the west. Turns out Cochrane’s domestics are worse than you think. His wife’s not happy because the fucker’s shagging some wee doll on the Springfield Road.’
Jackie wasn’t surprised. Many of the players in the city had at least one mistress hidden away somewhere. It was a point of weakness Special Branch had tried to exploit in the past. Billy was the exception rather than the rule.
‘This wee bint,’ said Billy, ‘took a tumble last week coming out of a shebeen when she was full. Now she’s in the Royal with a spinal injury and Cochrane’s been going to see her. This is it, lads. Time to make the fucker pay for nine of ours we lost in that bomb.’
Rab looked up from the scarred surface of the pool table and smiled. Rainey’s face had lit up and Jackie gave his best shit-eating grin in response. This was exactly what they’d been looking for. Cochrane was restricted by hospital visiting hours and locked into a schedule of sorts. The Royal Victoria Hospital was a sprawling complex with a wealth of hiding places and it was possible to enter with a good chance of remaining undetected. The busy Grosvenor Road on its northern perimeter mainlined directly to the city centre, although they’d have to be wary of the joint police and Army base located halfway along it. Alternatively, they could escape up the Springfield Road onto Ballygomartin and loyalist Woodvale, or continue on into the mountains on that side of the city.
Tommy had done his homework and noted the hours and days when Cochrane visited the girl, Shona Doherty. Cochrane visited without fail between 4 and 6 p.m. It would be rush hour, but easier to blend into traffic after the target was taken out, with plenty of crowds if they were forced to escape on foot. They could use a contact of Tommy’s within the hospital to gain access, study floorplans and hide weapons there in advance. Cochrane would have bodyguards but, crucially, would be alone in the room with the girl during the visit.
Jackie was surprised to find that the preparation was solid and the hit feasible. Risky, but what operation wasn’t? He would call Orr. Gordon would probably move the girl, maybe to another hospital under some administrative pretence. He might put a man in another room nearby with a uniformed guard on the doors. That would discourage the hit and piss Cochrane off, having to pass a couple of peelers while he visited his woman-on-the-side.
Half an hour later they were downstairs for a drink. The revolver and shoulder-holster had been placed in a safe upstairs by Rainey, the quartermaster. Jackie ordered a second pint.
Just this one and I’ll head off, he thought. Maybe two, just to get my head right.
Business over, Billy and Ruger began an earnest discussion as to whether Ally McCoist could do the business against Marseille. With Hateley out, the consensus seemed to be that the UEFA Champions League probably wouldn’t be coming to Ibrox this season. Talk turned to English football. Rainey was a Liverpool fan, Billy a Manchester United man. Billy was gently riding Ruger about United’s win at Anfield last month when the barman cut in.
Eddie McMaster was a new face behind the counter . Young and cocky, the Lodge’s landlord had hired him because he was cheap labour paid off the books, and in a desperate but doomed attempt to bring in a younger crowd. Eddie was also a fervent Liverpool fan. Cloth over his shoulder, he leaned on the oak bar and said, ‘Good result last month, Billy.’
Billy and Ruger nodded earnestly.
‘Hughes and McClair, eh? Yer man Hughes is quality, so he is.’
More nodding and a sly grin from Billy, enjoying the gloat over his mate.
Eddie McMaster said, ‘Too bad it was an ex-Celtic man scored your winner.’
There was barely a flicker of annoyance from Billy. But a flicker nonethele
ss, like a hand passing through a naked flame.
Eddie said, ‘Then again, is there any such thing as an ex-Celtic man?’
Sam Rainey stepped in, his voice an octave higher. ‘Ach, Eddie, sure we’d Dalglish for years and he was a legend for us.’
‘But wasn’t he a Rangers supporter as a kid? I can’t see McClair ever having a season ticket for Ibrox, like.’
All this time Eddie McMaster had had a small, conspiratorial smile on his simple face. He had even winked at Rainey. Before he could say another word Billy smiled and said, ‘You’ll never walk alone – right, boys?’ then strode off to the toilets.
Sam Rainey lit on McMaster: ‘You fucking eejit, is yourhead cut? Winding up Billy Tyrie?’
Jackie turned away, looking for an opportunity to make for the door and find a phone box. The sooner he could get the details of the Cochrane hit to Gordon the better. Picking through the finer details of the operation had brought home the fact that a man was going to lose his life and, whatever he thought of Cochrane, he didn’t want that on his ledger when he stood before Saint Peter. As he took in the swelling crowd of drinkers, he spotted, in the corner near the front door of the bar, two oul’ lads hunched over their pints. One of the men was in a bad way. His shoulders were shaking and even from across the increasingly busy room Jackie could see the man was wracked with large, gulping sobs. His companion, a ruddy faced boozer, his nose an explosion of shattered blood vessels, sat with a hand on the other’s arm. He leaned in close.
Jackie hadn’t seen his father for a few days. When he had come home his da had been busy with a dedicated bout of drinking or passed out in bed. He walked over.
‘Da, are youse all right?’
He nodded at the other man, curled over his pint as if protecting it, head down and focused on the cracked Formica table-top.
‘Aye, we’re grand, son. Harry’s just feeling a bit under the weather, like.’
Jackie bent to take Harry in. It was Harry Clarke, father of one of the wee girls killed in the bombing last month. Jackie remembered there had been two schoolgirls, friends, in East End Video at the time.
He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and said, ‘Mr Clarke, if there’s anything I can do …’
Harry Clarke looked up, his eyes fierce and red raw. Jackie took a step back, shocked by the venom in the man’s stare.
‘I don’t need nothing from you, or your boss.’
Samuel Shaw said, ‘Ach, c’mon now, Harry, that’s our Jackie. You don’t need to be talking to him that way. Our Jackie isn’t a bad lad.’ His father nodded at him: best if you go.
Harry Clarke straightened his frame in the chair, as if ready to deliver a sermon. As soon as his chest had risen and his back become rigid, he collapsed in on himself, deflating and returning to a wretched hunch over his half-empty glass. At first Jackie thought grief had got the better of the man. Then a voice behind him gave him a start.
‘Mr Shaw. Could I borrow your son, here?’
Jackie’s father nodded at Billy, who returned the gesture before guiding Jackie gently through the bar.
‘Upstairs. Now.’
The order was non-negotiable, but Jackie felt desperate to get to a phone box and unload the details of the Cochrane hit on Gordon before the drink and the stress washed them away.
Eddie McMaster stood next to Rainey in the upstairs room. There was a metal cashbox on the pool table, popped open.
Billy said, ‘Milburn pays you cash, doesn’t he, the tight oul’ shite?’
Eddie nodded. ‘That’s right, Mr Tyrie.’
‘Don’t be taking this the wrong way, Eddie,’ said Billy, ‘but I can’t be having you spout shite like that at the bar to me. It’s a lack of respect. People could hear.’
Jackie felt a hollowness in his gut. He didn’t want to see another young man beaten. He was tired and scared and just wanted to be outside in the cool evening air. To make that fucking phone call.
Billy said, ‘So you won’t be working here again. I have to be seen to do something. I’ve told Milburn. No hard feelings, eh?’
Eddie let out a long, slow breath. He said, ‘Mr Tyrie, I am so–’
Sam Rainey put a hand on his arm.
Billy pointed to the cashbox. ‘Like I said, no hard feelings. Take what you’re owed and be on your way.’
Eddie rubbed his hands on his hips and thanked Billy. Ruger walked over to the cashbox with him, trusted companion. Eddie smiled, Sam smiled. Eddie started taking ten-pound notes from the box. Sam Rainey took hold of him. Eddie jerked but Ruger was a big man. Billy was next to them in a second. The metal lid of the cashbox slammed down on Eddie’s right hand with a wet snap. He screamed. There was blood on the lip of the lid already and Ruger held McMaster’s neck as Billy slammed the lid down again. And again. The cashbox must have come smashing down on McMaster’s mangled hand at least ten times. Jackie lost count.
When it was over, Billy had barely broken sweat. He said to Jackie, ‘Take this piece of shite out and get him to Casualty. Make sure he keeps his mouth shut,’ then turned and began a conversation with Rainey. Jackie helped McMaster down the stairs and out to the alleyway where Shanty had had his escape from a kneecapping. He gave Eddie, a mass of tears and snot, a couple of ten-pound notes and told him to get a taxi to the City Hospital Casualty Department.
Then, mercifully, he was alone, a fine drizzle falling. He walked the short stretch home to Bendigo Street to grab a coffee before calling Gordon and was relieved to find the house empty. He turned the TV on while he searched for a jar of coffee in the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later he was in the hall putting on his jacket, ready to go out and find a phone box. He picked up the remote control to turn off the TV when a solemn-faced reporter on the ten o’clock news began the daily tally of deaths in Northern Ireland. A young man had been shot on the junction of the Albertbridge and Mountpottinger Roads. The police were treating the killing as sectarian. A couple of bomb scares. And an RUC constable had been gunned down by two PIRA gunmen in the car park of a hospital in Antrim. He was ambushed and shot in the back of the head as he left the maternity unit after visiting his wife and newborn daughter. His wife heard the shots from her hospital bed. She was now a widow, the child fatherless.
Jackie took off his jacket, threw his keys on the coffee table and cracked open a can of lager. He was going nowhere.
CHAPTER 14
Friday
A mist has descended on Belfast and it clings to the city like cordite to a gunman’s hand. It chokes the roads with slow-moving traffic and cloaks pedestrians in anonymity. Even Botanic Avenue, with its fast-food outlets, bars, nightclubs and hotels, is clogged with the fugue, like the inside of some giant drinking club from the old days, when you could double up on the poison you fed your system with tobacco as well as alcohol. It is 8.30 p.m.
Jackie thinks of Gordon Orr. A teetotaller and non-smoker, he was too gentle a soul for the world of E3A and E3B, the RUC Special Branch divisions targeting republican and loyalist groups. Jackie had received a phone call from his sister Sarah a few years ago to say Gordon had suffered a stroke. Not massive or fatal, but enough to force retirement and a plan to emigrate to the warmer climes of Australia with his wife. He never got on the plane, his health declining rapidly. He passed away four years ago.
As he parks in a side street and wanders around the corner towards Club Realm, Jackie thinks how aghast Gordon would be at Botanic Avenue tonight. Kids high or dulled by drink are strewn across the pavement and the homeless huddle at the entrance to the train station. For the first time since his arrival, Jackie sees a police presence. A PSNI patrol car is parked in front of a pizza joint and a foot patrol is making its way along the avenue at leisure, Glock handguns snug in hip-holsters.
There is an indistinct hum drifting from the closed door of the club, further muffled by the heavy mist. The facade of the building is an old church; Gordon would be distraught. He pushes open the door to be greeted by two bouncers with
regulation shaved heads and ill-fitting suits, sporting small earbuds for radio communication.
The bar is filling with a mix of students, young professionals and wasters. At the far end of the room is a stage, set up for a band, with more toilets next to it. Jackie looks along the counter on the left of the room for a man with a Buddha tattoo on his neck, Adrian Morgan. There are clumps of people laughing, drinking and chatting, but no shaggy-haired, bearded, tattooed drug-dealer types. Jackie eyes the bar again. He hasn’t touched a drop since he touched down at the City airport and now is not the time to start, but he makes for the counter and orders a fruit juice. As he sips, a door on the right of the stage opens, a Toilets sign above it, and a man walks through. He looks to be in his late twenties and is wearing a scruffy T-shirt and black jeans. Jackie catches a glimpse of biker boots. The man has greasy-looking, unkempt hair and a desperate attempt at a beard, which he scratches vigorously as he walks towards the counter.
Adrian Morgan, thinks Jackie, pleasure to meet you. The man adopts a swagger as he nears the bar, oblivious of Jackie.
Morgan says, ‘All right, doll, how’s you?’
The bar staff gives a stale smile. ‘Hi Ade, I’m tired. My flatmate has an exam, so always I have to be quiet at home. She gets angry when I make noise.’
‘Maja, darlin’, you can always come and make some noise in my place.’
Jackie calls it: the guy’s a first-class wanker. A wannabe.
Morgan orders a pint and persists with the girl, other staff saying hello as they pass. As he moves to a table, Jackie keeps an eye on the bar. He doesn’t want Morgan to notice him, and that’s a problem with an orange juice in his hand. After about fifteen minutes Morgan makes for the toilet again.
Broken the seal, thinks Jackie.
The ritual is repeated again when Morgan returns: drink, craic, piss, taking around twenty minutes this time.
Jackie makes his way towards the steps at the far end of the balcony, next to the exit for the toilets. He zips up his leather jacket, keeping watch over the bar from a distance, and takes a white wire and earbud out of his jacket pocket. It’s for his iPod, when he runs back in the West Country, and purposely only for one ear: he likes to be aware of his surroundings as he runs. He shoves the bud in his ear and walks into the toilet. A punter is washing his hands in the Gents. Jackie, looking like a bouncer, tells the man to finish up and leave, the toilets will be closed for a while. He takes in the room: chess-board tiles on the floor, long urinal, cubicles, two sturdy washbasins with brass taps, and a long light-cord hanging next to the door with a ceramic ornamental handle on the end. Then he follows the man out and stands in front of the toilet door. He hopes that, as these toilets are at the opposite end of the club, the real bouncers won’t notice what he’s doing. A young man with a Queen’s University rugby shirt approaches the door. Jackie turns him away, gives him a line about a damaged toilet. Morgan is laughing at the bar with another girl.