by Derek Fee
‘You’re just in time,’ Kate called from the kitchen. ‘Ham and cheese omelette alright.’
‘Prefect, along with a coffee. Let me get out of these sweaty clothes and grab a quick shower. I’ll be with you in five.’
He was still perspiring when he joined Kate at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.
‘My perfect wife,’ he said kissing her on the lips.
‘Let’s not go there. It’s only an omelette and coffee.’
He looked at her and was delighted to see that the smile was not only on her lips but also in her eyes.
‘What’s on the agenda for to-day?’ he asked.
‘Court, court and even more court. I have a nice juicy drugs case, and I’m meeting a client in Government later who is having trouble explaining away some of his expense claims. Apparently, the prosecution would like to lock the poor chap up just because he stole a lot of taxpayers’ money.’
‘How inconsiderate of the prosecution. Don’t they know the reason that most people enter politics is to rip off their fellow citizens?’
‘You’re a cynic. They enter politics to serve. What does your day look like?’
‘More of the same although I hope that we’ll be spared another press conference. Has the ‘Chronicle’ arrived?’
Kate retrieved it from the shelf under the bar. ‘I was hoping to avoid this,’ she placed the newspaper on the bar beside him.
The mini-riot in the Shankill pushed Lizzie off the front page of the ‘Belfast Chronicle’. Lizzie’s murder had, of course, been mentioned as a major contributing factor to the riot but the article pointed out that the spokesmen for the rioters voiced several other issues of concern to the Loyalist community. The report on the PSNI press conference had been relegated to page three, and the accompanying photo had been a stock shot of Wilson. That would not go down well with the powers at HQ.
‘Don’t forget that we’re expected at the opening of that new art gallery in Donegall Street. Seven o’clock, latest.’
Wilson closed the paper and put it away. He forked a piece of omelette into his mouth. ‘It looks like my day could be even worse than I anticipated.
CHAPTER 14
Wilson held a briefing at nine o’clock in the squad room. There was nothing new to report overnight. Moira had been put in charge of looking into Lizzie’s life, and she had delegated much of the work to Ronald McIver, who was the ‘Mister Research’ of the team. Peter Davidson was out on another round of house-to-house enquiries while Harry Graham was following up on the forensics report. Wilson was worried by the lack of progress. There were no sightings of people going in or out of the Rice house. There had been buckets of blood flying all over the place and there was no doubt that the killer would have got some of it on his clothes. The mace, pepper spray or CS could have been brought in from abroad or could have been manufactured at home from components bought at a local Tesco. The same could be said for the Taser so pursuing them would be a dead end. The only avenue of enquiry was Lizzie herself.
Just as Wilson was about to delve into the pleasures of his administrative tasks, his phone rang. ‘You and me are wanted at HQ,’ Chief Superintendent Spence announced. ‘I’ll meet you outside in five minutes.’
Wilson took one look at the e-mails on his screen and for once wished he had been left alone to deal with them.
A copy of the Belfast Chronicle sat on Deputy Chief Constable Jennings’ desk when Spence and Wilson entered. The DCC did not invite either man to sit, but Spence took the initiative and sat in one of the chairs in front of the DCC’s desk. He looked at Wilson, who was still standing and then put on a pleading face. Wilson understood and sat in the other chair.
‘First thing this morning I received a call from the Chief Constable,’ Jennings began. ‘The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and the First Minister, already called him. Then I received a call from the Minister for Justice.’ He tapped the front page of the newspaper. ‘They all want to know what we’re doing about these riots. All I can tell them is that my SIO is wandering around in the dark with his proverbial thumb up his arse.’
Wilson stiffened and Spence placed a hand on his arm.
‘I briefed you last evening, Sir,’ Spence said in his most moderate and diplomatic tone. ‘The whole resources of the Murder Squad and a large number of uniformed officers are committed to the investigation. So far, we’ve a drawn a blank on the house to house. The victim’s husband has been unable to provide us with any clues as to who the assailant might be or what the motivation for the attack might be. So, you‘re right, for the moment, we are wandering around in the dark.’
Jennings looked down from his desk. The DCC was short at five feet six but had arranged for his desk and chair to be elevated above his visitors. He pinched the top of his nose. ‘Perhaps nobody has told you that there are rioters on the streets. And there will continue to be rioters on the street until you get your act together. I want Lizzie Rice’s killer found and put behind bars before things on the street get out of hand.’
‘We’re currently looking for a lead to follow,’ Spence said.
Jennings looked directly at Wilson. ‘And what leads would they be, pray tell?’
Wilson would have preferred to let Spence carry the ball. ‘The crime appears to be centred on Lizzie so we need to know why the killer picked her in particular. I have my team trawling through her life at the moment looking for someone who might have a reason to kill her.’
Jennings sneered. ‘Try half the Catholic population of Belfast. The Rice family have been synonymous with attacks on Catholic homes. I assume that you have pursued this particular line of enquiry?’
DCC Jennings had never led an investigation in his twenty-five years on the Force, and Wilson was about to tell him so when he felt Spence’s hand on his arm again. ‘We don’t think that the crime was sectarian,’ he said simply.
‘But you can’t say for sure. I would be grateful if you pursued this line of enquiry at least.’
Again the pressure on Wilson’s arm. ‘Yes, Sir.’
‘I’ve been in contact with the coroner,’ Jennings said. ‘He’s already received the report from the pathologist, and of course he intends to hold an inquest. However, I have prevailed on him to release the body for burial. He can hold the inquest at a later date, but it’s important that we get this wretched woman in the ground as soon as possible. Maybe that will put an end to the riots.’
‘Fat chance,’ Wilson said quietly.
Jennings stared at Wilson. ‘You said something, Superintendent?’
‘Well done, Sir,’ Wilson said.
CHAPTER 15
Belfast, 1983
The woman held the young girl by the hand as they made their way along the Crumlin Road. The little girl skipped along. She was happy because she didn’t have to go to school. It wasn’t a holiday and she hadn’t been sick, so she had wondered why her Ma had kept her home. She didn’t like school, so she much preferred to stay at home with her Ma and play, or colour books. The other girls at the school didn’t like her. She knew it had something to do with her not having a Da. All the other girls had a Da and a Ma but she only had a Ma. So that had to be the reason that they didn’t like her. None of the other girls or boys would play with her. When she tried to join their games, they would push her away. Even when the teacher tried to get the other children to include her in their games, they cried and refused. She hated school. The girls used bad words when they spoke about her Ma. She didn’t understand the words, but she knew that they weren’t nice. The people on their street didn’t like Ma either. They never came to the house for tea, and they looked funny at Ma when she passed by. Maybe it was because Ma was getting fat. She could feel the pressure of her mother’s hand on hers. Ma was squeezing her hand tight, and it was starting to hurt. She wanted to tell her Ma to let her hand go, but there was a lot of traffic on the road and Ma had told her that she had to hold her hand, in case she ran out in front of a car. But she was a big gi
rl now, and she understood that she had to stay on the path. Ma could hold her hand when they crossed the road, but she didn’t need to be treated like a baby when she was on the footpath. She was aware that the pressure from Ma’s hand was increasing, and when she looked into Ma’s face, she could see that she wasn’t smiling like she usually did when they were together. She loved Ma more than anything else in the world. She loved sitting on Ma’s knee with Ma’s arms around her. She wondered where they were going. The last time they had made a trip like this was when Ma went to see the doctor. Ma had been crying when she came out of the doctor’s office, but she said that she wasn’t sick or anything. Ma had only been sad and that had gone away quickly. She felt Ma jump a little, and they started to cross the street. They were moving fast now. Ma was pulling her along, and her little legs were moving as fast as they could but she could barely keep up the pace that Ma was setting. They had almost reached the corner of the street when the big man caught up with them. He pulled at Ma’s arm, and she had to stop. The little girl was happy for the rest. She was beginning to get very tired. She looked up into the big man’s face. He was ugly and had no hair on his head. He looked like he was angry with Ma. He had hold of Ma’s arm, and she was trying to break away from him but the man was bigger and fatter than Ma. All the time that Ma and the man were talking loud Ma was gripping her hand tighter and tighter. She was beginning to get afraid and she whimpered a little. When she made the crying noise, the man and Ma both looked down at her. Ma smiled, but it was a funny smile not like the one Ma had when they played together or when Ma stroked her hair. The big fat man smiled too, but the smile made his face even uglier. She wanted to tell the fat man that she didn’t like him, and that he should leave her Ma alone. But she was afraid that he would hit her. Ma never hit her but her teacher sometimes hit the children and made them cry. Ma and the man started talking again, and then they began walking down the road in the same direction they had been going. Ma was still holding on to her hand and the big man was holding Ma by the elbow. They turned a corner, and the man pointed at a car. She had never been in a car because Ma didn’t own one, and when they went to the doctor they’d taken the bus. The little girl suddenly got very excited at the thought that they were going to go in a car. They stopped beside the big black car, and she saw that Ma didn’t want to go in the car. The big man opened the back door of the car. Ma was still holding her hand, and the big man made her let go so he could put the little girl into the back seat of the car. Ma looked at her. There were tears in her eyes. The fat man opened the front door, and pushed Ma into the seat. The little girl wanted to shout out ‘Leave my Ma alone’, but she was still afraid. The big man went quickly to the other side of the car and got in. He started the engine, and they began to move off. She felt lonely in the back of the car. Why didn’t Ma sit beside her? There was more room in the back than in the front. The little girl looked out the window at the people walking along the street. This was way more fun than the bus. She wanted to wave at the people on the street. The children at the school would be jealous of her now. Lots of them had never been in a car. They didn’t drive for a long time until they stopped. Ma was crying now, and the little girl started crying too although she didn’t know why. The big man took the little girl out of the back seat, and Ma got out of the car slowly like she didn’t want to. There was a group of women standing in front of the building they stopped beside. As soon as Ma got out of the car, two women came forward and held her by the arms. There was a big woman with yellow hair telling the other women what to do. They took Ma and brought her into the big building. The little girl started to cry.
‘It’ll be alright, dearie,’ the woman with the yellow hair said. ‘Nancy’ll take you away for a wee ice cream. You’d like that wouldn’t you?’
The little girl stopped crying. She nodded, and took the woman called Nancy’s proffered hand. She liked ice cream.
CHAPTER 16
It was one of those times when Wilson didn’t really want to go back to the office. The investigation was going nowhere fast, and he would have preferred to be out on the streets trying to drum up a lead than sitting behind a desk waiting for something to happen. It was one of the drawbacks of rank. As a young detective constable, it had all been about finding evidence and learning the game. When he moved up to detective sergeant, he’d taken on some responsibility for the work of the constables, but he was also on a learning curve to become an inspector, and then the exalted rank of chief inspector. It was what he and the other cadets aspired to when they were at Police College. Some cadets like Jennings took it to extremes of ambition while others were happy to truck along as constables for the rest of their lives. He knew that among his own team, the only person who had leadership qualities was Moira McElvaney. He had insisted that they make her up to detective sergeant but from now on it would be up to her how far she wanted to go. As far as he was concerned, he was happy to have made superintendent, and he had no desire to climb any further up the greasy pole to the rank of chief superintendent where he would be buried in a mound of bullshit administration. He had recently carried out the annual appraisals of his team and to a man they declared their ambition satisfied. That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t like a few extra quid in their pay packets every month but in terms of job satisfaction, they were, by and large, happy. Harry Graham had, he thought, finally accepted the fact that he would never be able to pass the sergeant’s exam. He didn’t know why Harry continually failed. He didn’t think that the man was dyslexic so perhaps it was simply a phobia with exams. Wilson had already put in twenty years on the Force. Despite the overt antipathy of DCC Jennings towards him, he had managed to reach a rank he had no desire to go beyond. Ian Wilson was a copper, and that’s what he always would be.
Only Ronald McIver was present in the squad room when he returned. The other four members of the team were beating the bushes for a lead. As soon as he was settled behind his desk, he reluctantly opened his computer and clicked the mail icon. A flood of new e-mails filled the screen in front of him. He wondered whether this new technology was a blessing or an affliction. He knew what he thought. He selected one with the subject line ‘toxicology’. He clicked on the enclosed pdf and learned that Lizzie was marginally over the legal alcohol limit and Sammy Rice was over by the proverbial mile. He was glad he didn’t have Sammy’s liver. There was nothing else of interest. The second e-mail contained a revised forensics report. Nothing major there either only a few more finger prints were identified. Added to the report were the rap sheets of those additional people. None of them would have been welcomed in heaven judging from their past deeds. He worked quickly through the rest of the e-mails discarding the ones that had been sent simply to show the hierarchy that a particular officer was still alive and working on something extremely important. Then he dumped the e-mails in which he had been copied for no other reason than that he was a superintendent. Then he dumped the e-mails consisting of ‘things he should know about’ such as new rules concerning the powers of the Chief Super to amend the station organisation chart. Important stuff no doubt, but not very relevant to finding the murderer of Lizzie Rice. By the time he had cleared his e-mails he had done a considerable amount of work but the investigation into the murder of Lizzie Rice hadn’t moved forward by one inch. He looked at his watch. It was lunchtime, and he had to choose. He hated eating alone in a pub.
CHAPTER 17
Deane’s restaurant in Howard Street is probably the best restaurant in Belfast. The main dining room exudes class with the white linen covered tables contrasting with the deep red of the walls and the dark brown of the wooden floors. Most people are highly delighted to receive an invitation to lunch at Deane’s but DCC Roy Jennings was an exception. He felt uncomfortable as he looked around the well-filled main dining room. A senior editor at the Belfast Chronicle had invited him and he was more apprehensive than usual at the reason for the invitation. He was not one to shy away from contact with the press. Ingratiating hi
mself with editors and journalists was part of his strategy to attain the office of Chief Constable by establishing a positive press presence. Therefore, the prospect of a decent lunch allied to an opportunity to schmooze with a senior journalist meant that he had jumped at the invitation. When he had arrived at the restaurant to find the table had been set for three, his nose had been thrown a little out of joint. He had assumed that the lunch would be an intimate one where he could easily ingratiate himself with the senior editor. Exchanging confidences at a table of three was a risky enterprise since it reduced considerably the value of deniability. He was even more bothered when the senior editor arrived with none other than Maggie Cummerford in tow. Cummerford had until recently been the crime reporter on the Chronicle, but her star had waned after she had been obliged to retract a front-page story concerning a Professional Standards investigation into Ian Wilson.