‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m thinking about writing a different type of book than the one Father Walsh had in mind. Something along fictional lines.’
‘You mean all this research might work in some sort of a novel, but not as a factual account?’
‘Yes. A novel might be the most fitting way to tell the secrets of the murder triangle. To tie up all the loose ends and clear away inconsistencies.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ He kept his voice as neutral as possible. ‘Researching a piece of fiction?’
He saw how Walsh’s death might have upset her literary ambitions. A best-selling exposé on the Troubles put on hold indefinitely. Her motivations suddenly seemed mundane and cynical.
She seemed to sense his recoil.
‘Not entirely. I want to help the investigation because Father Walsh’s work is too important to be forgotten. It means a lot to me.’
She saw the look of doubt on his face.
‘Of course, it’s true there are too many unresolved issues to make the book a credible work of fact,’ she continued. ‘That book was Father Walsh’s and it died with him.’
Her expression registered anger or disappointment, Daly wasn’t sure which.
‘But if I incorporated the story of your childhood it might make a different kind of book.’
Daly regarded her uneasily. He didn’t like the idea of her prowling after him, sniffing out the details of his family tragedy.
‘Have you been researching me? Is that how you knew I was an only son?’
She barely flinched.
‘I did ask around for a few background details.’
‘So that’s why you went along with the first meeting when you knew I couldn’t possibly be Father Walsh. That’s why you’re here today. You’re collecting more material for your book.’ He almost chuckled. ‘You’re following me because you’re afraid of losing sight of your story.’
She smiled, a little unsure of herself.
‘I should have admitted to you from the start that I wanted to turn Aloysius’s research into another type of book, but I didn’t have the nerve.’
‘But why do you need to add my story? Haven’t you enough material here?’
She shrugged.
‘Every story needs a lead character. A sympathetic hero.’
He frowned and wondered if she was trying to pay him a compliment.
‘But clearly I’m not a hero.’ He struggled to describe what he was. ‘I’m an outsider who arrived too late in the day to influence anything. When I think about it, there are no heroes in the story of the murder triangle. Except perhaps for Father Walsh, and he’s dead.’
She smiled at him.
‘Can’t you see that you’re perfect? A hero who doesn’t want to be a hero.’
Daly sighed.
‘There must be a better way for you to finish your book. One that isn’t complicated by me.’
‘I suppose I could work longer hours in the library, dig up more relatives and interview them. But that wouldn’t be half as interesting as following you.’
Her eyes glinted. What sort of game was she playing? She reached out and ran her hand along the backs of his fingers. She held her hand there for a moment, as if inviting him to hold it, but Daly did not respond. It was the first time in ages a woman had touched him so tenderly, but he remained motionless.
‘I could write about you sifting through Walsh’s notes like you are now. Doggedly following a trail. Negotiating the obstacles placed in your way. Of course, I’ll change the names; make sure no one can identify you.’
He felt a stab of annoyance, realizing she had already enrolled him in the plot of her book.
‘Except that you’ll never be able to follow the story to the end.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because I have no intention of letting you find out what happens next. Anyway, why would readers be interested in my search for the truth?’
‘Because you’re a police detective, but also a victim.’
‘Is that the impression I give?’
He could see the truth in her eyes. He was nothing more than a narrative device, a means to carry the interest of her readers. She was searching for a character made out of ink and punctuation toiling away at a knot of evil.
‘I want to see you get closure on your mother’s murder. Is that so bad? I worked with Father Walsh for months. Surely there’s some way I can help you amid all this confusion and uncertainty.’ She gestured at the murder map.
‘For a start you can answer this question: Why was Walsh so interested in a British Army major called George Hannon?’
Her answer gave him a start.
‘You can ask the major yourself.’
He hadn’t considered the possibility that Hannon might still be alive.
‘Where will I find him?’
‘He’s living somewhere in North Down. I’ll see if I can arrange you an interview. He’s retired now, but in the seventies he worked at British Army Intelligence’s headquarters in Lisburn.’
Daly did a rapid calculation. If Hannon was still alive, he must be well over a hundred. It was highly unlikely he had worked for the army in the late 1970s as well as operating in Palestine during the 1940s. Unless he was some sort of ghost.
‘Are you sure it’s the same man Walsh was researching?’
‘Judge for yourself when we meet him. I’ll call you when I’ve arranged a visit. For the two of us.’ She flashed him a winning smile.
‘I’ve already told you, I’ve no intention of involving a journalist in this investigation.’
‘At this point you need all the help you can get. Besides, this case is no longer a matter for the law. We can’t leave it to Special Branch to deliver justice.’
Daly looked at her. He wondered whether she had even been born when the murder gang was doing its despicable work. He considered asking her what age she was but thought better of it.
‘You can’t use my mother’s death as a source of inspiration for your book.’
He looked in her eyes and saw something that sickened him: grinding, writerly ambition. She had spent the entire conversation chipping away at his defences. He shuddered at the idea of her discovering his boyhood secrets, the lists of car number plates, his possible role in the intimidation his parents suffered. He gathered up his notes and stood to leave.
‘I’m going, Ms Pryce. Your story ends here.’
‘What if it’s just the beginning?’
He let her question hang in the air and left. He walked back down the corridor, and passed an open door. He stopped. From inside, he could hear a group of women reciting the rosary. An echo from the past had startled him, the uncanny impression that his mother’s voice was drifting through their murmured prayers. He crept in and took a seat at the back. The voice faded away. Perhaps the contents of Walsh’s cluttered room had strained his mind. The pungent smell of incense filled the air. He listened carefully, and the voice returned. He sank deeper in his seat and tried to pinpoint its location. A man’s voice began to pray at the front of the room, and the congregation fell silent. When the murmuring returned he detected her voice again, those soft syllables so familiar from his childhood. He stared at the backs of the women in disbelief. Her voice seemed to move within their ranks. He followed it like a ripple in water from one corner of the room to another.
To have this solemn echo of her, so close to him, must mean something, he thought. He began whispering the prayers, all the time listening to that reassuring voice floating through the others, as though it might give him some hint about her mysterious death. However, the voice was an auditory hallucination created by his imagination and the voices of living women who spoke in his mother’s old-fashioned Tyrone accent. It had no connection to reality. It was precarious, a single thread guiding him through a maze of strangers’ voices. He got up, a Hail Mary half-finished on his lips, and crept away.
17
All over the park the curling embryonic si
gns of spring glittered as Major George Hannon took his afternoon walk in determined good spirits. He skirted around an onrush of excited schoolchildren and pressed on along a path through the trees. He’d left the café with a coffee in hand and felt buoyed up by his surroundings and the countless signs that winter was over; the sense of creaturely occupancy amid the bushes and undergrowth; life shining and crawling onward in its endless war against death. Mother Nature keeps her eyes wide open, he thought with satisfaction. She knew instinctively how to outmanoeuvre the darkness that threatened to extinguish everything, even the sun and the stars.
He walked under trees that were already sprouting tender little leaves, almost hiding the skeletal branches. Feeling the warm sunshine on his face, he reflected that it was the perfect moment for a prayer of thanksgiving, but it had been years since he had mouthed anything holy, and he was reluctant to start now in case he might undermine his sense of enjoyment.
This feeling of light winning the battle over shade brought his mind back to the personal war he had waged during the Troubles. He thought of the informers he’d handled back in the days when he worked for the Ministry of Defence, when intelligence gathering was pure power, when a single phone call could decide whether a man lived or died, when he was effectively carving out the history of Northern Ireland, before that history was handed back to the squabbling politicians who mired it in sectarian point scoring and flag waving. He missed that sense of control and precision, manipulating hidden strings within the paramilitary gangs. However, the faces and voices of that era were far removed from this spring afternoon and his bright path through the trees.
He was sipping his coffee, listening to the birdsong piping overhead when the figure of a man seated on a park bench distracted him. He blinked but the figure remained silhouetted against the sunlight. For several moments the major stood motionless, studying the figure’s outline against the trees, stark as a freshly revealed target, an old ghost sitting in the sunlight. The major felt irritated rather than alarmed; his cheerful vigour drained away.
He approached the bench, and the elderly man glanced up at him and then looked away. His gaze was empty, without intent or focus. On his lap, he clutched a thin black briefcase.
Hannon stared vengefully at the man and sat down beside him. What was he doing here, disturbing the happy peace of his daily walk, like some half-dead corpse from the past seeking reanimation?
‘I had to see you,’ explained the man, sensing the major’s hostility. ‘This is urgent. There was no one else I could turn to.’
‘That’s not the case, Hegarty.’ Hannon frowned. He stared straight ahead of him. ‘I’m retired. It’s extremely dangerous to contact me like this.’
‘I’ve killed a man.’
The major sighed heavily.
‘Who?’
‘A shadow from the past. It was either him or me.’
‘How did he trace you?’
Hegarty croaked his explanation. Hannon felt his spirits flag, infected by the old spy’s doomed air.
‘I need your help.’
‘I can’t help you any more.’
‘Then let me preface my request.’ He shifted his briefcase in Hannon’s direction. ‘The gun in my case is pointed at you. Like I said, I need your help.’
Hannon stared at the briefcase. He considered the possibility that the spy was bluffing and discounted it.
‘You’d shoot me here in broad daylight?’
‘Believe me, it would be less messy than the last shooting.’
‘How much do you need?’
‘How much what?’
‘Money. How much to get you out of the country and off my fucking back?’
‘I don’t need to go anywhere right now. What I want are answers. A week ago, I arranged to meet a priest and now he is dead. Then a woman claiming to be a journalist almost lured me to my death. Who’s pulling the strings? Is the journalist on the MOD’s payroll?’
‘I’m out of touch. I don’t have those kinds of answers.’
The hand holding the object inside the briefcase shifted it closer to Hannon.
‘Then you must go looking for them.’
‘All you’re giving me is an assumption. What makes you think that the MOD would use a journalist and her accomplice to assassinate you? They don’t strike me as professional killers.’
‘Perhaps the MOD persuaded them to intervene.’
‘The MOD has its pick of agents. They don’t have to go with anyone they can persuade to do the job. If they wanted you killed they would have arranged for it to resemble an accident.’
‘Like Father Walsh?’
Hannon left the question unanswered and sighed. Hegarty was another searcher and puzzler trying to discover the hidden truths of the past. Like the priest and his journalist friend. He stared at the light fading through the trees with dismay. Everything precious about the afternoon was lost; cold shadows contending with the sunlight in every corner, the gracious burst of early spring warmth dissolving away. Hannon remained motionless, leaning away from Hegarty as much as he could. He grew aware of the vastness of the silence in the darkening trees.
‘What else is inside that briefcase of yours, Hegarty?’
The spy sniggered nervously but didn’t reply.
‘Why did you arrange to meet the priest? What makes you so worried the MOD is out to kill you? What secrets are you carrying that might make you their target?’
‘A copy of your old files. The ones you handed over to me.’ Hegarty smiled and a drunken glow lit his eyes. Hannon saw the excitement of a man addicted to secrets and betrayal.
He tried his best to smile back. Inside, however, he felt hollow. He wondered if Hegarty had noticed the inner slippage, the psychological tremor induced by the mention of the files.
‘You’re devious,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to grant you that, but foolhardy, too. Now I understand why your life is in so much danger. You should have stayed on the run, or got into some nice little racket, fuel smuggling or extortion. Small-time stuff. Nothing as big as holding on to those secret files.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not so dumb as to carry them with me. I think more than one step ahead.’
‘Where are they, then?’
‘Why do you think I’d tell you? Let’s just say they’re in a very safe place, and if anything happens to me I’ve left strict instructions that they should be posted to all the newspapers in the country. I think of them as my insurance policy.’
Hannon stared at the spy’s feverish-looking eyes. He saw betrayal upon betrayal, the reckless, heedless descent of an old spy into loneliness and death. Hegarty was like a lame dog that had been kicked out into the wilds to fend for itself. He might have a few old bones buried in places, enough to gnaw on for a few nights, but bigger, stronger animals were already circling him. If the MOD knew about the secret files, it was unlikely that he’d survive another week, unless they had some secret purpose for him, one final suicidal mission. The thought gave him some satisfaction.
‘I’ll dig up whatever information the MOD has on the journalist,’ said Hannon. ‘If she was working with Walsh, there’s bound to be a file on her somewhere. Come back here in a week’s time and I’ll have it for you.’
Hegarty removed his bony hand from the briefcase.
‘Consider it a deal.’
‘Does that mean you’re not going to shoot me?’
‘Just answer me one more question. I want the truth now and no more bullshit.’ Seeing the major squirm with apprehension made him more confident.
‘I can only promise not to lie,’ said the major with a thin smile.
‘Who was in charge of the rogue police unit Walsh was researching? Who allowed them to wreak such havoc?’
Hannon leaned back and tried to look the part of a respectable retiree enjoying the faint sunshine. He wondered whether Hegarty expected a truthful answer or not. He was bound to an unbroken code – surely the spy knew that – a brotherhood of denial and sile
nce.
‘There were so many intelligence units back then. Operations hidden within other operations. The whole system was run on a need-to-know basis, otherwise the networks would have collapsed.’
‘I want the name, you bastard.’
‘You should do what I do, Hegarty,’ the major said coldly. ‘Keep your fucking head down and watch your back. This is still a treacherous, violent little country.’ He shifted uncomfortably and tried to regain an upright bearing. ‘Is this why you’ve risked meeting me today?’ he continued. ‘To rake over the past?’
A grimace tugged at Hegarty’s lips.
‘You’re being evasive. Why won’t you give me the name?’
‘I’m protecting my privacy, not a gang of murderers. If there was such a unit operating it wasn’t on my watch.’
‘So that is all you’re concerned with? Protecting your privacy.’
‘Why should I let the past intrude on my life? It is of no concern to anyone.’
Hegarty leaned his face towards him, at once angry and vulnerable, like an offended beggar.
‘Who wiped your slate clean of all your meddling in this shitty country?’ he hissed. ‘Who purged you of everything rotten? Who made you pure and worthy of this bright afternoon?’
Hannon leaned back into his corner of the bench. He tried to maintain his composure. He did not take kindly to the inquisition but in the circumstances, with Hegarty’s gun still in his briefcase, he could not rise and walk away.
With increasing venom, Hegarty threw accusations at him, blaming him for the deaths of different agents, unsolved murders and other dark deeds from the Troubles. Hannon waited for him to finish his tirade. Hegarty’s scrawny little face was lined and pale. A more dangerous light glittered in his eyes as he made impossible demands for the truth. Worse than impossible – crazy. He should not even be thinking about such topics. The spy was unravelling, realized Hannon, a threat to all who encountered him.
‘Are you sick?’ asked the major when he stopped for a breath.
‘No.’
‘Then why are you so eager to dig up the past and search for these ghosts?’ Hannon grimaced. ‘Why the interest in past causes and retribution? You’ll never find answers in the fog of war. You’ll only flounder helplessly in the quagmire, like poor old Walsh did, becoming more weary and entangled by the day. Take my advice: crawl out while you still have the chance.’
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