Nothing but Memories (DCI Wilson Book 1)

by Derek Fee

  "As much as we can be at this point in time. Poor bastard didn't stand a chance. The fucker who set the explosives knew what he was about. George took the full blast."

  Jesus Christ, he thought, another name on the wall. Another copper killed for doing his duty. He wasn’t convinced that George was one hundred per cent behind him. He was too close to the hierarchy for Wilson’s liking. But why the hell take him out? Life sucked.

  He stood for a moment silently holding the apparatus to his ear and imagining what had become of the man who had been his assistant for the past five years. He'd seen the results of bomb assassinations. At that moment they would be scraping what was left of Detective Sergeant George Whitehouse into a plastic bag. No need to call the wife and ask her to identify his remains. Lumps of raw flesh are anonymous.

  "The Army have Rosemary Street sealed off in case there're any other booby traps around," the Desk-Sergeant paused. "He was one of your boys, how do you want to handle it?"

  "I'm on my way," he said mechanically. He knew they were rattling somebody's cage but he had never realised that this would be the consequence.

  "Not yet please, Sir," the Desk-Sergeant cut across his thoughts. "The Army Bomb Disposal Unit has asked us to warn all the Station personnel to watch out for devices. Don't open any parcels and give your car a good goin' over before you drive it. You know the drill. Just don't ignore it."

  "Yes, Sergeant," Wilson said wearily, "I know the drill." He prepared to cut the communication.

  "And, Sir."

  Wilson returned the receiver to his ear.

  "We're all bloody sick about this," the Sergeant said and hung up.

  "Bollocks," he shouted as he put the phone down. "Jesus Christ but I hate this bloody life."

  "What is it?" she watched Wilson's anguish from the doorway.

  He turned around and faced her. His face was as white as a ghost's. "George Whitehouse was blown up by a bomb this morning."

  "Oh my God," she moved quickly to him and cradled his head in her arms. "You poor man. When will it ever stop. But why him?"

  "That’s what I’m trying to get my head around. George was one of the boys. He licked up and kicked down just like he was supposed to. And he knew where the skeletons were buried but I’m sure he’d never say. Then again maybe it was working with me that got him killed."

  "Don't be so damned silly," she said. Ian took chances that other policemen didn’t take. That could get his partner killed, she thought to herself. It wasn't a sentiment that she would ever burden him with. "Whoever killed him did it all on their own. Don't start taking blame for something you had nothing to do with."

  "We'll soon know for sure," he moved to the hall door picked up a long rod with a mirror on the end and went outside.

  "What do you mean?" she said following him.

  "If it was only George then I know where to start looking for the bastards. If they tried to get me too, then there's something about the investigation that someone wants very badly to cover up." He walked to the Toyota and manoeuvred the mirror into position. He moved slowly from the rear towards the front on the driver's side. He saw it almost immediately. Since the early nineteen seventies, every police officer in Ulster received training in the procedure of checking for car bombs but that didn’t always save them. The explosive was packed into a crevasse between the chassis and the floor. A handful of grease had been used to obscure it but he could clearly see the stubby end of the detonator sticking out of the moulded explosive. Explosives weren't his field but he'd bet a month's salary that it would be Semtex.

  "I'm sorry George," he said softly continuing to examine the bomb.

  "Well," she said.

  "Get back to hell out of here," he said sharply. "Unless you want to find yourself in a thousand pieces." He carefully removed the mirror and moved on to Kate’s Peugeot. He repeated the procedure but found nothing.

  "I'm going to call this in," he moved off back towards the house. "I'd advise you to head off for the office by taxi. Your car's going nowhere until that bomb's been made safe. Now we know for sure."

  "For God's sake, Ian," she stood before him. "Don't jump out of one guilt trip and straight into another.

  "Now I've bloody done it," he strode through the front door with Kate directly behind him. "I should have known when to leave well enough alone."

  "It wasn't your fault," she said standing beside him while he dialled the Station on his mobile.

  "Wasn't it?" It was all connected. Now he was sure that the murders were not random. Patterson, Peacock and Bingham had been marked for death and clinically executed. They had seen or heard something that they shouldn’t have seen or heard while they were living at Dungray and for that they were being murdered. The IRA connection was simply a red herring to throw him off the track. He was going to find out why. Somebody was scared that they were getting close. Nichol had to be terminated and so did the investigating officers. As soon as Whitehouse and he were dead, the investigation could be handed over to somebody who would bury the affair as deeply as was required. George knew more than he had said and he had died because of it. He thought about the missing files and the way George had fidgeted in his office the previous day. Perhaps George had screwed up. Nichol was back in the frame and that wasn’t appreciated. The cover-up hadn’t been complete so now the body count had to rise. This time they’d gone too far. But who the hell were ‘they’? What was so important that people had to die to protect the secret? He felt exposed and alone. The bomb under his car hadn't been a warning. It was meant to kill him. Time was running out for him. Not for the first time in this investigation, he felt a sense of foreboding. He had come to realise that he wasn't dealing with common criminals, he was dealing with subversion within the system. The mindless goons of the IRA and the UVF hadn't put this thing together. If it were possible to gather all the members of both organisations in one room, they wouldn't constitute one brain.

  "You'd better get back to the city," he said turning to Kate. "The Bomb Disposal Squad will be here within fifteen minutes. I can already tell you what they're going to find. The explosive is Semtex, Czech made and the favourite of the IRA. Gustav Havel once said that the Czechs have sent enough Semtex to Northern Ireland to blow the whole Province up ten times over. So that's going to be a major dead-end. I'll also bet that the detonator is also the type favoured by the IRA. That piece of information will lead nowhere as well. Every bomber has his own peculiarities, like the way he sets the detonator or ties up the wires. It's like a finger print. The boys in the Bomb Squad can tell the signature of every sometime bomber in the Province. I bet they come up with a new boy on these bombs. In other words, it'll all lead to a dead end. A quick investigation will consign George's death and the attempt on me to the rubbish bin. Case unsolvable."

  "What will you do now?"

  "I'll have to warn the neighbours. We wouldn't want some innocent stock broker or banker to collect my little package. They've never been comfortable living beside a copper but this'll put the tin hat on it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more nervous get up a petition to get rid of me. I want the bastard who did this no matter what side of the fence he's on."

  "I'm sorry," she said holding his arm. She wanted to hold him tight and kiss him. She wanted to believe that she could erase the pain he was feeling but she knew that she couldn't.

  "I know," he forced a smile. "It's a hell of a way to finish a date. We'll talk later."

  Reluctantly, she released her hold on his arm and moved down the driveway. The street was quiet and still. There was no hint on the surface of the death and destruction lurking beneath Wilson's car. God but she hated this Province. What evil creature had created the situation where human beings living in close proximity to each other harboured such hated that they rejoiced in killing their supposed enemies?

  She walked slowly down the street away from his house. Ian could be dead now, she thought. He should be dead. Only her arrival last night had thwarted the
bomber. Somebody wanted the man she loved dead and perhaps they would not stop until they had succeeded. A tear formed at the corner of her eye. Please God, she thought, please let him find the bastard before there's any more killing.

  CHAPTER 39

  It was ten o'clock in the morning and Willie Rice was suffering from the effects of a monumental hang-over. He looked at the cup of black coffee on the table in front of him and his stomach turned.

  "It's nothing definite," Ivan McIlroy had seen his chief in this condition before and wished he were somewhere else. Willie had lately added a liking for cocaine to his fondness for Napoleon brandy. Coming down from the combination made him one mean bastard to deal with. "One of the black cab men reported liftin' a guy that could have been our friend from the `Black Bear'.

  "I want the bastard," Rice winced as a dart of pain shot through the top of his head.

  "The pick up was from just beyond the Shankill Graveyard," McIlroy moved Rice's coffee cup and opened a street plan of Belfast on the kitchen table between them. "That means that he probably lives somewhere between the Woodvale Road in the West and Tennent Street in the East," he drew two red lines down the streets he had named. "And between Azamor Street in the South and Sydney Street in the North," he drew a heavy line down the streets on the plan.

  Rice looked at the plan through the fog which clouded his eyes. He knew that he needed to think but his faculties were in such disarray that no act of will on his part could succeed in pulling them together. McIlroy had drawn a square with a side of approximately half a mile. It lay smack in the centre of the area controlled by Rice.

  "Cover the area house-by-house. Anyone who looks like our man get's lifted and brought to the Riverside Club." Another bolt of pain shot across Rice's eyes. "Tell our blokes that if they miss him I'll flay their skins off."

  McIlroy folded the map. He had no doubt that Rice would burn some arses if the bastard from the 'Black Bear' wasn't found. "You heard the news about Robert Nichol?"

  Rice had only just crawled from his bed. "No," he sipped at the hot coffee.

  "Topped himself," McIlroy slipped the map into his side pocket.

  "In a pig's arse, he did," Rice's hand shook and he spilled some coffee on the table. "That old bastard wasn't the type to top himself. Somebody offed him and they want to make it look like suicide. Jesus Christ! I wish I hadn't taken such a load on last night. My head is fuckin' splitting. There's something very wrong going on here. The Shankill has been littered with bodies this week and then Nichol gets himself topped. I don’t like it. Somebody is screwin’ around with us. Maybe it is the Provies?"

  "No way. They're not about to screw things up by gettin' into a gang war," McIlroy didn't like his chief's mood. In this frame of mind, Rice was downright dangerous. "We've got arrangements with them."

  "I wouldn't trust that fucker Cahill as far as I could throw him." Rice walked over to a wall cabinet, took out a pill bottle, shook three tablets into his mouth and swallowed them. "Maybe we'll have to take the old fart out."

  "The man's dyin', Willie. What would be the point of takin' him out now?" McIlroy could see that assassinating Cahill would be seen by the other side as an outright declaration of war.

  "I'm gettin' pissed off sittin' here and doin' nothing when I can feel it in my bones that something's goin' down." The tablets were beginning to deaden the pain in his head. "Get on to George Whitehouse at Tennent Street and find out whether the bollocks knows anything."

  Rice sipped on his coffee while McIlroy removed a mobile phone from his pocket and dialled a number. Something was stinking to high heaven. It had taken him ten years to consolidate his power in East Belfast and to build up a profitable operation. No business operated in East or Central Belfast without paying their tribute to Willie Rice. Shit he'd even taken on accountants to set the levies on businesses. Nobody was going to take that away from him without a fight. Despite the pills the drums were still playing away in his head. Sometimes instinctive action was called for and Rice's instincts were already screaming for retaliation.

  "Jesus," McIlroy wore a puzzled look as he put away his phone.

  "What the fuck is up now?" Rice asked.

  "Some arsehole blew up Whitehouse’s car and tried to do the same to Wilson." McIlroy sat across from his boss.

  "It's got to be the Provies," another bolt of pain seared through Rice's skull. "It's Cahill's last fling before they box him."

  "That's not all," McIlroy continued. "’Our boy’ was at the scene of the hit last night. One of the coppers on duty stopped a Brit heading away from the scene."

  "Who do you mean 'our boy'?" Rice asked sharply.

  "The description fits the boy from the 'Black Bear' to a tee," McIlroy leaned across the table. "And get this, he produced a Military Intelligence ID card when the fuzz stopped him."

  "Holy Shit!" Rice's head began to swim. This was stretching coincidence too far. "I don't like it, Ivan. There's an operation on for sure. But what are they after. A couple of Prods are murdered. Some of our men at the 'Black Bear' are roughed up and Nichol 'tops' himself. I can see the fuckin’ dots but I just can’t connect them."

  "It could be anything. The Brits are bloody devious when it comes to the `dirty tricks'. They wouldn't be trying to set the Provies and ourselves at each others throats?"

  Rice thought of his gut reaction of several minutes ago. "Could be. Did you tell our contacts what we know?"

  "I did in my arse. It might not be too smart to find this boy if he really is military. Maybe we should just keep our noses out of it until the killing stops."

  Rice knew that would be the logical thing to do. Over the years, he and his colleagues had built up a nice little empire but he didn't think for one minute that they were immune. The British Government and the police tolerated them. Letting the paramilitaries skim a little out of the system didn't hurt anybody, so they were allowed to operate within limits. Murdering a British agent could bring the whole house of cards down around their ears.

  "I still want to know where he is but tell the boys to leave him alone." The pounding in Rice's temples was beginning to subside. The gutter rat in him smelled an opportunity to squeeze a little more out of the Brits. "Knowing where we can put our hand on this bollocks might turn out to be an ace in the hole."

  CHAPTER 40

  Wilson acknowledged the nod from the Desk-Sergeant as he strode through the hall-way of Tennent Street police station. The atmosphere in the station was tense. Every policeman felt touched by the death of a colleague. Especially a well-respected local colleague. He made straight for the Squad Room tossing his coat onto the battered coat-rack in his office as he passed. His total complement of staff were present. Taylor, Graham, McIver and Davidson stood up as soon as they saw him enter. Moira remained at the back of the group.

  "Sorry, boss," they intoned in order. “We’re going to miss old George.”

  "We’re going to get the bastard that did this," Wilson said staring directly at his team. "And when we do we’re going to make sure that he pays for everyone he’s killed. All bets are off on this one. Pull in anyone you think can help. We’re going to turn this town upside down if we have to but we’re going to shake this bastard off his branch. Killing George was the worst mistake this guy could have made.”

  "Don’t worry. We’ll get him Boss," Taylor said and the other detectives nodded their heads in agreement.

  "What's the news from George's place?"

  "The car was totally destroyed," McIver said retaking his seat. "It burst into flames after the explosion and torched what was left of him." McIver saw the look of horror on Wilson's face. "He was dead before the flames started," he added quickly. "The bomb disposal people are examining the bomb that was under your car at the moment but we won't know for certain until later this morning whether the two bombs were set by the same person.”

  "I'll bet a month’s pay they were," Wilson could feel his energy returning with his indignation. "And I'll bet the bomb b
oys have never dealt with the son of a bitch before. It was my bloody fault. I rattled a cage and the animal inside went a bit berserk. We were supposed to think that Patterson, Peacock and possibly Bingham were random sectarian killings.” He looked over at Moira. “But our new colleague is one of those keen obstinate coppers who can’t let go once they get on the scent. Turning up the link with Dungray and Nichol was the vital discovery. We were gettin' too close to what had to remain hidden. I should have bloody seen it. McElvaney is a novice but I'm supposed to be the old pro. Our visit to Nichol signed his death warrant. He'd kept his trap shut fifteen years ago but someone didn't trust him to go all the way." He felt a shiver run down his spine. His intuition told him he was on the verge of opening the biggest can of worms that anyone in the Province could ever imagine. Who was at the centre of the web which had killed four innocent men, then Nichol and George Whitehouse? The killing wasn't going to stop until that person or persons felt completely safe. That meant that he would have to watch his back. He was definitely in the loose-end category. "I want all of you to drop what your doing and review the files on the Patterson, Peacock and Bingham murders. Moira, get on the computer and find me every man jack who was at Dungray at the same time as Patterson, Peacock and Bingham. Eric, you get on to the lab boys. I want every scrap of physical evidence for the four murders re-examined for a connection." He turned towards Graham. "Harry, I want you to get over to `A' Division and see what they've got on Nichol's suicide. I want to know everything no matter how unconnected it seems." He strode towards the door. "And Harry."