“Sean, I thought I would come with you today but I find that I’m swamped here. Would you be cross if I stood this one out?”
“Not in the least. I’ll give you a full report. I promise.”
“Thank you, Sean. Please do. You can’t imagine the bureaucracy.”
“Oh, I think I can. But I promise I’ll fill you in.”
“Please be discreet.”
“Always am.”
“Yes. Ciao.”
I hung up and went out to find the Crabman. He was in a cubicle cleaning his pipe.
“Busy?” I asked him.
“Not especially.”
“Fancy a run up to Antrim?”
“And let Matty steer the ship?” he asked skeptically.
“And let Matty steer the ship.”
“OK, then.”
When we reached the outskirts of Antrim town I handed him the Ordnance Survey map. “Where does Annie McCann live?” McCrabban asked.
“After the divorce she moved back in with her parents. It’s a wee village called Ballykeel just outside of town. Take the map and direct me. It’s complicated around here. If we take the wrong turn, we could end up on the motorway or the airport road. Those airport road coppers can delay you for hours with all their questions.”
Crabbie unfolded the map. “I’m not seeing the village.”
“It’s off the A6 toward Lough Neagh. You can’t miss it. Come on! We’re coming up to the first roundabout.”
“Ballykeel? Oh, I see it. Actually, you could miss it, it’s tiny. Go straight through the roundabout and take a right.”
“And then what?”
“What’s the actual address?”
“Number 3, Lough Neagh Road, Ballykeel, County Antrim.”
“I see it. Go through the next roundabout and head for the lough. Don’t go into the town, just follow the signs for the lough.”
I followed his directions, avoiding Antrim completely.
Lough Neagh was the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles but it was surprisingly underdeveloped, and visiting the villages dotting its shores was often like stepping back into an Ireland of a hundred or several hundred years before. Ballykeel lay a mile from Shane’s Castle, the residence of Lord O’Neill, one of the ancient Anglo-Irish families of the area. The village houses were whitewashed stone cottages, many with original thatched roofs. There was a spirit grocer and a newsagent and not much else. Lough Neagh itself lay to the south, a vast, still, pale blue presence with no boats and few birds. We were surrounded by woodland: oak, ash, elm, and wild apple trees.
We found number 3 Lough Neagh Road, which was an old two-story coaching inn or post house. It was a handsome structure built from local stone with a small stable block to the right.
“They must have money,” I said.
“Maybe, but I think you can get these old barns cheap. The money comes into it when you try to do them up, then you’ll need deep pockets.”
“I think they do have money, though. In the briefing notes I was given it said they had land in Donegal.”
“Aye, but there’s land in Donegal and land in Donegal. You could have a thousand acres and every inch of it sucking bog.”
We parked the car in a gravelly forecourt, got out, knocked on the door.
After a minute’s pause it was opened by a large, attractive, red-haired woman about fifty-five. She was wearing a brown cardigan and a green corduroy skirt that went down to her ankles. She had a large bosom and her eyes were clear, hazel, and intelligent.
“Bail ó Dhia is Mhuire duit,” she said.
“And to you,” I replied.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
I took out my warrant card and showed it to her.
“Detective Inspector Sean Duffy, Special Branch,” she read frostily.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m at Carrickfergus RUC at the moment and this is Detective Sergeant McCrabban, also of Carrick RUC.”
She grabbed the door and thought for a moment about slamming it in our faces, but she wavered. “This isn’t about Lizzie, is it?” she asked dubiously.
“Uhhh . . . no. Who’s Lizzie?”
“My daughter.”
“No. This is about Annie McCann.”
She nodded. Her face hardened.
“I see. I suppose you’re looking for Dermot?” she said with a groan of annoyance.
“Yes, and we were wondering if—” I began but she cut me off immediately.
“Do I look like an informer to you?”
“What does an informer look like?” I asked gently.
She shook her head. “You’ll get nothing here. We don’t know a thing about Dermot and if we did we certainly wouldn’t be telling the RUC!”
And yet . . .
And yet she still stood there. And she didn’t close the door.
Something was up.
I looked at the woman.
Something was going on here. Something I wasn’t twigging.
She had gravity, this lady. Power. Her daughter had been married to Dermot McCann but it didn’t come from that.
“We couldn’t possibly get a cup of tea, could we? Then we’ll get out of your hair and get on back to Carrick,” I tried.
She considered this for a moment, nodded, left the door open, and walked into the house.
Crabbie and I exchanged a look.
“Could be a trap. After you, mate,” I said.
We walked into a large, comfortable living room that must have been the old dining room when this was a coaching inn. There was a massive stone fireplace, rugs over a stone floor, attractive watercolors on the wall, a bookcase filled with what looked like volumes of poetry and history.
I sat on an ancient red leather sofa and got up again when the woman came back with the tea. She asked how we took it. I was milk and one sugar and Crabbie was milk with no sugar. She poured our tea into cups of fine nineteenth-century china. There was cake too. Dundee cake, carrot cake, homemade.
We both took a slice of the Dundee.
“I’m Mary Fitzpatrick. Annie’s mother,” the woman said, sitting down on a high-backed armchair.
“Nice to you meet, Mrs. Fitzpatrick,” I said formally.
“Likewise,” Crabbie said.
I took a sip of my tea. It was not laced with arsenic, which came as something of a relief. Mary Fitzpatrick might be the mother-in-law of a famous IRA operative but she wasn’t pathological.
“Very nice Dundee cake,” Crabbie said into the silence.
“Thank you.”
“Do you happen to know where Annie is?” I asked.
“She’s away with her da. I think they went rabbit shooting.”
“I see.”
“It won’t do you any good, you know. Annie wouldn’t tell you anything even if she did hear from Dermot, which she hasn’t since he broke out of the Maze.”
“We were wondering if he’d contacted you or Annie or you knew where he might be?” I asked.
Mary smiled and shook her head. “What incentive could I possibly have to help you, the agents of the occupier. Why on earth would I turn in my former son-in-law to the likes of you?”
“Dermot’s planning a bombing campaign. He’s going to kill a lot of innocent people,” I suggested.
Mary nodded. “There will always be casualties in a war. It’s regrettable but there it is,” she said brusquely.
“And then there’s the fact that the Brits have MI5 and the SAS looking for him and you know what those boys are like. They shoot to kill, don’t they? But if Dermot were to turn himself in or we were to find him before then—”
She raised her hand. “That’s enough now, Inspector Duffy. Say no more. I am no fan of Dermot McCann. I have some issues with the way he treated my daughter. I won’t go into the details but he did not exactly act the part of a gentleman. Be that as it may, I will not under any circumstances talk to or cooperate with any person who works for the British government or its—”
“Don’t interrupt me, young man!”
The tone of her voice told me that she was teasing me a little, but only a little. There was a steely menace behind those attractive hazel eyes.
She set down her teacup and put her hands on her lap. It began to rain outside and I thought to myself that if it kept up it might force Annie and her father to give up their rabbit-hunting expedition and come home.
Mary was looking intently at me. “What do you know about grief, Inspector Duffy, Sergeant McCrabban?” she asked.
“Grief?”
“Aye, grief. Are your parents still alive?”
“Mine are,” Crabbie said.
“Mine too,” I concurred.
“Have you ever lost a sibling or a child?”
“No.”
“No.”
“Well then. You don’t know. Neither of you.”
“Is there something you want to tell us, Mrs. Fitzpatrick?” I asked.
“Annie’s had her share of troubles. But that’s over and Dermot’s not part of our life anymore. He’s out of all our lives. And life goes on, doesn’t it? Where it can, life goes on.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said, utterly baffled by what she was talking about.
Mary got slowly to her feet. “Well now, you’ve had your tea and we’ve had a wee civilized chat and I think you should be leaving now, don’t you?”
“If you want us to go.”
“I do want you to go, gentlemen. I’ve had enough of you for one day.”
She walked us to the front door.
On the threshold she took my arm and held it for a moment. She looked me keenly in the eyes.
“Yes?” I asked.
“You’re not the first RUC detective that’s been in this house,” she said.
“Oh?”
“No. But you’re the first one who looks as if he knows his arse from his elbow.”
“Well, I’ll be—”
“You’ll be nothing, Duffy. You won’t come back here again without an invitation. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
We walked to the Beemer and when Crabbie had got inside she called me back to the porch.
“Yes?” I said.
“Orla McCann,” she said, and raised her eyebrows at me.
“What about her?” I asked innocently.
She smiled. “Run along, Inspector Duffy. Run along now.”
I walked to the Beemer, got in, started her up.
“What did she say to you?” Crabbie asked.
“A final warning. ‘If I ever catch you round here’ . . . they love that shit.”
Crabbie sighed. “Another busted flush, eh?”
“You and the gambling metaphors, Sergeant McCrabban! What’s the world coming to?”
He nodded ruefully. “If the wife was to hear me say that. Oh boy! And on the same day I praised someone else’s Dundee cake!”
I rubbed the stubble under my chin. “You’re right, though. Poker is Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s game and she’s definitely got something up her sleeve. But what it is, I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
It was a week later when the letter arrived in my pigeonhole at Carrickfergus RUC. It had been an interesting few days for Northern Ireland. It had been quiet, so to prove they were still in business the Provos had carried out a small coordinated series of car bomb attacks on market towns west of the Bann. Some of the car bombs had come with warnings, some hadn’t, which represented the different operational procedures of the various IRA cells. Only one person had been killed in the dozen attacks but this was only luck and everyone knew that luck wouldn’t hold forever. The mood in Carrickfergus RUC was tense. This was not the “big IRA push” we had all been promised but it would do just fine until the big push came along.
I had a busy few days driving to Derry, Limavady, and Coleraine to interview the last remaining members of Dermot’s clan; but if it hadn’t been apparent before this it was obvious now: none of them would talk. Informers had a nasty habit of ending up face down in a sheugh along the South Armagh border with their right hand cut off and a hole in their head.
One morning Matty found me in my office tackling the Times crossword and listening to the Hebrides Overture on what the kids were calling a “boom box.” He brought me a letter and a cup of coffee.
“A letter for you, Sean. Found it in your pigeonhole,” he said, plonking the white envelope down on my desk.
He had never brought me coffee or my post before and there was a hesitancy about him.
“Cheers, mate, what’s the special occasion?”
He was reluctant to look me in the eye.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Have a seat, mate, and tell me what’s on your mind,” I said.
“Ach, it’s nothing, you’ve got a letter to read, I’ll talk to you later, OK?”
“Are you sure?”
“Aye. I’ll see you later.”
Strange, I thought, and opened the envelope, which had no return address on it and had been mailed to “DI Sean Duffy, Carrickfergus RUC, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim.”
It was a brief handwritten note on cream writing paper:
Dear Inspector Duffy,
I hope it would be convenient for you to meet me in the Rising Sun Café in Cornmarket Street, Belfast on Saturday June 26th at 10 a.m. to discuss an arrangement that may be mutually beneficial. I would appreciate it if you do not ring my home or RSVP by post as I am quite sure that my calls and post are being regularly intercepted by British Intelligence and I would like to keep this meeting discreet.
I would further appreciate it if you would be so good as to destroy this letter without photocopying or transcribing it first. I have looked into your background and I feel that I may rely on your discretion in this matter.
Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile.
Yours faithfully
Mary Fitzpatrick
“Well, well, well,” I said to myself.
There was a knock at the door.
I put the letter quickly back in the envelope.
“Come in,” I said, and Matty stuck his head round the door.
“Sean, I was wondering . . .”
“Have a seat,” I told him.
He sat. “A glass of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative?” I asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and I opened my desk drawer, took out two paper cups, and poured us both a healthy measure of Johnnie Walker Black.
“What’s on your mind, Matty?”
“Well, you see, the thing is, there’s no future here, is there?” he began.
“You’re moving to England and you want me to write you a job reference!” I announced.
“How do you do it, Sean?”
“They used to call me the Great Stupendo. I did children’s parties and Butlins.”
He grinned. “It’s not England. It’s Scotland. I’m applying to join the Strathclyde Police and I need two references and I was wondering if you could write one of them for me.”
“Of course! I’d be happy to. If you think it’ll help.”
“You’re a detective inspector, Sean, and you’ve got the Queen’s Police Medal. I think it’ll help.”
“Why Scotland?”
“There’s nothing here, mate. It’s fucked. We’re all fucked. Someday I’ll want to have kids. Can you imagine bringing up kids around here?”
I swallowed my Johnnie Walker.
“Nope, I can’t.”
“I mean . . . don’t think I’m bailing on youse, but there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to look out for number one . . .”
“Jesus, mate, you’re not bailing on anyone. You’ve done your bit and I’d be happy to write you a reference. You’re a terrific police officer.”
Matty looked shyly at the floor, finished his whisky, and stood up.
“Thanks, Sean, and if, uh, if you could keep this under your hat . . . I don’t want any shit from upst
airs until I have this thing in the bag.”
“Mum’s the word, mate.”
“Ta.”
Matt had no reason to feel guilty. Getting out was the smart move.
I closed my office door, finished the Johnnie Walker, and reread the letter. Then I held it over the metal wastepaper basket and set fire to it with my lighter.
The very last bit, aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile, meant something like “a beetle recognizes another beetle” or perhaps more pejoratively “a cockroach recognizes another cockroach,” or if you wanted to turn it into criminal argot: “a rat recognizes another rat.”
The meeting with Mary was going to be interesting.
Cornmarket was a pedestrianized shopping precinct off Royal Avenue. This was the original market street of Belfast when the city was little more than a row of houses along the Farset river.
As Dublin had stagnated Belfast had prospered through linen manufacture and heavy engineering. Grand Victorian banks and building societies had grown up around the city hall, and by the time of the First World War Belfast was building fifteen percent of the ships of the British Empire. But after partition from the South in 1921 there had been little economic development or prosperity. In the Second World War the city had been heavily blitzed by the Luftwaffe and it suffered anemic growth after VE Day. The coup de grâce had come in the period from 1969 until 1975, when this part of Belfast had almost been wiped off the map by endemic IRA bomb attacks. Hundreds of shops, offices, and factories had been burned to the ground.
In 1976 the authorities blocked off vehicular traffic from the city center and made all civilians entering Belfast go through a series of search huts, where they were patted down for explosives and had their bags examined for incendiary devices. The streets around Royal Avenue were then flooded with police and soldiers, and although this was extremely inconvenient for all concerned, it had worked, and now Belfast city center, paradoxically, was one of the safest places to shop in the world.
The Rising Sun Café dated back to the 1890s, when it had been an elegant tearoom. However, smoke damage from various nearby incendiary devices and an ugly 1982 refit had robbed it of much of its original chintzy charm. The elegant booths had been replaced with plastic tables and chairs: the wide black and white tiles had been ripped up and the bare concrete underneath covered with brown linoleum.
In the Morning I'll Be Gone Page 9