‘I guess I better head off,’ he said. ‘Big day in court tomorrow and trying to be Mr Sensible these days. Boring but keeps me sane.’
He’d surprised her; she’d expected some play to her emotions and had intended to hit him hard if it came. She’d decided she wouldn’t hesitate to wound him, get some revenge in, but it hadn’t happened, and Macallan surprised herself by feeling sorry for her former lover. She’d always imagined that he’d been living the charmed life, the stuff of glossy magazines, when all the time he’d been suffering in much the same way she had in the aftermath of that night on the Ormeau Road.
‘If you are back in Belfast anytime and want to meet up for a drink, just say the word. That would be good for me. I don’t expect anything from you but would hate never seeing you again.’
He looked beaten, and she decided enough was enough. What the fuck? she thought, picturing the rest of her life with Harkins’ budgie. ‘I’ve no plans to come here in the near future, and meeting you hasn’t changed that. But if you want to meet for a drink you can come to Edinburgh. No strings; and if you’re there on business, pleasure or to have that drink with me just let me know. You can’t have my number, but you can get me at my office.’
He lifted his gaze and nodded. Macallan wondered if she’d overacted and fucked it up.
‘Okay. I’m over at the Faculty of Advocates from time to time and will give you a call.’ He rose awkwardly, wondering how to leave, and Macallan saw the problem.
‘Don’t try to give me a peck, and don’t try to shake my hand. I’ll see you in Edinburgh.’
She watched him walk away towards the city, shook her head and smiled. And there was a thought: I might not need that budgie after all, Mick.
Macallan went back to her room and stared over the rooftops to the Markets, remembering how it had been during the Troubles. Sometimes it all felt like a dream – that none of it had actually happened.
She switched on the television and groaned when she found it was EastEnders. ‘No way.’ She flicked the channel and saw the coalition being wound up by Ed Balls in a parliamentary bun fight. ‘Jesus, give me peace!’ she said. ‘One last go and I’m off to the bar.’ Third time lucky proved to be the latest report on the Jimmy Savile saga and breaking news on the umpteenth celeb. She escaped to the bathroom, sloshed some warm water on her face and patted it dry, deciding there was no other option but a proper drink.
Back down at the bar, Macallan pretended to read a book but spent most of her time watching the various characters coming and going in the lounge. All those lives squeezed into the hotel – business people making the most of their expenses, married couples ignoring each other and the inevitable pair of fools in the middle of a very passionate affair. She wondered what their partners were doing at home. The star act was a couple of very confident transvestites who hadn’t quite got the hang of the clothes and make-up yet, but they looked pleased. Good luck to you; you’re probably a lot happier than I am, she thought. Her mind inevitably drifted back to Jack, and she couldn’t decide whether she’d handled it well or completely misjudged the situation.
She looked back at the couple having the extramarital. They were lost in each other’s company and appeared to be about to spontaneously combust unless something was done about it. They were fools, but she felt a pang of loneliness and headed back to the room.
Hotels could be the most intimate or the most isolated of places – it just depended on which straw you’d pulled on the day. She undressed, wrapped the hotel dressing gown round her shoulders and stood at the window, looking at the orange glow from the street lights round the Markets and Ormeau Road. It looked quiet, the days of the Troubles far away now. A couple of teenagers walked away from the hotel hand in hand, making for the city centre, and they seemed at ease with the world.
Macallan climbed into bed, tired but knowing that there was little chance of sleep – the first night in a strange bed was always a problem, and she had Jack Fraser on her mind. Once again she flicked the TV from station to station in the vain hope that there would be something to grab her attention. Finally she gave up, switched the lamp off and lay staring towards the windows and the glow of the street lights over the city.
The only sleep she could find was fitful, and being in Belfast again filled her mind with old memories. At some point she dreamed that she rose from her bed, hearing the sound of a heavy, regular beat. She stood at the long window and realised there was no glass, the night breeze cooling her skin. The heavy rhythmic beat drew closer and then in the orange glow of the street lights she saw lines of men, lucent as if they were ghosts, marching proudly up the Ormeau Road. Endless lines of men, who gradually dissolved until there was only the orange light, but the heavy beat of the drum continued into the distance before fading into nothingness.
3
By the time Macallan had fallen into a deeper sleep, leaving her dream behind, two young Asian men were heading home through the cold drizzly streets of Belfast. The gift of youth meant that they hardly noticed the weather. They were keyed up after a good night and still had the buzz that only the under twenty-fives experience. They needed to be home before their families started to panic and walked quickly, the sound of their pounding feet echoing off the damp brick walls of the street.
When the peace process began to calm the conflict in Northern Ireland, their parents, who’d been friends with each other, had seen an opportunity. They’d wanted to escape the overcrowded community that was their home on the south side of London. The incentive of a developing economy with money being pumped in to aid peace, and open spaces outside a much smaller city had been too much to ignore. Nearly a quarter of a century earlier they’d travelled across half the world to live in a strange country where they might make a good life away from their harsh existence in Pakistan, so the short journey from London and across the Irish Sea should have held less risk for the family.
The boys had been in the gay quarter of Belfast and both knew the shame it would cause their families if they were discovered, but they were what they were. Their parents belonged to a generation caught between the traditions of the subcontinent and the freedoms – or excesses as they saw it – of modern Britain. The boys had made friends in the gay community, both white and black, and now felt part of something positive in the relaxed atmosphere of the pubs and clubs just a few minutes from the city centre.
They trotted past St Patrick’s Church in Donegall Street and were so busy laughing at the night’s events that they didn’t hear the four sets of footsteps trailing them from the club they’d left only minutes before. Their mistake was to cut through Stephen Street and then Union Street, where it was just too quiet. The men behind knew the right time to attack. Three of them had trained in the Ulster Volunteer Force and the fourth man, Billy Nelson, had served in the British Army, with two tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.
Nelson and his friends were formed in the Loyalist stronghold on the Shankill Road, which runs a mile and a half from the centre of the city through West Belfast. He was brought up in the Hammer district of the Shankill and as a boy saw too much evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. It still visited him now, the memory of the 1993 bombing, when an IRA device had exploded prematurely in Frizzell’s fish shop, killing nine people. One of the bombers had died along with the locals. Nelson had been close enough to feel the heatwave from the blast wash over him, and from that day he and his mates had just ached to get in on the fight. They wanted to get into the UVF as soon as they were shaving, and Nelson had been identified by the local men as a hard bastard of the first order, but they had other plans for him. He’d been taken into a safe Loyalist pub, and the man who’d spoken to him was someone that had to be listened to – you did not fuck with him.
‘We don’t need you to hit Taigs, son. You’ve a head on your shoulders, unlike those fuckin’ eejits you hang around with. They’ll do fine when it comes to violence, but we need to plan for the future. You’re going to join the Queen’s a
rmy, son, be the best and come back to us with something better than the ability to break bones.’
That had been it and Nelson had lived up to his task. The Parachute Regiment became his home, he took to the military and they took to him. He was good even among the best, and fighting Catholic boys seemed to become something he’d left behind with his youth. But what changed Nelson started in the Iraq War in 2003 and then Afghanistan. He saw too many friends maimed and killed by an enemy who fired from the shadows or planted a bomb that at best took a leg and at worst your face. Muslims replaced Catholics as the enemy in Nelson’s mind, and his control went after his closest mate in the regiment lost everything, including his balls. After that, he just wanted to hurt someone – and so that’s what he did. A young Afghani suspect had been detained, and Nelson had decided to do it there and then. The miracle was that the boy hadn’t died, but it was enough to see Nelson take a sentence and a discharge from the Army. The only place he could go was back to Belfast, where the Troubles were over and his hatred needed a new cause.
On his return, Nelson couldn’t believe the modern face of the province, especially Belfast and what had been the front line when he’d left Northern Ireland. But Nelson had changed as well – during combat, Catholic soldiers had saved his skin in more than one firefight in the deserts of the Middle East, and they were no longer the enemy. No, the new problem was the influx of immigrants and foreign workers with new ideas that were washing away the Northern Ireland of the twentieth century. Nelson had discovered a different cause, and there were others in the Loyalist movement who thought the same. He’d found his old team of friends were bored and had drifted into small-time drug dealing and a bit of extortion, but the problem was that they didn’t have a brain between them. To them, Nelson’s homecoming had been a big occasion.
‘A gay quarter? You have to be fuckin’ kiddin’ me on, Andy.’
The youngest of his old team, Andy Clark, couldn’t wait to fuel what was burning in Nelson’s gut. Nelson was prepared to forgive the Catholics, but there was still plenty to hate.
‘I’m telling you, Billy, these fuckin’ gay boys are all over the place. Doing it in the open they are – can’t fuckin’ stand them. Ain’t that right, boys?’
Dougie Fisher and Rob McLean made up the rest of the team. They just wanted Nelson to lead the way and knew that their days of selling a few tabs of ecstasy for beer money were over.
Nelson had looked at his old team and decided it was time to get involved.
Fisher was the oldest and slightly less rash than the other two. ‘What about the top boys though, Billy?’ he’d said. ‘The war’s over, but they still control most of what’s what. Shouldn’t you try and get the okay from them? Christ, with what you can do they’ll be eating out of your hand so they will!’ he’d added, knowing that upsetting the former paramilitary leaders made no sense.
Nelson had known he was right and that would need to be taken care of. ‘No need to go aggravating people before we even get started,’ he’d agreed. ‘Look, I’ve already reached out to the top men – they know I’m back, but they aren’t exactly rushing to shake my fuckin’ hand. I can wait, though that doesn’t mean we can’t see who’s fuckin’ around the queers’ patch.’
Fisher had looked pleased and excited; he’d always liked dishing out some pain. ‘There’s been warnings from the Loyalist side to the queers that they wouldn’t be tolerated so we’re doing nothing wrong.’
It was way too late when the older boy realised they were in trouble – in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first blow hit him from behind, below the ribs, where it would hurt like a bastard. He gasped out all the air from his lungs and fell to his knees retching. Nelson and Fisher were all over him, but they were experts and each blow was calculated to achieve maximum effect. The second boy tried to run, but his legs were clipped, and when he hit the pavement he’d already fractured his arm. He wondered why the two men attacking him were laughing.
Nelson and his team took about a minute and a half to beat their victims. By the time they walked away, the boys were both unconscious, and the damage done would stay with them the rest of their lives. Nelson slapped his friends on the back.
‘Job well done, boys, and good to be back. Paki queers, that’s a result and a half. Let’s get some beers in.’ Nelson laughed, on a high from dishing out a beating.
He’d miscalculated badly though. His mindset was still in the old Belfast – in the time of the Troubles – so he thought bashing the Asian boys would earn him some credibility where it mattered, and at one time it might have done. The new Belfast, however, was not the place he imagined; for all the sins of the past, the peace process showed there was a remarkable ability for tolerance even among the bitterest foes of old. There had been some Loyalist picketing in the gay area round the Cathedral Quarter of the city at one time, but the sensational revelations that a number of Loyalist paramilitary killers had been in the same closet had caused the movement to re-examine its own attitudes towards the subject.
The Loyalist organisations set up at the start of the Troubles to defend what they saw as a Dublin-backed policy through the arm of PIRA and Sinn Féin had changed following the peace process. Some of the men of violence had gone on to become leaders in the political developments, and the same was true for both sides of the conflict. Others had lacked the conviction to follow and support peace, realising instead that they had a talent for organised crime, and once they saw the profit margins their career paths were set. Nelson thought that his talent for violence would catch the eye of a few people and they’d welcome him with open arms, but that was his first mistake.
4
Over the next month Nelson and his gang attacked another gay couple, and an Asian boy on his way home from work. They were all hospital cases, and the media went on fire, claiming the attacks would bring a return of violence not seen in the city for years as the victims’ communities fought back. The PSNI had taken a beating in the press and from community leaders, so they reacted the way they always did – which was to use it as an excuse to target the men and women involved in the drugs trade and prostitution, knowing it might not get the culprits but would placate the average taxpayer. The men who ran the rackets were pissed off and business was suffering.
Jackie Martin had been a UVF leader in Belfast when the movement needed men like him. Short but muscled like a pit bull, he’d hardly changed in looks, mostly down to good genes but partly due to the hours he spent pushing weights every day. There wasn’t a spare inch on his arms for another tattoo pledging his allegiance to God, the Queen and Glasgow Rangers. His head was permanently shaven, his eyes clear blue and deceivingly friendly – though his close allies knew this was just a trick on the senses, as his ability to move from friendly banter to headcase was legendary. He’d built his reputation defending Ulster, and like all good legends had done his time in the Maze prison before coming out an even more violent bastard than before. He’d fought his way through the Loyalist internal feuds, and at the same time taken out enough innocent Catholics to get him to the top of his section in West Belfast.
The peace process had come as a shock to Martin. Once the guns had been silenced and most of them handed back, he’d sat at home with a wife who hated but feared him, wondering what the fuck he was going to do next. He knew a lot of the boys had their sidelines in drugs but hadn’t needed that himself. As a top boy, he paid for fuck all, and no door was closed to him in his particular empire. Once he decided that the politics of peace bored him, the move into the rackets was remarkably easy. He already knew how to run illegal operations, was even more violent than the other violent bastards and knew how to smuggle contraband and guns into the province. The money had flowed in. His wife had seen the results and decided she didn’t hate him quite so much, and the flash car plus shop-till-she-dropped money helped her to ignore her husband’s addictive use of the prostitutes he managed and abused on a daily basis. She thought he was a beast of the first order
, but he left her alone, and when she needed to she presented the front of the good Loyalist wife.
Martin loved watching The Sopranos, over and over again, and having the added gift of looking a bit like a short-arsed James Gandolfini, he’d even taken to mimicking Tony Soprano’s mannerisms. His wife sneered carefully behind his back and thought his only similarity to the mob boss was that he was a fat bastard. He’d been devastated by the actor’s death, and it had just made his wife loathe him all the more. What he did have in common with his hero was that he never hesitated to use extreme violence where it was necessary. He never lost a moment’s sleep for the poor bastards he’d either sent to their maker himself or ordered others to take care of.
As far as Martin was concerned life was good – very good – and he just sat at the head of his criminal, almost criminal and legal businesses and watched the profits roll across his desk. His biggest problem was laundering the cash, and he needed to pay top whack to the best but most corrupt accountants to keep the PSNI off his back.
Today, as Martin sat back in his leather seat and sucked deeply on a fat, expensive cigar, he was angry – furious in fact. Things had been stable apart from the occasional so-called Real IRA tosspot who still thought there was a war on, or the fucking idiots on his own side who thought the Union Jack was worth a riot, while the rest of the world just looked on and shook their heads in disbelief. They were the past and could stay there as far as he was concerned. He’d toyed with the idea of topping a few of them, but they were a useful distraction for the Peelers while he was getting on with both business and his latest plan – to build a home just like Tony Soprano.
Evidence of Death Page 3