Ravenhill: Jackie Shaw Book 1 - the first in an electrifying new thriller series

by John Steele

  ‘No, it’s all yours.’

  ‘Thanks, love. Our Sylvia’s in the hospital so she is, and my husband’s at the football, so I have to get our Davy to pick her up from the Royal. She’s getting out the day, so she is.’

  The Irish habit of pouring out your life story. It grounded him and he caught sight of the couple walking in the direction of the Albertbridge Road. The weather had kept up and the sun lit the girl’s golden hair as it bobbed in the breeze. Jackie kept a good number of yards behind on foot but Shanty and the girl weren’t professionals and far too interested in each other to pay much attention to what was happening around them. They stopped at the outer edges of the car park and stood behind a painter and decorator’s van. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what was happening on the other side of the vehicle. Jackie hung back, playing with a packet of cigarettes and, a couple of minutes later, watched the girl walk off with a spring in her step.

  Two minutes later, Shanty sauntered out from behind the van, finishing a smoke. There was playing with fire and there was full-on arson, and Shanty was in danger of getting a lot more than his fingers burned. If Jackie was going to protect a murderer like James Cochrane, he had to step in and keep a wee eejit like Shanty McKee out of harm. So he began closing the distance between them across the car park.

  Then a blue Ford Cortina came to a screeching stop on the sun-baked concrete and two masked figures leaped from the left-side doors. Shanty’s face seemed to crumple even before one of the men took a savage grip on his balls; the other wrenched his right arm behind his back. Jackie was between two cars, frozen, his breathing harsh. He barely registered the attack unfolding in front of him, it happened with such speed and ferocity.

  Survival instinct kicked in: fight or flight or keep your fucking head down. He went for the last option.

  Shanty’s head was up, his face scrunched in a silent scream as the attackers threw him into the back of the car like a scrap of discarded paper. There was a shriek of rubber as the Cortina took off at speed, leaving black scars on the concrete. Then it was over. No one had screamed. No one had moved to help because no one was there.

  Except Jackie.

  He surveyed what he could see of the rest of the car park. There were faces straining in the direction of the fleeing Cortina, but at least sixty yards off and they hadn’t witnessed the snatch.

  ‘Who the fuck was that?’ he whispered.

  Masked, but not republicans: what interest would they have in a scrappy teenage kid? Security Forces weren’t likely either. The style, aggression and speed had been in line with MSU or SAS work but again, there was no reason for Shanty to be a target for those boys. They’d have the sense not to do a lift near a busy shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon, too.

  Which left Billy and his mob. Shanty had escaped his kneecapping, then given them the finger by going back to the cause of his punishment, Shelly Kerrigan. The ball-grabber could have been Rab. Same height and build.

  A tattered rag of cloud blighted the afternoon sun. Jackie prayed that, against the odds, Shanty would turn up unharmed. He didn’t want to report another body to Gordon tomorrow.

  ‘You, Lodge, one hour.’

  That was the extent of it. The other end of the line went dead and Jackie slowly lowered the receiver back onto its cradle.

  He’d gone back to his father’s house after Shanty was snatched. At first, he’d taken the stairs two at a time up to his bedroom, ready to grab his warrant card from its hiding place and tour the local UDA haunts in search of information. Fuck the undercover work, fuck the surveillance, fuck the Branch. If Shanty was shot because Jackie hadn’t acted, well, that was something he didn’t want to live with.

  Then he’d thought of his family and the possible repercussions for them. Would Billy move against his da, maybe Sarah, if he found out Jackie was a peeler? The initial punishment for Shanty had been a kneecapping, nothing fatal. It was unlikely that Billy would escalate the sentence to a killing and Rab, psychotic as he was, wouldn’t make that kind of move without Billy’s permission. No, it was more likely Shanty had been picked up to put the frighteners on him. Maybe given a bit of a hiding as a reminder: past transgressions hadn’t been forgotten.

  I’m a coward, Jackie had thought, or I’d march over to Billy’s house right now and beat what was happening to the kid out of him.

  Instead, he’d gone to a phone box near the park and called in to Gordon again, bringing the time of tomorrow’s meet forward.

  He’d needed a strong cup of tea and a quiet few moments to settle himself, get his head together. After, as he sat in the bedroom upstairs, the window open to ease the rising heat, the insect whine of a helicopter began drifting across the city again. West Belfast, maybe North.

  Give my head peace, thought Jackie, just for one night.

  But how could you get any peace in this city? The choppers shuddering overhead; two-tone sirens; the dull thump of a bomb detonating, shaking the window-panes. Hellish ‘political wing’ spin doctors using misdirection and diversion to justify atrocity. Even funerals were all sound and fury: masked gunmen firing volleys of shots over flag-draped coffins and mourners brawling with the police, sometimes each other.

  And in the middle, the James Maguires and Mrs McCauleys. Gareth Hunter, who lived next to his father, worked shifts in the Co-op dairy, and lost his sister and niece in the East End bombing. John Wilson from two doors down who lost his wee brother. Tom Breslin who taught in Park Parade school and lost his little girl.

  Then the phone rang and there were four words, barked down the line.

  ‘You, Lodge, one hour.’

  Jackie hated the phone. He was a police officer, and reminded himself of the fact when he could. He read people, read faces. On the phone, that edge was gone.

  His mother always said, be sure your sins will find you out. He ran through his: sleeping with Eileen, beating Rafferty senior, seeing Shanty snatched and doing nothing. And, for Billy and the rest, being a traitor. A traitor to ‘Ireland’s Loyal Rebels’.

  He didn’t carry a weapon at meetings, but he considered tucking his personal issue Special Branch Walther in his waistband. But if he were searched going into the Lagan Lodge it would be an indictment. Instead, he drove out of the city for a couple of miles, checking as best he could for a tail, then stopped at a petrol station and left another message on Gordon’s machine detailing the summons to the Lodge. At a little after six, he walked up the stairs to the room above the lounge bar. Billy was sitting next to the pool table sipping a mug of something.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea? Something stronger?’

  ‘No thanks, Billy, I’m all right, so I am.’

  ‘Sure? You might need it.’

  Jackie dragged a wooden chair across to sit opposite Tyrie, looked him in the eye and said, ‘I’m grand, Billy.’

  Billy’s attention turned to the battered surface of the pool table. His hands, huge and pitted with scabs, picked at the green baize. He said, ‘You’re a single man. Keep it that way.’

  Jackie’s guts felt hollow, as though someone had carved them out of his body.

  ‘Billy …’

  ‘The ring. Your Claddagh.’

  The ring. Jackie’s mother had told him what it signified. When your heart wasn’t claimed, the tip of the heart pointed outward. When you were in love and your heart taken, the tip should point inward. Not that someone didn’t have some claim on his heart, but he wasn’t going to advertise the fact.

  ‘Oh, aye.’

  ‘Like I say, keep it that way. It’s better in our business.’

  Billy stroked his chin, his head miles away.

  ‘Fuck!’

  He threw a punch at the corner pocket. It cracked and the net drifted lazily to the floor.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck!’

  Jackie prayed that if this was a domestic, Eileen had kept him out of it.

  ‘I sound like Simpson,’ said Billy. ‘Business. It’s not a business, it’s a cause.’

/>   Drunk and angry was a toxic combination. His thick arms, further swollen with tension, hovered in search of a target. Then his head drooped slightly, as though wilting in the heat, and he slumped.

  ‘At least Rab’s handy with the video and camera stuff, I suppose. He’s done some sort of course at the polytechnic. Timers, automatic shutters, sensors, all that shite. Not that it’s been much help. I remember the day a balaclava and a baseball bat was all you needed to bring the government to its knees.’

  He was silent, probably lost in hazy memories of the barricades of the Ulster Workers’ Strike in ’74, manned by hooded paramilitaries wielding clubs and iron bars. Then his face seized in a scowl.

  ‘Sometimes I think it’s my fault.’

  ‘How’s that?’ said Jackie.

  ‘Those nine. Sometimes I think their deaths are on me. The East End bomb.’

  ‘Ach, sure Billy, how’s that on you?’

  ‘The fucking Provos wouldn’t have bombed the place if they didn’t think I used the upstairs. Nine people, Jackie. Those wee girls.’ Tyrie’s reptilian eyes drifted closed for a moment. ‘The op’s off,’ he said. ‘Cochrane’s girl’s been transferred. The Fenian bitch is on a ward with a city councillor now. There’s a police presence twenty-four hours a day. The Black Bastards are all over it. We can’t hit him at the hospital.’

  It sounded for all the world like a Branch response to intelligence from an asset. Relatively low key, no obvious specific response to the threat at hand; a manoeuvre to neutralise the hit. But Jackie hadn’t informed Gordon of the plan yet. He didn’t even have a confirmed day. He stared at the broken pool-table pocket, now a sharp metal splinter.

  ‘Sorry, kid,’ said Billy. ‘You’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the fucker dead. But we’ll get him. We … will … get … him.’ His head sagged further into his chest with each word, his hand moved to his face and rubbed across his scalp. Billy pointed at Jackie.

  ‘I’ll see you right. You’ll be on the team. When that murdering Fenian bastard is on the ground with a bullet in his head, you’ll be there, pissing on his corpse, Jackie.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Friday

  Adrian Morgan could have been lying dead in a ditch somewhere in the County Down hinterlands, a bullet in his brain. Instead, he is safe and sound back in the Holy Lands with a couple of quid in his pocket. His mobile phone is also safe and sound – in the glove compartment of Jackie’s rented Toyota.

  Jackie showed him the gun and painted pictures of various bodies he’s seen: headshot wounds with eyeball haemorrhage, lower jaws blasted clean off the skull. He told Morgan what death could look like, and to keep his mouth shut about tonight.

  Just to be sure, Jackie has left him with a promise that, should Morgan get any word to Rab Simpson of their meeting, Jackie will contact the police with the mobile in question. The message will have Morgan’s address, bank account details and drug contacts included. Whatever befalls him, he will have time to hit ‘send’ before his life is ground out. It is just past midnight on Saturday and over twenty-four hours until the next ‘business’ day rolls around, so there’s no hope of Morgan changing the mobile account before Monday. By then, Jackie hopes to be boarding a plane.

  But for now he is parked in a street off the Ravenhill Road. The road is deserted save for the odd taxi shuttling lost souls around the city. The local pubs have shut; the city centre bars and clubs are still open. It’s Friday-night-limbo for those too drunk to carry on, yet too far gone to find their own way home.

  He walks quickly to Bendigo Street. The mist still cloaks the city and he enjoys the cover it provides. He is also wary of others it may cloak in turn.

  The key turns smoothly in the lock and he quietly slips into his father’s house. Easing the door closed behind him, he stops and listens. There is a silence, which crowds him in the dark, smothering him. There had always been a clock ticking, timber settling, the general sighing and moaning of the house. No longer.

  His eyes begin to adjust to the dark and he makes his way into the small, narrow living room at the front of the house on the ground floor. The curtains are closed and there is no illumination from the street outside. The armchair, his father’s favourite, is still there, looking miserable. He takes in the sofa along the wall, the TV in the corner, the empty fireplace. He sees an ornament on the mantelpiece, a brass figure he picked up on some Boys’ Brigade outing in Scotland. Its silhouette stands proud, kilt billowing in the stagnant air.

  They lived as strangers, his father and he. The drink had crippled their relationship: Jackie couldn’t trust his da with details of his work and had fed him the bare minimum. He was RUC; he had insinuated himself into Billy Tyrie’s gang; if Tyrie or his hoods ever found out, Jackie would die. This had terrified his da. Sam Shaw had never said so but the look of panic on his face when Jackie came home in a mood or the phone rang late at night spoke volumes. This mutual fear and distrust had sapped the life from their bond as father and son. They talked about meaningless trivia, circled each other like wary guests at an awkward gathering and lived much of their respective lives in bars and clubs.

  He crouches and picks through a pile of books under the TV. He recognises landmarks and landscapes, and feels a thickness in his throat. They are all guidebooks and travel books about the West Country in England, where Jackie has been living for the last few years. Tucked beside the chimney flue, he can see a large coffee table volume and, straining through the gloom, he makes out the vague shapes of a junk and tall, angular buildings. Hong Kong, where Jackie served in the RHK Police Force.

  He sits heavily on the sofa and stares at the armchair. He would sit in it but he feels unworthy. He imagines the delicate frame of his da, shrivelled by age and ravaged by drink, flicking through these books. Perhaps he just stared at a picture imagining Jackie among these stock photos of oriental skyscrapers and rolling Cotswolds hills. He breathes evenly but his eyes begin to burn and he lets it come, crying quietly in this dark, roped-off museum exhibit of a room.

  He doesn’t have a da any more.

  After a time he rubs his eyes, raw with hot, salty grit, and walks past the mirror above the fireplace to the kitchen. He is an inky wraith in the glass, and thankful that the dark disguises his wretched face streaked with tears. He fancies a cup of tea, but there isn’t a tea bag to be found in the place. He wonders if there is anything stronger lying around. The cupboards which held a constant supply of vodka, gin or whiskey now contain only cups with faded patterns, relics from the warm summer days of his life when his mother was still alive: the Age of Mabel.

  And now the dawn of what? The Age of Jackie? The Autumnal Age? The Dead at the Hands of East Belfast Gangsters Age?

  Back out to the hall and the telephone stand where he used to call his mates, then girlfriends, then fellow paramilitaries. The phone is new but the table is exactly the same as twenty years ago. The Land Where Time Stood Still. He is shocked by a creak and puts his hand on the back of his waistband, feels the angular jut of the Ruger SR9.

  It takes him a moment to realise the sound was his footstep on the stair. Nevertheless, he takes the rest of the steep flight slowly, with his hand on the plastic grip and his finger across the trigger. The landing has a vacuum cleaner propped in the corner. Sarah’s been busy. His father’s room is at the front of the house on the first floor. He pauses before entering. As a child, his parents’ room was off limits without permission and he can’t shake the sense of intruding. Still, he pushes the door open and sees a neatly made bed, a wardrobe looming in the corner which terrified him as a child, and a bedside table with a couple of books and a horse-racing magazine. The curtains are drawn and the room is bathed in dim streetlight glow. There is a scent, possibly summer fruits, tussling with the sharp ammonia stench of urine.

  Jackie takes a moment to wipe his eyes, then walks across the narrow landing. Past Sarah’s old room, to his bedroom.

  It is all here: a football club poster circa 1985; an AC
DC poster, 1988 vintage; a photo of a Bond girl. His books are lined neatly on the shelf, although many of the spines are bleached by years of sunlight. There is an old Atari video game console in the corner with a few cartridges piled next to it, a football award from school and, of all things, a Bible study cup from the Boys’ Brigade.

  Jackie Shaw circa year zero to year zero. Birth to impostor: the make-believe Jackie who lived with his father like a character in an elaborate drama. Producers: Royal Ulster Constabulary. The posters, the books, the wallpaper: it is Jackie before the Army, before the police, before Mabel Shaw was taken by cancer. It’s Jackie when he was his father’s son, the wee boy his da used to bounce on his knee.

  He is dying for a drink. He pumps his hands in fists, balling and flexing his fingers and blowing air through his lips in a low whistle. After a time he hides the Ruger in the house, calms himself and walks down the stairs and out the front door, locking it behind him and sealing the time capsule once again.

  #

  He is surprised that it is already past 1 a.m. He hasn’t checked his mobile in hours. It has been in silent mode and Sarah has left a text asking when he’d like to come over again. He is irritated with his disappointment at no further contact from Eileen.

  Rab Simpson has sent a text message: Sorry for your loss.Now your da’s at rest, be sure your sister doesn’t join him.

  Nothing on Tyrie’s mobile. He wonders what Hartley is doing now, wonders if maybe it might be best to reach out. He has no idea what to do.

  Jackie walks back to his car through the mist. He approaches the small garden of remembrance for the East End Video victims and notices another plaque on the wall next to the monument: Best-kept street in Belfast 2007. He stands at the immaculaterailings and takes in the painted mural of the innocent victims. They look at him with warm, smiling eyes. Filtered through the haze they look like soft focus matinee idols in a film. Many of the more dubious murals around town juxtapose the sinister shadow of a gunman, machine gun in hand, with a comical face, a child-like scrawl of features in the holes of a rough balaclava.