by Derek Fee
Taylor stood up and started for the duty desk while Moira took off her coat and took her seat behind her desk.
Wilson sat behind his desk and ran his hand through his hair. He was beginning to wonder whether he had been too hasty in buying Cahill's 'not us boss' story. The lack of a connection between Patterson and Peacock was the factor that bothered him most. If the killer was selecting his victims at random, it could take months or forever to uncover the bastard. And all the time Jennings was waiting in the wings ready to pounce on him if he failed to stop the murders. Outside in the pubs the Protestant avengers would be stoking their anger with Guinness. Unless they were restrained some poor Catholic randomers were going to pay for the three killings with their lives. It was a heavy burden for him to bear that it was up to him to stop such a scenario.
"This job shits," Wilson said quietly under his breath. He rummaged around his desk rearranging papers into new bundles as he went. "Now where the hell did I put those computer printouts?" The piles of paper refused to yield the computer sheets that he sought.
"You were looking for me," Whitehouse said from the doorway.
"Glad you decided to join us," Wilson looked up from his cluttered desk. "Where the hell were you?
"Here and there," Whitehouse said.
"Out and about," Wilson said sarcastically.
"I suppose that Mr. Frank ‘Arsehole’ Cahill gave you nothing," Whitehouse said.
Wilson didn't reply.
"I told you not to bother with that bastard," Whitehouse sneered. "You should have listened to me. Haul the bollocks in and give me and the boys a couple of days with him. The bastard's in it up to his scrawny neck."
"Ever hear of innocent until beaten guilty," Wilson said. "You better haul him in soon if you want to give him the rubber hose treatment. He's on the way out. In fact one blow of a rubber truncheon would probably be enough to send him to his Maker."
"You're jokin'?" a wide smile creased Whitehouse's face. "That's the best news I've heard all year. God must be a Protestant."
Whitehouse's lack of humanity didn't surprise his chief. "The poor bastard's dying," Wilson said. "From the look of him he could be gone soon."
"It can't be too soon for me," Whitehouse spat out of the corner of his mouth. "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"I wouldn't celebrate just yet if I were you. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know." Wilson thought of the cold eyes of the young man who had been at Cahill's side in the club.
"I'll settle for spittin' on the old bastard's grave."
One more or one less, Wilson thought, wouldn't make too much difference. The PSNI had been responsible for taking lots of murderers off the streets but that had never seemed to slow down the level of violence. He had always believed that they should have been attacking the cause and not the effect. Thank God the politicians had woken up to that fact eventually.
"I might be losing my marbles but I'm inclined to believe Cahill this time," Wilson said. "I don't think he's involved."
"You're sodding mad," Whitehouse said, his colour rising. "If it quacks like a duck and it looks like a duck then it’s a fucking duck. It’s the way they operate. They bloody did it. Now they're tryin' to crawl their way out. Rotten sodding bastards."
"Don't ask me why," Wilson said raising his hand to stifle Whitehouse's tirade. "But I don't believe he'd try something like this right now. There's something else that worries me. Both the Chief Constable and the DCC are watching this investigation like hawks. The politicians are beginning to pass water in case the three deaths start the whole cycle of violence off again. That means pressure all the way along the line. If it was drugs or a turf war they wouldn’t give a curse. But the problem with these murders is that it looks sectarian and that’s what keeps the big boys awake at night. Has anyone from the Press been on?”
“Not so far.”
“We should be thankful for small mercies,” Wilson said knowing that it was only a matter of time before some smart jurno would get on the bandwagon to stoke up whatever flames were out there. Playing on fear and prejudice was always a winner. “It's bad enough trying to catch these bastards without having the brass breathing down our neck. Hopefully the Press will stay out of it for a few days yet. Until we turn up whoever's behind the killings I want maximum presence of police on the streets."
"Wise up, Boss," Whitehouse said. "Do you really believe that the Super is goin' to saturate the streets for a couple of dead Prods. Think of the cost of the overtime. If this professional bloke of yours knows the game, he'll close down for a few days and we'll be back where we started. The 'randoms' are the worst to second guess."
"It's not random," Wilson said with more conviction that he felt. The only way the killer could be caught would be by finding the pattern. "This guy is screwing around with us. Three dead bodies and no clues. If he was into the numbers game he'd hit a pub or a betting shop just like the rest of the crazies. No, it's not random. He’s got the names and he’s got a schedule and if we don’t get a break soon he’ll be finished and we’ll be none the wiser."
"Maybe we're missing something," Whitehouse said. "It could still be something personal. Drugs, women. Nothing to do with politics or religion."
Wilson turned and looked at the whiteboard in the squad room. On it were pinned the photos from the two crime scenes. Beside each set of photos was a brief description of the victims. "This bastard has me stumped. There’s something that connects our victims. It could be anything. Maybe they look like his old man. Maybe it’s the colour of their eyes. Maybe they both screwed his wife." He slammed his hand on the desk and the paper piles jumped. "It’s not drugs, it’s not a turf war and it’s probably not religious or political. We could just have an old-fashioned serial killer on our hands. If he was killing women, that might be a valid hypothesis. We’ve got to find what connects the victims."
“That could be a tall order, Boss,” Whitehouse said. “These are nobodies. We've interviewed Peacock's friends. It's work, boozer and home for a burnt offering from the Misses and maybe a bit of a punch up if he's in the mood. Patterson didn't have a life, just an existence. The wanker didn't even have a pet.”
"For the sake of argument let's assume that Cahill's telling the truth," Wilson held up his hand again to stifle Whitehouse's incipient protest. "You yourself said that it would take balls of steel for a Catholic to march so deep into Loyalist territory to carry out assassinations. So let’s start by eliminating some possibilities. What about a new Loyalist feud?"
"No sodding way," Whitehouse said. “Since the last UVF/UDA action there hasn’t been a peep in that direction.” His round face hardened. He hated to think of his own people shooting each other. But they had and he was in no doubt that if another turf war erupted then they would do it again. He thought back to his meeting with Richie Simpson. If there had been a Loyalist feud, Simpson wouldn't have come near him but he couldn't tell Wilson that.
"You're pretty damn sure about that," Wilson stared at his colleague. After ten years together he could read his Sergeant like a book. George was holding something back and this wasn’t the time to be playing secrets. "Is there some nugget of information you'd like to share with me?"
Whitehouse delayed replying a little longer than was necessary. "What are you gettin' at?" he said defensively. For the past few months Wilson had a habit of making insinuating remarks about Whitehouse's Loyalist connections.
"Don't get your knickers in a knot," Wilson was amused by Whitehouse's unease. "It's just that you're a Shankill lad yourself. You went to school with most of the Loyalist leaders. You drink in the same pubs as them. You attend the same Lodge as them. It's only natural that they might let something slip to you every now or then." Wilson saw a fine bead of sweat burst from Whitehouse's hairline. "I'd never think of suggesting that you might be in collusion with them."
"You'd better fucking not," Whitehouse's colour heightened further.
Wilson watched White
house's discomfort with pleasure. It was another little demonstration, if more was needed, that his loyal Sergeant was not to be totally trusted "Maybe it's time we made some use of these Loyalist contacts of yours. You could ask around and find out whether there's a 'new 'player' on the Protestant side."
"That's if anyone will talk to me," Whitehouse said.
"Don't underestimate your powers of persuasion," Wilson said smiling. "It never ceases to amaze me that we're so much better informed on the activities and personnel of the Republican side than we are on the Loyalist side."
Whitehouse said nothing and continued to lean against the door-jam. He stared at the bulky figure sitting behind the desk. Why was it that he had to work with the only officer on the Force who didn’t regard the Fenians as the enemy? If the rumours in the station were to be believed Wilson wouldn’t be sitting behind that desk for long. The boys at the top wanted people they could trust implicitly. There was no doubt that Wilson was probably the best detective on the Force but he was a loose canon himself. You never knew what he was going to do and that didn’t sit well with the top brass.
"Get on with it George," Wilson looked at the papers on his desk. "We won’t catch our man by spending our days holding the wall up. Let's find out whether your contacts can solve our little problem."
Whitehouse turned quickly from the door.
Wilson bundled up the scattered documents on his desk and formed a neat pile. Maybe, he thought, if he were to throw the handful of A4 pages into the air, the one with the piece of information which would lead to the professional with the nine millimetre would land on the top of the pile. That police work should be so easy. He looked through the glass partition into the squad room where four detectives from his staff of six were working. He continued to stare at the group until Harry Graham raised his head and met his superior's eyes. He beckoned Graham by crooking the index finger of his right hand. The detective stood up wearily from his desk an approached Wilson's tiny office.
"Let’s go through the statements you collected from Peacock’s neighbours, Harry," Wilson said when Graham presented himself in the doorway.
There had to be a clue somewhere. No matter how clever the murderer had been he had to make one small slip. But it would certainly be buried in a mountain of crap and would require hours of sifting and examining to turn it up. But that was what the British taxpayer paid him to do. He and his men would continue to wade through the crap until they located that nugget of information. No matter how long it took.
CHAPTER 19
Simpson looked around the faces of the four men who sat in the back room of the `Balmoral Bar'. He coughed and felt bile in his mouth as his nose and stomach reacted to the smells of stale beer from the bar and the ammonia from the open door of the toilet that competed with each other before combining to create a mixture with the potency of mustard gas. He decided to make the meeting as short as possible. The men sitting around the table in the back room of the bar had at one time constituted the entire Belfast High Command of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the most hard-line and vicious of the Protestant paramilitary groups. Each man sitting at the table had murdered in the name of Ulster. In Mafia parlance, each of the former UVF chiefs was a `made man'. Some many times over. All four had served terms of imprisonment in the infamous `Long Kesh' prison outside Belfast. But now all four were free men unstained by their 'criminal' pasts. He felt uncomfortable in the company of these dinosaurs. But even dinosaurs were useful to the political movement. The connection between the Protestant political parties and the paramilitaries went back to the establishment by Edward Carson of the original Ulster Volunteer Force which was intended to safeguard Ulster from invasion from the Catholic South. The best known UVF was created with political connivance in the 1960's but the membership lacked the discipline of Carson's original force and the UVF had become synonymous with brutal sectarian murders. Many of the Protestant politicians regarded the UVF as an evil, but a necessary evil. The organisation was often the instrument which had been used to terrorise the Catholic population. However, like their IRA `brothers', the former UVF chiefs had slowly gravitated towards the status of `godfathers' and each man made his living exclusively from the proceeds of his criminal empire. As the organisation metamorphosed from a sectarian strike force to a criminal conspiracy, so the hold of the politicians over the organisation had diminished.
The two major chieftains sat on either side of Simpson. Sammy Rice, whose fiefdom covered East Belfast sat to his right while to his left sat Jimmy McGreery, the 'godfather' in Central Belfast. The other two participants, Norman White from North Belfast and Ross Younger from South Belfast sat facing the other three men.
"This better be good," McGreery adjusted his fat body on the small wooden chair and glared into Simpson's face. McGreery, overlord of Sandy Row, was in a hurry to get away from the meeting. He was as busy as any other executive in Northern Ireland and his business empire needed his constant attention.
"I'm just a messenger boy," Simpson started defensively. He glanced over his shoulder before remembering that his `minder' had been left outside along with the other bodyguards. He was in no doubt that if these men decided to kill him, he would end up very dead indeed.
"Some messenger boy," Rice was the veteran of the group and the unchallenged leader. As a young man, he had proved himself to be a vicious, resourceful killer and had climbed to the top of his organisation by demonstrating the inability of the previous leadership to control him. He led the largest and most violent gang which was centred on the Protestant heartland of the Shankill Road. The fact that the meeting was taking place on his turf was not insignificant. Of all the men in the room, Rice was the most dangerous. "Get on with it Richie, we've other fish to fry."
"Yeah, what's your fuckin' problem?" McGreery looked pointedly at his watch.
"You all know that there've been three Prods killed during the past few days," Simpson concentrated on a point on the table between his outspread hands.
The four faces surrounding him hardened.
"If you decide to stop tryin’ to be a second rate politician, you could try your hand at bein’ a comedian," Rice said. "Of course we know three Prods have been murdered. If three Taigs had been killed we'd be tryin' to find the bloke who did it to congratulate him. As it is we're tryin' to get our hands on the bastard who did them three boys in. If we do get him, we'll switch his light off."
Simpson looked directly into Rice's face. He'd known the former UVF chieftain since he was a pale-faced Belfast hood with a single gold chain around his neck. Rice had graduated to having an all year round tan, a pompadour hairstyle that would have been over the top even for Elvis and enough gold jewellery to set off an airport metal detector at twenty feet. He'd heard that Rice had recently become the owner of a half a million pound villa in the Canaries. Not bad for a boy from the back streets of Belfast.
"My boss is gettin' a little worried that you boys are goin' to overreact and start toppin' a load of Taigs," Simpson let his gaze pass along each man's face in turn. He didn't much like what he saw. These men were not the type who would sit idly by.
"You can bet your fuckin' arse that we're goin' to over-react," Rice said. "The Taigs know the story. They kill some of ours and we fuckin-well kill more of them."
"That's the gist of it," McGreery said smiling.
"Bad move," Simpson said. "What happens if you go ape-shit? The peace goes up in smoke. The other side plant a bomb and kill a load of Prods. The Brits get even more pissed off with us than they are right now and shovel us down the tubes even quicker. The Assembly gets suspended again. You guys are livin' in cloud cuckoo land. The Brits want out and an all-out killin' war after a solution looks on the cards is goin' to send them running for the door. Think about it."
A sly smile spread across Rice's baby face. When he smiled, he was a most unlikely looking killer. "You people make me want to puke," he said. "You sit in your safe fuckin' house and draw your state salaries as so-called
politicians. But who do the people on the street blame if the Taigs shoot them up." He swung his arm around the assembled chiefs. "Us. They won't hassle you in the streets. But they'll give the shit to me, and Jimmy, and Norm, and Ross. We don't draw the salaries but we get the fuckin' blame. It's fuckin' typical. You call the general strike. We enforce it. And what do we get out of it? Sweet fuck all, that's what. You and your fuckin' buddies think that you're goin' to carve up this province between you. But I've got news for you. We've still got the guns and the explosives and it just might be that we won't like your form of government any more than we liked Westminster's. So when the dust settles, we won't ask for something, we'll just take it."
"Okay, Sammy," McGreery said holding up two fat hands, "Richie gets the gist of it. Don't you, Richie?"
Simpson nodded in assent. Handing Ulster to these boys would be the equivalent of giving Italy to the Mafia.
"We know only too fucking well," McGreery continued glancing around the faces of the other chiefs. "About the three Protestants that have been topped in the past few days. And as sure as shit at this very minute on the Shankill, Prods are workin' themselves up to take a couple of Taigs out. From what we heard, the boys who were shot were civilians. That means we can hold off for a bit but not too long, mind."
The door opened and the barman entered carrying a tray of drinks. The five men seated at the table remained silent until the drinks had been served and the barman had left.
"I'm here to ask you to make sure that the killings don't escalate," Simpson picked up his glass of whiskey and sipped the contents.
The four men looked at each other.
"What's in it for us?" Rice asked.
"The same as what's in it for the rest of us," Simpson replied. "The Brits let us hold on here longer than if we force them to abandon us."
"I mean in the fuckin' short-term," a malevolent smile creased Rice's boyish features.
Oh Jesus, Simpson thought as he looked into Rice's face. This was a perfect example of the Ulster political process. Sitting in filthy backrooms of bars with four common criminals who would make even the Medelin cartel look saintly. The men surrounding him were totally without honour. They had all proved themselves to be sociopaths. They cared nothing for the people of their area only what they could get out of them. Just a short time ago they had feuded with each other over turf. Now each one wielded power within his own fiefdom carved out after the dead bodies had been dragged off to the morgue. The `foot-soldiers' did their chief's bidding because failing to do so laid them open to a code of punishment which could have been lifted directly from the Mafia code of Omerta. This was the legacy of the 'Troubles'. Men who had killed and killed badly without compunction. Men who were to all intents and purposes uncontrollable.