by Derek Fee
A large crowd had already gathered in the garden and forecourt of St James’s Church in the centre of Aughnacloy when Wilson and Browne arrived. They remained on the street, scanning the faces of the mourners. Over to one corner of the garden, they saw Walter Hanna and his son Henry surrounded by a group of local men. The funeral cortege arrived at the church and the coffin was carried inside. Mrs Kielty followed directly behind the coffin. She seemed barely capable of walking and was supported by her son and one of the ladies Wilson had seen at her house. As they turned up the short driveway in front of the church, Trevor Kielty broke away from his mother and rushed at the group of men surrounding Hanna. Several mourners pulled him back and there was a general scuffle. Wilson and Browne moved towards the melee shouting, ‘Police.’ It was enough to stop the fracas. ‘For God’s sake,’ Wilson said when the hubbub died down. ‘Have a bit of respect for the dead.’
‘Get that fucker out of here. He can’t intimidate us.’ Trevor Kielty was shouting as he was ushered back by some mourners towards the church where his mother was watching from the door. Gradually Kielty was pushed in through the door of the church and the mourners piled in behind him.
Wilson stood in front of Hanna. ‘Not the best idea.’
Hanna ignored him.
‘Not like the old days, eh, Walter?’ Wilson pursued the point. ‘Not quite the hero when it’s one of your own who gets murdered. People are quick to differentiate between a common criminal and an upholder of the union.’
‘Fuck off.’ Henry Hanna shoved his head in front of Wilson. ‘You’re a poor excuse for an Ulsterman.’
Wilson turned to Browne. ‘Well if it isn’t the wee rat who was hiding in the shed the day I visited his father.’ He turned back to Walter Hanna. ‘Looks like the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.’ He stared into the faces of the four men surrounding Hanna. ‘I see you brought along a few old friends from the UDR platoon. It’s all coming apart, Walter. Shooting Kielty was a major mistake. People like you can operate with impunity only if you have the support of the people you pretend to defend. From what I saw today, you don’t have that support any more.’
Hanna stared at Wilson. ‘Better men than you have tried to bring me down.’
Wilson stared back. ‘Mr Hanna, I would like you and your son to come with us to Armagh police station for interview in relation to the death of Thomas Kielty. If you do not come willingly, I will be obliged to arrest you.’ Please make me arrest you, he was thinking. He turned and looked at the men with Hanna. ‘I’m sure that you will try your old gambit of presenting a false alibi, but I want people to know that when I establish that those alibis are false, I will prosecute every person providing a false alibi for perverting the course of justice, which will involve a jail sentence.’ He could see from the faces of the men that his point had been made. ‘DS Browne, would you be so kind as to caution these two gentlemen and to arrange for a police vehicle to take them to Armagh, where they are to be placed in separate interview rooms.’
‘When this is over,’ Hanna said. ‘I’m going to find out where you live.’ He was putting a brave face on it in front of the men he used to command, but he could read betrayal in their faces. He remembered the advice of his wife and was afraid that she might have been right. But something had happened since his last meeting with Wilson. The man had a new confidence. Hanna had been over and over the events of the night that Kielty had been killed. He was sure that he hadn’t made a mistake.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Graham and Davidson had been pounding the pavements since the discovery of Gillian McAuley’s body. There were only two aspects of McAuley’s life that were of interest: prostitution and drugs. Since Davidson had been in the Vice Squad earlier in his career, he was the obvious candidate to follow the vice line, which left Graham with the drugs angle. Both men were of the one mind that if McAuley had been murdered, it wasn’t because she had killed her son. The low lifes she mingled with wouldn’t mind if she had murdered her whole family as long as she could make them money tricking or consuming their drugs. It had to be something else, and that something else had to do with business. The question was no longer about where McAuley was, it was about who was in her life. Somewhere there was a pimp and somewhere there was a pusher and they needed to find both.
Davidson decided that his best plan of action was to contact a few former ‘working girls’ who had moved up the line and who might be open to speaking to him. The numbers for the first three women he tried to call had been disconnected. People moved on, some he assumed to their final resting place. The final name on his list was a woman he’d had a more long-term relationship with and who was supposedly no longer in the ‘business’. He punched in the number and was pleasantly surprised to get a ringing tone.
‘Maggie Boles.’
The voice was gruffer than he remembered it. It sounded like a lot of cigarettes had been smoked and a lot of booze had been drunk since they’d last met. ‘Peter Davidson, Maggie.’
‘My God, is it the Peter Davidson, the one who told me that he was going to save my life and then didn’t?’
Davidson’s head drooped a little. ‘Yes, the same one. It sounds like you saved your life all on your own.’
‘I had a little help but not from you.’
‘Things were difficult at the time. Someone told my wife about us and I was fighting off a divorce.’
‘I don’t need your life story, Peter. What do you want?’
‘I’m following up on a prostitute called Gillian McAuley, do you know her?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Linenhall Street.’
‘Revisiting your old haunts. Do you know a cafe called Common Grounds on University Street?’
‘No, but I’ll find it.’
‘I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.’
Davidson walked into Common Grounds and looked round the room. He had already called Harry Graham and told him he might have a lead. There was no sign of Maggie Boles at any of the tables. A woman at the back of the room looked up from her coffee and smiled at him. Could that be her? It had been fifteen years since he had seen Maggie and this woman looked nothing like her. Nothing ventured, he walked over to the woman. ‘Maggie?’
‘You really are a detective, Peter. How did you recognise me?’ She shook her ample bosom. ‘I’ve put on a pound or two, and my hair is its natural colour now, not something out of a bottle.’
He was about to say I didn’t, but stopped himself at the last minute. The Maggie Boles he remembered weighed in at nine stone and was a blonde bombshell. This Maggie bore no resemblance to her predecessor. The blonde hair was now grey and tied back in a ponytail. There was still a twinkle in her blue eyes, but the beautiful face hadn’t stood the test of time. ‘Those eyes are a giveaway.’
‘You always were a charmer, Peter.’ She waved at a waiter behind the bar and pointed at her coffee cup.
He sat down opposite her. ‘Yeah, that’s why ninety per cent of my pay disappears in alimony every month.’
‘Poor Peter.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Last I heard you were no longer in Vice.’
‘I’m with the Murder Squad. What about you?’
‘‘I run a shelter for sexually abused women.’
‘Poacher turned gamekeeper.’
‘It’s an honest job, you should try it sometime.’
If Davidson hadn’t been a cynic, he might have blushed. ‘I’m enquiring about Gillian McAuley.’
A dark look passed over her face. ‘Gillian … is she … ?’
He nodded but didn’t speak.
‘Oh God.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I tried to get her into a shelter, her and that boy of hers. She wasn’t a bad girl but the drugs and the life took its toll.’
Davidson’s coffee arrived and he handed the waitress a five-pound note and pointed at the two coffees. ‘You still keep your ear to the ground?’
She looked round the cafe but didn’t recognise anyone.
‘A bit.’
‘McAuley was probably hanging around with someone.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘We’d like to know who that someone is.’
Boles sat back and thought for a few moments. ‘You know, Peter, Belfast is changing. It’s not like the old days when you could trust the criminals but you couldn’t trust the peelers. Nowadays you can’t trust anyone. If I give you a name, and the people who count find out, I’ll be lucky if they only work me over.’
Davidson raised his coffee cup in a toast. ‘For old time’s sake.’
‘Mickey Duff,’ she said it so softly that Davidson barely heard her.
It was like a piece of a jigsaw suddenly slipped into place in his mind. Mad Mickey Duff would be good for the boy and McAuley if the pathologist decided that she had been murdered. Davidson knew every ‘character’ on the Shankill and he was well aware of what Duff was capable of. But Mickey was connected. He’d been involved in crime since before he got out of short pants. He needed to contact the boss and Graham immediately. He finished up his coffee.
‘Leaving so soon, Peter?’ Boles watched him ready himself to go. ‘Nothing really changes, does it? See you in fifteen years. That is, if you need something from me.’
Davidson leaned across the table and kissed Boles on the cheek. ‘Thanks, see you around, Maggie. Stay well.’ He turned and headed for the door. Outside he decided to hail a cab in order to get back to the station. For him, the hunt was over. They would drag Mickey in and fit him up for the boy and McAuley. It didn’t matter how old you got, there was still a buzz of excitement when it all came together. He turned left and headed for the Ormeau Road. He was in such a hurry that he didn’t notice the young man in the hoodie standing outside the cafe.
Maggie Boles watched Davidson’s retreating back and then stared into her coffee cup. Seeing him brought back memories and, like most memories, some were good and some bad. She had been a fool to look for a new life with a bent copper. He wasn’t as bent as most but she had never met a copper working Vice that didn’t take advantage of the working girls. She finished her coffee and stood up. Through the double doors she saw the young man in the hoodie loitering. She had been around long enough to recognise the type. He must have been following Davidson or maybe they have someone on me, she thought. In any event, it spelled trouble for her. She’d come to expect very little from life so she pulled herself together and went to meet her fate. She exited the cafe and as she passed the young man, he fell into step just behind her.
‘Turn left,’ he said as she came level with Carmel Street.
She knew better than to argue.
He stayed beside her until they reached a large hedge on the left side of the street where he held her arm to stop her. ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, you know the rules.’
She looked into the face beneath the hood. He looked like a nice young man but appearances could be deceptive.
‘You don’t talk to the peelers,’ he continued. ‘That way you get to continue running your little home for wayward girls. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.’ He looked at her quizzically and smiled.
‘The easy way,’ she said. She had immediately recognised him as one of the new type of criminal, the kind who spoke well and you couldn’t trust. She had no doubt that he was ready to hurt her.
He brought his face close to hers. ‘Did you give the peeler a name?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice seemed to come from somewhere low in her stomach.
‘Who?’
She could feel his breath on her face. ‘Mickey Duff.’
He sighed and removed his face from in front of her. ‘That’s all.’
‘It is?’
‘I hope you have a friend in Timbuktu that you can visit in a hurry, because some people are going to be very angry with you.’
She laughed. ‘People have been angry with me all my life.’
The young man started to walk away. He was glad she had given him the name immediately, he would have been sorry to hurt the old tart. She reminded him of his aunt. He took a mobile phone from his pocket and dialled. ‘I need to see Mr Best,’ he said as soon as the phone was answered.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Wilson felt like a juggler in a circus. Never mind bilocation, there were three places that he wanted to be. The first choice would have been the station to organise the hunt for Mickey Duff. As soon as Davidson had said the name on the phone, he knew that Duff was their man. It wasn’t so much intuition as the fact that he and many other members of the PSNI were waiting patiently for Duff to irreversibly soil his pants. He had already ordered an APB to be put out on Duff and by evening every PSNI officer in Belfast would be on the lookout for him. Mickey Duff as a child killer and a possible murderer of his girlfriend sounded so right he was annoyed that no one had thought of it. His second choice was also in Belfast. The keys to McDevitt’s house were burning a hole in his pocket. Somewhere in that house was a piece of paper that might be instrumental in putting the Hanna and Keenan gang in jail. That would put a momentary stop to other criminal conspiracies that brought together the remnants of the UVF and the IRA. But the place he was actually going was Armagh to set the trap that would seal the fate of the Hanna and Keenan organisation. He had ordered Gibson to find Keenan and bring him to Armagh. He wanted the leaders to see each other being questioned. After the funeral, he had renewed his promise to Mrs Kielty that the killers of her husband would be brought to justice. He’d then driven to Armagh from Aughnacloy and met Browne as soon as he arrived. His instructions regarding the Hannas had been followed to the letter.
He went immediately to the room reserved for those observing interviews. On a monitor, he saw Walter Hanna sitting erect at the table in an interview room. He looked straight ahead and not one muscle in his body appeared to be moving. He wasn’t relaxed and he wasn’t sweating. The same could not be said for the man on the second screen. Henry Hanna was a mass of ticks and itches. Whenever he looked up at the camera located in the corner of the room, his facial muscles twitched. He was nervous and he was sweating. By right, Wilson should begin with the younger man, but his blood was up and he wanted Hanna firmly in the trap.
He turned to Browne. ‘We’ll let them stew for a while. I need a cup of tea and maybe a Bourbon biscuit if such a thing can be found in the station. See if you can find both.’ He needed to call Davis and inform her of his plan. What he had in mind involved a slight risk for her.
Davis’s voice was strained when she came on the line. ‘Ian, what in God’s name is going on. You have the uniforms all worked up looking for this Duff character and my colleague in Armagh has been on saying that you’re taking over his station.’
‘The investigation into the Kielty killing is reaching a crunch point. Within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, we’ll either have the murder and attempted murder cleared up or we’ll have a mountain of egg on our face.’
Davis didn’t like the idea of the latter possibility. Her office was waiting in Castlereagh and she was the only one who could screw up the possibility of sitting in it. Except for Ian Wilson, of course. ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’
‘I need a search warrant for the house and farm of Walter Hanna in Moy.’
‘On what grounds?’
Wilson knew that Davis was playing politics. ‘On the grounds that he and his son Henry were present at the murder of Thomas Kielty and the attempted murder of Jock McDevitt, and that at least one of them was present in the field where the murder took place. I’m sure that we’ll find evidence to that effect if we search their house.’
‘Exactly how sure are you that you’ll find this evidence?’
‘Fairly sure.’
‘Fairly sure – exactly how sure is that?’
‘There is no certainty in this world, Ma’am. This is a chance not only to bring a murderer to justice but also to gain huge kudos from Stormont and Dublin.’
She didn’t reply immediately. ‘Have someone prepare the paper and bring it to my
office. When do you want to serve the warrant?’
‘This evening. With a bit of luck we might be able to go to the PPS tomorrow and have our suspects arraigned the following day.’
‘Bring the paper, though I’m not promising to sign it.’
The line went dead and Wilson was wondering who Davis’s next call would be to. He fancied her new friend Grigg would be high on the list. If you want the chair in Castlereagh, you need to have your arse well and truly covered.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Eddie Hills had just been kicked in his metaphorical balls in the worse way possible by his boss, and it was all because of a maggot like Mickey Duff. OK, on the face of it the plan for getting rid of the McAuley problem looked sound. Eventually she’s found in the house on Earlscourt Street with the needle still in her arm. It all points to an overdose caused by her grief over the death of her son. The peelers have their murderer and the case is closed. Duff and his dealers continue to bring in shedloads of cash. Somewhere along the line the plan got fucked up. Hills had served with Best in Afghanistan and that had probably saved his bacon. Davie Best had been a hard taskmaster in the army and he was even worse now that he was running a criminal gang. The golden rule was that there were to be no fuck-ups, and he had broken it. In effect, that maggot Duff had broken it when he had beat the living shit out of McAuley’s sprog. Since that stupid action, Hills had been trying to solve the problem while keeping Duff on the active register. That point had now been passed. The boss had decided that Mickey was more trouble than he was worth, and since Hills had been the main proposer of the plan regarding McAuley, he would have to deal with Duff’s removal. Their man at Tennent Street had informed them as soon as the APB for Duff was launched. Best had responded by immediately sending a man to keep Mickey company and to ensure that the peelers didn’t get their hands on him.