‘Now – where were we? If you say that Brann-’
There was a burst of wild guitar from Diarmuid’s trouser pocket. If Smith’s ears didn’t deceive him, it was from Electric Ladyland, All Along The Watchtower, and if the evening could have become any more surreal at that moment, Smith couldn’t have said in what way. Kelly whipped it out and pressed some sort of decline button but within seconds the wailing had begun again.
He said, ‘It’s Mairead…’
McCain said, ‘Go and take it, boy. Go into the kitchen there or the garden.’
Kelly looked at Smith, unsure, and McCain spoke again.
‘Get on with it! Your Englishman is safe enough with an old man like me. What am I goin’ to do? Chop him into pieces with a cup and saucer? Stab him with a tea-spoon?’
Smith nodded, though he had heard of stranger murder weapons, and Diarmuid left the room, the phone to his ear. When the door was closed, McCain waited for a few seconds until he was sure, and then he spoke in a new tone altogether.
‘Right, you’ve got five minutes, if that.’
It took half a second for the penny to drop.
‘I see. Why the game of charades?’
‘As I just told the girl, it’s for his own good. He doesn’t need to hear any of this. I don’t know much but what little I do know he doesn’t need to be carrying about with him. Does his mother know he’s here with you? I’m surprised if she does.’
‘Yes, she does. She said this far and no further. I think she sees you as family already.’
‘Oh, aye. The girl intends to marry him alright. He just doesn’t know it yet.’
There was a pause as Smith thought over the best way into this.
‘You know something then, Martin.’
McCain was leaning forward a little and keeping his voice lower than it had been – Kelly was in the kitchen, not out in the garden.
‘I was not involved with whatever happened to Brann O’Neill – whether you believe that or not is of no concern to me. After you did whatever you did, that cell never met again, not the five of us. That was the way of it, the plan whenever there had been a leak. I expect you know that much yourself.’
Smith nodded and waited for more.
‘When Lorcan arrived, we met in the other room, and he told us what you’d done. We left you in Tommy’s charge. I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten that…’
He was looking at the scar on Smith’s cheek. Tommy Blake had come to his own conclusion about the English student’s part in the betrayal, and had not waited for the return of the others. His face inches from Smith’s, with Smith himself already tied into the chair, he had drawn the lock-knife slowly down across the skin, as a down-payment, he said. The blade was so sharp that it had barely hurt but then Smith had felt the drip, drip of blood from the point of his chin onto his jeans. He had said no word in response but was sure then that it would be Blake who killed him in the end.
‘Go on.’
‘Lorcan’s plan was to get you to talk first, so we had to get you out of there to somewhere quieter. We couldn’t do anything like that in the back of Rourke’s. The tip-off gave us time to move things as well. That’s where Eamon and me went – we moved the mix and the timers to somewhere it would not be found, just in case you’d given that up as well. Had you?’
‘No. I’d no idea where you kept all that.’
‘Well, our thinking that you might have done was another thing that saved your life. Michael O’Dell went to check up on the place we planned to take you, and Lorcan was making phone calls and watching the street just in case. When they went back in half an hour later, they found Tommy gagged and tied on the floor, with you gone out of the back door.’
Two minutes already. McCain seemed to be enjoying telling the whole story, and looked as if he might have one or two questions of his own, but telling him to hurry would be counter-productive. Patience, Smith…
‘So how did you do that to Tommy Blake?’
‘I realised that he hadn’t been in the Boy Scouts.’
‘What?’
‘His knots were rubbish.’
‘I see. I’m surprised you didn’t cut him with his own knife, just returning the favour.’
‘I was in something of a hurry. What about Brann?’
O’Neill smiled a little at what he was about to say.
‘Lorcan went crazy. He knocked Tommy down three times – in the end he wouldn’t get up any more. Michael told me all this. Eamon and I didn’t get back for another couple of hours at least, we had to drive over to Fermanagh. Then he told them, Michael and Tommy, to find any bastard that might know where you were and make sure they talked. By the time we got back, that’s what was happening.’
Smith said, ‘So it was Michael O’Dell and Tommy Blake? One of them or both picked up Brann?’
‘I didn’t say that. Lorcan always had youngsters hanging around, didn’t he? He set them onto it as well. Some were looking for you, others for anyone that knew you. I don’t know who found who.’
‘Was his brother Aidan out with them?’
McCain raised his eyebrows in surprise.
‘Why d’you ask that? You do know what happened to Aidan Quinn the very next day, don’t you?’
It was the second time he had been asked that question within the space of two hours. Yes, he lied, he’d read about in the papers but McCain hadn’t finished with that part of this sorry tale.
‘Gunned down by the UDA. Shot in the back by those cowards because they couldn’t reach Lorcan. Aidan would have been something in this movement if hadn’t been cut down like that. He was born to it. It was in his blood.’
The more things change… Time hadn’t done much for Martin McCain. It had not mellowed him, and if something in his words just now had not caught Smith’s whole attention, he might even have found a second to feel a little sorry for him. But there had been something.
‘He was shot in the back, you say?’
‘Aye. Where else with those shit-bags involved?’
‘Well, I expect he became something in the movement anyway. A martyr?’
McCain took the comment at face-value.
‘That he did. The funeral was magnificent.’
…the more they remain the same, thought Smith.
Kelly would be back in moments – could he find anything more here?
‘So I need to speak to Lorcan, Michael O’Dell and Tommy Blake. Where can I find them?’
McCain laughed aloud before he answered.
‘Are you serious, man?’
‘Completely.’
Then, with a straight face, Martin McCain said, ‘Well, you’ll find Mr Lorcan Quinn in a large white building that looks down upon us from a hill in the east of the city. I’ve never been myself but I expect it’s a fancy sort of office he occupies now. Tommy Blake? I’ve no idea. If I did I might send you there to see if he would finish what he started but I don’t know.’
‘But you’re still in touch with Michael O’Dell.’
It wasn’t a question.
‘Tell me something. Was any of your story true? Did you have an Irish father?’
‘No. He came from Ipswich.’
‘Were you actually a student at the university?’
‘No.’
‘But we checked that out. I was the one who did that. Your name was down for courses there.’
Smith needed one thing more – to be able to see the next stepping stone, that was all. He didn’t have the time or the resources to find O’Dell or Blake on his own in a city of three quarters of a million people. Quinn he could find, of course, but getting to speak to him was a different matter.
‘Third year urban geography, on an exchange course with Bristol University. I went to a few lectures, and it was quite interesting.’ He stopped and recalled something – ‘The demographic consequences of long-standing cultural divisions in an urban environment’. Belfast was the best place in the world to have studied that at the time. But no
ne of it was genuine, not my part in it.’
McCain looked baffled.
Smith said, ‘The unit I was a part of was very good. Arranging cover like that was routine.’
‘It was an intelligence unit, then? You weren’t just a squaddy who got picked to get in with the locals?’
‘No. And the plan was for me to stay undercover. You were never supposed to know I was there. I was supposed to go back to England with the connections I’d made. If there were plans for further attacks on the mainland, intelligence hoped that you’d try to make use of people like Stuart Reilly and that would be the early warning. This was all set up after Brighton.’
It had to seem that he was giving something to McCain if he wanted to receive a little more, and Kelly was still talking away on the phone. The girl was good – they could have used her thirty years ago.
McCain said, ‘Never supposed to know? What happened to change that?’
‘Your choice of target for the bomb you were putting together.’
The Irishman knew immediately what he meant.
‘How could you have known that? It was never discussed outside of that room. Who gave it away?’
After all these years, it still mattered to McCain.
‘No-one. I’d put a tape in there. It was crude by today’s standards but it worked well for months. Each time I’d listen to it myself so that I could plan the next recording and then pass it on. When I heard what you were planning, I made sure that someone else above me had to take some action. You were going to bomb a primary school because some officers’ children went there? I wasn’t going to have that on my conscience, Martin.’
‘Your conscience? We’d already let you in by then. You’d already done things for the IRA that would have got us ten years if we’d been caught doing them.’
And that, of course, was true. The operational choices of deeply embedded undercover officers often become moral dilemmas. He had been set tests by Lorcan Quinn’s IRA cell, and he had passed them. There was no other way to get beyond the outer circle, to get close enough to them to put tape recorders in their meeting rooms.
Smith said, ‘I still have those things on my conscience. But blowing up five-year-olds during their morning story was never going to be another one. If my superiors had decided to let it run – and they did such things from time to time because some of them were as cynical and calculating as anyone in the Provisional high command – I’d have gone down to the school gates with a rifle and shot you all myself.’
They were eye to eye then for a long moment before McCain said, ‘And wouldn’t that have been something?’
‘Would it? Just another page in your bloody history. At least it was near to the end of it.’
‘You think so? You think it’s over? The fact that the war won’t be won in my time doesn’t matter. This talking and double-dealing won’t last forever. I’m not the only one that keeps the faith, David.’
‘The true faith…’
‘Aye.’
It was dark outside now. The dogs had all fallen asleep, it seemed, and with only a single lamp on the shelf to his left, Smith’s view of McCain was mostly in shadow.
Smith said quietly, ‘Michael O’Dell?’
‘Jesus bloody Christ…’
It wasn’t easy for McCain to give anyone up, even now. There was silence in the kitchen – Kelly was either listening, or texting or thinking.
‘I’ll give him the same assurances that I gave you. This is about finding Brann O’Neill’s body and giving him a proper burial – not about blame. You realise that it was thirty years ago this week?’
‘I do.’
‘And you know how ill Catriona Kelly is?’
McCain didn’t answer that. After another long moment he said, ‘I’ll give you the name of a pub. If you’re in there at midday tomorrow, you might see Michael – that’s up to him. But understand this. Doing it this way means that I’m telling him who wants to see him, and why. If he’s not there, that’s done – don’t come back to me. If he is there, I can’t guarantee he’ll be on his own.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Old Timothy’s on Berwick Road’
‘I don’t remember that one.’
‘Well, you’re the detective. Midday tomorrow is what I’ll tell him. You’ve had your bodyguard today but you’ll go on your own tomorrow. For Mairead’s sake, I don’t want the boy involved at all beyond today.’
‘Diarmuid as my bodyguard? He gave me a lift, that’s all.’
‘You think so? Our Diarmuid is a bit of handful. Martial arts and all that sort of thing.’
Smith considered it. He had thought more than once that Kelly must work out regularly – it was a possibility. His silence encouraged McCain to say more.
‘He used to compete up to a couple of years ago. I’m told he was very good but then he got into bother and had to give that side of it up.’
Off the subject of the cause, Martin McCain was just another Irishman, enjoying the craic, the telling of stories.
Smith said, ‘What sort of bother?’
‘He went into a bar in the city and found a good friend of his and his girl being shoved about by a gang of ne’er-do-wells. He asked them to desist and they did not. It was all over quickly after that but the police prosecuted anyway, him being a good Catholic boy. He was fined for assault, and I think when that’s happened you’re out of the martial arts thing. They have to sign something to say they won’t abuse their skills. Nonsense if you ask me. What’s any man going to do if he sees a friend taking a beating?’
The door opened and Kelly came back into the room, the phone still in his hand. He said, ‘Sorry’ to Martin McCain but the old man waved it away.
‘We’re done here now, whatever little use it’ll be.’
And then to Smith, ‘For Catriona’s sake alone I’d have told you more if I could – I’m sorry it wasn’t much.’ The look that accompanied the words, and which was not visible to Kelly, was plainly a warning, and Smith accepted it as such.
He said to Kelly as he got to his feet, ‘Yes, done. We won’t take up any more of this man’s time. I appreciate you agreeing to see me under the circumstances, Martin.’
In the brief pause that followed there was no sign that the man would ever have shaken his hand, and so he did not offer his own. McCain moved towards the door and all three dogs lifted their heads to watch him. Smith could not resist the thought that had been in his mind briefly earlier on before the business in hand took over – here was a man who rescued worn-out dogs from an ignominious death but who had been prepared to murder children for a political cause. It was still a strange country.
‘Well, he said that it wasn’t much which can only mean that there was something.’
Smith sighed a little and stared down the Falls Road. He was tired – post-operatively, of course, nothing to do with his age – and his knee hurt more now than at any time since he had left the hospital. Was that normal or was it because he had not been resting it as much as he had been told to do? As much? He had hardly rested it at all during the daylight… Tomorrow morning, before he set off for Old Timothy’s, he would put it up for a couple of hours, to compensate for ill-treating it so far. He certainly had some thinking to do.
But for now there was Diarmuid Kelly, who was beginning to remind him of someone else with a young, quick and inquiring mind and no idea when to stop asking questions. Good grief – imagine a Waters who knew how to use the Korean death-grip or some such thing. A terrifying thought. Still it might be useful with his current choice of female companion; Smith didn’t want to think of her as the girlfriend because that was an even more frightening possibility.
‘Yes, there was something. It was a tiny something that will almost certainly lead nowhere. I’ve spent most of the day apologising to people for involving you, even though I didn’t, and promising them that I won’t do it any more. Breaking those promises is much more likely to get me killed than a run-in with some ge
riatric IRA members. Thanks for the lift.’
Kelly said, ‘Well, you have my number. If you find anything or if you need to ask where somewhere is, you can ring me.’
Yes, thought Smith – I’ve got your number. That was way too easy.
‘I should also point out that I have a strong aversion to being followed. I would be highly likely, in that situation, to pull out my real badge and call the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I would be highly likely to deny all knowledge of anyone they picked up on suspicion of trying to follow me, especially if it was you. The story you’d tell them is so ridiculous they’d probably ask you do a turn at the annual federation dinner.’
Now Kelly too was staring along the Falls Road.
‘Just so you know, I’ve not developed a great concern for you personally. I’d just hate – having got this far, y’understand – for you to find something and then get done in before we get to hear what it is.’
‘Good. I feel reassured by that. You go and do some empire-building tomorrow morning, and if I get shot up, I promise to give you a ring and bleed slowly enough to give you a sporting chance of finding me alive.’
‘That’s a plan, Mr Smith.’
He glanced at Kelly as he was climbing out of the car. The eyes didn’t leave the road ahead but there were the remains of a smile of sorts around them – though at which particular part of the plan it was difficult to say.
Albert Street was well-lit, as was Milford Street after it, but the turning into the little road where Mrs Greene held court was less so. Smith stood just around its corner in an angle of shadow and waited for five minutes. If anyone was watching for him, it would surely be from a vehicle; there would not have been time to go through the rigmarole of getting the cooperation of private property owners. The houses were close together, with a passageway between each pair that ran to the rear of them. At this time of night, virtually the entire street was lined on both sides with cars, and no-one would be able to pull away quickly without him noticing them – he could go all the way down on the far side first, cross over and walk back towards the B&B, giving him the chance to check out three quarters of the vehicles. He could – but against it was the fact that his knee was painful, and that he was unconvinced that there was anything to worry about anyway. He waited another minute or so, and then stepped out of the shadow, the walking stick making its now familiar click on the pavement as he went towards that comfortable bed at the top of the fourteen stairs.
In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation Page 12