by Fee Derek
Wilson didn’t notice the light fading. He was totally engrossed in two American crime series where the cops were smart, if slightly autistic, and the criminals were dumb. After two helpings, he switched to Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which he found immeasurably more entertaining, but equally divorced from the reality of crime, as he knew it. Agatha Christie’s criminals were far too gentile. It was only necessary to examine the autopsy photographs of the two boys shot in Beechmount Parade to understand what murder was really about. On the screen, Poirot had just gathered all the suspects, dressed of course in evening clothes, together to explain how he had solved the murder, when his mobile phone rang. He hit the silence button on the TV remote before answering. ‘Wilson,’ he said simply.
‘Where are you?’
At first he thought it was Kate’s voice and his heart jumped. Then he realised it was Stephanie Reid. ‘At home.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’m down in the lobby with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and a takeaway from Mandarin City. Press the bloody button to let me in. Otherwise all this food is going to go cold.’
His first reaction was reluctance. He could feign tiredness. He’d been to Dublin and back. He’d been up half the night two days ago. Then it sank in. He was, as Davidson so rightly put it, single. Kate had been furious in McHugh’s but it hadn’t changed anything. She assumed he’d moved on. He stood up and moved to the entrance of the apartment where the button to release the front door was situated. He had one final bout of hesitancy before pushing the button. He opened the apartment door, and waited until the lift arrived at his floor.
Reid was carrying a cloth bag bearing the logo of a well-known supermarket. A bottle of wine stuck out at the edge. ‘Let’s get some of this stuff into your cooker,’ she said as she breezed past him. ‘I didn’t know what you liked so I had to guess what you might have ordered.’ She was already at the cooker and piling containers into the oven. She closed the door and set the oven going. ‘We’ve got some spring rolls and spare ribs to start followed by Chicken King Po and Crispy Duck. How’s that?’
‘You’re psychic, it’s exactly what I would have ordered.’ Wilson finally found his voice. ‘What’s the occasion?’
‘You guessed.’
‘Not really.’
‘It’s my birthday.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘For a second there I thought you might just be one of the best detectives in the world.’ She laughed.
‘Happy Birthday! He put his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry I won’t ask,’ he said as he moved away.
‘Don’t worry I won’t tell. I had the option of sitting at home feeling sorry for myself or forcing my company on someone I actually like.’
‘How did you know I was here?’ He took her arm and led her to the couch managing to knock the TV off on the way.
‘You weren’t at the Crown,’ she said.
‘Am I that pathetic?’
She smiled. ‘‘Yes.’
‘I think it’s time for a drink. Gin and tonic?’
‘If available.’ She sat and looked around the open plan space. ‘Not a bad little place, for a single man. You’re quite a bit neater than the average man.’
He handed her a gin and tonic, and raised his own glass of whiskey. ‘Happy Birthday! He touched his glass to hers and sat beside her. He realised that, apart from their work relationship, he knew absolutely nothing about her. ‘No family members in Belfast?’
‘No family members in Europe.’ She sipped her drink. ‘My mother and father split when my brother and I were in our teens. My mother married a plastic surgeon and moved to San Diego. I think over time she’s become his best client. My father stayed with us until we went to university and then went to work in the copper mines in Zambia. He owns a game ranch just outside Lusaka. I still visit whenever I can. My brother Peter is a paediatrician in Perth, that’s the one in Australia.’
‘Then I’m glad I’m of some use.’
‘I’ve shown you mine. Now you show me yours.’
Wilson finished his drink in one gulp and stood to make himself another. ‘My father was a policeman. He made sergeant. One day he went into a shed at the back of our house and blew his brains out with his service revolver.’ He poured a large measure of whiskey.
‘And your mother?’
‘My mother was having an affair with my father’s best friend. Six months after my father died she married her lover.’
‘And where is she now?’
Wilson was about to lie and say that he didn’t know. He looked at her face and knew that he shouldn’t. ‘She lives in a small town south of Halifax in Nova Scotia. I haven’t seen her since the day she married.’
‘Good God, Ian, that’s terrible. I don’t think I like my mother as a person but I still love her.’
He sniffed. ‘I think the food is ready.’
She finished her drink. ‘You set the table and open the wine. I’ll sort out the food.’ She could almost feel the sadness. It was difficult for her to comprehend being cut off from a parent. Her own family were not close. A Sunday dinner with four people living on four different continents was not going to happen, but she loved being with her family on their visits. She hadn’t realised that he could be so vulnerable. If someone had an Achilles’ heel, it could generally be traced to a family issue.
Wilson set two plates and two wine glasses on the table. He placed a knife and fork on the side of each plate. Something was going on with him. There was the side trip to Lisburn the previous day. Now he was discussing his family with a woman who was basically a complete stranger.
She brought a series of steaming containers to the table and in doing so their bodies touched in the confined space. When the food was on the table and the wine was opened they stood close. She looked up into his face.
He knew what she wanted. The whiskey and the nostalgia were coursing together through his veins. He bent and kissed her. He intended it to be a friendly kiss but it turned into something altogether more passionate. Then he broke away.
‘That was the best birthday present you could have given me,’ she said sitting at the table. She smiled. She knew it would be worth the wait, and it certainly was.
The talk over the meal had been about Africa. Her experiences in the Congo had been extreme, and Wilson was building up a picture of someone who was not only a consummate professional in her field, but also a compassionate and courageous individual. ‘You miss it,’ he said.
‘Not really, you have to have the ability to move on. It was what it was at the time. I learned a lot about medicine, but mostly I learned a lot about myself and my ability to cope.’ She looked at the cartons covering the table. ‘Shouldn’t we clean up?’
It was getting to the point that Wilson knew so well. The kiss had set the scene, and they had eaten, and more importantly drank enough to excuse what might be about to happen. Normally, he felt no reluctance at this point. There was a beautiful and intelligent woman who was making herself available. He didn’t know many men who would be hesitating in his position, but he was. ‘Leave it,’ he said standing up. He could offer a final drink, but he knew instinctively it wouldn’t end there. ‘I hope you’re not driving home.’
She smiled at the heavy hint. ‘Not a chance, I came by taxi and I’ve got the number programmed in my phone.’ She could see a mixed emotion in his face. She moved close to him. ‘You can’t avoid it forever, Ian. It will happen. Don’t ask me when. The first time I met you I felt we should be together. When you’re ready there will be three initial rules. One, it will only be sex. Two, we’re not moving in together. And three, it will be monogamous.’ She stood on her tippy-toes and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘Thanks for being here. I hate being on my own on my birthday.’ She started walking for the door.
He knew a single word would have been enough to arrest her departure but he couldn’t say it. He watched as she opened the door, and closed it behind her.
The camera whirred a
s the button was pushed and thirty photographs were taken in an instant of Reid leaving the apartment building. Jackson put the camera on the passenger seat and started the car. He had been stationed outside Wilson’s apartment since his colleague had been dropped off by that toe-rag McDevitt. It was obvious that the journalist hadn’t taken the hint. Silly bastard. Still it was a worthwhile vigil. Another nail in what would turn out to be Wilson’s coffin.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
At the same time as Wilson was entertaining Stephanie Reid, Chief Superintendent Campbell was meeting Sinclair at PSNI HQ. Campbell had just finished reading a report of Wilson’s meeting with Hodson in Dublin. As the days passed, he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his role in what was an “off-the-books” operation. The instructions he was operating under had been transmitted verbally, so he had no fall-back position if the shit hit the fan, and plainly there was a excellent chance of that considering the manner in which Wilson was acting more like an erratic free electron rather than the intended well-directed missile. Wilson and Hodson was not a combination that he’d foreseen, and it was one that had potentially catastrophic implications. Hodson was already instrumental in opening up the whole question of collusion between the security forces and the murder gangs operating in Mid-Ulster. He was one of the stars of the Historical Enquiries Team investigation. Bringing Hodson and Wilson together could send Wilson off in a direction that had not been anticipated. There was also a time issue. The operation should be completed as soon as possible. He stared at the man opposite him. He had been sold to Campbell by Special Branch as highly competent officer who could be depended on to carry the operation to its conclusion. That had been a crock of shit. At every step of the operation, he had proved himself to be not up to the task. Wilson was on to him and Jackson almost from day one. And now, they had compounded their incompetence by their unilateral decision to abduct McDevitt to throw a scare into him. Campbell didn’t know the journalist very well but he assumed that the abduction might have the opposite effect. That opinion was, more or less, borne out by McDevitt organising the meeting between Wilson and Hodson.
‘This reads like a fuck-up,’ he said tossing the report on the desk separating him from Sinclair. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. We’ve lost control of events.’
‘You’re the one who wanted him fed with the MRF crap,’ Sinclair said. Campbell might have the ear of the Chief Constable, but he and Campbell were the same rank and he wasn’t about to take any shit from him.
‘If you remember properly, that was part of the plan,’ Campbell said. ‘Unlike your decision to abduct McDevitt.’
‘We were forced to improvise,’ Sinclair said. He smiled at the memory. ‘McDevitt was a diversion. Wilson is pretty much on track. Ramsey is away to his relations in Scotland for a couple of weeks, and by then this mess will be over. Jackson and I are ready to follow orders but whoever conceived this operation has shit for brains.’
Campbell would have liked to argue, but Sinclair had a point. One of the precepts of a psych operation is to have a deep appreciation of who you are dealing with. Someone had got Wilson very wrong. Campbell was beginning to think that the outcome would be very far from what was intended. The object of the exercise was to break Wilson down, but he was beginning to doubt that was going to happen. And if it didn’t happen, the search for a scapegoat would include him. ‘This is not going to reflect well on any of us. I’m beginning to think that we’ve permanently lost the initiative. Do you have any idea how we might regain it?’
Sinclair could almost feel the light falling on him. ‘Hodson wasn’t part of the plan but sooner or later Wilson was going to see that there was collusion between the RUC and the Army. So, we’ve lost nothing. We need him to look for the definitive information on the Mallon and Lafferty shootings. Christ, we have very little more to give. He’s almost there.’
‘Not quite,’ Campbell said. ‘I think we should be considering an exit strategy.’
‘Why is that?’ Sinclair asked.
Campbell took a report from his desk drawer and pushed it across. ‘It appears that DC Peter Davidson asked one of his friends to look at the CCTV from Royal Avenue for the evening that McDevitt was abducted. Davidson is, as you already know, one of Wilson’s old team from the murder squad.’
Sinclair picked up the report and speedread it. He looked at the two photographs appended to it. One showed two men wearing beanie type hats and balaclavas. The second showed a black taxi. ‘So what?’ He tossed the report on the table.
‘McDevitt has made a police report.’ Campbell removed another sheet of paper from his desk drawer. This is a mock-up of the front page of tomorrow’s Chronicle.’
Sinclair stared at the headline. “Chronicle crime writer in abduction horror” looked back at him. The two photos that he had just looked at were included with the article.
‘That fucking weasel,’ Sinclair said. ‘We should have fucked him up properly.’ He picked up the mock-up, balled it up and flung it on the desk. ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.’
‘How was it supposed to happen?’ Campbell asked. ‘This is the kind of shit-storm that you and your friends at Special Branch are famous for creating.’
Sinclair leaned across the desk. ‘You get the plods to investigate and release a statement blaming paramilitaries.’
‘And McDevitt will go away?’ Campbell said.
‘If he doesn’t, he can be induced to.’ Sinclair’s voice was icy cold. ‘There’s no way they can trace the cab. It’s one of ours. We were careful not to show our faces to the cameras, and McDevitt only saw the balaclavas. For Christ’s sake, the guy shit himself.’
‘Like I said,’ Campbell looked directly at Sinclair. ‘I think we should establish an exit strategy.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Wilson was going to have to do something about his sleeping pattern. After Reid had left, he went in search of the only item he had kept from his old house at Malwood Park. He found it conveniently located in one of the suitcases that Helen McCann had packed and sent to the Europa Hotel. He removed the shoebox from the case, and carried it into the living room. He had already cleared the table of the detritus from their meal, and he laid the small box with no little reverence in the centre of the table. He opened the lid and removed a large number of photographs. None of the prints were recent and several were as old as Wilson himself. He sifted through them, and found his parents’ wedding photo. His mother was dressed in a simple white dress and wore a rose in her hair. His father was wearing his RUC uniform and looked stiff beside his more relaxed and smiling bride. He moved through the photographs depicting his early life; his father and him playing rugby, his mother teaching him how to swim. The first team photographs at school were simply some of a myriad that his father had taken at rugby matches. He spent hours poring over the worn photographs until he had examined each before returning them to the shoebox. He couldn’t shake the feeling of nostalgia, although he had no idea where it was coming from. He wondered whether this was a function of the loneliness he’d been feeling since Kate and he had broken up. He doubted it. It was some deeper emotion that had made him veer off the road into Lisburn to look at the old family home. He hated that place. And yet he was attracted to it like a moth to a flame. He hadn’t looked in the shoebox for years. He didn’t realise how long he had been looking at the photos until he looked at his watch. It was past 1 am. There were two photographs left on the table. One showed him and his father sitting on a bench. He guessed that he must have been ten and the location was probably Portstewart. It was the family’s favourite holiday location. He was smiling for the camera but his father wore a frown. In the last years of his father’s life, he had rarely seen him smile. Wilson’s rugby honours were the source of a rare smile. He knew his father was proud of him but a kind of sadness appeared to hang over the man. He was about to put the photo back in the box when he changed his mind and instead put it into his wallet. He picked up the last
photo. It was a picture of his mother as a young woman. She held a baby in her arms and he could only surmise that it was him. She looked beautiful in a summer dress. Her blonde hair hung in ringlets. When he was young, everyone said that he favoured his mother, and as he looked at the photo he could see the resemblance. He put the photo into his wallet beside the one of him and his father. He closed the shoebox. He was tired and emotional. The photos showed the history of the family that no longer existed. It had started with smiles and ended in tragedy. As a family history, he knew it wasn’t unique. But it was his family history and he was permitted to feel sad about it.