by Derek Fee
"The place is in four bedsits," Whitehouse said as the policemen approached the front door. "The house is in the name of Arthur Patel," he screwed his face up at the name. "He owns a couple of properties around the city. Rents the dumps out to students, young female office workers or single males like Patterson. I called the number of the rental agency first thing this morning. Mr. Patel prefers to live in London where he won't be bothered by asshole Paddies. His office has no idea who Patterson was or where he came from. Mr. Patel doesn't take what you might call a fatherly interest in his tenants. They give him money and he gives them a dump to live in. Blood suckin' bastard."
"Careful, George," Wilson stood before the front door which bore the scars of many a battle with somebody's hobnailed boots. "Your racism is likely to overcome your bigotry."
Four bells had been crudely stuffed into a hole gauged in a brick beside the door. Each bell had a name written in faded ink beneath it.
Whitehouse removed a plastic bag from his pocket and tipped a plastic key ring holding three keys into the palm of his hand. He slipped a Yale key into the lock and turned. The key moved smoothly in the lock and the door swung open.
The hallway was dark and the steel grey walls hadn't seen a lick of paint in the past twenty years. Wilson pushed the light switch behind the door but the hallway remained unlit. Both men looked simultaneously at the ceiling where an empty light socket hung suspended from a mesh of bare wires.
"Mr. Patel must be very energy conscious," Wilson said as he moved into the hallway. "This should be fun."
There were two doors on the ground floor. Whitehouse moved to the nearest one and tried the other two keys from Patterson's key ring. Neither key made any impression on the stout lock. He went through the same procedure with the second door and the lock turned when the first key was inserted.
"Bingo," Whitehouse said as he pushed in the door and entered Patterson's bedsit. Both men fished in their pockets and removed surgical gloves which they slipped onto their hands before entering the room.
As Whitehouse passed through the door he flicked the light switch and a faint yellow glow illuminated the dark room.
Patterson's home consisted of one room approximately 15 feet by 12 feet. Within that 180 square foot space he had lived, ate and slept. The lower half of a set of steel bunk beds was pushed against the side of the room opposite the door its four redundant posts jutting the air at each corner. A sink unit had been set into one of the side walls and a two ring gas burner sat on a roughly constructed shelf. A gas bottle poked its head out from underneath the sink. A relatively new microwave sat beside the two-ring burner. The floor was covered in cheap linoleum whose original colours might be guessed at but would never again be revealed. A coin operated electricity meter stood on the floor just inside the door. A series of shelves holding books and videos had been set above the bed. The only other piece of furniture was a battered wooden chest of drawers on which stood an equally battered 19 inch television/video combination. A plastic bowl with the coagulated remains of a cornflake breakfast sat on top of the television set.
"Somehow or other I don't think Patterson was expecting a visit from 'Home and Garden'," Wilson said moving around the room. Somebody might have done the poor bastard a favour taking him away from all this, he thought.
Wilson moved aimlessly around the room trying to get a feel for what appeared to be a pathetic existence. Why the hell did somebody want to take away what little life had bestowed on Patterson? The bad feeling that started the previous night was gaining momentum in his mind. This guy was a nobody who had nothing. No family, no friends. That meant no immediate suspects. Nowadays it was drugs and prostitution that were the root causes of murder along with the traditional and occasional family altercation. This bedsit didn't look like the pad of a drug runner or a pimp so that line of enquiry would probably lead nowhere. That left a sectarian motive and that made Wilson nervous.
"Holy God, look at this soddin' filth."
Wilson turned and saw Whitehouse examining the contents of the shelves above the bed.
"This boy was sick. He needed his head examined," Whitehouse held out a magazine.
Wilson crossed to the bed and took the magazine which Whitehouse proffered. He needed only a glance to understand Whitehouse's remark. The cover depicted a young man being fellated by a second young man. Wilson flicked quickly through the well thumbed pages. The photos were exclusively of males and went way beyond the limits of the Obscene Publications Act. Patterson was a connoisseur. This kind of filth wasn't available on the top shelf of the local newsagent. It had to be sought out. Wilson took a second glance around the room. People with this kind of interest generally found what they were looking for on the internet. Magazines were old technology for the porn gang. No computer. Patterson had been low tech or maybe just old fashioned.
"Our man doesn't go only the one way," Whitehouse said passing a bundle of magazines depicting hard core heterosexual sex to Wilson. He picked up a handful of videos and looked at the boxes. "If these videos are of Bambi then she's got two legs and she doesn't object to opening them."
"Nothing political I suppose," Wilson said tossing the magazines on the bed.
Whitehouse raised his eyebrows and smiled. "None of our pols have the equipment to appear in stuff like this."
"Very drole, George. Where does that leave us?" Wilson wondered aloud. He was well aware that there was an active gay community in Belfast. The boys in vice would have to be consulted. He stretched up and pulled a tattered copybook from the shelf. It was the kind of small lined book that children generally used for their homework. The name 'James Patterson' was written in careful adolescent writing on the cover.
"Holy Jesus!," Wilson exclaimed as he flicked through the first few pages of the copybook. Patterson couldn't draw to save his life but his simplistic sketches were not difficult to decipher. The pages were littered with crude drawings depicting what appeared to be young boys and grown men taking part in various permutations of homosexual acts centred on sodomy and fellatio. Beside each drawing were descriptions of the acts written in barely literate English. James Patterson was one seriously disturbed individual.
"This adds a new dimension to the enquiry," Wilson said. "Let's give this place a proper going over." He opened the chest of drawers. "Look for letters, indications of friends, relatives, anything to give us a lead on this bloke. Someone has to know the bugger. You can't go through life without leaving a footprint. We need to find that footprint." He pulled open the top drawer of the chest of drawers. It was half full of grey faded underwear and cheap tee-shirts. Charity shop gear, he thought. The drawers beneath it were equally unproductive.
This is eerie, Wilson thought as he closed the final drawer of the small chest. No letters, no indication of the presence of any other individual in the room besides Patterson. He had been momentarily seduced by the hypothesis of a sexual motive for the murder but there were gaps in that theory. Sex murders were crimes of passion. Blood and gore. Slashed throats and severed penises. Patterson had been killed with the minimum of fuss by a cold-blooded murderer. Sex couldn’t be ruled out as a motive but if there was a sex killer on the loose he sure as hell knew his business.
"Not a sausage," Whitehouse said and smiled. "It'd be pretty difficult to conceal something in this dump."
Wilson looked around the room. Every drawer had been emptied and searched; every cushion lifted; the inside of every book and magazine examined.
“Find any tracks on Patterson’s arms?” Wilson asked.
Whitehouse frowned. “None mentioned. Lots of scratches and scars but no tracks. I can ask the pathologist. What are you thinkin’?”
“If this Patterson character was a rent boy there should be signs of more money about.” He picked up the Social Security book from the table beside the bed. “He draws the brew religiously every week. Seventy-five pounds. The rent on this hole is covered so his has ten quid a day to look after himself. He might just abo
ut manage as long as he has no bad habits. But if he were a user then he might have been forced onto the game. That might explain the reading material. I want Patterson checked out with vice as soon as we get back to the Station. I also want to know whether any rent boys have been reporting threats of physical violence."
“That’s par for the course for those guys,” Whitehouse said writing in his notebook. “I still say he was the wrong man in the wrong place. He’s probably a perv all right but that’s not what got him killed.”
"That’s what I like about you, George." Wilson picked up the copybook which he had thrown on the bed. “You keep an open mind right through the investigation.” He looked at the drawings again. What in heaven's name had possessed Patterson's mind when he had scribbled his crude drawings and penned his inarticulate descriptions of the acts they depicted? They would probably never know. “I want SOCO to go over this place with a fine tooth comb. If we’ve missed anything I want to know about it post haste. Fingerprints, dried semen, blood, anything. And I want all the inhabitants of this dump and the neighbours questioned. I want to know whether they think Patterson might have been on the game. I want to know whether he brought friends home. I want to know everything there is to know about this man.”
“I don't envy SOCO,” Whitehouse’ said tossing a handful of videos onto a shelf. "This place looks like it hasn't been cleaned since the Great Flood so we've probable got the grime of ages to process. But you're the boss." His tone left no doubt about what he thought of the usefulness of the exercise.
"Let's get back to the Station," Wilson said dropping the copybook into an evidence bag and stuffing it into his pocket.
CHAPTER 6
The two men passed the journey back to Tennent Street in silence. Wilson was lost in thought. The information they had gleaned concerning the private life of James Patterson might have been germane to his death but might also have been the greatest red-herring that the killer could have hoped for. In Northern Ireland what you saw was seldom what you got so the news on Patterson complicated rather than simplified the investigation.
"Chief Inspector," the Desk-Sergeant signalled to Wilson as soon as he entered the station. "Sorry to bother you, sir. The Super wants to see you, pronto."
"I'll give him a call," Wilson started towards his office.
"I think he meant now and in person, sir," the Desk-Sergeant said before Wilson left the entrance hall.
Wilson sighed and started to mount the steps towards the office of Superintendent Joseph Worthington. He supposed that such a call was inevitable but it was just a little too soon in the investigation. What the hell could he report within the first 12 hours of a murder which seemed to have no apparent motive and no clue as to who the murderer might be.
"You wanted to see me," Wilson said as he entered Worthington's office.
The Superintendent looked away from his computer screen. "I fucking hate this thing," he said nodding at the computer screen. "It used to be meetings, meetings, meetings now it's just e-mails, e-mails, e-mails. Every bugger in the PSNI thinks that I need to know what they're up to and that's not counting the number of questionnaires I have to fill out for our friends in Human Relations."
"That's the problem of management but that's also why they pay you the big bucks," Wilson stood in front of the Superintendent's desk.
"So what the hell have you been up to now?" Worthington said taking off his reading glasses.
"We're looking into last night's murder in Woodvale. Nothing so far but it's early days."
"Nothing else? You haven't been pissing anyone off recently?"
"Not that I know of. Why? Has someone been complaining."
Worthing smiled. "Ian, you are the most insufferably insolent sod in the PSNI. I don't know one member of management that you haven't pissed off. Every day I come to this office I ask myself why it's me that has to deal with guys like you. The Deputy Chief Constable has been on to me this morning and he wants to see you immediately. I doubt it's about the investigation of last night's killing. Not screwing his secretary are we?"
"Not likely, the poor girl was made for spite."
"From what I hear that's never been an issue with you before. Some people say that you're trying to work you way through the entire female population of the PSNI. But I suppose that's only pub talk."
Wilson smiled. "I've only scratched the surface. The DCC didn't give any idea of what might be on his tiny mind."
It was Worthington's turn to sigh. "That's what I mean when I say insolent sod. He didn't say why he wanted to see you but I want you to concentrate on not pissing the man off. He gets pissed off with you, he takes it out on me. So please keep a civil tongue in your mouth difficult as that might be for you. Now piss off and let me get on with clearing my inbox. He wants you there now. Not in two hours, so get on it."
"Shit!" Wilson ran his hand through his curly grey hair as he left Worthington's office. A trip to PSNI Headquarters to meet Deputy Chief Constable Roy Jennings was not Wilson's idea of fun.
"Tell Eric where I am," Wilson said to the Duty Sergeant turning towards the door to the Station. "And tell him I want an up-dated file on the Patterson murder on my desk by the time I get back."
The Headquarters of the Police Service of Northern Ireland is housed in an impressive brick building in the Belfast suburb of Castlereagh directly fronting the more famous Castlereagh Detention Centre. Wilson flashed his warrant card to the constable on duty at the door and immediately took the lift to the top floor.
The outer office of the Deputy Chief Constable was at least four times the size of Wilson's cubby hole and looked like a suite in the Sheraton Somewhere.
"He'll be with you shortly, Inspector Wilson," the Secretary looked up from her desk into Wilson face.
"That will just make my day" Wilson said tossing his anorak over the arms of a steel coat stand. He sat in an easy chair and looked at the DCC's Secretary. He had been overcritical in telling his Super that she was pulchritudinously challenged. She was dressed in civilian clothes with a skirt that rode just above the knee. Her blond hair was shorter than the last time he had seen her and she had added several pounds to her Rubenesque figure. He might not toss her out of bed after all. She had already turned to her computer and was studiously ignoring him. Wilson's reputation for scoring with the women constables had been considerable. He had bedded quite a few during his career and none of them had been an unwilling participant even when they knew that he was a 'screw them and leave them' individual. There was a copy of the Belfast Telegraph sitting on a low table in front of him but he didn't bother to pick it up. He was still wondering why Deputy Chief Constable Roy Jennings wanted to see him when the door opened and his jaw dropped. Out of the inner office came a women who was stunningly beautiful and who he had known intimately, in the biblical sense. Katherine McCann was one of those women who had improved with age. She wore a black pin-striped suit with a skirt just above the knee. The dark colour of her clothes set off her blond hair which fell just to the collar of her white blouse. She stood erect on high heels with an air of confidence totally consistent with her standing as a Queen's Council.
Wilson pulled himself together and stood up. The look on Kate McCann's face didn't exactly please him. She looked like she had just discovered something nasty on the sole of her shoe.
"Kate," Wilson said when his voice finally started to work. "I didn't know that you were back in Belfast."
"It's my home, Ian." She maintained the look of distaste.
Wilson started to move but his feet seemed to be stuck in concrete. He felt that he should move to kiss her or at least shake hands but it seemed that there was a force-field between them repelling any intimacy. Kate had been different from all the others. She hadn't been just another conquest. Sure, he had gained huge kudos among the rank and file when it had got out that he was bedding one of Belfast's leading barristers and a beautiful woman at that. Kate McCann was the kind of woman that could get under your skin. S
ometimes in those quiet hours of the morning, when sleep would not come, his thoughts had strayed to Kate. Thinking of her gave him a warm feeling. Then the guilt would set in. Why hadn't he pictured his wife during those dark hours?
"You had business with the big man," Wilson nodded towards the inner office.
"I'm still trying to get a Truth and Reconciliation Commission going. I'm doing the rounds of anyone who can make that happen." Her tone was only a degree warmer.
The Secretary was watching them closely.
"We should talk," Wilson said quietly.
"What about? ancient history?" she replied tartly.
"I didn't know that you were back," Wilson moved towards her but she did not reciprocate.
"I'm not back. London is still home but something has to be done here to wash Northern Ireland clean from the stain of the 'Troubles'. A whole bunch of old guys on television saying they were sorry for what they did before they set up their political parties just won't do. We're going to have to find out who did what, to who and at whose behest. That's why I'm back, Ian. And that's the only reason."
"Can we get together?" Wilson knew that he sounded pathetic but there was unfinished business between him and Kate. He had the feeling that she might think so too. "Maybe dinner or even a drink if that what's on."
"No," there was a hint of a tremor in her voice. "The past is another country and I no longer live there. There would be no point."
"How can I contact you?" Wilson said ashamed at the pleading tone in his voice.
"You can't," she clutched a crocodile briefcase to her chest and made for the door to leave.
He was going to move to block her path but he saw the Secretary staring at him from behind her desk. "We're not done."